Posted by Anthony on March 11, 2010
In my last entry I felt compelled to clarify that I was married- and that, to a woman, and not a pillow.
I felt this need because of this article I just read talking about a guy in Korea marrying… well, a pillow.
Far be it from me to prohibit anyone from living out the rest of their lives in a committed, monogamous relationship. But I do have some questions.
Q. Does the pillow consent? If consent is no longer one of the important elements constituting real ‘marriage’ where does it end? Will people be marrying shoes next? If shoes, why not toddlers? Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on May 6, 2009
I think that this blog entry might be useful as a beginning of a series. I should just post examples as I come across them. It’s the kind of thing that you’ll notice more once you see a few examples.
What I’ve noticed is that there are quite a few areas out there where arguments are won not on the merits of the facts or the cogency of the argument but rather because the proponent casts his position as so intellectually self-evident that to believe otherwise is to be… well… an idiot.
If you want to find a glut of examples I submit to you the creation and evolution debate. I am not here referring to the multitude of snide, smug, and generally arrogant portrayals of the creationist position but rather the easy ridicule presented to the young inquirer when first they begin to consider the matter. Long before any facts are brought into the question (if they ever are) the message received is: “Oh child. Don’t you know? Smart people are already well past that. You do want to be counted among the smart people. Don’t you?” Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on April 23, 2009
The latest illustration of a growing and worrisome trend in scientism in our society comes in this story about the morning after pill being made available without a prescription to “17 year olds.” Here are some quotes:
Seventeen-year-olds will be able to buy the “morning-after” emergency contraceptive without a doctor’s prescription, a decision that conservatives denounced as a blow to parental supervision of teens but that women’s groups said represents sound science.
…
“It’s a good indication that the agency will move expeditiously to ensure its policy on Plan B is based solely on science,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the lawsuit.
…
The battle over access to Plan B has dragged on for the better part of a decade, through the terms of three FDA commissioners. Among many in the medical community, it came to symbolize the decline of science at the agency because top FDA managers refused to go along with the recommendations of scientific staff and outside advisers that the drug be made available with no age restrictions.
One of the questions that comes to my mind when I read this is how ‘no age restrictions’ means in practice ‘available to 17 year olds.’ Someone needs to check on this. It smells strongly like doublespeak to me. I have the feeling that by ‘no age restrictions’ they really mean ‘no age restrictions.’ I wonder if perhaps the headline said “FDA OK’s Morning After Pills for 13 Year Olds” the reaction would be quite different. I don’t see how that is precluded by the information provided in this article. But I digress.
This story is a perfect illustration of scientism and its dangers to our society. The idea that something is intrinsically morally correct by virtue of being ’scientific’ is a non sequitur, certainly, but nonetheless coming to be quite common. Science gave us the atom bomb, too, but it is self-evident that the decision to use it should be political. But can the decision to use it ever be scientific? (The movie IRobot comes to mind, here).
Is there any way to get from an observation of reality or increase in technology to “And you ought…” ? Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on November 7, 2008
A Christian Review of Anne Rice’s Called out of Darkness
Read my reviews of Anne’s other books, Out of Egypt and Road to Cana.
PURCHASE CALLED OUT OF DARKNESS
I was pleased to have Anne Rice’s latest release sent to me for review. Her spiritual auto-biography,
Called Out of Darkness: a spiritual confession, is available for purchase
through Amazon.
Welcome Catholic News readers! Feel free to drop a comment. You may be interested in my own book series,
Birth Pangs. Take a look after you finish the review!
Anne Rice begins her book by laying out in careful detail what her early life was like. It was a life that was thoroughly drenched in the Roman Catholic Church and culture as it was practiced in New Orleans. She attended Catholic schools and had Catholic friends. At one point, she wanted to be a nun. She delighted in the architecture of New Orleans and her Catholic surroundings.
However, she fell away from all this after high school. Though the seeds had been planted earlier on, in college she came into contact with people who loved learning, were smart, and cared about doing the right thing- all without religion, Christianity, or Catholicism. Anne reports that the controversies and strict moral teachings of the Catholic church weren’t primarily what drove her away from the faith. It was instead a disconnect between her and God, an inability to separate her relationship with the church with her relationship with Jesus Christ.
In a section on page 124 she says,
The church had become for me anti-art and anti-mind. No longer was there a blending of the aesthetic and the religious as there had been throughout my childhood.
Desperately I sought to escape the sense of sin that seemed to dominate every choice facing me. I lost faith in Hellfire. Or to put it differently, faith in Hellfire simply did not hold me firmly, as faith in God had once done. I left the church.
I stopped going. I stopped being a Catholic…. I quit for thirty-eight years.
…
I could not separate my personal relationship with God, and with Jesus Christ, from my relationship with the church. As I mentioned, I’d stopped really talking to God a long time ago. I hadn’t felt entitled to talk to Him in a long while. I’d felt far too demoralized to talk to Him. I just wasn’t the Catholic girl who had a right to talk to Him. I harbored too many profane ambitions.
I really enjoyed these frank and honest thoughts. I spend a lot of time talking to atheists and nonChristians and a lot of them were Christians at one time. They too could not separate their personal relationship with God and Jesus Christ from the relationship with the church. Incidentally, there are an awful lot of Christians who have this struggle, too. If you read my blog regularly, you will see that I speak to this fairly often.
Anne’s journey back to the faith was embodied in the novels that she wrote. If you don’t know, Anne is the author of the series of vampire books, beginning with Interview with a Vampire. Since I haven’t read these books, I merely report what Anne says about them in her spiritual auto-biography. After a long discussion about the appeal of her books and what drove her to write them, she says:
Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on June 8, 2008
In the first part of this discussion I explained that I believe that Christians need to distinguish between how we feel about homosexuality as a matter of our faith and religion and how we feel about it as citizens of this country. I had recently issued a call to Christians to do that on the ChristianPost.com, where I contribute columns. Part one talked about concerns strictly as a citizen of this country. This part will approach the matter from the spiritual side of things.
The very first thing I want to say is that the basic premise of Christianity on such a matter is simply that people would actually be happier all around if they did things the way that God wanted them to be done. In other words, those involved in homosexual (and extra-wedded) sexual behaviors think that they are in pursuit of their own best interests and happiness, but in fact the reality is that they will never be happier than if they followed God’s outline for sexuality, ie, a single man wedded with a single woman, to death do they part.
Note that this argument represents a different dynamic than the way many Christians have presented it. It is not an assertion that homosexuality is wrong… it is an assertion that homosexuality can never be as satisfying as heterosexual marriage. So, if those involved in homosexual behaviors really had their own best interests and happines in mind, they would choose the God’s model. You may disagree, but where is the offense? I have not issued a fire and brimstone assertion, but one of care and concern and promise. If there is a God and he designed things to be a certain way then it follows that you’ll be happier doing it his way.
God made it so that a man will be a better man when married to a woman and a woman a better woman when married to a man.
If you don’t think there is a God, or that he designed things to be a certain way, then you certainly shouldn’t be offended by this approach. Why should you care what those with these assumptions think? Surely the question becomes “Is there a God?” and “Did he design things to be a certain way?” I don’t suppose anyone is going to argue “I really enjoy my sexual habits and it appears that they would be outside of God’s design, if there were one, and I don’t like that, so I’ll simply say that there is no God!”
Of course, homosexual behavior is wrong, but with the above context in mind let’s try to explain how and why.
It certainly can’t be wrong because sex is wrong. The Christian consensus is that sex is quite good. God created it. It was his idea. (presuming there is a God). Yes, some Christians have been prudish about sexuality, but that doesn’t mean they were right to do so.
There is another thing that is wrong, too. Purposely breaking one’s arm is wrong. It hurts, you know. God created your arm to be a certain way and function in such a way as to be able to perform in a certain way. God believes that arms are good. He created them. They were his idea. But if you break your arm and your bone pokes out and it doesn’t work very well in the future exactly whose fault is this? If it heals but remains disfigured because you didn’t set it right, whose fault is this?
The only difference in these scenarios is that breaking one’s own arm obviously is painful from the outset whereas in homosexual behavior the initial act is presumably quite pleasurable, and the painful consequences are not obvious or necessarily immediate.
The underlying question remains whether or not God designed things a certain way, or not.
There is a different sort of ‘wrong’ at work, here. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on June 3, 2008
READ PART TWO
In a recent column posted at the ChristianPost.com I urged Christians to more carefully distinguish between our approach to homosexuality as citizens of heaven and our approach as citizens of this nation. The basic idea is that Christians shouldn’t conflate the two approaches, even if both are important. This post is my opportunity to take my own advice.
There will be at least two posts in the series. The first comes not as a Christian, but simply as a citizen of this country. It is below.
1. Let us take as our example what happened in California. More than 60% of Californian voters affirmed that marriage meant what it has traditionally meant in virtually all places at all times. Judges came in discovered somehow that this determination was unconstitutional. If words mean anything at all, if you are a homosexual activist and you are honest you must admit that there is absolutely no basis for that determination. Put the shoe on the other foot. If one day Judges came in and declared that homosexual behavior was unconstitutional despite silence in the constitution of California (or any state, or of this nation) on the subject, would you think that is reasonable? If you are a homosexual I understand that you feel the need to protect your rights, as you perceive them, as a minority. Do you really think its a good idea to get your way by trampling on the democratic process? Can’t you see how that kind of chaos can come back to haunt you?
2. One of my really big problems with the the gay marriage movement is what seems to me its latent irresponsibility. Read the rest of the entry… »
