We Need More Than A Little Christmas

We and our journalists, when faced with a crisis, have a tendency to focus on its immediate causes, and then tinker with them while attempting to affix blame in the partisan debate. Thus, in what may become known as the Financial Crisis of 2008, we focus on better regulation and troublesome government intrusion into the market while mustering arguments for the culpability of either the Bush years or the ideological and self-serving liberal Democratic Congress. Of course, there is helpful truth to be found in those investigations. But there are more important truths, and ultimately more helpful ones, to be found in pulling back to look at the bigger human picture and see the deeper problems embedded in our souls, or if you will, the contemporary American character.

Daniel Henninger takes this broader approach in his little newspaper essay, "Mad Max and the Meltdown" (Wall Street Journal, Nov. 20, 2008). He states his thesis metaphorically, saying, "A nation whose people can't say "Merry Christmas" is a nation capable of ruining its own economy."

Skipping his step by step summary of how this crisis unfolded, we come to his conclusion. The problem has been fundamentally not one of inadequate regulation, though there certainly was that. The problem was one of inadequate moral restraint on the part of many of the people involved, from the greatest to the least of them. This widespread moral wandering was made possible by a larger society that is aggressively discouraging religion among its citizens.

What really went missing through the subprime mortgage years were the three Rs: responsibility, restraint and remorse. They are the ballast that stabilizes two better-known Rs from the world of free markets: risk and reward. Responsibility and restraint are moral sentiments. Remorse is a product of conscience. None of these grow on trees. Each must be learned, taught, passed down. And so we come back to the disappearance of "Merry Christmas." It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. ... Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.

John Adams tells us, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." He said this not because he lived in a religious society and was so immersed in that point of view that he could not imagine the liberating possibilities of atheistic secularism. Late eighteenth century moral, political, and religious thought gave him a vivid awareness of the alternative. His claim on this point is based instead on his understanding of liberty and the human soul. Our constitution oversees a system of political and economic liberty. That system is not self-sufficient. It cannot govern what Immanuel Kant called "a nation of devils." Such a people, unable to govern themselves from within, would need a very powerful, active, and omnipresent state to restrain them.

C.S. Lewis saw this problem in his day. In The Abolition of Man, he argues that the Enlightenment project to refound all knowledge on an amoral, or "value-neutral," scientific basis, together with its philosophic collapse into nihilism or what we are calling post-modernism, have landed us in an inhuman and unsustainable situation by debunking the very means by which we make moral judgments or even recognize their possibility. "In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and we expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful" (Harper edition, p.26).

People want to be free of religion, especially Christianity, but they want to retain the morality that derives from and requires that religion for it to make any sense and to give it force in the human heart.

We see this vain hope expressed in a recent atheist ad campaign in London that has migrated to Washington DC in time for the Christmas season. It asks, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake." It is yet another effort not only to take Christ out of Christmas, but also to remove Christ from Christian character.

Mere exhortations of this sort are notoriously ineffective, however, because people, left to themselves, are incorrigibily self-centered. They must be governed from above by the looming consequences of violating the divinely established moral order. It was the irreligious Thomas Jefferson who confessed, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."

Even better, however, is when people are governed from within by a heart transforming spiritual grace that restrains selfishness and inclines the heart in charity toward not only one's family and neighbors, but also to strangers--both seen and unseen--and, yes, even to one's enemies. If we sow the wind, we can expect to reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7).

Public Reverence East and West

I am re-posting this from a couple of weeks back because I suspect that it got lost in the excitement leading up to the election.

A South African drive-time disc jockey in Dubai has been fired for imitating God as part of his morning banter. (AP story here.)

He was not fired for violating Sharia Law. Dubai, one of the principal cities and one of several semi-autonomous states in the United Arab Emirates, is a diverse international community. He was fired because his irreverence, that is, his careless treatment of this divine subject matter, offended the religious sensibilities of the people who live in Dubai. He was responding to someone's failed attempt to sue God in a U.S. court. (See my post on that: "The Audacity of Suing God.") "He intended to be funny, not to offend anybody," said Arabian Radio Network Chief Operating Officer Steve Smith. "However, what he did was highly offensive to the Muslim and Christian community in the UAE."

No doubt this shocks many American readers who see it as an example of religious fundamentalism in the benighted Arab world.

But this was our world not so long ago, and I think that in that respect it was a better world. People were more self-controlled and respectful of one another when we inhabited that world.



In 1966, John Lennon had to apologize publicly, or at least to give an account of himself, for saying that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus." The remark made no impression on the British when it was first published in London's Evening Standard. But when DATEbook published the Maureen Cleave interview in America it was a huge scandal.

Lennon's full statement from the interview was this:

'Christianity will go,' he said. 'It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first-rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.'

Here Lennon does not apologize, but explains how he was misunderstood.





Here is another press conference video, though not the same one, and again no one actually apologizes.

In some ways, of course, we are a better society now than we were. We're more accepting of racial differences among us, for example. But that improvement has not grown out of our rejection of God. Indeed, the civil rights movement was, in significant measure, motivated by Christian faith.

When people turn away from God and focus on themselves, they actually dehumanize themselves and each other.


Consider this post from November 7, 2007: "An Atheist Ally of Religion? Sounds Reasonable."

Dalrymple, noting the rarity of religiously motivated cruelty, draws attention to the decency that the eternal perspective engenders in by far most people who genuinely embrace it. After quoting from a meditation by Bishop Joseph Hall (1574-1656) on contentment and self-control, Dalrymple concludes that, “moderation comes more naturally to the man who believes in something not merely higher than himself, but higher than mankind. After all, the greatest enjoyment of the usages of this world, even to excess, might seem rational when the usages of this world are all that there is.” It is at least arguable that unsentimental, atheistic rationalism leads logically to debauchery and ultimately to tyranny.

He drives home this connection between piety and moderation by comparing the genuine fruit of Christian faith with what these grumpy anti-theists have to offer:

“Let us compare Hall’s meditation “Upon the Sight of a Harlot Carted” with Harris’s statement that some people ought perhaps to be killed for their beliefs:

With what noise, and tumult, and zeal of solemn justice, is this sin punished! The streets are not more full of beholders, than clamours. Every one strives to express his detestation of the fact, by some token of revenge: one casts mire, another water, another rotten eggs, upon the miserable offender. Neither, indeed, is she worthy of less: but, in the mean time, no man looks home to himself. It is no uncharity to say, that too many insult in this just punishment, who have deserved more. . . . Public sins have more shame; private may have more guilt. If the world cannot charge me of those, it is enough, that I can charge my soul of worse. Let others rejoice, in these public executions: let me pity the sins of others, and be humbled under the sense of my own.

“Who sounds more charitable, more generous, more just, more profound, more honest, more humane: Sam Harris or Joseph Hall, D.D., late lord bishop of Exeter and of Norwich?”

Harold adds:

This sensitivity issue raises a question in my mind. Odd, is it not, that the most hyper-sensitive "culture'"to come along--the post-modern "politically correct" species that got itself planted on college campuses and then spread relentlessly outward, sits cheek-by-jowl with this rough, uncivil assault on Christians, white southerners, conservatives, males, Walmart shoppers, etc. No protection for these groups from the Sensitivity Police. "Sensitivity", like "tolerance", is one of those personality characteristics which, good in themselves, make lousy principles in their own right. There will always be a more basic principle which must govern whose feelings and whose beliefs will be tolerated or deemed worthy of sensitive treatment. For Christians and a few other religions, respect for people as individuals equal before God is that principle which instructs tolerance and respect. For atheism, no such equality exists, since there is no god. Derision of those beneath them then is no vice ,and may be a virtue. Theists are grounded on the will of God; atheists are grounded in their own will, and as Nietzsche understood perfectly, that will is only and always the Will to Power.

Moral-Political Lessons From Dubai

A South African drive-time disc jockey in Dubai has been fired for imitating God as part of his morning banter. (AP story here.)

He was not fired for violating Sharia Law. Dubai, one of the principal cities and one of several semi-autonomous states in the United Arab Emirates, is a diverse international community. He was fired because his irreverence, that is, his careless treatment of this divine subject matter, offended the religious sensibilities of the people who live in Dubai. He was responding to someone's failed attempt to sue God in a U.S. court. (See my post on that: "The Audacity of Suing God.") "He intended to be funny, not to offend anybody," said Arabian Radio Network Chief Operating Officer Steve Smith. "However, what he did was highly offensive to the Muslim and Christian community in the UAE."

No doubt this shocks many American readers who see it as an example of religious fundamentalism in the benighted Arab world.

But this was our world not so long ago, and I think that in that respect it was a better world. People were more self-controlled and respectful of one another when we inhabited that world.

In 1966, John Lennon had to apologize publicly for saying that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus." The remark made no impression on the British when it was first published in London's Evening Standard. But when DATEbook published the Maureen Cleave interview in America it was a huge scandal.

Lennon's full statement from the interview was this:

'Christianity will go,' he said. 'It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first-rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.'

In some ways, of course, we are a better society now than we were. We're more accepting of racial differences among us, for example. But that improvement has not grown out of our rejection of God. Indeed, the civil rights movement was, in significant measure, motivated by Christian faith.

When people turn away from God and focus on themselves, they actually dehumanize themselves and each other.


Consider this post from November 7, 2007: "An Atheist Ally of Religion? Sounds Reasonable."

Dalrymple, noting the rarity of religiously motivated cruelty, draws attention to the decency that the eternal perspective engenders in by far most people who genuinely embrace it. After quoting from a meditation by Bishop Joseph Hall (1574-1656) on contentment and self-control, Dalrymple concludes that, “moderation comes more naturally to the man who believes in something not merely higher than himself, but higher than mankind. After all, the greatest enjoyment of the usages of this world, even to excess, might seem rational when the usages of this world are all that there is.” It is at least arguable that unsentimental, atheistic rationalism leads logically to debauchery and ultimately to tyranny.

He drives home this connection between piety and moderation by comparing the genuine fruit of Christian faith with what these grumpy anti-theists have to offer:

“Let us compare Hall’s meditation “Upon the Sight of a Harlot Carted” with Harris’s statement that some people ought perhaps to be killed for their beliefs:

With what noise, and tumult, and zeal of solemn justice, is this sin punished! The streets are not more full of beholders, than clamours. Every one strives to express his detestation of the fact, by some token of revenge: one casts mire, another water, another rotten eggs, upon the miserable offender. Neither, indeed, is she worthy of less: but, in the mean time, no man looks home to himself. It is no uncharity to say, that too many insult in this just punishment, who have deserved more. . . . Public sins have more shame; private may have more guilt. If the world cannot charge me of those, it is enough, that I can charge my soul of worse. Let others rejoice, in these public executions: let me pity the sins of others, and be humbled under the sense of my own.

“Who sounds more charitable, more generous, more just, more profound, more honest, more humane: Sam Harris or Joseph Hall, D.D., late lord bishop of Exeter and of Norwich?”

Atheists of the world, Unite!

Or so one might style the intent of one Norman Levitt, over at skeptic.com (http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-05-14.html#feature) whose review ("Give Me That Old Time Irreligion") of John Paulos' new book, Irreligion: A Mathematican Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up, caught my attention. Paulos is famous--or at least known--for his entertaining, popularizing books on mathematics. But both the reviewer and Paulos, in their rationalist hubris, think they understand far more than they do.

Norman Levitt believes his case for what he claims is a recent (since mid century) recrudescence of oppressive religiosity is made by pointing out that Jefferson, Madison, and Lincoln were not fundy bible thumpers; that the 19th century had writers like Mark Twain and Ambrose Beirce; and that H.L. Mencken's skepticism and barbed wit graced the early part of the 20th. All this on the way to showing that once upon a time in America, the president did not need to bow and scrape before the "fundamentalist ayatollahs" who now, we learn from Mr Levitt, control almost all of American social, cultural, and political life. Ah, for those halcyon days when the villiage had not only its idiot, but its atheist as well!

Aside from the bizarre starting point on presidents--Chester Alan Arthur's belief was uncertain--take that, you slack-jawed, stump-toothed, snake-handling holy rollers!--Levitt's drive-by history lesson seems to establish a narrative suggesting that only in these latter days has success in the public square come at the cost to public figures of at least the appearance of some religious orthodoxy. But perhaps he didn't notice that the rise of the Religious Right in the 1980's was in response to the secularist onslaught that continues til today its death-by-a-thousand-cuts attack on all our institutions, traditions, and beliefs. Funny, I thought Gotterdammerung meant that it is all things Christian are on the run, being forced out of the town square, the public schools, courthouses, work places, even private homes, if one's church is deemed too weird. But no, true Reason, and the heroic wielders of that Reason--Norman Levitt and John Paulos--are only now braving the abuse and vitriol certain to come, and taking a stand for nihilism! Proud of their bravery in facing the abyss, they seek with Nietzchean virtue to buck up the rest of us with their bracing discovery--no god exists, and we know this because no philosophical argument can establish it. So, eat drink and be merry, for everything is...meaningless.

This leaves out of account two things. First, the proof of God's existence is not susceptible to scientific or philosophical discovery or verification. As Eric Voeglin put it, "the proof of the truth of the revelation is its content"--not a formulation likely to satisfy such as Messers Levitt and Paulos, but there it is. As Ripley was wont to say, believe it...or not. Christian theology has its proof internal to itself, and does not seek the validation of the reasoning power of the human mind, even though, pace Herr Levitt, faith in God is not anathema to reason.

The second thing is God tells us himself--that is, those of us who believe it is actually Him speaking in the Bible--that he will frustrate the wisdom of the wise, and use the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. It is thus possible that He intended the truth to be hidden in plain sight so to speak; He leaves enough clues laying around to alert people that something more than material reality is at work: one such clue would be the deep structure of order implied by the existence and ontological status of mathematics, and its uncanny correlation with discovered-- not invented--physical laws. God is both ironic and subtle: deus absconditus anyone? He has not deigned to allow any slam-dunk, mathematical or philosophical proofs of his existence. Maybe this is because He desires faith of creatures given personal responsibility and free will--"blessed is he who believes and has not seen".

Atheists like Levitt and Paulos make a mistake similar to the builders of the Tower of Babel; they attempt to reach up to heaven on the strength of their own reason, and, finding nothing there but thin air, they declare for the negative and call it a day. The pathetic shortfall of the effort would be humorous, were it not for the seriousness of the consequences. God is not mocked, even by super smart book reviewers.

Spineless in the West

OK, Sam Harris--one of the newly vocal apologists for atheism--is not someone I read often; and the Huffington Post is certainly not a site on my regular rounds. But this piece is absolutely worth reading, re: the absurd preemptive obedience and self--censorship the various organs of the Western press are wrong-footing us with vis-a-vis radical Islamism.

This war is being fought and won in the media sphere. But not by the West.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/losing-our-spines-to-save_b_100132.html

On God's Love, Nature Mumbles

I hope that you are blessed with a preacher who gives you sermons each week that are not only Biblically faithful, but also thought provoking. Mine does. He was preaching this evening on Ecclesiastes 9:1 "But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him." (ESV)

If you look out at the world, at the evidence that life provides to the observant, the reflective and the morally serious, it is clear enough that there is a God, whether you get it from the intelligent design of the universe or the unavoidably moral sentiments we feel in the face of evil. But whether that God loves us or hates us is hard to determine from what we see.

Yes, there is sunshine and friendship and compassion and self-sacrifice and the beauty with which the lilies of the field are dressed. But a quick survey of today's headlines (I did not have to dig for these) leaves a muddled message from nature. “Hezbollah rocks eastern villages.” “Violence threatens Darfur camps.” “Zimbabwe police arrest activists.” “Gaza mortar attack kills Israeli.” Even in non-political news, we read “Minivan flips on western Pennsylvania interstate; 6 killed” and “Incest Dad Was Addicted to Sex With Imprisoned Daughter.” It is all so horrifying. And natural disasters easily match the deeds of men for their human devastation. Consider the recent cyclone in Burma. “Aid agencies estimate that 100,000 have died and warn that this figure could rise to 1.5 million without provision of clean water and sanitation.”

When I lived in the small town of Walker, Iowa, there was a bitter old man there who When confronted with a local Christian apologist's "argument from nature" responded, "I could make a better world with a rough cut saw." Christopher Hitchens looks at the world and concludes that if there is a God...well, what he says is not flattering. In the Hitchens-D'Souza Debate that The King's College hosted last October (see my post, "Debating Christianity? Debate Hitchens!"), Dinesh D'Souza tried to prove by natural reason observing the natural world that Christianity is true, or at least that it is not a problem. But that approach itself is a problem, and the inspired writer of Ecclesiastes confirms this: "...the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him."

And better minds than these have found the world either fundamentally puzzling or ambiguous or even meaningless. Plato found that life under sun was fraught with tensions and unanswerable questions. Machiavelli, Bacon, and Hobbes abandoned the search for meaning in favor of comfort and security, and perhaps glory. Nietzsche proclaimed the whole thing fundamentally irrational, and suggested that we craft out of nothing whatever meaning we think that robust human existence requires.

The final word on the subject, however, belongs not to nature and history and the judgments of men, but to God. What the writer of Ecclesiastes knows to be true he knows not by sight, but by faith.

The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:11-14)

God created the world good, and he pronounced it so (Genesis 1:31). But sin brought the universe into disorder. Why should it be any wonder that the natural theology it proclaims is incoherent, or at least ambiguous? But the gospel--the good news--is that God in the person of his son Jesus Christ invaded our history. Through his death and resurrection, his grace transforms nature and perfects its message. He is re-creating the world one soul at a time, and one day the entire heaven and earth will be a new creation. The new creation is where we see the goodness of God, and we see it most unambiguously in the first fruits of that work, the Lord Jesus himself. Ecce Homo. Behold the Man. Whether you are a grumpy old man in rural Iowa, a brilliant essayist with Vanity Fair, or just a longing soul confronting your world in a search for meaning, you will find your answer not in the newspapers or in the ups and downs of your life, but in The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Dith Pran 1942-2008 on the Cambodian Holocaust

In November of 1986 at Boston College, I heard Dith Pran relate his experiences in “the killing fields” of Cambodia under the radical communist Khmer Rouge (as if communist weren’t radical enough). Many are familiar with him as the photojournalist in the 1984 Roland Joffe film, The Killing Fields. He died Sunday in New Jersey of pancreatic cancer at age 65. This is what he told us that day.

The population of Cambodia was 7 million in 1970 when Cambodia entered the Vietnam War. The Khmer Rouge took power in 1975, and by 1978 when the Vietnamese toppled them they had killed 2-3 million Cambodians, one third of the country’s population. They did this for the good of humanity.

Dith became convinced that something was monstrously wrong when the Khmer Rouge began emptying the hospitals. They also emptied the cities, abolished all institutions, even money.

To establish a truly communist society and build a new humanity, everyone whom they did not kill had to become a peasant. Put simply, the people must work the land. To reach this goal they killed off the educated class. Wearing eye glasses was sufficient indication of one's corruption by education. If you were a high official, you and your whole family were killed. Lower officials were also killed, but not their families. People would tell the Khmer Rouges what they used to do as an occupation in the hope of getting their jobs back, but they were put to death unless they were unskilled. Teachers would admit to being so because they could not imagine a country without education. These were not killed right away, but sometimes a few years later. To save his own life, Dith pretended to be an illiterate taxi driver.

Generally, people’s imagination for evil fell far short of the plans the Khmer Rouges executed. Dith said it was as though they were from another planet. But of course they were not. They share the same human nature that we do. What restrains us? What civilizes us? Whatever it is, are we preserving it, or eroding it? This question gets scant attention in our universities. (Obviously, it is a central concern at The King’s College in New York City where I teach.)

The Khmer Rouges came in both male and female form, he said. Both were brutal. People had to pull both plough and wagon. Eighty year olds had to work. Everyone who ate had to work. There was no mercy. They killed children in front of their parents. Husbands and wives were tortured in front of each other. They separated husbands, wives and children. They buried the dead in wells (the only source of water), B-52 craters and trenches.

People played stupid. “The Khmer Rouges has many eyes.” If you said, “I miss coffee” or “I miss noodle soup,” you had an imperialist, capitalist mind. When they gave you your meager food ration and asked you, “Is that enough?,” you were sure to say, “yes.”

Dith said that The Killing Fields is a very accurate account of his experiences although the film is mild compared to what actually happened because American audiences can't stomach anything stronger. I require my Introduction to Politics students to see The Killing Fields (or one of a number of other films of that sort) in order to make them dramatically aware of the stakes that are involved in political life, the dimensions of evil that can proceed from the human heart, and thus how important it is for them to understand tyranny and liberty, wise and unwise political institutions, the importance of political culture and citizen character, the dimensions of God’s amazing common grace, and where we are and in what direction we are moving on the spectrum between the Founding and the killing fields.

Of course, this is just a glimpse at the horror. Sydney Schanberg, the New York Times journalist whose life he saved, wrote The Death and Life of Dith Pran (1980). Dith himself wrote Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields: Memoirs By Survivors (Yale, 1999). Haing Ngor, a Cambodian doctor with no acting experience who played Dith in The Killing Fields, wrote Survival in the Killing Fields (2003). You may also read Dith Pran's obituary in The New York Sun.

From the "Where are We Going and Why are We in This Handbasket? Department

ITEM:
"University of Oxford researchers will spend nearly $4 million to study why mankind embraces God. The grant to the Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion will bring anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other academics together for three years to study whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankind's makeup." Here is the link: Link

Let's see...any chance they'll come back with an answer like Augustine's--that there is a God-shaped hole in every human heart? No, that's so...Medieval; or St Paul, that since in the creation of the world God's attributes are clearly seen by all, that no excuse remains? Ha....resort to the Bible? you're kidding, right?

No, Science and its first principle, materialism, is the foreground and the background here; despite the postmodernist critique of science as a "totalizing discourse", i.e., an account that claims for itself exclusive access to truth--excuse me, "truth", in the discourse of the po-mos--science and materialism is the only frame that any study group like this is going to tolerate.

This is money spent to buttress the materialist world view and push theism to the margins, and if possible off the stage. It's hard to imagine a more than token presence in the study group of anyone even neutral on the question, let alone sympathetic to, the reality of immaterial reality.

Evolutionary psychology, the hottest intellectual ticket going these days, and not theology, nor anthropology, nor philosophy, will offer the only acceptable explanation for why so many people--in the twenty-first century!--still cling to such a puzzling, antiquated "meme" (Dawkins' idiotic word). The only explanation available to evolutionary psychology goes something like this: The idea of God had survival value--everything must have survival value!--for our primitive, benighted ancestors, whose use of it quelled their fear of death so well that they surpassed their atheist numskull neighbors and competitors-for survival in the ability to pass on their theistic genes.

Oh wait, that would make today's atheists kind of like the Cavemen in the Geico ads wouldn't it?..evolutionary deadends...the appendix of human 'isms. Maybe they should be studying why mankind persists in atheism instead...

Darwinism Poisons A Few Things Too

 

Note to Christopher Hitchens and friends: Finnish school shooter, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who killed six students, a school nurse and his school principal on Wednesday before killing himself, shows that Darwinism too can poison a few things.

"I am prepared to fight and die for my cause. I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection," Auvinen said on his YouTube posting.

I'm just keeping the conversation open. Or perhaps we should drop this unprofitable line of reasoning before I have to turn to Herbert Spencer, nineteenth century social Darwinism, Margaret Sanger and (oh, why not?) Adolf Hitler.

An Atheist Ally of Religion? Sounds Reasonable.

In the recent issue of City Journal (Autumn 2007), Theodore Dalrymple contributes his thoughts on the current “epidemic of rash books” by people whom we are calling neo-atheists, people such as Daniel Dennett, A. C. Grayling, Michel Onfray, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, for whom we here at The King’s College have a special fondness – despite his efforts to discourage our affections – because he was recently our guest.

Dalrymple’s essay, “What the New Atheists Don’t See: To Regret Religion is to Regret Western Civilization,” is a deeply humane and touchingly generous consideration of the controversy. It does not surprise me to find a defense of religious faith that is eloquent and profoundly sensible. It is a refreshing surprise, however, that it comes from a self-described atheist.

While the whole essay is a delight, both intellectually and aesthetically, l will hazard injustice by sharing two of his points. First, he says that even these scribbling neo-atheists find it impossible to avoid the language of teleology. Viewing the world as having purpose appears to be inescapable for us. “I think Dennett’s use of the language of evaluation and purpose is evidence of a deep-seated metaphysical belief (however caused) that Providence exists in the universe, a belief that few people, confronted by the mystery of beauty and of existence itself, escape entirely.” The very weapons we turn against God bear the evidence of his handiwork and proclaim him.

Though these currently popular authors see the Taliban and their atrocities in every religious person, Dalrymple, noting the rarity of religiously motivated cruelty, draws attention to the decency that the eternal perspective engenders in by far most people who genuinely embrace it. After quoting from a meditation by Bishop Joseph Hall (1574-1656) on contentment and self-control, Dalrymple concludes that, “moderation comes more naturally to the man who believes in something not merely higher than himself, but higher than mankind. After all, the greatest enjoyment of the usages of this world, even to excess, might seem rational when the usages of this world are all that there is.” It is at least arguable that unsentimental, atheistic rationalism leads logically to debauchery and ultimately to tyranny.

He drives home this connection between piety and moderation by comparing the genuine fruit of Christian faith with what these grumpy anti-theists have to offer:

“Let us compare Hall’s meditation “Upon the Sight of a Harlot Carted” with Harris’s statement that some people ought perhaps to be killed for their beliefs:

With what noise, and tumult, and zeal of solemn justice, is this sin punished! The streets are not more full of beholders, than clamours. Every one strives to express his detestation of the fact, by some token of revenge: one casts mire, another water, another rotten eggs, upon the miserable offender. Neither, indeed, is she worthy of less: but, in the mean time, no man looks home to himself. It is no uncharity to say, that too many insult in this just punishment, who have deserved more. . . . Public sins have more shame; private may have more guilt. If the world cannot charge me of those, it is enough, that I can charge my soul of worse. Let others rejoice, in these public executions: let me pity the sins of others, and be humbled under the sense of my own.

“Who sounds more charitable, more generous, more just, more profound, more honest, more humane: Sam Harris or Joseph Hall, D.D., late lord bishop of Exeter and of Norwich?”

This article brought to mind my doctoral studies at Boston College (1985-92). The political science department there was a rare gathering of several political theorists and political scientists all of whom were either students of Leo Strauss, students of his best students, or deeply influenced by him. None of them was a Christian, nor even particularly religious (to my knowledge), but they respected the weight of the Christian tradition and the serious alternative that it presents to rationalism, both classical and modern. In other words, they respected the legitimacy of the Jerusalem versus Athens debate, as any seriously reflective person would. Of course, they opted for Athens, but there was nonetheless a fruitful conversation between Catholics, Protestants, Jews, agnostics and atheists. And the world is a better place for it.

Dalrymple is clearly an atheist with whom I could have a conversation, though with this particular atheist I would surely do most of the listening.

Debating Christianity? Debate Hitchens!

Miserable Old Sinner

Source: www.observer.com

We are debating all sorts of new ideas these days, from homosexual marriage to the flat tax. But strangely enough, we have also taken up debating Christianity which has been around for almost 2000 years (thousands more years if you trace it back to its seed in God's promise to Adam). Last night, The King's College, along with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and ToTheSource.org, sponsored a debate between Dinesh D'Souza and Christopher Hitchens on the question, "Is Christianity the Problem?" (The debate will be aired on BookTV (C-SPAN2), Saturday, October 27, at 7 p.m., or you can view it on The King's College webite) Of course, this debate is in response not only to Hitchens' book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, but also to a wave of angry, aggressively atheist books that argue not only that religion is delusional, but also that, for the sake of humanity, it should be wiped out and religious people should be disenfranchised.

I seriously wonder if Hitchens actually believes this stuff he spouts, or if he is largely an entertainer, something like a shock jock for the literati. He mentioned that Giuseppe Verdi, though he wrote beautiful sacred music for the Catholic Church, was himself an unbeliever. There was good money in it. It is possible that Hitchens is writing these books because they create controversy, and controversy sells books and produces lucrative speaking tours. If I am right, look for a well timed Hitchens conversion and then another series of fortune-generating books and speaking engagements.

As for the debate itself, I think that I am the only one at The King's College who thinks that Hitchens won. (Correct me if I am wrong...about being the only one, that is.) Not that I think he argued the correct position, but his arguments were more forceful and went unrefuted. He attacked Christianity on three points. God’s sovereign rule itself (God is a divine totalitarian despot who wants us groveling in slavish subservience), God’s providential ordering of history (he has watched the torture chamber that is human history, only to intervene much too late with a solution that only compounds the problem), and the redemptive work of Christ in his death and resurrection (barbaric, sadistic nonsense). D’Souza had nothing to say in response. He offered ad hominim arguments (Hitchens hates God) and some charges of logical inconsistency (Hitchens traces the horrors of modern totalitarianism back to Christianity where he lays the blame, but does not trace his own moral sentiments to the same source, as he ought, and offer praise). But his opponent’s blasphemous charges lay untouched.

This is the poverty of classical, evidentialist apologetics. D’Souza restricted himself from the outset to naturalistic arguments, foreswearing reference to Scripture. He caged the lion. For his part, Hitchens, who knows all those arguments, used the Bible freely. A good student or Cornelius Van Til with a presuppositionalist apologetic would have struck at the root of the disagreement, and had this guy for breakfast, as formidable as he is. Hitchens’ attack was at the biblical and theological level, where the Christian should have had the advantage. (“The cross is monstrous? Yes it is! Because sin is monstrous! You know it is!”) Had D’Souza presented a biblically more sophisticated and theologically more substantive rebuttal, he could have educated the audience and exposed Hitchens as the straw man slayer that he is. Instead, he wasted his time with discussions about science and the laws of nature, and with various sociological, consequentialist defenses. (Look at all the hospitals, and see how we abolished slavery.) Of course D'Souza made many excellent points, though Hitchens ably countered many of them. But D'Souza was defending the religion while Hitchens was attacking the faith.

Source: www.stanfordreview.org

But this also is worth mentioning. I was struck during the debate with how cheerful D'Souza seemed and how clearly miserable Hitchens is. After the debate, one of my students asked him if he is happy. He said no, but his goal is not to be happy. Of course, that is nonsense. Everyone seeks happiness, even if sometimes perversely in self-indulgent grumpiness. Someone else remarked on his continuous drinking. He said that he drinks so that the people around him will appear more interesting than they are. So he hates life and he generally dislikes the people with whom he has to share it. But it is religion that poisons everything. If religion, or even the Lord himself, is not the source of well-being in this world, Christopher Hitchens cannot offer anything in himself or in his experience as an alternative.

In the Q&A, another of my students, a mature student from Tonga, posed one of the best questions of the evening to Prof. Hitchens. He said that before Christianity came to his region, people in Figi were eating each other and on his own island...well, all he said was "what a mess!" He then asked, "If you had arrived there first, what would you have offered us in place of Christianity." Hitchens did not answer the question, but instead returned to an earlier rant against God for leaving such people in misery without intervening with effective relief. That silence in response to the student's simple challenge spoke volumes to anyone who was listening.


Let me repeat, you can view the debate on The King's College website at www.tkc.edu/debate/

The last word goes to the Lord (as of course in the end it will):

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart."

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (I Cornthians 1:18-25 ESV)

America's Evangelical Future

According to secularization theory, as education, science and enlightenment progress, people should become more rational and less religious. Observe Europe, for example. But in that observation don't go back 70 years to the most philosophically and scientifically sophisticated nation in the world sunk in the darkest night of evil fanaticism. But I digress.

Today, the United States is a mighty engine of scientific research and technological innovation. Surely, according to the secularization theory of human progress, we should be a thoroughly secular nation, almost indistinguishable from France, our old ally from the revolutionary era. Not so! Arthur C. Brooks tells us ("Our Religious Destiny," Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2007, p.A11) that the following decades in America will see a growth of religious observance, and perhaps also a fundamentally religious view of the world. What are enlightened souls like Sam Harris to do in the face of this? They either flee their hopelessly Puritan homeland to enjoy the demystified life in secular Britain -- at least until it becomes an Islamic state, no doubt with the help of Charles when he is briefly king -- or they stay and fight.

That fight will be what Brooks calls a "tough slog," however, because religious people have demographics on their side.

A secular nation needs secular citizens. And nonreligious Americans are outstandingly weak when it comes to the most efficacious way to achieve this: by having kids.
If you picked 100 adults out of the population who attended their house of worship nearly every week or more often, they would have 223 children among them, on average, according to the 2006 General Social Survey. Among 100 people who attended less than once per year or never, you would find just 158 kids. This 41% fertility gap between religious and secular people is especially meaningful because people tend to worship more or less like their parents.

Of course some of those church attenders are liberal mainline Protestants and so forth who are no threat to a secular America. Brooks comes around to the political aspect, however.

Religious people who call themselves politically "conservative" or "very conservative" are having, on average, an astounding 78% more kids than secular liberals. Studies show that people are even more likely to vote like their parents than they are to worship like them.

A recent book by Lauren Sandler, Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement (Penguin, 2006), provides interesting statistics.

1. Age of born-again Christians most likely to have engaged in evangelical behavior in 2004: 18-20-year-olds (88 %)
2. Percentage of high school students who support prayer in public school: 84
3. Percentage greater than Americans overall: 8
4. Percentage of entering college freshmen who attend church: 81
5. Percentage greater than Americans overall: 15
6. Percentage increase in total enrollment for all public four-year colleges and universities from 1990 to 2004: 12.8
7. Percentage increase in enrollment at the 102 campuses that are members of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities, a group that works to advance Christ-centered higher education by relating scholarship and service to "biblical truth": 70.6
8. Increase in sales of religious music from 1989 to 2005: 318%
9. Estimated number of Christian music festivals held in the summer of 2000 attended by more than 5,000 youths: 5
10. ...and in summer 2005: 35

Sam Harris, atheist firebreather and author of Letter to a Christian Nation, says of Sandler's book, "If you have any doubt there is a culture war that must be won by secularists in America, read this book." Despite what Harris would have us think, Sandler, an atheist from Cambridge MA and now Life Editor for Salon.com in New York, is sympathetic toward, but ultimately unpersuaded by the subjects of her study.

In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Sandler shared, "The people I met showed me that the

need for what they have—the rigid structure of the lifestyle, the intense community—is deep among this generation. They want an alternative to mainstream culture, and they believe they are the true radicals out there. So Christianity spreads by being cool." Reflecting on the the Evangelical youth movement as a whole, Sandler observes, "A lot of people simply can't find what they are looking for in the secular world."

If what Brooks and Sandler report is accurate, the work of academically serious and spiritually ambitious institutions like The King's College in New York where I teach will become increasingly important in bringing that rising generation from explosive youthful enthusiasm into mature, biblically faithful, prudent adult accomplishment. And, God willing, the world will be better because of it…for everyone.

Religious Cleansing by Illiberal Liberals? Why Not?

Imagine that you are a Jew in Germany in the 1930s. You are going about your business as you always do, but you start to notice that some people are protesting very loudly that you and your kind are the embodiment of evil and a grave threat to civilization. We have been hearing such shouts this past year from a spate of anti-religious authors who are most beside themselves with rage when fulminating against Christianity and the biblical God.

If it were up to Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and several others,* Christian religion as well as the thinking it engenders would be illegal and vigorously suppressed. That, at any rate, is where their rhetoric leads. As they describe religion in general and Christianity in particular, it is simply institutionalized hatred. It is easy to imagine the Supreme Court one day exempting Christianity from the protections of the first amendment with statements like, "This cannot be dignified with the name of religion. This is nothing other than organized hatred: hatred toward religion and atheism alike; hatred toward neighbor and children alike. These doctrines and ways do not merit the protection of law. Rather, law itself was instituted to protect the public against evils such as this." Any legal mind that can find constitutional protection for murdering babies as they are being born is capable of embracing this kind of legal "reasoning" as well. It's not a stretch.

Of course, these writers are only saying overtly what we see portrayed on television all the time. In "Backward atheist soldiers!" (WORLD June 30/July 7, 2007; pp. 58-60), Marvin Olasky reports a New York Times writer saying, "Harris writes what a sizable number of us think, but few are willing to say." But the liberal media elite say it all the time. Christians, especially evangelicals, are regularly depicted as Dawkins et al. describe them: greedy, hateful and utterly miserable people who are just itching to overthrow liberal democracy and establish a new Age of Darkness...something like a Taliban regime, but more universal and without the international charm.

Alister & Joanna McGrath, in The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine (IVP), detect "a whiff of panic" in all of this. "Until recently, Western atheism has waited patiently, believing that belief in God would simply die out." Thomas Jefferson, who took the liberty of editing the New Testament to include only the true parts, thus excluding the virgin birth and the resurrection, expected that by the 19th century, religion would have become so enlightened and rationalistic that everyone would be a Unitarian. He was disappointed. The rampant atheism represented in these books goes beyond disappointment to loathing, fear and open warfare.

Every Christmas and Easter, the major news magazines faithfully produce their cover stories asking who Jesus "was" and telling us, on the basis of respectable liberal scholarship, that he was not who the Bible and our pastors tell us he "is." Why do they do this, and so consistently? After the 2000 presidential election, I noticed a sharp increase in media efforts to enlighten the public on the evils of Christian religion. Christians (along with the Supreme Court and the dark arts) put George W. Bush in the White House. George W. Bush is a mortal threat to liberty, enlightenment and world peace. Therefore Christians are a mortal threat to liberty, enlightenment and world peace. As if Ronald Reagan weren't enough! Will and Grace started playing almost continuously. Law and Order started portraying Christians as something like Nazis in a bad mood.

So what are we to make of this? And where does this lead?

The "religious cleansing," shall we call it, to which this demagoguery leads has precedent. There were various persecutions in the early centuries of the church's life.

1. Persecution under Nero (c. 64-68).
2. Persecution under Domitian (r. 81-96).
3. Persecution under Trajan (112-117). Christianity is outlawed, but Christians are not sought out.
4. Persecution under Marcus Aurelius (r. 161-180).
5. Persecution under Septimus Severus (202-210).
6. Persecution under Decius (250-251). Christians are actively sought out by requiring public sacrifice. Could buy certificates (libelli) instead of sacrificing. Bishops of Rome, Jerusalem and Antioch are martyred.
7. Persecution under Valerian (257-59).
8. Persecution under Maximinus the Thracian (235-38).
9. Persecution under Aurelian (r. 270–275).
10. Severe persecution under Diocletian and Galerius (303-324). (www.religionfacts.com/christianity/history/persecution.htm)

Religionfacts.com also writes: "Pliny, a Roman governor writing circa 110 AD, called Christianity a "superstition taken to extravagant lengths." Similarly, the Roman historian Tacitus called it "a deadly superstition." (Hitchens calls it poisonous.) Christians were accused of cannibalism (on account of the Eucharist) and sexual license (on the basis of rumor that they loved each other). They were also blamed for the fall of Rome, a charge in response to which Augustine of Hippo wrote his classic, The City of God.


But fear not little church!

1. We have the sovereign creator God on our side. His enemies may strike out in panic, but his children can respond with calm assurance of what we read in Psalm 2: "Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?... He who sits in the heavens laughs... Blessed are all who take refuge in him." (vv. 1, 4, 12; ESV)

2. We have reason on our side. God made the world a rational place (that's why the sun comes up each morning and why the light goes on when you flip the switch), and so, in public debate, honest inquiry is on our side. Despite all the talk about post-modernity, a good argument still carries weight.

3. Even if God were to allow persecution (real, boot-in-the-face, let-goods-and-kindred-go persecution), it would only purify and strengthen the church, as it has done in times past and still does in many parts of the world today.

4. But even short of such seemingly fictional times (though they don't seem to fictional in places where Christians are pillaged and killed for their faith, places like Iraq, Pakistan, Eritrea, Sudan, North Korea and, recently, Turkey), these volleys open opportunities for public discussion of the gospel, it's claims and consequences. This is an apologetic opportunity. ("Apologetics," from the Greek apologia, are the rational, public defense of the faith.) Thus we see several books published in response to these. I have mentioned the McGrath book, but there is also Doug Wilson's Letter from a Christian Citizen (American Vision) along with several others like it. As the war on Christianity moves into this overt stage, Christians will seize this opportunity to expose the fallacies, correct the record and proclaim the good news. And because Christ is risen and reigning, we can do with arresting charity.

* Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin); Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great (Twelve); Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf); also Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (Free Press) and others.