Category Archives: Atheism

The Blueprint for the Reign of the Immaculate Heart

Anthropology, Atheism, Marxism, Sexual Ethics, Theology, Theology of the Body, , , ,

Yesterday, July 13th, marked the 104th anniversary since Our Lady visited three children in Fatima Portugal and donned the prophet’s mantle warning of the dire consequences that mankind was to face for the next century.  Her prophecy that “Russia will spread her errors throughout the whole world” remains the most relevant today.  For Our Lady was not merely warning against Communism per se but was warning about the errors upon which Communism rested.  Our Lady of Fatima was telling us that the next great battle the Church would face would be against Marxism.

Our Lady anointed as her “helpmate” the second great prophet of the 20th Century, John Paul II to assist her.  He had given his papacy, like his entire life and priesthood, to Our Lady.  He even adopted as his episcopal motto, Totus Tuus (“all yours”), to show his total consecration to Mary.  So, when on May 13, 1981, the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima, just prior to giving his Wednesday Theology of the Body lecture and the announcement of the founding of the Pontifical Institute for Marriage and Family, the Pope was shot he saw it as confirmation of his prophetic mission.  He said that “one hand pulled the trigger while the other guided the bullet” away from his major arteries and organs.  Our Lady had directly intervened so that John Paul II could carry out his sacred mission of stopping the spread of the “errors” of Russia.  He eventually dealt a decisive blow when he played an instrumental role in the destruction of the Eastern Bloc. 

It is tempting to think that Communism died when the Berlin Wall fell, but nearly 2 billion people still labor under Communist regimes.  As one of them, China, continues to exercise its hegemonic aspirations, and the errors of Russian continue to spread far and wide, it becomes increasingly important to both understand and counter these errors. 

Marxism as Identity Theft

In his Encyclical Divini Redemptoris, Pope Pius XI spoke of Marxism as a “Satanic Scourge”.  The reason for this is that it strikes at God by attempting to obliterate His image in man.  It overwrites human nature as co-Creator with God (proletariat vs bourgeois) and as men and women in marriage (exaggerated equality between the sexes).  The Marxist revolution shifts away from the family, an image of the Trinity, as the fundamental unit of society towards the individual.  The individual is merely a cog for the collective without any inherent dignity.  It employs the Sexual Revolution as the means for bringing this about—divorce, abortion, contraception, sexual promiscuity even homosexuality (since nothing un-natural)—all permitted and promoted in the name of liberation from the family and human nature. 

Likewise, complementarity is replaced with inherent conflict.  A perpetual conflict between victim and victimizing classes is set up and Marxism delivers Messianic prophecies of peace that removes even the need for government.  Everyone will be equal except, of course, for those who would be more equal than others.  To reject the inherent hierarchy in creation leads to anarchy.

This is where John Paul II enters the scene.  As he told his friend Henri de Lubac, he saw it as his mission to put an end of the pulverization of the human person that had its roots in Marxist thought: “The evil of our times consists in the first place in a kind of degradation, indeed in a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human person…To this disintegration planned at times by atheistic ideologies, we must oppose, rather than sterile polemics, a kind of ‘recapitulation’ of the inviolable mystery of the person.” 

The means by which he would accomplish this “recapitulation” is his Theology of the Body.  He would flip the materialistic atheist’s vision of man as nothing but a collection of atoms at the service of the collective on its head.  He would say that the material exists to make the immaterial present.  Man was not just a body, but the body revealed man.  John Paul II would offer his Theology of the Body as the foundation for solving the identity crisis brought about by Marxism.

A man or woman’s identity can only be received by knowing where he or she came from.  Are they simply an accident of biology, or worse, an accident of a creation in lab?  Or, were they willed from the beginning as a directly willed act of love, the crown of creation and very good?  Karl Marx says they are the former while John Paul II affirms the latter. 

Theology of the Body as Antidote

Theology of the Body restores the Christian vision of man’s origin through the three moments of Original Solitude, Original Unity and Original Nakedness.  Man was made to be different from and superior to the animals.  He does not come from the animals but instead is superior to them from the beginning and capable of being in relationship with God.  This Original Solitude is not all because the man Adam was also made to be in a self-giving relationship with the woman Eve in Original Unity.  Through the Original Nakedness in which they are “naked without shame” the two visibly see their vocation to love.

But knowing the beginning is not enough for our identity.  We must also know our history.  This history is not marked by conflict between victim and victimizer but Fall and Redemption by Christ who became a victim so that we didn’t have to.  Christ came to take away all of the coping mechanisms that modern Marxian psychology offers and gives to us true freedom that Marxism can never give.

Finally, to know our identity, we must know our destination.  Marxism controls and manipulates people through a fear of death.  It always try to take away man’s vision of where he is going.  The last 16 months have made this abundantly clear.  But Christ came to take away the fear of death and to clear our vision to our supreme calling, to be caught up in the life of the Trinity with the Communion of Saints.  There is no absorption into the “Collective” but a blossoming of personality such that we become who we were made to be.  John Paul II’s Eschatological Man provides the vision and spurs our desire to journey there.

It is not a coincidence that Our Lady promised that once the errors of Russia were defeated, the reign of the Immaculate Heart would be achieved. The love with which Mary loves, a love that is marked by purity, will invade the hearts of mankind–and Theology of the Body supplies the blueprint for that vision.

A More Perfect World?

Atheism, Lent, Passion of Christ, The Life of Jesus, , ,

One of the go-to arguments against the existence of God is the presence of evil in the world.  The atheistic interlocutor looks at the world, sees evil and concludes that there is no God.  Such a conclusion rests upon a primary assumption, namely that he can conceive of a more perfect world, a world without suffering.  Therefore either God is a cold-blooded tyrant or He does not exist.  Given how often such an argument is given, we must be prepared to meet it, but not in the usual way.  Too often theists respond to the conclusions rather than the assumption.  In this essay we will challenge the notion that God could have made a more perfect world.  Can we really conceive of a world in which there is no evil and, if so, then would that world be more perfect than this one? 

To conceive of a world with no evil, at least on the surface seems relatively simple.  But we must be prepared to admit that the world would be vastly different than our own.  Not just in that it lacked evil, but that its physical properties (if it could have any at all) would be vastly different than are own. 

The Argument of the Head

Evil, properly conceived, is a lack of a good that should otherwise be there.  In a physical world of many physical beings the avoidance of at least some physical evils is an impossibility.  This topic is treated more fully in another essay, but the gist of the issue is that material things are by definition limited things and this limitation combined with a desire for self-preservation means that there will always be a lack in some creatures.  There is a single piece of bread and two people.  At least one of them (or possibly both if they split it) will experience the evil of hunger.  It is pointless to argue that the world could have an unlimited amount of bread because that will result in the evil of something else being lacking.  A physical world will always experience some lack and therefore some evil.

In a material world, one being’s good can be another being’s evil.  Not all relationships can be symbiotic.  The man who is hungry will experience the evil of thorn pricks from the bush that grows them in order to protect its berries from being plucked.  The virus that causes the flu will embed itself in a host and replicate for its own good but the host will experience sickness.

Usually the objection to the evil in the world is related to moral evils, that is, the evils we bring upon ourselves and inflict upon others.  The man who overeats will experience the evil of heart disease and the man who, in protecting his family from an intruder, will experience the evil of being stabbed.  These moral evils may results from the free will responses to physical evils (looters who raid stores after a storm for example) or strictly out of malice.  Either way, they are the result of the free will of someone.

A good God may give the power to use free will, which is good.  But the creatures that have the power may come in conflict with each other in how they use it.  God gave the power and is in a certain sense the cause of power in the action, but He is not the cause of the action itself.  A man who sells a gun to another is responsible for the man having the gun, but this does not mean He is responsible for how it is used.

While we cannot imagine a material world with no physical evils, we might imagine one in which there are no moral evils.  But this would result ultimately in the loss of free will.  A world in which all the goods are limited always carries with it the possibility of misapprehending and misusing those goods.  God could intervene each time someone tried to do something evil, but this would make free will conditioned and thus not totally free.

Our interlocutor would now be hard pressed to imagine a physical world that includes beings with free will in it that does not also include the presence of some evil.  Even if he can come up with one, he cannot prove it that it is more perfect than our own because perfect implies some knowledge of purpose.  Just as you cannot speak of a more perfect pair of shoes until you know what shoes are for, so you cannot speak of a world that is more perfect than our own until you know what the world’s purpose is.  In fact when we begin to examine the world’s purpose, we find that it is perfectly fitting that it contains evil

To say that the world has a purpose is really to say that the world is not an end but a means.  A perfect world would be one in which it prepares its inhabitants for the Real World that is to follow.  It must be a world that mirrors the goodness of the Real World just enough to invoke desire in its inhabitants, but not so much that they feel completely at home in it.  The Real World is one of an eternal communion of self-giving love.  This world must be a training ground that makes that self-giving love possible.  The limited nature of the physical world such as it is makes it possible for this self-giving love, but not without a willingness to suffer some lack for the sake of the beloved.   This willingness must mean that there are actual evils present in the world, even if not all love leads to also suffering from those evils.

The Argument of the Heart

What has been offered to this point is an argument of the head.  A mere “theistic” response is not adequate and only a Christian explanation will do.  God desired to make an “argument of the heart” in order to drive this point home.  This “argument of the heart” is the Passion and Death of Our Lord.  To show the path to the Real World, God Himself stepped into ours in order to show us the way.  He experience evil firsthand and used that suffering illuminating a path through this world marked by suffering.  

With the Passion and death of Christ suffering becomes a necessary component of the escape plan into the Real World.  In our suffering, we, in both a metaphorical and real sense, share in Christ’s suffering.  His suffering was entirely voluntary so that when we suffer, even involuntarily, it signals to us the depth of the love He has for us.  Without suffering we would not know what it was like for Him and would never grasp His great love.  Not only that, but He Who is the one in which all times are present, is really suffering with us.  The Passion is not just a past event but a current event for Him so that He (re)lives it in our very suffering.  He is the Lamb in the Real World that still walks about as though slain (c.f. Rev 5:6). 

The only acceptable answer to the problem of Evil for a Christian is Christ.  The impassible and unchanging God in exercising His omnipotence and omnibenevolence came into our world and suffered with and for us.  He spoke not just to our heads but to our hearts telling us the depth of His desire to share His life with His creatures.  This argument of the heart is at the very core of what it means to live Lent intentionally.  It is the time of reflecting on Christ’s Passion and coming to a greater knowledge of the truth of the nature of the Real World.

The Argument from Conscience

Atheism, Creed, , , ,

In his book, Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, St. John Henry Newman gives account of what might be described as a philosophy of faith.  He thought logical proofs for things like the existence of God, even when sound, were unconvincing for many people because they failed to garner the right kind of belief or assent.  In Newman’s thought, assent to a proposition or a set of propositions can be of two types: notional and real.  Notional assent was a simple assent to a proposition or set of propositions as true.  Real assent takes those same propositions and moves them from the head to the heart so that it becomes concrete and personal.  A man patterns his life around a real belief while a notional belief only remains in the back of his mind.  When it comes to questions of facts, notional assent is often sufficient.  But when it comes to important questions, such as the existence of God, an assent “following upon acts of inference, and other purely intellectual exercises” is never a sufficient impetus to conversion.  Instead Newman thinks that only real assent can act as a means of paving the way for the invasion of grace. 

In Newman’s mind, it is very difficult for all but the most erudite of philosophers to give real assent to the logical, deductive, metaphysical proofs of someone like St. Thomas and his Five Ways.  These proofs are not defective in any way, in fact they are quite the contrary, having stood the test of time by offering certain proof of the existence of God.  Instead Newman thinks real assent can only be given when a person’s experience leads them to a real encounter with God.  For Newman this means turning to inductive proofs that leads one to the probable conclusion that God exists.  Newman thinks he found a universal subjective experience that proves the existence of God in moral obligation.

Conscience as a Universal Experience

Newman’s Argument from Conscience as it has most often been called is one of the most effective arguments for the existence of God.  This is because it builds upon a universal experience.  We all judge our own actions according to whether they are right or wrong.  Once this judgement is made, we experience an obligation to do what is right and avoid what is wrong.  We do not always judge correctly, but we cannot avoid judging.  Likewise, the experience of guilt always accompanies when we don’t choose according to our judgement. 

Stepping outside of ourselves and looking at the universality of this experience we must admit that it is rather strange, especially considering that we appear to be both judge and judged.  We speak of conscience as a voice (or an echo of a voice) that is both imperative and constraining and it is like no other dictate in our experience.  Who, in judging himself, would ever declare guilt unless the voice of conscience somehow connects us to someone beyond ourselves?  When we look in the world, we find no source for this voice (more on this in a moment) and so Newman thinks that “If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear.”  Conscience then, according to Newman, is “a connecting principle between the creature and his Creator.”

Freud would tether us to a this-worldly explanation to keep us from leaping from conscience to God.  He explains guilt as “tension between the ego and the superego.”  The superego is something akin to conscience but it contains only faint echoes of human authorities, especially in our formative years.  This mechanistic explanation of guilt however does not explain the absoluteness with which the dictates of conscience are felt.  Rather than seeming like a transgression of a merely human authority, guilt is experienced as a breaking with the Absolute.  We feel guilty because we know we are guilty.

Why the Argument Works

Recalling to mind the context in which Newman presents the argument, we can see why it might be so convincing.  Conscience as the “aboriginal vicar of Christ” presents God not merely as a Voice out there, but One Who is close to me.  To grasp this though we must move from the notion of conscience as a source of guilt to conscience as spurring us on towards what is truly good.  It is not just the voice of Judge, but of a Father, that desires our well-being in everything.  If we but listen to its voice, conscience no longer acts like a referee keeping us from breaking rules but a coach teaching us to excel in the game of life.  As Newman puts it, “the gift of conscience raises a desire for what it does not itself fully supply. It inspires in them the idea of authoritative guidance, of a divine law; and the desire of possessing it in its fulness, not in mere fragmentary portions or indirect suggestion. It creates in them a thirst, an impatience, for the knowledge of that Unseen Lord, and Governor, and Judge, who as yet speaks to them only secretly, who whispers in their hearts, who tells them something, but not nearly so much as they wish and as they need” (Sermons preached on Various Occasions, Dispositions for Faith).

Presented then in this light, Newman’s Argument from Conscience paves the way not just for notional assent, but real assent.  As the person begins to listen more and more to his conscience, even if poorly formed at first, he develops a taste for the good.  That desire for the Good manifests itself in desiring only what is truly good and the soul begins to look for the moral maps that God provides through the Church.  Judging correctly more and more often, especially as they open themselves up to grace as a gift from the God Who has speaks to them louder and louder through an informed conscience.  The Argument from Conscience truly paves the way for conversion.   

Darwin and Intellectual Racism

Anthropology, Atheism, Creation, Evolution, Faith and Reason, Science, , , ,

When you are in the habit of setting days and months aside to celebrate everything and everyone, you are bound to have some rather odd coincidences.  Today, February 12th, might be one of them.  In the midst of Black History Month, we take a day to “celebrate” Darwin Day.  Chosen to coincide with the birthday of Charles Darwin, the day is set aside to highlight Darwin’s unique contributions to science and to promote science more generally.  A strange coincidence because Charles Darwin single-handedly gave the world a theory that, at its very core, gives intellectual justification for racism.

To be fair, Charles Darwin himself was vehemently opposed to slavery.  He came from a long line of abolitionists.  The problem is that he also came from a long line of atheists so that his hatred of God was greater than his love of slaves.  His justification of slavery and many other genocidal practices was not merely an unintended consequence of his theory but a result of a willed obstinance.  His co-discoverer of the theory of evolution, Alfred Russel Wallace warned him that it was insufficient for explaining man and his friends, including Samuel Wilberforce, the son of the great British abolitionist, warned of the brutality his theory justified.  Darwin, in a moment of brutal honesty once wrote, “I have lately read Morley’s Life of Voltaire and he insists strongly that direct attacks on Christianity produce little permanent effect: real good seems only to follow the slow and silent side attacks.”  In short, he was willing to accept any collateral damage in his “slow and silent attack on Christianity.”

Even Evolutionary Ideas Have Consequences

If we look closely at the theory of evolution itself, we will see why racism necessarily follows.  The Theory of Evolution is based on the relatively straightforward principle of Natural Selection—“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”  Colloquially known as “Survival of the Fittest”, Darwin’s model is rather intuitive until he posits that it explains everything.  The principle is without limitation and any species, given enough time and interaction with the environment, might evolve into any other species.  It is endless evolution with no room for distinctions between micro- and macro-evolution even though Darwin never uncovered evidence for the latter. 

Had he simply put forward the theory of Natural Selection to explain the origin of non-human species like he did in his first book On the Origin of Species, then it is very likely that the microevolutionary aspects would have been accepted and the macroevolutionary rejected, or at least severely modified.  But Darwin had intrinsically connected his scientific theory to a materialist worldview.  To consummate the wedding, he slipped humans into the theory in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.

After Evolving into a rock, Charles Darwin hangs out with the author at the Museum of Natural History in DC

Despite making numerous connections between the rudimentary forms of morality and intelligence in animals and human beings, Darwin was plagued by what appears to be an uncrossable chasm—the difference between the highest animal and the highest human.  But if he was to apply Natural Selection to the “descent of man” then he could allow for a slow and steady evolution which posits that there is not just a difference between animals and men, but between gradations of men as well.  As he puts it in The Descent of Man “Some of these, for instance the Negro and European, are so distinct that, if specimens had been brought to a naturalist without any further information, they would undoubtedly have been considered by him as good and true species.”

For Darwin evolution is an ongoing process.  This means that it continues down to our own day and that various species are continually fighting for survival; humans included.  Governed by the first evolutionary principle of Survival of the Fittest, Natural Selection has favored certain races over others.  Race is pitted against race and tribe against tribe so that the only way we know which is the most fit of them is by their continued survival and destruction of other races and tribes.  So then evolution not only scientifically justifies slavery and racism, but also genocide.  As Darwin himself put it in Decent of Man:

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes [like the gorilla, orangutan, or chimpanzee] . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

An Inherent Contradiction

Modern men are unique in their ability to hold contradictions together in their head, but it is impossible to hold them together in practice.  Either racism, slavery, and genocide are wrong and Evolution is a false explanation for the origin of man or Evolution is true and racism, slavery and genocide are justified.  There can be no intellectual racism without actual racism emerging.  No amount of “sympathy” (to use Darwin’s term) or “woke” condemnation can overcome “scientific fact.”  When science is all you got for truth, then you have to accept the consequences of that.   

We have spoken on any number of occasions previously on why Evolution is both bad philosophy and bad science.  Nevertheless it is accepted as fact because it is the only explanation that eliminates God.  Darwin knew that and his intellectual progeny know it as well.  The problem is that any worldview that eliminates God ultimately ends up justifying the elimination of men.  If Man really came from below, then we might treat him as we see fit.  Might makes right.  But if man came from above then every man is intrinsically valuable regardless of whether he is a savage or civilized.  In fact, as history has borne out, it is Christianity and not some blind process of evolution that raises man from savage to gentleman.  

Aquinas’ Fifth Way and Science

Atheism, Defending the Faith, Faith and Reason, Science, , , , ,

While St. Thomas thought his First Way for proving the existence of God was “the most manifest” in his own day, it is the Fifth Way that is the most accessible to modern man.  Among the Five Ways, the Argument from Finality speaks most clearly modern man’s anti-metaphysical language.  In fact, one modern philosopher, Immanuel Kant, thought the Fifth Way oldest, clearest and the most accordant with the common reason of mankind.”  This is a powerful endorsement coming from the man who killed metaphysics and thought that there could be no objective proofs for God’s existence.  Given its accessibility therefore, it is instructive for us to examine it more closely.

The Argument from Finality is often mistakenly confused with its doppelganger, the Argument from Design.  St. Thomas’ proof is deductive and demonstrative while all the variations of the Intelligent Design Arguments are inductive and probabilistic.  The latter always leaves open the possibility, even if it is remote, that there is in fact no Intelligent Designer.  The Argument from Finality, while it too comes to the same conclusion, it proceeds in a logically sound manner leaving no doubt as to the existence of a Supreme Intelligence Who created and sustains all things in existence.

The two types of proofs are different in another important way.  Like the other Four Ways, St. Thomas’ proof is not really concerned with creation, but preservation.  It is concerned primarily with why things are the way they are right now.  In other words, it eliminates the possibility of deism that plagues all of the Intelligent Design-type arguments. 

The Argument

With that said, let us turn to St. Thomas’ rather brief argument directly.

The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result. Hence it is plain that not fortuitously, but designedly, do they achieve their end.  Now whatever lacks intelligence cannot move towards an end, unless it be directed by some being endowed with knowledge and intelligence; as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer. Therefore, some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.                   

  ST I, q.2 a.3

Proceeding from direct sense experience of the world, St. Thomas posits that since non-intelligent beings always (or at least when not impeded) act for an end, that is, act intelligently, there must be an intelligence “underwriting” their intelligent activity.

On the one hand this is common sense.  In fact, this is such a “given” that empirical science treats it as a first principle.  In order for science to proceed, it has to assume that the object of its study is intelligible.  Intelligibility requires intelligence.  Prediction requires predictability which requires a governing intelligence. 

But common sense, especially if it conflicts with a scientistic worldview, is not so common.  This makes philosophical inquiry necessary.  Framing the discussion within philosophical terms such as final causality makes the argument clearer.  Recall that a being can be explained with regard to its four causes.  The first two causes, the material cause, or what it is made out of, and the formal cause, or what makes the thing what it is, are intrinsic.  The other two, efficient and final causes, are extrinsic.  The efficient cause is the external cause that brings about the existence of a thing or a new way of existence.  This need not point to a First Cause (at least directly), but can refer to secondary causes.  The efficient cause of new oak tree is an acorn.  Looked at from the perspective of the acorn, we can say that the final cause of the acorn is to become an oak tree.  Given all the right conditions, it will develop into an oak tree and not anything else like a rosebush or a donkey.  This is always the case, so much so that we can say that the acorn acts towards this end and not another.

This connection between a thing acting as an efficient cause and fulfilling its own final cause is very important for modern science.  For modern science seeks to study efficient causality.  In developing predictive models for inert matter, it seeks to explain what causes changes in matter.  It does not concern itself so much with final causes, but they are always lurking in the background because of this inherent connection between the two extrinsic causes.  Even if it does not so much care about final causes, the modern scientist cannot act as if they don’t exist without simultaneously denying efficient causes.  It is like sawing off the branch you are sitting upon. 

Why There Must be a Final Cause

Because the acorn lacks intelligence, this inner directedness of the acorn to develop into an oak tree must have an extrinsic intelligent cause.  This becomes evident when we realize that Aquinas is talking, not about creation but preservation.  Why does the acorn, here and now, have as its end or telos, the oak tree?  And why must there be Intelligence for this to be the case?  In order for a final cause to be a true cause, then the effect must be in the cause.  To see how this works, we will draw an analogy with a human artifact, say a house.  The builder is the efficient cause of the house, but he is also what is called the exemplary cause.  It is his idea of what the house will look like that is the final cause.  That cause does not exist in the house, but in the mind of the builder.  So if we return to our acorn, we can ask where the final cause exists.  When we do, we realize that it exists as a divine idea.  Now we see why the final cause cannot exist without an intelligence.  It must first exist as an exemplar in order to be a true final cause.  It must exist not just at creation, but also in the here and now.   

Once this link between final causes and intelligence is made, we see why St. Thomas’ argument is true.  The fact that we observe anything that acts as an efficient cause is also acting upon its own final causality.  Because these things act towards ends, and not just any ends, but very specific ends, there must be an intelligence behind it.  “Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God.”

Understanding what St. Thomas is really arguing for then becomes important because it differentiates it from other Intelligent Design arguments.  This demonstrative proof is protected from the “God in gaps” arguments that usually plague these types of arguments.  Sharing the same assumptions as modern science, it also makes it especially potent against those who reject God based on scientism.

Translating the Five Ways

Atheism, Faith and Reason, , , , ,

Having stood the test of time, St. Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways remain a reliable means by which to prove the existence of God.  The problem, especially in an age steeped in scientistic thinking, is that most people are metaphysically illiterate and unable to really capture the genius behind them and see their great evidentiary power.  This calls for those who can understand the proofs to summarize them in such a manner that even the metaphysical novice can understand.  Better yet, in a sound-bite culture, it is invaluable to provide a single argument that combines all five into one.  Thankfully, there are Thomists in our own age who have done the legwork on this (Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s God His Existence and His Nature and Edward Feser, Five Proofs for God) but their work remains inaccessible to those unschooled in Scholastic Philosophy.  It is in this spirit, that this essay tries to translate St. Thomas’ work into a language that can be readily understood, and more important, presented to unbelievers.

The great 20th Century Thomist, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange summarized the arguments like this:

“All these arguments can be summed up in a more general one, based on the principle of causality, which may be stated as follows: That which does not exist by itself, can exist only by another, which is self-existent. Now, experience shows that there are beings endowed with activity, life, and intelligence, which do not exist of and by themselves, since they are born and die. Therefore, they received their existence from another, who must be existence, life, and intelligence itself. If such were not the case, we should have to say that the greater comes from the less, the higher form of life from the lower, and that the plurality of beings comes from a primary being less perfect than all the others taken together.”

God: His Existence and His Nature Volume I

An Important Distinction

At the heart of each of the Five Ways is the distinction between what a thing is or its essence and that a thing is or its existence.  Once we grasp this distinction, the existence of God logically follows.  Everywhere we look we find things that have not always existed.  No visible being has as part of its nature, existence.  Each being requires that existence be given it by another being.  We call these existence-dependent beings, contingent beings.

One of the common mistakes we make in interpreting these arguments is to look at them as proving a First Cause in time.  But that is not what they do.  They set out to show a First Cause in existence.  Contingent beings, beings who do not have existence by nature, require existence be given them not just when they come into being, but in order to remain in being.  The fact that a thing exists at each moment would not allow for an infinite regress in causes.  But because this is not immediately obvious, we will discuss it briefly.

The chain of causes that we are describing is called an essentially subordinate series.  It is labeled as such because in order for the entire series to hold, the First Cause must continually exercise its causal activity.  Suppose we have a chain ABCD.  C can only cause D because it is being caused by B.  Likewise B causes C.  You could multiply the causes between B and A, but unless you get to a cause, which we are calling A, that is uncaused, then the chain of causation will never occur.  There must be a cause that does not itself require a cause in order for any link of the causal chain to connect.

Recall that this causal chain is not tracing back in time like an ancestral tree where a grandmother ceases to exercise causal power on her grandson, but is horizontal in holding a being in existence here and now.  St. Thomas uses the analogy of a man using his arm to push a stick that moves a rock.  If the man ceases to exercise his free will in moving his arm, then the stick ceases to move and the rock remains stationary. 

Once we eliminate the possibility of an infinite regress, we can see how the proof leads us to God.  If there must be an uncaused cause, a being who does not get existence from another source, then we can say this being’s essence includes existence.  We call this being the necessary being.  More accurately we would say that this Being because his essence is to exist is existence itself.  And we call this Being God or “I AM”.

The Five Ways and the Way

This obviously does not take us all the way to the Christian God as He has revealed Himself.  Reason could never get us there.  But it does, in a certain sense, lead us up to the time of Moses.  God revealed Himself to Moses as Being Itself, “I AM WHO AM” because it was the foundation upon which He was to reveal Himself not just as Being Itself, but Being Who is here for you right now.  Once we grasp that it is God Who doesn’t just create us and leave us to our own devices, but instead holds us in existence at each moment, the Christian message becomes more accessible.  If God is holding us in existence then He must will to do so.  He wills not in some disaffected way, but because He sees our existence as something good.  And not just “our” but mine and yours individually.  He wills it because He loves the good that we are.  We need only open ourselves to the fullness of that love so that we don’t merely exist as creatures but are crowned as sons. 

By adding the Christian conclusions to our philosophical findings, we come to realize why St. Thomas should never be seen as some dry intellectual philosopher.  He saw all of his work as leading us back to God, including his proofs for his existence.  We too may grasp this when we set to succinctly give his reasons for believing, not just to win arguments, but to win souls.  The Five Ways ultimately lead us to the Way Himself. 

Confronting the Problem of Evil

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The Greek philosopher Epicurus may have been the first to articulate it, but he was most definitely not the last.  For the past 2400 years, believers have been haunted by his trilemma: “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.  Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”  Epicurus is putting forth the “Problem of Evil” which remains the most repeated argument against the existence of God.  Dressed in various forms, the conditions are always the same—the incompatibility of omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and the existence of evil.  Because of its longstanding quality, believers of every age, our own included, must be prepared to answer this challenge.

Navigating the gauntlet begins by defining our terms, the first of which is evil.  In our time there is a tendency to see evil as some positive force in the universe locked in a cosmic battle with good.  Viewed as something, it seems to have a power all its own.  But evil is no more of a thing than blindness is a thing.  It is not a something but a nothing.  Just as blindness is a lack of sight, evil is a lack of a good that should otherwise be there.  Both exist, but neither has any being of its own.  Instead it exists in the form of a deprivation.  In fact, blindness in the philosophical sense of the term is an evil; a lack of sight in a being that should otherwise see.  Evil only exists as a parasite to some good and has no existence of its own.

Whence cometh Evil?

This philosophical hair splitting is necessary because it addresses Epicurus’ question “whence cometh evil?” and demonstrates how God can be all good and there still be evil.  God, as Creator, gives being to all things.  He is, in an absolute sense, the cause of being.  God cannot create non-being, not because He isn’t omnipotent, but because “create non-being” is nonsense.  To create is to give being and to create something with no being is a contradiction.  God’s omnipotence does not suddenly make the intrinsically impossible, possible.  God could no more create evil than He can make a square with three sides, omnipotent or not.

If we are to take the world as it is, that is a material world with a multitude of creatures, we could see why a certain amount of evil might be logically necessary.  We call these evils physical evils or evils suffered.  These types of evils are not privations per se, even though they can be causes of privations.  They are simply incidences where two goods collide.  When the good of the lion’s preservation meets the good of the lamb’s, the lamb tends to get the short end of the stick.  Physical evils are always connected to a good directly.  The lion’s self-preservation is a good thing, even if the lamb’s demise is not. For God to remove such evils is not simply to make our world better, but to make an entirely different kind of world.  Whether that world would be better or not can be debated, but the presence of physical evil is no argument against God’s omnipotence or omnibenevolence because one could readily imagine that same God guiding all interactions such that they work out for the good of the whole.

Moral evils, that is, evils done by rational creatures, are by far the more difficult to explain.  There are no goods in conflict, only a failure to do what is good.  The moral agent deliberately introduces disorder into what should otherwise be good.  Exonerating God from responsibility for these evils is a bit more challenging. 

God is not just the Creator, but the sustainer of creation.  That means nothing happens without His somehow being a cause.  He is not only the cause of a man, but a cause of His free will activity.  Related to the topic at hand, God is not the cause of the man’s choice, only his power of choosing.  The man cannot choose without God, but what he chooses is up to him. 

Recall that God, through His omnipotence, can do anything that does not imply a logical contradiction.  God could have made a world in which a man might choose freely but always choose good because there is no contradiction.  But He did not.  Instead the world we inhabit allows for free choice that can include evil.  This is allowed because God’s will in creating is to create a world such that His goodness is most fully made manifest through the goods of His creatures.  One can readily see that there are a multitude of goods that would never be made known were it not for the ability to choose what is evil: courage, forgiveness, mercy, justice to name just a few.  If through the designs of divine Providence God wanted to make His creatures participate in these real goods, there must be some evil present; not just physical evil, but moral as well.  Eliminate all evil, and you drag goods with it.

Why the Argument Fails?

This is why the argument ultimately fails.  One may readily admit that there are a multitude of evils present in the world, but not without admitting that there are many cases in which goods that would not otherwise be created are made present.  So, the good trailing on evil is proof not of God’s non-existence or His weakness, but of His goodness and power.  As Aquinas puts it, “‘Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.’ This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good” (ST I, q.2, a.2, ad.2). 

Once we define evil for what it is metaphysically, that is a “no-thing”, we realize that it is only God Who is All-Good and All-Powerful that can create good ex nihilio.  The fact that good does come from evil shows that to be the work of God Himself.  So, the Problem of Evil, rather than leading us away from God, actually leads towards Him.   

Arguing for God’s Existence Through the Degrees of Being

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According to the First Vatican Council, it is an article of Faith that the existence of God can be proven using reason alone.  This declaration shows just how much faith the Church has in reason and philosophy.  It is an endorsement for the metaphysical endowment that God has given to man in the form of his own intellect.  The timing of the Vatican Council’s declaration is not accidental; reading the signs of the times almost 150 years ago, the Council Fathers saw that faith in reason was in decline and so the Holy Spirit thought it necessary to remind us of our metaphysical prowess.  Their message remains a clarion call for us today.

Among the many proofs for the existence of God, the Church has given a special pride of place to the Five Ways of St. Thomas.  These proofs ably combine metaphysical thinking with common experience to lead us to back to God under five different attributes: the Unmoved Mover, the Uncaused Cause, the Necessary Being, the Most Perfect Being and the Orderly Governor of Creation.  This does not, mind you, replace what God has revealed, but instead acts like a preamble to faith or a preliminary motive of credibility that paves the way for the invasion of grace and true Faith.  These proofs have proven to be irrefutable.  Those who have tried have only shown themselves unable to understand them.  It is therefore vital that we be able to present these proofs in an intelligible manner.  In the past we have explained the First Way so that in this essay we will present what is the most metaphysical of the Five Ways, the Fourth Way, often called the Argument from Degrees of Being.

Before getting to the actual proof, it will be helpful to review the metaphysical principles that St. Thomas employs because the modern mind habitually assumes that all value judgments are subjective.  But objective reality is otherwise.  But in order to grasp this, we need to introduce the medieval concept of the Chain of Being.

The Chain of Being

In an egalitarian age that is unable to decipher between the value of man and beast, the Chain of Being might strike us as odd.  It posits that the world is not just a blob of different stuff or a random collection of atoms, but instead an ordered hierarchy of beings.  The ordering is not based upon subjective preferences, but upon objective standards.  A man’s best friend really does have more value than Man’s Best Friend; John is objectively more valuable than Fido. 

Merely saying so does not make it so however.  Instead we must look at why John is more valuable than Fido.  We say that one creature is greater than another when it has more perfections, that is more being.  A geranium has life and can grow and thus has more perfections than a Plymouth Rock.  Fido has life and the capacity to grow, but also the power of locomotion and sense knowledge.  John too has vegetative powers and sensitive powers of Fido, but also the power to reason.  John is more valuable than Fido because he has more perfections.  And because he has more perfections, he has more being and occupies a higher place in the Chain of Being.  We can say that John is objectively more valuable than Fido accusations of speciesism not withstanding.

It is better to be than not to be.  Put another way, a thing must exist before it can be good so that whatever has goodness must have being.  The reverse is also true: everything that has being also has some goodness.  This is the case because being and goodness are convertible meaning that we can examine being under the aspect of goodness. To be is good and to be more is to better.  Good is related to the perfection of being.

Being is not within a category, but instead transcends all categories because it contains all categories.  The same applies to goodness in that it transcends all categories because it applies to all of them.  This is why we refer to goodness, along with truth and beauty as transcendentals.  Truth is a transcendental because all being is in a sense knowable.  The more being a thing has, the more knowable it is (and the hard it is to truly know).  In that sense we can also say that a plant is more true than a rock.  Likewise with beauty which, in a certain sense, combines goodness and truth so that the objectively beautiful exhibits integrity, harmony and clarity.  To avoid repeating what has been said before, I point the reader to this link on beauty.

Aquinas’ Fourth Way

With our feet planted on this metaphysical foundation, we can now evaluate St. Thomas’ argument.

The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But “more” and “less” are predicated of different things, according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum, as a thing is said to be hotter according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest; so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being, as it is written in Metaph. ii. Now the maximum in any genus is the cause of all in that genus; as fire, which is the maximum heat, is the cause of all hot things. Therefore there must also be something which is to all beings the cause of their being, goodness, and every other perfection; and this we call God.

ST I, q.2, art. 3

St. Thomas begins by referring to the aforementioned Chain of Being.  What he then goes on to do is say that if we predicate a transcendental property to any being, then there must be “something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being.”  This might not be intuitive based on our foundation so we will spell it out more explicitly. 

Although creatures have various degrees of being, none of them are the cause of their own being.  Each creature is limited in their being by their nature or their essence and thus they must receive their existence from another (this is the First Way).  This cause of being cannot itself require a cause but instead must have maximal being, that is, it must be of their essence to exist.  This Being, we call God Who calls Himself “I AM”.

Meeting an Objection

It is worth looking at an objection because it helps to clarify the argument and illuminate St. Thomas’s genius.  It would be a misreading of the argument to assume that St. Thomas is saying that all things that exist in degrees must have a maximum.  He is partly to blame for this because of the example he used with respect to fire and heat.  Heat need not have an absolute maximum.  Treating it as simply an example of a closed system in which a fire is the source of all heat, makes the example more intelligible.  Many people, including theists, make this mistake.  But none make it with as much flair as Richard Dawkins did in his book The God Delusion when he said that “You might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness.  Therefore, there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker.”

Dawkins’ cleverness stops at his example.  Unable to see anything without his scientistic glasses, he can only see the flaw in St. Thomas’ example and is unable to grasp the underlying logic.  A bad example does not invalidate the principle.  Dawkins and his kind do not grasp that the argument is not about beings in particular, but being itself.  St. Thomas is focused only on the transcendentals—” so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest and, consequently, something which is uttermost being; for those things that are greatest in truth are greatest in being”—and not on particular created things.  Those things that share or participate in a limited way of being, goodness, truth and beauty must be caused by a Being that is essentially and maximally good, true and beautiful.

Hope and the Mystery of Evil

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Atheists, at least those who are honest, often cite the problem of suffering as their main obstacle to believing in God.  They reason that if there is a loving God, then there wouldn’t be so much suffering.  A believer may counter with the burden of free will, but that really only accounts for the moral evils in this world.  What about the natural evils, those like we see in the wake of hurricane, where suffering and death seem to be everywhere?  The problem facing the believer is how he can explain a mystery, that is the mystery of evil, to one who does not yet have faith.  And so, the unbeliever goes away with only more reasons for disbelief.  But if we are to give them reasons for belief, then we must be willing to dive into this question a little more deeply.

Evil and suffering are, as we said, a mystery.  The word mystery comes from the Greek word mysterion which literally means closed.  Mysteries, at least in the sense we are using it here, are closed to the rational mind.  The human mind, unaided by revelation, can not even conceive of the mystery.  Once it is revealed, it becomes intelligible, but the light of full understanding cannot be seen.  The mystery of evil is one such revealed truth that, absent the gift of divine faith, is completely incomprehensible.  No amount of reasoning about suffering and evil could ever bring us to the point where we could conclude that “all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).

Hope and the Desire for Justice

Even if we could intellectually assent to this truth, it remains elusive because it is also the foundation of the theological virtue of hope.  Like faith, hope is a gift and not something we can earn.  It resides in the will and acts like a holy fortitude that enables us to habitually cling to the truth of God’s Word even in the presence of manifold evils.    It is in “hope we are saved” (Romans 8:24).  At every corner, the believer is tempted to despair, that is, to give up on the fact that God always fulfills His promises so we should not be surprised when the unbeliever, who lives without these supernatural gifts, finds no seeds of hope in this world. 

Lacking supernatural faith and hope, it would seem that the unbeliever’s ears remain permanently closed to any possible theological explanation.  It only seems that way however when we ask an important question.  Why is it that the unbeliever expects things to be otherwise?  The answer, once it is uttered, turns the issue on its head.  What makes evil and suffering so bad in the mind of the unbeliever is that it appears to be indiscriminate; favoring, if anything the guilty more than the innocent.  Peeling back a layer of his thoughts he will find that, like all men, he has an innate desire for justice.  This desire, even if it is unacknowledged cannot be stamped out.  He finds within himself a fundamental paradox—”there is no God and yet I expect justice.”

Every true desire that we have has an object.  We experience hunger and there is food, we experience loneliness there are companions, we desire knowledge, there are things to be known.  We could go on and on listing our desires and find that each matches to some object.  Justice however remains mostly elusive.  We certainly believe there is an object, or else all the political machinations in which we try to create a utopic paradise are pointless.  But those objects have proven to be woefully inadequate.  It is reasonable then to expand our horizons. 

This line of reasoning is not unlike CS Lewis’ argument from desire, except that it points towards an event—the Last Judgment.  The Last Judgment, the moment when Christ comes to judge the living and the dead, will be first and foremost an event of justice.  Every injustice will be set right, every wrong righted, everlasting crowns given to those who suffered injustice and everlasting shame to those who doled it out.  The judgment of history will be corrected and “the last shall be first and the first shall be last.”  Justice will be served. 

The Final Judgment as a Beacon of Hope

In short, the desire for justice is meant to serve as a signpost pointing towards the truth of eternal life.  Pope Benedict XVI calls this “the most important motive for believing in eternal life” in Spe Salvi, his second encyclical:

There is justice. There is an “undoing” of past suffering, a reparation that sets things aright. For this reason, faith in the Last Judgement is first and foremost hope—the need for which was made abundantly clear in the upheavals of recent centuries. I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favor of faith in eternal life. The purely individual need for a fulfilment that is denied to us in this life, for an everlasting love that we await, is certainly an important motive for believing that man was made for eternity; but only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does the necessity for Christ’s return and for new life become fully convincing.

Spe Salvi (SS) #43

Following this line of reasoning a little further, we see that the unfulfilled desire for justice in this life becomes a beacon of hope for the next.  It is according to God’s Providential design that justice will be lacking in this world precisely to spur our desire for the next.  Revelation then becomes the venue where desire meets object.  The heart testifies and Revelation answers.

Based on this view, the Pope wants us to correct our view of the Final Judgment and see it in the light of the Good News.  “The image of the Last Judgement is not primarily an image of terror, but an image of hope; for us it may even be the decisive image of hope” (SS, 44).  When we see it as part and parcel of the Good News as a response to man’s universal longing for justice, its evangelical power can be unleashed.

God and the Gray Lady

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Just in time for the Feast of the Incarnation, the New York Times published an opinion piece written by Professor of Philosophy Peter Atterton that purposes to refute the idea of “deity most Westerners accept” because it is not coherent.  His approach is the same approach is the same tri-lemma that was the topic of a recent post: pitting God’s omnipotence, omnibenevolence and omniscience against each other.  It is worthwhile to examine his argument, well at least part of it, not because it is particularly compelling, but because it was featured in one of the country’s largest fish wraps.  In fact, his argument overall falls rather flat as we will see.

A Stone too Large, Really?

First he experiments with the “stone too large to lift argument” to attack God’s omnipotence.  This seems rather easy to resolve once we define what we mean when we say that God’s omnipotence allows Him to do any thing  and not anything.  Provided that the thing is an actual thing, that is something that could be done, then God can do it.  The rock too heavy to lift is a sophist word game because it is simply a logical contradiction akin to saying that God can also square a circle or make right left (which everyone knows only Lightning McQueen can do).  This is a classic attack (the author even cites Aquinas who addressed it) but it really stems from a misunderstanding of God’s nature.  Those who posit such a thing normally think of the voluntarist God of the Calvinists and Muslims rather than the God Who is Reason and has revealed Himself in the Logos or Word that became flesh.

Professor Atterton may have been trying to set up an attack on God’s omnibenevolence by even mentioning the ersatz dilemma of the stone that can’t be lifted.  He seems to think that a world in which evil does not exist, at least from the Christian point of view, is among those logical impossibilities.  That is certainly not something that Christians believe.  God could have made (and even possibly did) such a world, but for reasons we may not understand (because we are not God) He chose not to.  The point however is that He could have done otherwise, but had a reason for doing it the way He did.   

As far as this part of the tri-lemma, I will refer the reader to the aforementioned post that deals with God and the Problem of Evil.  The part of the argument that bears the most attention is the “conundrum” of omniscience.  In short, his argument is that “if God knows all there is to know, then He knows at least as much as we know. But if He knows what we know, then this would appear to detract from His perfection… if God knows all that is knowable, then God must know things that we do, like lust and envy. But one cannot know lust and envy unless one has experienced them. But to have had feelings of lust and envy is to have sinned, in which case God cannot be morally perfect…Therefore, God doesn’t know what it is like to be human. In that case He doesn’t know what we know. But if God doesn’t know what we know, God is not all knowing, and the concept of God is contradictory. God cannot be both omniscient and morally perfect. Hence, God could not exist.”

God’s Omniscience

One must first admit that this has a diabolical ring to it, “for you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (c.f. Gn 3:5) and so we should immediately intuit that it contains a falsehood.  The diabolical delusion is unmasked once we challenge the Professor’s contention that  “if God knows all there is to know, then He knows at least as much as we know.”

The problem is not that it is wrong, but that he is equivocating on the term “knows”.  The way we know things is vastly different  from the way God knows things.  In truth, God knows only one thing—Himself—and this knowledge of Himself embraces everything actual and possible.  Our knowledge comes piecemeal and only after discursion.  His knowledge embraces all things at once without any reasoning out all the possible details of each individual thing.  His knowledge is eternal and unchanging and thus He must come to know all things in light of their cause, Himself.  If this were not so, then there would be an imperfection in God, namely that His knowledge would depend on created things.

God’s knowledge is not determined and measured by things like ours, but is the cause of things.  God’s knowledge in relation to things then is a creative knowledge that gives existence to things.  Ours is an experiential or connatural knowledge.  This point seems to be missed when the Professor speaks of God having to know “lust and envy.”  This train of thought is important because it keeps the Professor’s moral argument from leaving the station.

Evil is foreign to God, but, according to St. Thomas, God can still know evil “through the good of which it is a privation, as darkness is known by light.”  His point is that evil, like darkness, can only be known in contrast to the thing that is lacking.  God is not the cause of the lack, but man is, even if God has permitted it.  In other words, God can know about evil, but only because it is affront to the good of which He has creative knowledge.  But St. Thomas goes even further when he says that “He would not know good things perfectly unless He also knew evil things” (ST I, q.14 a.10).   His point is that to speak of “full” knowledge is to imply degree.  In short, to have full knowledge means one must also be able to know when it is lacking. 

In recent years the New York Times has come under intense scrutiny for its lack of journalistic integrity and a decidedly partisan slant with little regard for truth.  They seem to now be setting their sights on Truth Himself.  Of course, if they are going to succeed in placing God in the Dock, they are going to have to find better arguments than Professor Atterton’s elementary attempt.  Maybe some news isn’t really fit to print.

The Problem of Evil and God’s Existence

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For anyone who has read either of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summas, it is patently obvious that he took objections to the Catholic Faith seriously.  Put more precisely, he felt obligated to address serious objections fully.  So keen was his understanding that he often made his opponents’ arguments more precisely and succinctly than they can.  One can often learn more from the objections and their responses than from the substance of his response.  Christians of today could learn much from the Angelic Doctor in this regard, especially when it comes to the existence of God.  There are most certainly motives of credibility  that honest atheists must take seriously if they are genuinely interested in discovering the truth.  But these can often be overshadowed by what might be called “a motive of discredibility”, namely the problem of evil and suffering, that Christians must also take seriously.

When St. Thomas tackles the existence of God in the Summa Theologiae, he finds this to be the only real objection.  This was not to suggest that other objections don’t matter, but that they begin to fade away once this objection has received a sufficient answer.  St. Thomas articulates the objection like this: “It seems that God does not exist; because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word ‘God’ means that He is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist” (ST I, q.2 art 3, obj. 1). 

The Dilemma of Suffering and Evil

Notice that the objector has set up what is essentially a dilemma revolving around God’s infinite goodness.  If God is omnibenevolent then evil cannot exist.  Many have added to this argument by suggesting that the problem is really a tri-lemma in that God could not be infinitely wise, good and powerful if evil exists.  Either he cannot stop the evil (omnipotence), wills the evil (omnibenevolence) or doesn’t know how to stop it (omnisapience). 

St. Thomas, in a certain sense, anticipates the expanded objection when he quotes St. Augustine who said “Since God is the highest good, He would not allow any evil to exist in His works, unless His omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil” and adds his own comment that, “This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good” (ST I, q.2 art 3, ad. 1).

What St. Thomas doesn’t say, but that remains just beneath the surface of what he did, is that evil, once properly framed, actually presents an argument for God.  Evil in the metaphysical sense does not exist.  This does not mean it is not a reality or that it causes suffering in people, but this suffering is not a result of the evil per se, but of the deprivation of a good that should otherwise be there.  Blindness is a deprivation of the good of sight and therefore is an evil.  Moral evils like sins and vices are nothing but a lack of the moral good that should otherwise be in and flow from the human heart. 

This distinction, although well known, is important for two reasons.  First, it refutes any dualistic ontological explanations.  Second, and more closely related to our point, is the fact that when good comes from evil, it is always a creation ex nihilio.  Good that does come comes from absolutely nothing.  Only a being Who is all powerful can create out of nothing so that the problem of evil presents no difficulty to the principle of God’s omnipotence.   In fact, a God who allows evil and suffering and brings good out of it is more powerful than a God who simply erects a divine Stop Sign to stamp out any evil beforehand.

Neither does evil or suffering present a difficulty to God’s omnibenevolence.  Especially when we add the principle that God only allows evil to occur when it is the only manner in which a particular good can come about.  Certain goods such as self-sacrifice can only exist in a world in which evil and suffering are possible.  One could see that the world with evil and suffering in it actually manifests God’s goodness more than a world without it (if it didn’t He wouldn’t have allowed it that way). 

Christ Crucified and God’s Wisdom

Once we grasp the preceding two points we see that only a God Who is all-wise could navigate these waters.  And this is why it is Wisdom Incarnate Who ultimately “dwelt among us” in order to prove this point.  When Christ healed the man born blind, the disciples ask Him what the man (or his parents) did wrong to deserve this.  He tells them that his blindness and his healing was so that God’s goodness could be made manifest.  Christ did not alleviate the suffering of everyone He met.  He did not heal those who deserved it either.  He healed only those, like the man born blind, that would glorify God and be better off without it.  There were many people He didn’t heal, but that wasn’t because He didn’t have time or didn’t care.  He was consistently applying His principle.  Those who were left to suffer were glorifying God in their suffering and were better off because of it.  

Those who suffer know that the problem of evil is no mere intellectual problem.  But the Christian must proclaim that there is no mere intellectual solution.  The answer to evil and suffering is not a philosophical proof but Christ crucified.  Christ is the final answer to this problem, because in truth, only by way of participation in His Cross is God’s goodness made manifest to the individual person.  Through suffering and evil God brings the greatest Good, Himself.  Suffering becomes a treasure that never ceases to give a return on investment.  Rather than an obstacle it becomes a launching pad.  Christians who grasp this and live it out become the most effective argument against those who have yet to see it.     

The Unmovable Straw Man

Atheism, Faith and Reason, Theology, , , ,

Richard Dawkins opens his chapter on surveying arguments for God’s existence by quoting from Thomas Jefferson that “a professorship of theology should have no place in our institution.”  Instead of demanding proof for this statement, Dawkins turns his gaze towards the proofs of another Thomas, St. Thomas Aquinas.  With amazing brevity he is able to debunk the first three of Aquinas’ five ways in a mere two paragraphs.  Three quarters of a millennium is swept aside by a Professor of Public Understanding in Science at Oxford in a mere two paragraphs relegating one of the greatest philosopher’s arguments to the dustbin of history.  Unfortunately, upon even a cursory examination the Professor’s rebuttal falls rather flat.  In fact, for those who have actually read and studied Aquinas’ five ways you get the impression that Dawkins is talking about a completely different argument.

Dawkins might advocate removing theology from the standard course of study, but he has also thrown the philosophical baby out with the theological bathwater.  He and his “New Atheist” friends may be competent scientists, but they are terrible philosophers.  Revealing hubris more than truth, they are particularly adept at knocking down straw men. Rather than putting forth the intellectual effort to grapple with the real argument they dismiss it with a healthy dose of acerbic wit.  So despite the fact that they are a loud gong signifying nothing, they make enough noise that they get the attention of many people who thoughtlessly regurgitate their arguments.

Dawkins and the First Way

Here is how Dawkins describes Aquinas’ first way:

The Unmoved Mover.  Nothing moves without a prior mover.  This leads us to a regress, from which the only escape is God.  Something had to make the first move, and that something we call God.

Candidly, if this did accurately describe Aquinas’ proof, then he would be warranted in his criticism when he says, “They make the entirely unwarranted assumption that God Himself is immune to the regress. Even if we alow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name, simply because we need one, there absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God: omnipotence, omniscience, goodness…”

Of course this is not at all what Aquinas was arguing in what he called the “more manifest way of the argument from motion” (ST I, q.2 art.3).  When Aquinas speaks of “motion” or “movement” he is not talking about physical bodies moving from one place to another specifically.  Dawkins is not alone in his linking this argument with what he calls a “big bang singularity” or anything like a cue ball hitting one ball that then knocks another ball into the pocket.  Rather than locomotion (i.e. motion though space), Aquinas is concerned with motion in the broader sense of change.  Change for Aquinas is the actualizing of some potential.  This is why this particular argument is the most obvious for Aquinas—we see change everywhere we look.  All change requires a changer, that is some actualizer to a given things potential.  Lukewarm water is potentially cold, but in order to become cold, it must come into contact with something that is actually cold.  This is nothing other than the principle of causality, a principle that a scientist like Dawkins must readily accept.

“All change requires a changer” sounds like just a rewording of what Dawkins said, except by examining change more broadly Aquinas is concerned not of a linear change like tracing the Big Bang to a Big Banger (that would be just locomotion) but having a vertical understanding change in the here and now.  An example might help to understand this.

The keyboard on this computer has the potential to put the letter R in a document.  But in order for that potential to be actualized, it must have someone type it.  But for someone to type it, it must be open and on a desk.  In order for the desk to hold it, it must be sitting on a floor.  In order for the floor to hold the desk holding the computer it must rest on joists that rest on a foundation that rest on the ground.  The earth is held in place by the sun which in turn is held in place by the other heavenly bodies and so forth.  Each link in the chain reveals another actual being that was only potential until something else actualized it.

Notice that the regress then is not backward in time, but here and now.  Notice also that no infinite number of desks, for example, could support the computer.  Each desk cannot derive its power to support the computer on its own.  It must borrow that power from something else.  In short, even an infinite number of desks must sit upon something unmovable, or an “unmoved mover.”  No number of desks can support themselves.  So, rather than making the “entirely unwarranted assumption that God Himself is immune to this regress” Aquinas shows the necessity of some being that has no potential and is pure activity.  Dawkins has failed to even address the argument but simply labels it “an unwarranted assumption.”  It is not an assumption but something that Aquinas has proven.  Perhaps he is mistaken, but you must deal with the argument as it is.  You have to disprove the principle of sufficient reason, which would also throw science as a discipline out with it.  Dawkins and many of those who repeat what he says instead takes the intellectual high road and mocks what is a very serious challenge to his worldview.  Rather than relying on reason as he purports to do, Dawkins instead prefers faith in his unprovable assumption that God does not exist.

But Must We Call It God?

Reading between the lines of what Dawkins says it might be that he rejects calling this necessary being God.  He mentions that “there is no reason to endow the terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God.”  This again reveals his unwillingness to actually engage the argument and instead prefers to play silly games like pitting omniscience and omnipotence against each other.

Certainly there are limits to what reason can tell us about God.  To fully reason to God would make us God.  For those invited to divine participation they must rely on Divine Revelation to know that He listens to prayers and forgives sins (two that Dawkins mentions).  But once reason tells us that He exists and that He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent then faith can tell us the rest.

Rather than having “no reason to endow” God with these attributes, we have good reason from what has already been said.  Because He is the source of all change or motion, He must be all-powerful.  Since the principle of sufficient reason tells us that the effect must be in the cause and that the thing known must be in the knower, the nature or essence of all things must be in the cause of them.  Therefore God is omniscient.  Finally, because He lacks nothing (i.e. having no potential) and the actualizer of all things He must be omnibenevolent.

Aquinas closes his first way with the statement, “therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God”( ST I, q.2, art. 3).  Everyone?  Perhaps Aquinas was wrong.  More likely though is that there are many who refuse to acknowledge God’s existence by doing the intellectual leg work to confront challenges to their worldview.

The Newest Teen Idol

Anthropology, Atheism, Church and State, Politics, , , , ,

To mark his 200th birthday, the self-styled “young person’s guide to saving the world,” Teen Vogue,wrote an article on Karl Marx—“the Anti-Capitalist Scholar.”  The article is worth reading, not necessarily because it is a work of serious scholarship, but because it represents a perfect example of the propaganda that many young people are fed regarding Marxism.  Avoiding the inconvenient truth that his ideology led to deaths in the neighborhood of 150 million people (according to The Black Book of Communism) and focusing instead on the abuses of capitalism that it allegedly rectifies, Marx is presented and an underappreciated genius.  This marks the latest in a long line of attempts to paint the intellectual founder of Communism and his theories in a positive light.  Of course this is a favorite tactic of Lenin himself who thought that targeting the minds of the young and teaching them to love Marx, hate any authority and  label anyone whose ideas differ from theirs as haters (notice how “bosses”, “rich people” and even Donald Trump end up in their sights) they could be won over to Communism.  The rest of the general public, living in a post-Cold War world, remains wholly ignorant to the tenets of Marxism, let alone its inherent dangers.

In his scathing condemnation of Communism (he calls it a “satanic scourge”), Divini Redemptoris, Pope Pius XI said that Communism spread so rapidly because “too few have been able to grasp the nature of Communism. The majority instead succumb to its deception, skillfully concealed by the most extravagant promises…Thus the Communist ideal wins over many of the better minded members of the community. These in turn become the apostles of the movement among the younger intelligentsia who are still too immature to recognize the intrinsic errors of the system” (Divini Redemptoris, 15).  His assessment of Communism remains to this day one of the best overall and succinct descriptions of the goals and errors of Marxism.  It should appear on every Catholic’s reading list, especially those who view Marxism as something relegated to the dustbin of history.  It is still very much alive in places like Cuba and North Korea and in its cultural form in many countries (including our own).

Marxism and Conflict

Rather than focusing in this essay on each of these errors, there is one particular aspect that draws our attention.  In the last paragraph of the Teen Vogue article, the author says “While you may not necessarily identify as a Marxist, socialist, or communist, you can still use Karl Marx’s ideas to use history and class struggles to better understand how the current sociopolitical climate in America came to be.”  This plea for open-mindedness towards Marxism is really a thinly veiled attempt to promote it.  It rests on an important assumption attached to Marx’s philosophy that paves the way for the whole package—his dialectical and historical materialism.

Marx’s interpretation of history is simple; it is a process that is driven inevitably forward by the law of dialectics.  In this vision of history, all social change comes about through class conflicts produced by economic causes.  As Marx put it, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Communist Manifesto, Chapter 1 ).  This growth occurs according to the pattern of the dialectic.  Thesis generates its own antithesis and from this conflict a synthesis emerges.  This synthesis becomes the new thesis and the process continues until it reaches its end—the Communist society.  For Marx, the rise of Capitalism had reduced society to only two classes, the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.  What he proposed was a single world-wide revolution that abolishes the Bourgeoisie and puts an end to class conflict forever under the “dictatorship of the Proletariat.”

To organize the young around the view that all of history is oppression is the key to the spread of the Marxist revolution (or any revolution for that matter).  This is also at the heart of the challenge by cultural Marxism that we face.  The dialectic of oppression is the predominant social vernacular of our day.  The rich oppress the poor, men oppress women, white men oppress black men, religious majority oppress the sexual libertines and on and on.  We must see this for what it is—something the Holy Father warned about, “The preachers of Communism are also proficient in exploiting racial antagonisms and political divisions and oppositions” (DR, 15).

Marx’s vision of history is not historical but religious instead.  He offers no evidence to support his claim that all of history is conflict and accepts no explanation to the contrary.  In fact, if we look at history then there are plenty of examples of cooperative societies (including the family and apprentice/master relationships) that were not in perpetual conflict.  The Christian High Middle Ages were not a period of economic conflict either.  Historian Christopher Dawson has shown conclusively that history has been moved not by economic factors, but religious ones.  Of course there is some truth to the fact that when the cooperative elements broke down, conflict ensued.  But still that can hardly be the lens through which we view all history.

One could refute Marx based on his unproven assumption, but there is a more important anthropological assumption that needs to be challenged.  For Marx the goal is the perfection of society and thus each individual exists for the sake of the whole.  Each man becomes a cog in the machine of society and thus is expendable, leaving him without any true rights.  In the Christian conception of man, society exists for the individual; not in the liberalist sense of individualism couched in a social contract, but because each man only finds his individual perfection by contributing to the whole.   Man is social by nature because He is made in the image of God, Who, as a communion of Person, is social by nature too.

Conflict and Complementarity

This is ultimately why the conflict theory of history doesn’t fly.  Society is formed by men who are all made in God’s image, thus giving them a certain equality.  But this equality does not mean we are destined for a classless society.  The message is not one of conflict but complementarity in which each man and woman finds and is satisfied with their own station in life.  They are fulfilled only by finding this station and living out of it.  This place is predetermined only in the sense that it is part of God’s providential plan and not based upon the preconceived ideas of other men and women.  Richer and poorer depend equally upon each other for their own personal fulfillment.  Men and women, black and white, likewise are the same.  When done well without social agitation from cultural Marxists, this can become a reality.

Perhaps this sounds more utopian than Marxism itself.  This vision will not put an end to oppression because the problem is not in the social structure but in the human heart.  “The poor you will always have with you” because there will always be Original Sin and its accompanying oppression.  But it is not a social revolution that will put an end to that but a revolution of each man against himself.  But this revolution will never come about unless we live out of the truth.  The exterior must support the interior.  The revolutionary language of oppression will never bring about this revolution but only further alienates us from each other and from ourselves.  It’s time we pull the mask off Marxism and call it when we see it.

The Lion in the Room

Atheism

In case you missed the big announcement, the American Humanist Association is having their 75th Anniversary Conference in Chicago next May.  Before you book your trip to Chicago for this historic event, it might be helpful to have a clearer idea of what you would encounter when confronted with a room full of Humanists.

On their web site under their Frequently Asked Questions, I found the following definition of Humanism:

Definitions abound.  Kurt Vonnegut, who served for many years as the AHA’s honorary president, maybe said it most succinctly when he observed that “…being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”

It seems that this comes down to the age old question of whether we can be good without God.  In fact, the AHA has sponsored an ad campaign in the past on buses in Washington DC that said “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.” Given their campaign, I think this is precisely what they are saying.

It is interesting that a group such as the AHA that says reason is the best way to understand the world around us, would treat the most fundamental question of why we should believe in God as irrelevant.  But the fact of the matter is that our ability to reason is one of the things that set us apart as human beings.  This means that above all we seek truth.  And there is no greater question related to the truth than the question of whether God exists or not.  There is no more relevant question than this and it is entirely contrary to reason to simply dismiss it.

To make my point, suppose I change the scenario a little bit and I say, “Why worry about a lion in the room?  Just pass me the popcorn and enjoy the movie.”  I might very well be worried about the lion in the room because there is in fact a lion in the room.  To simply say that I should ignore this question and enjoy the movie is ridiculous.  In much the same way, the answer to “Why believe in God?” may in fact be because there is a God.

Aslan

What I am saying is that before you can even answer the question as to whether we can be good without the Lion of Judah, we must first address whether the claim that God exists is true or not.  If it is not true then nobody who is honest should believe it, regardless of how comfortable it make him feel.  However, if God does exist, then someone who is honest will believe in Him, even if they find it difficult.

What about the original question as to whether we can be good without God?  Despite the fact that I don’t personally think this is a good question, a little over 40% of Americans say you can in fact be good without God (and that is low compared to the rest of the Western World).  Unfortunately, I am going to split hairs again and say that this answer totally depends upon the answer to the first question.  What I mean by this is that your definition of good is totally dependent upon whether there is a God or not.

Those who believe in God also believe that life is eternal and that we are just pilgrims in training for the next world.  Our definition of what is good is going to be seen in light of eternity.  This can lead to a vastly different view of whether an act is good or not.  On the other hand, those who do not believe in God are not pilgrims but tourists and are going to see things that are good only in the temporal sense.

To illustrate my point, I will pull another portion of their definition of humanism from the FAQs.  In it they say that Humanism

is a worldview which says that reason and science are the best ways to understand the world around us, and that dignity and compassion should be the basis for how you act toward someone else.

The part that I want to emphasize is “dignity and compassion” being the basis for how you act toward someone else.  These words have very different meanings depending on your worldview.

Before you can recognize the dignity of the human person, you must first ask from where that dignity comes.  We as Christians believe that our dignity is rooted completely in the fact that we are made in the image of God and are made for God.  That is the source of our dignity.

How would the atheistic humanist answer the question as to what gives the individual dignity?  In the absence of God, we will replace Him with some other god.  These humanists seem to have set themselves up as their own gods (I am not sure how else to interpret the comment that “No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.”).  When this happens, the only answer to the question then of what gives an individual dignity is that they are made in our own image.  In other words, what gives a person dignity is how useful they are to me personally.  If I have no use for them, then they can be thrown away.

This, by the way, is precisely why Communism and Atheism must go hand in hand.  If the individual is going to live forever then they are afforded the dignity due to them because they will live forever.  However, if they are merely going to go into the ground to rot then the society or the state is the most important because it will last much longer.

What about compassion?  The word compassion literally means to become a co-sufferer with.  For a Christian, compassion means a willingness to journey with another as they suffer and to take whatever burden of that suffering you can upon yourself.  The Atheistic Humanist flips this completely around so that compassion means that you will do anything you can to relieve your own suffering that is caused by the suffering of another.  This is played out in spades in “Mercy Killing”.  They advocate euthanasia because they cannot stand to see another person suffer.

So with all of this nitpicking of the questions, I will answer the question anyway—can we can be good without God?  My answer is no.  Christ asked the rich young man why he called Him good and that God alone was good.  That is why I think the idea of being “good for goodness sake” is ludicrous.  You cannot be good without some absolute standard upon which to base your goodness.  Which brings me to my second reason and that is that you can’t be good for goodness sake.

What this statement means is that the purpose of life is to “be good”.  So often I hear people say, “I’m a good person” right before they try to justify something that is not good.  When I hear this I want to grab them and shout, “NO YOU’RE NOT AND NEITHER AM I!”  The purpose of life is not to be good.  The purpose of life is to be a saint.  Saints are not merely good people, they are holy people.  As Leon Bloy said, “the only tragedy in this life is to not be a saint.”