Believers argue faith is a means of acquiring knowledge. Non-believers maintain that the source of knowledge springs from evidence. Which position makes sense? I attempt to answer in the following brief essay.
Faith and reason are incompatible. There is no room in reason for faith, and there is no room in faith for reason. (1) They are diametrically opposed. Reason is the faculty by which man identifies and integrates the material provided by or ultimately provided by his senses. Its method is called logic, which is the art of non-contradictory identification. "Reason integrates man's perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions," wrote Ayn Rand in "Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World"; she continued: "thus raising man's knowledge from the perceptual level, which he shares with animals, to the conceptual level, which he alone can reach. The method which reason employs in this process is logic—and logic is the art of non-contradictory identification." She defined: "Reason is the perception of reality, and rests on a single axiom: the Law of Identity. - "Philosophy: Who Needs It" p.62. Reasoning is validated by observing that knowledge is derived from conceptions and that conceptions, in turn, are derived from perception. Actual measurable concrete observed existents related by valid logic lead to objective recognition of the facts of reality .
Mysticism, however, is the acceptance of allegations without evidence, against one's own reasoning, often despite the presence of evidence to the contrary. Its method is called faith, which is a short-circuit and abrogation of the mind. It is the numbing of one's own perception of existence and ultimately the rejection of one's own right to live. "Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as "instinct," "intuition," "revelation," or any form of "just knowing." Mysticism is the claim to the perception of some other reality—other than the one in which we live—whose definition is only that it is not natural, it is supernatural, and is to be perceived by some form of unnatural or supernatural means." - Rand, (ibid p.62)
If evidence is available to support a claim, then a validating appeal to reason alleviates need for faith, then there is no need to dispense with the requirement of evidence in order to accept the claim as true. Exclusively, if there is no evidence in support of a claim and acceptance of the claim as justified knowledge is desired, then only by dismissing the requirement for evidential support, and accepting the claim in spite of the lack of evidence by "faith" can the claim be accorded truth status. Essentially, the process of believing by "faith" is a method of self-deceit. The Christian depends on a mystical epistemology of "faith". However, the Christian would, if there were evidence to support her claim that 'god exists', have no need to appeal to faith. She could appeal to reason, and since reason is a method based on perceptually ascertaining reality, her knowledge would be validated. Faith would then necessarily be a fallacy.
In Hebrews 11:1 faith is described: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." What is meant by "substance of things hoped for"? What is meant by "evidence of things not seen"?
Can such a thing as 'substance' originating from hopes actually exist? Only if consciousness can create, modify, or manipulate reality. But that is impossible, for consciousness is merely an awareness of existence. "If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something." - Ayn Rand via Galt's speech in "For The New Intellectual" p.124
Rand's great insight that frees the minds of Humanity from the tyranny of Christianity, and indeed all religion, is that "Existence exists". Instantiated existing things cannot be 'created', for nothing comes from nothing; something cannot come from nothing. Conservation of Mass-Energy is fixed reality. Matter and energy may change form, but new matter does not suddenly appear from nothing as is predicated by Christianity. Living beings are manufactured by nature, using components, in the form of molecules, which already exist; our bodies put us together. That is why we eat regularly. Our bodies use nutrients consumed to foster the development of our tissues. Our bodies are not created. A pregnant woman is referred to as "eating for two" when she takes her meals. The nutrients she consumes are used both for her body, and for the body growing and being manufactured within her. No organism that ever lived, is living, or ever will live was, is, or will be created. Judging by that, the notion of 'hope' springing forth into 'substance' makes no sense.
Regarding ' faith as evidence of things not seen'? If something cannot be detected by sensory perception or instrumentation, then in what sense is evidence present? Information provided by our senses or instrumentation is necessary to claim that we have evidence. It may be objected that various phenomena that cannot be detected by the senses may still be admitted as evidence. In such cases, it is argued that the phenomena at question is inferred by other means and that employing logic and the Law of Causality empowers the reasoning mind to inductively infer modally following conclusions. I contest the contrary, that immaterial entities that cannot be detected by the senses or instruments exist, by noting that reasoning is based in the perception of reality. Mental constructs, objects of thought, with no corresponding reference to reality cannot be conceptualized. The nature of conceptual knowledge requires the knowing mind, the subject of thought, to generalize from shared attributes and traits an encompassing definition to supply meaning that can be used as the concept. Inductively inferring from pure rationalism or imagination circumvents the process of concept formation. The inability to conceptualize undetectable phenomena is fatal to the notion that inductive inference can justify acceptance of what can only be described as "the imaginary" as evidence. Those who disregard the necessity of using concepts in knowledge do so by committing an epistemological reversal. They give priority to their own consciousness as the subjects of thought while disregarding reality that entails the priority of objective existence. Information about existence is perceptually acquired. Assigning the subject of thought priority over objective sensory perceptions of actual existence is called subjectivism. Doing so in regards to metaphysical ontology, is referred to as metaphysical subjectivism and is the basis of all religion and superstition.
Is this what Hebrews 11:1 meant by 'evidence of things not seen'? Did the writer of Hebrews mean things that can be evidenced by appeals to our other senses or instrumentation? Or, did he mean imaginative thinking? I speculate to the later. But no amount of wishing will accomplish anything for anybody. In order to reach any kind of goal in reality, human beings must use their innate reasoning ability and do work in actual existence.
To assert the contrary, that faith is superior to reason, is to presuppose, by faith, a vast array of propositions. Circular special pleading and gross question begging may operate to sooth the emotional needs of the religious acolyte, but in so doing they commit the fallacy of the stolen concept. "First identified by Ayn Rand, it is the fallacy of using a concept while denying the validity of its genetic roots, i.e., of an earlier concept(s) on which it logically depends." - Leonard Peikoff "editor's footnote to Ayn Rand's "Philosophical Detection," - "Philosophy : Who Needs It". p.22 The advocate of faith over reason steals the conceptions of reality and causality while denying the genetic roots of existence. This they do to assert the primacy of their fantasy of a ruling consciousness. Thus faith is a method whereby Christian believers are able to deceive themselves.
What is the nature of god-belief. Is it distinguishable from imagination? Can the god believer describe a method whereby another person may reliably distinguish any difference between what they believe god to be and what they imagine as god? (2) Indeed, what is the difference between belief and imagination? Belief is defined as "any cognitive content held as true - a vague idea in which some confidence is placed - confidence in the truth or existence of something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof ." Imagining is defined as "to form a mental image of something not actually present to the senses". From these, it is readily apparent that imagination plays the dominant role in god belief.
Invisible magic beings existing in other realms and communicating with people is surely just as vague an idea as it is an idea not susceptible to rigorous proof. God is defined, as an infinite, personal being that interacts with humans and nature, that is transcendent, omnipresent, supernatural, and immaterial. To be a personal being is to be finite, yet God is defined as infinite. To be transcendent is to be non-spatial, lacking dimensions or location and non-temporal, lacking duration. To be omnipresent is to be everywhere, but to be transcendent is to be nowhere. Supernatural means the negation of all that is natural and thus to not be part of nature and to lack any ability to interact with nature; it is to be other than matter, energy or fields. But God is defined as a being interactive with nature and thus must be matter, energy or fields. Special Relativity informs humanity that E=MC^2 and thus matter and energy are equated in proportion to C^2. Immaterial means to be other than material, other than matter or energy. By virtue of self-contradiction, God is certainly vague. God then is defined as a vague contradiction that has no location, no dimensions, no duration, no ability to interact with nature, no mass, and no energy. This is the ontological equivalent of nothingness.
Placing confidence in and assigning truth status to the ontological equivalent of nothingness as a personal being of infinite scope is the ultimate act of accepting something not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof. Entirely such an action must take place by forming a mental image of something not actually present to the senses since there is nothing in nature that indicates that such beings as gods might exist or from which a concept of "god" may be formed. From these considerations, it is readily apparent that god belief stems from the subjective imagination. (1) Anton Thron, Tindrbox Files: 22. Reason vs. Faith? Rights vs. Religion? (2) Dawson Bethrick, Incinerating Presuppositionalism blog, My Chat with a Presuppositionalist
Postscript: The writings of Anton Thorn at "Objectivist Atheology" (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Sparta/1019/Thorn2.html) and Dawson Bethrick at ""Incinerating Presuppositionalism" blog" (http://bahnsenburner.blogspot.com) have been of great assistence to me in understanding the value and advantage of Objectivism. For whatever it may be worth, I strongly recommend their blogs and essays. The material in this essay is largely drawn on my understanding of their work. I thank them for their efforts, and acknowledge that by standing on their foundations, I am able to present a better quality of writing and ideas than I would be able to by my own reasoning.
Sermon Title: “The Rooster, God’s Alarm Clock” Date Presented: February 4, 2007 Message Delivered By: Farmer Hank From The Series: “Sermons by Farmer Hank” Theme: Hymn #201, “Is It For Me, Dear Savior” Thesis: God guides and directs us and gives evidence of his creative power and direction in nature. Sinners can’t see it. Only the righteous can see it. Sermon Transcribed By: Judith Miller, church secretary, Oakwood Baptist Church:
As the people of God, we look for spiritual things in nature. Conveniently, God has enabled us to see what no one else can see. Even if it’s not there, we see it. That’s why we’re Christians. We’re special and God loves us more than everyone else in the whole wide world. And there is one thing in nature that is a sure testimony of God. The Lord led me to this conclusion earlier this week when I was hoeing in the garden, plantin’ tomaters. The Lord told me to preach a sermon on the rooster.
Roosters are like fruit trees—when we see that they are beneficial to mankind, we just assume that God made them for us. We assume that the fruit put on that tree was put there solely for our benefit. The evolutionists say that fruit is merely nature’s way of reproducing the plant, which is why there are seeds in the fruit itself. But we know, as educated Christians, that God made that fruit for us. We just know it because the Bible says it. We have no other way of knowing anything. Not even the senses can convince us of something that is not in the Bible, and we hate reason and science, so don’t bother trying to convince us with either of those. They are the enemies of God. [At this point, Farmer Hank hawks a loogy and briefly coughs]
Now think about the rooster for a moment. He crows in the morning, which tells us to get up and get our britches on, and to go out to feed the pigs and the hens. How does the rooster know to crow at the same time every morning? Because God told him to! That right there is proof-positive that Jesus Christ is creator of the entire universe, because he made roosters to tell us when to get up! It’s just right to get up early in the morning, to put your overalls on, and not be lazy and sleep in like some sluggard (Proverbs 6:6-9), and we farmers know that better than anyone else. This is why southern, white, Christian farmers tend to be so close to God.
And that’s another thing; we work hard for our sustenance, which happens to include chickens. We eat chicken abortions for our pleasure, but we preach that human abortions are wrong at all costs, which is why we voted for Bush twice! And even though the evolutionists keep telling us we are an odd species because we are the only species who drinks the milk of another animal as a source of nutrients well into our old age, we still know that God gave us cows to milk and to eat. It’s in the Bible, so it has to be true. [Loud “AMENS” from the crowd]
We have no problem killing a once-living being for food, for clothing, for saddles, or just for our pleasure so that we people with missing teeth can look at each other and senselessly grin. Any reason to kill is ok. Our minds are eased in killing lesser lifeforms because it’s in the Bible that we can do it, and no one ever takes as much delight in killing as when God says the killing is acceptable. And kill we do and will continue to do! We kill for food, for putting big trophies with horns up on our walls (and on the front of our Cadillacs), for rugs, and for oil overseas—and if the law would stay off our backs, we’d kill the gays too. God has been gracious enough to enlighten the eyes of a few of his children, not only to see that without Jesus, we’re all worthless sinners who are going straight to hell, but to see the purposes God has for all of his creations, just like the rooster.
For instance, we see that clouds are inspiring to artists and painters and poets, and that means God made them for that purpose—to stimulate our big brains. We know why pigs were made; they were made to be killed and cooked and cut-up to flavor the beans. And iron was put in the earth to make hoes, rakes, and especially rifles out of. Without rifles, we couldn’t have the National Rifle Association, could we? The NRA is only one tiny step behind the church in holiness and importance, I’ll have you know! [Countless and loud “AMENS” from the whole congregation]
God has given us many other things too, like pretty flowers for sending to sweet sisters in Christ, like Leanne Simmons, who recently lost her husband, and Ima May Anderson, whose husband suffered his third heart attack this week alone. Flowers are God’s way of saying, “I may not be willing to heal you of your painful ailments, my child, but I sure will engage your sense of beauty to help you forget about it for the moment!” That’s our God for you—always willing to help us out on the little things, but never a once in the ways that matter most! He’ll heal a heart murmur or a headache, but never an amputee! But, he’s the only God we got, so we still have to worship him or we’ll get the boot! And God is not the enemy here. It’s the evolutionist who is the enemy. The evolutionist tells us that flowers were originally ugly, and that all the beautiful flowers are man-made.
Evolutionists are just stupid. They actually think that the entire universe came from yarn, which is why we hear so much today about “String Theory.” It’s a bunch of hogwash, that’s what it is! They say that the horse evolved from a small, scrawny, five-toed, fox-like creature that eventually grew larger, but that’s a bunch of hooey. We know that God created everything exactly as it appears today. The horse was created instantaneously and made to be ridden, just like pappy’s Model-T and Dixie Lee’s old International truck that sits up on blocks in her driveway like it has been for the last 8 years. If horses had been created small, how would Abraham and Moses have gotten around? They didn’t have dependable Fords and Chevys like we do today.
What we often forget is, this is our world, and God wants us to get around it and conquer it. God doesn’t care about animals anymore than he cared about injuns when they had this land. That’s why the good Lord ripped it right out of their hands and gave it to us! He cares about us using the animals on this land too. He wants us to ride them, and then when we’re done, to use them again in large, industrial farming efforts so that they are systematically and cruelly served up as food, so that our young Sallies and Daisys and Tommys and Bobbys can grow up big and strong and become red-faced, mashed potato-eating cowgirls and boys, who eat off of the serving spoons at church potluck dinners, and who wear truly massive belt buckles and hats just like we wear. And that’s another thing; if God didn’t want us to eat mashed potatoes and gravy, why would he have invented butter or flour? No evolutionist can answer that. And someone please tell me, if God didn’t want us to wipe our rear-ends with them, why did he make plants like lilies and elephant ears? There’s not an evolutionist alive who can answer that! [More “AMENS” heard from the audience]
Come on! Think about it; if God didn’t want us to swim and fish, why would he have made rivers and ponds? If he didn’t want us to herd sheep, why did he give them wool? If God didn’t want us to be impressed with his extravagant creativity, why did he make such pretty stars and those dead, worthless planets that revolve around them? If God didn’t want us to make and enjoy beer, why did he make porches, lawn chairs, and tailgates for us to sit outside on with our buddies as we admire the confederate flag?
Christians, the point has been made: Jesus loves you and he created this entire universe for you, and not for any other reason. All those distant stars and worlds and galaxies that God created, he really doesn’t care about, just like the salmon as he futilely swims upstream. Why, the entire Whirlpool Galaxy doesn’t even matter as much as the spittoon at your papaw’s favorite liquoring hole. What God really cares about is you, little old you. Isn’t that nice? [“AMENS” from all parts of the crowd]
For centuries, Christians believed that the heavenly few would see and even rejoice at the sufferings of hell’s multitude. As Paul Johnson [himself a defender of Christianity] admitted in A History of Christianity, “This displeasing notion was advanced and defended with great tenacity over several centuries, and was one of the points Catholics and orthodox Calvinists had in common.”
The idea is still being defended today in Trevor C. Johnson's thesis composed for his master's degree in Biblical Studies at Reformed Theological Seminary in 2004. (Johnson is also a loving and faithful Christian missionary, husband, and parent serving the Lord in a potentially dangerous mission field.) I would like some Evangelical Christian apologists on the web to read Johnson's master's thesis which is now online (and also offered at amazon.com -- note the three positive reviews from fellow Christians), and explain either why you agree with it, or disagree with it, and if you disagree, how such a notion came to be derived from various Biblical stories and verses, and also came to be defended from the philosophical necessity of heaven's occupants remaining joyful (no tears in heaven) and knowledgable concerning God's decisions, and view such decisions as praiseworthy such that there are not the least bit of doubt nor lack of joy at viewing such decisions in action.
Anyone here remember this case? A 15-month old girl died from an infection that could have been easily treated with antibiotics because her family refused to get her medical treatment, instead relying upon the promises of healing made in the Bible with the blessings of their Followers of Christ church. Well, her 16-year old cousin and fellow member of the Followers of Christ congregation just died from a condition that could have been treated with a simple catheter. Another tragic example of what happens when you trust in the supernatural to deal with mundane issues, and a ready rebuttal to the people who drop by and ask "If religion is false, why do you get so worked up about it?" I know I often challenge people to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to their faith and to rely on God for their mundane needs, but please, don't ever take me up on that challenge.
Below are a pair of letters exchanged between the philosopher Baruch Spinoza and a young friend who had converted to an evangelical form of Catholicism (so evangelical that the young man almost sounds like a modern day Evangelical Christian, especially at the end of one paragraph in which he tells Spinoza, "Give in, turn away from your errors and your sins; put on humility and be born again," or in another place when he compares the evidence for the truth of his beliefs with the evidence that "Julius Caesar lived," or when he writes of the "wretched and restless life of Atheists").
Their exchange -- on the topic of Christianity versus Spinoza's philosophy -- parallels today's feisty (at times firey) debates on the internet (and in places makes one chuckle at the young man's endorsement of a few supernatural tales no longer heard these days, such as "the restoration of plants and flowers in a glass phial after they have been burnt; Sirens; pygmies very frequently showing themselves, according to report, in mines." (I mean who can explain that last one? Perhaps the translator messed up and should have used the word "dwarf" -- as in the dwarfs who lived in mountains per "Lord of the Rings" -- instead of "pygmies?") Goethe, the famed German poet and natural philosopher, declared that Spinoza's correspondence with his friends and disciples was "the most interesting book one could read in the world of uprightness and humanity." But first... a little background before presenting Burgh's letter and Spinoza's reply.
Born in 1632, Spinoza lived most of his life at The Hague, earning a bare subsistence as a lens grinder, yet his works influenced Descartes, Leibnitz, Hobbes and many among others (even Einstein compared his "God" to Spinoza's ideas of God). Spinoza helped give birth to modern biblical criticism and to the idea of separation of church and state. He was also focused on philosophy so much that neither wealth, fame, nor even marriage, could tear him away, much like some ancient Greek philosophers.
When a prince, the Elector of Palatine, offered Spinoza a professorship in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg and thus promised him freedom from financial cares, Spinoza, unwilling to make any promise to refrain from "disturbing the publicly established religin," graciously but firmly refused. When Louis XIV of France offered him a pension, in return for the dedication of his next book, he again refused. Obstinately, but quietly, serenely, even graciously and elegantly, Spinoza rejected the advice of "worldlings and careerists" and spurned "the spurious immortality of popular acclamation." The easy security of a comfortable post offered by His Electoral Highness or His Imperial Majesty could not lure him. The truth Spinoza sought woudl be found only in solitude -- and besides he needed every year, every day, every precious hour to finish his Ethics, undistracted by fame, free from royal favor.
Spinoza's integrity met the supreme test when he was cast out from the Jewish religion and reviled by the synagogue of his forefathers for heresies springing from his thirst for truth. His denial of immortality won him the hatred alike of Jews and Christians.
The only books published by Spinoza in his lifetime were The Pinciples of Cartesian Philosophy (1663) and Tractatus Theologico-Politicus: A Critical Inquiry Into the History, Purpose, and Authenticity of the Hebrew Scriptures, which appeared anonymously in 1670. This was promptly honored with a place in the Index Expurgatorius -- a list of books banned by the Catholic Church; it dates back to 1559 and was prompted not so much by the occult but by the rise of Protestantism.
Spinoza had many friends among the influential governing classes at The Hague. Among them was Conrad Burgh, one of the wealthiest citizens of Amsterdam, who in 1666 (the "666" being merely a coincidence) held office as Treasurer General of the United Netherlands. His son, Albert Burgh, was a pupil of Spinoza. Young Burgh continued his study of philosophy in Italy, and finally turned to the Catholic faith with fanatical zeal. Burgh's family was disturbed by this and persuaded Spinoza to write to Albert.
When Spinoza's books were banned by the civic authorities, many of his friends and disciples carried on the resulting theological controversy both in person and by correspondence. Spinoza received many letters "intended to reform him." Typical of them was the one he rec'd from young Albert Burgh, his old friend and former pupil -- a letter tyhan some students of church history believe was officially prompted or at least encouraged by the ecclesiastical authorities of the time.
YOUNG ALBERT BURGH TO SPINOZA:
"...YOU WRETCHED LITTLE MAN, VILE WORM OF THE EARTH, AY, ASHES, FOOD FOR WORMS..."
To The Very Learned and Acute Baruch Spinoza:
Many Greetings.
When Leaving my country, I promised to write to you if anything noteworthy occurred during my journey. Since, now, an occasion has presented itself, an one, indeed, of the greatest importance, I discharge my debt, and write to inform you that, through the infinite Mercy of God, I have been restored to the Catholic Church, and have been made a member thereof [later Burgh even entered the Franciscan Order--E.T.B.]. You may learn the particulars of the step from a letter which I have sent to the distinguished and accomplished Professor Craanen of Leyden. I will therefore, now only add a few remarks for your special benefit.
The more I formerly admired you for your penetration and acuteness of mind, the more do I now weep for you and deplore you; for although you are a very talented man, and have received a mind adorned by God with brilliant gifts, and are a lover of truth, indeed eager for it, yet you suffer yourself to be led astray and deceived by the wretched and most haughty Prince of evil Spirits. For, all your philosophy, what is it but a mere illusion and a Chimera? Yet you stake on it not only your peace of mind in this life, but also the eternal salvation of your soul. See on what a miserable foundation all your interests rest.
You assume that you have discovered the true philosophy. How do you know that your philosophy is the best of all that ever have been taught in the world, are now being taught, or ever shall be taught? Passing over what may be devised in the future, have you examined all the philosophies, ancient as well as modern, that are taught here, and in India, and everywhere throughout the whole world?
Even if you have duly examined them, how do you know that you have chosen the best? You will say: "My philosophy is in harmony with right reason; other philosophies are not." But all other philosophers except your own followers disagree with you, and with equal right say of their philosophy what you say of yours, accusing you, as you do them, of falsity and error. It is clear therefore, that before the truth of your philosophy can be made manifest you must put forth arguments not common to other philosophies, but which can be applied to yours alone. Otherwise you must admit that your philosophy is as uncertain and as worthless as the rest.
However, restricting myself to that book of yours with an impious title (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus) and taking your philosophy together with your theology, for you yourself blend them altogether with diabolic cunning, you pretend to show that each is separate from the other, and that they have different principles, I proceed thus--
Perhaps you will say: "Others have not read Holy Scripture so often as I have; and it is from Holy Scripture, the acknowledgment of which distinguishes Christians from the rest of the world, that I prove my doctrines." But how? "By comparing the clear passages with the more obscure I explain Holy Scripture, and out of my interpretations frame dogmas, or else confirm those that are already produced in my brain."
But I adjure you seriously to consider what you say. How do you know that you have correctly applied your method, or again, that your method is sufficient for the interpretation of Holy Scripture, and that you are thus interpreting Holy Scripture on a sound basis? Especially since Catholics say, and it is very true, that the whole Word of God is not given in writing, so that Holy Scripture cannot be explained through Holy Scripture alone, I will not say, by one man, but not even by the Church itself, which is sole authorized interpreter. For the Apostolic traditions must likewise be consulted. This is proved from Holy Scripture itself, and by the testimony of the Holy Fathers, and it is in accord not only with right reason but also with experience. Thus, as your first principles are most false and lead to perdition, what will become of all your doctrine, built up and supported on so rotten a foundation?
So then, if you believe in Christ crucified, acknowledge your most evil heresy, recover from the perversion of your nature, and be reconciled with the Church.
For do you prove your views in a way that is diferent from that in which all the Heretics who have left God's Church in the past, or are leaving it now, or will leave it in the future, have done, do, or will do? For they all employ the same principle as you do, that is they make use of Holy Scripture alone for the formation and confirmation of their dogmas.
Do not flatter yourself because, perhaps, the Calvinists, or the so-called Reformers, or the Lutherans, or the Mennonites, or the Socinians, etc., cannot refute your doctrine: for all these, as has already been said, are as wretched as you are, and, like you, are seated in the shadow of death.
If you do not believe in Christ you are more wretched than I can say. But the remedy is easy. Turn away from your sins and consider the deadly arrogance of your wretched and insane reasoning. You do not believe in Christ. Why? You will say: "Because the teaching and the life of Christ, and also the Christian teaching concerning Christ are not at all in harmony with my principles, nor is the doctrine of Christians about Christ consistent with my doctrine." But I repeat, do you then dare to think yourself greater than all those who have ever arisen in the State or Church of God, than the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, Doctors, Confessors, and Holy Virgins innumerable, and in your blasphemy, even than Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself? Do you alone surpass all these in doctrine, in manner of life, in every respect? Will you, wretched little man, vile worm of the earth, ay, ashes, food of worms, dare, in your unspeakable blasphemy, to put yourself above the Incarnate, Infinite Wisdom of the Eternal Father? Will you alone, consider yourself wiser and greater than all those who from the beginning of the world have belonged to the Church of God and have believed, or still believe, that Christ would come or has already come? On what do you base this bold, made, pitiable and inexcusable arrogance?
You deny that Christ is the son of the living God, the Word of the eternal wisdom of the Father, made manifest in the flesh, who suffered and was crucified for the human race. Why? Because all this does not correspond to your principles. But, besides the fact that it has now been proved that you have not the true principles but false, rash and absurd ones, I will now say more, namely that even if you had relied on true principles and based all of your views on them, you would not be more able to explain, by means of them, all things that exist, or have happened, or happen in the world, nor ought you to assert boldly that something is really impossible, or fales, when it seems to be opposed to these principles.
For there are many, indeed innumerable things that you will not be able to explain, even if there is some sure knowledge of natural things; you will not even be able to remove the manifest contradictions between such phenomena and your explanations of the rest, that are regarded by you as quite certain.
From your principles you will not explain thoroughly even one of those things that are achieved in witchcraft and in enchantments by the mere pronunication of certain words, or simply by carrying about the words or characters, traced on some material, nor will you be able to explain any of the stupendous phenomena among those who are possessed by demons, of all of which I have myself seen in various instances, and I have heard most certain evidence of innumerable happenings of the kind from very many most trustworthy persons, who spoke with one voice.
How will you be able to judge of the essences of all things, even if it be granted that certain ideas that you have in your mind, adequately conform to the essences of those things of which they are the ideas? For you can never be sure whether the ideas of all created things exist naturally in the human mind, or whether many, if not all, can be produced in it, and actually are produced in it, by external objects, and even through the suggestion of good or evil spirits, and through a clear divine revelation.
How, then, without considering the testimony of other men, and experience of things, to say nothing now of submitting your judgment to the Divine omnipotence, will you be able, from your principles, to define precisely and to establish for certain the actual existence, or nonexistence, the possibility, or the impossibility, of the existence of, for instance, the following things (that is, whether they actually exist, or do not exist, or cannot exist, in Nature), such as divining rods for detecting metal and underground waters; the stone that the Alchemists seek, the power of words and character; the apparitions of various spirits both good and evil, and their power, knowledge, and occupation; the restoration of plants and flowers in a glass phial after they have been burnt; Sirens; pygmies very frequently showing themselves, according to report, in mines; the Antipathies and Sympathies of very many things; the impenetrability of the human body, etc.?
Even if you were possessed of a mind a thousand times more subtle and more acute than you do possess, you would not be able, my Philosopher, to determine even one of the said things. If in judging these and similar matters you put your trust in your understanding alone, you no doubt already think in this way about things of which you have no knowledge and no experience, and which you, therefore, consider impossible, but which in reality should seem only uncertain until you have been convinced by the testimony of very many trustworthy witnesses. Thus, I imagine, would Julius Caesar have thought, if someone had told him that a certain powder could be made up, and would become common in subsequent ages, the strength of which would be so effective that it would blow up into the air castles, whole cities, even the very mountains, and such too that wherever it is confined, which ignited, it would expand so suddenly to a surprising extent, and shatter everything that impeded its action. Julius Caesar would in no wise have believed this; but he would have derided this man with loud jeers as one who wanted to persuade him of something contrary to his own judgment and experience and the highest military knowledge.
But let us return to the point. If you do not know the aforementioned things (divining rods, alchemy, etc.), and are unable to pronounce on them, why will you, unhappy man swollen with diabolical pride, rashly judge of the awful mysteries of the life and passion of Christ that Catholic teachers themselves pronounce incomprehensible? Why, moreover, will you rave, chattering foolishly and idly about the innumerable miracles, and signs, which, after Christ, his Apostles and Disciples and later many thousands of Saints performed in evidence and confirmation of the truth of the Catholic Faith, through the omnipotent power of God, and innumerable instances of which, through the same omnipotent Mercy and loving kindness of God, are happening even now in our days, throughout the whole world? If you cannot contradict these, as you surely cannot, why do you object any longer? Give in, turn away from your errors and your sins; put on humility and be born again.
But let us also descend to truth of fact, as it really is the foundation of the Christian religion. How, if you give the matter due consideration, will you dare to deny the efficacy of the consensus of so many myriads of men, of whom some thousands have been, and are, many miles ahead of you in doctrine, in learning, in true and rare importance, and in perfection of life? All these unanimously and with one voice declare that Christ, that incarnate son of the living God, suffered, and was crucified, and died for the sins of the human race, and rose again, was transfigured, and reigns in heaven as God, together with the eternal Father in the Unity of the Holy Spirit, and the remaining doctrines which belong here; and also that through the Divine power and omnipotence there were performed in the Church of God by this same Lord Jesus, and afterwards, in his name, by the Apostles and the other Saints, innumerable miracles, that not only exceeded human comprehension but were even opposed to common sense (and of these there remain even to this day countless material indications, and visible signs scattered far and wide throughout the world) and that such miracles still happen.
Might I not in like manner deny that the ancient Romans ever existed in the world, or that the Emperor Julius Caesar, having suppressed the Liberty of the Republic, changed their form of government to a monarchy, if I disregarded the many monuments evident to all, that time has left us of the power of the Romans; if I disregarded the testimony of the most weighty authors who have ever written the histories of the Roman Republic and Monarchy, wherein they particularly treat of Julius Caesar; and if I disregarded the judgment of so many thousands of men who have either themselves seen the said monuments, or have put, and still put, their trust in them (seeing that their existence is confirmed by countless witnesses) as well as in the said histories, on the ground that I dreamed last night that the monuments, that have come down from the Romans, are not real things, but mere illusions; and similarly, that those stories that are told of the Romans are just like the stories that the books called Romances relate, puerile stories about Amadis of Gaul and similar Heroes; also that Julius Caesar either never existed in the world, or if he existed was a melancholic man, who did not really crush the Liberty of the Romans, and raise himself to the Throne of the Imperial Power, but was induced to believe that he had performed these achievements, either by his own foolish imagination or by the persuasion of friends who flattered him...
Lastly, reflect on the very wretched and restless life of Atheists, although they sometimes make a display of great cheerfulness of mind, and wish to seem to spend their life joyfully, and with the greatest internal peace of mind. More especially consider their most unhappy and horrible death, of which I have myself seen some instances and know with equal certainty of many more, or rather of countless cases, from the report of others, and from History. Learn from their examples to be wise in time.
Thus you see, or at least I hope you see, how rashly you entrust yourself to the opinions of your brain (for if Christ is the true God, and at the same time man, as is most certain, see to what you are reduced; for by persevering in your abominable errors, and most grave sins, what else can you expect but eternal damnation? How horrible this is, you may ponder for yourself) how little reason you have for laughing at the whole world with the exception of your wretched adorers; how foolishly proud and puffed up you become with the knowledge of the excellence of your talents, and with admiration for your very vain, indeed quite false, and impious doctrine; how shamefully you make yourself more wretched than the very beasts, but depriving yourself of the freedom of the will; nevertheless, even if you do not actually experience and recognize this, how can you deceive yourself by thinking that your works are worthy of the highest praise, and even of the closest imitation?
If you do not wish (which I will not think) that God or your neighbor should have pity on you, do you yourself at least take pity on your own misery, whereby you endeavor to make yourself more unhappy than you are now, or less unhappy than you will be, if you continue in this manner.
Come to your senses, you Philosopher, and realize the folly of your wisdom, the madness of your wisdom; put aside your pride and become humble, and you will be healed. Pray to Christ in the Most Holy Trinity, that he may deign to commiserate your misery, and receive you. Read the Holy Fathers, and the Doctors of the Church, and let them instruct you in what you must do that you may not perish, but have eternal life. Consult Catholics profoundly learned in their faith and living a good life, and they will tell you many things that you have never known and whereat you will be amazed.
I, for my part, have written this letter to you with truly Christian intention, first that you may know the great love I bear you [Did Burgh forget that earlier in the same letter he illustrated his "great love toward Spinoza" with the words, "...YOU WRETCHED LITTLE MAN, VILE WORM OF THE EARTH, AY, ASHES, FOOD FOR WORMS"--E.T.B.] although a Gentile [since I guess in Burgh's day "Gentiles" did not normally bear "great love" toward Jews like Spinoza]; and secondly to beg you not to continue to pervert others also.
I will therefore conclude thus: God is willing to snatch your soul from eternal damnation if only you are willing. Do not hesitate to obey the Lord, who has so often called you through others, and now calls you again, and perhaps for the last time, through me [how humble of Burgh to think so--E.T.B.], who, having obtained this grace [again how humble of Burgh to think he's obtained God's special approved grace through the Catholic Church and believing what it tells him, while everyone else is going to catch hell come judgment day--E.T.B.] through the ineffable Mercy of God Himself, pray for the same for you with my whole heart ["...YOU WRETCHED LITTLE MAN, VILE WORM OF THE EARTH, AY, ASHES, FOOD FOR WORMS"]. Do not refuse, for if you will not hear God now when He calls you, the anger of the Lord Himself will be kindled against you, and there is the danger that you may be abandoned by His Infinite Mercy, and become the unhappy victim of the divine Justice that consumes all things in its anger. May the omnipotent God avert this fate to the greater glory of His name, and to the salvation of your soul, and also as a salutary and imitable example for your most unfortunate Idolaters, through our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who with the Eternal Father lives and reigns in the Unity of the Holy Spirit as God for all eternity. Amen. [Why did Burgh stop repeating the liturgy formula there? Why didn't Burgh just end his letter by writing down the WHOLE liturgy of the Catholic Mass? Kind of like an exorcism Mass in letter form to try and "save" Spinoza's soul from "the Evil One" whom Burgh mentioned earlier had power over Spinoza?--E.T.B.]
Florence, (Sept. 3, 1675.)
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SPINOZA'S REPLY
"...HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT YOU HAVE CHOSEN THE BEST?"
Baruch Spinoza Send Greetings
To the Very Noble Young Man Albert Burgh:
What I could scarcely believe when it was related to me by others, I at least understand from your letter; that is, that not only have you become a member of the Roman Church, as you say, but that you are a very keen champion of it and have already learned to curse and rage petulantly against your opponents. I had not intended to reply to your letter, being sure that what you need is time rather than an argument, to be restored to yourself, and to your family, to say nothing of other grounds that you once approved when we spoke of Stenonius (in whose footsteps you are now following). But certain friends who with me had formed great hopes for you from your excellent natural talent, earnestly prayed me not to fail in the duty of a friend, and to think of what you recently were rather than of what you now are, and similar things. I have been induced by these arguments to write to you these few words, earnestly begging you to be kind enough to read them with a calm mind.
I will not recount the vices of Priests and Popes in order to turn you away from them, as the opponents of the Roman Church are wont to do. For they are wont to published these things from ill-feeling, and to adduce them in order to annoy rather than to instruct. Indeed, I will admit that there are found more men of great learning, and of an upright life, in the Roman than in any other Christian Church; for since there are more men who are members of this Church, there will also be found within it more men of every condition. You will, however, be unable to deny, unless perhaps you have lost your memory together with your reason, that in every Church there are many very honest men who worship God with justice and charity; for we have known many men of this kind among Lutherans, the Reformers, the Mennonites, and the Enthusiasts, and to say nothing of others, and know of your own ancestors who in the time of the Duke of Alva suffered for the sake of their Religion every kind of torture with both firmness and freedom of mind. Therefore you must allow that holiness of life is not peculiar to the Roman Church, but is common to all.
And since we know through this (to speak with the Apostle John, the First Epistle, Chapter 4, verse 13) that we dwell in God and God dwells in us, it follows that whatever it is that distinguishes the Roman Church from others, it is something superfluous, and therefore based merely on superstition.
For, as I said with John, justice and charity are the only and the surest sign of the true Catholic faith, and the true fruits of the Holy Spirit, and wherever these are found, there Christ really is, and whence they are lacking, there Christ also is not. For by the Spirit of Christ alone can we be led to the love of justice and of charity. If you had been willing duly to ponder these facts within yourself, you would not have been lost, nor would you have caused bitter sorrow to your parents who sorrowfully lament your lot.
But I return to your letter in which you first bewail the fact that I suffer myself to be deceived by the Prince of evil Spirits. But I beg you to be of good cheer, if I am not mistaken, you used to worship an infinite God, by whose power all things absolutely come into being, and are preserved, but now you dream of a Prince, an enemy of God, who, against the will of God, misleads and deceives most men (for good men are rare), whom God consequently delivers up to this master of vices to be tortured for all eternity. Thus divine justice permits the Devil to deceive men with impunity, but does not permit the men who have been miserably deceived and misled by this same Devil to go unpunished.
These absurdities might still be tolerated if you worshipped a God infinite and eternal, and not one whom Chastillon in the town of Tienen gave with impunity to the horses to eat. [Spinoza is speaking about a consecrated host from a Catholic Mass being fed to horses -- by a Protestant I presume. Catholics believe during Mass the host becomes consecrated, turning into the literal (but invisible) body and blood of Jesus. I might add for my Protestant friends that even the apostle Paul writing to the earliest Christian churches took the idea of the Lord's Supper so seriously as to believe God was punishing "many" Corinthian Christians with "illnesses" and even striking some "dead" for not celebrating the Lord's supper the right way. See 1 Cor. 11:27-30: "Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged." I also assume from Spinoza's story about the horse being fed the host that both rider and horse survived. Otherwise I'm sure that Catholics living back then, including Burgh, might have cited the illness or deaths of horse or rider as yet another reason to become a Catholic.--E.T.B.]
And do you, unhappy one, weep for me? And do you call my Philosophy, which you have never seen, a Chimera? O brainless youth, who has bewitched you, so that you believe that you swallow the highest and the eternal, and that you hold it in your intestines? [Spinoza is again speaking about a consecrated Catholic host.--E.T.B.]
Yet you seem to want to use your reason, and you ask me, how I know that my philosophy is the best among all those that have ever been taught in the world, or are taught now, or will be taught in the future? I could ask you the same question with far better right. For I do not presume that I have found the best Philosophy, but I know that I think I have found one that pursues truth. If you ask me how I know this, I shall answer, in the same way that you know that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. That this is enough no one will deny whose brain is sound, and who does not dream of unclean spirits who inspire us with false ideas that are like true ones, for the truth reveals itself and the false.
But you who presume that you have at last found the best religion, or rather the best men, to whom you have given over your credulity, how do you know that they are the best among all those who have taught other Religions, or are teaching them now, or will teach them in the future? Have you examined all those religions, both ancient and modern, that are taught here and in India and everywhere throughout the world? And even if you have duly examined them, how do you know that you have chosen the best? For you can give no reason for your faith. But you will say that you assent to the inward testimony of the Spirit of God, while the others are cheasted and misled by the Prince of evil Spirits. But all those outside the Roman Church make the same claims with the same right for their Churches as you do for yours.
As to what you add about the common consent of myriads of men, and of the uninterrupted succession of the Church, etc., this is the same old song of the rabbis/Jewish teachers/Pharisees. For there also, with no less confidence than the adherents of the Roman Church, produce their myriads of witnesses, who relate what they have heard about, with as much pertinacity as do the witnesses of the Romans, just as if they themselves had experienced it.
They trace back their lineage to Adam. They boast with equal arrogance that their Church maintains its growth, stability, and solidity to this very day, in spite of the hostility of the Heathen and the Christians. Most of all do they take their stand on their antiquity. They declare with one voice that they have received their traditions from God Himself, and that they alone preserve the written and unwritten word of God.
No one can deny that all heresies have left them [the Jews were fairly well united in doctrine, moreso than the Christians, generally speaking--E.T.B.], but that they have remained constant for some thousands of years without any imperial support or compulsion [such as Christianity received after Constantine's conversion to Christian and also received from the Christian Emperors that followed in his wake--E.T.B.], but rather through the mere power of superstition. The miracles they [the Jews] relate are enough to weary a thousand gossips. But what they chiefly pride themselves on is that they number far more martyrs than any other nation and daily increase the number of those who with extraordinary constancy of mind have suffered for the faith that they profess. And this is not untrue. I myself know [have heard], among others, of a certain Judah, whom they call the Faithful, who in the midst of the flames, when he was believed to be dead already, began to sing the hymn that begins, "To Thee, O God, I commit my soul," and died in the middle of the hymn. [The person to whom Spinoza is referring was a Spanish nobleman who was converted to Judaism via the study of Hebrew and who had adopted the named "Judah" as his Hebrew name. His given name was Don Lope de Vera y Alarcon de San Clemente, and he was burnt at Valladolid, July 25, 1644 according to Gratz' book Gesch. der Juden x. 101. This reminds me also of the famous story of a rabbi facing the Inquisition who was asked to deny his faith. He requested time to think it over. The next morning he said, "I will not become a Catholic, but I have a last request -- before I'm burnt at the stake my tongue should be cut out for not replying at once. To such a question 'No!' was the only answer."--E.T.B.]
The order of the Roman Church, which you so greatly praise, I confess, is politic and lucrative to many. I should think that there was none more suited to deceive the people and to constrain the minds of men, were there not the order of the Islamic Church, which far surpasses it. For from the time that this superstition began there have arisen no schisms in their Church. [Spinoza means I suppose that in the history of Christianity there have been many major ruptures -- from early church theological differences resulting in violence like the Arian vs. the Athansians, or the Catholics vs. the Donatists -- to such major schisms as the Catholic-Orthodox split that arose after the whole eastern half of the Christian Roman Empire excommunicated the entire western half, and vice versa -- to the Great Schism within Catholicism itself whereby two and then three popes existed simultaneously -- to the Reformation -- and a host of other "heresies" arising during each age. While Islam like Judaism has never complicated its central formula though even in Islam a big schism (the Sunni-Shia schism) occurred when the Islamic prophet Muhammad died in the year 632, leading to a dispute over succession to Muhammad as a caliph of the Islamic community. Over the years Sunni-Shia relations have been marked by both cooperation and conflict. Today there are differences in religious practice, traditions, and customs as well as religious belief. Though the Shia now only constitute about 15% of all Muslims. --E.T.B.]
If therefore, you calculate correctly, you will see that only what you note in the third place is in favor of the Christians, namely, that unlearned and common men were able to convert almost the whole world to the faith of Christ. But this argument militates not only for the Roman Church, but for all who acknowledge the name of Christ.
But suppose that all the arguments that you adduce are in favor of the Roman Church alone. Do you think that you can thereby mathematically prove the authority of the Church? Since this is far from being the case, why then do you want me to believe that my proofs are inspired by the Prince of evil Spirits, but yours of God? Especially so, as I see and your letter clearly shows that you have become a slave of this Church, under the influence not so much of the love of God as of the fear of hell, which is the sole cause of superstition. Is this your humility, to put no faith in yourself, but only in others, who are condemned by very many? Do you regard it as acquiesce in that true Word of God that is in the mind and can never be depraved or corrupted? Away with this deadly superstition, acknowledge the reason God has given you, and cultivate it, if you would not be numbered among the brutes. Cease, I say, to call absurd errors mysteries, and do not shamefully confuse those things that are unknown to us, or as yet undiscovered, with those that are shown to be absrud, as are the horrible secrets of this Church, which, the more they oppose right reason, the more you believe they transcend the understanding.
If you will consider these carefully, and also examine the Histories of the Church (of which I see you are most ignorant), in order to see how false are many of the Pontifical traditions, and by what fate and with what arts the Roman Pontiff, six hundred years after the birth of Christ, obtained sovereignty over the Church, I doubt not that you will at least come to your senses. That this may be so, I wish you from my heart. Farewll, etc.
B. d. Spinoza [the Hague, Dec. 1675]
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WHAT BECAME OF SPINOZA AND BURGH?
Spinoza died two years later, in 1677, at the age of forty-five. Albert Burgh died in a monastery in Rome [I wonder, was he ever reunited with his family?]. A little over two hundred years later, in 1882, a statue was unveiled of Spinoza at The Hague, and Renan (the French theologian and author) gave an address at its unveiling, calling Spinoza, "The greatest Jew of modern times," adding, "Ages hence, the cultivated traveler, passing by this spot, will say in his heart, 'The truest vision ever had of God came, perhaps, here.'"
While Einstein wrote: "I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings." [Albert Einstein, following his wife's advice in responding to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the International Synagogue in New York, who had sent Einstein a cablegram bluntly demanding “Do you believe in God?”]
How much do I love that noble man
More than I could tell with words
I fear though he'll remain alone
With a holy halo of his own.
Spinoza's portrait was featured prominently on the Dutch 1000-guilder banknote, legal tender until the euro was introduced in 2002. And the most generious and prestigious scientific award of the Netherlands is named the Spinoza prijs (Spinoza prize).
TO FIND OUT MORE, SEE THIS GREAT LITTLE COMMENTARY ON TNE BURGH-SPINOZA EXCHANGE
SEE ALSO SPINOZA'S WIKIPEDIA PAGE, AND ALSO THIS ONLINE BOOK REVIEW: Michael Dirda, Expelled from the Jewish community of his day, Spinoza went on to construct a lasting philosophy. A review of Rebecca Goldstein's 2006 work, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity
We have a couple of pests here at DC whom I consider ignorant Christian defenders. Not all Christians are this ignorant, of course, since some are quite knowledgeable (usually the more they know the more liberal-secular they are). One Christian here goes by the name Jason, and the other one goes by the name Dan Marvin. They think they have answers for almost everything, and yet it's clear from reading what they write they have not had a background in some basic level apologetics. Okay. Fine. So here are my two challenges to them...
Why don't each one of you truly test your faith? If you are as cocksure of it as you say you are such that nothing can move you off your faith then you should have no fear in taking the Debunking Christianity Challenge along with the Outsider Test For Faith. No excuses will do here. I invite all Christians to take up these two challenges. That's what I would've done had I been challenged to do so as a Christian, if they were made known to me. I would want to know what the best arguments are against my faith just in case I was wrong. I would try to argue why I shouldn't take The Outsider Test, and I would take up the DC challenge. I challenge you, Jason and Dan Marvin, and all other Christians. Or, you can keep spouting off prooftexts without a good grasp of what they mean.
My claim is that most Christians defenders do not understand how we got the Bible, and that they do not understand it. My claim is that most Christian defenders do not fully appreciate the nature of historical studies when it comes to believing something miraculous took place in the past, nor the true nature of interpreting a given text, any text, much less one among high context societies in the Biblical era. My claim is that most Christian defenders do not understand the results of biblical archaeology. My claim is that most Christian defenders do not understand the nature of science and how it makes us all different than the superstitious people of the past. My claim is that most Christian defenders do not understand how psychology undermines the the free will defense to the problem of evil, and a wrathful God. My claim is that most Christian defenders do not understand the full impact of global religious diversity that is caused by "when and where" people are born. My claim is that most Christian defenders are simply ignorant and that's one major reason why they continue to believe, and this includes Jason and Dan Marvin.
Link. Do you think Christian apologists knowingly lie to defend their faith. I think some do. What evidence can support such a claim? The purpose of the site "is to expose the false claims of Christian apologists one lie at a time." The video below is from "Lying for Jesus."
The rise of the so-called "New" Atheist movement in America and elsewhere has coincided with a decrease in religious adherence throughout the world. From an estimated size of 0.2% of the world's population in 1900, non-believers now number over 900 million. Yet how much influence has the "New" Atheist movement had in this increase? Or is the New Atheist movement just a symptom of growing non-belief? Belief has been on the decline in America and Europe for decades now, which seem to indicate the latter; the New Atheist movement is a response to the growing momentum of the non-beliver demographic. But why has non-belief progressed so far in Europe, yet continues at a much more plodding pace here? Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman have an idea, and it's a doozy; because Americans aren't as secure and content with their lives as their European bretheren.
The so-called "New" Atheist movement consists of what I have referred to as "atheists who refuse to know their place". By and large, the so-called New Atheists are not saying much new; most of their arguments have been around for decades to millenia. However, the novel feature of the New Atheist movement has been a distinct loss of meekness that previous generations of atheists have had to affect. Atheists have become more vocal, more outspoken, and less deferential to religion in their modern dialogues than previous generations. And it is undeniable that religious society is changing, especially here in the US. Biblical literalism has dropped from almost 40% in the mid-70's to less than 30% today, while Biblical skepticism (aka fableists) has increased from ~12% to over 20% over the same period. However, the rise of New Atheists seems to be more of a response to the loss of faith in America. For example, the proportion of people who thought religion was very important in their lives dropped from over 65% in the 1960's to just over 50% in the 70's and 80's. In their article, Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman argue that this loss in religion is also correlated with a loss in spirituality in general, and reflects a population that is more content and secure in their material lives, and therefore more materialistic. This conclusion builds on multiple studies that show that danger and insecurity increases affinity not only for religion, but for authoritarian systems in general.
Paul and Zuckerman argue that it is secure access to what are normally thought of as middle-class amenities like adequate health care, consistent food supply, employment, and egalitarian status with one's peers that drive the process of secularization. One of the most intriguing problems in the sociology of comparitive religion has been the question of why a wealthy democracy like the US has remained relatively religious, while other wealthy democracies have seen a steady decline in religion spanning decades, and are now overwhelmingly secular. What Paul and Zuckerman argue, with some merit I think, is that it is the insecurity of existence in America that supports religion. To compare, in Europe it is very difficult to lose the amenities of middle class. Health care in many cases is government-supported. Labor laws are much more weighted toward the worker. Food supplies and the means to obtain them are secure. There is relatively little gap between the wealthy and the middle-class, which reduces materialistic competition--the Jonses' are likely to be about as well-off as you are, and anyone in the middle class is fairly close to the apex of their society's socioeconomic status. These factors result in a society that is comfortable in their material lives, which causes them to forsake spiritual outlets.
In contrast, in America the hold on the middle class is more tenuous. Health care is not government mandated, and access to health care is readily revokable in cases of prolonged illness or loss of employment. Health care costs remain the number one cause of individual bankruptcy in America. Labor laws in America are largely weighted toward so-called "at will" models, where employee termination does not have to be justified by the employer. Access to adequate food is not secure for those not in the middle class (and recently not always for those IN the middle class--can anyone spare a tomato?) These scaricities have a two-fold effect. First of all, they render people insecure and amenable to authoritarian systems, including religion, that promise to alleviate their problems. Second, they open the door for well-meaning religious charities to attempt to fill in the needs of the underserved, bringing prosetylization (often second-hand, but there nonetheless) in their wake. (How many of you live in a town that has a large hospital? Of those that said yes, how many of those hospitals are run by an arm of a religious group? We have two hospitals, the largest of which is Catholic.) Unfortunately, even the largest religious group in America does not have the resources or the mandate to handle the needs of a large and shifting underclass (our healthcare system is a prime example), which leaves people insecure in their materialistic lives. Additionally, even among the middle class, the gap between wealthy and middle class in America is ENORMOUS and widening. Even those in the middle class who are secure in their material lives are very often not content, as they have not reached even close to the apex of socioeconomic strata in America.
The panic in America that followed 9/11 allowed for an excellent chance to look at the kinetics of insecurity-induced religion--how fast or slow do people as a whole turn to religion as a result of a short-term panic, and how lasting is that change. The results show that church attendence and religiosity surged briefly after 9/11...then quickly returned to pre-tragedy levels. I would argue that, while the 9/11 tragedy and the following attacks did shake our nation to the core and cause widespread panic, it did not have a lasting effect on our religiosity because it did not have a lasting effect on our security or contentment in our material lives. We still had the same access to medicine, food, housing, etc. Our jobs were just as secure as they were before.
Conventional wisdom has often stated that religion is a counter-materialistic phenomenon; it is a rebellion against the materialism that drives the culture of America, and its adherents tend to be less materialistic in nature. However, Paul and Zuckerman argue fairly convincingly that it is the other way around; spirituality is a reaction of our materialistic nature to a failure to securely acheive material contentment, and that in societies where material contentment can be acheived securely, spirituality inevitably peters out. It is not that the spiritual tend to be less materialistic by nature; it is that those that fail to acheive secure material contentment tend to turn to spirituality. While Paul and Zuckerman do not exactly put it this way, I envision it as a kind of "sour grapes" phenomenon; they can't get what they REALLY want, so they decide to want something else that will help them cope with their lack.
If this is true, then it suggests that all of this debating and rational (and sometimes irrational) argument and apologetics and proofs, etc., are all just a sideshow to the main event in deconversion. If we were honest about it, we would be able to admit this already; Europe has the same number of apologetics as we do, they have access to the same evangelists, they have churches of every variety, and yet they are and remain secular. Why are we different? China has a large atheistic class AND widespread materialistic insecurity, but they also very recently had atheism as an unjustly enforced state religion, and since loosening of religious restrictions are experiencing an upsurge in religious belief, especially among the oppressed female population. Face it; there is something about American society that acts to preserve religion, and I think the data are strong enough to entertain the hypothesis that materialistic insecurity is one major factor in sustaining a religious culture. Given that hypothesis, then the biggest blow we could give to religion in America is the establishment of a more egalitarian socioeconomic structure. If you make people happy and content in this life, they are less likely to blow up people looking to find contentment in the next life.
Antony Flew shows the Freewill Defense theodicy fails since it is the case that existence of compatibilist free will is not a logical impossibility relative to what is generally thought of as Omnipotence in his essay “Divine Omnipotence and Human Freewill” featured in Peter Angeles' anthology, “Critiques of God”.
Flew begins by wrongfully, but inconsequentially so since many falsely think the following to be from Augustine’s “Confessions”, quoting [1] St Augustine : "Either God cannot abolish evil, or he will not; if he cannot, then he is not all-powerful; if he will not, then he is not all good." [2] An elegant summation nonetheless, Flew rightly pigeon holed the saying by noting that this is “Perhaps the most powerful of all skeptical arguments, this has appealed especially to the clearest and most direct minds, striking straight and decisively to the heart of the matter.” Actual EVIL, existing in contradistinction to actual moral goodness, is the substantive core of the question at issue. How can the God of classical theism exist when the world, and even more so the Universe (ie: all existence), is saturated with a cold indifference to life? Not only does observed empirical existence reveal man’s inhumanity to man, but the unimaginable sickening horror from natural disasters evidenced by an ever growing list of causalities dimly echoes within a grand canyon of animal suffering. The predator-prey and parasite-host relationships in a brutally uncaring, mechanistic, evolutionary context screams “Humans are not the point.”
In large measure, the history of human civilization has been recorded in step with efforts to understand our existence. By crafting myths, we encode ways we try to reconcile seeming contradictions between life and brutal reality. Such is the case of the world's oldest story. When Gilgamesh, the king, sends the woman Shamhat, a temple prostitute, to Enkidu, the wild-man, their sexual liaison civilizes Enkidu. After six days and seven nights of love making, he is no longer a wild beast who lives with animals. [3] Upon visiting the water hole, the animals flee from the sight of Enkidu, puzzled he asks Shamhat what it means. She wisely informs the anti-hero, “Behold Enkidu, you are become wise like unto a god.” [4] As the knowledge of sexual procreation transformed the wild Enkidu, we ordinary mortals, when we become aware of the absolute nature of existence and its identity, become transformed by recognizing that objective good arises from objective existence while evils anticipates a dearth of goodness. While these ethical qualities share a relationship like up and down or big and small, good and evil are nonetheless objective. And, even though, mutually required to make sense of the other, they can be understood in light of what is meant by values and why they are important to living beings. The Objectivist philosophers offer clear and cogent definitions.
“In ethics, one must begin by asking: What are values? Why does man need them?” Wrote Ayn Rand, and she continued: “Value” is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. The concept “value” is not a primary; it presupposes an answer to the question: of value to whom and for what? It presupposes an entity capable of acting to achieve a goal in the face of an alternative. Where no alternative exists, no goals and no values are possible.
I quote from Galt’s speech: “There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence—and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of ‘Life’ that makes the concept of ‘Value’ possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.” [5]
Even so, the broad scope of animal suffering, a vast ocean of pain and terror, is like the Great Barrier Reef of objective evil, for if anything diminishes the “process of self-sustaining and self-generated action”, it is the pain, suffering, and terror of being eaten or burned alive. “Suppose in some distant forest lightning strikes a dead tree,” wrote William L. Rowe in describing the problem of evil: “resulting in a forest fire. In the fire a fawn is trapped, horribly burned, and lies in terrible agony for several days before death relieves its suffering. So far as we can see, the fawn's suffering is pointless. For there does not appear to be any greater good such that the prevention of the fawn's suffering would require either the loss of that good or the occurrence of an evil equally bad or worse. Nor does there seem to be any equally bad or worse evil so connected to the fawn's suffering that it would have had to occur had the fawn;s suffering been prevented. Could an omnipotent, omniscient being have prevented the fawn's apparently pointless suffering? The answer is obvious, as even the theist will insist, An omnipotent, omniscient being could have easily prevented the fawn from being horribly burned, or, given the burning, could have spared the fawn the intense suffering by quickly ending its life, rather that allowing the fawn to lie in terrible agony for several days. Since the fawn's intense suffering was preventable and so far as we can see, pointless, doesn't it appear that premise one (See note 6.) of the argument is true, that there do exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse? [6]
There is a problem of evil, and we recognize it concurrently with our awareness of objective morality from absolute existence. Perhaps that may be why Flew found it useful to cite John S. Mill’s posthumously published “Three Essays on Religion” to further refine the problem and challenge theology by noting Mill did not imagine “the impossible problem of reconciling infinite benevolence and justice with infinite power in the Creator of such a world as this. The attempt to do so not only involves absolute contradiction in an intellectual point of view but exhibits to excess the revolting spectacle of a jesuitical defense of moral enormities.” [7] Amen! Mill’s bold words are, however, not conclusive, for the Christian believer has faith that ways to reconcile the existence of objective evil with their God’s omni-loving, omni-compassion attributes can be found.
For that purpose theodicies have been devised. Flew notes that: “Several determined efforts have been made to escape from the dilemma. One favorite – which might be dubbed the ‘Freewill Defense’ – runs like this. The first move is to point out ,via citing Thomas Aquinas, “Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God.” [8] Flew elucidates, “even God cannot do what is logically impossible; that is, if you make up a self-contradictory, a nonsense sentence it won’t miraculously become sense just because you have put the word God as its subject.” Flew follows up on this by predicating that theologians find the third formulation superior because it pinpoints the essential quality of logical impossibility as being no restriction upon the Omnipotence of God. Antony rightly disagrees with Aquinas, however, that God’s Omnipotence is indeed limited by logical impossibility. Flew could have pointed out that the forth and fifth century superstars of Christian Theology, St. Augustine, [9] and St. Jerome [10] both disagreed with Aquinas and implicitly asserted that God being all powerful means God can do anything without regard to logic. How or why the Christian view of Omnipotence evolved in the centuries between Jerome and Aquinas Flew does not ask, but it would be an interesting study.
He could have followed that thread down a rabbit hole. Instead, and to his credit, he continued to state the position he argues against. “The second move in this defense is to claim, “God gave men free will”; and that this necessarily implies the possibility of doing evil as well as good, that is to say, that there would be a contradiction speaking, it would be nonsense to speak of creatures with freedom to choose good or evil but not able to choose evil. (Which, no blame to him, is what his creatures, men have done.)” [11] Generally, Christians will not seek to specify the nature of free will and will equivocate by assuming it is understood that they mean contra-causal libertarian free will.
Antony could have, but did not, include the scriptural proof texts Christians predicate as a basis for their contra-causal and libertarian view of free will. It is interesting that the Johannine writer’s midrash in John 10:34-35 “Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your law, 'I said, you are gods'? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came (and scripture cannot be broken),” refers back to Psa 82:6 where is read: “I say, "You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you;” . In the later passage, Elohiym is in the council of the elohiym and is exhorting his fellow gods to do justice and righteousness; and then in a fit of hissy, Elohiym condemns his fellow gods to mortality. Elohiym, in 82:6, is very clearly addressing his fellows in the council of the gods. The Johannine midrash tortures the text to make it apply to human beings (ie: the Jews). A truly brilliant man, Richard Carrier, explains what this means to Christianity. “...the Libertarian notion of free will assumes that one's own desires (among other things, like one's own reason and knowledge) also constrain one's will, rendering it unfree. In other words, our personality, knowledge, wishes, are themselves chains that bind our will. But your proximate, causing desire is your will. It therefore cannot be considered as something “outside” of the will that constrains it – your strongest desire and your will are one and the same.” [12] Later, as we will see, Flew’s argument hinges on the fact that human free will is not Libertarian.
The third premise of the free will defense listed by Flew is: “…certain good things, namely, certain virtues, logically presuppose not merely beings with freedom of choice (which alone are capable of either virtue or vice), and consequently the possibility of evil, but also the actual occurrence of certain evils. That what we might call the second-order goods of sympathetic feeling and action logically could not occur with out (at least the appearance of) the first-order evils of suffering or misfortune. And the moral good of forgiveness presupposes the prior occurrence of (at least the appearance of) some lower-order moral evil to be forgiven.” [13] Flew goes on to elaborate and explain this premise by noting the subjective nature of good and evil assumed by the F.W.D. Certain moral virtues “logically presuppose the possibility of correlative evils” [14] This leads to the conclusion that it “makes no sense to suppose that God “might have chosen to achieve these goods without the possibility in the one case, the actuality in the other of the correlative and presupposed evils.” [15] Flew's acceptance of subjective definitions of good and evil is contrary to Objectivism; that notwithstanding, his argument still has value to those humans who seek to live and thus make a conscious choice not to lie down and die. (It is beyond the scope to this brief essay, however, to show how Flew and Objectivism can be harmonized.)
Antony assesses the argument as disconcerting to the skeptic, and yet he excuses the usual counter arguments as lacking simplicity or a decisive presence compared to the original dilemma in that they allow the believer room to counter argue. Having set up a dissonance, in dialectical fashion, he then offers a penetrating foil towards coherent synthesis. His attack is directed at the central idea of the F.W.D.; it would be fatal to the notion of the Christian God that if it were not the case that a contradiction obtains such that God could not create a free will where people always choose to do the good. If it is logically possible for God to make a free will that is truly free and also determined so that people always freely choose to do good, then Omnipotence could have “made a world inhabited by wholly virtuous people.”[16] Then the F.W.D. collapses, and the problem of evil destroys any reasoned basis for God belief.
This idea is reinforced by Raymond D. Bradley, who argued from international criminal law: “according to the moral principles concerning Command Responsibility as recognized by Ping Fa around 500 B.C.E., principles that were eventually enshrined in the Hague Conventions of 1907, the Geneva Conventions of 1948, and the Nuremberg Charter of 1950 (Principles III and VI of which explicitly assign responsibility to Heads of State who have "planned" and "initiated" crimes against humanity). And, quoting from Article 7 (3) of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, they pointed out that the fact that a subordinate committed crimes does not relieve his superior of criminal responsibility if he knew or had reason to know that the subordinate was about to commit such acts or had done so and the superior failed to take the necessary and reasonable measures to prevent such acts. This principle, they observed, is a particular instance of the more general moral truth:
If a person knows that evil of any kind (natural or moral) will occur or continue to occur unless they prevent it from occurring, and has the ability to prevent it from occurring, then that person is morally culpable for the occurrence of that evil. By virtue of his omnipotence and omniscience, God was found to be an accessory, before, during, and after, the fact of all evils.” [17]
This sets the stage for Flew's blitzkrieg. The first pincer entails defining what it means to act freely. He asks what is meant by “being free to choose”? His insight is that being free to choose does not necessarily mean the choice is unpredictable or uncaused. Paradigmatically, he spins a touching tale about two young lovers with nothing better to do than get married. Murdo exercised his freedom by asking his love, Mairi. Being madly in love with Murdo, she gladly acquiesced. Murdo's and Mairi's actions were not uncaused or in principle unpredictable, nor were they compelled. Yet even if in an all too near future, it becomes a predictable norm that such pairings or nascent behaviors are completely predictable , still Homo Sapiens will be able to choose to do what they want. They will still be able to choose between alternatives that are most appealing. Flew argues that “Unless they (advocates of hard determinism) produce evidence that there was obstruction or pressure or an absence of alternatives, their discoveries will not even be relevant to questions about his freedom of choice, much less a decisive disproof of the manifest fact that sometimes he has complete, sometimes restricted, and sometimes no freedom.” [18]
When we use expressions that characterize an action as either freely chosen or compelled in some fashion, we are not saying that what was done was in theory unpredictable and neither are we asserting that the action was contra-casual. But we are saying that there were viable alternatives. Pivoting on the phrase “could have helped it”, Flew explains that by examining simple “paradigm” cases where writers freely choose from a variety of lexical tools to craft their missives, we can find a wealth of examples of free actions. And if not, then they'll do till the real thing comes along.
Flew's prophecy was fulfilled. Behold - brilliance. “Even if my choices are entirely determined in advance,” expounded Dr. Richard Carrier regarding what free will actually means: “I still make decisions, and my decisions are still caused by who I am and what I know – my thoughts and desires and personality - just as they must be if I am to be “free” in any sense that matters. And because I am still their cause, I can still be praised or blamed for them. This is why compatibilism makes more sense: free will is doing what you want – nothing more, nothing less. And being responsible is being the cause - nothing more, nothing less.”[19]]
Plop-plop-fizz-fizz goes the cathode! After such crafty word smithy, for Flew to just pour his premise like Alka-Seltzer is almost anti-climatic, yet soothing. “...there is no contradiction involved in saying that a particular action or choice was: both free, and could have been helped, and so on; and predictable, or even foreknown, and explicable in terms of caused causes.” He admits that he cannot here demonstrate the premise sound, but he does note that Hume, Hobbes and even Aristotle took a similar line of reasoning. Meanwhile back at the anode, the Catholic Church predicates that it's God has foreknowledge that is not incompatible with human freedom. Raising the bet, he turns the kicker and amusingly observes that, if compatibilism is error, then human free will hitch hikes on God of the Gaps arguments and like God hides in human ignorance. Flew's spartan rhetorical question polishes the first pincer. “... if it is wrong, then it is hard to see what meaning those expressions (“could have helped it”) have and how if at all they could ever be taught, understood, or correctly used.”
Having saved his Panzer divisions, he now deploys them into the other pincer and closes on the salient. “... not only is there no necessary conflict between acting freely and behaving predictably and/or as a result of caused causes; but also Omnipotence might have, could without contradiction be said to have, created only people who would have already as a matter of fact freely have chosen to do the right thing.” [20] Observing that a person's endocrine glands are not the same as a person, and that whatever physiological cause may be accorded responsible for a person's action, it is not contradictory to say that if people can sometimes help doing what they do, they still act freely. He argues against the objection that physiological causes of actions exclude the possibility of doing what is desired. Emphasizing that the absence of proposed physiological causation would imply absence of effect, he contra-distinguishes mental motives to accent a disconnect between the two. By way of analogy he points out that “... if I think as I do because of such and such physiological causes or because of such and such motives; then it cannot also be the case that there are, and I have sufficient reasons, arguments, grounds for thinking as I do.” This hinges on how “because” equivocates multiple ambiguities. There are many explanations which do not exclude one another.
Carrier speaks to the fallacy here identified by Flew when he argues in defense of compatibilism against J.P. Moreland. “Moreland says, for example, that on compatibilism “a reason for acting turns out to be a certain type of state in the agent, a belief-desire state, that is a real efficient cause of the action”. He (Moreland) argues this excludes the possibility of final causes. But since a belief-desire state is an intention, and an intention is a final cause, it follows that final causes can and do exist under compatibilism. A final cause is simply a thought process: a prior calculation form ends to means, which in turn participates in the causal chain that ends in acting. The visualized 'end' is caused by a desire (“I want the second ball to land in the corner pocket”), and the conceptualization of the 'means' is caused by an application of reason and knowledge to that desired end (“If I collide the first ball into the second just so, then I will achieve what I want”). That is all a final cause is, a thought process, and that's an efficient cause: without the final cause (the desired end) there would be no act. So Moreland is attempting to state a tautology (A is B) as if it were a distinction (A is not B), a fundamental violation of basic logic.” [21] The same fallacy was committed by those determinists Flew argued against who claimed physiological causes precluded mental motives. If it is objected that Murdo and Mairi were influence by their glands, again it is pointed out that glands are not people. Murdo and Mairi made their own decision. Despite this it is also true that we can do what we want but that we cannot want whatever we want.
At this point in his essay, Flew serves the 800 pound Gorilla. What becomes of the keystone of the Freewill Defense, if there does not exist a contradiction in thinking that God could have arranged things so that human beings always freely choose the good? If it really is possible for a person's action to be freely chosen and fully determined by caused causes, then doesn't the theodicy collapse? All goods of whatever order presuppose not only corresponding lower order evils but also freedom. Even virtues like honesty and intellectual integrity while not parasitic upon antecedent evils are still contingent to freedom. If there is no contradiction, then there is no need for any soul making theodicy either. The resultant people, no matter the challenge, would always choose the right without the evils of those who choose damnation or that required for higher order goods and virtues. The deity could have evolved humans trustworthy in all situations without need for acquiring trustworthiness via fortitude, suffering, or pain. However, in that case it would be senseless to suggest that God would still be required to forgive or display fortitude. Nonetheless, subtly reworded versions of Predestination or Determinism could be hurled at the argument. “...but that there is not contradiction in speaking of a world in which there are always antecedent conditions of all human action sufficient to ensure that agents always will as a matter of fact freely chose the right.” [22] The distinction turns on crucial differences in the character of the deity. If the former is asserted, then God's character would be that of a quasi-personal being that has fixed everything that everyone will do, choose, and suffer. If the latter, then the deity is not thought of a puppet master or master hypnotist, rather it just happens to be the case that antecedent conditions predisposing humans to act in a particular, instead of some other, fashion always have, do, and will always obtain. The counter thesis would specify that determinism is perhaps compatible with human freedom and responsibility, but that predestination is assuredly not.
The error here is that predestination alleviates all human responsibility no matter what. Flew wrote: “The first reaction to the idea of God, the Great Hypnotist, is that this would mean that no one ever was or had been or would be really responsible, that none of the people who we should otherwise have been certain could have helped doing things really could. ... But this is very misleading. Certainly it would be monstrous to suggest that anyone, however truly responsible to and in the eyes of men, could fairly be called to account and be punished by the 'God who had rigged his every move. All the bitter words which have ever been written against the wickedness of the God of predestinationism – especially when he is also thought of as filling Hell with all but the elect – are amply justified.” [23] By reminding the reader that the paradigmatic cases defining key phrases exemplifying human liberty are impervious to the predestination doctrine as no theological information can alter their meaning, Flew counters the objection.
Refining the position: “...there is no contradiction in speaking of God as so arranging the laws of nature that all men always as a matter of fact freely choose to do the right.” What infuriates is still the idea that providence punishes anyone for freely choosing the wrong in the case that omnipotence had arraigned the antecedent conditions so that his victim would so act. Flew concludes: “...the Calvinist picture – the Great Hypnotist – is appropriate in its appreciation of the implications of Omnipotence; it is morally obnoxious insofar as it presents human creatures justly accountable to that Omnipotence.” [24]
Flew couldn't resist his sense of symmetry. Although his free choice was likely determined, still he wrote what he wanted, and that's compatibilist free will. As it was in the beginning, so he closes. "Either God cannot abolish evil, or he will not; if he cannot, then he is not all-powerful; if he will not, then he is not all good."
[1] Anthony Flew, ‘Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom’, p.227, in “Critiques of God: A major statement of the case against belief in God”, edited by Peter Angeles, copyright 1976.
[2] Flew acknowledged his error in wrongly attributing the given quotation to St. Augustine, and he thanked Dr. John Burnaby of St. John’s College for pointing out that St. Augustine did not write the line. The author of the present essay was unsuccessful in finding the actual source of the quote.
[4] Dr. Robert Price makes this point in his Bilbegeek Genesis #2 podcast.
[5] Ayn Rand, 'The Objectivist Ethics,' p.15, in “The Virtue of Selfishness”
[6] William L. Rowe, 'The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism', p.253, in “The Improbability of God”, edited by Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier
(Premise 1. “There exist instances of intense suffering which an omnipotent, omniscient being could have prevented without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.”
Premise 2. “An omniscient, wholly good being would prevent the occurrence of any intense suffering it could, unless it could not do so without thereby losing some greater good or permitting some evil equally bad or worse.”) - quoted from Rowe, ibid., p.251
[7] John S. Mill, “Three Essays on Religion”, p.186-87 as quoted by Flew, ibid. p.228
[8] Flew, ibid. p.228 citing Aquinas from “Summa Theologica”, IA XXV, Art. 4.
[9] St. Augustine, “…for certainly He is called Almighty only because He is mighty to do all He will…”; “City of God”, Book XXI, p.458, “NPNF1-02. St. Augustin's City of God and Christian Doctrine” - http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102/Page_458.html
[10] St. Jerome, “But I do not presume to limit God's omnipotence…”; “EPISTLE 58: TO PAULINUS”, Art. 3, - http://www.voskrese.info/spl/jerome058.html
[23] ibid., p.235; “The recognition, for example, of the object of highest worship in a being who could make a Hell; and who could create countless generations of human being with the certain foreknowledge that he was creating them for this fate ... Any other of the outrages to the most ordinary justice and humanity involved in the common Christian conception of the moral character of God sinks into insignificance beside this dreadful idealization of wickedness.” (quoted from Mills, “Three Essays On Religion”, p.113-14)
