This ministry needs your financial support! Donate now!
Posted by Anthony on September 5, 2009
This essay is long- some 2,000 words. But I think it is worth reading. Print it out if you like if that makes it easier.
————————
‘Individualism’ has a bad rap, even among Christians. To be fair, there are things in ‘individualism’ that I think are unhealthy or even immoral, too, but the key thing to remember is that any opposite of ‘individualism’ is not necessarily preferable. If we’re going to raise up ‘inter-connectedness’ (a neutral term, I hope) it must be done thoughtfully, and it cannot obliterate that which is moral or good in ‘individualism.’
The only folks that I’ve ever heard defend ‘individualism’ are the Objectivists- the offspring of Ayn Rand, that spunky atheist who escaped the clutches of communism. Rand’s views on the individual seem to be expressed most succinctly, and passionately, in her little book Anthem
, which is a favorite of mine. There is a flaw in her book however: the intrinsic value of the individual is assumed; no basis for it is provided.
And no wonder. In atheism, no basis for the value of the individual human can be provided. At best, the individual human values himself, and then out of concern for his own interests forges a social compact with other individual humans not hurt him. That is secular humanism at its core. But this can only go so far. Once ‘social compacts’ are on the table, the ‘good of society’ becomes an obvious next step. “The most good for the most people.”
I won’t explore the inevitable progression from there (“Someone must decide what that good is”) and discuss the history of abuse that consistently emerged within these systems. These are not the point of this post, but you can find comments on it on this blog and the issue is discussed in my fictional book series, Birth Pangs.
The point, here, is that within secular humanism and atheistic systems, the only thing that lasts from one generation to the next is the State. Society and the State become the ‘highest’ level organism, and the individual a mere cell within it. From the point of view of the State, the individual has as much value as a skin cell which can be scraped off and safely discarded. Naturally, more valuable cells you want to keep around- while they have utility- but the ‘brain cells’ never lose sight of the fact that the cell’s value is strictly in what it can contribute to the ‘body.’ Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on May 12, 2009
A while back I posted a blog on the ‘Gospel according to Toy Story.’ It has generated an atheist response.
I am afraid to say the blogger needs to go back to the drawing board. He was greatly confused about what I actually said and so much of his reply just doesn’t fit what I was saying.
For example, he said that I presented Toy Story as a Christian allegory. I did no such thing. I said that it had theological themes. There is a big difference there. So, the blogger kept thinking I was trying to interpret the whole movie as some sort of intentional Christian metanarrative. This just isn’t the case. I detected one particular theme… and recognized that it was theological in nature.
This alone would shave about 8 paragraphs off his response. 
Another confusion is in his assessment of my assessment of Objectivism. Here I suppose there may have been a lack of clarity on my part- or he just read too fast. The part in question is where I said:
“If Toy Story were written to reflect modern secular humanistic relativistic atheistic worldviews, Buzz would have decided that he was a real Buzz Lightyear if he said he was… ie, prestigious in his own eyes, if the important thing is that we value our individual selves (ala Objectivism).”
The blogger seems to think that my entire post was framed against Objectivism. In fact, the only think the Objectivism reference was related to is the supreme value that Objectivists give to ‘our individual selves.’ See Rand’s Anthem as the epitome of just that.
The rest of my post discussing value assignment, reality, etc, is not meant to be constrasted with Objectivism. Objectivism is simply a subclass of atheism where I thought the ‘final value regress’ issue was highlighted with clarity.
So that’s another 8 paragraphs off his response. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on November 14, 2008
Update: A response to the folks at Somethingawful.com is at the bottom.
Toy Story is one of those movies that is constantly playing at my house. It is a ‘safe’ movie for kids and it has enough material for the grown-ups that I don’t mind it playing over and over again. It was on again last night. In fact, it is on right now.
If you don’t know Toy Story, it is simply a story about toys- toys who come alive when you aren’t looking. In otherwords, a stock ‘toy story.’ In both movies there is a curious perspective presented that I really appreciated. In the first movie, Buzz Lightyear has to come to terms with not being a ‘real’ Buzz Lightyear. The realization that he is a mere child’s plaything drives him to drinking. Woody the Sheriff helps him through this difficult time. In the second movie, Woody the Sheriff finds out he is a valued collectible after he is separated from Andy, the child who owns him. Ultimately, it is Buzz who brings Woody the Sheriff back to his senses, using the same arguments that had been deployed by him. After all, both have Andy’s name written on the bottom of their feet.
Both movies address in their own way the difference between assigning value to yourself and having it assigned to you by someone else, someone more superior, something more real. Here then is the first valid insight into theology- in both movies, the ‘toys’ come to the understanding that their self-assigning was less valid and less meaningful than the meaning they would have relative to Andy, the child that loves them. If Toy Story were written to reflect modern secular humanistic relativistic atheistic worldviews, Buzz would have decided that he was a real Buzz Lightyear if he said he was. And Woody the Sheriff would have decided that being a collectible, ie, prestigious in his own eyes, if the important thing is that we value our individual selves (ala Objectivism).
That the movies end with the toys coming to terms with the fact that they are toys and finding immense satisfaction in their created purpose is one of those wholesome lessons that proves that however much Hollywood and secular humanists try, theological messages resonate. (See also Bruce Almighty and Evan Almighty)
So, are we toys?
We don’t like to think so. We would like to think that if we merely declared that we were completely independent and autonomous from any creator it would be so. We would like to think that assigning ourselves whatever value we like means that we really have that value. There is the theory and then there is the reality. Buzz tried to fly to prove he really was the ‘real’ Buzz Lightyear and lost an arm. You can only mock reality so long before you get hurt. And like Woody the Sheriff discovers, coming to terms with your created purpose means that your value is found relative to a Lover but this is more ‘real’ and satisfying than the vaporous self-adulation apart from anyone else’s considerations. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on August 20, 2008
When I was in college I made a nuisance of myself once by finding the slope of a vertical line (which, we are told, is ‘undefined.’) Impossible, you say. As did the math instructor. But I ‘found’ it by rotating the grid beneath the line and recalculated, for now, of course, the line wasn’t perfectly vertical anymore.
You may say that this was a cheap trick and doesn’t really find the slope of a ‘vertical’ line. You might say that we are required, by assumption, to take the graph in a certain way. I might reply that that is only an assumption and there is nothing that says I can’t rotate the grid back and forth as it suits my fancy. If I want to find the slope of the vertical line I can change the grid for a moment and then change it back. To this you might say that this is all well and good but the net result of such an approach is that you couldn’t trust any slope measurement and moreover, the whole program seems designed specifically to attack one particular mathematical proposition (ie, a vertical line has an undefined slope).
Such an exercise illustrates what anyone worth their salt already understands: most of what we believe is true rests on assumptions which can’t themselves be demonstrated. The data of our experience is set upon a particular ‘grid’ or ‘graph’ which by convention we accept and adopt.
In order to make any progress at all, we have to posit a certain ‘alignment’ of our graph. Here now is the problem: What if in the course of talking someone they begin by having the same alignment as you but halfway through they ‘rotate’ their grid – specifically to undermine a particular assertion you’ve just made- and then hoping you don’t notice, rotate it back? And how if you call them on this, they denied that they performed such a rotation and/or that there was never an agreed upon frame of reference in the first place?
Or, how if you don’t begin with the same ‘alignment’ in hand at all? Now the two people are setting their data in different frames of references and their calculations may be using the same formulas but the conclusions will be different? How could it be that either individual could say that the other is ‘wrong’ in their ‘calculations’?
This is precisely what transpires every day in debates between theists and atheists. Read the rest of the entry… »
