Natural Law Philosophy Convinces Almost No One--and So What?

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
Natural law thinking is a hard sell at present for at least three reasons: 1) it is philosophical, and being so requires a bit of hard study of the basic metaphysics even to begin to grasp it; 2) it gives answers that contemporary Westerners have been programmed to reject out of hand; 3) it is part of a particular cultural order's approach to truth and ascertaining it, and that cultural order is now utterly lost and foreign.

I think this last is the deepest of the challenges. Ever since Aristotle's summary demotion in the early modern period, Aristotelian causality (especially final causality) just doesn't make sense to people who live in a mechanistic/emotivist universe, and whose very idea of learning and study is grounded in a very different theory of causality--provided they even have any respect for learning or study.

But of course our modern distance from natural law theory doesn't at all mean it is wrong or somehow "primitive”. The recognition that moderns have iPhones and Thomas Aquinas didn't, which decides the matter for a lot of folks, is clearly lame. Edward Feser has been good at underlining just how many of the "serious problems" of contemporary philosophy and science arise directly from the modern refusal to recognize Aristotelian causality. In the ethical realm, Alasdair MacIntyre musters an even more decisive army of arguments, and comes to the same conclusion: Back to Aristotle. Natural law arguments, pace the iPhone wielders, are philosophically very strong.

So although natural law thinking is a hard sell for us, still I think Rod Dreher, in his recent reply to a piece by Paul DeHart, shows a bit too much of the shall we say practical approach when he suggests that natural law isn't the way to go because "It will convince almost nobody." Serious philosophy, for most of history, has been a matter of convincing almost nobody. By definition. Thinkers, writers or teachers who dedicate themselves to teaching Aristotle or Thomas are doing very important work--whether what they say and write will be popular or not. And I mean this also in terms of what their work can do for the Church. Sure, given where we're headed, such Catholic scholars might have to drink the hemlock eventually, but in that they'll be in good company, and hopefully their teachings will survive, if only in a small group of disciples. Isn't this in any case, speaking of Rod Dreher, also part of the ethos of The Benedict Option--to keep and maintain a core of the faithful in the face of opposition from all sides?

We can continue to use more biblical and immediately existential approaches to waking people up to the Gospel, all the while offering hearty support to others who struggle on the more arcane natural law philosophical ground. Why not?

DeHart's article and Dreher’s response were both hard-hitting and worth careful reading. Yes, DeHart seems a bit too motivated to search out and debate Leo Strauss, and so may be finding Strauss under every rock, including Dreher's Rock. But although that might weaken his piece a bit, I don't think he's wrong to raise his dissent to Dreher’s brief outline of history, if only to remind us of the strong continuity between the Enlightenment order and the more properly Christian era. I'm not sure how many dozens of times I've tried to make similar arguments to "progressive" liberals: namely, that their bitter anti-Christianity is intellectually weak stuff, given that their own notions of rights and individual dignity were basically derived in the West and are part of the West's Christian inheritance. I've yet to have a single progressive liberal agree with me, or even get so far as recognize my point. Which has finally convinced me of something: it's generally a waste of time to discuss history with progressive liberals, who in terms of historical range seem to have been hatched from eggs last Tuesday. I mean--these people think of the 1950s as the Middle Ages.

DeHart:

While Christianity appropriates ideas from classical antiquity, it also fundamentally transforms them. By contrast, even though modernity rejects classical Christianity, it does so by and large within a frame bequeathed to it by Christianity. Indeed, the notions that human beings are by nature equal, that by nature they are free from political subjection, that political order is created by human will and choice, that the community or commonwealth is authoritative or sovereign over government, that there are natural rights that government ought not infringe, that there should be separate jurisdictions of church and government and those who exercise political power should have no authority in religious matters, that human persons transcend and are not defined entirely by political association (be it the kingdom, the polis, or the empire) . . . These all are Christian ideas--or, at least, ideas that were first articulated by classical Christian thinkers.

I hold these truths to be self-evident. But trying to get people, especially coastal people, to acknowledge any of them is like trying to build a snowman out of rain.

The problems of periodization raised by DeHart and Dreher in their brief back and forth are some of the most important problems we can be wrestling with. Because how we solve them will largely determine how we orient ourselves in terms of making historical arguments. And we need to make strong, well-evidenced historical arguments, at least to those who are open to listening. Re: our current malaise, I suspect Dreher is right that the real worm in our apple began its growth with 13th century nominalism. Sadly, we now don't face an apple with a fat worm in it, but rather a worm and a few remaining apple skins.

NB: 1) Edward Feser has penned the best short introduction to Thomas Aquinas for those unfamiliar with Aristotle, Aquinas and natural law philosophy. The perplexed could do much worse than start with this little book. 2) Dreher quotes from a 2013 debate between Feser and David Bentley Hart over natural law. Relevant links can be found here. I'd say Feser wins this one.

E.M.

Check my Idiocy, Ltd. at Amazon.com.

LaVar Ball: Ass-Clown of the Year

The arrest of three UCLA basketball players in Hangzhou for shoplifting early this month was shameful enough. But it’s the reaction to the event by LaVar Ball, father of one of the players, that takes the cake for clueless. I nominate him Ass-Clown of 2017.

The debate over whether the man should thank the US president for getting his son out of ten years jail time in China is one thing. Of course he should thank him. He’s a moron for not doing so. But it’s not just that. What most people are forgetting in all this is what it means to be part of a nation, part of the United States.

China is our main global competitor at present. The shoplifting by these "students" (I’ll use the scare quotes because I don’t think athletic scholarships should even be a thing) was of course widely reported in the Chinese press. Think about that for a moment. Given China's population of 1.4 billion, that means hundreds of millions of Chinese, catching this event in the news, were confirmed in their prejudice that America people of color are troublemakers and losers. Good job for your son there, LaVar.

LaVar said he would have thanked President Trump if he’d flown his kid home on Air Force One. “There’s a lot of room on that plane,” he said on CNN. Uh-huh. Does the man really have no idea what it means for national leaders to visit another country? Imagine how it would have played in Chinese media if our president, after getting them bailed out for their criminal behavior, had actually then flown these entitled "student" morons home in the presidential jet. Imagine the message it would convey, how the Chinese media would use it to dis American common sense in general and America’s leader in particular.

Rather than being a smart ass on national TV, LaVar Ball should be hanging his head in shame. Ball's son, a youth representative of the US, disgraced tens of millions of Americans in front of literally hundreds of million Chinese. And yes, he and his two teammates disgraced people of color. Why aren't more black Americans calling out the father on his cluelessness? This “father” thinks his son stealing is no big deal; and the Chinese, reading American reports, will naturally assume this to be typical of how American blacks think.

That CNN treated LaVar Ball with anything but contempt tells you something about CNN. Not thanking your country’s president for saving your son’s future? Shoplifting “ain’t that big a deal"? It's true I myself have never given much of a damn about ball players. But as for this ex-ball player and his "father", they are trash role models and a disgrace to America.

My novel A Taipei Mutt is now in print. The Asian capital unmuzzled.

The Russiagate Shuffle: More Pathetic Pleading from NYT

One of my more liberal friends recently challenged what he called my “cynical” attitude toward the big names in American journalism: the New York Times, Washington Post, etc. “There is a thing called skepticism,” he wrote, “and a thing called cynicism. You are really starting to fall into the latter.”

Ironically, not a day later, he sent me a link to an editorial in the New York Times which, he said, conveyed his own thinking on why Mueller’s Russia investigation was important. He thought the piece was spot on. It was David Klion’s “Why Don’t Sanders Supporters Care About the Russia Investigation?” When I read it, I was really almost flabbergasted.

This is what you send me to demonstrate my cynicism is misplaced?

Let me explain. I’ve lived in Asia for decades now, in Taiwan, and have keenly watched the political shifts in my home country, the US, with a feeling of ever more distance. And not a small amount of shock. In recent years, what’s especially struck me is the degree to which some of my sharpest friends from the past have become what I’d call zombified. I really can’t comprehend their inability to see things that are glaringly obvious. There are many such things, a growing heap, but surely the Top Thing at present is the absurdity of Russiagate. The shabby editorial my old friend sent me—a friend, by the way, who graduated from one of America's top universities—how could he not manage to see what it was about?

Since I went out of my way to snap my old friend out of his NYT-induced funk, I’ve decided to post my remarks here:

-----Yes, David Klion’s piece underlines a lot of key themes relative to the problem of globalized corporate oligarchy. And these problems are obvious. But sit back and think for a minute. Fighting corporate oligarchy was not the reason Mueller was put in charge of the Russiagate investigation. The reason the investigation was launched was to find evidence of the Trump administration colluding with Russia that would amount to tampering with the 2016 election. And surprise: NO EVIDENCE HAS BEEN FOUND.

In short, this NYT piece is yet another example, and a pretty transparent one, of trying to milk something newsworthy out of Russiagate. But the problem to me seems this: Russiagate is by definition NOT newsworthy. It's not newsworthy because it doesn't exist. There was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to sway the election to his advantage. If there had been, it would have been found out many months ago.

So what we have here from the NYT, sorry to say, is just a new example of what has infuriated me and many others about the "journalism" coming from the NYT/WaPo/MSNBC/CNN axis. I'd like to call them the Axis of Feeble. Because if, like me, you've been following the Russiagate business from the start, you will see that when one claim falls apart, this little press axis just shifts to implying that the investigation is about some other claim. It's gotten downright mendacious.

Let's take a moment, old friend, to consider how this new piece works. Or tries to work. Bear me out, and I think you'll come to see what I've been seeing for many months. The reason for what you call my cynicism. At least I hope you see it.

Look at the article's first paragraph: "Nearly every day, new details emerge about the relationship between Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government. The extent of the alleged collusion, which may ultimately endanger Mr. Trump’s presidency, has yet to be determined, but the scandal has dominated news coverage and enthralled Washington."

This is a statement of fact that doesn't amount to anything. What is stated? "Every day, new details emerge." Of course every day new details emerge. The problem is that none of those details is evidence of collusion or even very interesting in itself. Are Paul Manafort's dealings in Ukraine many years ago newsworthy as far as the 2016 election? No. Is Flynn's undisclosed meeting such a big deal? Hardly. Plenty of people in both parties have had plenty of meetings with Russians, as they've had meetings with Germans, Chinese, and Indians. Meetings don't mean anything. After a full year of this sordid business, there is still NO SMOKING GUN. And there won't be. (A recent article by Caitlin Johnstone does a good job of explaining just why there won't be. Check her out.)

The other statement in the first paragraph, namely that "the [Russiagate] scandal has dominated news coverage and enthralled Washington"--yes, that's true too in a bland and irrelevant way. Because what does it even mean? It only means that establishment Washington, loathing Trump, can get excited over a conspiracy theory and that, to its shame, can continue to PRETEND to be excited long after it's clear the theory points to no concrete truth.

After the article's first few paragraphs (which quote a few sane people like Noam Chomsky) did you notice how THE WHOLE FOCUS OF THE ARTICLE SHIFTS? No more is there anything about the 2016 election; rather it's all just bromides about international capitalism. You could write the same article substituting the names of other countries in for Russia. Because there are dirty deals and money laundering from one side of the globe to the other. And probably Trump's friends and Hillary's friends and Manafort's friends have their fingers in various of these global pies. We all know this, and the Russiagate investigation is not going to help a democratic citizenry fight such wheeling and dealing. Nor is the NYT going to help much either, when push comes to shove.

In short, this article is an exercise in BAIT AND SHIFT. Honest analysts on right and left are all saying that the Russiagate investigation is, in terms of its original mandate, an utter joke. Your NYT article does its best to imply that they're wrong about that because, you see . . . oligarchy. The writer's trying to save face for the establishment press by not-so-subtly re-purposing the investigation.

How can you not see this? Sure, parts of the article reflect your thinking on oligarchy, but c'mon--that question is NOT what the investigation was about. Was Mueller tasked with investigating the Trump team in order to find arguments for leftists to use against apologists of globalized capitalism? No. He was tasked with finding out how Russia colluded with Trump to sway a democratic election. He has found, and will find, NOTHING.

Two more things:

1) Note how the name UraniumOne doesn't even appear in the article. That's just another example of our paper of record at work. They're afraid a new investigation will be launched, and that their gal will be under the lens. If there's any story that might give us an object lesson in how corporate backroom deals with politicians subvert national interests, UraniumOne is at least as worthy a story as Paul Manafort's greed.

2) Note that even Masha Gessen--diehard Putin foe and Russian-American LGBT activist, a woman who loathes Trump almost as much as she does Putin--note that even she is quoted in the chorus of those pointing out the Russiagate investigation is a waste of time. Gessen is not always honest in her writing. But she has to admit the truth on this one. And that should tell you something. Because Gessen is a woman who would like Trump impeached and Putin roasted alive.

This article may seem worthy to you in some points it makes, I don't know. But to me, honestly, in terms of a coherent editorial, it's trash. It's a cheap rhetorical game, nothing more. It's like a man who says he wants you to try a new lager and ends by putting an iced green tea in front of you. Oddly, you raise the glass to your lips and say, "Wow, that's a good lager!"

I just don't get it. Really.

* * *
I'm still waiting for my friend's reply to these remarks.

My novel A Taipei Mutt is now in print. The Asian capital unmuzzled.

The Gospel of Mark: a World-Historical Text

And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed. And he straitly charged him, and forthwith sent him away; And saith unto him, See thou say nothing to any man: but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them. But he went out, and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert places: and they came to him from every quarter. --Mark 1:40-45

This passage appeared in a friend’s post. Mark, the earliest of the the Gospels, and the shortest, is also in many ways the most powerful--a brilliant, world-altering text. Think about it. Whoever this author was, he created a new genre of writing to communicate a new reality that had entered the world. Scholars point out that his Greek was crabbed, uncouth. But his narrative skills were immense.

In Mark we see the human side of Jesus. We see him almost as a man reeling from his own powers. Much in the narrative also indicates a closeness to the crowds that thronged to get near this power.

Erich Auerbach, the first couple chapters of whose Mimesis are sheer brilliance, points out that Mark was the first writer in the ancient world to write of the lower classes as fully human characters. He brought into writing an entirely new, and more fully human, way of communicating social reality. I would suggest that this is because, like many a first Christian, he recognized that Jesus' coming radically altered social reality as such.

E.M.

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. at Amazon.com and begin the long, hard reckoning.

A Gay Man Returning to the Catholic Church?

It was in an online discussion of Milo Yiannopoulos’ interview with the Jesuit magazine America. Myself I thought Milo had done a great job of it. Matt, a 20-something gay friend of mine, who’d grown up in a very Catholic town, weighed in to say he was stunned a Jesuit magazine had even agreed to interview Milo. This same friend had recently surprised me with the news that he was attending Mass again. He'd even gone to Confession.

I’d describe Matt as brilliant, precocious, complex. Though part of Catholic culture, he’d always criticized the Church, and for the years I’ve known him was certainly far from being a “practicing Catholic”.

Our discussion that day, in chat, is very brief, but I want to post it because it allowed me to summarize a few points I keep wanting to make--points that also relate to Milo's interview.

Thing is, Matt was already despairing over his future as a practicing Catholic. Here’s how it went:

MATT: Meh. I probably won't go back to Church. I don't want to live a celibate life, and I can't be arsed spending time around people who consider me fundamentally immoral and spiritually disordered. Some crosses are too heavy to bear.

MYSELF: But here's the thing--the point, if I may raise it, that I think you're missing. I don't think any really serious Catholic will think you're "fundamentally immoral". Or rather: they will think we are all fundamentally immoral.

The mistake of post-1960s Westerners is to assume that we are fundamentally defined by our sexuality. This is why we’ve been subject to so much of the SJW cultural ranting regarding this whole question. I myself have come to realize that this shift in the definition of the person is more a late effect of Protestantism, bending toward Gnosticism, than anything else. The shift has taken in many Catholics too. But it's a mistake; it's a modern perversion of the faith. Even the coded definition of people as hetero or some letter of LGBTQwerty is a modern invention. Most cultures through most of human history have just recognized that humans are sexual.

Something eccentric is going on with us. We're out on a limb in our basic anthropology, and we're moving further and further out.

So if I were you, I'd keep thinking this through. And I don't think you're even close to fundamentally immoral. You're probably more fundamentally moral than plenty of the others attending Mass. Milo in his interview was right, I believe, to recognize that he has sin, but that the sin society defines him for is not his worst sin--rather that pride is a more dangerous sin.

One option is to, as it were, cordon off your sex life for the time being. By which I don't mean to actually become celibate, but rather to allow the contradiction to exist, but put it aside while you keep faith with those aspects of the Church's tradition that you can.

I haven't had coffee yet, so I'm not so sure these points are well put. But I think they're very important--that we've been more or less brainwashed by the culture into assuming that our definitional center is sexual behavior. It is not. Even most of the Christians around us are in this respect more "late modern Westerners" than they are Christian. But you don’t have to be.

MATT: Good points. And thanks for the advice! Maybe I’m being over-dramatic on this question.

I'm not all that obsessed with sex anyway. I just worked myself up into a tizzy thinking, "Who are THEY to demand that I be celibate!"--without realizing that, in theory at least, all Catholics could spend their lives celibate if they go unmarried.

I'll keep thinking these things through, and continue with my experiment. In any case, I'm not in a relationship at present.

* * *

And that was that. Myself I don’t know how most gays or lesbians will react to my points, but I do stand by them as important. The contemporary world, especially post-1960s, has sex on the brain in ways that warp what is essential in both the meaning of personhood and the meaning of faith. And, I'd add, in the meaning of sex itself.

E.M.

Have some deadpan with your coffee. Check out Idiocy, Ltd. Dryest damn humor in the West.

Jeff Flake and the Meaning of Failure

I'd heard about Sen. Jeff Flake's early retirement protest, but hadn't watched his speech. A friend messaged me: "You really should watch it. It’s very good. My concern is that the 'good' people are resigning, when that is exactly the opposite of what we need." She pasted the link:


Since I commented at length in reply, I've decided to blog my remarks here.

E.M.: Watched the whole Flake speech. My reaction to it is mixed. Yes, I don't like aspects of Trump's governing, and I do think his personality doesn't help. That said, I find it odd that you call Flake one of the "good" people--though you did put the word in quotes. He knows how to hit all the pious notes, and he does have some good points, but here's what I see in in his speech.

1) It is the establishment talking, the establishment registering its protest against Trump. This is the same establishment that wanted Dubya, that wanted Clinton, that loathed both Bernie and Trump, and loathed them for some of the very same reasons: a) Both Bernie and Trump stood for discontinuing the neocon foreign policy of ongoing US "nation building" in the Middle East; b) Both Bernie and Trump wanted out of international trade deals.

When Sen. Flake here talks about "international agreements" and "organizations", etc., you should keep in mind what these words mostly mean to the establishment: they mean more corporate-run globalization, more corporate-run wars.

I think Flake's speech had a lot in common with Dubya's speech a few days back. Dubya mentioned the word "freedom" multiple times: America and freedom, freedom and America, freedom freedom freedom. But I know what the establishment mainly means by "freedom": they mean freedom of capital to move across borders and thus evade control by national governments. The freedom they value is the freedom of the oligarchs to play the whole globe as a chess board and evade every downside--all while they keep talking about “freedom”. (NB: Though I was impressed by some of Flake's points as valid, Dubya's speech I found horrific in its falseness.)

2) These early retirement announcements by Flake and Corker, in my mind, are mainly proof that the populist, anti-globalist right represented by Trump (in his often flailing way) is successfully pushing the establishment out of the GOP. I'm glad of that. I don't think the smarter members of this particular movement are against real freedom in any demonstrable way: quite the contrary. It's the Republican establishment that is the greater threat to freedom, since it will always compromise on principle under corporate pressure, and the voters now recognize this. The Republican establishment is unconnected to the voters, and the voters now know it. As was proven in the last election, where Trump and Cruz wiped out all the establishment GOP candidates. I think between the two of them they took 80% or something of primary votes.

3) I find it painfully ironic that Flake speaks of the need to recognize failure but not excuse it. He said: “[We all need to be forgiven at times for failures, myself included.] But too often . . . we rush to forgive and excuse our failures, so that we might accommodate them and go on failing.”

He's saying this of course because he’s keen to call out what he sees as Trump's failures. But you know why Trump and not Jeb Bush is in office? Because of failure. Because of the gigantic failure of our CONGRESS for decades now--Flake's "dignified" Congress.

In short, if Flake wants to talk about not allowing a nefarious “new normal” to take root, I’d say the new normal that should not have been allowed to take root happened years ago. Trump's tweeting or slipshod language are not the main problem America has to deal with. The main problem is the brokenness of "normal" Washington. You know this too. In short, Flake is good at calling out Trump's failures, but did he resign when his whole party was rubber-stamping whatever Wall Street or the corporations wanted? Did he resign when the plan on the table was to outsource another gazillion manufacturing jobs because that’s what the oligarchs wanted? He didn't. And the voters know it.

4) As for the valid elements in Flake's speech, yes, I think it's pretty dismal the level of discourse that our two-party political circus has sunk to. And Trump is pretty much a circus barker. It does set a bad example for youth, and it maybe does weaken our standing in the world a bit. (But on this latter I'm still not fully decided. Because there are so many factors to take into account. Is Trump's personality weakening our stature, or are his demands that our partners take up some of their responsibility actually strengthening that stature?)

In any case, as for the descent of discourse into ad hominem attacks and vulgarity, I think that ship sailed before Trump. I don't think Obama descended there, but our media culture has been there a long time now. And yes, the liberals since last year have been just as vulgar and spiteful as anything Trump or his supporters can come up with.

Where do I stand on the issues? That's a longer subject. In general, I'm happy to see a movement on the right that is challenging the neocons and the Washington normal. I'm happy to see a smart right that his eviscerating the left's identity politics, which I consider un-American, authoritarian, abhorrent. I don't agree with some of their positions on this or that, and don't think Trump himself is likely to drain the swamp in the way most of his base hopes. But I'm glad the movement is there.

As for the American left, I really see no hope for it. I think it's got no sane foreign policy, no workable economic theory; that, bizarrely, it doesn't even seem to notice economics anymore. I thought Bernie was an honest and committed leftist, and might have been able to put together a serious challenge to the establishment, but even Bernie would have been too subject to riding the unbreakable identity-politics wave that is now the Democratic base. And so in office he'd likely have been abetting all kinds of authoritarian PC nonsense I would have been opposed to.

Clinton herself, if she is the left, which I think she is in terms of representing a huge voting base that calls itself left, is just a PC neocon. Which is what I'd call the majority of "left" voters in the US at present. They’re Republicans waving various PC flags.

As for the left that is our youth movement--Antifa, the millions of liberal-leaning university grads, etc.--they’re political children, with no idea of what the left needs to be. And they won’t learn either.

So . . . there will be no standing against the establishment from this political left. Because, like it or not, Bernie is not an army, but an individual. Yes, he gathered a big following. But many many of his followers are likely more drunk on the identity-politics Kool-Aid than they are interested in fighting capitalism in any comprehensively left way.

A lot of typing here. Rather quickly too. I hope you can get the gist.

* * *

Update: Weird. Patrick Buchanan makes almost precisely the same series of points I made here. If I didn't know better, I'd say he's reading my blog. To judge by time stamp (my blog is set to British time) Buchanan's article hit a few hours after mine. Yes, I'd say it's better argued than mine. See "It's Trump's Party Now".

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. at Amazon.com and begin the long, hard reckoning.

The Wages of (Postmodern) Sin

When the faithless masses of my contemporaries die, their souls do not end up in Hell; they end up in Heck. One may think this punishment less, but still it is extreme. For eternity they will wail there, regretting that they hadn’t been perceptive enough in life to attain to faith and so have a route to redemption. But they will also gnash their teeth in shame, recognizing they never had enough grandeur in them to merit the flames of Hell. And so Heck will drag on, a fetid heaviness in the air, as they spend their days in lines waiting to exchange coupons for gadgets and novelties which keep repeating themselves--which, when they get them back to their cubicles, always somehow end up being the same thing: a little semi-lifelike effigy of the buyer him- or herself.

Atheism, Utopianism, Tyranny, Creation: A Damaged Debate

Let me introduce this thread with one of my last comments on it:

ERIC M.: Nothing I hate so much as disrespect for dialogue, whether in the form of direct censorship or attempts to efface or erase the record of dialogue that took place, especially when the dialogue was worthwhile. And so, to everyone still here, I'm saddened and angered that Allan H., after writing that he respects me as a debate partner, and whose own ideas I've often praised, has decided out of the blue to unfriend me and also to delete all his comments in this thread. It is deeply disappointing.

Is Allan maybe ashamed that he got called out on certain fallacies? So censorship of the record is the correct answer? Sorry, but all I can say is: Atheist values. It's not the first time I've been hit in just this way. The worst of it was a poet I admired a few years back, whose work I’d written about, but who saw nothing in deleting my comments from threads on his wall when I even so much as touched on religion or questioned his arguments. An atheist who admired the New Atheist bunch, he assumed ethics just meant shutting up religious people. And we Christians are supposedly the ones who censor and close down debate.

It’s happened to me a handful of times since, but Allan’s unfriending this time, suddenly and with the erasure of all his comments, is really a disappointment.

Because of Allan’s sudden disappearance and self-erasure, our long discussion was left on my wall with holes all over it. Yet another broken dialogue.

Still, I decided I wanted to salvage it as best I could, and so have written in what I remember of his remarks. No, my versions of his arguments might not be as sharp as his were, and they are briefer. But I’ve no choice. While our spat was going on, I knew I’d eventually want a record of it; and when, returned from a trip a week or so later, I went to my computer to save it, I found all his arguments gone, and he himself no longer a contact.

[Update: I’ve still no explanation for Allan's sudden disappearance, although I did learn later from a mutual friend that Allan had in fact completely deleted his Facebook account. So perhaps my initial anger was a bit misplaced? Perhaps. But I don’t think completely.

When you engage in dialogue with people, then decide to erase the whole history of those dialogues by clicking DELETE ALL, you are, whether you know it or not, deleting their access to that dialogue as well.]

Eric Mader

Atheism, Utopianism, Tyranny, Creation

On Sept. 9th, I posted the following image, from the Freedom From Atheism Foundation:



Details from image:

Aboriginal Religion
Yakubu Gowon (1966-75) Nigeria
Kills 1.1 million

Atheist
Mengitsu Haile Mariam (1974-91) Ethiopia
Kills: 1.5 million

Atheist
Kim Il Sung (1948-94) North Korea
Kills: 1.6 million

Atheist
Pol Pot (1963-81) Cambodia
Kills: 1.7 million

Muslim
Ismail Enver Pasha (1913-19)
Kills: 2.5 Million

Buddhist
Hideki Tojo (1941-44) Japan
Kills: 5 million

Catholic
Leopold II of Belgium (1865-1909)
Kills: 15 million

Racial Nationalist
Adolf Hitler (1934-45) Germany
Kills: 17 million

Atheist
Joseph Stalin (1922-53) USSR
Kills: 23 million

Atheist
Mao Zedong (1942-76) China
Kills: 78 million

This FFAF post links an article by Dinesh D’Souza.

The thread began with Allan’s first comment:

ALLAN H.: [Another anti-atheist post. Really, Eric, this is beneath you. It is not atheism that leads to mass murder. Rather, any ideology or “-ism” can do so. The problem is that people don’t know they have the possibility of not listening to authority. I they are taught to think for themselves, they can refuse orders to commit atrocities. The real problem is people NOT thinking for themselves, people submitting to arbitrary authorities that gain a following by reference to some ideology. Leave atheism out of it.]

ERIC M.: Allan H.: In fact I partly agree with you. But with reservations having to do with the question of how ethics might be grounded. Also, in our modern West, it's atheists who have always been more apt to be become fellow travelers of utopianism: that fatal pipe dream that we can remake society from scratch, and that our remake would be an improvement.

In terms of religious communities, this is how these atheists always sound: "Since Utopia obviously hasn't arrived, and since religion remains part and parcel of our current flawed community, and since moreover religions are OLD and our project is to birth the NEW, which is of course the GOOD and the NECESSARY, because it will bring the PROGRESS we foresee, this all means that religions (read: religious people) must be expunged."

Like it or not, such thinking is still an integral part of our progressives' general world view, and given an illiberal turn, which is very possible, indeed already happening, this thinking could easily again become weaponized. Or rather: re-weaponized.

After 1) the problem of grounding any workable ethics and 2) the link between atheism and utopian projects, I might also mention 3) the fact that there are now many serious scholars who wonder if our liberal order could even survive without maintaining its Judeo-Christian roots. Our Western liberalism, with its stress on human rights, arose and flourished in the Christian West. This is not merely a random historical accident.

But if I continue to post against atheists, especially if I continue to underline the societal collapse and horror that has come when officially atheistic parties gain control of the state, there's yet another reason. And it's that it's still common to hear people say: "Religions and conflicts over religion have caused more wars and killed more people than anything else in history." I just heard my father say this last time I visited him. It's typically one of the first cliches to come up in barroom discussions of religion vs. secularism.

The problem with this cliche, of course, is that it's patently false. The above meme does a bit to underline how, especially in modernity, this cliche is actually worse than false. Because the truth happens to be quite the opposite. No ideology has gassed, tortured and executed more human beings than those great experiments in "scientific" socialism called Marxist-Leninism and Maoism. A second place prize, in terms of sheer number of dead, has to go to the "scientific" racism of the Third Reich. It is modern utopian fantasies of a perfect society, combined with a rejection of the traditional culture of the society in question, that has killed by far the most of our fellow humans.

And now again in 2017, look, it's "scientific" thinking on the definition of the human person that allows for increasing application of “mercy killing” of the elderly, infirm or mentally deficient. This is happening in Europe as I write, and in Canada, and there's no telling where it will lead, once social and economic pressures increase, as they will. I'm utterly against it. On Christian grounds.

But secular ethics, like it or not, has always tended to make more and more room for the “practical”. Against this, Christianity, I am glad to say, is not practical. That child who will be born with Down syndrome? She must not be aborted, says the Christian. She is a human person, a soul linked to a body. It's not any medical panel or state institution’s right to declare on her "quality of life" and snuff her out, supposedly in her own interest. Likewise with the elderly. I predict we'll be seeing more and more people disposed of because, ultimately, they are judged to be impractical to have around. You heard it here first.

But one more thing. Being religious, I'm supposedly the one who is intolerant. And yet isn't it odd that among the fellow Christians I keep in touch with, a few of them on Facebook, I have never yet heard one say anything along the lines of "These atheists need to be wiped out." Or: "These secularists need to be removed from society, then we can get back to building a healthy culture." I never hear religious people talk this way. I never even hear them say that atheists should be censored or jailed.

It's quite the contrary with atheists. Just last year, I caught a liberal friend of mine weighing in to the effect that "It's time we finally scrub all these Christians out of American society for good."

"Scrub"? That's a metaphor from the realm of hygiene. As in cleansing. As in, yes, precisely what Hitler said of the Jews.

Another friend, and you know him, just last month weighed in here on Facebook with the keen comment: "All religious people should be locked away in a closet and the key should be tossed. After 3,000 years we'll come back, and we can talk." That's our friend Michael A.’s take. Myself, I've never argued that atheists or SJW extremists should be "locked away in a closet". To say religious people should be locked away is bigoted, offensive--a serious offense against the basic rules of our civilization.

And it reveals something about whoever could write such a sentence. Somewhere in his noggin, and it's not far from the surface, he really does seem to believe that religious people are a kind of cancer on the social order. That if they were all gone, things would start to get better and sanity and reason would reign. The question of how to make them gone is just a matter of practical application. The Soviets got to work on such practical business when our great-grandparents were around: millions murdered, sent to the gulag, etc.

The sentence "Religious people should be locked away in a closet" is not really that different from "Wouldn't it be great if we just got rid of all these Jews?" I find both sentences about equally amusing.

So I'm supposed to NOT be critical of atheists, when even among my more liberal-minded atheist friends this kind of "cleansing" shit appears regularly?

Yes, sure, Michael will say he's joking, just mouthing off. But I'd argue there's more to it than that. It's the New Atheism that has set the ground for this kind of "We need these people to shut up now" approach. Michael's only excuse, I think, is that he repeatedly rails against humans in general as a cancer. Still, his point is clear: Humans would not be quite the cancer they are if only the religious among them were gotten out of the way.

I have no problem with atheists or secularists being around. In my mind, they're just folks playing with a deck that's short a few cards. I'll continue debating and discussing with them, but wouldn't imagine that they're eventually going to disappear from the social order. I'd never dream of scrubbing them from society. Quite differently, many many atheists and secularists clearly DO imagine that religions will eventually die out. It's part of the shallow ideology "History = Progress" that they've inherited from Enlightenment culture. The unselfconscious but persistent notion that progress means old things are necessarily replaced by new things and that the replacement is always good.

And so religions will be replaced by MTV, I suppose. Or Community Ethics Brigades, something along the lines of the Red Guards. "You'll know it's Progress because they'll have smart phones!"

Ever notice how in nearly all science fiction movies the characters don't really follow any religion? That's because, don't you know--"In the future, religion won't exist anymore."

Uh-huh.

Ever notice also how in science fiction movies the characters don't ever shit or eat either? That's because, don't you know--"In the future people won't need to shit or eat. Those things are part of the old present. In the future we'll all wear cool uniforms and talk in a dry, scientific way. Because it will all be, you know, really SCIENTIFIC."

Pardon me if I’m not impressed by such childish stuff.

Myself I don't think evil decreases with More Science or new technological advances. With digital culture, we may finally have to conclude that the opposite is true: Our digital technology, this pervasive connectedness and speed of communication, is making us more of a threat.

The human animal remains the same, as subject to ideology and groupthink and mania as he or she ever was.

If I have faith in the Christian vision of humanity, it is in part because it is more beautiful, deeper and more variegated than the other visions on offer. It links my thought and daily perception to a communal experience that reaches back through Europe into the ancient world, and it provides me lenses that reveal more than the lenses of the various secular ideologies I've studied. Aside from this, of course, is the fact that I believe in God--a One God glimpsed by the ancient Israelites as well as by some of the earliest of Greek philosophers. Xenophanes, Heraclitus.

Cheers, all.

ALLAN H.: [Who are you kidding about Christians not wanting to cleanse society of atheists? I’ve many times, on atheist chat boards, had to deal with Christians throwing out the most violent rhetoric. Aside from the common “You’re all going to hell anyway” refrain, which in my mind pretty much sums up just how loving and ethical Christianity leads people to be.

Further, how is it you manage to ignore Christian utopianists? Of course Christians are guilty of the same kind of utopian thinking when they project a perfect society in which everyone believes in their god. Christian Fundamentalists believe in a utopia in which everyone accepts and practices Christianity, often expressed as a "return to" a state or order of things with a dogmatic hierarchy that is often sexist and classist. And look at our Muslim utopianists. You don’t find ISIS, a religious movement, to be murderously utopian?

Finally, not all atheists subscribe to radical utopian projects, so your attack against atheism as a an intellectual position is unwarranted. And as for scientism, it's not an inherent element of atheism. Scientism is just a quasi-religious belief in the power of science to ultimately explain all phenomenon and decisively disprove the existence of any supernatural entities or forces. Though atheists don’t believe it likely that any supernatural entities exist, many of them doubt that science will ever be able to prove this.]

ERIC M.: I don’t doubt you’ve experienced verbal violence from some Christians in heated discussion with atheists. I don't doubt that it happens, but as I don't spend time on atheist chat boards I rarely see it. But note: Verbal violence is one thing. Enacting large scale cleansing operations, with gulags or gas chambers, is quite another.

Myself I don't think I argued above or elsewhere that all atheists are subscribers to radical utopian projects. Rather, I argued that if you find aggressive utopian projects in the modern world, the kind of political projects that typically lead quickly to mass graves, then you'll find that atheists are massively represented in the ranks of the radicals, or that atheism or anti-religion is one of the key elements of the project. I don't think this can be denied. And thus I find atheism combined with scientism a very serious modern threat because, of course, there's the empirical evidence of the last century. Try to deny that evidence all you want.

Nazism sought to displace both the Lutheran and Catholic churches as spiritual center of German culture and put in their place a cult of the German race that was based on supposedly scientific racial theories. In Russia, the displacement was of Orthodox Christianity with a scientific theory of history. The atheism in Nazism was not as explicit as with the Soviets, or at least not at the start, but the program to repurpose the churches as sites for the worship of Hilter and the Volk are very well documented. Both Soviet and Maoist utopianism were, of course, explicitly atheist.

What’s more, you seem to be mischaracterizing a key term in our discussion. You accuse me of ignoring Christian and Muslim utopianists, but in the large picture, this is to misrepresent utopianism. Especially with Christianity, the claim in itself is incoherent.

Utopianism refers to attempts to create a perfect society on earth. This is not something Christianity has ever believed in. The point of Christianity is that the historical realm is fatally fallen, sin cannot be reformed or legislated away, and that only God could radically transform our condition. By definition, utopians are people who believe otherwise: that if we reorganize production, law, thinking, etc., we humans ourselves could bring about a Utopia. There were, especially in the 19th century, small Christian communities characterized as "utopian", but these were mainly a matter of breakaway groups trying to build separate communities in which Christian life could flourish. They were not aimed at "remaking the world” according to some new social plan, which they would have considered, theologically speaking, an impossibility, a project akin to the Tower of Babel. In short, there wasn't the totalizing vision we normally label utopian.

So if you want to claim utopianism is also a Christian threat, just as it has proven a threat from atheistic, pro-"science" utopianists, point me to your examples. Where are the mass graves? And please don't try to change the subject to war, because, again, wars, such as the Crusades, are not examples of trying to create a Utopia on earth.

You write: "Christian Fundamentalists believe in a utopia in which everyone accepts and practices Christianity, often expressed as a 'return to' a state or order of things with a dogmatic hierarchy that is often sexist and classist." Sorry, but that is not a utopia. That would just be a Christian society of a certain kind. And again, these fundamentalists have not organized cadres of armed thugs to take over any Western government and impose their vision by slaughtering those who think differently. Even aggressive fundamentalists recognize that they must spread the faith through persuasion.

The ISIS caliphate is a different matter. Here I think you might argue for a utopian vision. So there's that. Islam doesn't have quite the notion of humanity's fallenness that Christianity does.

The other term I think you seriously mischaracterize is scientism. You call it “a quasi-religious belief in the power of science to ultimately explain all phenomenon and decisively disprove the existence of any supernatural entities or forces." I don't think that's what scientism is. The quasi-religious part is right, but the desire to "explain all phenomena" is of course shared by science and scientism. I don't think that desire is a bad thing, by any means. It's what science seeks to do.

Scientism is the uncritical application of scientific method to areas where science can't really apply. It's the uncritical belief that science can give humans not just knowledge of the physical universe, but also guidance in social norms, ethics, etc. The problem is obvious: Empirically-derived knowledge of what this or that thing is as a material entity cannot tell human beings how they should live. Scientism can offer no ethics, because the empirical findings will always have to be supplemented by ideology. Scientists know that science can inform ethical decisions, but cannot provide the criteria of what is ethical or unethical. Those who subscribe to scientism (and the New Atheists, especially Richard Dawkins, are the poster kids here) forget this basic philosophical truth.

Good to read your comments, as always.

Cf. on Scientism

MICHAEL A.: Sometimes I feel Eric Mader and Allan H. are the same person. Alter egos having some slap and tickle. As for the mass murders above, the communists included, I would say: Not in the name of atheism.

JEROME K.: My guess would be that the numbers in the image above were strongly be influenced by the vast number of people under their control or sway and how many True Believers (a la Eric Hoffer) they had in their ranks.

ERIC M.: Jerome: Yes, a fair point. And though it was long long ago that I read Hoffer, I'm glad you mentioned him. Because those True Believers, as Hoffer knew, are recruited from the ranks of people who suffer a deficit of meaning, who aren't able to find meaning in human society as it is. For them meaning and validation (Hoffer considered pride a key motivator) could only come in company with the zealots out to overturn that social order in which they felt meaningless. Hoffer probably would have plenty to say on the rise of both the alt-right and the SJW left in the US: mirror images of each other, in my view.

Would love to hear what you might say about Allan's vs. my points above. And maybe you've a few ideas on what poses the most danger to Western liberal order at present. If you've time, of course. My burning question at present is: Will a diet of consumerism and selfie love, combined with decreasing economic opportunities, not lead almost inevitably to a huge demographic ready to be converted as True Believers in the Hoffer sense? Isn't it already happening?

MICHAEL A.: The concept of the God gene comes to mind. The vast majority of sapiens believe in an invisible, omnipotent, omniscient entity that has an obsessive fascination with what we do on earth.

Anthropocentric is the word of the day again. The hubris of mankind won't ever cease to amaze me.

Science fiction often has a world or worlds with no religion because, well ye know, Eric Mader, religion has totally failed to bring us together as a species. It's a failure--like communism, Marxism, I'd venture democracy too, etc.

We've outgrown religion in those movies. If only.

Geronticide (and voluntary suicide of the aged) and infanticide have been with us since the beginning. Nothing to do with atheistic parties.

I absolutely do not believe in me "noggin" that it'd be better if religious people were all gone. I think religious people are deluded. It isn't their fault. Bless.

ERIC M.: Of course everything will fail to bring us together as a species. But again, I don't think it was religion's goal to bring us together, or at least it was never assumed in most religious traditions that all the world would be brought together. Not so with Marxism or democracy.

I think you're deluded. But it isn't your fault either. And in any case, I don't think you should be locked away in a closet. At least not quite yet.

MICHAEL A.: Claptrap! The goal of the monotheisms has, for the most part, been to convert or kill the nonbelievers. Once they become threatened, they fight.

And btw, on the original post, there is no mention of the millions of native North and South Americans murdered by the righteous, brave, God-fearing white folk. In whose name? You guessed it in one! Praise Jehovah!

ERIC M.: In the name of the King of Spain. But of course you've a good point. In North America it was mostly slow expansion, land grabbing, often brutal and two-faced, but in South America--enslavement, destruction of the native cultures.

MICHAEL A.: Which country has polluted this unique planet more than any other? God's chosen one of course. The good old Christian U S of A.

MICHAEL A.: Faith is fiction (delusional and sometimes funny). Science is science. These are empirical truths.

ERIC M.: Is that so? Impressive that you can define these two things so concisely. All the many books and philosophical papers--we don't need them. We just say: "Faith is fiction. Science is science."

You could have saved a lot thinkers an amazing amount of trouble if you'd have showed up earlier.

MICHAEL A.: If the god gene is real, and I suspect it is, then billions of people have spent a lifetime thinking about their existence. Worthwhile no doubt. Out of this contemplation, serious debate on the origins of life and our place in the universe has awakened.

Time to move on, Eric. If it's in your DNA, I can't help you. Boohoo!

ERIC M.: Speaking of moving on, and of what science has brought us, the argument that our universe is created, and that there is a creator, has never been stronger than in the past couple decades. Serious secular-minded scientists, among them Stephen Hawking, acknowledge this. Note that this thesis makes no claim about which religious tradition gets it right, or even if religion is the right matrix through which to understand creation; it makes no claim as to the ultimate purpose of life. It merely makes the claim that the universe we're in appears to be a created artifact. Do you know this thesis, and how uncannily grounded it has suddenly become in the best of what hard science has shown us?

Most people I debate on these questions are amazingly stuck in the 19th c. as far as their general understanding of what science is.

Now here's a little article that lays out some of the metrics. I've posted this article before, but not sure either you or Allan took the time to read it. I'm not so much interested in the biological arguments on cell structure, but more on the first part of the article, on the physical universe and the fact that it does host life. Also, don't bother to try to dismiss the article because of who wrote it. Look at the contents, at the factual data. The multiverse vs. created universe debate is what concerns me. Theists have long been accused of making "God of the gaps" arguments. I consider the multiverse theory to be clearly an "atheism of the gaps" argument. Why? Because the only evidence its supporters have for their claim is the deeply troubling "coincidence" that the physical parameters of our universe are hospitable to life. The multiverse is a mythical entity invented to dull the sting of the fine-tuning science now allows us to see in the actual universe.

Worth a read, as it gathers some of the main arguments.

Cf. The Return of the God Hypothesis

JEROME K.: Eric: 1) This is a heavy argument to wade into, but let me start by saying I always recommend Hoffer's True Believer since he makes the point that whether one be Marxist, religious, nationalist, etc., one can try to find a lost identity and self worth in a cause; it transcends but also fits the religious/science debate because of that. Just as I recommend Mircea Eliade's work Sacred and the Profane as something that applies as well outside religious circles; i.e. for true Elvis fans, Graceland is the center, and the sacred. What this comes to is understanding the difference of how we forge paradigms in the realms of physics and metaphysics.

2) (What follows will be partly a plug for and brief summary of points in my most recent book, The Paradigms that Guide Our Lives and Drive Our Souls. The religious/science debate gets confusing since it comes from two different realms that we live in (the third realm is phenomenology) namely physics and metaphysics. In physics we discover and forge our paradigms as we learn the "laws of nature,” etc. Unfortunately, physics tells us nothing about teleology and meaning or purpose in life. For that we have to go to metaphysics, where things cannot be proven as in physics but by which we try to determine how we should live in community. Here we are in a realm of faith whether we are religious or atheists--that is the key that has to be realized. Agnostics generally hold off judgment and sit on the fence--acceptable, but one eventually has to make some sort of community decision. In metaphysics we don't discover paradigms like we do in physics: instead after our faith decision/choice we try to build them from faith, presupposition, past teachings/experiences, etc., whether we be atheists or religious. Religious people have an advantage since they have elaborate systems answering anomalies; atheists lack such as they seek to build a humanistic community. Hope that is not too confusing. Remember there is a third realm, phenomenology--very subjective, but very real as well.

ALLAN H.: [Jerome: Which would seem to suggest that all constructs of reality are equal, yes? That one cannot presume to judge other cultures or a different reality construct.]

ERIC M.: Jerome: A very concise outline with a lot of overlaps on how I see these issues as well.

I read The True Believer long ago, and really should read it again. Back then it formed for me, along with Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem and Crane Brinton's The Anatomy of Revolution, a kind of quick Master Course in the dynamics of tyranny. Hoffer and Arendt present very different theses, but both offer crucial portraits of different types that end up part of tyranny's machinery. I haven't read Eliade.

I'm glad you plugged your book, because I'll be putting it into my next shopping cart. Given what you've laid out in these comments, it sounds useful as a schematics of how we construct and negotiate meaning, and I suspect the tripartite structure might reveal much. And you work as well into phenomenological questions, where I've some grounding, being a student coming out of a Comparative Literature department where Heidegger (pro and contra) was all the rage. I’m looking forward to it.

Your remarks are congenial besides because, in what you define as the metaphysical, you make a point I keep trying to make but that regularly falls flat. Namely: "Just because you, [Dave or Lisa or Mike], don't subscribe to a religious understanding doesn't mean you are not reading the world in basically mythological terms. Because you are. You have partly constructed and partly been indoctrinated in an ideological system, a myth construct, that you don't even suspect. You assume your thinking is just 'perception' or 'obvious' when it is in fact a semiotic construct not all that different from any other, including any religious or political construct any human has made at any time in history."

I think you can get my meaning, though most people I debate, especially online, do not. They assume they are just being "objective”. Not willing to struggle with philosophical problems, which is hard work, they don't end up facing up to the tentativeness and (usually) bland conformity of their own metaphysics. Led by the nose.

Of course what you call the metaphysical level has huge overlap with the religious and ideological and mythical--that in fact with a few shifts of emphasis we're talking about the same cognitive realm. "Metaphysical" being a good general designation.

I'm getting ready to head out of town, so won't continue this discussion for now. But thanks all for weighing in.

One more point for Allan H.: Myself I believe all humans have value, that it is wise we recognize them as having equal value in terms of law and right to life and liberty, but I don't think this means that all constructed "realities" are thus equal. I'd say they're clearly not equal, but that the challenge of judging among them arises from the fact that no one is really qualified to do so. As no one, and certainly no committee, can escape the blindnesses of their own reality construct, it is impossible to establish an objective ground at this level. Which doesn't mean we don't constantly make such judgments, just that we can't claim objectivity.

I think radical relativism, i.e. the "All reality constructs are therefore equal" stance, is a way some people try to avoid the conundrum, but ultimately no one really lives by this belief, and philosophically it's a cop-out, aside from being self-contradictory. After all, what if I say: "You claim all reality constructs are equal. My own reality construct says 'No, you're wrong.' You have to acknowledge my position as equal to yours."

This very conundrum is a kind of nutshell image of what current Western liberalism goes through when it claims to respect and welcome all cultures equally. There's a logical incoherence that liberals can't manage to face up to, mainly because they believe their own culture is somehow "neutral". Cue Europe and its current predictable malaise over mass immigration from the Muslim world.

ALLAN H. [weighs in with an initial response on the “God Hypothesis” link, arguing that the interpretation of the data is tendentious, that the data doesn’t necessarily suggest the universe was created to host life, that vast stretches of the universe can’t host life in any case.]

ERIC M.: I’ll have to reply in depth later as to your arguments on the structure of the universe(s). In any case, as often, medieval Catholic thinkers were already dealing with many of the logical problems: How a Medieval Philosopher Dreamed Up the 'Multiverse'

ALLAN H. [posts a lengthy few paragraphs on the, in his mind, particular evil of the Catholic Church. His focus (surprise!) is on reproductive rights and the Church’s teachings against abortion and birth control. Allan underlines that especially in the African context, where many people take the Church’s teachings seriously and where HIV is a particular threat, the Catholic Church can only be seen as “pure evil”.

Allan goes on to say that the Church’s teachings against abortion are grounded in nothing but myths and an abstruse and convoluted logic which is used as a cover to pull the wool over people’s eyes.]

ERIC M.: Allan: My Church runs hospitals and clinics all over Africa, caring for the sick and needy, as well as schools and universities, educating the next generations. It also runs myriad charities in service to the elderly, the displaced, refugees. In all these areas the Catholic Church is one of the continent's major providers. What's more, Christianity has been in Africa as long as it has been in Europe; if we're talking Western Europe, it has been in Africa longer.

Many African nations are finally pulling out of the rut of the just post-colonial period, and for some of these countries, I'm quite optimistic. My African friends here in Taiwan, most of them Catholic, most of them from West Africa, are among the sharpest, most mature people I know: centered and wise; principled and dedicated; and not overly impressed by American liberals who imagine themselves in a position to teach Africa about sex and family life.

In fact, my African friends see America as a culture in steep decline: a culture that lives for consumption, that is media-obsessed, sex-obsessed; a culture many of whose young people aren't much interested in building families. When I've listened in to their discussions of politics in their respective home countries, the focus is typically on which party's policies can actually be implemented, how these policies will help or hurt the economy or which parts of the economy, which party is doing the best to fight corruption, etc. When I'm around Americans talking politics, by comparison, the focus tends to be quite otherwise. Last time I was with Americans talking politics, the topic shifted quickly to trans soldiers in the military.

The Catholic Church's teaching on issues of sex, marriage and family actually has much more in common with the thinking of many African cultures than does the mainstream liberalism now dominant in the US. You imply that, as a "religious" teaching, the Church's stance against artificial birth control must be mysterious and convoluted. I'm not sure you even know what it is. I could state it in a few sentences:

1) By our observation, we recognize that like many species the human species is divided into two sexes, male and female, and the evident telos, or ultimate purpose, of this sexual division is the reproduction of the species.

2) Being that new life is a good, and that the ultimate purpose of sex is clearly new life, intentionally interfering in that purpose by artificial means is a perversion and deformation of the gift of sex.

3) Sexual relations should occur only in the context of marriage, to allow for the raising of any new life that comes about, and those sexual relations must always be open to the possibility of new life.

You may agree with this teaching or not. But you could only call it "convoluted logic" if you were particularly stupid. Notice also that none of it has anything to do with "bowing down" to some "mysterious" ecclesiastical doctrine, again to use your language. Rather, it’s very direct and grounded, earthy even, the only real metaphysical elements being the recognition that 1) we should respect an evident ultimate purpose, and 2) we should recognize our sexuality as a gift.

A lot of Catholic teaching is like this. Of course reference is made to Scripture as well, but the doctrinal argumentation, the philosophical buttressing of what the Church teaches, is often very straightforward. Which is not to say that it is easy to live according to such teaching.

You write of religious institutions or approaches as if they were all sheer madness, but you yourself flail about without showing that you even know what you're writing on. You write of Christianity as if it worked something like Aztec religion or Babylonian magic. Who is the mad one here? In any case, you are clearly quite mad in the other sense of the term: i.e. angry.

Perhaps it's because you are very dedicated to Africans living in poverty, and you're sorry to see that this poverty might be exacerbated by lack of birth control. I'm guessing you contribute to various secular charities because of your concern for the plight of Africans, right?

As I'm heading out soon, I'll say one more thing. I began this discussion by pointing out the evident horror brought into the world by atheistic utopian projects, and pointed especially to the systematic disappearing of millions of people by, especially, the communist ideologues. I was talking of arrest, torture, enslavement, and murder of tens of millions in the name of "scientific" ideologies of which anti-religion was a central plank. To me it's kind of odd to note that the first time you utter the word "evil" in this whole discussion is when you want to criticize the Catholic Church for being against condoms. This oddity could only arise from a serious, deep-seated resentment against all things Christian (your memes certainly suggest it), or from a pretty weak ability to distinguish magnitudes of evil. I'm talking the gulags, the millions murdered during the Cultural Revolution in China--and your example of "evil" is that my Church teaches against extramarital sex and condom use? Are these really commensurate horrors?

It's sadly typical of Western liberals, especially in the English-speaking world, to think morals or ethics refers largely to questions of sex.

Q: Who can have sex and when?
A: Anyone, anywhere!
Q: Who can say what is or isn’t right in sexual behavior?
A: No one!
Q: How many genders are there, 52 or 94?
A: We’re still counting!

Right here we have about 90% of what American liberals think ethics is about. And any institution that dares answer these questions otherwise MUST be insane, right? MUST be mumbling inanities that have to be bludgeoned into youth because they have no grounding in reality, right? MUST be just trying to mesmerize with convoluted logic.

Sorry, but I’m not so impressed by your notions of where the real evil resides.

PAIGE W.: Eric: An excellent, excellent, excellent reply! Thank you. And so on point. Let me count the ways.

ERIC M.: Thanks, Paige.

ALLAN H.: [doesn’t address my points re: Africa or Catholic teachings on sex; returns to the claim, this time worded differently, that Christianity is “utopian” and equally dangerous as any atheist ideology on record. Reiterates criticisms of “The God Hypothesis”, argues that there’s nothing in science that supports Christian doctrines like the Trinity or the Resurrection, etc.]

ERIC M.: Setting some high ethical standard in this or that realm is not the same as "utopian". Look up the word utopianism and see how it's used.

As for the "Christian slant" of the paper, just read the facts presented, the physical facts. And they are facts; they are what recent science has revealed. These facts don't point to anything specifically Christian by any means. All they point to is fine-tuned design of a physical matrix in which the rise of life is possible AT ALL. And that is improbable to the point of uncanny. But Christian? If I put on my skeptic’s cap, for all we know from such data, I might equally speculate that the universe is a sort of computer program created by some alien intelligence for kicks. But you do recognize that already with Big Bang cosmology, the argument for creation of one sort or another got a boost. Which is why the Soviets forbade teaching Big Bang cosmology.

From a scientific point of view, to me the whole question hinges on the viability of multiverse theory. To the extent that theory is just a reaction to growing evidence of the mind-bogglingly narrow parameters necessary for life to emerge, then it is little more than scientific myth-making, a form of stubborn materialist wishful thinking. All those who keep insisting that 1) empirical evidence is everything, and that 2) empirical evidence supports only a universe that arose randomly, without design, are revealed suddenly with their pants down, in a monstrous contradiction. Until of course they can provide empirical evidence of the multiverse. Which they may eventually be able to do. But until then, their smugness is unwarranted.

ALLAN H.: [argues that the universe is massive in scale, that life cannot exist in vast stretches of it, that it is absurdly anthropocentric to assume the universe was created to allow for the rise of humanity, and that the physical constants are significantly different in different regions of the universe. NOTE: I think this last point is simply false.]

ERIC M.: The basic physical laws of the universe are constant across it. So I’m not sure what your point is.

1) In terms of cosmology, I never claimed a universe created for specifically human life, but only that the argument for a universe created within parameters to allow for the rise of life, in whatever form, is persuasive, given the staggering improbability that the physical constants would be set as they are, i.e. just right.

2) I think your concern with the size of the universe, that vast stretches of it may well not have life or allow for it, is irrelevant. Why? Because size and distance, like time, are realities within this universe, but not necessarily relevant outside it: they may offer no challenge or even experiential (?) relevance to the creating intelligence, whatever that intelligence may be. What's more, we inevitably think space and time on human scale, which makes light years impressive to us, but may not to a superior intelligence. As for the problem of whether that creating intelligence "cares" about life, all we could infer, from the fine-tuning hypothesis, is that it cared enough to create a universe set to allow for life.

I don't think my speculations in 1) and 2) here can be called religious, do you? I don't think I'm promoting some "religious ideology" with such speculations, but rather believe they follow reasonably, if only as speculations, from the evidence.

Will be busy for awhile, but it was, as always, interesting.

ALLAN H.: [further comments on Christian “utopianism”]

ERIC M.: Again you bring up utopianism. I still think you are misusing this word, in ways I thought I’d explained. Let me add the following: Christians would never assume that a world in which everyone was Christian and did their best to follow the faith would be a perfect world. No, it would still be full of sin and suffering and disorder. Because, again, humans cannot create a perfect world from within the human condition, which is by definition fallen. This is what makes Christianity particularly resistant to utopianisms. You really need to finally get this point.

Put in the simplest terms, the utopianist is convinced that humanity can be significantly improved via some radical and sweeping social overhaul. The Christian knows that this is nonsense, that no matter what laws or new economic relations are enacted, precisely the same spectrum of sins will reappear in slightly different costumes.

MICHAEL A.: Mother Theresa was a murdering bitch!

ERIC M.: Hitting the bottle already, Mike? It’s not even dinner time.

PAUL W.: Have you read The Missionary Position, Eric? You should.

ERIC M.: Haven’t read it, but I do know of it. I was aware Michael was likely basing his comment on that book, but this fact doesn't mean 1) he wasn't hitting the bottle, or 2) his remark is any less a non sequitur.

STEVE M.: Well, I did in fact read as much as I could on this thread. So, I may have been the one to argue that "Christians" should be eradicated, or some sort of argument that was a few dance steps away, but normally, I tend to say "religionists". And typically, I don't tend to feel that my meaning is for all the practitioners, just the ones that want to change what I think is fairly obvious facts into their version of facts. In general, I think that any sort of dogmatic view tends to bend, eventually, to the extreme, as the dogma itself is addictive, and with addictions it always takes more of the juice to meet the need. When I burn the religionist doctrines in effigy, it is most often because they have crossed some boundary that I feel is part and parcel of what culturally is now, or should be, sacrosanct. Sometimes I ask, “Why aren't all Christians like Eric Mader?" Then I remember, “Oh yeah, he is against legalizing gay marriage, because of ancient times, and since ancient times is the basis for now, so ancient times wins.” Can you pass the refrigerated meats when you are done making your point? There is no clear cut "atheism" in my view, and if I am to believe Eric, when I get into a debate here in my local community with people who argue that it is THEIR CHRISTIANITY that informs them that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, and thus it must be taught in schools, because well, “Everyone has an opinion and that makes them all equal” . . . there are no clear-cut "Christians" either. Because many Christians don’t argue in this lame way about science. Not sure if this post is entirely coherent, but I am working now, so I hope what it conveys, basically, is that there are no One Size Fits All religionists or atheists, and we are shaped by the immediate and local experiences we have. I don't know many Christians like Eric anymore, but sense that back in the '80s they were the norm. I suppose atheism is gone the same route.

ERIC M.: I don't suspect I'd recognize the facts you find "obvious" as really being obvious. Also I don't think any ideological group, however eccentric in their "facts", should be eradicated. To suggest otherwise is to break the liberal project. In fact, the only grounds for eradication is when some group takes it into their heads to break that project through violent overthrow. For example, again, ISIS, or, with more time and power, our SJW crowd. I don't object to SSM because of "ancient" thinking. After all, most of the world, now in 2017, still rejects SSM. As we Westerners did through most of our modern history. You need to get out more often. As in: Out of the US. Still, thanks for the kudos. I agree the increasing extremism from all corners needs to be defused. But probably won't be.

STEVE M.: I may not have been clear. Ignorance is what needs to be eradicated. What ignorance is, is probably problematic to ascertain. People should not be eradicated. I think there are many obvious things that you would agree with. I will provide some examples: The Earth was created in seven days is a theory, as is the idea of how the solar system was created. Likewise evolution is a theory. “Theory” means (according to those who feel they should be taught as equally relevant in schools) “not proven”--and therefore equal in stature. Sort of like "opinion" on what tastes better, chocolate or vanilla? There are more. There was no such thing as dinosaurs. Or, there were dinosaurs, but they lived alongside man. Or, there were dinosaurs, but they existed inside of the 10,000 years that the Earth has existed. I think all of these sorts of notions you would find obviously flawed. When you very lucidly stated your views on what the religious views of Scripture were in the premodern world, and how the ancients never presumed Scripture was a science textbook, I was blown away. I recalled how many of my friends in high school and years prior had that ability. In America, that way of thinking is dead on many levels. Now, for many of these people, the Bible is to be read LITERALLY like the Wall Street Journal. And if it is not read that way, then it is, they think, being subjected to flawed interpretation. Except the literalists here are not using any kind of traditional interpretive approach (like those you sketched out in your essay) but simply claiming “This is what literally happened because the Bible can’t be inaccurate.” Or worse, they are turning their suppositions as to what the Bible is into a Political Action Committee, linked to the Republican Party, and meanwhile ignoring the golden rule of Jesus Christ.

ERIC M.: A couple points. First, these young earthers do not represent a serious threat to society, and in any case the level of understanding of evolutionary theory even of the vast majority who accept it as true, as I do, is pitiful. In short, you may think the young earthers annoying fools, but if you go and question Americans in general on the basic mechanisms of evolution, how random mutations and selection drive it, you will find nine out of ten can't even explain it. I'be had many instances of smart alec secularists assuming that I don't believe in evolution that, when we actually begin to discuss it, reveal kind of embarrassingly that they don't even get the basic theory. Second, in my view, all of this comes round to a sad but unavoidable truth: America is basically a failed state when it comes to education. This holds across the board: history, civics, science, religious education from the churches (what we call catechesis). Our contemporary America is a failed state.

STEVE M.: I hear you man. Not a threat. Until your kid has to attend the school that has teachers that insist on ignorance as truth, and are responsible for teaching mythology as equal to fact. Probably explains a few other reasons America has divorced itself from facts in the political realm too: they must do so if they want to maintain their cherished beliefs.

ERIC M.: No, I disagree with you here. Both theories of creation and evolutionary theory could be taught with rigor, but in America, there is no rigor, virtually no homework, and so virtually nothing is taught. I know whereof I speak. I teach in a country [Taiwan] whose kids know how to study, whose parents and teachers consider the process very important, and intellectually speaking my 13-year-olds could eat most American 16-year-olds as a pre-breakfast snack. I've seen them do just that.

STEVE M.: Eric: Although I have no issue with your comments on American education, regarding creationism and evolution you are dead wrong. 100% incorrect. There is no circumstance, except in a religion or mythology class, where creationism can or should be taught. Period. It is not science on any level, and is nothing more than pure myth.

ERIC M.: I don’t think the biblical account should be taught as science. But as for creationism per se, namely the theory that the universe was created by a superior intelligence, I think you might change your tune if you carefully read through the link I posted above titled “The Return of the God Hypothesis”. Recent developments in physics and biology have made this question look very different than it did a few decades ago.

ALLAN H. [posts a video of a lecture by a professor in the “Christ Myth” camp, with the comment that “I seriously think people aren’t skeptical enough as regards the question of Jesus’ supposed existence.” I can’t recall the video’s title, so can’t link it here.]

ERIC M.: Re: the Christ myth theory. No, Allan, and really, you should know better. Why? Because the vast majority of qualified scholars of the period, religious or atheist or otherwise, recognize Jesus was a historical figure. This is not in the least controversial.

As for the reliability of the Gospel accounts, that's a whole different matter and much more complex. Scholars basically agree on a handful of facts as certain: he came from Galilee, he gathered followers, he was crucified by the Romans.

In serious scholarship, the Christ myth theory is fringe, only kept alive because there's a willing audience for it. I find it borderline offensive, because there are myriad ancient figures for whom we have far less textual evidence but whose existence is not in doubt. And so, by all means doubt the miracles, doubt Christian teaching on what Jesus meant, but there was a radical peasant itinerant teacher named Yeshua at the origin. I could go on at great length, as I've spent years on the history, but am typing on a keypad and am besides, as of today, am on vacation in Paris, so I’ve better things to do.

See here for an overview of the scholarly consensus: The Historicity of Jesus

ALLAN H.: [There is no good reason not to doubt the existence of Jesus. Just because millions of believers worldwide choose to believe he existed, thus providing a reason for scholars to go along with the belief, does not decide the matter. To refuse to raise the question is anti-intellectual. I think you are letting your religious commitments undermine your objectivity.]

ERIC M.: Allan: Here you're just being dumb, and frankly you're way out of your league. The vast majority of scholars of the period, most of whom are not in fact Christian, accept Jesus' historical existence. Scholars, well upwards of 95%, accept Jesus was a historical figure. That millions of believers also accept it is irrelevant here. Only the fact that trained historians of the period, with their own rigorous methodological tools, accept Jesus' historicity--this alone should be decisive for you in judging likelihood. Unless of course you yourself are anti-intellectual.

STEVE M.: I just read the Wikipedia link, and see the point. Historical vs. historicity. As for the historical, that is all debated. It is not, that he said this, or did this or that. Those points are all questionable. But that there is a historical figure behind it all--that is what the scholars agree on. He may not have gone by the same name, nor done the things he is claimed to have done by others, but there was in fact someone who lived. From my perspective, Eric, this is a far cry from what Christians claim, but hey, since the standard of existence here is so low, compared to the standard for claimed statements, actions, and meaning--sure, there was a Jesus.

ALLAN H.: [Yeah, no kidding. It coulda happened. He could have been this guy or another guy with a different name. But there was a guy.]

ERIC M.: Yes, Steve, that’s the basic difference between historicity and questions about the “historical Jesus.” My point re: the “Christ myth theory” is that it’s fringe. Aside from the fact that it doesn’t hold up to the kind of records we have of Jesus: the imprint left in the Gospels. They are not texts about a mythical figure, but clearly texts about a historical person.

And Allan: The question of Jesus’ name, that you’re quibbling on here, is just dumb. In ancient Hebrew the modern name "Jesus" doesn't exist. The name is Yeshua, identical to our Joshua. Identical to the Joshua of the Old Testament.

PAUL W.: "Josh". Imagine if that was the savior's name.

ERIC M.: As for the historical Jesus, if I put on my secular historian’s cap, my own view is that most of the parables represent a core authentic tradition. Why? Because there is a unique genius and concision, a unique and utterly odd philosophical vision, a voice different from any other ancient voice, and there would be no likelihood of different followers inventing these parables.

Anyhow, I'm not wasting further time on this. It's only pigheadedness, and a misunderstanding of how ancient historians work, that leads to the spread of the Christ myth theory. The theory might have made some sense in the 19th c., but our methodology and ability to understand the records has sharpened enormously in the meantime.

ALLAN H.: [Nothing that Jesus supposedly taught was not taught previously by other ancient figures.]

ERIC M.: No. You're dead wrong. Many key teachings are utterly new, and there are utterly different stresses, as well as a unique linguistic register in which it was all conveyed.

ALLAN H.: [Yeah, OK. But as for the consensus of historians, their methods may be wrong, the consensus might change. There’s no way they can be so certain on the historicity. They might be wrong. Happens all the time with humans. And I find the reasons for skepticism to be compelling. But whatever.]

ERIC M.: What’s your career, Allan?

ALLAN H.: [I’m in IT security, assessing risk to systems and predicting risks.]

ERIC M.: OK, so say I spend fifteen hours of my life reading up on IT security, then watch a handful of videos on it, then come into your office and start telling you how almost everyone in your profession, including you, has got it wrong. And when you point out that, “Well, it's not quite what you think, Eric, there are complex reasons why your arguments don't really hold water,” I reply with, "Yeah, OK. Whatever. Humans are wrong sometimes, and you might be wrong on this too. Anyhow. But whatever."

This is what you're doing here.

STEVE M.: if you walked into my office and said the same, I would smile and laugh and then assume that your fresh eyes might be better than me and my colleagues. I would also presume that although you don't understand the underpinnings of why things are the way they are in IT, where I also work, you might still have a lot to contribute. I would also leave that room, and demand of my profession a way to make it impossible for your critiques to be shut up. I would demand this of my profession because nothing frustrates me more than the failures of my profession.

ERIC M.: Hey, appreciate the confidence, Steve! I’ll be in your office soon.

But the problem is, in scholarship, underpinnings are everything. Real historians don't offer a product for an ever-changing market. They offer understanding, and understanding ancient texts is a very tricky business, because ancient genres and our genres, which is to say assumptions about what a text is supposed to accomplish, are radically different. In the twentieth century especially, scholars began to grasp how truly foreign these ancient texts were.

My dull eyes are off to breakfast, so I can't elaborate further.

ALLAN H.: [Eric: We are going to continue to disagree on this question of Jesus’ historicity, as with many other things. That’s just the way it is. You’ve ultimately left me unconvinced of most of your key points here.

Still, I hope our disagreements don’t become grounds for personal animosity. I consider you a very worthy challenger, often with the sharpest of arguments, and found much in this debate well worth my while. I hope you can accept both the disagreement and my respect simultaneously.]

ERIC M.: Fully agreed as to your approach to these challenges, Allan. And thank you for the kind words. I also recognize you as a clearly serious debater, and a damn good writer besides, and it's a delight to take on your arguments. Of course you have my respect. I’d write more now, but have to head out.

My novel A Taipei Mutt is now in print. The Asian capital unmuzzled.