If you’ve read any of the New Atheists books, you’ll note very quickly that they are indeed polemic works.  They are specifically written in an attempt to take people out of the Christian faith, or to expose it for “what it really is”. For example, Dawkins himself hopes that those who read his book The God Delusion will read the book and then come out the other side as atheists. For the easily fooled, dim witted, and ignorant, this will be true. For the one thing in common the New Atheist books have is that they hit people where they live these days…in the gut. Hitchen’s book “feels” right. What Harris says “sounds” intellectual. Hitchens was a very good writer, he was witty, and he was great at the one liners…perfect for today’s age. Why build an argument when you can throw out zingers all night. As Feser notes:

… But then, that is the Christopher Hitchens recipe for serious journalism: one part real knowledge, one part filibuster, one part sheer bluff. Click “save”, email it to Graydon, down the last bit of scotch, and you’re done for the night. How can you go wrong?

Oh…Feser doesn’t stop there with one liners of his own. There are great quotes like the one above that had me laughing out loud….and very few books do that to me. Lines like this one:

..a secularist colleague of mine once assured me that he didn’t need to bother reading writers like Aquinas, since he “already knew” that they must be wrong – though judging from his grasp of what such writers mean by “God (he confidently trotted a few stupid anthropomorphisms, tiresome comparisons to the Easter bunny, etc), it was obvious that he knew no such thing. It was like trying to discuss Titian with a three-year old who thinks painting is something you do with your fingers.

Finger painting indeed.  With that one little paragraph, the man has summed up what the New Atheism is all about. It’s about being sloppy. Sloppy with your thinking. Sloppy with your scholarship. Sloppy with your choice of words. Sloppy with your logic. I can’t count the number of atheists I talk to on the internet that are clearly finger painting their way through serious philosophical and theological questions. They are content with arguing with questionable wikipedia links, Youtube videos and LOLcats.

TLS is more than just a polemic against atheism. The digs against the New Atheists (Hitchens, Harris, Dennet and Dawkins) are just icing on a wonderful Thomistic-Aristotelian cake. Not only does he fight fire with fire, Feser also…*gasp*…gives the philosophical underpinnings of the Christian tradition and carries that into the polemics itself. I know…how is one supposed to cope outside of a 144 character description? Heh. It’s brilliant the way he does it. Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas (…among others…) are all discussed in great introductory detail in the book. Thank God that he does, because I have a feeling that name recognition is the only knowledge the average person has of these men. The study of these men is CRUCIAL in understanding everything in Christianity. As Feser notes:

…the classical metaphysical picture of the world, which derives from Plato, was greatly modified first by Aristotle and later by Augustine, and at last perfected by Aquinas and his followers, is, as I have come to believe, essentially correct, and it makes atheism and naturalism impossible.

If you don’t know what is meant by Final and Efficient Causes, then you will never get why Catholics are against things like abortion, or so-called homosexual marriage, or contraception. If you don’t understand Form and Matter, you’ll never get the Catholic understanding of Transubstantiation. If you don’t understand Potency and Actuality, you’ll never get Creation. Indeed, if you don’t understand any of these concepts, you’ll never understand what Christians mean by God. This is the problem with the New Atheists and their followers: they understand none of it and so all of the arguments they present are at best, straw men…at worse they are intellectually dishonest. The book goes into enough detail to get you curious about things like the Mind-Body problem, Causality and the 5 Ways of Thomas Aquinas. Feser…of course…has books on two out of these three of these subjects (Philosophy of Mind and Aquinas).

A couple final thoughts: one to Atheists and another to Christians.

If you are an atheist, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Why? Firstly, because you don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to Christianity. You think that God is some being in the sky, no different from Zeus. You think that the soul is something like a ghost. You think that faith is just a funny feeling people have…kind of like gas….but more warm and fuzzy. You think that the word Suma is something that came out of Japan. You think that part of the argument for God’s existence is “Everything has a cause”. Lastly, aren’t you even curious what the real arguments are in this great debate…or have you just decided to shut your mind completely? If it’s the former, you just might be the intelligent person you think you are. If it’s the later, well….

If you’re a Christian, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Why? Most importantly because you need to understand your faith as deeply as you can. Atheists can only reflect the Christians they’re trying to fight. Currently, the New Atheism is philosophically and theologically weak. This means that the knowledge Christians have of their own religion is philosophically and theologically weak…despite the fact that Christianity itself has great depth. Stop being weak and take up the mission you were given. You have 2000 years of tradition, wisdom and knowledge sitting here being un-used. Use it. For those Christians who have not read a word of Aristotle, or Aquinas, TLS is a perfect introduction to these works. In addition to the introduction, you will get a picture of how your faith tradition just towers over this new atheist movement. Right now, you are probably scared to defend your faith… intimidated by the emotional charge (…and that’s all it is…) that is led by men like Dawkins. This book will start giving you the confidence you need.

That’s it for the review. The Last Superstition is available at the usual places. Go out now and order it today. Atheists owe it to themselves if they want to seem credible, and Christians owe it to themselves to get deeper into the faith.

D out.

In learning these myself and applying them to apologetics, it shocked me on how frequent I used them in the past, and indeed, how frequently they are used by atheists. I want to just go over the top three that I have noticed in the past year or so. The idea is to give the reader a brief interduction to each type of popular fallacy and then maybe get into ways of refuting them. Now, not everything you read or hear from a person you debate will be fallacious in nature. If you’re going to pursue Catholic apologetics, know that the element that is interesting in an atheistic argument is trying to find out how cleverly the fallacy in the argument has been hidden. Aquinas boldly said, paraphrasing, that if someone is arguing against the truth claims of Christianity, a fallacy is waiting to be found in their argument. I have found this to be true 100% of the time so far. Some of your opponents will be really good at hiding the fallacies…but the majority you encounter will not be that skilled at it.

Genetic Fallacy

This, I think is probably one of the most popular ones out there. It’s an argument that tries to invalidate a position by showing how a person came to hold it. This is clearly an invalid way to deal with an argument. A person may have found out that the world is round from a comic book, but that does not show that their belief in a round world is false.

Many times, thinking they are being clever, the local village atheist will say something like, “This whole Christian thing is just a fluke. If you were born in the middle east, you’d be a Muslim.” This does nothing to challenge the truth of the claims of Christianity.

Very simple to deal with this argument. You just call the fallacy and ask them to argue to the claims in the Christian faith. They may refuse if they wish, but they do so on pain of being illogical. If you’ve got a public audience…like a forum…you’ve won the debate and can move on.

Argument Ad Hominem

When you’re close to closing the debate, or have the village atheist backed into a corner, this one is usually whipped out in predictable fashion. The Argument Ad Hominem is a attacking the character of a person who holds a belief in order to invalidate the belief itself. This is logically fallacious. A person can have a horrible character, e.g. is dishonest, cheats on his wife, arrogant, etc..but yet the belief he holds may yet still be true. If Albert Einstein skinned puppies and ate them with babie legs, e=mc(squared) would still be true.

What you’ll hear from atheists will be something like this: “You Christians are so arrogant to claim that your belief is correct. How dare you be so arrogant!” Sound familiar? It doesn’t matter how arrogant this person thinks I am or how arrogant I am in reality, it says nothing to the arguments being presented.

Begging the Question

Also known as circular reasoning. This I don’t see as often except in those who profess scientism. Begging the question is when one assumes the conclusion is true in the premise of the argument.  I’ll go after fundamentalist Christians for a second. The popular “The Bible is true because the Bible was inspired by God. Why? Because the Bible says so”. Some atheists are non-believers because they think that science is the only way to truth (…we do live in the 21st century after all..). That statement, of course, cannot be proven by science…at least not without begging the question.

This fallacy is sometimes very obvious, but most of the time it is very cleverly hidden.

That’s it for now. Like I said…when you’re debating and you spot one of this, stop the debate right away and point out the fallacy and attempt to get the debate back on arguing the truth claims being made by each side.

Watch out for one more thing. The atheist will sometimes deny that they are being fallacious….they are the summit of logic after all. If that is the case, then simply restating their fallacious argument and explaining to the audience why it is fallacious is enough to get through that. This will at least give the atheist a chance to restate or clarify. One way to head this objection off at the pass is when you spot the fallacy, get them to confirm that the statement in question is indeed what they actually want to say. This makes the denial that they were not being fallacious a bit more difficult. Of course, not every statement is fallacious and it very might well be valid, so make sure you’ve spotted it correctly to begin with.

Hopefully this helps. It takes some work and practice, but eventually these things will start to sound like finger nails on a chalk board to you.

D out.

D out

…carrying on…

On the way back from Mass last Sunday, as an experiment I asked my 6 year old in the back seat a question: “Who is God?”. The answer that came back was what you’d expect from a 6 year old: “He’s a man in the sky”. OK, I asked what he looked like (…obvious follow up question…). The answer was again quite typical and what you expect from a 6 year old: “He has a beard. He’s tall. Wears a dress”. (I loved the last part about the dress). The point I’m going to get to is probably quite obvious given my string of polemical blog posts against atheism. The point is this: to a tee, village atheists,  have no more a sophisticated idea of God than my 6 year old. Indeed, even the most educated among atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris) fall into that mold very easily. With Dennett comparing God to the Tooth Fairy, and Dawkins using the Celestial Teapot argument…it gets quite clear that they do not understand Classical Theology.

Instead of ripping into their clear ignorance and/or stupidity on this matter, I must say I cannot blame them in a way…but only in part. The 6 year old understanding of God works up to a certain point. Really, once a person hits the age of about 10-12, these explanations become very unsophisticated and, indeed, quite laughable. I can recall from my own experience that this failure to grow my understanding of God from the 6 year old understanding to the “next phase” was a key contributor of me falling away from the Church and embracing Atheism. After all, it seems quite logical to reject one bearded man who lives in the sky when you’ve already rejected a similar bearded man who lives in the North Pole. I’ll point one finger at the Catholic Church for very poor catechesis for that age group, but I’ll also point the finger at myself for lacking the curiosity for striving for that next level of understanding.  The same goes for the atheism movement that we’re seeing right now….but again, only in part. People need the equivalent of that moment in chemistry class where you find out that electrons are not like planets orbiting the nucleus of an atom. You can’t stay in grade 6 forever in scientific understanding…same is true for theology.

The new atheism seems to be less about poor child-to-adult catechesis and more of deliberate form of intellectual dishonesty. They need the 6 year old definitions to be the case. They need that stunted concept of God to be the argument because it is that very foundation on top of which their whole worldview is built upon. Any other information to the contrary given to them by theologians and the accusation of “changing the definition” are immediately thrown. We see variations of it everywhere: angry pink unicorn and the flying spaghetti monster. There are probably others, but what is the common thread in all of them? God is a physical being, one among many and if we cannot find Him with our senses or our most powerful scientific instruments, then he can’t exist. Getting back to the  flying spaghetti monster, this is a perfect example of using a “physical being” as a mocking tool to people of faith. It’s a clear, “Haaaa ha! We’re going to create something as stupid as what you believe in”, when really, they are mocking their own ignorance, indeed, they are parading their ignorance for all to see.

Let’s briefly talk about this misunderstanding a bit. The misunderstanding is that God is a physical being, one among many and should therefore be detectable by the senses. This is the 6 year old definition that atheists are not growing out of. God, by definition, is the creator of the universe. He is the first cause, the unmoved mover, the uncaused cause (…remember, we’re using Thomistic and Aristotelian terminology here for terms like cause, mover, first cause, etc…). He is what is causing existence here and now. Recall our brief discussion on per se and per accidents series of cause and effect. If all of this is in place, then it naturally follows that God must be outside of creation. What is creation? Creation consists of space, time and matter. Therefore, God must be outside of space, time and matter. Think of things you create. When you create something, you (meaning mind, body and soul) do not become part of that creation. You do not create a train set and then all of a sudden find yourself literally in the engine as the conductor. Creators always exist outside of their creations. And no…before you say “Well, Darren…I always leave a bit of myself in my paintings”, or something of that nature, then you’re not reading carefully enough. Sure, you leave a “fingerprint” and metaphorically “put yourself into your work”, but beyond some kind of magic, you do not literally and physically find yourself as part of your creation after you create. Given this, God is by definition: spaceless, immaterial and timeless. This whole argument is formally supported by various cosmological arguments, e.g. Kalam, Contingency, etc

So, this idea that God is somehow detectable or is a physical being like Santa Clause, or the flying spaghetti monster is…once again…simply fallacious. I’m gong to need to do a blog about popular fallacies by atheists, but specifically it’s the Strawman Fallacy. Classical Theology has never understood God to be a being inside of time, space and matter. Atheists who argue otherwise are just embarrassing themselves and are indeed showing that they have just not gotten past a grade 1 understanding of God. The greatest Theologians in human history paint brilliantly, but atheists are still just using their fingers.

D out.

…have you actually read your holy book? What sort of twisted morality comes from it? Slavery, bigotry, homophobia, misogyny, violence. I really hope that you don’t take your morality from your evil church but from the same place that most of us obtain our moral focus: from ethical society and philosophy.

(…yes…these quotes I give you are from real people…)

Again, we’re left with an atheist who has presented an emotional assertion. This is a common tactic that is used when dealing with internet atheists who absorb…rather than think about…ideas from their heroes like Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens. This guy is channeling Hitchens and/or Dawkins…more Hitchens than anything else.

How to deal with this type of opening attack?

Well, you don’t. Right now, you’re under no obligation to respond in the slightest. A simple eyebrow raise and a “hrmph” is all you really need to do with this..or you can simply ignore this person all together. What we have here is an emotional assertion with nothing to back it up at and is therefore not an argument at all.

Right off the bat, you know this person is ignorant and hostile. Ignorant because no serious scholar of Biblical studies would say the bible supports Slavery, bigotry, homophobia, misogyny, violence…at least not in the sense that we know it today. Language…after all…does change over 2000 years. Hostile…well, that is easy enough for people to read into. If you do want to respond, it’s easy enough to throw the ball back in their court. You have been given a softball…so what are we missing here:

1. No verses from the Bible are given (…which apparently he has read and thoroughly understands…) that support slavery, bigotry, homophobia, misogyny, violence. Ask for specific ones so that you can analyse the context. Context, literary type, etc, is important and sometimes you need to read the whole book the verse is contained in order to understand it completely. Just because he’s being intellectually lazy, doesn’t mean you should be.
2. No definitions of what he means by slavery, bigotry, homophobia, misogyny, violence. Biblical meaning and popular meaning are not the same. In other words, what sense is he using these words? Ask for definitions. You can pretty much bet that he is applying 21st century meanings to Biblical meanings…certainly in the case of slavery, he is using 18th century meanings.
3. What does he mean by morality? You may be able to dismiss his argument altogether if you start to suspect a morally nihilistic person.
4. What “evil church” is he referring to? There are lots of churches in the ecumenical sense. There are even different meanings of the word “church”. Is he talking about the building?
5. What is “ethical society”. Seriously. What the hell does that mean?
6. Philosophy? OK. Which school of thought he specifically referring to? If he’s atheist, most certainly you can count on a philosophy of materialism, scientism…or God help you…positivism.

Enemy occupied territory – that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going. He does it by playing to our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery. I know someone will ask me, ‘Do you really mean, at this time of day, to re-introduce our old friend the devil – hoofs and horns and all?’ Well, what the time of day has to do with it I do not know. And I am not particular about the hoofs and horns. But in other respects my answer is ‘Yes, I do.’  I do not claim to know anything about his personal appearance. If anybody really wants to know him better I would say to that person, ‘Don’t worry. If you really want to, you will. Whether you’ll like it when you do, is another question.

There have been many movies about exorcism, the most famous being the 1973 film The Exorcist. The latest movie is called The Rite. Although I have yet to see The Rite, the priest who Sir Anthony Hopkins played was recently on an episode of Catholic Answers Live. It’s a very interesting and sobering listen. Most of my gamer readers (…if there are any left…lol..) will scoff at the idea that this stuff is real. Like I said, I’m sure most are calling the guys in the white coats now. Like I said though, Jesus took this stuff VERY seriously…so in following Him, the Vatican also takes it VERY VERY seriously. If fact, they take it so seriously, there is one trained exorcist in every diocese in the United States.

Enjoy.

D out.

I’m going to quoting a couple of times from Dr. Edward Feser on this, simply because I’ve got two books on his that are on the go right now. The first book is simply called Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide, and the second is called The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. The one about Aquinas is a pure philosophical and theological treatment of Thomas Aquinas, who is, without a doubt, one of the most brilliant men in Philosophy and Theology. The second book is a pure polemic against atheism. Aquinas and TLS are both excellent to read together because they reinforce each other very nicely. If you read something in TLS and want to get into more detail, it is certainly treated with more detail in Aquinas. If you’re an atheist and are reading this blog, you owe it to yourself to read these two books AS A START into the works of Thomas Aquinas. Dr. Peter Kreeft also has a great book called Susma of the Susma which I also recommend…and then of course hitting BOTH the Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles. In my opinion, if you are an atheist and HAVE NOT read anything in the above list, you have no business commenting on Christianity. I would also say that if you are a Christian and have not started reading these books, then you have no business commenting on Christianity.

After the talk with the family member, I was struck by the following entry from TLS:

..a secularist colleague of mine once assured me that he didn’t need to bother reading writers like Aquinas, since he “already knew” that they must be wrong – though judging from his grasp of what such writers mean by “God (he confidently trotted a few stupid anthropomorphisms, tiresome comparisons to the Easter bunny, etc), it was obvious that he knew no such thing. It was like trying to discuss Titian with a three-year old who thinks painting is something you do with your fingers.

This is very true, as most…nay..ALL of the atheists that I have interacted with over the past couple of years have had a dreadful and embarrassing concept of what God is. If I were to classify it, it’s a mix of Greek mythology, Freudian psychology, and Charlton Heston movies. Yes…it’s that bad. God, is a bearded man in the sky somewhere that waves a finger at you every time you masturbate. He judges people and throws them into hell for the simplest of offences. He rejoices in the murdering of people who he doesn’t like. Oh…and my personal favorite: he is three gods in one god…which is totally stupid of course. Again…yes…it’s that bad out there. Now, I’m not going to hit every single point about God (…maybe in later posts..). For a full treatment I will point to Dr. Feser’s books above, especially TLS. No, what I want to hit is something I read today on Dr. Feser’s blog, namely God as the first cause of everything. This is clearly not understood by most, if not all village atheists you will come to meet in daily encounters.

Now, when most think about the whole “first cause” issue in relation to God (…not just atheists, but Christians as well…), they think of a set of dominoes. A chain of events, which is referred to as per accidens. One event is the cause of an effect, but once that effect gets underway it is no longer dependent on it’s cause and this continues in a chain of subsequent causes and effects. For example. I am the cause of my daughter. She is clearly the effect. However, if I was to go out of existence after her conception, her existence continues regardless of what happens to me. God is NOT this kind of cause. He is not the first cause in a chain of cause and effects per accidents. He did not tip the first domino which lead to a series of cause of effect. God is the “first cause” in a series of events per se. In this type of cause and effect relationship, cause and effect are pretty close to simultaneous and without the cause, the effects would not exist at all. To illustrate this, I’ll quote Dr. Feser from here:

For the Thomist, to say that God is the First Cause of things is, first and foremost, to say that He is the cause of their existence at every moment at which they do exist.  God creates things out of nothing precisely in the act of conserving them in being, and apart from His continual causal action they would instantly be annihilated. You, the computer you are using right now, the floor under your feet, the coffee cup in your hand – for each and every one of these things, God is, you might say, “keeping it real” at every instant.  Nor is this causal activity something anything else could either carry out or even play a role in.  Creation – which for Aquinas means creation out of nothing – can be the act of God alone.

Where creation is concerned, then, God is “first” cause not in the sense of coming before the second, third, and fourth causes, but rather in the sense of being absolutely fundamental, that apart from which nothing could cause (because nothing could exist) at all.  As serious students of the Five Ways know, the sorts of causal series Aquinas traces to God as First Cause are causal series ordered per se, not causal series ordered per accidens.  In the former sort of series, every cause other than the first is instrumental, its causal power derived from the first.  (See this post for more on the subject.)  But where creation is concerned, Aquinas’s talk of intermediate or instrumental causes is only “for the sake of argument”; his point is that even if there were intermediate causes of the being of things, the series would have to terminate in a First Cause.  In fact there is and can be only one Creator and He cannot in principle create through intermediaries.  (That is not to say that God does not work through intermediaries in other respects.  We’re only talking here about His act of causing the sheer existence of a thing or creating it out of nothing.)

So, let’s put a domino-like analogy to it. Imagine you were standing on a bolder on the ground. Under that bolder is a lever (…a large stick or something…) and a man is there ready to lift the bolder. When he uses the lever (cause), the effect is that the bolder moves up (effect). The bolder moving up causes you to move up….yet another effect. That chain of simultaneous cause and effect (per se) was all brought to life by the arm of that guy. Of course, you can go deeper into the arm, the muscles of that arm, etc, but you get the idea. God is the first cause (i.e. the arm if you will) of all the secondary effects. If “the arm” stopped is leverage, all the other causes would cease to exist. Of course, my treatment here is the understanding of a layman (…one who is learning himself…), and to get into a full treatment and understanding, I would recommend TLS or Aquinas. One can see quite easily, how other mistakes can flow from not understanding the theistic arguments when it comes to the first cause, i.e. arguments for God’s existence…the famous “who made God” question is rooted in the misunderstanding of first cause.

This is already getting quite long, so I’ll stop it there. Next time I’d like to address the whole “bearded man in the sky” concept of God. Much like the misunderstanding of “first cause”, this one really makes it seem like God is a physical “thing” out there somewhere. Fun to address….we’ll see you then.

D out.

“If children are taught, however moderately, that faith is a virtue, they are taught that they don’t need evidence to believe something; that they can believe something just because it’s their faith, then that paves the way for the minority to become extremists. If children are taught that they don’t need to defend their beliefs with evidence, then that does pave the way for extremism.”

He believes that atheism will soon become a more popular framework for people. “There seems to be a correlation with education. It’s certainly true within the US — the more educated people are more likely to give up religion. I’m sure that’s true in India as well,” he says, adding that even US presidents may have been atheists but they’re not allowed to say so or they won’t get re-elected. “I think Lincoln, Kennedy, Clinton, Obama may well be an atheist. Obama’s a very intelligent man. He probably is an atheist,” he says. “There are 535 members in the US congress. Presumably some of them are reasonably educated. It’s inconceivable that only one of them is an atheist. There’s got to be at least 50% of them.”

Ahhhh…Richard Dawkins. The man most village atheists wish they were. He is the pinnacle of thought, reason, logic and science. Oh…and the fact that he has British accent MUST mean he knows what he’s talking about and…AND…he’s a scientist. This man is it ladies and gents. He represents what Christians are up against. So, let’s take a look at the above quote for just a second…shall we. Don’t worry, it won’t be the last time we visit Dr. Dawkins…cause he’s just full of fun things to talk about.

Apparently, if children are taught that faith is a virtue, that means that they are taught that they don’t need evidence to believe in something. They’ll just take things on faith, and that paves the way for a minority to become extremists. Dr. Dawkins then goes on to present “data” that there has got to be 50% of the US Congress that are atheists. Why? Because atheists are intelligent…50%+ congressmen are intelligent or well educated…therefore, 50%+ of congressmen must be atheists.

Dawkins clearly thinks all of these things are true: both the statement about the children and the statement about the US Congress. Why would he state such things if he didn’t think they were true. Remember, Dawkins has already stated that, at least in terms of children, that they shouldn’t believe something unless they have evidence to believe it. So…obvious question: Where is the evidence for these beliefs that Dr. Dawkins holds to be true? He says that there’s got to be at least 270+ US Congressmen who are atheists. Where is the evidence for this? We must have it, or…by Dr. Dawkins own standards…he cannot possibly hold this to be true. At the very least, he cannot believe it to be true unless there is solid evidence to state such a thing. He…he doesn’t take those statements on …*GASP*…faith, does he? Furthermore, where is the evidence that a minority of children who are ONLY taught faith as a virtue (…remember, he said noted NO other factors…) will become extremist or that it paves the way for extremism? Is Dr. Dawkins now an extremist for not having evidence for his position? I think he might be.  Fun isn’t it?

OK. So, your local village atheist will start…or has started…parroting Dawkins on this. Count on it. Remember, the local village atheist will have not thought this position through. Why would he? Dr. Dawkins said it…the thinking has already been done. When the atheist starts saying that evidence is needed, they usually have a very narrow view of what that is. They usually mean scientific evidence ONLY. In other words, science is the only way to find out what is true. Of course, this is a self-refuting statement. The atheist is asserting that the statement “science is the only way to find out what is true” is itself true, but they can’t scientifically prove that statement…therefore, it logically follows that it must be false.

Usually what follows the “there must be evidence” angle…as we’ve seen from Dr. Dawkins…is a statement which will indeed not live up to the standard they assert. You can almost set your watch by it. Remember, evidence is now the pre-requisite for anything and everything the atheist says. They say that 50% of congress are atheists? Demand evidence. They say teaching religion to children is child abuse? Demand evidence. Certainly, present the evidence for your case…you have 2000 years of data which to pick from, so have at it. Be prepared though for the atheist not to accept what you give as evidence. Remember, they’re view will still be about science…not about history, or philosophy, or witness accounts. LOL…at that point though, you can always ask them for evidence that your evidence is not acceptable

D out.

Because of the confusion of language, I often drop language such as “good” or “bad” and simply talk about decisions in terms of preference. I consider myself a moral nihilist and think that talk of “morality” doesn’t really add anything to conversations about what we ought to do as a society to build a cooperative world.

Before I move on, you can’t get any farther from a Catholic than a morally nihilistic atheist. They are polar opposites of each other. I’m almost willing to bet the farm that this man was not a nihilist when he first rejected…what he thought was (more on that later)…God. Nihilism is the natural consequence of atheism, and it’s very easy to see the progression:

There is no God(atheism)->there is no objective m0rality ->morality is subjective -> there is no intrinsic morality.

(NOTE: please refrain from the usual, “but I don’t need to believe in God to be good” angle. Note the argument has nothing to do with belief  in God.)

Also note, I’m not going to link were this conversation took place. The last thing I want is for the person who took the nihilistic position to be harassed in any way. The purpose here is to look at the ideas he presents and maybe help those who have similar conversations.

Moving onto the quote above. The nihilist has clearly decided to drop from his vocabulary the usage of “good” or “bad” when it comes to discussions of morality. Now, we must understand that there are other uses of those words. For example, the phrase, “That was a good chess move” is not a moral statement; however, the statement “Jim is a good man” is a moral statement (…or more specifically, it a moral judgement of a man…). Something like, “It was a good stroke of the sword that cut off the head of the innocent man, Jim”…would probably make a moral nihilist’s head explode….a morally bad action done by something that is said to be “good”. Moving on.

Clearly now, the nihilist is a bit of a bind right off the bat. Look carefully at the phrasing he uses:  ”what we ought to do”, and “build a cooperative world”. What immediately comes up is why does he even care that we build a cooperative world and…even more so…why does he think that is what we ought to do. (Whenever you see an “ought” what follows is a moral judgement). To that, he continues:

Nearly everybody *wants* it. That’s an obvservation. I want it, too. That’s an observation, too. Based on that observation — and my intention to fulfill my desire — I have to decide on the best course of action to fulfill that desire.

This is the basis of the decision-making process. “Good” and “bad” don’t enter into the conversation.

“Everybody wants it”….or more completely: We build a cooperative world because everybody wants it. Now, this does not answer the question, because “everybody wanting it” means absolutely nothing. He’s pushing the question back just a step, and eventually…as you’ll see…he’ll get backed up into a wall (…and eventually he does beg the question, but I have limited space here…). So, I press more and you can just guess what comes next from my reply: why does everyone want a cooperative world?

Because we’ve been raised in cooperative societies, we don’t really have any other practical alternative, and we’ve been exposed, all of our lives, to the fantastic benefits of living in a cooperative society.

nihilism

The answer is: because we’ve been raised that way we don’t have any practical alternative than living in a cooperative society. Think about that for just a moment. Given what you know of human history, is there really no other practical alternative to living besides being cooperative that also gives fantastic benefits? Of course there is! Being uncooperative! Conflict. In fact, the victors of conflict sometimes get MORE rewards and MORE benefits from being uncooperative than they would have otherwise gotten from being cooperative. Jeeze, just talk to a 99%er and they’ll heartily agree with that (…I don’t know if I hurt or helped my case with that example…). Remember, even if this person…say, the best whipping boy of the 20th century: Hitler…were to stir up some trouble in Europe, he’s not really doing anything bad, he’s just being uncooperative. He’s acting unfashionably or sub-optimal….like a man wearing white socks with sandals and shorts, or a kid throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of a crowded mall, or a date picking his nose during dinner. Clearly his premise is false, because there is another option to being cooperative and people do it all the time. It gets better as the ice gets thinner.

The topic of murdering an innocent human being came up, of course. The fact that we’ve now established that these things are just unfashionable. Things get interesting and this was the response:

And there can still be consequences for breaking the code, like being imprisoned or executed. The punishment is given not because the act was “wrong” but because the punishment *is* the consequence decided upon for breaking the code.

So, we’re now into “codes”…or laws and consequences for breaking these codes. OK, but remember, everything good and bad is out the window…in every sense. What I mean is that if no good and bad can be applied to an action itself, then no action can be better or worse than any other action. This includes punishments as well, since punishments will be actions carried out by the current ruling class…or whatever. So…in this system, theoretically, you are just as likely to be put to death for jaywalking as you are for murder. Of course, this is when I get really Catholic on him and call bullshit on the idea. Here’s why: although he has not hit the wall yet logically, he has certainly bumped into it and I want to press him more and see what he does.

This is when a nihilist gets fun to talk to, and the real motives start to surface…when you act out of character for what he expects a Catholic to behave:

You know, I think I’ve been very patient and very forthcoming with my explanations of a particular philosophical position. I was hesitant to engage you in conversation because you struck me as someone not capable of handling a mature discussion about views that differ from your own, and you’re not proving me wrong here. If your idea of a conversation is to curse at people and use juvenile phrases to dismiss legitimate philosophical positions, then I think that says a lot about your own values, and it’s nothing too flattering.

The logical wall has now fallen. For someone who holds that there is nothing that is morally good or bad, the tone here certainly transmits that I’ve done something wrong here. There is certainly emotion here. But…how can that be? Really, from his perspective he shouldn’t be insulted at all because I am aware of no code that says one cannot call bullshit on an idea. Certainly, as a Catholic I am within my right to judge an idea as bad. Now, if I judged his heart, I would probably need a confessional, but so far I have avoided ad hominem. I press him on this a bit more because we get him against the only wall he has. Did I do something “wrong”?

No, not “wrong” in the “in violation of ultimate morality” sense. You said something rude, according to the standards that exist in this time and place, in the discursive context that we share.

What standard? Who says there was a standard and who says I broke it. I am clearly not aware of any standard. Forum rules have no such standard of calling bullshit on an idea. My faith certainly does not hold by the standard of calling bullshit on an idea. And here it is ladies and gents…the only thing a nihlist can objectively say of the questions you ask him:

Says me.

“Says me”. That is the root….the absolute core…of moral nihilistic atheism right there: “Says me”. No matter how much they dress it up at the beginning, you ask them enough questions and those two words are the only place they have left to run. They can go nowhere else.

Now, I summarized this whole conversation because this literally went on for pages and pages. I could have gone on with more, but there simply is not enough space without writing a book. Other Catholics were also asking the same line of questions…maybe at a different angle, or a different emphasis. All very charitable until we finally just told him he ought to start justifying his stance a bit more. As you can see, the root of it all was just only layers away from his real answer and the root of his morality: “says me”. You ask a well formed Catholic (…or any Christian for that matter…)  the very first question of why we want a cooperative society, it will be because of God. Full stop. The conversation then starts to become more about why (…or how…) He would want a cooperative society, or just laws, or “the good”, and less about why we want it, or why I want it. Totally different emphasis and, it’s objectively solid when you start getting into the objective nature of God (immutable, pure act, etc)….and we’ll get into that next time.

D out.

What am I going to do with this site? The initial focus of this site is was to evangelize gaming to the faithful and plant the seeds of faith in gamers. I still think this is a noble goal…but it is one that is quite large. One one hand, you have the average Catholic who knows nothing of games…that is not the Catholic that I am after. I’m after the Catholic who has dismissed gaming and sees it as something to be avoided. The goal there is just to educate. To get them from dismissing games to accepting them as a valid form of entertainment for groups of people to participate in. That task, I think will be doable. The more difficult task will be gamers and the idea of faith.

So far…and I’ve been at this for months (almost going on a year)…most of the gamers I’ve interacted with are either agnostic or self proclaimed atheists. Materialistic at best, and nihilistic at worse. Some are brick walls which are entirlycomposed of logical fallacies, irrational thinking patterns and emotional reasoning. Yes, some are open but very suspicious of intentions and fear religion in some way. It would shock you…SHOCK I SAY…at some of the stuff that is out there that is coming out of the mouths…erm…keyboards of gamers. Or maybe it wouldn’t shock you at all because you are one of them.  I had a conversation with one gamer about prostitution. Upon being cornered with the whole idea of renting another person for the ends of another’s sexual satisfaction, he said, “well, you’re not really renting the entire person, you’re just renting part of them….so there is nothing wrong with that”. These are the tough nuts to crack and there are layers upon layers of logical knots one has to navigate. They are the hard ground on which nothing can or will grow. It’s a hard thing to even start because who the heck am I? I’m just some anonymous guy saying, “dude…you really need to think about your position a bit”. It’s also a bit frustrating because when you’re on a gamer forum, attempting to work through the inevitable Crusades, priest abuse or Inquisition reference, you’re usually surrounded on all fronts by legitimate…yet usually illogical…hostility. There is an atheist echo chamber out there and it is extremely good at drowning out reasoned thought. Outnumbered in the range of 10:1 in most cases, one finds it’s a big issue to take on….but yet it is my job to do so as a Catholic. Catholics have been doing this type of activity for 2000 years, so at least I’m in good company. The question is whether forums are a good way to do this. Forums are usually giant black holes of “wtf” even when religion isn’t thrown into the mix. This site needs to build and grow in order to reach gamers who would usually not even think about Catholicism..and that’s where the next issue comes in.

As I swim deeper into the Catholic faith (…and believe me…the depth is immeasurable…), I find gaming to be less and less appealing. Now, it’s very hard to tell whether the lack of appeal of gaming is an objective measure or just my subjective judgement. I certainly am observing a shift in gaming and it’s surrounding community…but it’s very hard to tell whether that shift is because people are naturally just moving on or if gaming itself has changed, in this case, for the worse. All I can say is that the study of Philosophy and Theology, specifically Thomas Aquinas…for me…has started to make gaming seem a bit shallow. “How dare you, Darren!!!” I know. I know. However, I think you need to understand something before you jump to conclusions regarding me calling your favorite pastime “shallow”. As a gamer, one can be left focusing on the entertainment of oneself at the expense growing in other ways. Entertainment is fine…all for it…but we are in an age and culture where entertainment IS the end AND means towards which one strives. Metaphysically speaking: Entertainment is. When you start to read about what men like Aquinas were concerned with, the release date of your next “big game” starts to seem a bit small; indeed, the game you’re currently playing seems extremely small. You find yourself wanting to absorb everything written about or written by Thomas Aquinas…and by extension…Aristotle. That’s where I find myself: getting disconnected from gaming and becoming more engaged with the world Catholicism has opened up. So, it doesn’t take a genius to see that one’s effectiveness at communicating to gamers becomes hindered when one’s own gaming becomes a shallow exercise in iteself. I find it ironic that maybe this is why some Catholics don’t find gaming all that interesting: they’ve found something waaaaay more interesting. See the push-pull dilemma here? Funny, eh.

So, reading has been my focus over the past couple of months. Very….heavy…reading. Also, being active on forums with the focus of dismantling strawmen that the local village atheist seems to be comfortable at building. The focus of this blog then, becomes what? Well, it becomes what I care most about and what I am focusing on: Philosophy and Theology, confronting atheism, and maybe gaming. So expect that going forward. It’s still CatholicGamer…but maybe it’s becoming more CATHOLICgamer.

There is another issue. Readers of CommonsenseGamer and listeners of SUWT will remember that I’ve always said that the way to be a successful blogger is to post regularly. Clearly, that habit has been lost here at CatholicGamer and needs to be reacquired. This will take time. This may or may not be successful. The urge to read and debate on forums may take precedence and be the default position for a while longer. I may be busy with volunteer work. Who knows how this will work out. Point is that I think CatholicGamer can work, but it’s an issue of timing and of focus. So, I’ll aiming to one article a week for now…most likely every Sunday. So stay tuned and I ask for patience as I find my footing here. I think I’ve got enough material to talk next week about an interesting “debate” with a real-life nihilist that some will find interesting…so let’s say that will be our topic for next week and see how it goes.

Cheers all,

D Out.