From time to time I go online to check my account at the university library. It is my habit, at any given time, to be reading several books, of various genres, concurrently. I have found that the books communicate with each other, like, perhaps, several experts seated around the table of a multi-disciplinary symposium. I am their privileged and grateful witness.
But, I borrow so many books that I sometimes lose track of them. It is therefore prudent to peruse the online record of my borrowings. I found this morning that my current list of borrowings numbers nine, as follows:
1. Alone of All Her Sex, the Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary
~ Marina Warner
2. Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks
~ Simone Weil
3. The Quick and the Dead, a novel
~ Joy Williams
4. A Stay Against Confusion, Essays on Faith and Fiction
~ Ron Hansen
5. The Complete Stories
~ Flannery O’Connor
6. State of Grace, a novel
~ Joy Williams
7. Mary Today, the Challenging Woman
~ M. Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O.
8. Luther’s Theology of the Cross, Martin Luther’s Theological Breakthrough
~ Alister E. McGrath
9. The Problem of Evil
~ Mark Larrimore, editor
Of these, I am currently reading numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, with the rest waiting “on deck.”
The following paragraphs are the result of a whimsical experiment by which I selected at random one sentence from each of the nine books above, arranging them in three paragraphs, each containing three of the nine sentences, in approximate order of length:
In other words, philosophic theism has always shown a tendency to become pantheistic and monistic, and to consider the world as one unit of absolute fact; and this has been at variance with popular or practical theism, which latter has ever been more or less frankly pluralistic, not to say polytheistic, and shown itself perfectly well satisfied with a universe composed of many original principles, provided we be only allowed to believe that the divine principle remains supreme, and that the others are subordinate. Saint Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi, a headstrong Carmelite nun in the sixteenth century, would tear off her habit and flamboyantly embrace a statue of Jesus while crying out in an orgasmic way, “O love, you are melting and dissolving my very being! The paying customer saw not at all what had been promised or inferred, only a vague, grainy drift, an emptiness that with effort might suggest some previous thriving and striving, but all in all a disappointment.
That horse represented the life he loved and couldn’t get enough of—the gear and the parades and the good camaraderie and the dragging for criminals or fishermen who drowned off the keys or in the swamp. The intense controversy between Bizer and Bornkamm over this issue has served to demonstrate how intimately the two concepts are linked, rather than to resolve the question. The relationship of the cube, which, properly speaking, is never seen in the appearances produced by perspective, is like the relationship of the stem of the sundial to the shadows.
The prolific Luke is still credited with hundreds of statues and paintings all over the Catholic world (figure 43); and there are still many acheiropoietoi images in Catholic churches. The past and the future were the same thing to him, one forgotten and the other not remembered; he had no more notion of dying than a cat. When we, in spirit, unite our yes with Mary’s, it becomes integrated with the yes of humanity that Mary is saying.
Okay, so I’ve got too much time on my hands. Things could be worse…
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Reflections: You Don't Know What Love Is
Luke 10:27 He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
Love is central to the Christian religion. We say "God is Love." Jesus Christ charged us to love God, neighbor, and self, as the supreme commandment. Yet what do we really know of love? Love is sometimes seen as that which temporarily manipulates the mutual activities of a Kid Rock and a Pamela Anderson, for the titillation of the public. It is seen by some as the relationships that they have with their golden retrievers. Love is experienced by nearly every contemporary person as the jealous, competitive, co-dependent possessiveness which entangles mates and family members in nets of anxiety-ridden, yet voluntary, emotional slavery. So who knows what love is?
In her essay “The ‘Symposium’ of Plato” from the anthology Imitations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks, Simone Weil quotes the following, from the discourse of the tragic poet, Agathon:
196b. The most important is that Love neither causes nor submits to injustice, be it among the gods or among men. For, when suffering happens to him he does not suffer by force, for force cannot reach Love. And when he acts, he does not proceed by force, for each one consents to obey Love in everything. That agreement which is made by mutual consent is righteous, according to the laws of the ‘City royal’.
Weil herself next comments:
“These lines are perhaps the most beautiful in Plato. Here is the very center of all Greek thought, its perfectly pure and luminous core. The recognition of might as an absolutely sovereign thing in all of nature, including the natural part of the human soul, with all the thoughts and all the feelings the soul contains, and at the same time as an absolutely detestable thing; this is the innate grandeur of Greece.”
Does this not speak directly to the power-plays at the heart of every domestic drama, or “family romance”—a stuggle between affinity and repulsion—the initial desire to be as one, which gradually morphs into a struggle to be oneself?
Weil continues:
“Today one sees many people who honor might above all, whether they give it that name or other names possessed of a more agreeable sound.”
Right, a more agreeable sound--such as “democratization” or “nation-building.”
“One also sees many, however, in rapidly decreasing number, who despise might. This is because they are ignorant of its powerful effects. They lie to themselves, if need be, in order not to learn about it.”
Here, I believe, Weil has her finger on the pulse of that evidently numerous variety of “religious conservative,” whose moral cognitive dissonance renders him at the same time hawkish, and, in his own mind, pious. He is unable to see the conflict between the coercive use of force against his neighbor, in pursuit of his creature comforts and personal security, and the commandment to love his neighbor.
“But who knows the whole extent of the empire of might and at the same time despises it? ...perhaps some Christians very near to saintliness, but seemingly few.”
Amen, sister. You got that right.
Love is central to the Christian religion. We say "God is Love." Jesus Christ charged us to love God, neighbor, and self, as the supreme commandment. Yet what do we really know of love? Love is sometimes seen as that which temporarily manipulates the mutual activities of a Kid Rock and a Pamela Anderson, for the titillation of the public. It is seen by some as the relationships that they have with their golden retrievers. Love is experienced by nearly every contemporary person as the jealous, competitive, co-dependent possessiveness which entangles mates and family members in nets of anxiety-ridden, yet voluntary, emotional slavery. So who knows what love is?
In her essay “The ‘Symposium’ of Plato” from the anthology Imitations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks, Simone Weil quotes the following, from the discourse of the tragic poet, Agathon:
196b. The most important is that Love neither causes nor submits to injustice, be it among the gods or among men. For, when suffering happens to him he does not suffer by force, for force cannot reach Love. And when he acts, he does not proceed by force, for each one consents to obey Love in everything. That agreement which is made by mutual consent is righteous, according to the laws of the ‘City royal’.
Weil herself next comments:
“These lines are perhaps the most beautiful in Plato. Here is the very center of all Greek thought, its perfectly pure and luminous core. The recognition of might as an absolutely sovereign thing in all of nature, including the natural part of the human soul, with all the thoughts and all the feelings the soul contains, and at the same time as an absolutely detestable thing; this is the innate grandeur of Greece.”
Does this not speak directly to the power-plays at the heart of every domestic drama, or “family romance”—a stuggle between affinity and repulsion—the initial desire to be as one, which gradually morphs into a struggle to be oneself?
Weil continues:
“Today one sees many people who honor might above all, whether they give it that name or other names possessed of a more agreeable sound.”
Right, a more agreeable sound--such as “democratization” or “nation-building.”
“One also sees many, however, in rapidly decreasing number, who despise might. This is because they are ignorant of its powerful effects. They lie to themselves, if need be, in order not to learn about it.”
Here, I believe, Weil has her finger on the pulse of that evidently numerous variety of “religious conservative,” whose moral cognitive dissonance renders him at the same time hawkish, and, in his own mind, pious. He is unable to see the conflict between the coercive use of force against his neighbor, in pursuit of his creature comforts and personal security, and the commandment to love his neighbor.
“But who knows the whole extent of the empire of might and at the same time despises it? ...perhaps some Christians very near to saintliness, but seemingly few.”
Amen, sister. You got that right.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Readings: I Like This:
The following is from the essay "Divine Love in Creation" which is included in an anthology of the writings of Simone Weil entitled Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks:
"Proportion and harmony are synonyms. Proportion is the bond established between two numbers by a mean proportional; thus 3 establishes a proportion between 1 and 9, that is 1/3 = 3/9. Harmony is defined by the Pythagoreans as the unity of contraries. The first couple of contraries is God and the creature. The Son is the unity of those contraries, the geometrical mean which establishes a proportion between them: He is the mediator."
File under: Topics Not Covered in Confirmation Class
(And they want to label me sola scriptura. Ha!)
"Proportion and harmony are synonyms. Proportion is the bond established between two numbers by a mean proportional; thus 3 establishes a proportion between 1 and 9, that is 1/3 = 3/9. Harmony is defined by the Pythagoreans as the unity of contraries. The first couple of contraries is God and the creature. The Son is the unity of those contraries, the geometrical mean which establishes a proportion between them: He is the mediator."
File under: Topics Not Covered in Confirmation Class
(And they want to label me sola scriptura. Ha!)
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Religion: Who Said It Was Gonna Be Easy?
The comments section of the October 23rd post over at Disputations entitled "The Hard Way" is headed up by TSO's comment:
Given that the evidence is pretty solid that Christianity is indeed hard, it does take faith to emphasize: 'My yoke is easy, My burden light."
There ensued from this some discussion of how it is possible to reconcile this saying of Jesus to the fact that Christian discipleship is hard, as indicated by the post's title and purport. I made an attempt at addressing this question at Disputations, and since the topic relates nicely to reflections previously posted here and here, and especially here, I have decided to make a post of it, as follows:
To live in this world is inevitably to experience sickness, pain, loss, death. It is to experience the agonizing shame of sin and the humiliation of being seen as culpable by God, and by our fellow man. It is to experience the false sense of personal power that comes with the illict pride we nurture when we think we've gotten the upper hand in life and have risen above our brothers.
Suffering is the antidote for such false pride.
With regard to suffering per se, the key concept is acceptance. We may understand our acceptance of the Necessity entailed by our existence as obedience. God has made us as we are, towards which creation our proper response and orientation is praise and gratitude.
As Christ, who was perfect in His innocence, was obedient to the Necessity that He suffer and die on the Cross for our sake, so must we, with the help of grace, in praise of God's goodness, and in gratitude for His sacrifice, pick up our own meager crosses and follow Him.
His yoke is easy, because it is simple. We don't have to find it, or figure it out for ourselves; it has been given to us, gratis. His burden is light, because it is all that we need, henceforth, to bear. We have put down the crushing weight of the world and all of the unbearable burden of our sins, and all that we need to shoulder now is that bare minimum which is asked of us, in exchange for Life Eternal.
Given that the evidence is pretty solid that Christianity is indeed hard, it does take faith to emphasize: 'My yoke is easy, My burden light."
There ensued from this some discussion of how it is possible to reconcile this saying of Jesus to the fact that Christian discipleship is hard, as indicated by the post's title and purport. I made an attempt at addressing this question at Disputations, and since the topic relates nicely to reflections previously posted here and here, and especially here, I have decided to make a post of it, as follows:
To live in this world is inevitably to experience sickness, pain, loss, death. It is to experience the agonizing shame of sin and the humiliation of being seen as culpable by God, and by our fellow man. It is to experience the false sense of personal power that comes with the illict pride we nurture when we think we've gotten the upper hand in life and have risen above our brothers.
Suffering is the antidote for such false pride.
With regard to suffering per se, the key concept is acceptance. We may understand our acceptance of the Necessity entailed by our existence as obedience. God has made us as we are, towards which creation our proper response and orientation is praise and gratitude.
As Christ, who was perfect in His innocence, was obedient to the Necessity that He suffer and die on the Cross for our sake, so must we, with the help of grace, in praise of God's goodness, and in gratitude for His sacrifice, pick up our own meager crosses and follow Him.
His yoke is easy, because it is simple. We don't have to find it, or figure it out for ourselves; it has been given to us, gratis. His burden is light, because it is all that we need, henceforth, to bear. We have put down the crushing weight of the world and all of the unbearable burden of our sins, and all that we need to shoulder now is that bare minimum which is asked of us, in exchange for Life Eternal.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Readings: Skip to My Lou, or Skip to My Lai?
I have now finished reading Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke. In my October 13th post, in musing about where the novel was headed, two-thirds of the way through the plot, with particular reference to the character, Skip Sands, I wrote:
What does Johnson have in mind for Skip? As a symbol of patriotic, casually Christian America, will Skip become even more the fascist than he already de facto is? Or will he veer off in the direction of sainthood, persevering, but suffering, in his new-found acknowledgement of the agony of existence in a fallen world? As a symbol of America, where will Skip find his will-to-power?
Well, I now know the answer to that question—kind of. But, as part of my purpose here is to promote the reading of books that I have found worthy, I’m not going to announce a spoiler alert and then disclose what becomes of Skip Sands in the end. Tree of Smoke is rife with mysteries, the significance of which is best left to the individual reader.
What I think that I’ll do instead is present a kind of impressionistic mashup of some of the thematic threads at which I’ve been pulling in my last several posts.
In the post previous to this one, I wrote:
A fundamental characteristic of atheism is its banality. Compared to the intellectual and spiritual richness of myth, religion and theology, it is simply boring. The last really interesting atheist may well have been Nietzsche.
That said, I had also noted in my October 13th post that Tree of Smoke had interested me in the writings of E. M. Cioran—along with Nietzsche, an interesting atheist, imho. Having now read a bit of Cioran, if I understand him correctly, one of his themes is that words intervene between human perception and reality. It does seem to be the case that only mathematics can express reality purely objectively. But math can only prove that a thing is there; it can't put us in contact with it, or allow us to see it as it is. Using words we can attempt to give an impression of things as they are, but words alone cannot prove that there is really any there there. A unicorn built of words is as real as a donkey described on the same page. This use of words to separate human perception from reality relates to the project of Skip’s uncle and mentor, the legendary and Kurtz-like, Colonel of Tree of Smoke, and thus, to Skip’s fate.
One of the Cioran texts I am reading is The Fall into Time, translated from the French by Richard Howard; Introduction by Charles Newman; Quadrangle Press, Chicago, 1970 (it seems to be out of print in English, so no amazon.com link provided). The following is a quote from Newman’s Introduction:
"[For] Cioran, language is a sticky symbolic net, an infinite regression from things cutting men off from the world, as they once cut themselves off from God; and so, to scramble the metaphor, humans are no more than shadows who project their images upon the mirror of infinity." (p. 12)
Consider, too, these quotes from Cioran’s essay “Civilized Man, a Portrait” from that same book:
“If you try to convert someone, it will never be to effect his salvation but to make him suffer like yourself, to be sure he is exposed to the same ordeals and endures them with the same impatience.” (p. 57)
And,
“Once someone is shackled by a certainty, he envies your vague opinions, your resistance to dogmas or slogans, your blissful incapacity to commit yourself. Blushing in secret for belonging to a sect or a party, ashamed of possessing a truth and of being enslaved by it, it is not his acknowledged enemies he resents, those who profess another, but you, the Indifferent, guilty of pursuing none.” (pp.57-58)
I see this as having relevance to both the American project as exemplified by Vietnam, and to the resistance of Simone Weil to enter the Catholic Church (to pull in another thread).
I have been struck by the similarities between some of the thought of Cioran, an atheist, and Simone Weil, a freelance Christian. Both of them express the opinion that the way to salvation is to strip the Self, through suffering, down nearly to the vegetative level. For Cioran, this would eliminate all that is false in human existence, providing the salvation of utter authenticity. For Weil, the effect would be to remove the “I” from one’s existence, leaving room for God to move in and take over. The main difference between the atheist and the theist here seems to be that Weil, as opposed to Cioran, had a personal experience of Christ—a special revelation—that converted her from a secular leftist into something resembling a saint.
Compare, for instance, these two excerpts:
“Once man, separated from Creator and creation alike, became individual—in other words, fracture and fissure in Being—and once he learned, assuming his name to the point of provocation, that he was mortal, his pride was thereby magnified, no less than he confusion. At last he was dying in his own way—he was proud of that; but he was dying, dying altogether—and that was humiliating. No longer reconciled to a denouement once fiercely desired, he turns at last, and longingly, to the animals, his former companions: all, vile and noble alike, accept their fate, enjoy it or resign themselves to it; none has followed his example or imitated his rebellion. The plants, more than the beasts, rejoice to have been created: the very nettle still flourishes within God; only man suffocates there, and is it not this choking sensation which led him to stand apart from the rest of creation, a consenting outcast, a voluntary reject? All other living beings, by the very fact that they are identical with their condition, have a certain superiority to him. And it is when he envies them, when he longs for their impersonal glory, that man understands the gravity of his case.”
~ E. M. Cioran, The Fall into Time, “The Tree of Life” (pp.37-38)
“The vegetative energy alone has the right to remain attached to those things that are necessary to the vegetative life. One must not appropriate anything to oneself, whether it be an object or a being, through the exercise of the supplementary energy. Poverty.”
~ Simone Weil, Notebooks, Vol. 2
And, finally, this, (quoted in the Introduction p.26):
“The self, triumphing over its functions, shrinks to a point of consciousness projected into the infinite, outside of time.”
~ E. M. Cioran
I leave to you the choice: connect the dots, or not.
What does Johnson have in mind for Skip? As a symbol of patriotic, casually Christian America, will Skip become even more the fascist than he already de facto is? Or will he veer off in the direction of sainthood, persevering, but suffering, in his new-found acknowledgement of the agony of existence in a fallen world? As a symbol of America, where will Skip find his will-to-power?
Well, I now know the answer to that question—kind of. But, as part of my purpose here is to promote the reading of books that I have found worthy, I’m not going to announce a spoiler alert and then disclose what becomes of Skip Sands in the end. Tree of Smoke is rife with mysteries, the significance of which is best left to the individual reader.
What I think that I’ll do instead is present a kind of impressionistic mashup of some of the thematic threads at which I’ve been pulling in my last several posts.
In the post previous to this one, I wrote:
A fundamental characteristic of atheism is its banality. Compared to the intellectual and spiritual richness of myth, religion and theology, it is simply boring. The last really interesting atheist may well have been Nietzsche.
That said, I had also noted in my October 13th post that Tree of Smoke had interested me in the writings of E. M. Cioran—along with Nietzsche, an interesting atheist, imho. Having now read a bit of Cioran, if I understand him correctly, one of his themes is that words intervene between human perception and reality. It does seem to be the case that only mathematics can express reality purely objectively. But math can only prove that a thing is there; it can't put us in contact with it, or allow us to see it as it is. Using words we can attempt to give an impression of things as they are, but words alone cannot prove that there is really any there there. A unicorn built of words is as real as a donkey described on the same page. This use of words to separate human perception from reality relates to the project of Skip’s uncle and mentor, the legendary and Kurtz-like, Colonel of Tree of Smoke, and thus, to Skip’s fate.
One of the Cioran texts I am reading is The Fall into Time, translated from the French by Richard Howard; Introduction by Charles Newman; Quadrangle Press, Chicago, 1970 (it seems to be out of print in English, so no amazon.com link provided). The following is a quote from Newman’s Introduction:
"[For] Cioran, language is a sticky symbolic net, an infinite regression from things cutting men off from the world, as they once cut themselves off from God; and so, to scramble the metaphor, humans are no more than shadows who project their images upon the mirror of infinity." (p. 12)
Consider, too, these quotes from Cioran’s essay “Civilized Man, a Portrait” from that same book:
“If you try to convert someone, it will never be to effect his salvation but to make him suffer like yourself, to be sure he is exposed to the same ordeals and endures them with the same impatience.” (p. 57)
And,
“Once someone is shackled by a certainty, he envies your vague opinions, your resistance to dogmas or slogans, your blissful incapacity to commit yourself. Blushing in secret for belonging to a sect or a party, ashamed of possessing a truth and of being enslaved by it, it is not his acknowledged enemies he resents, those who profess another, but you, the Indifferent, guilty of pursuing none.” (pp.57-58)
I see this as having relevance to both the American project as exemplified by Vietnam, and to the resistance of Simone Weil to enter the Catholic Church (to pull in another thread).
I have been struck by the similarities between some of the thought of Cioran, an atheist, and Simone Weil, a freelance Christian. Both of them express the opinion that the way to salvation is to strip the Self, through suffering, down nearly to the vegetative level. For Cioran, this would eliminate all that is false in human existence, providing the salvation of utter authenticity. For Weil, the effect would be to remove the “I” from one’s existence, leaving room for God to move in and take over. The main difference between the atheist and the theist here seems to be that Weil, as opposed to Cioran, had a personal experience of Christ—a special revelation—that converted her from a secular leftist into something resembling a saint.
Compare, for instance, these two excerpts:
“Once man, separated from Creator and creation alike, became individual—in other words, fracture and fissure in Being—and once he learned, assuming his name to the point of provocation, that he was mortal, his pride was thereby magnified, no less than he confusion. At last he was dying in his own way—he was proud of that; but he was dying, dying altogether—and that was humiliating. No longer reconciled to a denouement once fiercely desired, he turns at last, and longingly, to the animals, his former companions: all, vile and noble alike, accept their fate, enjoy it or resign themselves to it; none has followed his example or imitated his rebellion. The plants, more than the beasts, rejoice to have been created: the very nettle still flourishes within God; only man suffocates there, and is it not this choking sensation which led him to stand apart from the rest of creation, a consenting outcast, a voluntary reject? All other living beings, by the very fact that they are identical with their condition, have a certain superiority to him. And it is when he envies them, when he longs for their impersonal glory, that man understands the gravity of his case.”
~ E. M. Cioran, The Fall into Time, “The Tree of Life” (pp.37-38)
“The vegetative energy alone has the right to remain attached to those things that are necessary to the vegetative life. One must not appropriate anything to oneself, whether it be an object or a being, through the exercise of the supplementary energy. Poverty.”
~ Simone Weil, Notebooks, Vol. 2
And, finally, this, (quoted in the Introduction p.26):
“The self, triumphing over its functions, shrinks to a point of consciousness projected into the infinite, outside of time.”
~ E. M. Cioran
I leave to you the choice: connect the dots, or not.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Reflections: Atheism and its Discontents
I was planning to write a reasoned, well-constructed, rhetorically air-tight little essay contra atheism this weekend. But I’m not gonna do it. I’m just not in the mood. What I need to do instead is go into my room, shut the door, get down on my knees, and ask God…WTF!?! Or else punch a hole in the plasterboard.
A fundamental characteristic of atheism is it's banality. Compared to the intellectual and spiritual richness of myth, religion and theology, it is simply boring. The last really interesting atheist may well have been Nietzsche. Most atheists, regardless of the complexity of their presentation, or the opacity of their academic jargon, have but two messages for the world: 1) There’s no God, and you can’t prove that there is one; and, 2) Religion is responsible for everything that’s been wrong with the world since before the dawn of history.
Okay. Fine. Messages received. What else you got?
What originally set me off on this little rant was being faced with the fact that my latest literary love, Rebecca Goldstein, has hooked up with a professional atheist named Steven Pinker. I had been informed of this anecdotally already, by Madscribe, but I didn’t allow my mind to dwell upon it at that time. Then I came across this article, and all possibility of denial went down the proverbial drain. That Rebecca Goldstein is, herself, an atheist did not so much surprise me, although I would have guessed “agnostic.” But that she would join forces with a preening professional blasphemer was a hard blow.
Right now there are at least three other "intellectuals" making a good buck as professional atheists. You’ve got Richard Dawkins. You’ve got Sam Harris. (“Sam” for chrissake?) And then you’ve got pathetic, drunken Christopher Hitchens. Obviously the times are ripe for a resurrection of the spirit of Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Organized religion is undergoing a period of global resurgence, whether it be in the form of Protestant fundamentalism, or of Muslim militancy. We know from Brother Ike Newton that for every action there’s an opposite reaction, striving to become equal. Steven Pinker is among the strivers.
Dawkins I can ignore. He’s Brit, and we all know about them, don’t we? Eccentric though they are expected, almost obligated, to be, they automatically sound intelligent, even if slightly cockney in their delivery. All of which explains why they are more and more in demand as spokesmen in American TV commercials. But I’m not buying. Dawkins is an evolutionary scientist, so he’s got a professional axe to grind. And he has mouth-breathing mobs of bible banging, fundie adversaries, ready-made to attack him and thereby juice the sales of his books and elevate the price of his speaking fees. Next, please.
Ah. Sam Harris. What can I say? Follow the link, read his bio, and then try to find it in your heart to practice a little charity, preferably in the form of pity. The guy is obviously all jacked out of shape and striking back blindly at those forces, far beyond his control, which have left him in the shape he’s in; forces which he mistakes for the God whose existence he denies. Atheism is, after all, every bit as subjective as religious faith. One can no more prove that God does not exist, than one can prove that He does. Pro- and con-, it’s all faith-based. All of it.
Christopher Hitchens…my, my, my. Through a boozy haze, Mr. Hitchens now squanders what’s left of his talent, and formerly fine intellect, by railing mean-spiritedly against the obvious. By “obvious” I don’t mean that he’s obviously right, but that he sets up every obvious straw man in the atheist arsenal and then kicks it to pieces for the delighted amusement of his adrenaline-pumping audiences in an alcohol induced frenzy of over-the-top wrath. Poor Hitch! Butch as he is, he has yet to realize that since death is inevitable, to die tough is nothing. Oh, yeah--it takes a real mensch to diss the memory of Mother Teresa.
Finally, Steven Pinker. Or should we call him “Little Steven” Pinker, since he’s doing his best to be taken seriously as an intellectual, while simultaneously looking like the foal of Kenny G. out of Adam Ant?
I just don’t know. Becky! Becky! Where did it all go so terribly wrong?
A fundamental characteristic of atheism is it's banality. Compared to the intellectual and spiritual richness of myth, religion and theology, it is simply boring. The last really interesting atheist may well have been Nietzsche. Most atheists, regardless of the complexity of their presentation, or the opacity of their academic jargon, have but two messages for the world: 1) There’s no God, and you can’t prove that there is one; and, 2) Religion is responsible for everything that’s been wrong with the world since before the dawn of history.
Okay. Fine. Messages received. What else you got?
What originally set me off on this little rant was being faced with the fact that my latest literary love, Rebecca Goldstein, has hooked up with a professional atheist named Steven Pinker. I had been informed of this anecdotally already, by Madscribe, but I didn’t allow my mind to dwell upon it at that time. Then I came across this article, and all possibility of denial went down the proverbial drain. That Rebecca Goldstein is, herself, an atheist did not so much surprise me, although I would have guessed “agnostic.” But that she would join forces with a preening professional blasphemer was a hard blow.
Right now there are at least three other "intellectuals" making a good buck as professional atheists. You’ve got Richard Dawkins. You’ve got Sam Harris. (“Sam” for chrissake?) And then you’ve got pathetic, drunken Christopher Hitchens. Obviously the times are ripe for a resurrection of the spirit of Madalyn Murray O’Hair. Organized religion is undergoing a period of global resurgence, whether it be in the form of Protestant fundamentalism, or of Muslim militancy. We know from Brother Ike Newton that for every action there’s an opposite reaction, striving to become equal. Steven Pinker is among the strivers.
Dawkins I can ignore. He’s Brit, and we all know about them, don’t we? Eccentric though they are expected, almost obligated, to be, they automatically sound intelligent, even if slightly cockney in their delivery. All of which explains why they are more and more in demand as spokesmen in American TV commercials. But I’m not buying. Dawkins is an evolutionary scientist, so he’s got a professional axe to grind. And he has mouth-breathing mobs of bible banging, fundie adversaries, ready-made to attack him and thereby juice the sales of his books and elevate the price of his speaking fees. Next, please.
Ah. Sam Harris. What can I say? Follow the link, read his bio, and then try to find it in your heart to practice a little charity, preferably in the form of pity. The guy is obviously all jacked out of shape and striking back blindly at those forces, far beyond his control, which have left him in the shape he’s in; forces which he mistakes for the God whose existence he denies. Atheism is, after all, every bit as subjective as religious faith. One can no more prove that God does not exist, than one can prove that He does. Pro- and con-, it’s all faith-based. All of it.
Christopher Hitchens…my, my, my. Through a boozy haze, Mr. Hitchens now squanders what’s left of his talent, and formerly fine intellect, by railing mean-spiritedly against the obvious. By “obvious” I don’t mean that he’s obviously right, but that he sets up every obvious straw man in the atheist arsenal and then kicks it to pieces for the delighted amusement of his adrenaline-pumping audiences in an alcohol induced frenzy of over-the-top wrath. Poor Hitch! Butch as he is, he has yet to realize that since death is inevitable, to die tough is nothing. Oh, yeah--it takes a real mensch to diss the memory of Mother Teresa.
Finally, Steven Pinker. Or should we call him “Little Steven” Pinker, since he’s doing his best to be taken seriously as an intellectual, while simultaneously looking like the foal of Kenny G. out of Adam Ant?
I just don’t know. Becky! Becky! Where did it all go so terribly wrong?
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Religion: Thanks For Sharing
I realize that I haven’t posted anything new for going on a week now. This is in great part because my cyber-energies were being drained off by an on-going discussion following the Wednesday, October 10th post at Disputations, entitled “Neither Pretense Nor Trump” which is now at 230+ comments and counting. It has been pretty much Protestant me against the Catholic field. But that’s par for the course. I’m not whining. That’s why I read that blog.
The original post, in which Tom, the Lord and Master at Disputations, discusses the urge of some Catholics and non-Catholics toward Christian unification and intercommunication, and the problems inherent therein, contains this statement of a Msgr. Wells:
“To pretend a unity that does not exist may feel good at the moment; but it allows us to avoid the painful truth that we are still far from the oneness in faith and action intended by the Lord.”
This was followed immediately by Tom’s statement:
“True enough, but if I may, I don't think Catholics and non-Catholics who desire intercommunion are pretending a unity that does not exist. At the very least, they surely don't think they are.”
I have argued before for an open communion as a necessary condition to allow for even the hope of a future Christian unity, and I took this opportunity to argue for it once again. Those interested in the topic might want to read through the comments following Tom’s post, as they are interesting from a number of different angles. I will not try to recapitulate all the points here. But I do want to mention an argument that occurred to me rather late in the discussion, which was that the episode in the Gospel of John concerning “Doubting Thomas” was a good analogy for a Protestant wanting to receive the Catholic communion.
The decisive argument against a Protestant receiving the Catholic communion, as forcefully articulated by Zippy, and others, is that the Protestant would be done great harm by receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, while not believing in the Real Presence. I argued that Thomas was allowed to touch the resurrected body of Christ, while not believing it to be the Real Body of Christ, and Thomas was in no way harmed; in fact his faith was confirmed and he received an immeasurably great gift:
John 20:24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, wasn’t with them when Jesus came. 20:25 The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
20:26 After eight days again his disciples were inside, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, the doors being locked, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace be to you.” 20:27 Then he said to Thomas, “Reach here your finger, and see my hands. Reach here your hand, and put it into my side. Don’t be unbelieving, but believing.”
20:28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”
20:29 Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen me,* you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed.”
Here is but one of my comments in this long, long thread:
Zippy--
No, you're missing my point. The analogy obviously assumes that the Eucharist IS the Real Presence, as it was in the case of Thomas. The point is that Jesus did not send Thomas away because of his unbelief. Rather, Jesus allowed Thomas contact with His body, and thereby Thomas came to believe that it was Real.
We recall that first Thomas refused to believe the reports that Jesus has risen. Next Jesus appears in a room *with a locked door*. In other words, as in the Eucharist, the REAL body is present; but it is present *supernaturally*. The analogy is really very close.
Unbelievers should not be denied contact with the Eucharist because of their unbelief, but rather should be allowed the opportunity to come to belief *through their contact with it*. This, even though it would be better if they just believed without having it proved to them.
It is, in fact, difficult to see what the point of the inclusion of this episode in the Gospel is, if not to make this point and teach this lesson.
Rodak | Homepage | 10.14.07 - 7:15 pm | #
I was not able to convince a single Catholic that my analogy was any good, although I did receive some moral support from a loving soul named Anna, for which I was grateful. I have extensive notes for a post on the subject of the banality of atheism, that I will get to this weekend. Meanwhile, I would welcome any comments that would continue the conversation here.
The original post, in which Tom, the Lord and Master at Disputations, discusses the urge of some Catholics and non-Catholics toward Christian unification and intercommunication, and the problems inherent therein, contains this statement of a Msgr. Wells:
“To pretend a unity that does not exist may feel good at the moment; but it allows us to avoid the painful truth that we are still far from the oneness in faith and action intended by the Lord.”
This was followed immediately by Tom’s statement:
“True enough, but if I may, I don't think Catholics and non-Catholics who desire intercommunion are pretending a unity that does not exist. At the very least, they surely don't think they are.”
I have argued before for an open communion as a necessary condition to allow for even the hope of a future Christian unity, and I took this opportunity to argue for it once again. Those interested in the topic might want to read through the comments following Tom’s post, as they are interesting from a number of different angles. I will not try to recapitulate all the points here. But I do want to mention an argument that occurred to me rather late in the discussion, which was that the episode in the Gospel of John concerning “Doubting Thomas” was a good analogy for a Protestant wanting to receive the Catholic communion.
The decisive argument against a Protestant receiving the Catholic communion, as forcefully articulated by Zippy, and others, is that the Protestant would be done great harm by receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, while not believing in the Real Presence. I argued that Thomas was allowed to touch the resurrected body of Christ, while not believing it to be the Real Body of Christ, and Thomas was in no way harmed; in fact his faith was confirmed and he received an immeasurably great gift:
John 20:24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, wasn’t with them when Jesus came. 20:25 The other disciples therefore said to him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
20:26 After eight days again his disciples were inside, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, the doors being locked, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace be to you.” 20:27 Then he said to Thomas, “Reach here your finger, and see my hands. Reach here your hand, and put it into my side. Don’t be unbelieving, but believing.”
20:28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”
20:29 Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen me,* you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed.”
Here is but one of my comments in this long, long thread:
Zippy--
No, you're missing my point. The analogy obviously assumes that the Eucharist IS the Real Presence, as it was in the case of Thomas. The point is that Jesus did not send Thomas away because of his unbelief. Rather, Jesus allowed Thomas contact with His body, and thereby Thomas came to believe that it was Real.
We recall that first Thomas refused to believe the reports that Jesus has risen. Next Jesus appears in a room *with a locked door*. In other words, as in the Eucharist, the REAL body is present; but it is present *supernaturally*. The analogy is really very close.
Unbelievers should not be denied contact with the Eucharist because of their unbelief, but rather should be allowed the opportunity to come to belief *through their contact with it*. This, even though it would be better if they just believed without having it proved to them.
It is, in fact, difficult to see what the point of the inclusion of this episode in the Gospel is, if not to make this point and teach this lesson.
Rodak | Homepage | 10.14.07 - 7:15 pm | #
I was not able to convince a single Catholic that my analogy was any good, although I did receive some moral support from a loving soul named Anna, for which I was grateful. I have extensive notes for a post on the subject of the banality of atheism, that I will get to this weekend. Meanwhile, I would welcome any comments that would continue the conversation here.
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