Homophobia and Racism

Gay rights advocates often claim that gay rights are simply one more type of civil right; or conversely, homophobia is the same kind of thing as racism. To think homosexuality is immoral is as illogical as saying that being a certain race or ethnicity is immoral.

But what exactly do some say is immoral? Homosexuality? Homosexuals? Or homosexual acts? Traditionally, the Judeo-Christian claim is that only the last of these is immoral. Homosexuality is the ongoing temptation to engage in homosexual acts, but temptation is not immoral even if what you're being tempted to do may be. Moreover, the Christian is commanded not to condemn the person (the homosexual) but only the act. This is the meaning of the proverb "Love the sinner, hate the sin." (Admittedly this proverb is not in the Bible, but it summarizes the biblical position well.) Both of these are in some sense dependent on the third category, homosexual acts or behavior. To say someone is homosexual but is not tempted to perform homosexual acts is a contradiction in terms. Similarly to refer to homosexuality without any concept of same-sex attraction simply doesn't make any sense. The temptation to perform homosexual acts is what "homosexuality" means.

Now the problem with claiming homophobia is the same sort of thing as racism is that these categories do not transfer to race or ethnicity. This is most obvious with the third category. We all know what homosexual acts are: they are sexual acts between members of the same gender. They are not merely acts performed by homosexuals; when a homosexual washes his car, he is not engaged in a homosexual act. A homosexual act is one which defines the act as homosexual inherently, that is, by its very nature.

If homophobia were the same sort of thing as racism, there should be corresponding acts or behavior that are particular to different races. Just as there are homosexual acts, so there should be Chinese acts, or Hispanic acts, or white or black acts. This is obviously absurd. Therefore, homosexuality is not the same sort of thing as race or ethnicity. As I argued in this post, homosexual behavior involves an element that is simply not present in race: namely, behavior.

The first and second categories are problematic as well, since they are dependent on the third. A homosexual is someone who is tempted to perform homosexual acts. But a white person is not someone who is tempted to perform "white" acts, since there are no such acts. To say someone is homosexual but is not tempted to engage in homosexual acts is to redefine the word "homosexual." A homosexual is a person who is tempted to perform homosexual acts by definition. Similarly for the first category: the equivalent of homosexuality would be "whiteness" or "blackness" or whatever. But "whiteness" is not the temptation to perform "white" acts because (again) there are no such acts. Thus to treat homosexuality as the same sort of thing as race or ethnicity -- and homophobia as the same sort of thing as racism -- is simply invalid.

One more Christian

I know the biographer A. N. Wilson primarily because I read parts of his biography of C. S. Lewis for one of my theses; he has also written biographies on John Milton, Leo Tolstoy, Hilaire Belloc, and Jesus. Additionally he wrote the book God's Funeral: The Decline of Faith in Western Civilization. Wilson was raised Christian, but abandoned it as an adult and became a high-profile atheist.

In his Lewis biography, Wilson interpreted everything through the lens of Freudianism by finding psychological causes (rather than rational reasons) for Lewis's Christian beliefs and his attempts to defend them rationally. Right off the bat, I find such speculations about Lewis's motivations extraordinarily tone-deaf. In the first place, it commits the Bulverism fallacy (aka the circumstantial ad hominem fallacy), which gets its name from Lewis's famous essay of the same name. In the second place, another of Lewis's most famous essays is "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism" (alternatively titled "Fern-seed and Elephants") in which he makes the point that reviewers of his own writings and those of his friends have often tried to reconstruct their motives. According to Lewis, such attempts were universally incorrect; he could not recall a single accurate statement. For biographers of Lewis to make such attempts themselves in light of Lewis's explicit claim that "the results are either always, or else nearly always, wrong," either demonstrates that they were unfamiliar with this essay or that they chose to ignore it.

The issue I was researching was the Argument from Reason (AFR) and Lewis's debate with Elizabeth Anscombe, who challenged the AFR on Wittgensteinian grounds. Lewis was unfamiliar with the "new" philosophy of Wittgenstein, and so his immediate response was somewhat weak. Wilson suggests that Lewis was so humiliated by his debate with Anscombe that he abandoned writing apologetics. Others have claimed this as well, such as Humphrey Carpenter in The Inklings. The problem with this claim is that it's demonstrably false; Lewis did write apologetics in the decade after the Anscombe debate, including rewriting his main presentation of the AFR in the third chapter of Miracles. Anscombe subsequently praised it and him, although she still disagreed.

Wilson, however, went a step further, suggesting absurdly that Lewis retreated into writing children's literature (the Chronicles of Narnia), because children, at least, wouldn't be able to dispute him intellectually. Wilson even suggested that the Emerald Witch in The Silver Chair is based on Anscombe. This despite the fact that Anscombe was herself a Christian. He found Puddleglum's response to the Emerald Witch's enchantment as constituting Lewis's statement to continue believing even after having one of his main arguments refuted.

"One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things -- trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for the Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

My point in bringing this up is that Wilson has re-converted to Christianity. I'm very happy for him, and am glad to count him as a Christian brother. The New Statesman has his account of his path back to God, although the full story is only available in the print edition. They also have an interview with him, which includes the following question and answer:

What's the worst thing about being faithless?

The worst thing about being faithless? When I thought I was an atheist I would listen to the music of Bach and realize that his perception of life was deeper, wiser, more rounded than my own. Ditto when I read the lives of great men and women who were religious.

Reading Northrop Frye and Blake made me realize that their world-view (above all their ability to see the world in mythological terms) is so much more INTERESTING than some of the alternative ways of looking at life.

I found this interesting, because it sounds an awful lot like Puddleglum's response to the Emerald Witch.

Update (14 Apr): Here's another article by Wilson condemning secularism as the "religion of hatred." He briefly, but positively mentions C. S. Lewis, and towards the end states, "Materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals. It has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love or heroism or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat." This sounds similar to the AFR, insofar as it claims that some common aspect of human experience is inexplicable in an atheistic worldview. It brings to mind (at least my mind) something Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed regarding his wife's death:

If H. ‘is not,’ then she never was. I mistook a cloud of atoms for a person. There aren’t, and never were, any people. Death only reveals the vacuity that was always there. What we call the living are simply those who have not yet been unmasked. All equally bankrupt, but some not yet declared.

But this must be nonsense; vacuity revealed to whom? Bankruptcy declared to whom? To other boxes of fireworks or clouds of atoms. I will never believe -- more strictly I can’t believe -- that one set of physical events could be, or make, a mistake about other sets.

Apologetics reading list

A few years ago I taught an apologetics class at a friend's church, and I compiled the following list of books for the students. Most of them are popular level, but not all. It's obviously incomplete; these are books that I own or encountered at the book store where I worked. Also, as you can tell, under the science section, I put books that argue against biological evolution. Since then, I have become much more open to evolution, and would include books by Christians who argue for it, like Denis Alexander. If the title has a hyperlink, it will send you to a website containing part or all of the book.

General Apologetics
Gregory Boyd, Edward Boyd, Letters from a Skeptic
William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith
Norman Geisler, Christian Apologetics
_____, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics
_____, Paul Hoffman, Why I Am a Christian: Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe
Peter Kreeft, Socrates Meets Jesus
_____, Ronald Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics
Paul Little, Know Why You Believe
Josh McDowell, A Ready Defense
J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City
Ralph Muncaster, “Examine the Evidence” series

Jesus
Gregory Boyd, Jesus Under Siege
Paul Copan, Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? A Debate between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan
_____, Ronald Tacelli, Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact or Figment? A Debate between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdemann
William Lane Craig, The Son Rises
R. Douglas Geivett, Gary Habermas, In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Action in History
Gary Habermas, Antony Flew, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate
Harold Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ
Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus
Peter Kreeft, Between Heaven and Hell
Josh McDowell, More Than a Carpenter
_____, Bill Wilson, He Walked Among Us
J. P. Moreland, Michael Wilkins, Jesus Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents the Historical Jesus
Ronald Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow From Pagan Thought?
Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ
N. T. Wright, Who Was Jesus?
_____, The Original Jesus: The Life and Vision of a Revolutionary

The Bible
Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels
_____, The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel: Issues and Commentary
F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?
Walter Kaiser, The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and Relevant?
Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict (2 vols.; republished as a single volume: The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict)
_____, Daniel in the Critics’ Den
Randall Price, The Stones Cry Out: What Archaeology Reveals About the Truth of the Bible

Science
Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box
William Dembski, Mere Creation: Science, Faith, and Intelligent Design
_____, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology
Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
Fred Heeren, Show Me God
Phillip Johnson, Darwin on Trial
Fazale Rana, Hugh Ross, Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off
Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos
_____, The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis
_____, The Fingerprint of God
Robert Shapiro, Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth
Lee Strobel, The Case for a Creator
Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, Roger Olsen, The Mystery of Life’s Origin

Dealing with Problems and Objections
Gleason Archer, New International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties
F. F. Bruce, Walter Kaiser, Peter Davids, Manfred Brauch, Hard Sayings of the Bible (originally published separately as Hard Sayings of the Old Testament; of Jesus; of Paul; etc.)
Paul Copan, “True for You, But Not for Me”: Deflating the Slogans That Leave Christians Speechless
_____, “How Do You Know You’re Not Wrong?” Responding to Objections That Leave Christians Speechless
_____, “That’s Just Your Interpretation”: Responding to Skeptics Who Challenge Your Faith
William Lane Craig, Hard Questions, Real Answers
James Dobson, When God Doesn’t Make Sense
Norman Geisler, Thomas Howe, When Critics Ask: A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties
John Haley, Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible
J. Carl Laney, Answers to Tough Questions
Josh McDowell, Don Stewart, Answers to Tough Questions Skeptics Ask About the Christian Faith
Kenneth Richard Samples, Without a Doubt: Answering the 20 Toughest Faith Questions
Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith
Ravi Zacharias, Norman Geisler, Who Made God? and Answers to Over 100 Other Tough Questions

Specific Issues and World Views
William Campbell, The Qur’an and the Bible in the Light of History and Science
Norman Geisler, William Watkins, Worlds Apart: A Handbook on World Views
Gary Habermas, J. P. Moreland, Beyond Death: Exploring the Evidence for Immortality
André Kole, Jerry MacGregor, Mind Games (a Christian perspective on psychic and paranormal phenomena)
Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults
Hugh Ross, Kenneth Richard Samples, Mark Clark, Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men: A Rational Christian Look at UFOs and Extra-terrestrials
James Sire, The Universe Next Door
Tom Snyder, Myth Conceptions: Joseph Campbell and the New Age
Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God?
_____, A Shattered Visage: The Real Face of Atheism
_____, Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message
_____, The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks With Buddha

Authors not yet mentioned whom you should read
C. S. Lewis
Francis Schaeffer
Dallas Willard

24 and Evil

I haven't had a TV for years, but I've managed to see a couple of episodes of the show 24 with Kiefer Sutherland, and liked them very much. So I just checked out its sixth season from the city library.

Spoiler alert. After seeing the first four episodes, I have to say that I'm strongly put off by it, because of its attempt to realistically portray evil situations. One storyline really got to me: a family (husband, wife, son) have a Middle-Eastern neighbor, who is a friend of the son. Terrorist attacks start taking place, and some other neighbors decide to beat up the neighbor. The husband goes over and puts himself between the neighbor and his attackers, saying that if they want to get the neighbor, they'll have to go through him first. The attackers leave, and the husband insists that the neighbor stay with them for safety. Well, it turns out the neighbor actually is a terrorist, and takes the family hostage, forcing the husband -- who had gone out of his way and put himself at risk to do the right thing -- to drive all over town delivering "packages." The first ends up being money for an electronics component, but the guy insists he wants more before he'll hand it over. The husband calls the terrorist who says he'll kill his family if he doesn't get the component. So the man is forced to murder the man holding it in order to get it. The terrorist then demands that he deliver it to another location. When he gets there, he discovers it's the last part for a nuclear bomb. As cops descend upon the location, the terrorists set it off. So the husband's last two actions before his death are being forced to commit murder, and then (unwittingly) helping to assemble a nuclear bomb that kills tens of thousands of people. Again, this is a man who went out of his way to do the right thing. The terrorists used this man's love for his family to steal his soul. This is just horrifically evil.

Of course, it's just a TV show. It's fiction. It didn't really happen. But I can't help thinking of Philippians 4:8: "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable -- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy -- think about such things." This isn't an appeal to ignore evil, or to do your best to forget the fact that we live in an evil world. Rather, it's a plea to remember that Good is the foundation of reality and that it will win. So do I want to continue watching this show that so far has had one of the most evil concepts I've ever heard of? I think I'm willing to give DVD 2 a chance, but if anything like this starts to unfold again, I'm just returning it to the library and never watching 24 again.

Christianity in China

Here's an interesting article: "Recent surveys calculate the number of Christians worshipping independently of the State churches in China to be as high as 100 million. That means that almost one in every ten Chinese may now be a Christian, making Christianity bigger than the 74 million-member Communist Party." I live in a pretty international town and attend a pretty international church with a lot of Chinese folks. I've asked them about this in the past, and they told me that Christianity is fashionable in China right now, meaning that it's popular but some of it is superficial. But I've also heard estimates that east Asia, and China in particular, will be the global center of Christianity within the next 30 years.

Jupiter going behind the Sun

Size Doesn't Matter (thank God), part 1

Contemporary western culture is dominated by the "conflict thesis", the claim that science and religion are at war, and that religion (or at least Christianity) is losing. The latter claims that human beings are the pinnacle of creation, but science has revealed that we are merely animals evolved from simpler forms of life, which in turn were just the product of matter and energy acting upon each other, all of which occupies an insignificant dot in an insignificant location in an infinite universe. Nietzsche illustrates this perspective well with the parable with which he opens his brilliant essay "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense":

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die.

To think we have any significance or value in light of this is essentially to stick your fingers in your ears, shake your head, and say, "La la la la, I can't hear you!"

One of the elements in this metanarrative is the incomprehensible vastness of the universe, only discovered in the modern scientific era, and the infinitesimal size of the earth in comparison. This renders absurd any suggestion that human beings, occupying only a speck of dust in a cosmic sandstorm, are special, showing (once again) that contemporary science has refuted Christianity. Or so the story goes.

This view is expressed well by Douglas Adams' Total Perspective Vortex and Monty Python's Galaxy Song. I was going to embed the latter, but since there are some, shall we say, improprieties therein, I decided to go with a different song that expresses this sentiment in a more family-friendly fashion.



Unfortunately (at least for some), there are multiple problems with the conflict thesis in general, and with the claim regarding the spatial insignificance of the earth in particular. Regarding the latter, everyone, of course, feels a sense of insignificance when faced with the vastness of the cosmos. This is universal, although some ages and cultures feel it more intensely than others. But before it can made into an argument against Christianity, several further questions must be answered. For example, why would something's value or importance be connected to its size? Does Christianity actually teach that humanity is the most important thing in the universe? If so, does it tie this to a belief that the universe is small and the earth the largest thing in it? Is it really only with modern science that we've discovered the universe's immensity, and thus the disparity between it and ourselves? In the remainder of this post I'll be addressing this last question from the side of science.

-- The impression that the universe dwarfs us is based on a sort of common sense view of measurement. But a couple of years ago James made a very important point about this issue. He compared human beings to the smallest and largest things in the universe; that is, he used the exponential scale which is precisely the standard of measurement which physicists employ. When this is done, it reveals that human beings are actually closer to the larger end of the scale than the smaller end. The smallest is the Planck length at 10^-35 meters, and the largest is the universe itself, at about 10²⁵ meters. "So comparing our absolute size to the smallest and biggest possible things in the universe, we are about three fifths of the way up the scale. In other words, we are of medium to large size using the exponential scale, the only scale that makes any sense in physics."

Of course, one could simply reject this standard of measurement as having any relevance to the issue. If one does, however, then one would have to reject the argument under discussion as well: for it depends on the claim that modern science has demonstrated our spatial insignificance. You cannot make this claim while rejecting the very method of measurement actually used by the sciences in question.

-- Another scientific point involves the Anthropic Principle. One of the characteristics I mentioned in this post is that the universe's mass density must be precisely what it is in order for life to be possible anywhere at any time in the universe's history. The mass density is the amount of matter in the universe. The velocity with which the matter and energy created in the Big Bang burst outward was precisely governed by the universe’s mass density, since the more mass there is, the more gravity would slow down the expansion, matter being what gravity acts upon. If the universe's mass density were different by one part in 10⁶⁰, life could never exist at any place and at any time in the universe's history. In other words, if the universe was just a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth smaller or larger than it is -- an amount equal to "about a tenth part of a dime" according to the link above -- the universe’s velocity would either have overpowered gravity, or it would have been overpowered by gravity. The first case would have prevented the matter from being collected into stars and galaxies. The second case would have resulted in the universe collapsing back in on itself. Either way, life would have been impossible anywhere at any time in the universe. So in order for life to be possible on our dust speck of a planet, the universe must be precisely the size that it is.

Of course, some people will insist that this is not enough. Just because every piece of matter had some relevance to the universe's initial expansion, it does not have any connection to our existence now -- and this calls into question any view that sets up the earth and humanity as significant. In other words, unless every rock, planet, star, and galaxy in the universe is always and only there for our benefit, Christianity (somehow) cannot be true.

But what exactly is being asked here? Given the necessary fine-tuning of the universe's mass density, the matter making up these rocks, planets, stars, and galaxies had to be there. To ask why they're still there is to ask why God didn't destroy them once they served their initial purpose. In other words, it is to expect God to destroy the evidence of what he has done. This is problematic on several levels, not least of which is that if God did do this, the same people who raise this objection would obviously be pointing to the lack of evidence for God. So it seems that no matter what he does -- whether he keeps the matter there as a testimony to his actions or whether he destroys it once it has served this purpose -- they will use it as an argument against his existence. I may come back to this in future installments.

-- Alexandre Koyré argues in From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe that there is an element to modern cosmology that is lacking in its ancient and medieval counterparts. Regardless of how big they thought the universe to be, they clearly believed it to be finite. But modern science has, according to Koyré, demonstrated that the universe is infinite. The reason this is significant is because moving from one finite size to another is not the same as moving from a finite size to an infinite one. Regardless of how large the ancients and medievals conceived the universe to be, there is a difference in kind involved here, and this is the significant aspect of modern cosmology that refutes the ancient and medieval cosmology. "Let us not forget, moreover, that, by comparison with the infinite, the world of Copernicus is by no means greater than that of mediaeval astronomy; they are both as nothing, because inter finitum et infinitum non est proportio. We do not approach the infinite universe by increasing the dimension of our world. We may make it as large as we want: that does not bring us any nearer to it."

I will not contest here Koyré's claim that an infinite universe is a different type of thing than a finite one, and as such, would represent a complete change of our view of the cosmos as well as ourselves. On this score, C. S. Lewis agrees: in The Discarded Image (a text to which I'll be returning) he argues that there is a radical difference between believing in a distant horizon and believing in no horizon at all.

Hence to look out on the night sky with modern eyes is like looking out over a sea that fades away into mist, or looking about one in a trackless forest -- trees forever and no horizon. To look up at the towering medieval universe is much more like looking at a great building. The 'space' of modern astronomy may arouse terror, or bewilderment or vague reverie; the spheres of the old present us with an object in which the mind can rest, overwhelming in its greatness but satisfying in its harmony. That is the sense in which our universe is romantic, and theirs was classical.

This explains why all sense of the pathless, the baffling, and the utterly alien -- all agoraphobia -- is so markedly absent from medieval poetry when it leads us, as so often, into the sky. Dante, whose theme might have been expected to invite it, never strikes that note. The meanest modern writer of science-fiction can, in that department, do more for you than he. Pascal's terror at le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis never entered his mind. He is like a man being conducted through an immense cathedral, not like one lost in a shoreless sea.

Perhaps, then, one could argue that since an infinite universe presents us with an object in which the mind cannot rest, this sense of "agoraphobia" that it produces entails a greater sense of insignificance than any finite universe could convey; and hence a greater assault on humanity's dignity. However, Lewis argues to the contrary: an infinite universe would have no absolute standard of measurement, only relative standards. But a finite universe would have both absolute and relative standards of measurement.

The really important difference is that the medieval universe, while unimaginably large, was also unambiguously finite. And one unexpected result of this is to make the smallness of Earth more vividly felt. In our [infinite] universe she is small, no doubt; but so are the galaxies, so is everything -- and so what? But in theirs there was an absolute standard of comparison. ... The word 'small' as applied to Earth thus takes on a far more absolute significance.

Koyré argues that modern science requires a complete overhaul of our view of the cosmos and our place in it because we have discovered that the universe is infinite. The irony is that, even before Koyré wrote this, Einstein's relativity equations and Edwin Hubble's observations of the expansion of the universe indicated something different. Today Big Bang cosmology has established that the universe is spatially and temporally finite. It began to exist a particular time ago, and has a finite size. In this sense at least, the ancient/medieval cosmology has been exonerated. Whether Lewis is right to describe it as "unimaginably large" will be the subject of the next installment.

Update (11 Aug): (see also part 2 and part 3)

(cross-posted at Quodlibeta)

Thought of the Day

The fact that some people go off the deep end is not an argument against the existence of water.

Plantinga vs. Dennett

Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett engaged in a pseudo-debate recently -- "pseudo" because it was not a traditional debate format, but took the form of a presentation, response, and counter-response -- on the compatibility of science and religion. You can read an account of it here, or download the audio here. Here are my thoughts on it, based solely on the account:

1. I'm very disturbed that the philosopher who wrote the account linked above felt it necessary to remain anonymous. Is this really the state of academia today that religious devotion can ruin one's career? That just scares me.

2. Plantinga's presentation should have been broader. He could easily have shown the Christian origins of modern science, and how many aspects of contemporary science seem to confirm religious claims (the Big Bang, the Anthropic Principle, etc.).

3. Plantinga should not have mentioned Michael Behe's critique of orthodox Darwinism. The relationship between religion and science is controversial enough without bringing in the most controversial aspects of it, especially since there are plenty of Christians who disagree with Behe.

4. I don't understand Dennett's (and radical atheism's) insistence that atheism is just obvious, and anyone who doesn't see it is a moron. I don't see why the atheist's knee-jerk reaction is a surer guide to truth than the lifelong reflections of the majority of the most intelligent people who have ever lived. Perhaps the latter were wrong, but I have a hard time believing that they were stupid.

5. As a corollary, I further don't see why Dennett (and radical atheism) feels it necessary to be so contemptuous of anyone who disagrees. Dennett essentially accuses Plantinga of being stupid. You need to re-examine your worldview if it requires you to believe that one of the greatest and most profound thinkers in the world today is stupid. Again, I can certainly see how he could be wrong, but to accuse him of stupidity is not even worthy of consideration.

6. At the very least, Dennett (and radical atheism) could employ arguments to defend a) atheism and b) that belief in God is silly (as opposed to just false). If atheism were not only true but obviously true, it seems to me that they should be able to give reasons for it at the drop of a hat. Instead they usually offer slogans, insults, and propaganda. Dennett suggests, for example, that belief in God is equivalent to Holocaust denial. Nevermind the fact that the experience of God is one of the most common human experiences throughout history, and one of the main subjects of philosophy for the last few millennia has been proofs for the existence of God. As such, to put belief in God in the same category as conspiracy theories is pretty weird.

Regarding the Stimulus Bill

This is funny.
This is scary.
This is really scary.
This is kind of freaking me out.

Update (12 Mar): And we're back to funny.

Gorbachev the Christian

1. During his presidency, Ronald Reagan speculated to some of his advisors (including Colin Powell) that Mikhail Gorbachev might secretly be a Christian. Several years ago, Peter Robinson asked Gorbachev why he didn't just squash the 1989 revolution, like previous Soviet leaders had squashed other revolutions. Gorbachev's answer: "Because of something I shared with Ronald Reagan. Christian morality."

2. About a year ago, Gorbachev came out and acknowledged that he is a Christian believer. He entered the Russian Orthodox church after studying St. Francis of Assisi.

3. Now comes news that Reagan actually tried to convince Gorbachev on a personal level that God exists. Very interesting.

Refreshing Drink Fail

Why I Love the Internet, part 2

The standard theology/philosophy textbook in the Middle Ages was the Sentences of Peter Lombard. The only book that received more attention was the Bible. Just about all of the major medieval and Renaissance thinkers wrote commentaries on it. I've actually found it difficult to get a copy of just the Sentences without someone's commentary.

Well, here's a link to a page that has much of the Sentences in parallel Latin and English, including book I, book II, and the beginning of book IV. And just in case that's not enough, they also have links to many of the commentaries as well.

Escape from Hell

There are several books that I've read well over a dozen times. One of them is Inferno -- not Dante's version, but a modern version written by two science-fiction authors, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Pournelle, a fan of C. S. Lewis, says that he got a lot of the "theological stuffing" for Inferno from Lewis's The Great Divorce. Niven and Pournelle have written several novels together, including The Mote In God's Eye, one of the best SF novels ever written (it's a first-contact story, and one of the other books that I've read over a dozen times).

The story of Inferno, for those who don't know, is about a guy who descends to Hell and discovers its levels and punishments. In Niven and Pournelle's version, the main character is a SF author. What's interesting about this is that as their character (named Carpenter, although he calls himself Carpentier) travels around Hell, he realizes that he has committed many of the crimes that he sees other people being punished for. This induces in him some self-examination; and consequently the authors, in writing this story, also go through a level of self-examination that is rare in our day.

One of the best parts in Inferno is when Carpenter encounters the pit for those who invented their own religions. The demon-in-charge accuses him of having committed this crime, and thus implies that Carpenter belongs in this pit. The way he invented his own religions is that, in writing his SF stories, he invented alien civilizations, cultures, and societies; and this involved inventing alien religions as well:

"You never created your own Church, Carpenter?"

Oh, dammit! "Listen, those weren't in competition with God or anybody! All I did was make up some religions for aliens. If that was enough you'd have every science-fiction writer who ever lived! ...

"Take the Silpies. They were humanoid but telepaths. They believed they had one collective soul, and they could prove it! And the Sloots were slugs with tool-using tentacles developed from their tongues. To them, God was a Sloot with no tongue. He didn't need a tongue; He didn't eat, and He could create at will, by the power of His mind." I saw him nodding and was encouraged. "None of this was more than playing with ideas."

The demon was still nodding. "Games played with the concept of religion. Enough such games and all religions might look equally silly."

Again, I'm very struck by the fact that two SF authors had enough self-awareness to recognize the possible negative consequences of their craft. In our society we tend to think that we'll go to Heaven, and don't think of the bad things we've done for fear of having a low self esteem. In other times, people have tended to think that they would go to Hell; or at least they have focused on their bad things so that they could learn and turn away from them. For example, Christians have often focused on their failings in order to recognize the depth of God's love in being willing to forgive them for it. I think the appropriate attitude is to recognize both the good we've done and the bad rather than to focus on one to the exclusion of the other.

At any rate, Niven and Pournelle have just published a sequel to Inferno entitled Escape from Hell. Glenn Reynolds has a brief review of it here. I'm looking forward to it, and seeing whether it also gets its theological stuffing from C. S. Lewis.

Justifying Terrorism

I've met people who, despite being very good, godly, loving people, nevertheless think that the United States deserved 9/11 and refuse to blame the terrorists. It wasn't their fault, they were driven to it by US foreign policy or something similar. My response to this is threefold:

1. This first one is commonly stated, so please forgive the repetition: but how is this any different than blaming a rape victim? Any example you can give me as to how the terrorists were driven to do what they did, I can say something similar to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of the woman who is raped. She was wearing a short skirt, she invited the guy up to her room, she was flirting, she was leading him on, etc., and by so doing, she inflamed the rapist's sex drive beyond his ability to control it. If you can't condemn terrorists, I don't see how you can condemn the rapist. But obviously this is insane: the terrorists, not their victims, are responsible for their actions, just as the rapist is responsible for the rape.

2. If the terrorists were driven to their actions by the US, and are therefore not responsible for them, why wouldn't this apply to the US as well? Why couldn't we just say, "The US was driven to their actions by the actions of other countries," or something? If the terrorists can't be blamed for their actions, I don't see how you can blame the people who allegedly drove them to their actions either; since these people were also driven to their actions by a third party, who was driven to his actions by a fourth, etc, ad infinitum. The only way to avoid this absurdity in which everything everyone does is always and only a reaction to something else is to stop it before it starts. And this entails that the terrorists, not US policy, are responsible for their acts of terrorism.

3. I don't care what the terrorists' excuse is for their atrocities. There is never an excuse for terrorism. Period. Once you've committed an act of terrorism in order to promote a particular cause, for that very reason I will no longer pay any attention to your cause. The only thing I will pay attention to is forcibly stopping you from committing any more such atrocities. I refuse to reward bad behavior in general, and especially so when it comes to horrific acts of depravity.

This is not just an ethical position -- a refusal to accommodate evil -- but a practical one as well. If we allow the terrorist to have any positive response to his atrocities, this will simply encourage more atrocities. "We want more money for our country's infrastructure." BOOM. "We want a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." BOOM. "We want you to imprison anyone who says things we don't like." BOOM. Again, the only way to avoid this is to never allow it in the first place. Even if your cause is worthy, as soon as you use terrorism to promote it, it immediately moves off my list of concerns.