Atheists On The Old Testament...

Recently, on Dinesh D'Souza's blog, some anti-Christians were throwing around verses from the Old Testament -- like dashing babies against rocks -- and insisting that we have to interpret them the way they want us to. Now, any knowledgeable Christian is going to understand the basic principle that we interpret the Old in light of the New, that is, through the lens of Jesus Christ. Further, we, at least we Catholics, don't abandon the Preambles to Faith, which are rationally based prefaces that, in logic, precede faith -- yes, they're called "preambles" for a reason! Anyway, I tried to impress upon them that, like any field of knowledge, you start with first principles, which you have to keep before your mind, which you cannot violate -- this, of course, takes intellectual discipline, which many people just don't have. Now, these particular people also happened to be subjectivists, which made their insistence that we interpret such verses the way they want us to all the more absurd. Here's the reason I gave them:

"If value and morality are purely subjective, that is, exist only in your head and not as a reflection of reality, then when you say that such and such is wrong you are really saying you feel or imagine such and such is wrong *even though it's really not*. The 'really not' logically accompanies every expression of your subjective moral view *if value and morality are purely subjective.* Now, when I say 'really' I mean 'in truth', and I accept the classic definition of truth: 'the conformity of the mind to reality.'"

"I'll tell you why understanding all of this is important to me. First, you will not understand where people, theists who are like me, are really coming from [on interpreting atrocities in the Old Testament] unless you understand this basic idea, which I grant is often just a vague intuition in some theist's minds. You see, I admit the problem of morality in certain Biblical passages is a real one, but that is because I believe morality is a real reflection of reality. That is, I believe there IS inherent worth to an individual -- not that I project it on someone if I want to. As soon as [any subjectivist] starts attacking anything the Bible says or that Christians have done, I hear the logical echo attending their words "but nothing is really right or wrong", and their criticisms find no sympathy with me for they want to share a common ground which they've already denied a basis in reality -- in truth."

"Let's put this all into perspective. Think of an atrocity; take the holocaust for example. Most likely you believe it's appalling and just plain wrong. However, if you take the line [subjectivist x] takes, you will be saying, "I feel the holocaust was wrong, but it really wasn't." Or, "I think dragging homosexuals behind my car is wrong, but it's really not." Isn't that a shock to your humanity? So, no matter how worked up a given subjectivist gets about a Biblical passage, no matter how morally outraged they appear to be, the cold, inescapable logic completes their every outburst with "but it's not really wrong" -- and I can hardly take them seriously."

There are various things to keep in mind when considering the Old Testament, like Midrash, like the difference between inspiration and revelation, like the fact that God and some of His perfections can be known through reason (thus anthropomorphisms are not to be taken literally), and, also, like Jesus was the perfect revelation of God, and his Church through the Holy Spirit (and by Christ's authority) can decipher certain dogmas from mythological imagery like Genesis; but none of these things (and others), which are necessary to keep before our minds while considering the question, will make any difference to one who doesn't really want to hear you...

Christianity In Terms Of Odds?

...Only as an intellectual proposition detached from reality, that is, unsupportable by evidence. However, Christianity does not claim to appeal to a detached intellect, as if all we know are ideas, but to the full person who has, in addition to an intellect, both a will, as well as bodily senses. Therefore, I can think of at least three things to say:

1.) it is from the data of the senses that the rational proof for God's existence are employed in what's called the Cosmological Argument -- it proceeds from experience. Here, in the C.A., God's existence and perfections are arrived at through our physical grounding (senses) in the physical universe (physical objects of senses) -- God's existence is a proposition attached to reality (Catholicism says rational proofs for God's existence are "preambles to faith", thus assuring the necessity of reason in religion), and;

2.) there's the will: As George Brantl eloquently said, “It is only in the waiting, thirsting spirit that revelation can find a reply”; thus, "Christianity," says C.S. Lewis, "is addressed only to penitents, only to those who admit their disobedience to the known moral law… [i]t offers forgiveness for having broken, and supernatural help towards keeping, that law." In other words, Jesus Christ speaks to an essential need of our human nature, which only God can meet, and which takes us to the third point;

3.) the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ, who was crucified for claiming to be God, combines one and two, and leaves us with a personal choice, a choice of trust, which cannot be quantified in terms of odds. Since it concerns our will, and choice, it would be like, as Peter Kreeft said, "Suppose you hear reports that your house is on fire and your children are inside. You do not know whether the reports are true or false. What is the reasonable thing to do—to ignore them or to take the time to run home or at least phone home just in case the reports are true?" ( http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/pascals-wager.htm )

Chapter Two: The Temptations Of Jesus

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The Problem Of Pain -- A Submitted Amazon Review

Pay No Attention To The Humbugs Behind The Curtain
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Lewis believed we should try to enter into the meaning, the intent of the authors we read, instead of bringing our own biases and immediately subjecting them to our own categories of thought. We cannot help but enrich our minds if "in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself." Therefore, if you’ve stumbled upon this book for whatever reason and feel inclined to read it then I’d urge -- pay no attention to the humbug critics, at least until after you’ve read what could be a life enriching book, as this was for me.

Ten years ago I began reading Lewis; the Problem of Pain was one of the first of his works, after Mere Christianity, I picked up. It wasn’t long after I read PoP that I was watching Schindler’s List. Scene by scene, the dilemma of evil in the face of a good God assaulted me till I was overcome with intense and sickening violence. I ended up falling to the ground, in anguish, crying “how”? I received no blinding insight, I’m sorry to say, into the mystery of evil; but Lewis’ logic had infected me, and suddenly an argument took hold of my mind, checked my despair, and gave me something to hold onto (incidentally, those critics who, in reading Lewis have immediately subjected him to their atheist framework have a-priori cut themselves off from understanding the ultimate logic of their own position – or they just don’t care, which is far worse).

The argument, in so many words, ran something like this: the proposition that God doesn’t exist amounts, at the same time, to the proposition that all this anguish at the injustice unfolding before me on my TV screen is not rooted in reality, that it’s all a purely subjective illusion, which reflects no eternal value, goodness or justice, and, logically, could just as well be delight and approval. In other words, the extent I thought evil truly evil and wrong – that was the extent to which I had to believe in a good God; to deny Him would be, at the same time, a denial of the reality of evil, which was driving me to deny Him in the first place. I simply refused to concede that the Nazis, slaughtering Jews, were no more morally culpable than if they were involuntarily swatting mosquitoes.

Many people are keen to respond something along these lines, “well, I personally feel this or that is wrong,” and seriously think they’ve resolved the matter. However, this “line” has a shocking corollary, which runs thusly: “…but it is not really wrong”. In it’s blunt, down to earth form, and applied to my experience above, it looks like this: “I feel the Nazi’s were wrong, but I cannot speak for them and say they were wrong, because they were not REALLY wrong.” When the mind reflects objective reality it has truth; if my mind isn’t reflecting the eternal reality of value, goodness, and justice, then my gut reactions and intense emotions are a response to nothing in reality, to no quality innate to human beings, which categorically warrants such a reaction – they’re a fictional response, a response to a pretended reality. We all know, deep down inside, that this cannot be true, and that evil really exists because there’s an eternal standard of goodness (God) by which to identify evil as evil…

Read this book – make your own judgments…

Jesus Of Nazareth Foreword

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