Punditry

At a rally on the campus of North Carolina State in Raleigh, N.C. Wednesday where President Obama went to drum up support for his jobs bill, this happened.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I love you, Barack!

THE PRESIDENT: I love you back. (Applause.) But first — but if you love me — if you love me, you got to help me pass this bill. (Applause.) If you love me, you got to help me pass this bill.

Here’s John 21:15, the New International Version, describing a scene between Jesus and his disciples:

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter,”Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” [Source]

Hmm, not sure if NPR is mocking Obama’s MESSiah-like status or just noting the comparison. Though this is not the verse I would have chosen to make a comparison with – but hey with NPR it is amazing they would have any verse in mind. Much more fitting I think is:

“If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15)

Surely this idea is more what the President has in mind. Though I think the cruelest thing that could be done to the President was to pass his jobs bill, not to mention the American people. It won’t be passed and the President can then blame the Congress for the worsening economy. The effects of passing the “More of the same – American Jobs Bill” would not give him this out. Though like most politicians he is quite apt at blaming someone else as usual.

I find the whole idea of this type of appeal to love for political reasons rather odd. For one the response for love is not always to acquiesce to what somebody wants. If an alcoholic tells you “If you love me, bye me a bottle”, giving him a bottle is not love. To love is to will the good for the other and there a prudential considerations to be dealt with when considering this. The only demands love can make is for love. To use it as a coercive demand is not love.

The prudential merits of the Presidents economic plans has nothing to do with supporting his plan. I would consider the President to be an enemy for his culture of death policies, yet I can still love him and will the good for him without supporting his plans.

An AlterNet article by Amanda Marcotte reminds me of a question a reader asked me over at Google+.

7) Atheist lives are bleak and lack meaning. Those in the atheist activist community find this one particularly insipid, because we so often deal with people who suffered religious abuse and were only able to find peace by abandoning religion. There’s really no reason to believe that happiness and fulfillment come from a supernatural place, or else believers would have no need for fulfilling work, loving families, friends, and hobbies, since their spiritual beliefs would suffice. Most atheists actually find our lack of belief in a supernatural being makes it easier to fill our lives with meaning and joy. Since we don’t believe in an afterlife, many of us find ourselves more motivated to make the most out of the time we do have instead of looking to the next life to make us happy.

Some might remember that Amanda Marcotte was one of two bloggers fired from the John Edwards presidential campaign for some rather extreme anti-Catholic screeds. In this article she makes some valid points though her article named  “10 Myths Many Religious People Hold About Atheists” should really be named “10 Myths May Atheists Believe That Religious People Hold About Atheists” or at least that is the impression I get from her replies. She could not put the disclaimer “No straw man was hurt in the making of this post.”  This is not to say there are no myths that religious believers have concerning atheists. I would say there certainly are when it comes to discerning motivations and atheists like any group of individuals have motives that span the gamut.

The question I got asked myself concerned the question of joy and happiness when I was an atheist and the comparison to now.

Generally I have always been a happy person and as an atheist enjoyed many of the natural joys involving family, discovery of knowledge, and the effects of the natural virtues (and of course the effects of vices).   I could read an article in a science magazine and feel elation on some aspect of science and discovery and be amazed anew at our universe. Music has brought me great enjoyment.  I certainly experienced many material joys and I would have called myself a generally happy atheist.  My developed sense of wonder certainly contributed to this feeling.

I didn’t dwell on the meaning of life since there wasn’t one other than to “go along to get along” and to enjoy what I could since one day I would just stop existing.  When I thought about this “not existing” it didn’t fill me with fear since that was a natural end and there was nothing to regret once you stopped existing.  This is not to say that the idea does not cause a rebellion of self at the idea of not-existing, but it was just a fact to be faced and one to be faced not all that often.

There’s really no reason to believe that happiness and fulfillment come from a supernatural place …

I don’t anybody who believes that or makes that claim.  Atheists can very well be happy people, but can it really be said that their happiness derives from their atheism?  Is somebody who most fully lives the tenants of atheism happier?  Some of the atheist philosophers were the most miserable people I can think of Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ayn Rand, Jean-Paul Sartre.  When you think of the new atheists the word joy doesn’t usually come to mind, but this is also seems to be true of some religious leaders.

What I would contend is that religious believers in general and Catholics in particular can be more filled with joy than any atheist.  Joy is the feeling aroused by the expectation or possession of some good.  There are both natural and supernatural joys depending on these goods. There are goods that atheists deny so this in itself reduces the range of possible joys. I did not give up joy when I came to faith.  All of those natural joys I was comforted by were expanded in directions I never expected.  My love of science did not end as I came to believe in God, it was extended. Somebody who took great joy in the beauty of paintings who discovered that there was also a painter could rejoice in both the painting and the painter.   Before I was limited  to just admiring the painter.  It is a much greater and deeper joy to think about both the universe and its creator. My love of science resulted in the fact that the world is intelligible.

Most atheists actually find our lack of belief in a supernatural being makes it easier to fill our lives with meaning and joy.

Of course she doesn’t mention how she knows this and if her data is other than anecdotal. Where exactly does she get this meaning she fills her life with?  In an atheistic universe meaning is only something you impose on it.  There is no intrinsic meaning other than 42.  One of the many things I found towards the end of my atheism was that I used many words and ideas in a way that I could not really defend.  The words good, meaning, rights, etc were societal conventions and societal devices that could ultimately make no claims on me other than what I decided for myself. Something is generally agreed upon might be well worth looking at, but it can make no moral demands on you if there is morality other than a subjective one.

Since we don’t believe in an afterlife, many of us find ourselves more motivated to make the most out of the time we do have instead of looking to the next life to make us happy.

Again a generality that probably can’t be supported.  Going from atheism to theism did not affect my motivation for making the most out of time.  I did not suddenly decide that I could stop making the most out of time now that I believe in an afterlife. Besides the whole phrase “making the most out of time’ is pretty subjective.  Is somebody traveling the world and constantly dong things making more out of time than a nun in a contemplative order?

Sometimes you hear of a Jewish person who converts to the Catholic faith saying that they did not leave behind their Judaism but completed it.  All of those natural joys and virtues I enjoyed as an atheist were not left behind, but completed and heaped upon.  Ironic that in her myth-debunking post that she asserts that believers just look to the next life to be happy.  This is really usually a both/and situation unless your St. Bernadette*.  When I think upon Heaven, I don’t think “well I can hardly wait for the afterlife to be happy and I will just have to need trudging along until then.” What I do know that gives me great joy is that God has made me for himself and even though my imaginative abilities to conjure the reality of Heaven are woefully lacking; I totally know that God will give me joy and happiness also in the next life.  Many atheists would call this wish fulfillment and a crutch, but that there is a reality that matches the desire in my heart is not some cosmic joke and if a crutch helps me walk straighter and to obtain that joy – all the better.

I just wish my “wish fulfillment” didn’t bring me to belief in hell and the real possibility that I could reject God.  That my “wish fulfillment” didn’t wish for a hundred or more Lents to work on my sins and to be able to grow in virtue.  Darn that “wish fulfillment” for putting a crimp in my style and keeping me from just going after individualistic pleasures. Us believers really need to work on our “wish fulfillment” since we come up with such downers like repentance and all that.  Some might critique atheism as a sort of “wish fulfillment” of there not being ultimate consequences to actions, but this would be as equally untrue to the majority as the counterclaim.

* I say this jokingly because of the famous quote from the Virgin Mary to St. Bernadette “I do not promise to make you happy in this life, but in the next.”.

(AP) Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson told his “700 Club” viewers that divorcing a spouse with Alzheimer’s is justifiable because the disease is “a kind of death.”

During the portion of the show where the one-time Republican presidential candidate takes questions from viewers, Robertson was asked what advice a man should give to a friend who began seeing another woman after his wife started suffering from the incurable neurological disorder.

“I know it sounds cruel, but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but make sure she has custodial care and somebody looking after her,” Robertson said. [Source]

Mr. Robertson might not want to let Mrs. Robertson know you can get a divorce if your partner is brainless.

When it comes down to it though, how is Pat Robertson’s position much different from the view of divorce in Protestantism generally? Marrying after a civil divorce is pretty much totally accepted within Protestantism. If a Protestant want’s to get “remarried” there is pretty much no bar to going to any Protestant minister to perform a wedding. Their civil divorce could have been for pretty much any reason. Now of course talking about Protestantism in general means that there is bound to be one group or more that are an exception since practice is so varied.

Sure some will use scripture to defend divorce in the case of adultery, but pretty much once they had one exemption the reality is that there are no exemptions as practiced. There is no investigation into a marriage even for the supposed exemption.

One of the things that attracted me to the Catholic Church when I became a theist was the Church’s view of marriage. As an atheist I saw marriage as a “unto death” kind of thing even if I had nothing in atheist philosophy to build such and opinion on. While some might think that annulments are a form of Catholic divorce, they are founded on a valid principal even if the practice is not perfect. Only the Church treats marriage as seriously as is merited.

When you don’t have a Magisterium difficult cases are what drive the practice and the exceptions made open up endless exceptions. While we can easily see the effect in Protestantism it also applies to Orthodoxy where divorce is more and more accepted.

Archbishop Dolan fallows up on his markers of the faith post with some more reflection on this subject after attending World Youth Day.

…The planners of each Mass — wisely and thoughtfully, when you think about it — printed in the Mass booklet, and even announced before Mass, “Look, it’s so jammed in here, and you are all so hot and tired, why don’t you just stay seated during the Eucharistic prayer.”

Very practical . . . very wise . . . let’s make this simple and a bit more relaxed. Let’s “lighten-up.”

What happened? I’ll be darned, at all four occasions, all the hundreds, thousands of youth still knelt! They wanted to kneel in adoration! They didn’t want it simple or practical! They didn’t mind the challenge! They wanted it!

I realize it’s a trivial example, a little thing. Maybe I read too much into it. But I wonder as well if once again our people — our young people — are telling us something:

“We don’t like ‘Catholic-lite.’ Don’t pander to us! Call us to greatness! Call us to heroic virtue! Remind us that following Jesus calls for sacrifice, and that we long for ways to let ourselves, and the world, know that we are different. Don’t make things simple! Don’t cater to convenience!”

Jesus summoned us to be a “light to the world.” Nothing “lite” about that.

Have we put this lantern under a basket? Have we turned light into lite?

I would say the answer is yes. Holiness does not come lightly and minimum Catholicism results in minimum holiness.

Father Frank Pavone, one of the country’s most visible and vocal opponents of abortion, has been suspended from active ministry outside the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas, over financial questions about the priest’s operation of Priests for Life.

The suspension was made public in a Sept. 13 letter from Amarillo Bishop Patrick J. Zurek to his fellow bishops across the country, but Father Pavone told Catholic News Service that he was returning to Amarillo and planned to continue functioning as a priest there.

“My decision is the result of deep concerns regarding his stewardship of the finances of the Priests for Life (PFL) organization,” Bishop Zurek wrote. “The PFL has become a business that is quite lucrative which provides Father Pavone with financial independence from all legitimate ecclesiastical oversight.”

Bishop Zurek said “persistent questions and concerns” from clergy and laity about how the millions of dollars in donations the organization has received are being spent led to the action. [Source]

Wow its been a tough years for “celebrity priests”. Fr. Euteneuer, Fr. Corapi, and now apparently Fr. Pavone. Though it is almost a relief to see that it was financial irregularity and not something else. Especially considering that two priests that were most involved and visible in the pro-life cause have run into problems. Satan would like to sift all of us like wheat, though I am not surprised if he had concentrated he efforts in the pro-life cause. I say this not to invoke the Church ladies “Satan” as blame considering our free will.

Again a further reminder to pray for our priests.

Update: Fr. Pavone has released a statement in response to his bishop’s order.

As usual time will tell what is going on, but the financial situation is not the loose canon that was Fr. Corapi financial arrangements.

The same attorney who has won public notice for trying to sue McDonald’s on the grounds that the institution is responsible for America’s obesity is now behind the now well-known sex-discrimination lawsuit against Catholic University’s decision to reintroduce single-sex dormitories. Citing District of Columbia’s Human Rights Act, Professor Banzhaf believes CUA’s decision does not qualify for the Act’s exemption of discrimination of any kind outside of “business necessity”: “without such exception [discrimination on the basis of sex], such business cannot be conducted. [Source]”

I don’t know anything about Professor Banzhaf private life, but I think I will sue him anyway.  In fact I am considering a class action lawsuit against him.  For example if he is heterosexual than that means he discriminated against  men in his selection of a possible mate.  This is totally outrageous that he would make any such decision based on sex alone.  If he has same-sex attraction the same goes for his discrimination against women as a suitable partner. Either way he has discriminated against a whole group of persons based on sex alone and this outrageous behavior  certainly deserves that a class action lawsuit should be brought against him.

In some interesting news the movie on the story of Judah Maccabee looks like it will actually happen.  I remember when this movie was rumored to happen not long after Mel Gibson directed The Passion of the Christ.  Mel Gibson along with Catholic convert and screen writer Joe Eszterhas are behind the project with Mel Gibson possibly directing.  Considering Gibson’s drunken anti-Semitic rant and subsequent bizarre behavior you can imagine their will be some opposition to the idea of him doing a movie on a very interesting and less known piece of Jewish history.

So instead of hammering the Jews, Mel Gibson will make a movie on Judah the Hammer.

On an apologetics note it would be quite interesting to have a movie based on the books of Maccabee and really there is great material in them for a movie.  I always found profoundly moving the story of the mother and her children who were martyred rather than to give in to the Greek culture.  We have a equally if not more  pernicious culture today that would force itself on us. Of course discussions/flame wars would erupt about the canon of scripture since Protestants removed these books after the King James was first published and that only some Jewish groups have these books in their cannon.  I say deuterocanonical you say apocryphal.

When D.G.D. Davidson does get around to updating his blog the Sci Fi Catholic it is usually worth waiting for. His latest post Science Fiction and Religion is a case in point.

Over at Grasping for the Wind, Steve Davidson, who may or may not be my evil twin (or maybe I’m his evil twin, bwahaha) has an essay entitled “Science Fiction and Religion, a Marriage NOT Made in Heaven, Nor Even the Laboratory.” That title could lose at least four or five words without harm, but never mind that. Davidson’s argument is that science fiction absolutely must be written by atheists, and must either ignore religion or attack it, or it is not science fiction.

Ah yes the Atheist-Puritans. Don’t want any foul theists polluting the genre. While it is certainly true that so many of the Grand Masters in SF have been atheists or at least secularists it is hard to imagine the number of great books in the genre that would have to be excluded by this definition of science fiction. I guess we should blacklist those who do not conform to this standard and cull the Hugo awardees that dared to be theists and write SF.  It would be equally ridiculous if I decided to read only SF and other books if they were written by theists. I would miss out on so much great storytelling if I did such a foolish thing.  When I read fiction it does not mean that I have to buy into any of the underlying philosophy and I can enjoy a well-written story even as I note those errors. But the Atheist-Puritans or the so-called new atheists demand a ritual purity when it comes to religion – unclean – unclean.  Isaac Asimov was quite upfront about his atheism, but he was no jerk about it.  I think ole Asimov who was my first love as a reader would have also found such blog posts quite odd.  The more I think about the term Atheist-Puritans the more apt I think my term is – that is if somebody else hasn’t already coined it.  To upend the quote of another atheist H. L. Mencken:

Athiestic-Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy being a theist.

The Atheist-Puritan goes through life being offended at roadside crosses, religious symbols in government seals, Christmas Trees, and any decoration or ornament that points to belief in God. And with SF being the scriptures for some atheists of course doctrinal purity must be maintained.

Anyway just go and read  post Science Fiction and Religion.

Atheist trolls are so perceptive.

Earlier today I tweeted “TGIF, Though I thank God for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday Also!”

In reply someone tweeted “why not thank the tooth fairy instead?”

I really appreciate the fact that someone out there is scrubbing Twitter in search of references to God and replying to individuals they don’t know with such important information.

Wow, I never before made the connection between mythical creatures and belief in God. I am devastated – I will have to totally rethink this belief in God thing. After 40 years of atheism how did I miss that connection when I became Catholic. If only he could have tweeted that then and saved me so much annoyances like repenting and all that. After all throughout history people have had equal belief in both God and the Tooth Fairy. Earlier hunter-gatherers after they made up “god” to explain everything followed this up by also inventing the tooth fairy to explain away what to do with children’s teeth. It is a little know fact that after St. Thomas Aquinas went on to to describe five ways of knowing God in the Summa Theologica he then wrote about the  ways of knowing about the existence of Tooth Fairies.

Objection 1. It seems that the Tooth Fairy does not exist because no one has ever seen one and it is quite an improbable creature.

Objection 2. There is inequality in the amount that children receive in monetary compensation for placing their baby teeth underneath their pillow.

On the contrary, The Tooth Fairy exists.

I answer that, Since I already believe in God than subsequently I must believe in all mythical creatures equally with no degrees of discernment whatsoever.

Over at John C. Wright’s blog “A reader I hope is young and not being serious asks:”

Let me get this straight: you, a presumably rational individual who writes science fiction stories for a living, sincerely believes that the creator of our 13.7 billion year-old universe of 70 sextillion stars magically impregnated a human female about 2000 years ago – a woman who then gave birth to a son named Jesus who performed miracles, rose from the dead and served as the creator’s messenger to humanity?

This might make for a mildly interesting, if outlandish, science fiction story, but the source of your belief system? If you’re going to base your life philosophy on absurd myths, why not choose something a bit more interesting? Why not master the Dark Side of the Force or the Golden Path, becoming a Sith Lord or a God-Emperor and strive to rule a Galaxy? Why choose something as ridiculous and wretched as Christianity? I must admit I am rather perplexed…

John C. Wright replies to him in much less snarky tones than would be my initial response to a question put that way. He describes how his conversion from atheism involved a miracle and that of course the response from his atheist friends was basically “Since miracles can’t occur because my philosophy tells me so, no evidence to the contrary be be entertained.”

I then discovered that the Christian world view makes sense of much that the atheistic or agnostic worldview cannot make sense of, and even on its own philosophical terms, is a more robust explanation of the cosmos and man’s place in it, answering many questions successfully that atheists both claim cannot be answered, and then, without admitting it, act in their lives as if the question were answered, such as how to account for the rational faculties of man, the universality of moral principles, the order of the cosmos, how best to live, etc.

At one time I would have used the same level of sarcasm and perplexity about any atheist who became a Christian. My reaction in regards to believers was to pity them for not living a life of reason as I did. The fact that my worldview undermined reason and that I unreasonably expected intelligibility in my atheistic philosophy had not yet occurred to me. My later investigation into Christianity and ultimately the truth of the Catholic Church came first off from the gift of faith which subsequently opened up my intellect to confirm what the gift of faith had given me.

After decades of atheism my newborn faith in God both filled me with joy and  seriously scared me. You might say it scared the hell into me since previously I believed in no such thing. Faith for a lifetime atheist is a scary thing. For one thing you are always testing the claims of faith or at least this was so in much case. I constantly asked myself “am I deceiving myself”? How can I put aside a lifetime of belief for something I could not prove by empirical means? The roller coaster of both faith and having to wait for your intellect to catch up is unnerving to say the least. So I read everything I could get my hands on both to grow in faith and perhaps to find that fatal flaw to faith so I could go back to my old ways. I only wish religion was a crutch and an opiate. Actually acknowledging and repenting of your sins is no fun at all. Each day you wake up and know that repentance is not a one time action and requires growing in virtue and avoiding the occasion of sin. Not exactly my idea of an opiate. As Julie of Happy Catholic quoted in her book “Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that’s a tough call. That’s rebellion.” – Alice Cooper. If I was going to have faith why couldn’t it be a religion where I believed in some mythical creature and didn’t have to change any aspect of my life?

That roller coaster of both faith and serious difficulties in understanding my faith was thankfully relatively short lived. “Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.” – Blessed John Henry Newman. As I started to read more philosophy and apologetics these difficulties via the use of reason diminished. I will always be thankful for the “Handbook of Christian Apologetics” by Peter Kreeft and Fr. Ronald K. Tacelli in that I first really found that not only was the Christian faith reasonable, but that reason itself was not something you left behind. I came more and more to see the symphonic nature of truth in how it multiples itself in every aspect and what seemed to be congruent truths were weaved together in a coherent tapestry for me to investigate. In the last 13 years I have rejoiced in exploring that complex tapestry and to see more details in those threads. This does not mean you never again have difficulties and questions since both the believer and the nonbeliever will always have a tension in the thought “what if I am mistaken?”. Only total arrogance can eliminate such a tension.

So while ultimately atheism is not a coherent philosophy, people are more than the philosophy they might believe. I once pitied believers, but as far as atheists go I only pray that they receive at the minimum the gifts I have received and that they are much less hard-headed than I was.

If I have one regret (leaving aside a thousand failings as a person, husband, grandfather, great-grandfather and friend — and my lazy, slapdash, selfish attitude as an actor) it would be that I didn’t take the decision to become a Catholic in my early twenties. That would have sorted out a lot of my life and sweetened it. (p. 560) — Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography