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Posted by Anthony on June 17, 2010
One of the things I’ve come to realize is the truth of this statement:
As the dead do not know the living, or even that they themselves are dead, so too irrationality does not know rationality.
Augustine argued that evil was not a ‘thing-in-itself’ but always some good thing that has been corrupted. Evil is a direction away from good. I think he is right about that and I know now that there are many examples of the same principle. Rationality and Irrationality are one example. The Living and the Dead, another. Morality and Immorality yet one more. I’m sure there are others, and now that I am more alert to the principle I’ll keep my eye out for them.
But it does raise interesting questions: if the dead do not know they are dead how are you to proceed if you are a live person in the business of raising the dead?
Posted by Anthony on April 15, 2009
I once got into a disagreement with someone about the nature of communism. My sin apparently had been that I had issued a series like this… “Freedom and Democracy, Tyranny and Communism…” The objection was that the three preceding terms have to do with polity and governance while communism was merely an economic system. As such, it was said it did not belong in the series.
Frankly, given the course of history and its clear testimony linking communism with tyranny and piles of dead, I find the notion that communism is ‘only’ an economic system to be absurd. Similarly, with the close connection between capitalism, freedom, and democracy, I would resist the assertion that capitalism is merely an economic system, too. It is not my purpose to expound on the above. It is my purpose here to make the point that economics cannot be separated from ideology. If one wishes to insist that pure economics certainly can, I won’t belabor it. But can you have ‘pure economics’?
I think it is clear that you cannot. I don’t for a minute believe that capitalism is without its problems but the last century provides a testing ground that generates iron clad results. Capitalism tends to produce or facilitate free societies. Communism runs pell mell into tyranny, death, slavery, famine, purges, and oppression. These are simply historical facts. Evidently, there is a link between economic systems and morality, ideology, politics, values, and beliefs. Deny it if you like: to your own peril. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on February 11, 2009
I am hereby issuing an open invitation to Christian apologists to upload their video content to my new site: http://www.apologeticsvideos.net
One of my chief goals in starting this site was to meet some of my own video sharing needs- namely, Youtube’s 10 minute video limit was killing me. 
Henceforth, I will post all of my videos to Apologeticsvideos.net and if they are lucky enough to be under 10 minutes long, I will also upload them to Youtube.com.
Some questions you may be having:
Q. Can Christians other than Christian apologists post videos?
A. Sure.
Q. Can atheists and nonChristians post videos?
A. Um. At this point I am going to tentatively say yes, but I reserve the right to change my mind.
Q. Can content be uploaded that has nothing to do with religion, philosophy, Christianity, etc, like for example using Mentos to blow up innocent pop bottles?
A. No. At least make some effort, even if scant and in passing, to make sure the content ‘fits’ the site.
Q. Is this free?
A. For now. If it starts costing me money I may change my tune, but even then I’d rather find sponsors. I wouldn’t worry about it.
Posted by Anthony on January 29, 2009
I recently had a conversation with some gents that I thought I would paraphrase for my blog. I think I’ve had the same kind of conversation a dozen times in the last three months. I have combined all the conversations into one paraphrase. The Internet is filled with conversations like this. If you have got one feel free to share. Enjoy.
Them: We believe science is the only way to learn about the world and religion is just faith-mongering superstition. There is no scientific basis for believing in the existence of God. Belief is just irrationalism. I know what you’re going to say. That there had to be something that has always existed. Why not the universe?
Me: Well, science says that the universe had a beginning. So I guess the universe can’t be the thing that has always existed. Surely that means we can explore other options.
Them: Did I say that I accepted that something has always existed?
Me: No. Do you?
Them: No.
Me: So something can come from nothing?
Them: No, that’s now what I’m saying.
Me: Well, if it isn’t the case that something has always existed then there is only one alternative, and that is that you posit that something can come from nothing.
Them: What I am saying is that we can’t know which is true, whether something has always existed or if something can come from nothing.
Me: Well, for which do you have evidence for?
Them: Evidence?
Me: Well, you’re claiming the high road of science so obviously you must be willing to accept, provisionally at least, where the evidence takes you.
Them: But we can’t know which. That’s my point.
Me: So you should be a principled agnostic, then.
Them: I’m not, I’m an atheist.
Me: But if you’re saying you can’t know then agnosticism is the proper answer.
Them: But I’m an atheist.
Me: lol, whatever. Moving on. The evidence would seem to suggest that the universe hasn’t always existed. It had a beginning. Regardless of the fact that you can imagine scenarios by which the universe could regress infinitely, it would seem that science tells us there is a hard limit on speculations about what was ‘before.’
Them: But if everything requires a cause then that would include God.
Me: Who said everything requires a cause? The whole point of our conversation to this point has been on the general agreement that something has always existed- without a cause. So you are misrespresenting the argument. The argument is really, best known through William L. Craig, is that everything with a beginning has a cause. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on December 15, 2008
Orthodox Christianity holds that God is both a transcendent entity and immanent. If you understand what Christians propose to be true about God, you understand why both attributes follow necessarily. All religions boil down to some expression of one of these two attributes, usually to the exclusion of one to the other. Deism, for example, emphasizes transcendence and despises immanence. Various forms of paganism emphasize immanence, that is they identify ‘God’ with the universe and reject that there is a God ‘outside’ it. Even atheism takes a position here: naturalism is just another variation on immanence and ‘God’ is just another label for the ‘universe.’
Christianity insists that God is both transcendent and immanent.
At any rate, there are some implications of this and I think it would be helpful to understand some arguments regarding Christian theism. I can begin with by trotting out the old ‘Can God create a rock that he cannot lift or move?’ line. The contention is that if God is all powerful he should be able to do this but in doing so he would simultaneously undermine his own omnipotence. Most of the time this is answered by pointing out that some statements are just nonsense and God’s omni-characteristics do not require him to be able to achieve the nonsensical. To understand how this is nonsensical we might take on the next line in this attack, “Can God make a round square?” We see in this case that what is involved is simply definitional. If round is properly and consistently defined and asked to apply to a square, also properly and consistently defined, then the request is nonsensical. Something doesn’t become reasonable just because you insert ‘Can God’ in front of it.
Most people accept this explanation and I’ve found that even nonbelievers come around to accepting it. (Not all of them do, which is why 17 year olds with Google can still find the question to ask it)
There is another way of looking at it, too. Here let me submit the story about Flatland to help illustrate the situation.
In Flatland, the characters exist in a two dimensional world and have their geometry- and logic- all worked out. Until, that is, a sphere breaks into their world. Now, a sphere is a three dimensional object, so naturally the 2D entities have great difficulty perceiving what they are seeing. A sphere, breaking through a plane, appears first as a single point and then a varying sized circle depending on how far the sphere comes in. Are the triangles and squares face to face with a logical contradiction? Not at all. Rather, the logical rules that apply to the 3D world incorporate and transcend the logical rules of the 2D world.
Given the truth of Christian theism, I propose that we are in precisely the same sort of situation, with a few important differences- ie, God is not merely an entity occupying a higher degree of existence- he is that AND he essentially permeates all degrees of existence as it is. This poses interesting epistemological problems if God wants to reveal himself and make himself known to the occupants of our ‘degree of existence.’ But I’m not here talking about that.
The point here is that if this is true, a number of the difficult to comprehend ‘contradictions’ in Christian theism are viewed as paradoxes that (plausibly might) entirely ‘make sense’ from the point of view of the super-natural perspective. How can Jesus be both God and Man without diminishing either? It can be a mindbender- especially if you insist in viewing it only in ’2D’ terms (eg, in only ‘naturalistic’ terms).
It so happens we can use an analogy to help us understand it. If God is 3D, and we are 2D, then our own creations are 1D. What creations do I mean? Those which we are simultaneously transcendent and immanent to- that is, the worlds we create within our minds and sustain by our powerful words. Can we create a story in our mind and then a rock within that story within our mind that we cannot lift? No. We see precisely how that is nonsensical after we understand the nature of relationship between the creator/author and creation/character.
Likewise, we can, if we want, very easily make ourselves a character within that creation. In doing so, we can perceive as we are doing it that we do not become any less than we were before, yet that character- You- is really both You and Character. This is using sub-logic to understand super-logic. If what I have said is the case regarding the stories we make inside our heads and threatens no logical incoherency or contradiction then we see that the same will be the case when contemplating our relationship to the Christian God.
I gave the example of the incarnation as an illustration of this but in my mind the real example is free will. Naturally, we cannot create characters with real free will, but just as cube ‘loses’ something when rendered as a square, we too impart lesser attributes to our own creations. Something is always ‘lost in translation.’
However, God can create ‘characters’ (us) who have real free will. He can be both utterly sovereign AND give us real autonomy able to make real choices. This seems logically ridiculous from our frame of reference. Indeed, I will perhaps admit that it is logically ridiculous. But I don’t see why I must confine myself to explaining everything from my own frame of reference. In my opinion, there are enough clues as to how this might play out from ‘higher’ to ‘lower’ dimensions that from the perspective of the sphere, ie, superlogic, the supernatural, the conundrum reconciles perfectly.
In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerened. The spiritual man makes judgements about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man’s judgment:
For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?
But we have the mind of Christ. 1 Cor. 2:11b-16
Posted by Anthony on September 24, 2008
What follows is submitted by an up and coming apologist named W. E. Messamore. His webpage is linked at the bottom and to the right. I invite readers to take a look at it. I like what I see and note that he and I have similar trains of thought and areas of emphasis. For example, in a recent post on his blog he listed Lewis’s The Great Divorce
as one of his top books to recommend. That is my number two favorite book- number one being Lewis’s Perelandra (Space Trilogy, Book 2)
. Without further ado, here is Mr. Messamore’s submission:
—————-
The Large Hadron Collider on the Franco-Swiss border is presently causing quite a stir. The hope is that the LHC will replicate physical conditions in the universe’s primordial past- during the earliest stages of the Big Bang. If this occurs, scientists will have a window of discovery unlike any other. They might discern secrets and solve problems about the physical universe that have haunted physicists and mathematicians for most of the last century. Such cosmic questions and their respective answers naturally carry religious implications. Will the operation of the LHC be the final nail in the coffin of theism, a triumph of science in explaining the physical universe only in terms of itself and without resort to the divine? Not hardly.
Actually, if the LHC does what most physicists are expecting it to do, it will lend even more credence to the already widely accepted Big Bang theory- and this will help theism, not hurt it. In my conversations on the street, in university classrooms, in coffee shops (etc.), I am puzzled by what seems to me like the division of many theists and atheists into two camps: those who doubt the Big Bang theory and see it as an affront to their belief in God and those who believe in the Big Bang theory, respectively. I find this puzzling because there was a time when each party took the opposite position.
Before the scientific community came to a consensus on the Big Bang theory following the discovery of the cosmic radiation echo predicted by Big Bang theorists, many scientists believed in the Steady State theory. In short, they believed that the universe had no definite beginning and that hydrogen atoms were randomly popping into existence somewhere in the universe, supplying the material for all the physical phenomena like stars and planets. Atheists were generally rooting for this theory, understanding that a definite beginning for the physical universe implies its contingency- that it has a cause which is outside itself. As it turned out, the Big Bang has been confirmed in great measure by scientific findings, and the LHC’s possible production of the Higgs boson would just be frosting on the cake.
How the atheists managed to adopt the Big Bang theory as evidence for their position confounds me. If there is any interesting history behind this, I’d be curious to know it.
To elaborate further on why this is a philosophical defeat for atheism: The contemporary atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen is frequently quoted by Christian apologists as saying about causation: “Suppose you suddenly hear a loud bang and you ask me, ‘What made that bang?’ and I reply ‘Nothing, it just happened.’ You would not accept that – in fact you would find my reply quite unintelligible.” Nielsen is quite right on this account. Bangs must have causes because they are finite, contingent events that have a definite beginning. So what of the largest Bang of all? Little bangs have causes, so must big bangs, …so must the Big Bang. Now this is hardly to say “…and therefore Christianity is right!” But it’s a start. As an atheist, it would present a problem to me. What do you think?
———-
W. E. Messamore is finishing his last year of undergraduate studies in Nashville, TN and hoping to make a positive impact on the world, he writes on his own blog at http://www.slaying-dragons.com
Posted by Anthony on September 23, 2008
So last night was the season opener for the NBC series Heroes. Am I the only person left scratching his head? I had hoped that the series would start making sense again but instead it seems to have become even more convoluted. I want to enjoy the show but there is just way too much going on to keep track of from week to week.
In last night’s back to back episodes, one of the characters, Nathan Petrelli, credits the saving of his life to God and suggests at one point that perhaps he and his brother (Peter) could become angels. ‘God’ popped up in a few other places as well. It appears that one of the goals of the writers is to not turn off the religious folk. Apparently interspersing the word ‘God’ and making statements alluding to the possibility that God is at work in the doings of the characters is enough to do this. Maybe it is, but I’m not really impressed. The series is placed squarely on the evolutionary worldview, though I doubt even many evolutionists are prepared to imagine natural selection could select for time travel, etc.
Theology and evolution don’t mix well, if they mix at all, but the series doesn’t have a single character representing a knowledgeable theistic point of view. The series seems primed to have Nathan ride to power as a senator on account of the religious fervor of voters who are inspired by Nathan’s account of his experience with the divine. But would competent Christian thinkers simply buy in? The ‘miraculous’ healing is certainly something to take into account but the whole concept of God giving secret messages to individuals without any witnesses whatsoever apart from that individual himself is the approach of the Gnostics (heretics), Muslims, and Mormons.
According to Christianity, when God finally made his boldest move, he did so in public. Jesus taught in the temples and synagogues and streets for three years and died right smack in the middle of a shouting crowd. Later, he appeared to numerous people at the same time, including at least one incident where 500 people were present.
Heroes seems ready to embrace the notion that only atheists are skeptics and religious people will believe whatever is handed to them in the name of ‘God.’ Meanwhile, of course, survival of the fittest continues to play out amidst the characters (who unsuprisingly never seem to stay dead once killed) and we’re supposed to feel for them, despite the visual protrayal of a life that really is ‘nasty, brutish, and short.’
The series would be greatly improved if they got ahold of some writers who didn’t merely want to explore some philosophical concepts but who also could represent accurately those ‘on the other side.’ I might even be able to endure the plot upheavals that take place every five minutes.
