La Fe del Ateo

My friend Jose (on Bede's discussion group) has translated some interesting passages from his fellow atheist, the Spanish philosopher Gustavo Bueno. Who sometimes is even more Catholic than the Pope.

It is from Bueno's latest book (La Fe del Ateo (The Faith of the Atheist), Temas de Hoy, Madrid, 2007):

"Sometimes 'rationalist' fundamentalism, in the shape of atheism, is presented as the prior, necessary, and even sufficient condition for the advancement of the nations, while religion (in general) is deemed responsible for backwardness and barbarism in human societies. This is purely idealistic naivety, a throwback to the Enlightenment mentality of the 18th century, which not only traditional Christian philosophers have responded to, but also Comte's positivists, Marxists (especially Lenin), and other critical movements such as the Frankfurt School led by Horkheimer and Adorno, wuth their renovated criticism of the Enlightenment.

Tertiary religions in general, and Christianity in particular, cannot be regarded as an irrational antithesis to the development of science and culture, as so many of those who espouse scientific fundamentalism (i.e. atheist 'radical rationalism') would have us believe. On the contrary, tertiary theology, and especially Christian theology has, thoughout its history, built a doctrinal edifice which can be seen as one of the most refined examples (when it comes to cultural development) of propositional science in the Aristotelian sense.

Anyone who is familiar with the Thomistic doctrine of transubstantiation cannot help but admire the refinement and subtlety of the theological theories, which have in turn often paved the way for ulterior philosophical or scientific concepts or ideas, even materialist ones.

We have no alternative but to heap scorn on those who speak, in general, of the 'crudity' of theological reasoning and its backwardness, and who, in their naive adolescent idealism, believe that once religion is removed and atheism established, progress, welfare, peace and happiness will naturally follow."

Jose doesn't quite avoid to mention a certain set of new atheists (or El Nuevo Ateo, I presume) in this connection.

However, as Bueno does not, we will leave it to the reader's imagination.

Un-American heretic

Robert J. Sanders has an interesting essay on how the Name of God was profaned in the US by linking the Christian faith to a neo-conservative political agenda. Old news in more ways than one, still an interesting angle on the present presidential campaign where the "Christian Right" now fools fewer people than ever.

Sanders looks especially at Pat Robertson, who (to put it mildly) has had some influence on the Christian Right. In his book The New World Order, Robertson presents his program for America and the world.

He begins by painting a picture of a world soon to fall under the power of Satan. According to Robertson, conspiratorial forces, such as the Illuminati, the Masons, the national and international bankers, the United Nations, the liberals, and The Supreme Court are conspiring to create a world order against God. The only hope for the world is for Christians to take control of the U.S. government and impose the Ten Commandments. Unless that happens, there will "never be world peace until God's house and God's people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world.

Viewing the world as a conspiracy is a surefoot way to diaster.

Once the Christian right gains control of the U.S. government, their next step is to "save" the world from the godless one-world government that is waiting in the wings. Here is Robertson,

Such a world government [the Satanic one] can come together only after the Christian United States is out of the way. ... With America still free and at large, Satan's schemes will at best be only partially successful. ... An independent America could point out Satan's lies. If America is free, people everywhere can hope for freedom. And if American goes down, all hope is lost to the rest of the world.

Sanders calls it nothing less than idolatry.

It places Christians on the top, rather than on the bottom as those who serve as Christ served. It makes the un-biblical claim that a Christian United States of America is the divinely anointed, holy nation by which God defeats Satan and saves the world.

And it makes me shiver not a little.

So, how then, what is the best way to evaluate Robertson's theology? Sanders concludes with no surprises. Robertson is even (worse of all, some would say) un-American.

By the norms of orthodoxy, Robertson is a heretic. By Old Testament standards, he is a false prophet, telling the powerful what they want to hear. By the standards of America's founders, his agenda is un-American. It violates the founders' belief that America should not be governed by those who impose their sectarian religious practices upon others.

I have mixed feelings about Sanders' web site and book reviews. Still, one can almost forgive him for finding Harry Potter unsuited for children, when he finds Robertson unsuited for all.

ILN - February 8, 1908

So what did Chesterton write about one hundred years ago?

We begin a weekly tradition of the democracy of the dead, on this blog mainly consisting of quoting from - and paraphrasing - his articles in the Illustrated London News one hundred years ago.

This time about Suffragette Demonstrations.

The incident of the Suffragettes who chained themselves with iron chains to the railings of Downing Street is a good ironical allegory of most modern martyrdom. It generally consists of a man chaining himself and then complaining that he is not free.

GKC is not impressed. He doesn't think it will matter much. For true martyrdom was about something different. To change the world it helps little to make pretences of suffering. Or to use violence, like fighting in the streets or making bombs like the anarchists or modern days terrorists.

You have to suffer, and sing praises while you do,

if men smiled and sang (as they did) while they were being boiled or torn in pieces, the spectators felt the presence of something more than mere mental honesty; they felt the presence of some new and unintelligible kind of pleasure, which, presumably, came from somewhere. It might be a strength of madness, or a lying spirit from Hell; but it was something quite positive and extraordinary; as positive as brandy and as extraordinaory as conjuring.

And it led to different effects.

The Pagan said to himself: "If Christianity makes a man happy while his legs are being eaten by a lion, might it not make me happy while my legs are still attached to me and walking down the street?"

Naturally the skeptic is as always not quite satisfied.

The Secularists laboriously explain that martyrdoms do not prove a faith to be true, as if anybody was ever such a fool as to suppose that they did. What they did prove, or, rather, strongly suggest, was that something had entered human psychology which was stronger than strong pain.

One conclusion, then, is to

strongly advice modern agitators, therefore, to give up this particular method: the method of making very big efforts to get a very small punishment.

Greenpeace and others may not quite take heed, still it is a rather good advice.

Of course, what Chesterton was writing about was womens' right to vote. In 1908 this was still a rather radical idea. Chesterton did not accept it, as his impression was that most women didn't want it. And he thought even less about the suffragettes' methods.

As a matter of fact, Miss Pankhurst is quite in earnest about votes for women. But she does not prove it by being chucked out of meetings. A person might be chucked out of meetings just as young men are chucked out of music-halls - for fun. But no man has himelf eaten by a lion as a personal advertisement.

Still, it is hard to avoid the fact that the suffragettes won. Women now are as powerless as men when it comes to complaining about the government's decisions. They can't even excuse themselves with not having the right to vote. And as long as they don't sing in joy about it, nothing will change.

Next Saturday the topic is Charlatans and Quacks. In short counterknowledge.

Science and Religion

For those interested, here is a link to an interesting debate on Victor Reppert's site, about an argument propagated by John Loftus (a former Christian and now one of the most active anti-Christian "debunkers" on the net) about the size of the universe as speaking against Christianity.

I mean the stuff e.g. Thomas Chalmers debugged in the early 1800's (A series of discourses on the Christian revelation viewed in connection with the modern astronomy (1817)) and C.S. Lewis about fifty years ago (The Discarded Image - An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature). Not really new arguments, nor very good. A bit telling to use them, one might say.

Still, evaluating such a debate is sometimes difficult. However, as John from time to time is building and strenghtening his case by myths, it is easy to conclude that science sometimes really is threatened by faith. In this case John's.

One particularly telling allegation from his side is that

Christianity slowed the progress of science down or tried to stop it dead in its tracks every single hard-earned step of the way.

The question then is how long Loftus's variant of atheism will slow the progress of the Historical Sciences.

Anyone interested might do worse than check this article on some aspects of it. Or, if you are Norwegian inclined, my two chapters in the book "Tro og vitenskap - Sammenheng eller Sammenstøt" ("Faith and Science - Connection or Conflict?".

As a mostly finished chapter on the size of the universe, the aliens debate and Christianity, was dropped from my recent book on Dawkins and the New Atheists (again in Norwegian, alas (especially for my bank account)), it may surface somewhere later this year.

Debunking

Thanks to Bede who made me aware of an interesting blog concerned with myths, particularly political ones it seems.

And as the latest article praises Damian Thompson's latest book, Counterknowledge, and Michael Barkun's A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America, it is easy to recommend the site.

It is no downside that Kamm enjoys Chesterton.

Medievalists and movies

Before leaving for some major snow shuffling this weekend (one of the perils of having a family with a cabin in the mountains), a nod to Claw of the Councilator who made me aware of a Medievalist's take on Kingdom of Heaven.

Yesterdays' news in more senses than one, still rather hillarious.

We know Guy is a bad person, because he's rude and French and talks about God a lot. In fact, anytime anyone talks about God a lot in the movie, they're bad. Orlando, who is struggling with religious doubt brought on by the death of his wife and child, is good, but not really very good at making you understand that he's struggling with religious doubt unless he says outright, "I'm struggling with religious doubt," but he does say it, so don't worry. Then his dad dies, and they all decide to go see his lands in Jerusalem.

It gets worse.

Let me sum it up like this: arrows, fire, and heroic speeches. For any scene, pick two of the three elements and mix them together. Every time there's a heroic speech, the movie grinds to a halt, because Orlando, God bless him, can't summon up masculine swagger to save his perfectly tousled head. It's like watching a kitten dressed up like George C. Scott's Patton. Sure, the big flag is behind him, but everything he says falls flat--especially the part where he tells the defenders of Jerusalem that their holy sites don't matter and that all religions are essentially crap. I think perhaps crusaders, even reluctant ones who are only there because they killed a priest who insulted their dead suicide wives, probably didn't shout those things to big mobs with weapons, even if they might have secretly believed them. Call me crazy.

This is the big problem with the movie, and it only gets worse when the Archbishop of Jerusalem instructs people, fearing they're all about to be captured, to 'covert to the heathen faith and repent later'. This is supposed to show that he's a craven fake, but not five minutes ago when Orlando was telling us, 'all religions are bunk,' we were supposed to see him as a champion of "the people" and a crack theological thinker.

Though, as we all know, the movie is not about the Crusades at all. It is Ridley Scott's take on politics in the 21th Century.

And what does a Medievalist know about such matters?

Memories of Madeleine

As a fantasy fan (well, the Tolkien/Lewis/Chesterton/Powers league at least), it was a delight to discover also Madeleine L'Engle. Witty and wise, fantastic and fun. And she was no copy cat.

Few authors had such a distinctive style as Madeleine. She went her own way. She avoided routes that tasted of mediocrity. Of course this applied also to theology. What creative artist has really ever accepted other persons' views of truth, not to mention Church Councils' (except from Tolkien/Lewis/Chesterton/Powers)?

And Madeleine was more creative than most.

Madeleine left us five months ago, almost 90 years old. Hopefully she may show that is is possible to be inventive to the end, especially if you are made in the image of God. In other words, human.

What better way to remember her than by reading a tribute by someone who knew her?

Then you have to get out your copy of A Wrinkle in Time again, of course. And the rest of the L'Engle canon. You deserve the company of Meg, Charles and the twins. And not a few others.

Bede is back

Just to mention that the honourable Bede is back, after some months in hiatus - welcome!

Whether I am back is another question.

Fanfare for the fanfare

And here it is.

Keyboards a bit low in the first part. Then it starts kicking in.

Wow.

(Update January 30th - the link is now off again - not wow.)

Atheism falsified

Of course, it was bound to happen one day.

As reported on talking squids:

The properties of one of Saturn’s moons may ring the death-knell for atheism, NASA/JPL announced today. Astronomer Gerhard Baalschmidt was routinely
scanning the files of the hundreds of small orbiting objects imaged by the Cassini-Huygens space probe when he came across a newly-identified moon that caught his attention.

Next : The discovery of the Cosmological Knob Panel.

Counterknowledge

Damian Thompson, my fav and not a little candid catholic exposer of Conspiracy Theories and Counterknowledge in general, is out with a new book.

In Counterknowledge: How We Surrendered to Conspiracy Theories, Quack Medicine, Bogus Science and Fake History, Damian takes on many of the latest, and a some of the older, claims on what's really going on behind the curtains, who's really in control, what really happened and all that and some more.

He has a big disadvantage, though. The website 9/11, The Bigger Picture and the Quest for Truth now reveals that Damian shares surname with the director-general of the BBC, Mark Thompson.


Say no more. Or read about it here.

If you check the comments you will also discover the amazing story of Oliver Panic. Even if historians in a millennium or two will presume that the name is pure invention .

GKC and JRRT - as Theologians

It had to happen in the end.

After some hundred studies of their Biographical, Cultural, Ethical, Historical, Literary, Mythical, Parodical, Periodical, Philosophical, Poetical, Political and Witty writings and achievements (from various Biographical, Cultural, Ethical, Historical, Literary, Mythical, Parodical, Periodical, Philosophical, Poetical, Political and Witty angles), now the time even has come for a study of perhaps the most important aspect that powers Chesterton and Tolkien's works. In short, Theology.

Though the author, Alison Milbank, is not the Milbank of Radical Orthodoxy fame, Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians: The Fantasy of the Real seems well worth reading (and hopefully easier to grasp).

Especially when the price is a bit down.