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Posted by Anthony on November 20, 2006
There is a thread on my forum right now where I discuss whether or not two of the members are in fact the same person. (Click here to read it). The conversation has gone just about how I expected it to. It was dismissed by the interested parties, then as it became evident I was seriously proposing the idea, there was mockery, etc. When it finally dawned on them that I was actually using their own arguments against theism and the supernatural, one ‘cut and run’ and the other went hostile.
The objection is that the types of arguments and the types of evidences regarding theism and the supernatural are going to be in a class different than any other types of claims.  This is why one person dismissed the thread’s argument and the other went hostile. To them, it is patently self-evident that supernatural claims are in a completely different class of things. Thus, it so happens (in their minds) that their logic applies to one class of claims, but through some miracle, does not apply to another class of claims. (Natural claims versus supernatural claims. Note the common denominator). Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on November 19, 2006
So, yea, ok. Me, a Christian, reviewing the movie “Shaun of the Dead.” I admit its a little odd. Even my personality objects- I don’t like ‘horror’ movies. Or blood and guts movies, either, though I’ll make an exception for military movies like Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan. But yea. I saw this movie while overseas in England, visiting a friend I knew from the Internet. I knew even then that eventually I’d be writing this. Having now seen it a second time, here is the ‘review.’
One wonders how you could make a more hilarious version of Dawn of the Dead, since it was already funny (though it didn’t mean to be) but they did it. What struck me about this movie, though, is how certain themes percolated up that were so…. well, Christian. What I mean by that is that I believe the best explanation for them is Christianity. Certainly, I do not think atheism, secular humanism, or reductionism can explain them. To explain that, I should talk about some of those themes.
Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on November 17, 2006
You may have arrived here searching out this Latin phrase from my book, Fidelis, the first in my Birth Pangs series. If not, you might want to consider picking up said books!
“Praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui…”Or, in some translations I’ve seen, “Faith supplies what the senses cannot…” But I am no Latin scholar. We get the idea easily enough, though. In the first place, this little sentence implies that there are things that are real that our senses themselves are inadequate to detect. In the second place, the ‘organ’ for making the detection is ‘faith.’
Faith has gotten a bad rap. In part, this is because notions of faith being a belief based without evidence or even in spite of the evidence. This is a pretty distorted view of ‘faith,’ and at least it can be said it is not the Biblical view on faith. God was well aware of our need for evidence- Jesus told his disciples that if they doubted him, they could take into consideration his miracles. The resurrection is a specifically concrete demonstration. God does not request or require faith in him apart from evidence- in fact, he provides it. This particular event, the resurrection, also tells us something of WHY we ought to have faith in God… WHY should we trust him… ?
Simply put, the resurrection was not merely explicit evidence of God’s existence (the resurrection validates Jesus’ claim to be God), but also for his concern about issues that trouble the human race. The problem of pain, the problem of suffering, God’s apparent distancing from the human predicament… reasonable people have struggled with these issues, but the resurrection is evidence that God is not in fact indifferent and even if we don’t know the solutions to them, he has acted. He has taken on death and suffering… and when he says he’ll come again to really finish up the problem, we have reason to believe it.
In this context, then, ‘faith’ can provide answers and understanding that raw sensory data cannot provide. ‘Faith’ is the trust context which helps us decide what kinds of relationships are sound and which are not. For example, I have faith that my chair will not disappear from underneath me. This faith, this trust, is based on the fact that chairs haven’t let me down yet- or at least, not very often- we have a good relationship! Similarly, if I understand that God is aware of the human predicament and has taken at least one concrete step to deal with it, I am able to view the world through that lens- and I may begin to come to understandings and truths that were unknowable while I remained a skeptic, cynical, or unfaithful.
Praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui
Let faith supply what the senses cannot.
Posted by Anthony on November 8, 2006
Well, not a full review.
I just finished this book and thought it was spot on in a number of areas. For quite a long time I was a man more or less indifferent to ‘going to church.’ I didn’t have objections to it, but on the other hand I never detected many tangible benefits to it, either, though I believed that others must be getting something out of it. In the last few years, my attitude has changed. Now, not only do I pretty much detest ‘church,’ I find it to be destructive in the ways that matter. I didn’t quite understand why I thought that. In the last year or so I’ve understood it better, but no sooner have I figured it out, I have learned how many others had already put their finger on it.
David Murrow’s “Why Men Hate Going to Church” does not describe me personally in every respect, but it does in a great many ways. The argument: the church has been feminized. I am inclined to agree. As Mr. Murrow points out, women can do ‘man’ things comfortably, but it doesn’t work the other way around. A girl can be a ‘tomboy’ and be well thought of. There is no comparable for boys. This does not reflect culturalization, it reflects the real nature of men. Thus, if ‘church’ is girly, most men aren’t going to willing to suck it up and ‘attend.’ They just won’t even go.
I consider myself unique. Most of the men in Mr. Murrow’s book have no real interest in theology, and philosophy, doctrine, etc. When confronted with things in ‘church’ that they don’t like they are at a loss to describe it, and since they lack the tools to do so, they are unable to see the distinction between ‘Christianity’ and ‘church.’ Thus, they reject Christianity on the basis of ‘church’ structures. For my own part, I see that the two can and should be separated. Thus, I am as disgusted by ‘church’ as many men are, but not with Christianity… and not with Christ. Still, I think that if men understood their responsibilities under God, they’d see that theology and such really captivated them and moves them.
Mr. Murrow does not draw this distinction as neatly as I would like, but I can see the argument for it. I agreed with most of what was in this book and found it to be insightful. Now, if only the mainstream clergy and laity (mostly women in the latter case, and quickly becoming mostly women in the former) will consider it.
Murrow’s site: www.churchformen.com
Posted by Anthony on
Under discussion here:Â http://www.sntjohnny.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=2223Â
Two quotes to start this off with. First, from atheist Bertrand Russell, answering a question in an essay by the same title, “Why I am not a Christian”: “I think that you must have a certain amount of definite belief before you have a right to call yourself a Christian. The word does not have quite such a full-blooded meaning now as it had in the times of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. In those days, if a man said that he was a Christian it was known what he mant. You accepted a whole colletion of creeds which were set out with great precision, and every single syllable of those creeds you believed with the whole strength of your convictions. Nowadays it is not quite like that.”
Mr. Russell is about right about this. Its sad and a little indicative of things that he chose not to use this definition in his assault, but rather the watered down versions circulating around him. Worse, he, being an atheist, didn’t have a problem deciding for himself which definition of ‘Christianity’ he was going to shoot down. In logic circles, we call that setting up a strawman. Still, he is dead center right on in this quote. Here comes the next quote. Read the rest of the entry… »
