Equus Nom Veritas: The Other JC

Three Links Wednesday (vol. V)

2012-02-01T06:42:00.000-08:00

[Opening Comments]

--I--

There are facts, there are theories, and there are misunderstandings.

"A fact is something observed: falling bodies. A theory is a story we tell ourselves which makes sense out of those facts: gravitation. So that whereas a fact is neither true nor false, a theory, being a proposition about some facts, can be true. Specifically, "true to the facts." While bodies will always fall in the same way, the theories that explain them may vary. Gravity, as such, is not a fact. (Newton was acutely aware of this.) Simil atque, evolution is observable fact: species do come into existence and pass out of existence and may change over time. Natural selection is a theory that tries to explain those facts."

--II--

If you could time travel, would you abort Hitler before he was born? Professor Mike Adams offers an argument for "no.":

That is because aborting Hitler would not have prevented the Holocaust. It would have justified it. The killing of millions of innocents does not begin with the killing of one innocent. It begins with the idea that in the larger scheme of things it is permissible to kill one innocent person....

Ideas have consequences. And so do exceptions. One of the consequences of embracing an evil exception is that it hardens our hearts and clouds our thinking in advance of our consideration of other exceptions. Eventually we come to a point where we cannot imagine life without that initial exception.

It is fitting that it all began in Mississippi. We have a legacy of executing innocents by denying their personhood. It happened with slavery. It happened again with abortion. Now we have learned to justify our own Holocaust. We didn’t need Hitler after all.

That is to say, we cannot do evil so that good may result.

--III--

My friend Mr Nathanael Blake sounds off on the Obama Administration's latest attack on religious liberty. Today they come for me and my fellow Catholics, tomorrow it may be Mr Blake and his fellow Protestants. But of course, being not only a self-interested guy, Mr Blake notes that this is an issue which Protestants should heed regardless of whether the next blow will fall on them specifically, since we are all in the end brother Christians. On a related note, Mr Frank Weathers has created an online whitehouse.gov petition which you can sign. It's a small step, and should not be the full extent of your activities in opposing this attack on religious liberties; but it is a step nonetheless.

--Bonus--

From the files of "college is overrated": Miss Katie Kieffer has an (old) post on the subject. Education is not what drives an economy; entrepreneurship and the willingness to work hard (whether physically, mentally, or whatever) is. It's a tragic truth that a great many people are going to college to get a degree that they don't need which will ultimately enable them to work in a career which they don't want--and at. an absolutely exorbitant price (one which is much higher even after inflation than, say, the last generation of people suffered). All of which does more and more to convince me that I should ensure that my future children learn a trade before attending to college; they will then be free to go to college for the pursuit of an education, and not merely a degree. In a similar vein, while I don't usually agree with much of what is printed on the Daily Texan editorial pages, their Tuesday editorial concerning the opening of another Law school in Texas (really, anywhere in the US) does give me something to agree with. We have far too many law school as-is, which is good for nobody.

TMM: Poverty as a Moral Problem

2012-01-30T09:34:00.000-08:00

"If you give a man a fish, you have fed him for today. If you teach a man to fish, you have fed him for a lifetime." Few would deny that poverty exists in the world, and fewer still that it is a problem of sorts. From there, the opinion tend to diverge a bit more widely. Is poverty a technical problem which can be "solved" by government intervention--whether in the form of a sort of socialism which meets every man's basic needs (which might include everything from food and clean water to a modest house and two cars)--and if so can it actually be solved?

Most debates of an economic nature tend to treat poverty as a technical problem, with varying opinions as to whether or not said problem has a possible (let alone plausible) solution. To use a bit of Catholic theology, they believe that the solution is to be found in the works of corporal mercy: feeding the hungry, giving drinks to the thirsty, clothing the naked, harboring the harborless. The debate is then over who ought to do these works: the government (at any level, but inevitably at the federal level), the community (e.g. through charitable organizations), or the individual people (often working as a community).

The problem with this is that it gets the diagnosis wrong, at least in part. Yes, the works of corporal mercy are needed; but the problem is not a technical one, or at least is not only a technical one. It's solution is not, therefore, only a technical solution--though the solution must have a technical side, too--and so it cannot be resolved only through the corporal acts of mercy. Rather-dare I say primarily?--it is a moral problem, and so there must be a moral element to approaching poverty. This means that it must have some sort of moral solution, too.

Part of this moral solution is what we call the works of spiritual mercy: instructing the ignorant, counseling the doubtful, comforting the sorrowful, reproving sinners. After all, nor all poverty is material poverty, and there is such a thing as moral capital, even if it is in ever shorter supply today. The poor might rise a little from their poverty, and their lives will not seem (or be) quite so "nasty, brutish, and short" with a bit of this moral capital. They can gain this moral capital by recognizing their own dignity as members of the human community, by recognizing that although there are many things which are beyond their ability to control--economic factors and such--there are some things over which they may exert some modicum of control (moral factors). This does not mean that they will all become virtuous overnight (or perhaps ever); but the mere effort to move in that direction can give them a greater sense of their own dignity, since such a struggle for virtue is in accordance with that dignity. To be unemployed or "underemployed" does not mean that a man ought to cease taking responsibility for himself (or for his family).

There is, of course, a second part to this moral solution. So far I have spoken as if the entire solution to the problem must be applied to the poor. Give them money or education or instruction and they will not be poor anymore. That is, of course, quite false. The other part of the solution applies to us, those who do not live in poverty; since poverty is a moral (and perhaps technical) problem for us, too. And this should make it clear why the government solutions will fail to alleviate poverty if they are the only (or even primary) approach to "solving poverty." We also must recognize the dignity of the poor, and can be helped in that endeavor when we carry out he works of mercy (both corporal and spiritual). We need to give them their fish for today--and teach them how to fish for tomorrow. We must look at them and see another person, another "I." We must look at them and say, "There but for the grace of God go I."

I am not claiming that this will rid the world of poverty, or even that it will mean there are no more poor people. The poor we will have always, and perhaps poverty as well. But at the very least we will rid ourselves of what poverty we have: that spiritual poverty which prevents us from being truly poor in spirit. We may just help others to do the same while we're at it: which is more than can be said for employing a purely technical solution administered by bureaucracy to the unnamed masses.

Seven Quick Takes (v 22): Confession, Reconciliation, Absolution, Penance

2012-01-27T12:51:00.000-08:00

This week's theme is the sacrament of Reconciliation (or Confession, Penance, Absolution...), because several questions were (mostly inadvertantly) raised in RCIA on Sunday. Call this rehearsal for the short presentation in our next session.

--1--

First, there was some confusion about what constitutes a mortal sin (see 1 John 5:17). In order for sin to be mortal, three conditions must be met: 1) it must be a grave matter 2) committed under the knowledge that it is a sin 3) with the sinner's free consent (CCC 1857; the latter two again in CCC 1859). It seems to me that any of these three conditions can trip somebody up when deciding "is this sin mortal or not"), though most of the trouble is in distinguishing between the sin as a mortal sin as opposed to it's being a "grave matter." In the Catechism of the Catholic Church we read that

"Grave matter is specified by the Ten Commandments, corresponding to the answer of Jesus to the rich young man: "Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and your mother." The gravity of sins is more or less great: murder is graver than theft. One must also take into account who is wronged: violence against parents is in itself graver than violence against a stranger." (CCC 1858).

Thus, for example, adultery as such is always a grave matter, but not always a mortal sin.

--2--

When we sin, and as soon as we are aware that we have sinned, we may feel remorse. We have guilt, we are aware of that guilt and so have "guilty knowledge," and now we feel sorrow for that, and want to find forgiveness. The first step in this process is to turn to God in prayer and ask for His forgiveness. We might make an act of contrition, for example. And having been sincerely sorry for our sins and asked God for His forgiveness, we are granted it.

--3--

With that in mind, why would we then need to go to confession at all? As I have mentioned before in addressing the Sacrament of Reconciliation, being guilty of sin means that we have wronged God (and oftentimes men, too), and that we need to heal from this wronging. There are four more steps needed for this healing to occur, besides being forgiven. These are that we need to confess what we have done, the wrong needs to be atoned for, we need to be reconciled with all parties whom we have wronged, and we need to be justified. I have addressed each of these four points before in discussing reconciliation (and Professor J Budzisewski does so more thoroughly in his books The Revenge of Conscience and What We Can't Not Know); all four are to some extent dealt with in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. However, I would like to take another look at two of the four, the two with which this sacrament most directly deals.

--4--

The Sacrament of Penance is sometimes also called "confession." We often will say "I went to confession" rather than "I received the sacrament of Penance/Reconciliation." This is because much of the sacrament consists on the penitent confessing his sins to the priest. Why do I bring this up? Two reasons. First, because the first step in overcoming a sin is often admitting that we committed it and that it was a sin. In confession, we are essentially doing both, and doing so out loud. Second, because confessing our wrongdoing gives us a sense of closure on the matter. We may fell a mixture of other emotions when we go through this--embarrassment, shame, anger, frustration, sadness--but we also get a sense of relief. It's over and done with, and now we can really move on. "It is finished." It should also be noted here that in giving our confession, we are on the one hand asking God for his forgiveness (again), and on the other testifying to His glory (that He will forgive; that we are imperfect, and He Is perfect). And on the third hand, we are asking the priest, as representative of the Church community, for forgiveness from that community.

--5--

This brings me to another aspect of the sacrament of Penance, which is reconciliation. In brief, reconciliation means actually repairing the harm done to our relationship due to the sin (which involves more than just forgiving the sin). Through this sacrament, we are reconciled again to God and also to His Church. The former is obviously important, but what about the latter? All sins damage our relationship with God in some way; some also damage our relationship with other men, or with the community as a whole; indeed, if the Church is the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-31), then any damage done to our relationship with the one is also damage to our relationship with the other. Or looked at in another way, the Church is the Bride of Christ, and so if we will be reconciled with Him then we must also be reconciled with her. I mentioned that the priest acts as representative of the community, that is of the Church; he also acts in persona Christi (see CCC paragraphs 875, 1348, and 1548) so that our reconciliation with both is completed in this sacrament. It also means that we are again as members in good standing with the community, and can again participate directly (and "worthily") in the Sacrament of Communion (see 1 Corinthians 11:27).

--6--

At some point, the question of repentance came up. What does it mean to repent of a sin? Does it mean that we will never, ever commit it again? Not necessarily; it does, however, mean that we intend to not commit it again. As we say in the act of contrition, "I firmly resolve, with the help of Your grace, to sin no more and avoid the near occasion of sin." Even the firmest of resolutions may later waver, though we should pray that we are able to keep those resolutions. Often avoiding the near occasion of sin (though this may require quite a bit of effort) is enough to keep us out of that particular sin. On the other hand, if we enter the confessional and confess a sin which we have committed while intending to commit the same sin again, then we have no truly repented; and though our confession as a list of things we've done is true, it is a lie as a sacramental confession. Absolution will not be ours, and we will not be truly reconciled. But just because we do commit the same sin again does not mean that we had intended to do so all along; and the same sin may e forgiven many times over if we repent of it (see Matthew 18:21-22)

--7--

Some effects of the sacrament are outlines and summarized by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (paragraph 1496):

The spiritual effects of the sacrament of Penance are:
- reconciliation with God by which the penitent recovers grace;
- reconciliation with the Church;
- remission of the eternal punishment incurred by mortal sins;
- remission, at least in part, of temporal punishments resulting from sin;
- peace and serenity of conscience, and spiritual consolation;
- an increase of spiritual strength for the Christian battle.

All of these are important effects, but perhaps the last one is particularly important for one of the question raised: why should I go to confession for a sin which I am sorry about, but which I fear I might commit again (e.g. through habit or addiction)? If you are sorry for a sin but fear that you might commit it again, then it seems to me that you ought to do anything you can to fortify yourself against it. One of the spiritual effects of this sacrament is the grace to help you do this, that is, the grace to help you avoid this sin when you can and resist it when you must. You must of course still cooperate with this grace; but in receiving this sacrament, you receive this grace so that it is there for you to cooperate with at all.

-----
Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

RCIA Question Box: Papal Infallibility

2012-01-26T05:55:00.001-08:00

What does it mean to say that the pope is infallible? Does this mean that he never makes any mistakes, never sins, or that he is perfect?

The doctrine of Papal Infallibility [1] was formally defined at the first Vatican council in 1870, but its roots run much deeper:

When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter said in reply, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." Jesus said to him in reply, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matthew 16:14-19).

We can trace in an unbroken line all of the popes, from Benedict XVI back to Peter the apostle; and just as we believe that the bishops are the successors of the apostles, we believe that the Pope, as earthly head of the Church, is the successor to the "head" apostle, Saint Peter. As such, he is the visible head of the Church on earth and the vicar of Christ, who Is the Head of the Church (Ephesians 5:23).

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

Three Links Wednesday (vol. IV)

2012-01-25T09:33:00.000-08:00

"Aborting Hitler would not have prevented the Halocaust. It would have justified it. The killing of millions of innocents does not begin with the killing of one innocent. It begins with the idea that (in the larger scheme of things) it is permissible to kill one innocent." (Professor Mike Adams)

--I--

Since this week began with a sad anniversary, and contains the national of prayer, penance, and atonement for abortion, let's begin with a post about abortion: this one from "Red Cardigan." She begins with,

"As the March for Life takes place today, as President Obama declares that abortion is necessary so our daughters have the same freedom to fulfill their dreams as our sons (because apparently embracing rampant sexual immorality and the ability to kill one's offspring is essential in order to be just like a man)"

Such is the (ahem) logic of at least the feminist arm of the pro-abortion movement. And Mrs Manning, being a feminist of a more conservative and Catholic sort [1], has framed this in terms of "why should women want to go there." Those of us who are men might look at it another way: why is it that this issue is framed in such a way as to assume that women must become cold-hearted murders of their own children to be "just like" us? See with which colors we are painted (as men) by the feminists (at the least) of the pro-abortion movement. Is it any wonder that all men are also viewed primarily as "potential rapists" by this culture (and then treated as guilty until proven innocent)?

[1] Meaning that she believes that women's rights are a matter of human rights and not necessarily just a matter of "fighting the man."

--II--

Speaking of the culture wars, Mr Chris Willitson considers the difference between two laws which pertain to conscience rights and abortion. He concludes by writing:

The battle lines of the 2012 election have never been more clear and Catholics have a moral responsibility to step up and get involved in the process to enact change. The bishops have made it clear that we must prayerfully consider who we support with our political action and resources. Now, more than ever, it is clear that the only wrong thing that any of us can do is nothing. Please keep our political leaders in prayer for conversion of heart and mind. Our battle may never be won on political fronts, but will be waged in the hearts and minds of all whom we encounter in love.

I disagree with one point: that the only thing we can do wrong is nothing. Voting for Obama is not nothing. As Fr John Zhulsdorf has put it, "I’d vote for a frozen orange juice can in November 2012." Unfortunately, the frozen orange juice isn't running, so I'll probably have to settle for Mitt Romney come November, even though I don't trust him. He may be the devil I don't know, but it's hard to imagine his doing more damage to our culture, our civilization, and our liberty than the current president.

--III--

In other topics, Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler has a post on the National Catholic Register about not worrying too much about the children's college tuition. There are a lot of good things said in Mrs Fulwiler's article. The idea of attending community college to get a few of the classes out of the way is fairly common, but doing so from the local community college and living at home is not quite as common, which is unfortunate (after all, the living expenses are often the killer cost in college, along with tuition which is also mitigated by going to the community college). The idea that college is not for everybody is right, but tragically also counter-cultural (to be blunt, a university education is not right or "best" for more than a few percent of people, and certainly not more than 10-15%). Unfortunately, it is often used as a supplement for the education which nobody is getting from the public schools, at least in the non-major (and some of the major) classes at most universities. I will add one note. My wife and I have discussed the possibility of sending our future children to trade school (or otherwise making them learn a gainful trade) before sending them to college; this might be as a part of the education from home, or we might make them take a year or two off to do this. Being a licensed massage therapist, or machinist, or electrician can help them to pay for their own college education (which might help them value it more), not to mention it gives them the incentive to get a good broad education instead of having to worry about whether or not their degree will be employable thereafter.

--Bonus--

Since it's 2012, we need a little perspective concerning the Mayan calendar: and Mr Mark Shea gives it to us.

IT: Assumptions and Models

2012-01-24T10:15:00.000-08:00

The scientific method, as does much learning in general, begins with observation. Father Stanley Jaki likened this process to the first step in the march of science, without which there can be no second or third step. We might call it a sort of first cause in scientific investigation, both in order of time sequence an in order of importance.

Where do the models and theories come into all of this? The model is the second step (if observation and interpretation of data are together taken as one step), and that model should describe the system’s behavior and then predict its behavior under some new conditions. Then it’s a matter of testing the model—more observation and more interpretation—and then modifying it, and testing again, and so on. A theory then brings together several models in a coherent fashion and attempts to explain them.

Read the rest on IGNITUM TODAY.

Abortion and the Virtues

2012-01-23T13:03:00.000-08:00

There are, as we know, seven principle virtues—four cardinal virtues and three theological ones—I a daresay that abortion manages to violate all seven of them. Few sins, I think, can claim such thoroughness in being so opposed to virtue.

Abortion and Prudence

That prudence is violated by abortion can be seen in many ways. The first of these is the false-prudence which advises abortion to begin with: do this, or your life will be ruined with a child. "Think of all the things you'll miss out on if you have a child now" could be a slogan for the abortion industry (of which the contraception industry is a subgroup). Yes, but if that is of such a large concern, then why the lack of prudence up until this point?

Where was prudence before the pregnancy, where was the voice of caution before the act of intercourse which does, after all, have as its end (natural consequence) procreation, whatever tampering we may do to it? And why does prudence suddenly seem to leave the room when the "choice" of abortion is taken so seriously as to require some time to think it over with the facts in hand (and not only the propaganda of those who would profit from an abortion). Witness, for example, the attempts of abortion advocates to withhold sonograms, or to deny information (let alone consent) from parents of minors involved.

Prudence is cast by the wayside leading up to an abortion.

Abortion and Justice

Justice is also violated in the act of abortion. Even in its simplest form--justice being only "giving to one what is his due" is violated, since it denies the child the life that he is due. It does, however, cut deeper than this, since the act of abortion denies the child his very dignity as a member of the human community, his value as a child of God. Abortion commits the injustice of denying his nature and dignity. It also does an injustice to the mother, by denying her the dignity which she has as a mother; and likewise to the father.

There are also the many smaller injustices, the men who are never informed that they are fathers, the women who are coerced to give up being mothers, and the parents of those women who are often denied their role as guardians (especially in the case of a minor). And of course it denies not only the Golden Rule (do onto others as you would have them do to you), but its Confucian (or Old Testament) counterpart, do not do to others what you would not have done to you. We treat animals with more dignity that we do the children who will be killd by this procedure, since few animals are killed by being torn limb-from-limb, or by having their skin dissolved and boiled off. Abortion falls short not only of granting the dignity due to a fellow human being, but even of granting the much lesser dignity granted to most animals, over which our natural relationship is lord or steward.

Abortion is an act which denies justice to all involved.

Abortion and Fortitude

What of fortitude--that is, steadfast courage in the face of trials and adversity? Certainly, adversity and trials are implied in abortion (most of the time): if they weren't, there would be no abortion. Yet, abortion is the "quick and easy" solution, though the grieving and guilt suffered by many women who have undergone this procedure suggests that it is not so easy, at least. Abortion is the coward's way out, though often it is not only the woman who is the coward in question. Sometimes it is the father abandoning his duty for convenience, sometimes it is the girl's parents who can think of nothing but "saving face," or "family reputation."

They perceive all of the trials which come with bringing a child into the world (and sometimes raising him), not to mention to reputation which comes (or once came with) bearing children out of wedlock; if they do away with the child quietly, then they believe that they will be spared this latter thing, at least, not to mention any inconveniences they might suffer. They overlook the blessings involved, overlook that every child is a gift from God, even when that gift is illicitly obtained. They look at the challenges and overlook the blessings, and so shy to the convenient path which requires less sacrifice (or really, fewer changes in lifestyle), forgetting that the easy path is the one which slopes down and down.

It requires much fortitude to be a parent, and none to be an ex-parent.

Abortion and Temperance

Temperance may be the biggest stretch on the face of it, but it really isn't so great a stretch when we see that temperance involves self-control. There are two possibilities: either the woman engaged in sexual intercourse willingly--in which case she lacked self-control--or (occasionally/rarely) she did not, in which case it was her partner (or aggressor) who lacked this part of temperance. The self-control may have been lost several steps earlier, as if she decided to drink to excess and then became inebriated (though this may also be a problem with prudence, as when she decided to go to the bar knowing that she tends to lose control of her drinking). She was subsequently taken advantage of--a lack of self-control on the part of her date--and then nature ran its course and a child was conceived.

Temperance is thus violated not so much in the act of abortion as in the course of events leading up to it.

Abortion and Faith

Faith means not only believing in God, but also accepting the truths which He has revealed. This includes those truths which are "written on the heart" (Romans 2:15), which are often then clarified by more explicitly revealed truths. It means accepting an outside authority as being superior to one's own self in determining matters of truth and goodness, which includes matters of right or wrong.

In an abortion, these outside authorities are sometimes misplaced (that is, the woman trusts in the pressuring of her coercive boyfriend or the coaxing of the profiteering abortionist). Other time, the outside authorities are totally discarded (as when the woman ignores all advice to the contrary and screams "my body, my choice!"). God's law is subverted, and His voice is ignored in favor of another's. When He said that He shall have no other gods before Him, He did not make an exception for Moloch.

Abortion is an act in defiance of faith.

Abortion and Hope

Hope can be taken to mean placing all of one's trust in God. It means accepting that He is ultimately in control, that even if we don't know what to what ends his Providence moves us, they will be good ends. They will be better ends than what we will achieve on our own. This means that we must trust that when he allows something which we think is bad to happen, it is because He will bring a greater good out of it, if we will but let Him.

Thus, every child is willed by Him, and every child is a blessing. We may not immediately see the blessing, we may see the adversity, we may see the pregnancy as a "crisis." But that is looking at it with earthly eyes, with eyes of "the flesh," with eyes not attuned to seeing what God sees. Abortion (like suicide) is the ultimate act of despair, saying not so much that no good can come from life, but that whatever good may come of life will be far outweighed by its suffering. There is no hope that God will bring a greater good from this, no trust that He knows what He is doing when he creates a new life.

Abortion is most certainly a sin against hope.

Abortion and Charity

How abortion violates against the precept of selfless love is self-evident. Whether the woman is driven to this by fear or by force, charity is itself not a consideration. Where is the charity which welcomes the stranger (let alone which welcomes one's very own child)? If we can't love our neighbors who we see, then how shall we love God whom we don't? And if a mother cannot love her own child, if a father cannot love his own child, how can they claim to love their neighbors whom they hardly know?

Sure, there is the false-charity which says (in some cases) that the child would be "better off dead," though we see in real life that few people think this of themselves, whatever may be there quality of life. For the logical conclusion to "I'd be better off dead" is suicide, and though this is a significant cause of death, the vast majority of people elect to continue living, whatever may be heir quality of life. Moreover, many of those who elect suicide at some point do so only after living some length of time in the world around them: and often the people who make this election are not the same kinds of people who the pro-choicers would say are "better off dead".

Thus, what we see is not charity but rather is false compassion.

I write this not to condemn--it is not for me to do that--but rather to warn. Those who have gone through this need no condemnation from men: they are either filled with remorse (secret or no), or to be condemned by a higher Authority. We may take the path of virtue, or the path of convenience.

TMM: What Destroys Marriage (A False Dichotomy)

2012-01-20T15:30:00.000-08:00

A false dichotomy.

One of the little themes used by those who favor the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples is to point to the erosion of "traditional" marriage over time and suggest that with this in mind, "gay marriage" cannot possibly destroy the institution. The picture to the left is a good example of this, and is the latest making the rounds on the internet (and in particular, in social media). The basic argument is that, since all these people (in this case, all these celebrities: because Hollywood et al. are truly socially conservative preservers of the culture [1]) have somehow failed to live up to the traditional definition of marriage, therefore gay marriage will not do any harm.

Another (and more insidious) way of saying this is that it's either gay marriage or the failure of the rest of the culture in part or whole which destroys marriage, and since all of these other things in culture happened first, therefore they're the ones who have destroyed marriage in it entirety, and so redefining the institution doesn't matter because it's already lost its definition anyway. It's not a matter of "either all these examples ruined marriage, and so gay marriage does no harm" (the argument claimed by many advocates of redefining marriage) or else "gay marriage will destroy the institution of marriage, so (therefore) none of these other things really matters or contributes to this destruction" (which is the opposite claim). This is, of course, a false dichotomy, because there is another possibility not granted by the dichotomy and yet which could be (and is) true in reality: namely, that both gay marriage and such things as no-fault divorce (and its high rate of usage among the population in general) and the cavalier attitude of the Hollywood stars and other celebrities towards marriage can contribute to its decline and ultimate destruction as an institution.

Here is an analogy. A man is filing for bankruptcy. He is hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and is no longer able to pay off even the interest on all of his loans. He went to college and mostly partied, which delayed his graduation for a few years. After 7 years, he graduates with a BA in business and a high tolerance for alcohol, plus $60k in student loans. He lands in a decent job which pays $40k/year, and decides to buy a status car ($30k) and a nice house little house in a decent neighborhood in Austin ($350k). He runs up his credit card bill each month and then makes minimum payments each month, opening a second and then a third credit line as each previous line fills up. The result is that he needs to pay (minimum) $30k/year to all of his creditors, but brings home less than this after taxes. He is given one last chance to fix things, by consolidating his loans, but he must make a cash payment of $5k--his entire life savings--up front to do this; on his way to do this, he gets robbed, and loses that last $5k. He goes bankrupt. So, which of these purchases caused this?

Answering "the house and the car" is somewhat analogous to answering that the destruction of marriage is due to the celebrities and the culture being manufactured by the mainstream media (to say nothing of HBO, MTV, of the pornography industry). If you said it was all the college loans and the credit cards, you blamed the loss of respect in the culture for the institution as evidenced by the high divorce rate (not to mention cohabitation, etc). And if you blamed it on the robbers who beat him up and stole his money after all of this, then you blamed it on gay marriage. In reality, it is a combination of all these things, or perhaps more importantly, the fact that the man never attempted to reform his life (and spending habits) save possibly at the eleventh hour, but rather he escalated them as his debt grew.

Another analogy (a violent extension of the first). Suppose the robber stabs him with a knife and leaves him for dead. He will, however, survive if he receives some medical care (but will die otherwise); but the first passerby ignores his calls for help, and the second sees him and decides to shoot him now and put him out of his misery. Again, which of the three is responsible for the man's death? The robber who strikes the initial death blow (our declining culture), the man who ignores him (those who have pushed for commitment-free marriage, consequence-free sex, and no-fault divorce), or the man who shoots him (gay-"marriage" advocates and the MTV-Pornography portion of the media)? Again, I'd say all three share some part in the blame.


He's done his part to destroy the institution of marriage

The erosion of the institution of marriage began (in a mainstream way) in 1930 at the Lambeth conference, in which the Anglican communion became the first denomination to formally separate marital sex from procreation. It was helped along by the Supreme Court (Griswold v Connecticut and later Roe v Wade, Doe v Bolton, and Casey v Planned Parenthood), by the Roosevelt's New Deal and the Johnson Great Society and the expansion of the welfare state. It gained greater momentum by the separation of sex from marriage and marriage from procreation, thanks in no small part to the sexual revolution (both the quiet one taking place in the 40's and 50's, the louder one fueled by Alfred Kinsey and Hugh Hefner, and the explosive one of the '60s and '70s). It surged forward when parents and churches abdicated in their duty to properly catechize the growing generation: witness that my own generation and the rising generation--which are the most poorly catechized in recent history--are the age groups which show the most support for redefining marriage. The final death blow has come from the media and elites--academia, Hollywood, the mainstream media, and especially MTV--which have been not only actively working as proponents for redefining marriage, but indeed for destroying it. These are not merely proponents for "gay marriage," about which I think they couldn't care less, but rather are opponents of "traditional" marriage and of the Christian morality [2] which helps to support and defend it [3].

But that all of these forces have worked together or apart to destroy traditional morality in general and the institution of marriage in particular does not mean that the institution is yet dead and gone. That these forces have strained to push it over the edge and into the abyss does not mean that it has gone there, or that it cannot be recovered. Our culture has been pushed to the brink. Traditional morality, which is the lifeline of our culture, has been maimed but is not yet dead. The institution of marriage now hangs by but a few thin threads, as that lifeline of culture has been frayed by the forces arrayed against it. Attempts to redefine marriage are attempts to cut those last few threads, and will finally destroy the institution. The solution is not to redefine marriage, and thus to throw it (and our culture with it) into the abyss; rather, it is to re-attached the lifeline, to splice and weave its stands back together, to repent of our civilizations long slow suicide of sin. There may still be time.

---Footnotes---
[1] Well, ok, they can perhaps point to Newt Gingrich as a person who actually makes claims to care about social conservatives. I don't buy it, mostly because I'm not convinced that Newt Gingrich actually does care about social conservatives, however much noise he may be making on the campaign trail. As for the "43-50% OF TRADITIONAL MARRIAGES" statistic, it's worth noting that all such marriages end at the death of one of the spouses. The argument should read that this percentage ends in divorce--but that begs the question that divorce itself has the ability to end something which one side of the "traditional" marriage proponents claims can't actually be ended by human power.

[2] I would say "Judeo-Christian," and to some extent it is true. On the other hand, divorce presents no problem for Jewish theology, as it is permitted under the Law, whereas Christians at least must come to grips with Christ's statements that "

"But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother (and be joined to his wife), and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.' In the house the disciples again questioned him about this. He said to them, 'Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.'"

[3] Which is not to say that this is only defensible through Christian morality; but I think a good argument can be made that it is being attacked because it does happen to be found in Christian morality, and that the hostility is towards Christian morality in general, and this specific aspect in particular becomes an especial casualty of that hostility.

Seven Quick Takes (v 21)

2012-01-20T09:45:00.000-08:00

--1--

My wife had me take down our Christmas tree, now that Christmas season is actually over. That was my Saturday project, and it was a two step process. Let's just say a picture or two is worth more that a description:

Step 1: Cut into pieces

Step 1 requires: saw. Gloves, axe, and/or hatchet optional.

Step 2: Fire in the hole.

Step 2 requires: matches, fireplace/pit/barrel. Poker and tongs optional.

--2--

Looking for a charity and/or project which is not religious per se but which does have to potential for a lot of good? May I suggest the global village construction set: aside from potentially developing some machines which could be built in the third world, it also creates a set of DIY equipment which may yet be useful for those who want to survive the complete collapse of Western Civilization.

--3--

I read Mr Matt Archbold's latest piece in the register about the joys (and importance) of being a father. Have I mentioned that his is one of maybe two good "daddy" blogs which i read fairly regularly? Oddly enough, I only see women commenting on the article (well, 6/7 comments). For those who are curious about what I consider to be the other, it is The Art of Manliness, which also touches on a number of "fathers' issues," though from a bit of a different perspective.

--4--

I just finished reading Dr Edward Feser's book, Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide. I'm not sure whether or not I'll write an actual review of the book any time soon, but I will probably be referring to it in at least some of my future posts on science (and scientism) over at IGNITUM TODAY. After reading Dr Feser's book, I decided to shift gears a little (but not too much) and turn to science fiction. I made an allusion to this with Wednesday's Three Links post: I started in on Mr Michael Flynn's In the Lion's Mouth, and it is so far excellent. I was sorely tempted to just not go to bed last night and instead stay up all night reading it--by my better half convinced me to do otherwise.Snippet from Flynn:

"The tube walls formed a Visser Skin, laminas of progressively slower space called subluminal mud, which decoupled the interior of causally from normal space. In a sense, a ship in the tube network was no longer 'in' the universe, but 'underneath.'

All this had been understood in ages past, in the old Commonwealth of Sun; and being understood, had been well engineered; and being well engineered, understanding no longer mattered. The formulas worked, and machines could be taught to work them. That was all a man need know."

This passage (and so many others in this series) points back to one of Flynn's theories as to how a scientific dark age can progress, as he explains more in-depth here.

--5--

Incidentally, a few people have been wondering why I seem to have decreased my writing frequency with that site. Mostly, it's a combination of things: 1) Christmas has come and gone, but that plus finals plus the start of the new semester has disrupted my general writing routine, and I typically (though not always) try to write stuff for IGNITUM TODAY and the Nicene Guys on the weekends and therefore a few days in advance, which relies on having a definite routine. 2) we changed our writing schedule a bit, so I am scheduled to write once every 4 weeks; I can in principle write more often, and I plan to do so. However, last time around that I wrote something on a day I wasn't scheduled for, they hadn't fixed up the system so that the featured/non-featured posts had a distinction, and I don't want to "bump" other people from the front page by posting out of turn.

--6--

With the start of the semester, I've had to shift my sleep schedule a little. I teach a class at 8:00 AM on Mondays and Wednesdays, and getting from my apartment to campus plus either waiting on the bus or hiking from the parking lots (they're about a mile from RLM) means that by the time all is said and done, I have to get up at 5:30 to get here on time (so I've got Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler beat in the getting up uncomfortably early department). The weeks just after daylight savings' time shifts are going to be a real bear. The only upside to all of this is that it means getting up for That Man Is You on Fridays isn't any earlier than my normal routine. The downside is that, since my lab, office, and classroom are all windowless, and since I usually pack a lunch along, there are some days during which I literally get to work before the sun rises, and leave after it sets--and thus I have some days when I never see the sun.

--7--

This blog is soon going to be syndicated through Austin Catholic New Media's site. This means that most of these posts will show up in the "community posts" pages. I have a few friends who are writing for that site more directly, and was given the opportunity to do the same, but I had to decline for now. I am stretched a little thin between my current blogging, plus school and research and family life. Go check their site out!

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Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Three Links Wednesday (vol. III)

2012-01-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

Old Nick: a spiritual being in constant rebellion against religious authority. Sadly, he is able to poison and twist religion (and religious authorities) as with anything else. But that act of twisting and poisoning does not mean that the thing twisted was bad to begin with (indeed, it is evidence that the thing itself is very good). On to the links:

--I--

After linking an article about whether we can teach virtue (I may come back to this later), Dr Lawrence Gage has written a short essay in which he summarizes the problematic dichotomy of modernity, beginning with the scientific (or scientistic?) revolution. That dichotomy is between power and love. Might I add that (within science) the dichotomy may be between emphasizing science as the search for truth, goodness, and beauty--which ultimately leads back to the source of these things--on the one hand, and power, utility, and technology on the other. But more broadly, I think that he is right to suggest that there are two fundamental paths--the one of love, the other of power--which we can go down; and that our civilization has clearly chosen the latter. As an aside, the love-power dichotomy is fundamental to the thought of Prof. Dietrich von Hildebrand, and thus also to Blessed Pope John Paul the Great's Theology of the Body; after all, in his Love and Responsibility, the latter suggests that the opposite of "to love" is "to use": love or power.

--II--

Want a litmus test about whether or not somebody is full of nonsense when they say "don't judge me?" Wait until he agrees with you and then tell him not to judge you. This is one of the two most misinterpreted and misused (really, abused) statements or actions of Christ. The other is just like it: His general condemnation of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. This is often used by the "spiritual but not religious" (and in conjunction with this other statement) types today to give blanket condemnation to those of us who have the courage (and common sense) to admit being religious. We are not to condemn or pass judgment about people; we are, however, to do for for actions (or courses of action). "Test everything; retain what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

--III--

What is a dark age? Perhaps in honor of the release of their latest novels, two of my favorite science fiction authors address this question, each slightly differently. First, there is Mr Michael Flynn's post about the idea of the loss of scientific understanding (though not necessarily technological know-how), which forms a part of the backdrop to his far-future "Spiral Arm" series (my name for it). Systems become complex, and we focus so much on specialization that we lose sight of the "big picture"--he used Poincare's analogy of science as a house as opposed to merely a pile of bricks (facts)--and first our technology, then the world itself becomes so many "black boxes" for which we know that a (controllable) certain input will yield a certain (predictable) output, but about whose inner operations, laws, and design we know nothing. The other post is by Mr John C Wright, whose "dark age" is economic and political before it is scientific. He points out that there were plenty of technological developments during the middle ages (and those who are familiar with Prof. Duhem and Fr. Jaki among others know that there were indeed some actually scientific advances during this age), though there was also "a loss of craftsmanship." Might I add that there is another important element which leads to a societal collapse--if widespread enough, a dark age--which is the decline of public (and therefore private) morality and the abandonment of virtue. All of this suggests that we are heading for such a fate.

--Bonus--

What would the Phantom Menace have looked like if Mr John C Wright had written it? Well, it would have been better than the movie itself actually was, but that's not exactly hard to accomplish.

TMM: Body, Spirit, and Religion

2012-01-17T12:44:00.000-08:00

"Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes." I kicked off my quick-takes last Friday by pointing to a few general dismantlings of the recent YouTube hit "Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus" (which I will not rehash here). Not surprisingly, the frustration to this kind of approach to "spirituality" is not limited to Catholics, as my friend Mr Nathanael Blake has let his own misgivings be known. The trend of claiming to be "spiritual,but not religious" or of attempting to distance oneself from religion by claiming that it gets in the way of a relationship with God.

So what does this have to do with Chesterton's observation that most "new ideas" are in fact "old mistakes"? It may seem a simplistic critique, but I believe that Mr Jefferson Bethke is, even if subconsciously, embracing the Gnostic heresy of Manicheism in making this video (and apparently, I'm not alone in this assessment). A strong claim, to be sure, and perhaps overkill for the video itself, or even the"spiritual,but nor religious" trend as a whole. But it does have something in common with that heresy in particular, a sort of revulsion of the body as opposed to the spirit.

What I mean is this. Belonging to the church (yes, small c in this case) means belonging to the Christian religion, and accepting at least certain dogmas and doctrines (e.g. that Jesus is true God and true Man, that He died for us, that the Bible is the inspired written word of God). Of particular relevance to this discussion is that belonging to this religion means being a member of the mystical Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-14) [1]. That means that human beings—yes, in our frailty and weakness, in the fallen state we suffer in this vale of tears—are in effect Christ's hands and feet and even (gasp) His voice in this world.

In a more strictly Catholic understanding, the Church (large C this time) is the Faithful who are the body of Christ, and this body is guided by the Holy Spirit. More broadly, the (small c) church is made up of believers who would profess Christ, and yet who are also sinners who would at times deny Him. Both of these things appear as contradictions—though they are only paradoxes. What manner of chimera consists of a body of men and yet is animated by the Spirit of God? And how can we follow a religion of people who claim that they are believers yet who often fall well short of what faith demands of them? Worse still, religion seems to demand that we submit ourselves to this body of believers—it is from them that we learn about Christ, and from them that we get our Bible, to them that we must at times turn for help in understanding what we ought to believe.

We see that the other members of the body of Christ are sinners. We know this, we recognize it, and we often want to proclaim it as a way of distancing ourselves from their sins. "I am not like those others, those miserable sinners who boast of their religion and ritual like the pharisee but who really don't know you!" (Luke 18:11). We see the sins of the members of Christ's Body, and so want to separate ourselves from it, as Mr Bethke attempts to separate himself from it by embracing the pure spirit of just wanting the relationship without the religion. The problem is that the religion is a part of the relationship, and indeed an integral part. The former cannot be denied without damaging the latter.

This "spiritual, but not religious" attitude seems to me to be a way for those so-inclined to remove themselves from the nitty-gritty part of living as a member of the body of Christ. Yes, they still care about some of the works of mercy—feeding the poor, for instance [2]—but these are often the "noncontroversial" or "feel-good" works, and not the "hard" works of (say) rebuking sinners or instructing the ignorant. These latter are "hard" because they often force ourselves to come into contact with our own failings—either by making us keenly aware of our own sins or by risking being truly judgmental. Moreover, as we are members of a larger body which is as a whole accountable to Christ, our turn may yet come to be rebuked or corrected; we may face the fact that though we profess with our mouths (and even our hearts and minds) Christ, we proclaim sin with our lives. Dissociating ourselves from the other sinners, from "religion", does nothing to resolve this problem. Learning to live in the humility which recognizes that we are not too good for the rest of the body of Christ, however, may go a long way in helping us to truly repent.

"Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes. The Catholic Church has for one of her chief duties that of preventing people from making those old mistakes; from making them over and over forever, as people always do if they are left to themselves. The Catholic Church carries a sort of map of the mind which looks like the map of a maze, but which is in fact the guide to the maze. It has been compiled form knowledge which, even considered as a human knowledge, is quite without any human parallel. There is no other case of one continuous intelligent institution that has been thinking about thinking for two thousand years."

--Footnotes--

[1] Yes, s**t just got corporeal.

[2] Though again, it is the institutionalized religions which have done more than anyone to carry out these works.

Seven Quick Takes (v 20): Smoke and Mirrors

2012-01-13T12:21:00.000-08:00

--1--

Before I do any of these other takes, I'd like to point reader to a couple of good links concerning that "I hate religion" video which has (not surprisingly) gone viral on YouTube this week. The first is by Mr Marcel LeJeune. Preach it Marcel! The second is by my co-blogger at IGNITUM TODAY, Mr Marc Barnes. "Smackdown" much? Word (no, really, Logos, which is relevant to this whole discussion, no?). I've written a few posts on this theme before too, but not in the context of this particular video. It really is nothing new, other than that, in the words of Mr Barnes,

"He’s very, very wrong with some great video editing, good background music, a strong emotional appeal, catchy rhyme, and all in relatively well-timed YouTube moment. He’s wrong in style. When a man gains immense popularity by making blanket statements stylistically, how likely is it that his followers will read a rebuttal making specific statements prosaically?"

Go read the replies by Barnes and LeJeune. It's a tired (and tiring) false dichotomy that we must choose either Christ or religion; and though the creator(s) of this video never states it explicitly, it's fairly obvious in this case which religion he is especially targeting. By choosing Christ, we are choosing a religion. The question is how particular and how deep and thought-out and recognizable that religion is going to be.

--2--

Since I'm already mentioning Mr Barnes, allow me to point to another of his posts: this one about smoking pipe tobacco. Some friends of mine and I probably get together about every other week to smoke our pipes and discuss all things Catholic/literary/philosophical/theological/cultural/etc; so Marc, if you're ever in Austin, look me up. As an aside, I was talking to one of these friends--Mr Matthew Anderson--and he made this remark concerning smoking: cigarettes are for looking "cool" and "hip" and alone (and are generally disgusting to boot); cigars are for smoking when trying to appear as the man about the town, or the celebratory man, or for discussing politics and business. But pipes, these are for enjoying with friends and in conversation about the finer things, about philosophy or fantasy or art or culture. 'Tis the pipe that I like best.

--3--

I might add a second note to this effect: cigars seem to go well with whiskeys, maybe Bourbons and especially Scotches. Pipe tobacco I find can go well with these things, but with beer or spiced rum-and-root beer (or rum and cream soda, either of which is, incidentally, much better than rum and coke), or even some types of wine: depending on the type of tobacco you pick. Drink and smoke responsibly [:)] .

--4--

Cigar and scotch. Live jazz music in the background.

Ok, one last take about tobacco and booze. (I swear I don't smoke but maybe every other week, and drink more than but twice a week and in small quantities). For Christmas, I got my wife an incense censor (and a few incense blends, to include frankincense and myrrh, since we exchanged gifts on the feast of the epiphany). She got me a ticket to the Secret Society Adventures: Scotch. Cigars. Jazz, which I attended with my best friend (and fellow Nicene Guy) Mr Andrew Elster. There was a professional photographer on hand, so we'll have some photos of that in a few days. In the meantime, here are a couple from the event. The Scotch was great, the cigar was good, and the jazz was an excellent touch. The next one will be a jazz/swing dance themed thing, so we may be back (with our wives!) for more.

Andrew looking dapper as always

Just for fun: How a pipe-smoker gets started on cigars.

--5--

My wife, for her part, is contemplating doing the training to become a licensed massage therapist. This is so that in addition to offering voice and piano lessons, she can offer massages, and hopefully therefore supplement our income when we have children (especially if/when I'm still in graduate school when we start). This means that tonight we are going to a free session on ankle and foot massages. She is going to see if this is really something she wants to do (it's a big time-commitment for the next year, and it's not free or even cheap, but is rather an investment of sorts). I am going to be supportive.

--6--

My wife and I have been wanting to plan a short (weekend) camping trip for a while now. I've not been camping anywhere in Texas, though I used to go all the time in Oregon/California (though we did do some camping there last summer). Any recommendations for places within a few hours of Austin where we can pitch a tent, cook by fire, etc? Note that my wife hasn't done much camping, and that we probably won't be going until it warms up again anyway.

--7--

Classes begin this week. I'm not taking any classes this semester--I have a time conflict with the only one which looked interesting to me--but I am teaching a couple of section of physical science. Hopefully this semester will come with less stress than the last few have. In any case, when the semester begins, things start to get more complicated around here, kinda like this:

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Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Quote of the Day: John Stuart Mill and Libertarians

2012-01-13T09:19:00.000-08:00

"In every principle premise of his argument, [James Fitzjames] Stephen declared, [John Stuart] Mill suffered from an inadequate an inadequate understanding of human nature and history. All the great movements of humankind, Stephen said, have been achieved by force, not by free discussion; and if we leave force out of our calculations, very soon we will be subject to the intolerant wills of men who know no scruples about employing force against us. (So, one may remark, many twentieth-century libertarians would have had us stand defenseless against the Soviet Russians.) It is consummate folly to tolerate every variety of opinion, on every topic, out of devotion to an abstract 'liberty'; for opinion soon finds its expression in action, and the fanatics whom we tolerated will not tolerate us when they have power."

This passage comes from Dr Russell Kirk's essay "Libertarians: Chirping Sectaries", published as a chapter in his Redeeming the Time. It was written concerning the possibility of any political alliance between conservatives and libertarians--which possibility Kirk denied--to stand against Communism, which ideology both opposed. It may be worth revisiting today, if for no other reason than that the likely second-place candidate in this year's Republican nominations will be the libertarian candidate, Ron Paul.

For what it is worth, Congressman Paul is not quite the archetypal libertarian against whom Dr Kirk is writing here--but in so many ways he is quite close, at least in his approach to politics. As a human being, he seems to me to be far less libertine than his political philosophy would seem (and Dr Kirk in this essay certainly treats the libertarians as being also a libertine); he is indeed quite possibly the most decent and even conservative of all the candidates in his personal life.

Moreover, with some of the dangerous excesses of the government (and in particular, of the current president, at times backed by and at time s independent from Congress), it is certainly a very tempting idea to pull for the candidate who would, if elected president, most likely work to repeal these excesses. Giving the president the power to target civilians without trial for assassination or indefinite imprisonment (and torture to boot) may or may not keep us collectively safer from foreign threats; it will, however, put us individually in more danger from our own government, if not immediately then somewhere off in the future; it certainly gives more credence to the speculations of a friend of mine who suggested that we will see a dictatorship in the United States in our lifetimes.

In general, perhaps the best case for libertarianism is that because men are often wicked and always fallen, it is a bit of a gamble to allow any one person (or group of people) to have too much power, because that power will inevitably be abused. Much of this power to the government is granted with the best of intentions: for example, the expanded powers of government during wartime to help win the war, or in a crisis to help end the crisis, or to protect the citizens (or subjects) from this or that threat (be it a hostile foreign power, terrorists, criminals, or whatever) or likewise for society as a whole (e.g. the law acts a a moral teacher, too). Often these expanded powers are granted to a government headed by men who are largely thought to be "good men" (unlike, for example, our current president, or to look at it from another perspective, our previous one), and often also under the assumption that the powers will.

But what happens when the crisis ends, or when somebody new and less trustworthy, honorable, or "good" gets into power? What happens when we embrace the theory that the law is a moral teacher (though not the most important one) so that we can pass "good" laws, and then the other side comes to power and sweeps these aside to be replaced with "bad" laws? And how did that granting emergency powers to the leader (in this case, the general, the "dictator") thing work out for Rome as a Republic when Julius Ceaser decided to cross the Rubicon? Better perhaps to limit the government's ability to wield power so that these dangers (and these possible threats to life and liberty) are avoided (or more easily avoided).

This is, however ironically, also perhaps one of the strongest cases against libertarianism. The government rightfully yields some authority--and as Christians we believe that that authority is granted by God. Merely to limit the government will not mean that no group exercises power, but rather will shift it to some other group (e.g. big labor, or big business, or a foreign power, etc). Power may frequently tend to corrupt the character of the powerful when granted in great enough amounts and for a great enough duration; but there are ways of fighting this which do not begin with "all government exercise of power is excessive..." This is not to say that our government right now does not exercise too much power, or that it is not too big as is. But as Dr Kirk notes, the exercise of force does have some part to play in human affairs--and not always a bad part--so long as we live in this vale of tears. That the government abuses its authority in countless ways does not mean that it lacks authority to abuse.

"The great line of division in modern politics--as Eric Voegelin reminds us--is not between totalitarians on the one hand and liberals (or libertarians) on the other; rather, it lies between all those who believe in some sort of transcendant moral order, on one side, and on the other all those who take this ephemeral existence of our for the be-all and end-all--to be devoted chiefly to producing and consuming."

And since I am discussing libertarians in general, it might be worth a moment to return briefly the most important libertarian in America right now, who is Congressman Ron Paul. He really does deserve to be one of the top three candidates this time around. And he really does have some good insights--the case for libertarianism is based on mostly good insights--but he often takes these too far. I agree that America is spread a bit thin, and that these last two wars were badly run; he takes this a bit too far when he says that we shouldn't have been involved in fighting Germany in the second World War, or that we should have left the Barbary Pirates alone; nor was peaceful coexistence with a hostile superpower (Soviet Russia) a likely outcome long-term. Similarly, I agree with him in his insistence that the war on drugs has largely been a costly (and wasteful) endeavor; I do not think that the legalization of every drug from marijuana to heroine is the solution to this problem. Nor do I think that the government ought to be legalizing prostitution just because it shouldn't be entering into people's bedrooms--though I suppose that our culture's addiction to pornography does come pretty close to this anyway, since after all it involves people's getting paid to have sex [1].

On the other hand, most of these things are areas on which Representative Paul would be largely blocked by the other branches of the government. In that case, he really would be the candidate who would do "the least amount of damage," which seems to be the reason why some (or many?) people would vote for Mr Mitt Romney.

In closing, it is worth returning one more time to Dr Kirk's essay--and noting in light of this point, that the problem is that there aren't really any actually conservative candidates running this year who are likely to garner many votes:

"But surely, I must be misrepresenting the breed? Don't I know self-proclaimed libertarians who are kindly old gentlemen, God-fearing, patriotic, chaste, well-endowed with the goods of fortune [2]? Yes, I do know such. They are the people who through misapprehension put up cash for the fantastics. Such gentlemen call themselves 'libertarians' merely because they believe in personal freedom, and do not understand to what extravagance they lend their names by subsidizing doctrinaire 'libertarian' causes and publications. If a person describes himself as 'libertarian' because he believes in an enduring moral order, the Constitution of the United States, free enterprise, and old American ways of life--why, actually he is a conservative with imperfect understanding of the general terms of politics."

--Footnotes--
[1] I am not going to take time and outline what I think should be done in each of these situations, however.

[2] Oddly enough, Representive Paul seems to fit this bill, despite being a libertarian as candidate. Thus, the next part, "put up cash for" might be rendered "would grant political or legal cover to."

Three Links Wednesday (vol. II)

2012-01-11T08:32:00.000-08:00

Sometimes (ok, often) I wish that it was a quick and easy to post links to my blog as to post them to Facebook. In particular, I'd like to be able to post these quick links (with or without my commentary) and have them show up in a side-reader instead of the main blog. Perhaps that will be a feature which comes to the Nicene Guys blog when the upgraded version gets launched. Since the site has been up and down all week, I suspect that perhaps my friend and theoretical co-blogger there, Mr Andrew Elster, may be tweaking the site just a little. We'll see.

--I--

My friend Mr Nathan Kennedy has an interesting post about moral relativism and "objective" as opposed to "subjective" morality. It's not exactly the same direction as my other Nathan-named friend Mr Nathanael Blake has gone concerning morality (or truth), but it has given me something to think about. NB that I also have mentioned something similar in a past post, that there is Truth (and Goodness) and then there is our own interpretations of these, but this isn't necessarily the same understanding as either of my friends are putting forward.

--II--

Professor Edward Feser has a discussion about the concept of "perverted faculties" wrapped in a discuss about the morality of lying. He also outline seven points about lying, which he has examined in more depth elsewhere. The first three points more-or-less contain the others, and in particular he begins by noting that lying is always wrong, but not always gravely wrong.

--III--

On the National Catholic Register blogs, Mr Patrick Archbold writes about custody of the eyes--and how the men (or maybe "guys") of our society no longer practice this. For those who struggle with this, a step in the right direction would be to at least keep the dirty thoughts to yourself. It would be better still to not have such thoughts at all, but this may be a bit harder to master. One step at a time, though. Mr Archbold offers this advice to help, though: "I have a simple, yet effective rule of thumb for how men should act. I would never look at a woman or say anything about a woman that I would not do or say in front of my wife. To do otherwise would bring shame upon her and me."

--Bonus (RANT)--

While I disagree with the rhetoric of this article, it does say one good thing: that a playoff is apparently looming in college football. The SEC was gift-wrapped the BCS national championship this year (so claiming "we won six in a row" can't be done with anything but an asterisk, which I would have put on the statement before anyway), but the result is that change is coming. From a fan's perspective, playoffs are great: but I'd actually be quite content to go back to the old bowl system (and perhaps with a reduced number of bowl games), which at least did not put on the continual charade of pitting the supposed #1 vs #2 in the championship. Perhaps Alabama really is the best team; perhaps not; we'll never know how OSU (or, for that matter, Stanford or even Oregon, to say nothing of USC and BSU) would have fared against them. For that matter, how would Texas, USC, or Utah fared against Florida in 2008, or USC or WVU (assuming the coach had stuck around) or OU fared against LSU in 2007? I will give the SEC '06 and '09-'10, but of those only the '06 championship game was really that impressive.

On a related note, I suspect that if the top three teams from the PAC-12 played against the top 3 from the SEC, it would be a 2-1 split (and could go either way as to who wins 2), including a possible Oregon win in a rematch with LSU (after all, if Alabama can lose at home by 3 in overtime to LSU and then win by 21 on a neutral site a few months later, there' no reason to believe that Oregon couldn't have the same kind of turn-around)--though I suppose a 3-v-3 would look like Oregon v Alabama, USC v LSU (maybe next year?), and Stanford v Arkansas. I suspect that the same would be true for the Big-12, with OSU being a match for Alabama, KSU not so for LSU, and OU being more than a match for Arkansas.At leas tthe PAC-12 and B1G are planning something similar for the future.

I did, in any case, boycott watching the SEC West championship re-match, as did a number of other people, since the rating was down from last year (and was lower than 8 other "BCS Championship" games--it was third lowest rated all-time and lowest all-time for cable BCS games). As one friend put it, "I played Battlefield 3 instead. I guarantee I had way more fun than anyone who watched the game."

IT: Acts of Faith in Science

2012-01-10T08:31:00.000-08:00

The idea that we have faith in everyday matters is not new. This secular faith is practiced by, well, everybody, since we rely on a sort of faith that our senses do not deceive us in perceiving the world around us. This sense of secular faith is no less apparent (and certainly no less important!) in the sciences. Indeed, we have some amount or other of faith in each step of the “process” for a given experiment, which we exercise quite unconsciously.

Faith in Theory

It’s been said before that a scientific theory is a sort of story which we tell ourselves to makes sense of some set of (presumably repeatable) data. Well and good. But what reason do we have to believe that our “story” describes reality—and especially, that it holds true anytime, anywhere? What reason do we have to believe that it really describes the natural world as it is?

It is worth noting here that a great many theories—at least in physics—begin with any number of assumptions. There is a joke that physics never works in real life because most objects aren’t spheres and very few of us actually live in a vacuum. We often, moreover, ignore any number of “small” interactions when deriving our formulas [1], which interactions may not actually be ignorable, and may play a large or a small part in any given interaction; these interactions may or may not be separable from the particular interaction or effect in which our theory takes some interest.

Read the rest on the IGNITUM TODAY site.

Seven Quick Takes (v 19)

2012-01-06T11:31:00.000-08:00

--1--

I've mostly enjoyed my Kindle for the approximately half-year that I've had it. I have very few complaints about it as a product, and it has cut down drastically on the number of books I've bought in the last few months which save us some money (though I usually buy used) and also lots of shelf space (I don't have much stuff, but I have hundreds of books, and that eats up a lot of space in our apartment). I do, however, have two complaints about my Kindle. The first is that it sometimes crashes if I make too many notes/highlights too quickly--which is annoying, but not deal-breaking. The other is that (aside from writing notes) there is no way to distinguish between types of highlight. Sometimes I like to just browse and find the memorable quotes from a book, other times I want the key passages, others the passages I've marked for my own purposes, and occasionally I want to return to that one passage which I either disagreed with (and may want to blog about) or which I am unlcear on (and thus wanted to think about some more). Not too mention, it's sometimes nice to distinguish between things I found important on the first reading and things I found important on the second or third or tenth. I do kind of wonder if the Kindle Fire remedies this.

--2--

Tomorrow is our Dominican Study Day! This is one of our "major" events as a group for the year, in which the groups from Rockdale, Austin (Spanish), Austin South/central, and Austin North groups get together as one large group. We've also commonly had contingents from other cities (especially an Antonio and surrounding), and also (last year) from the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody (especially the folks from the Austin South/Central group, from which the North group missioned off). The Study day itself often works as a sort of miniature retreat--open with prayer, hear a presentation, discussion the presentation in small groups, discuss it as a larger group, and then repeat for a second presentation. Those in the Austin area who are curious about being lay Dominicans would do well to come to this, it's from 9-3:30 at St Julia's Parish.

--3--

The break is slowly coming to a close. This week was not my first week back, nor was it a full week (yay for New Year's day being observed on Monday as a holiday), but it was a laser week--so I'm back in the swing of things a bit more. Luckily, after three long days (and late nights), I get a short day today: the building is closing down and they're kicking us out by 6 for some electrical service work. Then I return next week and begin planning for classes, which start on the following week.

--4--

Speaking of getting back into the swing of thing, RCIA starts back up on Sunday, so I may be fielding some more question box questions soon. Hopefully the Nicene Guys site will be fixed by then.

--5--

Happy Feast of the Epiphany! No booze recommendation for today, unfortunately. Well, unless you include Three Philosophers Quadrupel. I suppose that the wise men were sort of like philosophers, right? Indeed, it could be argued that both the philosopher and the magi seeks the God made man*. And it's three philosophers, and tradition (small t) tells us that there are three wise men (Jasper, Melchior, and Balthasar). So, yeah, I guess there is an opportunity for drinking with the saints after all.

*As my friend Mr Nathanael Blake put it,

"Plato was looking for a church...Christianity offers freedom for philosophy. Leaving aside the Christian revelation as the fulfillment of the spiritual experience of philosophy described by Plato, Christianity relieves philosophy from the burden of expressing the spiritual experience of the right order of the soul in a temptation to reorder society in its image. Political philosophy is free to focus on the realization of a tolerable and peaceable order within the City of Man, while the Church meets the spiritual needs of man by being the mundane expression of the eschatological City of God."

--6--

My wife and I are making a little road trip to New Ulms on Sunday. We're basically going to this resort and golf club for the afternoon to relax a little and check the place out. This is in large part because I won a drawing and want to claim the prize, but it should be a nice little trip out of town for a half-day.

Hey, it will get us outside, which does both Rebecca and I some good.

--7--

Parting thought: just for fun, I'd like to see a battle of the (you-tube) bands. I'm thinking "Ok Go" vs "Pomplamoose."
In this corner, Pomplamoose:

And in this corner, OK Go:

And for the last time this liturgical year, Merry Christmas!
-----
Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Three Links Wednesday

2012-01-04T11:25:00.000-08:00

The laser is up, the Nicene Guys site is down, and so today seems a good day to just pass along a few quick links.

--1--

First, an assessment of the Iowa caucuses by Mr Ross Douthat. He's been saying for some time that this is the weakest field of Republican (or really, any party) candidates for President in some time. The Iowans selected the three who least deserve to lose. My own observation is that the Republicans of the 2012 elections are increasingly looking like the Democrats of the 2004 elections, but perhaps more so: "anybody but Mitt for nominee, anybody but Obama for President." Fortunately, that didn't work for the Democrats then; it probably won't work for the Republicans now, and this against the worst president in living memory (and possibly, ever). I also agree with Mr Douthat (and also with my friend Mr Nathanael Blake) that Rick Sanctorum and Ron Paul are the most likely to do a good job of actually "challenging" Mitt Romney, but that Romney will ultimately (and probably quickly) prevail.

--2--

Second, Dr George Weigel has an excellent piece about breaking bad liturgical habits--actually, a follow-up to an older piece which is also quite good. It gives a little something for everyone to work on. I especially like the suggestions for silence: both during the Mass at given times, and (among the congregation) less chit-chat while in the Sacred Space (I suppose I could work on this one a little myself).

--3--

I kind of missed out on this blogosphere party, but quite a few bloggers have been posting book recommendations for 2012 (apparently, at the invitation of Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler); Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler has collected these and posted them. I've read a number of the recommended books, and many of the others I have read something else by the same authors, and most of these I would second. I especially liked Jesus of Nazareth, What We Can't Not Know, and Memorize the Faith. However, if I was going to make one recommendation (one which is not on the list already mentioned, and which you are likely to not have read already), I'd probably go with Prof Mortimer J Adler's Ten Philosophical Mistakes. In this book, Dr Adler takes aim at ten common misunderstandings found in modern philosophy--indeed, in everyday life. In particular I would recommend the section on happiness and contentment (which I have discussed a few times), but really all ten are common mistakes. Adler is also very readable: like Dr Budziszewski, he writes very well to the everyman reader while not just "dumbing down" philosophy.

--Bonus--

Today's bonus link is to my friend Mr Colin Gormley's post about hypocrisy, in which he briefly discusses another common (rhetorical or philosophical) mistake.

Quote of the Day: Technological and Spiritual Progress

2012-01-03T13:34:00.000-08:00

"If the new science of the moderns has 'succeeded,' then, it might be argued that this is in large part because they stacked the deck in their own favor. Having redefined 'success' as the achievement of dramatic technological progress and in general the manipulation of nature to achieve human ends, they essentially won a game the Scholastics were not even trying to play in the first place."

This short passage is from Dr Edward Feser's Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide, and it puts a finger on an important difference between the moderns and the medievals. The medievals were not, after all, opposed to "scientific" (or technological) development--but this was also not the thing with which they most concerned themselves; they were not so enthralled with technological development as our "modern" society, in which technology often passes from cutting edge to obsolete in a matter of years.

What they did care about more (generally and on average) was spiritual well-being, public and private morality, and philosophical and theological insights into these things. Doctrines mattered to these people, and specifically having the correct doctrines, be they about God, man, nature, or what have you. This is not to say that they always made good moral or spiritual progress: though any number of both "big" and "little" sins were less rampant, and were often frowned upon more strongly than they are today. I shudder to think of what they would say about a generation which is hooked on pornography, for example, or one in which Mass attendance among Catholics is often less than weekly (not to mention what they would think of our architecture; ugh!), or in which more and more "learning disabilities" are first diagnosed (which is good when correct), then drugged and/or privileged rather than actually treated.

This is not to say that everything in medieval times was perfect, or that men were all moral and virtuous--they never were nor shall be on this side of the Parousia. But there is something to be said about a society in which you know your neighbors, and in which you can count on them for support in at least the moral basics. And that is something which we do not have today. If they were not universally saints, they at least did not want to be sinners, either. They also recognized as many today do not recognize that "not being a sinner" is not a merely human endeavor, be it on an individual or a societal scale, but that both the individual and the community (and hence the civilization) do have some role to play in this.

As for the intellectuals of that society, if they did not always grasp the mechanistic side of nature, or if they did not always get things right from the physicist's point of view, they also had a clearer grasp of metaphysics. This latter field has become taboo not because it's pointless, but rather because the modern scientist prides himself too much on his specialization to admit that he all too often knows nothing about this other part of nature. Technological development is not a bad thing, but it does become problematic when technical knowledge is used in an attempt to solve a moral problem; similarly, mechanical science is good, but only so long as it recognizes that it is only one part of human knowledge, and not necessarily the most important part.

The temporal order is important, as the Scholastic certainly recognized. However, the spiritual order is far more so, which is what the moderns have by-and-large denied. In so doing, they have traded away heaven for earth, a promise of permanent happiness for an ever-changing semblance of contentment. This is a Faustian bargain indeed.

IT: Contemplating Beauty

2011-12-30T11:56:00.000-08:00

Beauty is mentioned alongside goodness and truth as something for which all men yearn; yet of the three, beauty itself is most enigmatic. We want to know the truth—that is, we want what we think of reality to actually correspond to reality—and we want to pursue or acquire the good—our actions should thus be ordered to this end. But what about beauty? We long for it, but not necessarily as guide for thought or action: rather, we only want to contemplate it and appreciate it. There is a certain sense in which beauty is a synthesis of goodness and truth, so that beauty rests upon goodness and truth as a foundation; and at the same time it is bound to love, perhaps more effect to cause than cause to effect.

Seeking Goodness and Understanding Truth

Often discussions of “the true, the good, and the beautiful” tend to focus on the first two and ignore the last of this trio (save perhaps discussions of art, architecture, or music). And why not? It seems to me that there are those who order their lives to the good and the true, and who then get beauty as a part of the bargain; and on the other hand those who go for beauty first to the exclusion (and often the inverse) of these, who then consequently lose all three, or else get a twisted and marred beauty [1].

Read the rest on the IGNITUM TODAY website.

Seven Quick Takes (v 18): Miscellaneous Loose Ends

2011-12-16T10:30:00.000-08:00

--1--

Being the pyromaniac that I am, I'm always a little disappointed that the wreath at Mass never burst into flames when the alter server goes to light the advent candles. I mean, I can see the sparks (more like miniature fireballs) falling onto the wreath, but it never lights into a satisfying conflagration. This is, of course, because they don't use live greenery. This morning, Fr. Larry told us exactly why this is: the fireball wreath scenario actually happened once when he was associate pastor at another parish. I wasn't there to see it, but I can at least get a consolation prize:

Of course, there's also the National Lampoons version.

--2--

Now that the last laser week cycle, plus proctoring two exams (one on Saturday Night!!!), I was hit by one last hurdle:

From PhD Comics

Part of the problem is that all of my students want to get A's, but only a handful want to earn them. Thus, I get complaints from quite a few of them, since very few consistently turn in A quality work. I especially despair of the ones who try to bargain for higher grades by asking me to "round" their 89.1 to a 90. Um, no. An A- is not a bad consolation prize.

--3--

I finally finished reading through Saint Augustine's City of God. Unfortunately, most of my study group gave up long since. Maybe we'll go for something a little shorter for the next book. We're kicking some options around for the new year. Aristotle is definitely in the works, but maybe we'll look at Mortimer J Adler's Aristotle for Everybody first as a warm-up.

--4--

Now that most of the semester-related hectic-ness is over, I can return to pondering more important questions posed by my inner nerd. Who would win in a fight: the parasite, or Amazo (the Tabula Rasa Android)?
Parasite:

Amazo:

--5--

I've been playing around with the idea of a new short feature in which I name a booze which goes with the liturgical calendar. For example, Lepanto brandy goes very nicely with the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary (our Lady of Victory) because this was instituted in honor of the Holy League's victory over the Mohammedan Turks at Lepanto. I guess I could call such posts "Spirits in the Spirit" or possibly "Drinking with the Saints." Not sure if I have the time for it, though, not to mention that I don't intend for this to become the "Disgruntled Catholic Homemakers' and Disaffected Husbands' Club" blog.

--6--

With a tip of the cap to Mr Mark Shea, this video is probably the most entertaining thing I've seen all week:

I want one!

--7--

My wife and I leave for Oregon on Sunday, and although we'll be back just before Christmas, we'll probably be spending most of our time with family for the next few weeks, so I don't think there will be many more posts here for a while. I may try to get back online once or twice in between visiting family and such--but that's about it. More importantly, I can't wait to see my parent and my brother again!

-----
Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Quote of the Day: Potency and Potential Energy

2011-12-15T11:47:00.000-08:00

"I reply that it must be said that potency as potency is ordered to act so that a potency must be understood in terms of the act to which it is ordered and that there will be a plurality of potencies insofar as there are diverse acts. Acts in turn are distinguished in terms of their object. Every action is of either a passive or active potency and the object of a passive potency relates to its act as an efficient principle or cause: insofar as color moves sight it is the principle of seeing."
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Question on Truth, Question 2 Article 2
Reprinted in Prof. Ralph McInenry's A first Glance at Thomas Aquinas: A Handbook for Peeping Thomists

We employ similar language--and sometimes similar meanings--in science when discussing such things as energy. An object--let's say it's a ball--of mass m moved to a height of h (h << r_earth) above the surface of the earth is said to have "potential energy," which we express mathematically as V = m g h, g being the gravitational acceleration which object near the earth's surface experience when in free-fall. The object has potential energy: but what is that potential in relationship to? It's tempting to just say that the object has the potential to fall back to the earth, and that is true enough if I am just holding it above the ground: as soon as I release it, it will fall.

But what if I release it and it rolls (or slides) down a ramp? Does the potential energy change? Well, no, though the energy of the ball may be different at the bottom than at the top, not only in quality (it's gravitational potential energy will be reduced, and it will probably gain some kinetic energy), but also in quantity (rolling implies some amount of friction, meaning the object will lose some of its energy in this scenario). Whether the ball is dropped in free-fall or allowed to slide/roll down a ramp, we still say that it has the same potential energy, and it is still expressible as V = m g h.

Rather, we might say that potential energy is (in this example) the potential for gravity to work on the ball, which (again in this example) manifests as the ball's moving [1] from a greater height to a lesser height. What "moves" the ball when it is released? Gravity, of course. Why does gravity do this? Because objects tend to seek the lowest potential energy state available--which in this case means "resting" on the earth's surface.

Of course, this state of "rest" from the fall is a state in which the ball most likely has some amount of kinetic energy--T = 0.5 * m * v^2 < m g h--but as far as the motion of falling is concerned, its potential has been actualized, since the ball was acted upon by gravity, resulting in its fall from the lofty heights to the floor below. And in turn, as it rolls across the floor it begins to slow: friction now work upon the ball: it's kinetic energy is equal to the quantity of work the floor must do on the ball before it comes to a stop. Perhaps we might call this kinetic energy the potency in relationship to the act of friction doing work. I'm not sure what Saint Thomas would think about all of this (he may find it an interesting discussion, or a pointless one): but it certainly makes for an interesting mental picture in solving basic "energy conservation" problems.

As for the ball's actual fall, it seems to me we have and object which is translating from high point to a low point with a motion described in time by h = 0.5 g t^2 + v_i t, whose motion is affected by gravity, in such a way that it reaches the lowest potential energy state. But of course, we don't rely on Aristotle's causes at all in physics: or so a long line of physicists and philosophers of science--stretching back to Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes--would have us believe.

----Footnotes----
[1] Moving--This is also defined by Aristotle and Aquinas, though not necessarily in the same way we would define it. We say "it's moving" if an object has a nonzero speed or rotation. But motion is also the middle state between potency and act: the state between having only potential and having that potential actualized. It is the state of falling, but not because the ball has a nonzero speed, but rather because so long as the object is falling, it is in that middle state between potency (potential energy--gravity might yet do some work on the object) and actuality (gravity has done all the work it can on the ball).

Holy Innocents

2011-12-14T08:27:00.000-08:00

A while back I wrote a speculative post for the Nicene Guys about the possibility of infant salvation. The point of the post was that many people--Catholic and Protestant alike, and the detractors of both in common especially--have this idea that all unbaptized infants must be hell-bound. Some have speculated on the existence of Limbo: Dante, for example, placed it as the first circle of Hell, to which went not only unbaptized infants but also all those who lived worthy lives before the time of Christ; and C.S. Lewis alludes to it in his Screwtape Letters as a sort of state below consciousness to which the unbaptized infants slip, experiencing neither happiness nor sorrow. Our Holy Father has long since approved the suggestion that the speculations of Limbo ought to go by the wayside, that there is yet hope for the salvation of the unborn or unbaptized.

So, what of it? It's a question which comes up in the RCIA sessions--we've taken time to discuss this at least twice at some length. What hope is there for those infants who die unbaptized? The feast of the Holy Innocents is three days after Christmas, which seems fitting to me. After all, these were infants who were unbaptized, and yet are venerated by the Church as martyrs, as they have been since the time of the early Church. They were the first Christian martyrs, "witnesses" for Christ; but persecution is not the only form of witness, and God's mercy is wide indeed.

IT: Beauty and Nature

2011-12-13T07:27:00.000-08:00


The golden ratio appears all over the place in nature. Source: Naturography.

It is almost inevitably the first question I am asked in any gathering with more than four of my relatives: “So, what is it that you are working on these day?” The second question is often, “So what is this research good for?”, and the third (and most important), is “And when will you finish?” [1] Why do we study science? That may seem an odd question to pose in an essay written for a Catholic website, but it is the question which I am posing today.
Notice, though, that there is an assumption underlying the questions as posed to me by my relatives–and the same assumption is in society as a whole–regarding not only scientific research, but any number of other endeavors of human civilization, from art to music to literature to philosophy. The assumption is that it is only worth doing as a society if it is “useful” somehow.

Music is “useful” because it helps us to relax at the end of a long day so that we can be more productive tomorrow; or because it can–in its “classical” form–stimulate the brain, thus strengthening memory (for example). Art is “useful” because it can help us to visualize something which is not present–as in a police sketch, and architectural rendering, or for that matter a billboard advertisement. And science is “useful” because, well, it “works” [2].

This last attitude concerning science–it works! and that is why it is good!–can be traced back to the early stages of the scientific revolution

Read the rest on the Ignitum Today site.

Nicene Guys: RCIA Question Box on the Immaculate Conception (pt 3)

2011-12-13T07:23:00.000-08:00

I'm still having troubles with the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Why does the Church insist on this dogma, and doesn't it contradict the Bible?

Recall that there are three common objections to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception which are made by modern Protestants in general and Evangelicals and Fundamentalists in particular:

Only God is sinless. So if Catholics believe that Mary is sinless too, does that not mean that Catholics make Mary into God (or a god)? Jesus was sinless because He Is God.
Isn't sin a part of human nature? Then how can Catholics believe that Mary was conceived without sin?
Doesn't the Bible itself tell us that all of us are sinners—and so doesn't this belief necessarily contradict the Bible?

There may be a number of other less-frequent objections, but, as I have mentioned before, to treat every objection would require too much time for even a short series of posts (or RCIA sessions). In the previous installments of this short series, I considered in turn the doctrine of original sin and what the Church teaches concerning the Immaculate Conception, and then I replied to the first two objections. Today, I would like to wrap-up by considering a few of the Biblical verses concerning this doctrine.

There are some passages which are often cited as "proof" texts against this doctrine: most especially Saint Paul's letter to the Romans. In this epistle, we read that "None is righteous, no not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong. No one does good, not even one" (Romans 3:10-12, citing Psalm 14). We'll begin with this passage. It's worth asking just what it is that St Paul is trying to address when he wrote these verses. He is in the middle of considering a question about Jews and Gentiles: namely, is one group to be favored over the other amongst Christians?

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

Nicene Guys: RCIA Question Box on the Immaculate Conception (pt 2)

2011-12-08T08:54:00.000-08:00

I'm having troubles with the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Why does the Church insist on this dogma, and doesn't it contradict the Bible? Also, if Mary is sinless, then how is she not God (or at least a god)?

In talking a number of my friends who have converted from Protestantism—in particular, Baptist, Evangelical, or Fundamentalist forms of Protestantism—to Catholicism, I've found that there are certain doctrines or dogmas which are always last to be accepted. The Marian doctrines are always among these, and I suspect that if they had to name one doctrine which was hardest of those, it would be the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The objections aren't always the same, but many are similar:

Only God is sinless. So if Catholics believe that Mary is sinless too, does that not mean that Catholics make Mary into God (or a god)? Jesus was sinless because He Is God.
Isn't sin a part of human nature? Then how can Catholics believe that Mary was conceived without sin?
Doesn't the Bible itself tell us that all of us are sinners—and so doesn't this belief necessarily contradict the Bible?

These are the main objections, though there are also a number of questions which get associated with these, and there are a number of "minor" objections held by different individuals which are no less potent (for those individuals) for not being widespread. Actually to deal extensively with these three "major" objections (let alone the "minor" ones) and to explain the meaning the of dogma, etc would be more than could be dealt with by one post or one RCIA session (etc.) [1].

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

TMM: Proofs Scientific and Philosophical

2011-12-07T15:27:00.000-08:00

A recent post by Dr Stacy Trasancos--and the inevitable discussion which ensued from it--has caught to attention of my muse.The question which immediately arises is one of proofs (not evidence, mind you, but proofs). As in, the predictably anonymous interloper demands a proof--and without stating what he expects as a proof--"that divine revelation is actually divine revelation."

I won't rehash that conversation here: for that, you'll just have to go read the back-and-forth comments between the anonymous interloper and the folks responding to him (e.g. my friend Mr Colin Gormley, and Dr Trasancos herself). No, I am brought back to the idea of proofs, and what constitutes a proof anyway. Does a proof need to be made via experiment (physical demonstration), or scientific reasoning (induction and deduction), or logic (deduction and syllogism)?

I suppose this depends on the person. an "experiment" or "physical demonstration" might be what is needed to convince a person operating strictly scientifically. You want to convince a scientist that your theory is correct? Then show the experimental data which "proves" it. This is more-or-less the attitude taken in scientific circles--though they often don't accord this the status of a "proof" so much as mere "evidence;" and for the most part, I agree that experiments generally do not "prove" things in a positive sense, but only in a negative sense; they can only "prove" by counter-example, e.g. if a statement begins with "X will never be observed under these conditions..." and X is observed, or "Y will always be observed under these conditions..." and Y is not observed. The recent experiments involving faster-than-light neutrinos proves that c is not the universal speed limit--assuming of course that the data turns out to be correct [1].

What about scientific reasoning? Proofs carried out via induction are even weaker. After all, the assumption of inductive reasoning is that a phenomenon which has occurred under certain conditions will reliably occur under those same conditions. As someone--I think it was Mr John C Wright--has noted before, this is a formal logical fallacy. An apple falls off of a tree and hits Sir Isaac Newton on the head; he moves to another tree, an apple fall from this tree too, again hitting him in the head, and again and again: this may be a good cautionary reason to not sit under apple trees, but it does not follow that every time he sits under an apple tree, he will be hit by an apple. Rather, he induces this principle from the pattern of his observations, and then deduces that the pattern will continue based on his principle: but at no point has he actually "proved" that his principle holds for all time and all apple trees. Instead, this is an assumption which he makes--and justifiably so--based on his experiences.

Nor all all such theories so reliable as this one. Want to make an experimental physicist rant? Ask him what he thinks about String Theory as science. He'll likely tell you that he will believe it to be scientific when it makes an observable (and hence testable) prediction. Even then, we have scientific reasoning working alongside scientific experimentation--which we've already determined can only "prove" something within the limits of its assumptions. So science itself can't do a good job of "proving" much of anything.

This leaves us with logic or "reason" in general--perhaps the province of the philosopher? "I posit the following premises, and now allow the rules of logic to work on these premises, here are my conclusions." That is a sort of proof, but again it must rely on the correctness of any premises, and especially of any axioms which are themselves unproven. He, too, must make some assumptions, some "leaps of faith."

However, not all leaps are equal; not all proofs begin with a "brute fact." Some assumptions really are reasonable, in that they make sense out of the world around us. Some are ultimately necessary, if we are to live in the world (regardless of whether or not we want to be "of" it). Even Descartes could not doubt his own existence (nor, ultimately, could he doubt God's); and, more fundamentally, it becomes impossible to doubt existence as such, since if something exists, then there is such a thing as existence.

Anything (or anyone) which (who) exists whose essence is not also its (his) existence needs a cause to lend its existence to its (his) essence.

----Footnotes----
[1] There are, of course, a number of other assumptions or at least assessments here. One is that Rene Descartes was wrong when he formulated a philosophy which begins by rejecting the reliability of the senses, and (for that matter) of mathematics. I agree with this assessment.

Nicene Guys: RCIA Question Box on Original Sin and the Immaculate Conception

2011-12-05T09:11:00.000-08:00

What is "original sin," and what do Catholics mean by saying that Saint Mary was preserved from the stains of original sin?

There are two kinds of sin: original and actual [1]. Original sin is the direct effect of the fall—we are all "born this way"--and it is normally remitted through the waters of baptism. Actual sins are any sins which we ourselves commit [2]. Anything which you have done which is evil, or anything which you should have done which was good and chose not to do is an actual sin. These sins are normally remitted through confession. It is ultimately Christ's suffering and death which atone for both kinds of sin, and through His resurrection that we are able to be reconciled with God; thanks to these things we may be justified before God (BC2 Q102; see [0]).

So what is original sin, and what are its effects? Original sin is the state into which we come into being at our conception as a result of the fall. It basically means that we have fallen from the state of preternatural grace into which our first parents were created. It is not something which we acquire directly through our own personal fault, but rather is something which is transmitted to us though our parents (and to them though their parents, and so on). The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains original sin thus:

"Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence". Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle" (CCC 405).

Read the rest at the Nicene Guys site.

Seven Quick Takes (v 17): It's Over!

2011-12-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

--1--

The title is to mark that yesterday was the last day of the last class I ever have to take en route to my Ph.D. From now on, it's all research and writing. That will probably take 2-3 more years. But at least I won't be weighed down by what passes for classes at the graduate level. I think I've taken maybe 4 good classes as a graduate student--and two of those ultimately didn't count toward completing my degree. I'll be glad to get that 10-20 hours/week back to put into research, time with family, well, anything which is not just a required class.

--2--

This is not to say that I will never again enroll in a course. There are a few courses I would like to take for fun and/or self-betterment which have nothing whatsoever to do with my degree. And years from now I may yet attempt to get that master's degree in either philosophy or theology. But for now, it's nice to know that I've cleared one more hurdle.

--3--

Unfortunately, I am not done with all of the administrative work for the semester--I still have to administer (and worse, grade) the final exams for my own classes. Speaking of which, I want to know the name of the idiot who thought that it would be a good idea to schedule exams for a Saturday, and who thought that it would be swell to schedule exam time as if each block of time needs to be treated the same as every other block of time. Since starting grad school 5.5 years ago, I have managed to have at least one of either a 7-10 PM final, or a Saturday (afternoon/evening) final. This semester, I have to give the final from 7-10 PM ON A SATURDAY. There is not a good reason for this. Whatever is the excuse for this kind of moronic scheduling, it's not acceptable. Classes with exams meet for at least 3 hours per week, and the exams are for three hours; all of the classes fit between 8AM-10PM (ending) between Monday and Friday. Not all courses have exams. Therefore, there is no reason to need 6 days' worth of exams, with the 9AM-Noon, Noon-3PM times being given no more preference than the 4-7PM and 7-10PM time slots. Even assuming that we were going to need the extra day--WHY USE A SATURDAY? We end on a Tuesday during the following week. Why not use the Wednesday and Thursday of that week?

--4--

On to other topics. I was trying to understand the OWS movement. What are their goals, what is the point of the protest (besides that corporations are evil, and that the rich are getting richer, and so on)? Are they just a liberal version of the Tea Party, but without manner, common decency, a sense of pride, or at least of cleanliness, and with more crimes committed (though often unreported), not to mention sexual assaults? In the end, it was Tim Robbins of the Film Actors' Guild who was able to explain their views best:

--5--

In sports: I still say "no rematch." Houston (if undefeated), Standford, Oklahoma State (if they win tomorrow), Boise State, and probably Virginia Tech (assuming that they avenge their only loss this weekend) are all arguably at least as deserving as Alabama (and just for fun before you read the rest of this post, go here). In fact, the SEC west this year reminds me of nothing so much as the Big 12 South from 2008 (Texas-TT-OU each had 1 loss), save that instead of a 3-way tie there is and undefeated LSU who played a tough out of conference schedule, an Alabama team who lost in overtime to LSU and who has beat all of two ranked teams, and an Arkansas team who got blown out by Ablabama, then blown out by LSU, has beat one good team (South Carolina) and one other foe with a winning record (Auburn), scraped by a terrible 2-10 Ole Miss team (29-24), and for all of this is somehow ranked in the top 10 (8th by BCS, 6th by AP). This is, incidentally, two AP places (and 1 BCS place) above a 10-2 Oregon team which destroyed 11-1 Stanford on the road and played LSU closer (actually outgaining them) in a de-facto road game, and whose only other loss is by 3 points to a very hot 10-2 USC team.

--6--

This Arkansas team is, incidentally, Alabama's best win (9-3 Penn State, Arkansas, and LSU are the only ranked foes they've even played, and Arkansas, Penn State, and 7-5 Auburn are the only teams with winning records who Alabama has beat); for comparison, if Oklahoma State beats OU (a big "if", to be fair), they will have defeated 5 teams in the top-25. Stanford has beat only 1 top 10 foe (USC), but also beat Notre Dame (now an 8-4 team hovering near the top 25), plus 7-5 Cal and 7-5 Washington (four team with winning records). If we see a title game rematch, it will be either because Alabama had the least bad loss (a factor which didn't help Texas in 2008), or because of the reputation of the SEC as a "tough conference," which is largely a reputation built upon winning the national championship every year*. That streak of 5 national championships will be tarnished by adding a sixth featuring two SEC teams squaring off against each other.

--
*And I'm not convinced that the foe picked as BCS #2 has always actually been the best non-SEC team each year, as in 2008 when USC, Texas, and Utah were all arguably better than OU, or in 2007 when there were several 11-1 or 10-2 teams "cut" from the BCS title game in favor of 10-2 LSU.

--7--

Last Saturday I went deer-hunting with my brother-in-law. I actually saw two does from my car, and though I got out of my car, grabbed my gun, loaded, and got into position to shoot at them quietly enough that they didn't notice me, I wasn't able to get a good shot off. They had already been meandering our of the clearing which I was overlooks, and by the time I got into position, they were already entering the brush. I did see another deer, which I did take a shot at form ~80 yards. Unfortunately for me (and perhaps fortunately for it), the deer sort of flinched or spooked at something just before i could get the shot off, so I missed. Oddly enough, it paused for a few moments and looked around--I supposed it didn't know which direction the gunshot had come from, and thus must have spooked at not me--but it took off before I could get a second shot at it. Doe! I mean, doh!

Probably 30 minutes later, the logging/construction/mining/whatever operation on the land nearby started up. Needless to say, I didn't see any more wildlife after that, unless you count the young kestrel--he also flew away before I could get a (snap)shot off. Maybe I'll get another chance for the deer before the New Year.

-----
Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Quote: Rhetorical Education and Citizenship

2011-11-30T09:54:00.000-08:00

"Consider the audience of an orator like Lincoln: even if his audience consisted of simple farmers, these farmers would have been exposed regularly to examples of oratory modeled on great orations of the past. County fairs often featured Ciceronian orations extolling the virtues of American agriculture; even country preachers modeled themselves on the sermons of great Protestant divines; eloquent, structured toasts and speeches were expected features of public events. American culture at the time of Lincoln, in other words, was one in which the average citizen encountered regularly acts of rhetoric that demonstrated sustained logic in elegant, gripping language, held up to the standards of great Western orators."

So writes Dr Sean Lewis on the blog for Wyoming Catholic College, concerning the decline of Rhetoric in the West. This is turn reminds me of a conversation which I had a few years ago with a good friend of mine, Mr Stephen Cheney. We had been discussing the relative decline of the art of homiletics (specifically), when he mentioned a style of homily which was once in wider use, but which has seemingly gone by the wayside. There was a time once when the preacher might on occasion choose not to write his own homily, but rather to present the homily of somebody else, a sort of "great homilies" approach.

Sometimes Fr Dullwind really does have a very good homily which truly illumines this week's readings, or at least a well-thought-out sermon which can somehow be tied into them. There are certainly more than a few priests who take great pride in their homilies, meaning that they put great effort into researching the material for a good homily, and then crafting an excellent oration which glorifies God and edifies the congregation. However, more often than not Fr Dullwind is the type who puts together maybe a half dozen such homilies during the year, and then the remainder are "self-help motivational talks or cutesy stories littered with bad jokes...little more than funny anecdotes poorly strung together."

Must Fr Dullwind prepare his own homily each week from scratch? Can he not look back to some of the great orators of the past, the homilists whose sermons shook the world, the preachers whose preaching can still be presented today fresh an edifying as it was hundreds or even thousands of years ago? Can he not present a homily from Saint Augustine, or St John Chrysostom, or even the commentary of St Jerome? Or, turning from the Church Fathers, can he not find anything from Saint Thomas Aquinas, or Saint Vincent Ferrer, or Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman?

Perhaps he can. Or perhaps we have lost the ability to follow such sermons to the lethargy which has beset our society in its rhetorical slumber. Nevertheless, I can't help but think that in looking to these great preachers of the past, we may help raise if but a little the discourse of the present. We may also find that the Faithful are more well-catechized as a result.

Ignitum Today

2011-11-29T07:43:00.000-08:00

Normally, I would have written a new post for Virtuous Pla.net yesterday. However, the site has been migrating to its new home--there was apparently a kerfuffle with some other group by the same name--and so has been under construction. I guess it gives me more time to work on the post in question, which is a sort of clarification. Said post is essentially done, though I've been discussing it with a friend to make sure the clarification really makes sense and isn't missing anything. We'll see.

In any case, what was previously VirtuousPla.net is moving, and there will be new posts when it's finished. All of the posts which I previously wrote for VirtuousPla.net have also migrated. This means that there are a lot of broken links, both on this site and on the new site site (namely, anything which began with "http://virtuouspla.net" no longer works). I'll fix the links when we officially "re-launch," I guess.

On the up side, this is a pretty busy next couple of weeks for me. I guess this is pretty good timing in that sense. Silver lining and all that.

TMM: There Are Some Questions

2011-11-28T11:41:00.000-08:00

There are some questions whose answers I'm really not that interested in. This is not to say that I think the questions (or even the answers) are worthless: only to note that they value they will have for me is exceeded by the cost of obtaining those answers. I can hear some objections, especially in the context of a bit of performance art (note to self: use sparingly). Bad timing as this is, it's not meant to be related to that.

Actually, it's a statement of priority. There are three basic questions which I think must have priority over all others: what should I believe, what should I desire, and what should I do? These are lifelong questions, and they are the ones which really matter most, not only for me but for everybody*. There are other questions which are also important: "how do I know that my answers are correct?", for example. There are personal questions such as "who should I marry?" (I've already answered this question, of course), which might be important to me or to my family and close friends.

And then there are other questions, which may be interesting but whose answers don't much matter in the long run. "What is the damage-threshold of a gold-plated mirror at 873 nm?" is fairly important to me in that I need to know the answer to decide whether or not to buy a gold-plated mirror for my Raman laser system. "How does stimulated Raman scattering work?" is also fairly important to me, given that this is a part of my job. It's also a very interesting question, especially for the AMO affectionado; the political science major, however, couldn't care less, and he's no worse off for not knowing.

The knowledge would, of course, be worth attaining if it could be done "free": no time commitment, no financial cost, no risk to health, the knowledge doesn't displace some more "important" knowledge. But even knowledge is rarely so cheap: it is at the least a time investment. Some answers are not worth the investment, at least not intrinsically (that is, in the same sense as the three basic questions).

----
* "What is the meaning of life" might be classed as a part of these three questions.

Sympathy for the Devil

2011-11-23T11:38:00.000-08:00

I've posted a follow-up to my last Virtuous Pla.net post. It can be read here. Excerpt:

My last post on this site was my take on why not to read Nietzsche. I received a few comments which partially agreed with me but questioned whether is was a little presumptuous to say that there is nothing of value in Nietzsche–perhaps even a little cynical (ironic, no?). I probably should have mentioned that the last post was part of a sort of “internal debate” and that it would be followed by a second part, which would be in defense of wasting time on Nietzsche [1]. This is that brief defense.

Before I get too carried away, I would like to make a few preliminary notes. First, there will necessarily be some contradictions between this post and the last. It is, after all, a sort of debate, albeit an interior one. Second, there are some assumptions made explicit in my last post and the comments therein which still apply here. Namely, that Nietzsche shouldn’t be read at the expense of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas (at the very least), and that what he has to say is for the most part not true and not good (that is, the central tenets of his philosophy are neither good nor true) [2]. Third, I am here addressing Nietzsche but I think a lot of what I say here could pertain to other “great books” as well (I am thinking of Marx, Rousseau, Hegel, Kant…). Finally, I am writing for the young Catholic everyman who wants to be well-rounded, not necessarily for the professional philosopher.

With that in mind, there are some reasons to read Nietzsche. A number of them are already mentioned in the comments to my last post, so I will not rehash all of these, but rather will focus on a few reasons which come to my mind.

Read the rest on the Virtous Pla.net site.

Also, this didn't really have any place in either of the last two posts on Nietzsche, but here is a excerpt from Henri Cardinal De Lubac's The Drama of Atheist Humanism:

Deep is sadness,
Joy deeper than affliction.
Sadness says: pass on and die!
But all joy wants eternity,
Wants deep, deep eternity! [Zarathustra]

Between this 'deep eternity' that all joy wants and the height 'of sexual instinct, of rapture, of cruelty,' into which the Dionysiac trance plunges ["Dionysos philosophos"], the ring of 'becoming and return' has not effected a unity. This 'nuptial ring' has remained a beautiful symbol--a beautiful, powerless symbol [Zarathustra].

Nietzsche does not admit this. But his work cries it out. It contradicts the solution it lays hold of. It shows its gaping faults. 'I must persist in my dream under pain of perishing.' This is a terrifying admission, for what he called his pearl at the time could have become his salvation, while it is his attachment to an impossible dream that to the contrary will end up leading him to his doom. He who by his demand for sincerity allies himself to the highest of souls has ended up showing a suspicious interest in the idea of the 'sacred lie.' He who smelled out so subtly and flogged so harshly the unconscious hypocrisies of others, he it is who has become in the final analysis, not a masked man, but the man of the mask, almost, as it were, a theoretician of the self-indulgent, obstinate illusion, an adorer of a fiction that he knows quite well in the depths of his heart to be a fiction [Die frohliche Wissenschraft]. He pretended to create what he could not help suffering...Zarathustra is 'a Wagnerian work' [Andler, vol. 6, p. 59]. This poem in which he wished to mimic the Gospel is, despite so many beauties, painfully theatrical. One feels that there is a thirst for purity and authenticity in it, but at the same time something inflated and falsely solemn that betrays something counterfeit. And at the very same time that he feels sorry for Pascal as a victim of Christianity, Nietzsche is very close to admitting that he is a victim of his anti-Christian dream--his lie.

_____

Nicene Guys: The RCIA Question Box on The Act of Contrition

2011-11-22T08:01:00.000-08:00

I understand "contrition" means "to feel remorse or guilt," but what does the "act" of contrition mean? Is it to confess your wrongdoing?

"O my God! I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life" (Traditional form of the Act of Contrition as found in the Baltimore Catechism no. 3 and the Penny Catechism). [see footnote 1]

When we talk about an "act," we often mean something which we do—an action. Thus, an "act of kindness" means something which we have done for somebody else out of kindness. But now think about this again: an "act" of kindness is often thought of as "small." An act of mercy is certainly something small which we've done, or we might call it rather a "work" of mercy. Thus, instructing the ignorant is a work of spiritual mercy, or feeding the hungry a corporal work of mercy; they take effort and commitment. Raising children is a "work" of love—but merely kissing your child goodnight is by contrast an "act" of love.

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

VP: Waisting Time With Nietzsche

2011-11-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

“There is no university if Plato is not read, even if it is called a university. Students who go to a university never having read Plato or Aristotle or Augustine or Aquinas, among other, are really wasting most of their time and money. Without those thinkers, and also the Bible, they will not have a clue as to what it is all about.

And I am not necessarily an advocate of what are called ‘great books,’ not that I am against reading them, however defined. My Another sort of Learning, in fact, was written because the great books are not adequate, even though they are ‘great.’ I agree with Leo Strauss and Frederick Wilhelmsen, both of whom remarked that the great books contradict each other. They can and often do lead to skepticism. Likewise, I agree with Plato in The Republic when he warns us of exposing students to great things too early, before they have lived long enough to recognize what is indeed great.”

My mind returns to this passage from the Jesuit Fr James’ Schall’s The Life of the Mind: On the Joys and Travails of Thinking whenever it is suggested to me that I ought to read the works of Friedrich Nietzsche or Karl Marx or Immanuel Kant (to pick just three “great” works). This is not to say that I utterly disapprove of “Great Books” programs, which if done well would indubitably lead to a better formal education than the one which I received.

Read the rest on the Virtuous Pla.net site.

Seven Quick Takes (v 16): Aristotle and Augustine and Anselm Oh My! Pascal, Too.

2011-11-18T11:43:00.000-08:00

--1--

My last post on ~~Virtuous Planet~~ IgnitumToday--My Second Best Reason to Believe in God--has generated a bit of criticism. I somewhat expected that, though a lot of it misses the mark entirely, giving me the impression that quite a few people misunderstood the post. I generally appreciate constructive criticism, and can even sometimes tolerate destructive criticism. However, I would prefer that people who criticize do so while understanding my meaning. Based on the emails, facebook comments, and comments on the post itself, nobody save possibly Mr Nathanael Blake actually did understand my post, and even his comment makes me suspect otherwise. So, here are some comments, explanations, and hopefully clarifications.

--2--

The best reason to believe in something is because it is true–which I stated in my post. Arguments which seek to demonstrate or prove that God exists are thus arguments about the truth of God’s existence. There is more than one such argument, whatever may be those arguments’ merits or demerits. These would all be classed under “my best reason to believe in God.” The next best reason to believe something is because it is good. This is more a reason to desire that a thing be true, and (in the absence of evidence either way) to order your life in the hope that it might be true. For what it’s worth, the third best reason to believe something is because it is beautiful. Note well that the second best reason is subordinate to the best, and the third best to the second best. This means that if God does not exist and we know that God does not exist without a shadow of doubt (a thing which even some atheists do not claim), then the fact that God is good does not make Him exist. I never claimed that it did, contra some commentators

--3--

Aside from citing Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, Mr Nathanael Blake states that "Combining Anselm (who begs the question) with a definition of hell simply produces a horde of question-begging street urchins." Of course, my discussion doesn't rest on whether or not Saint Anselm is right. It rests on four propositions: that happiness comes from enjoying the good in proportion to the greatness of the good (Aristotle); that sorrow and wretchedness come from the converse of that, that is, from losing or failing to obtain that which is good (Augustine); that God Is the greatest good (definition employed by Saint Anselm); and that hell is that where the greatest possible sorrow exists (pick your source). If these four things are true, then it necessarily follows that we are in Hell right now (though we may not yet know it).

--4--

For more discussion concerning Saint Anselm's Ontological Argument, I would recommend Professor Edward Feser's post, fittingly titled Anselm's Ontological Argument. He also has a post concerning Professor Alvin Plantinga's version. Now, I know that this argument isn't air-tight. For crying out loud, even Saint Thomas Aquinas rejected it! I pass this along, for two reasons. The first is that Dr Feser points out just where the actual question-begging occur. Here is his conclusion:

"The lesson is not that Anselm’s argument is unsound so much as that it presupposes knowledge (i.e. of God’s essence) that we cannot have. Moreover, the idea that reason points us to the existence of that than which there can be nothing greater is something Aquinas himself endorses as long as it is developed in an a posteriori fashion, as it is in Aquinas’s Fourth Way."

The second is that he also has a good comment about the three ways in which people approach this argument.

--5--

This point is not especially relevant to the argument either way. The differences between Hell as "this life without God" (let's call this "Earth-Hell") and as the next life without God (let's call this "Gehenna-Hell") are threefold. First, in Earth-Hell we cannot have absolute certainty. Even some atheists admit this, as when Professor Dawkins et al. chose as their bus ad campaign "There is probably no God" (my emphasis). In Gehenna-Hell, we will have absolute certainty. Second, Earth-Hell is temporary; Gehenna-Hell is not. Third, we may pursue other good in Earth-Hell, but there is no good (or goods) in Gehenna-Hell. Fourth might be the existence of hellfire in Gehenna-Hell, though there are other forms of suffering in Earth-Hell, too.

--6--

This brings me to Pascal's Wager. The Wager is, after all, not a proof that God exists, nor is it presented as one, either by me or by Blaise Pascal himself. Rather, it is a sort of bet which begins with the assumption that we don't know enough either way to conclude that God does or does not exist. The best reason (truth) comes up a coin-toss, not in that the truth itself is a coin toss but rather in that our knowledge of it is one. We lack certainty, and thus assume that God could exist or He couldn't. Yet we still have to decide one way or another, and we still have to live one way or another. There are four possibilities, based on whether God exists or not and whether we pick correctly or not. If God does exist, then we go to either Heaven (we picked correctly) or Gehenna-Hell (we picked incorrectly); if God does not exist, then picking either way does not much matter in the long run. My article does not exactly follow Pascal's wager, though someone told me that it was akin to upping the ante on this cosmic bet, though this was not exactly my intention. Rather, we should desire that God exist for the sake of our ultimate and final happiness; but desiring that a thing is so does not make it so. On the other hand, if we don't have absolute epistemological certitude that God does not exist, then we should live according to the desire that He does. This is Pascal's point, I think.

--7--

The common objection to Pascal's Wager as an argument qua wager is that it seems to rely on a particular conception of God, namely, that it bets on the Christian God as opposed to the pagan gods, for example. The counterargument of the atheists is, in other words, that since some other gods may exist, therefore we should live as if no God or gods exist. Probably the right question to ask is whether or not the Christian God is or could be GCNBT. Since I'm already running fairly long for a set of "quick" takes, I'll let Mr John Zmirak field the question; or, since he is my go-to blogging philosopher, I'll refer the interested reader to Dr Edward Feser's post addressing the "one god further" objection (and his follow-up post); his posts about God, Man, and Classical Theism is also pertinent.

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Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Nicene Guys: The RCIA Question Box on Blaspheming the Holy Spirit (part 2)

2011-11-16T09:29:00.000-08:00

This is a continuation of my discussion of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, which is the one unforgivable sin (Matthew 12:31-32). In the previous part, I explained what it means to blaspheme the Holy Spirit. There are two meanings (at least) for this passage, the one being literal—that is, lying about God—and then a "practical" meaning, which is that there are six ways in which we can blaspheme the Holy Spirit. I left off by noting that the first four (despair, presumption, resisting/impugning the truth, and spiritual envy) lead to the last two (to obstinacy and, finally, to impenitence), and that these sins are ultimately unforgivable. This gives rise to a new question: why are these sins unforgivable?

To answer the question about what blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is, I turned to the end of the Catholic Encyclopedia's entry about the Holy Spirit. I would like to begin here by returning there:

The sins against the Holy Ghost are said to be unpardonable, but the meaning of this assertion will vary very much according to which of the three explanations given above is accepted. As to final impenitence it is absolute; and this is easily understood, for even God cannot pardon where there is no repentance, and the moment of death is the fatal instant after which no mortal sin is remitted. It was because St. Augustine considered Christ's words to imply absolute unpardonableness that he held the sin against the Holy Ghost to be solely final impenitence. In the other two explanations, according to St. Thomas, the sin against the Holy Ghost is remiss-able — not absolutely and always, but inasmuch as (considered in itself) it has not the claims and extenuating circumstance, inclining towards a pardon, that might be alleged in the case of sins of weakness and ignorance. He who, from pure and deliberate malice, refuses to recognize the manifest work of God, or rejects the necessary means of salvation, acts exactly like a sick man who not only refuses all medicine and all food, but who does all in his power to increase his illness, and whose malady becomes incurable, due to his own action. It is true, that in either case, God could, by a miracle, overcome the evil; He could, by His omnipotent intervention, either nullify the natural causes of bodily death, or radically change the will of the stubborn sinner; but such intervention is not in accordance with His ordinary providence; and if he allows the secondary causes to act, if He offers the free human will of ordinary but sufficient grace, who shall seek cause of complaint? In a word, the irremissableness of the sins against the Holy Ghost is exclusively on the part of the sinner, on account of the sinner's act.

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

VP: My Second Best Reason to Believe in God

2011-11-14T14:24:00.000-08:00

Some weeks I’m really not into writing long introductions to my pieces, so let’s get to it shall we: If God does not exist, then what follows is not that Hell does not exist, but rather that we already live there. Sure, we may not be shivering away in the ninth circle of Hell–though I suppose if we were, somebody would find a way to pin it on climate change–while having the endure the torment of Lucifer gnawing the flesh off of Judas and sucking the blood from Brutus. Nevertheless, the idea of merely being in the first circle of Hell is not exactly my idea of warmth and comfort.

Usually people don’t necessarily associate the lack of God as being “Hell” at any level, other than to note in passing that suffering does exist here as it must surely exist in Hell (albeit perhaps to a lesser degree). However, the first and greatest torment of Hell is precisely this loss of the beatific vision, this absence of God. Here is Dante’s own description of the first circle of Hell–the “limbo” in which we find ourselves if there is no God:

Read the rest on the ~~Virtuous Pla.net~~ Ignitum Today blogs.

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I should here add a little announcement: I anticipate that my blogging activities will probably be lighter for the next few weeks. The semester is wrapping up slowly, and I have a daunting number of tasks to finish before it does. I suspect that there will be little time for me to do much in the way of writing between now and early December (we'll see how the Thanksgiving break goes), between the workload and life in general. I hope to keep up with the RCIA question box (Nicene Guys) at the least, and hopefully also a regular post for VP. No guarantees for anything else.

CAT: Education, Propaganda, and Virtue

2011-11-10T07:29:00.000-08:00

Today on the ~~VirtuousPla.net~~ Ignitum Today blogs, my co-blogger Miss Anna Williams discusses the relationship between education and virtue. In summary: being more educated does not make a person more virtuous. I agree with her assessment if we take education to mean "getting a higher degree" and all of the learning which goes with it. But learning is not the same thing as education. A truly well-rounded education is one in which a person learns (strengthening the intellect) but also attempts to inculcate virtue (strengthens the will)...Propaganda--unworthy of the name "education"--can thwart us in our attempt to become virtuous, be it by convincing us that some things are virtuous which are not (and vice versa), or by alternatively convincing us that we ought not be virtuous.

Read the whole thing on the Catholic America Today blog.

Nicene Guys: The RCIA Question Box on Blaspheming the Holy Spirit (part 1)

2011-11-08T07:57:00.000-08:00

This isn't so much a question placed in the question box as a question which was brought up, briefly discussed, but never really resolved during our session about the Saints and Purgatory. What does it mean to blaspheme the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31-32)?

"Therefore, I say to you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever speaks against the holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come" (Matthew 12:31-32).

Given that we are told that blaspheming the Holy Spirit is the one unforgivable sin, it makes sense that we should want to know exactly what this means so that we can avoid doing it. I recall that a few years ago, there was this big atheist movement on YouTube in which people would make videos of themselves "blaspheming" the Holy Spirit, presumably as a way of saying "not only am I not a Christian now, but I intend to seal as not one ever, because I will sin in such a way that even should I be convinced that Christianity is true, it will be useless to me: I will have sinned so that I can not be forgiven." The videos were mostly of people saying bad things about the Holy Spirit: that He wasn't real, that He wasn't God, that He wasn't good but rather was evil etc.

There is some irony to be found in these videos. The folks involved wanted to be guilty of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, and in a sense they are—but not for the reason that they believe. Sure, speaking ill of the Holy Spirit is a form of blasphemy, and especially attributing to God something which comes from Satan, or to Satan something which comes from God, is a very serious form of blasphemy. It most definitely can lead to scandal—deliberate confusion of people on a spiritual level. This is in and of itself bad (see Matthew 18:6, Luke 17:2, and Mark 9:42). This alone is a very grave sin.

There's something worse than this...

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

VP: Spiritual Battles in a Spiritual War

2011-11-07T10:54:00.000-08:00

In his book The Total Money Makeover, finance adviser Mr Dave Ramsey describes a method for not only getting out of debt, but also then saving up for your children’s college fund and your own retirement fund. In reading his plan, I notice that he doesn’t begin with: take all available money and start paying off your debts. Rather, the first step in his plan is for you to save up $1000 as a short-term emergency fund. The idea behind the plan is that accidents and emergencies happen, and when they do it is best to have some cash on hand so that you do not need to tack out more debt to deal with them. The goal is to eliminate debt, so that also means eliminating possible (that is, emergency) sources of new debt first. This idea of a short-term emergency fund is not unique to Mr Ramsey, but is in fact widespread [1].

What the system recommended by Mr Ramsey does, in other words, is take into account both the long-term goals and the short-term obstacles, and then it gives solutions for achieving the one and overcoming the others. This seems to me to be sensible advice both for personal/household financial planning and for the larger economic planning on our country’s part, though unfortunately neither the average family nor our country’s government ever seem to take both into consideration [2]. However, since I’m not an economist, this isn’t going to be an economic policy post, nor a financial advice one. For the former I would recommend Thomas Sowell, F.A. Hayek, or Henry Hazlitt, and for the latter Dave Ramsey; but my in-expertise combined with my writer’s block means that drawing all of this out would suck up a little too much time and would yield a poor product in return. On the other hand, there is another topic which I think could use a similar approach and which would involve a bit less time-suckage on my end–even if the end-product is little improved over an economics post.

In thinking over this principle of long-term plans and short-term contingencies, had a bit of an epiphany, at least one for me. It may have been a the kind of epiphany which leads to my realizing something that an ordinary person has long known based on common sense, much like Mr Ramsey’s advice is rather commonsensical. Well, at least there wouldn’t be as much time-suckage in writing such a post, so here goes: this principle which I have said is a financial principle is really a moral principle. We cannot win the spiritual war in our own lives if we lose every battle along the way.

Read the rest on the Virtuous Pla.net blogs.

On Two Movements

2011-11-04T13:52:00.000-07:00

My friend Mr Nathanael Blake has a couple of short posts concerning the push for "gay marriage" and how a part of it's purpose--arguably it's main (if not sole) purpose--is to be used to strip Christians of our civil liberties. They're worth a read, as is the brief exchange in the com boxes of the first post. I was originally not going to write anything more about these here--I find nothing really to disagree with in either, and did not originally have much in particular to add, either. I did, however, originally pass the latter post along via facebook, which had the unsurprising result of garnering a comment in opposition:

"To coach it in terms of an issue about which we have had a longer time to consider, I guess it comes down to whether we want to allow black people to sit at the counter or not. Half a century ago the nation came to a decision that we did not want to be a civilization where the powerful were allowed to mercilessly bully the minority under the dubious guise of liberty. Ironically enough, the Civil Rights movement was waged AGAINST practices like those exhibited by the B&B owners. There is childishness in the linked article [that is in Mr Blake's post], and someone is accruing quite a civility deficit, but I do not believe it is the party the author tries to make it out to be.

If this were actually a religious organization I would probably take a different stand, we have a right to whatever personal bigotry we wish to cling to in our private lives, as evidenced by the continued existence of organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. But, if a business wants to refuse to sell a gun to a Klan member, seat a black person, host a homosexual, or elect a Catholic CEO; due specifically to that status, then there is a problem."

Yes, the homosexualist movement would like to pretend that they are exactly paralleling the old civil rights movement*. This means that we necessarily must try to paint anyone who dissents as being every bit as bigoted and backwards as the old white supremacists, and that THEY. MUST. BE. PUNISHED! Therefore, the bed and breakfast which refuses to host a "gay marriage" must be punished, and lawsuits must be brought to bear. Their conscience rights must be trampled under the boots of progress marching inexorably forth into the future.

There are any number of problems with this comparison between the civil rights movement and the homosexualist movement. Without getting into the entire argument as to whether or not the homosexual lifestyle is right or wrong, free-will choice or predestined by genetics or environment, I can think of a few other places where the two movements deviate from one another.

First, how did each movement go about achieving its goals? I can think of a grand total of three lawsuits involving the civil rights movement spanning over a half a century. These challenged either standing laws (Plessy v Ferguson), or the board of education (Brown v Board of Education, Cummings v Board of Education) for a school district: which is a public entity providing a rather public good. It is true that in the former, there were private business involved--but these were governed by state laws mandating segregation. In the case of the latter, a school board (and school district) is a public entity, not a private business. For the homosexualists, it's all about lawsuits. Are you a photographer who refuses to work at a gay civil union service? Lawsuit. Are you a baker who won't bake cakes for a reception at such a service? Lawsuit. Are you a bed and breakfast owner who refused to host any part of the service? Lawsuit. Are you a clerk who had an authorized assistant sign the state marriage license? Lawsuit.

Second, aside from the fact that they are rather lawsuit-happy, we see that the homosexualists are anything but peaceful on other fronts, too. For example, there was plenty of violence in California against Proposition 8 supporters. I for one am having difficulty imagining the leaders of the civil rights movement engaging activities such as beating the bus driver who asked Rosa Parks to give up her seat; and the sit-ins at various businesses hardly involved vandalizing the place. And, as mentioned above, the folks who engaged in the sit-ins did not then run out and sue their target businesses if service was refused them.

Third, there is a bit of the "Tolerance is not enough. You. Must. Participate." to the homosexualist movement. Are you a firefighter in San Diego? Well, be ready to drive around (and be sexually harassed at the least) at the next gay pride parade. Are you a teacher? Well, be prepared to give a mandatory lesson on the glory and goodness of gay sex. Are you a pastor? Well, in spite of my friend's comment about this being limited to businesses and not Churches, be prepared to be forced into performing gay weddings at your church. Are you a religious organization who provides adoption services? Well, be prepared to either place with homosexual couples--or to close your doors.

Right or wrong, the homosexualist movement does not parallel the civil rights movement--and does not deserve the comparisons it draws to that movement. The civil rights leaders insisted on tolerance, respect, touching hearts and minds, and peaceful demonstration; on working against institutions, it is true, but on doing so peacefully, an attempt to change or heal the institutions. The homosexualist movement doesn't give a damn about tolerance, or for that matter about respect. They're not out to change hearts and minds, they're out to demand immediate compliance. They don't want to work to peacefully change institutions, though of course if some of their demands will be met peacefully they'll take victory that way; rather, they want to crush any opposition, even the faintest whisper of an object; they want to destroy institutions, and from their rather malicious lawsuits, they are more than happy to ruin individuals as well. This is not to mention that they have already succeeded in ruining more than a few lives, and have done so in a rather callous manner.

---Footnotes---
* All of which ignores the original points in Mr Blake's article. The first is that this movement is less about rights and equality than about bullying Christians and ultimately creating a system of legal persecution. This can be seen by the simple fact that a photographer's refusal to work at a "gay marriage" ceremony does not in the least prevent that ceremony from going forward. Get over it and get a different photographer. Ditto for the B&B, the baker, etc. The second point is the actual childishness and petty hypocrisy of the left on this issue. The first post pointed out that the left is not the least bit interested in saving marriages--they're the driving force behind a number of projects and proposals which have made it easier to destroy, ruin, or otherwise end a marriage; and they have done little more than oppose any efforts to actually make divorce more difficult to obtain, or for that matter any other method which might help marriages to last and to be successful. In the second post, he ties in with the OWS crowd and others on the left who complain about the soullessness (and immorality) of businesses--all while the left punishes any business whose owners seem to care about the wrong things besides profits, in particular morality.

---Updates---
Catholic Vote's Mr Thomas Peters expresses some more thoughts on this, which are in agreement with my own (albeit from a slightly different angle).

Seven Quick Takes (v 15): Seven Quick Links for RCIA

2011-11-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

This week is going to be a little different with the quick takes. Two or three of the RCIA candidates and catechumens have been asking me for a while for a list of my favorites blogs. So, this week's quick takes will be a few of my favorite blogs (and similar) sites which I think could be and/or will be helpful for converts.

--1--

My first pick is the National Catholic Register blogs. They have put together a stellar cast over the years, most (all?) of whom also have their own private blogs elsewhere. I would especially recommend Mr Mark Shea (who writes with a goofy and rather winsome style), Mr Jimmy Akin (whose prose is generally very clear and thorough) and Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler (who is smart, humorous, and also quite gracious), but the entire group is good.

--2--

While on the subject of group blogs, I would also recommend Virtuous Pla.net. There are quite a few talented young writers there, and posts have covered everything from philosophy and theology to culture (including specifically Catholic culture). Your humble servant also contributes a (usually) hebdomadal post, but I would actually recommend quite a few others who write there first: Mr Brent Stubbs, Fr Ryan Ehrlenbush, Mr Marc Barnes, the Three Bright Maidens, Mr Nathan Kennedy, Mrs Jennifer Mazzara... Most of the VP contributors also list their own personal blogs on the "meet us" page. I especially also read the blog of Dr Stacy Trasancos.

--3--

The blogs for the Archdiocese of Washington are in general good. Monsignor Charles Pope is especially good, as his writing style is clear and pastoral, and often also very insightful. I suspect that he gives some very good homilies for whichever parish is lucky enough enough to have him.

--4--

There are several sites which are not so much blogs with advice as blogs which collect links to good, useful, or interesting posts. The New Advent site which is put together by Mr Kevin Knight is the best of those; he's also done us all the great favor of compiling online such things as the Douay-Rheims Bible, the Summa Theologica, the Catholic Encyclopedia, and some of the writing of the Church Fathers (though I'm not sure whether a candidate or catechumen will necessarily find these useful now).

--5--

It's not technically a blog, but the Catholic Answers website is a veritable treasure trove for anyone who is coming into the Church or is otherwise interested in apologetics. They have a team of apologists (which includes a few folks I've introduced above) who have answered probably thousands of short questions, they have compiled a number of tracts on any number of doctrines and practices of the Church, and the even have a forum for discussion. This is, incidentally, the first site that I turned to when I became interested in apologetics. I can think of a few other non-blog sites which are worthy of recommendation (Dr Peter Kreeft's site and Fr Robert Baron's Word on Fire spring immediately to mind), but for a convert (or anyone else interested in Catholic apologetics), I can think of no better single-stop site than Mr Karl Keating's Catholic Answers site.

--6--

The Aggie Catholics blog, which is mostly run by Mr Marcel Lejeune, is also very candidate/catechumen-friendly. Actually, of all these sites I've listed so far, this one seems to me to be the most heavy on Q&A posts--and his answers are always very good. They're also usually more succinct than my answers (which is not hard to do, but still...), so those who have questions and don't want to read a lengthy 3-4 page tract in response might look to see if he's answered your question before, and if not perhaps drop him a line.

--7--

There are a lot of other great websites out there. The list of links by the side of my blog will take you to some of them, and following the links from New Advent (or from Mr Tito Edward's Pulp.it, or sometimes Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler's links blog, etc) will generally point you to them. However, I wanted to limit myself to 7 blogs. And since Catholic Answers isn't technically a blog, that leaves leaves me with at least a couple possible selections. I would recommend Dr Scott Hahn and Mr Frank Weather's "Why I Am Catholic." These two men--like so many others on this list--are also converts. Scott Hahn's books in particular are excellent, and I think that they would be very beneficial not only to most if not all converts but also to most if not all cradle Catholics. And Frank Weather's site is just plain inspiring.

Take 7 Update: And here is another reason why Frank Weather's blog rocks.

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Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Nicene Guys: God, Love, and Desire

2011-11-03T15:47:00.000-07:00

"For surely anyone's love will grow feebler and cooler towards one whom, as he supposes, he will have to leave, whose truth and wisdom he will have to reject, and that after he has come to the full knowledge of them, according to his capacity, in the perfection of felicity. No one can love a human friend with loyalty if he knows that in the future he will be his enemy" (City of God, Book XII, Chapter 21).

The last couple of weeks, I've been discussing happiness as it relates to the good, and the good as it relates to love. This week, I would like to discuss love is it relates to God. So far, I've given a basic definition for happiness—namely that our lives are only truly happy if we spend them in pursuit of the Good, meaning that we pursue our greatest goods first and our other lesser goods only when these do not hinder our pursuit of the greater goods. Moreover, to love somebody means to desire that person's greatest happiness, which in turn means desiring that that person pursue and acquire or attain his highest goods. As for these goods, the highest goods of man are to know (or understand) and to love, but the greatest, perfect, and supreme Good is God. In other words, man should aspire to final union with God, even though this is achieved only after this life; but he should also attempt to love others, and to pursue not only knowledge about God, but also the so-called "secular" knowledge (e.g. Natural philosophy, science, etc).

Saint Anselm, in formulating his famous ontological argument, noted that God is defined as "that than which greater cannot be thought" ("GCNBT"). As I mentioned in the first part of this series,

In other words, this is what (or Who) God is, by definition (and regardless of whether or not St Anselm's proof itself holds), and it can be nicely combined with Divine Simplicity (the two seem to be naturally intertwined in the thought of St Augustine, for example), which is a tenet of Classical Theism and of the Catholic Faith. In other words, when a faithful Catholic refers to God, he is referring to GCNBT, whether or not St Anselm's argument works. In other words, whether He exists or not, God is the greatest Good of which we can conceive.

It therefore follows that the greatest happiness of which we can think is to be with God or in Him. In other words, eternal life in heaven is the total fulfillment of the greatest happiness which we can conceive. There cannot, even in principle, be either a greater happiness than this nor a greater sorrow than to lose this eternal life. If atheism is true, then we are already in Hell, because there cannot, even in principle, be a greater sadness and sorrow than to lose or fail to obtain eternal life with God.

There is a corollary to this which I did not draw out before.

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

Some Hump Day Drollery

2011-11-02T07:03:00.000-07:00

This week's Friday quick takes are being dedicated to something else (you'll see on Friday), so here are a few sundry things which I would otherwise have put there.

--1--
What does an Australian call his friend from Prague? "Czech mate."

--2--
My wife and I made the Daily Texan comics today--as characters! My critiques: my wife's hair is more of a auburn-brown than blonde, and also I've gone as Leonardo (though not this year!), but never Michelangelo.

There is some back-story to this comic, which I shared with my two classes. My wife and I went over to her voice student's house for Halloween. He made us a very good dinner, and shared his scotch with me (that definitely counts as a treat), and we handed out candy to trick-or-treaters. Now, on the way over, we passed by a little girl who we saw from the back had what appeared to be butterfly wings on. My wife made one of those "Oh, how cute!!!" comments, and on we drove. A few hours later, the same little girl made it to our friend's house and my wife made another "Oh, how sweet!!!" comment as we opened the door. She then held the bowl of candy down for the girl, who grabbed several candy-bars and m-and-m packages out of it. Her dad, who was right behind her, said, "Tell them what you are, honey."
"I'm a stwawberwy fairwy."
Good thing my wife didn't actually say what she had been thinking: "What an adorable butterfly!"

Bonus: the little girl then counted out the candies that she had taken for Becca on her fingers.

--3--
There is anther trick-or-treater story worth sharing. The doorbell rang, and my wife got up to answer it. She slowly crossed the room to the door while motioning for me to get the candy for her. She opened the door and there were two very sheepish-looking middle school girls on the threshold. One was looking just to the left of the doorbell and apparently reading something, while the other was standing back awkwardly. "Yes?" my wife asked.
"Um, what does 'no soliciting' mean?" the girl in front replied.
"It means no door-to-door salespeople, don't come here to try and sell anything."
"Oh. Um, trick or treat?" she said, while still looking quite sheepish.

--4--
Speaking of role reversals, here is my thought of bad cooking (which in my family is really only inflicted by me):
There are lots of starving people in the world--who would turn down this meal.

--5--
I did end up making it to the JPII Life Center benefit banquet. Oddly enough, I ended up sitting next to the mother and father of some of Becca's music students. They in turn recognized not only Becca as the music teacher, but also me as the guy who gave that talk about physics at Saint Dominic Savio's, where their oldest daughter is enrolled. We had a pleasant conversation before dinner, which was largely about being a lay Dominican. Afterwards, Becca and I were stopped by a second set of her students' parents. These actually had a background in engineering (the mother, in Mechanical, the father in Biomedical); our conversation was a bit more about physics research.

And to cap of the night, I caught Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler, who was with a friend. Oddly enough, the conversation with turned a bit towards...being a Dominican and a physicist. I was laughing a little about the role reversal involved in her introduction of me to her friend as "I read his blog."

Nicene Guys: The RCIA Question Box on Welcoming Unrepentant Sinners into the Church

2011-11-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

Would a practicing homosexual be welcomed into the Church? Would a practicing thief be welcomed into the Church? Would a practicing idolator be welcomed into the Church?

I'd first like to re-phrase the question to get to the gist of it, then return to these three specifics. "Would a practicing and unrepentant sinner be welcomed into the Church?"

There are several ways in which we can welcome a person. We can, for example, invite him to come attend Mass with us or invite him to an outing (say, a Church picnic). One need not be a Catholic to do either of these things, nor really to recognize them as forms of being made welcome.

There is another form of welcome, which is "would this person who is unrepentant of his grave sins be welcome to receive the sacraments?" The answer to this questions is "no, he would not." As pertaining to the sacraments in general, this is because the Church tries to respect where a person is on his faith journey, whether he himself does or not.

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

Seven Quick Takes (V14)

2011-10-28T10:02:00.000-07:00

--1--

Last Saturday, my wife and I went on a little date: The Great Waltz! There was a photographer on the dance floor, so hopefully I'll be able to find some "action" photos, but for now, there's this:

A quick dip

And here's a more fun and goof picture:

Mask, meet monocle.

And of course, we did do some actual dancing, too, though I don't have any pictures of that yet. The live orchestra (Austin Symphonic Orchestra) was great, too--although they tended to be a bit heavy on the Vienese waltz and the polka to the exclusion of silver waltz, foxtrot, etc.

--2--

Earlier this week, I shared some student art work from my take-home quiz. I don't have any other artwork to share, but I can state that my students are clearly confused: the problem involved a pirate corvette and the hero's space frigate. I got lots of pictures of hot-rods. Just to clarify, this is what a corvette is based on:

Clockwise from top left: USS Freedom, German corvette Magdeburg, 19th Century French corvette Dupleix, and WWII-era Flower-Class corvette USS Intensity

I could probably make this a 7 pictures of Corvettes post, but I'll stop here, because otherwise, next week I'd have to do Battleships.

--3--

Speaking of students, yesterday I had a little back-and forth with one of my more troublesome students. I posted a rough version on facebook, but I'll re-post here for your amusement:

Me: We will be wrapping up this lab today. Next time, we will start something new.
Student: What if we don't finish this time? I wasn't here last time, so I'm a bit behind.
Me: Well, the room will be open on Friday from 9-4, and it will be staffed by learning assistants during that time.
Student: But I have class during all of that time.
Me: Well, our room is mostly occupied during the week, but you can try to come in when there isn't class. You can try to come in at 9 PM and see if either of the rooms are empty.
Student: I can't do that. I work at night.
Me: Well, I suppose you could try to come in at some other time and check out the equipment.
Student: No, I'm too busy.
Me: I have no additional solutions to offer you.
Student: That's not fair! How am I supposed to finish this on time?
Answer I wish I'd given: You can start by sitting down, shutting up, and getting to work instead of wasting my time, not to mention the time of everybody else in your group, and for that matter of the whole class since other groups are waiting with questions for me.

What I actually did say was something along the lines of, "you won't fail this class based on one bad lab and one more missed day."

--4--

This week was my laser week: which means that I didn't do much during the week besides working in the lab. Now the week is about over, and I get to ~~relax at home after a long week at~~ work on a take-home midterm. Luckily, the homework are getting lighter. But I suspect that there are at least two more years left before I finish.

--5--

Just for fun, here is some spectral data I took yesterday:

My project is slowly transitioning from Phase I (build a two-color terawatt laser system) to phase II (use said laser system to do laser-plasma experiments). Among other things, this means that some of my lab-mates are wanting to use the system which I built. Turns out that there are some uses of CPA Raman Laser systems besides just my own experiments. Well, and whatever the heck the Canadian military is planning to use their version of this laser system for,

--6--

This has been making facebook rounds:

I'd say that's got to count as reason #192087783749820 to homeschool.

--7--

My wife and I bought tickets for the JPII Life Center benefit dinner. The problem is, it's on All Saint's Day--and I'm not sure if I can swing going to the 5:30 Mass at the Cathedral before hand or not. She's also having second thoughts, because she really wanted to participate in the Choir at St Louis' Mass that night. Talk about bad planning. More than likely, she'll skip choir that night (they are, after all, also singing for Mass the next day), and everything will work out fine.

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Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Nicene Guys: Good, Happiness, and Love

2011-10-27T08:47:00.000-07:00

"For surely anyone's love will grow feebler and cooler towards one whom, as he supposes, he will have to leave, whose truth and wisdom he will have to reject, and that after he has come to the full knowledge of them, according to his capacity, in the perfection of felicity. No one can love a human friend with loyalty if he knows that in the future he will be his enemy" (City of God, Book XII, Chapter 21).

Last week, I discussed this passage from Saint Augustine's City of God in the context of happiness and God as the total, supreme, and perfect good--the Ultimate Good. Today I want to explore a little more about what this means with regard to love.

What does it mean to love? This needs to be answered before much else can be discussed. There are a great many opinions about what it means to love, and most of them are wrong. This should not be surprising, since these mistaken opinions are I believe related to the various mistaken opinions about what constitutes happiness and what constitutes good. The three things--the good, happiness, and love--are, after all, related to each other.

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

More Student Art!

2011-10-25T14:39:00.000-07:00

Since I didn't field any new questions for RCIA this week, as I have for the past two Tuesdays, I think that today is a good day for student art:

Some comments. First: yes, this brings a reasonable amount of joy to my life when I get these little sketches. On the other hand, I would be happier still (yes, even in an Aristotelian sense) if they got the answer right. She alas did not, though the first few steps all were.

Now for some specific comments to the artwork. Note the Saturn/Uranus-like planet in the background, but the distinct lack of a nebula. Hmmm. Also, I'm not sure that I'd wear a bow-tie on the outside of my space suit. I also wonder at the development of technology which would lead to a rigid-looking space-suit, by faster-than-light travel and the ability to shoot flames from the feet with no apparent storage place for the rocket-fuel. Perhaps this is the reason for the armored-looking suit top?

Now, on to the smaller diagram of the pirate corvette. Note that the pirate is wearing a 17th-century pirate hat, as if he is fresh from the Caribbean. Nice touch. I also appreciate that the missile is launched from a cannon (a pirate ship's gotta have a cannon, right?). I do have to wonder at the ship's wheels: apparently, it's meant for space and land, but the shape does not make it look worthy of atmospheric flight. It appears to be a hot-rod (corvette?) which has undergone the "hover" conversion from 2015 in Back to the Future, but now with rockets for space travel (and hopefully sans the flux-capacitor).

Personally, I had something more like this in mind:

There's even a nebula in the background! Of course, that might be a stretch for anyone who's never experienced the fun that is "Freespace" (which would probably include everyone who did not grow up in the 90's). Perhaps this is a more realistic "space corvette":

Sorry, wrong model for this generation:

On the other hand, the Tantive IV doesn't carry missiles as a part of her armament. So I guess we're back to Descent: Freespace II:

Yikes! Better hope you have some counter-measures aboard.

Virtuous Planet: Miracles and Nature

2011-10-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

“A small error at the outset can lead to great errors in the final conclusion” (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Being and Essence, quoting Aristotle).

There has been a popular trend among theologians who are looking for a more scientific bend to their theology to turn to quantum mechanics as a sort of silver-bullet explanation for miracles. The explanation for this basically goes that because there is some imprecision in measuring a pair of conjugate variables (position and momentum, energy and time, number and phase)–the two cannot both be measured exactly–therefore causality itself is overthrown. This is, however, a fallacious bit of reasoning–one which began with Werner Heisenberg himself–which hinges on the equivocation of “exact.”

This equivocation is explained by Fr Stanley Jaki in his Miracles and Physics (among other places):

“It was largely overlooked that Heisenberg’s principle states only the inevitable imprecision of measurements at the atomic level. From that principle one can proceed only by an elementary disregard of logic to the inference that an interaction that cannot be measured exactly, cannot take place exactly. The fallacy of that inference consists in the two different meanings given in it to the word exactly. In the first case it has a purely operational meaning, whereas in the second case the meaning is decidedly ontological. The inference therefore belongs in the class of plain non sequiturs that, as a rule, are severely structured in better-grade courses on introductory logic.”

There is thus an equivocation between the operational and the ontological meanings of “exact,” and this this confusion resulted in the discarding of causality by a great many physicists, beginning with Professor Heisenberg himself.

Read the rest on the ~~Virtuous Pla.net~~ Ignitum Today site.

Seven Quick Takes (v 13): Education

2011-10-21T11:48:00.000-07:00

--1--

One of my obligations as an assistant instructor is to attend a weekly meeting (this week, it's been cancelled!) with the other assistant instructors and our professorial supervisor. These meeting vary quite wildly in content--some are logistical, others involve guest speakers who give us their insights on teaching. A major theme of these meeting sis the method which our supervisor would prefer that we use in teaching, which might be best described as "guided discovery learning." My comment on this score is that while GDL has some upsides--and while I don't have any particular qualms with using it as a teaching method--it also has some down-sides, and is not the end-all, be all. It is, however, quite useful, and especially rewarding for me to see the "ah-ha!" moment that my students have when they not only get a concept, but actually "discover" the concept for themselves.

--2--

I suspect that some of my students have fantasies about this.

An undertone of this theme which my supervisor mentions on occasion is that we are supposed to be approaching the teaching side of physics (though not necessarily the actual physics-side of physics) with a mixture of Aristotelian and Socratic attitude. I haven't asked whether the "Socratic" approach is supposed to be faithful to Socrates as Portrayed by Plato or Xenophon and Aristophanes et. al., or just simply the popular conception of a guy who only asks leading questions and never answers them (in exactly the way that Socrates doesn't). I've taken a middle-ground approach of using the leading questions with occasional stated hints, and then the occasional brief lecture/discussion. Some things--like, say, definitions--are inherently dogmatic and conclusive, so Chesterton is (as he so often is) correct when he says that good teaching is inevitably at least a little bit dogmatic.

--3--

Speaking of Aristotle as he applies to education, I was enjoying a bit of an interior dialogue (or monologue?) concerning what it means to be a happy student. I have, of course, written a bit about happiness, especially over on the Nicene Guys site. Happiness means the fulfillment or attainment of the good. In particular, it means achieving the end for which a thing is made, and fulfilling it well. This means that a student should be happy (as a student) first and foremost if he attains the end of education, and attains it well. What is the end of education? I think that's a question which is a bit too tangled for a quick-take, though I will say that it's not (just) knowledge. Perhaps a good short answer is that education is for the betterment of a person--which can mean that he becomes smarter, but also wiser, or more moral or virtuous or holy or saintly. I sincerely hope that my class help move students to that end.

--4--

In the class which I specifically teach, the end of the class is that student should be better at a) thinking and b) problem solving, and that they should view the natural world as a "knowable place." Thus, ostensibly the goal is not for them to leave knowing Newton's Laws (for example)--though this would be a secondary good (or end) which ought to be pursued since it does not interfere with any of the principle ends of the class--but rather to be able to conduct and interpret a simple experiment which could demonstrate Newton's Laws. Unfortunately, they just want to be told Newton's Laws, and then to move on. Dare I suggest that their way won't make them any happier as students, nor will it leave them more well-off?

--5--

I bring that last point up, because i handed out an 8-question midsemester evaluation which asked them what I should start, stop, and keep doing, what the like and dislike about the course, and also what they need to improve about themselves to get more out of the course. I was overwhelmingly told that they just wanted me to give them the formulas and answers for the course, and stop making them come up with solutions on their own (with, of course, some subtle hints and leading questions). They also complained a great deal about my not giving them enough information to arrive at their own conclusions. "Explain more" was the often if vague comment [1]. Most of these complaints boil down to "I hate thinking." This is a college course, is it not? I also notice how few foreign students enroll in this filled-to-capacity course and worry about our country's future.

[1] The most common self-assessment for what they needed to do to improve about themselves to get more out of the course was "I need to pay more attention." The second-most-frequent was "I need to go to office hours/tutoring."

--6--

The Quadrivium--and the Trivium--would be a nice basis

Switching gears but remaining on the "education" front, I would like to dare to suggest again that a great many people who enroll in college now would enjoy trade school much more. This is a better option for most of them, including a great many very smart and skilled people. I would certainly eliminate entirely a few majors from most universities, and others really do belong in trade school: this includes (among others) accounting, perhaps nursing, and quite possibly even engineering (which is currently one of the toughest majors available and which attracts many of the smartest students). Once upon a time, an education prepared you to be a well-rounded person capable of thinking and problem-solving which drew from a very broad base of knowledge in many different fields; it also aimed at inculcating virtue. Now, it is commonly little more than job training in a limited field (mileage may vary). Some of those limited fields may go away within our life-times; the need for men who can think will not.

--7--

Homework in chalk

On one last note, our neighbor and her daughter seem to have hit on a way to making spelling lessons a bit more fun. A picture is worth a thousand words here. The only problem is that it's right at the landing of the stairs to our apartment, and most people have a tendency of wanting to not step on it. Who says kids can't ever have fun doing their homework, and yet still go through the regular motions required to learn the material. Also, note that spelling is another of those subjects which is ultimately very dogmatic. Perhaps this is why it is being abandoned in our age of post-enlightenment.

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Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Nicene Guys: Good, God, and Happiness

2011-10-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

"For surely anyone's love will grow feebler and cooler towards one whom, as he supposes, he will have to leave, whose truth and wisdom he will have to reject, and that after he has come to the full knowledge of them, according to his capacity, in the perfection of felicity. No one can love a human friend with loyalty if he knows that in the future he will be his enemy" (City of God, Book XII, Chapter 21).

I found quite a bit of meaning in this short passage, but I wanted to focus on one thing in particular which I can use as a springboard for discussion. At some earlier point in the City of God, St Augustine mentions that true happiness must be lasting, or else it will be spoiled by the fear of its loss. Happiness—that is, true happiness—must be final and not cyclic. Aristotle was right here, and Plato wrong. In this life, we can only strive for happiness, but we can't obtain it finally during this life.

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

TMM: Turning the Other Cheek

2011-10-19T15:20:00.000-07:00

"But I say to you not to resist evil: but if one strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other: And if a man will contend with thee in judgment, and take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him.And whosoever will force thee one mile, go with him other two, Give to him that asketh of thee and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away. You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust....Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:39-45, 48).

Broadly speaking, I've encountered two schools of thought in modern exegesis on the first part of this passage. The former would reduce Christians to pushovers; the latter supposes that the "other cheek" is not on your face, and notes that the second mile could be made very miserable for the poor soul who dragged you the first mile. Color me skeptical concerning both camps, though this does tend to leave us with a question: what does it mean to "turn the other cheek?"

I sometimes wonder how much is lost in cultural translation. What meaning did this have then, and what would be it equivalent now? I once heard a homily in daily Mass on this passage which was most interesting to me o this regard. For some reason, those five minute daily-Mass homilies often manage to convey more meaning than the twenty-five minute versions we get on Sundays. What Fr Ed said in that homily has stuck, at least in part.

There were certain cultural prohibitions in place at the time which we don't have (or don't recognize) now. One was that there was but one dignified way in which to strike a person: in a sideways motion with the palm of the right hand. This makes striking the left cheek easy, but the right cheek is rather more difficult to get a good swipe at in this fashion. Similarly, a man without coat and cloak would be left with a loincloth--practically naked--which would be rather awkward and embarrassing for the other person.

This means that these verses might be interpreted as encouraging a sort of passive resistance. We're being told to stand our ground, in other words, wile at the same time not ending the other person. I suppose that more sense is made of this by St Augustine's observation that their are many children of the Church who are not yet revealed to us, meaning that we never know when a conversion might take place.

I also wonder whether these words were all spoken as "evenly" and without intonation as they become after being written down--without emphasis one way or the other. I wonder at times where the stresses fell when Jesus Himself spoke these words, and I suspect that perhaps it falls on the last verse, not the first. That is to say, we are being told to be perfect, and to love perfectly, above all else (see Matthew 22:37-40).

But this too should be put in context. I've mentioned before (almost fixedly) that loving another person means desiring that that person obtains what is good for him, which ultimately means turning to God. A part of this process is turning away from sin. This means that if we love a sinner, we must warn him against his sin, perhaps by admonishment and perhaps by simple instruction. This means avoiding the two extremes of ignoring (or worse, legitimizing) a sin as if it did not exist and despising the other person as if he were identical with his sin. Instead, we must stand our ground and offer fraternal correction.

Of course, standing our ground means that we should be prepared to take the occasional beating. Sometimes we turn the other cheek only to find that the other fellow doesn't want to play by those rules. At that point, it seems to me that we will be out of cheeks to turn. We can't all be Saint Lawrence, after all, can we? Nor does perfection require that of us.

Nicene Guys: The RCIA Question Box on the Saints

2011-10-18T07:51:00.000-07:00

This week's question-box question is a two-fer: What is a patron saint? What is a saint? Who is your favorite? and also I've noticed that when Matt [the other Catechist] invokes the saints during the litany of saints, he often invokes 'Saint Michael the Archangel.' How can an angel be a saint?

A saint is basically anybody who lives happily for eternity with God in heaven. The Baltimore Catechism # 1 (and 2) question 6 asks, "Why did God make you?" It answers by saying that "God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next." Thus, it is proper to say that our purpose in life is to become saints, and that the purpose of the Church is to help us to do this.

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys Site

VP: The False Dichotomy of Religion or Relationships (Part 2)

2011-10-17T09:04:00.000-07:00

I concluded my last post by noting that there is a right way to engage in spiritualism, and a right way to develop a “personal relationship with God. “There is a right way to have even a personal relationship with Christ. And since there can be no meaningful spiritualism without actual spirits, there must be a right way to engage in spiritualism.” The implication of this is that there is also at least one wrong way to do this, which leaves us with a dilemma: how can i be sure that I am “doing spirituality” or forming my relationship the “right” way?

Enter religion, complete with all the rituals and doctrines and morals and dogma. Suddenly all of these things look a little less like a hindrance to even the “personal” side of religion, both the relationships and the spirituality. Morality ceases to be just a matter of “do this, don’t do that,” and starts to fulfill its purpose of rightly ordering us to God, to our neighbors, and even to ourselves. Rituals now gain meaning as well, both as things which draw us together as a community and as things which draw that community closer to God. Indeed, I can think of few things which draw a community together more joyfully than the two rituals which are celebrated universally by Christians of all denominations, sects, or Churches: baptisms and weddings. As sacraments, these draw us also closer to God.

Read the rest on the ~~Virtuous Pla.net~~ Ignitum Today site.

Seven Quick Takes (v 12): Short, Unusual, Cogent, Klassy?

2011-10-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

--1--

Short would be my patience after I exhausted it on my class yesterday. We had a practical midterm which was meant to take about an hour for the practical part, and another for the short answer questions. We spent two hours just doing the practical. After about an hour of barely containing my frustration at their lack of ability to follow simple instructions (and why, exactly, should I be giving instructions of how to do an experiment ON A TEST!!!), a little red countdown timer appeared in my mind. It read: 6 hours and counting until I can go home and drink. 5:59:59 and counting...Heck, I even had some (ok, a lot of) left-over Brandy from last week. A couple of hours spent with the guys last night worked wonders for me. A beer and brandy and pipes and, the random Chester-Belloc poetry-reading: all in the enjoyment of the company of some good friends. It's the little things in life...

--2--

Unusually-large (though still quite precious) is how I would describe my new nephew. Rebecca's brother and his wife had their baby earlier this week: 10 pounds, 1 oz, 22 inches long. Congrats to them on the mostly-successful delivery, and a healthy if large baby boy. Mom was understandably very tired by the time we got to visit, though they've been discharged from the hospital now. With any luck, we'll get to see them again this weekend. The only down-side to this is that it means that we'll likely be missing out on the rosary rally at the capitol. What can I say, plans change. :)

--3--

Cogent is how I would normally describe my explanations to other people. Opinions may vary on this, of course. Unfortunately, "cogent" is not always what people are looking for. Two cases in point: RCIA and my students when taking an exam. The former want simple, "baby-steps." Fair enough, I could probably use some work in this category. No more "physics" explanations in my Catechesis. No problem. I have a bit more of a problem with my students effective request, which amounts to "no more physics in physics class."

--4--

Klassy is how I would describe the dress-code around the drag heading toward down-town Austin on Thursday and Friday nights (I don't even want to know what it looks like in the actual downtown area). I'm less-than-thrilled that this sometimes spills over into the classes I teach. What ever happened to modesty? or self-respect?

--5--

And now on to other things.The Gregorian blog published a list of the Ten Greatest American Catholic Thinkers. They intend to publish future lists for Bishops and for novelists (hence, no Flannery O'Conner, no Bishop Chaput, no James Cardinal Gibbon). This list is just the group most frequently nominated by "top Catholic commentators, editors and scholars to ask: 'Who were America's greatest Catholic intellectuals?'" Fair enough, but I notice some conspicuous absences: Fr Stanley L Jaki (among greatest philosophers of science), for one, and Dietrich von Hildebrand (whose thought has been influential for both popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II) for another. Perhaps they were disqualified for being immigrants? I would also probably nominate Russell Kirk and Alice Von Hildebrand (Dietrich Von Hildebrand's wife) for the list.

--6--

Going back to RCIA, I noticed a pair of posts by Ms Emily Stimpson of Our Sunday Visitor which might be interesting for my fellow-Catechists. The first is a short list of 19 words which every Catholic should know. I would have added a twentieth word--dogma--and distinguished it from doctrine (which is one the list), though I also see that one commenter has already done this nicely. I think this counts as a "baby-step", right? The other is a set of 10 things every Catechist should know. Give them a read, especially if you are a Catechist, though both are useful for even the ordinary Joe Catholic.

--7--

Eventually I may actually change the title of this blog. It's been the immemorable "Equus Nom Veritas" since I started it back in 2005, and I've been playing with changing it. On the one hand, same title for so long, why make a change? On the other hand, the title is actually misspelled, and most people don't get the humor in the meaning anyway. I've thought about changing it to "Contemplata Traderi" (or alternatively "Contemplated Preaching") on the one hand, or "The Other JC" on the other. And the other dilemma is that I don't want to change the blog url. Decisions, decisions.

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Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

VP: The False Dichotomy of Religion or Relationships

2011-10-13T14:33:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, my fabulous co-blogger Ms Fabiola Garza published a post about the necessity of religion (as opposed to simply spirituality). To be a good Christian implies being religious. Take a moment to go read her post, if you haven’t already. Her post piqued my interest, because this is related to a topic which I come back to on occasion: the supposed dichotomy between religion, on the one hand, and having a “personal relationship” with Christ on the other.

I have a great many Protestant (especially, evangelical) friends, as I once moved as much or more in Protestant circles as in Catholic ones. I have therefore encountered this attitude fairly frequently within my own circle of friends (though I also know more than a few who also reject it). It is trendy today–especially amongst Evangelical Protestants, but also among Catholics who take their cues from Protestants and/or the rest of the surrounding culture–to insist that a relationship with God must be individual only, a personal thing into which no one else may enter. Religion—with all the rituals, the doctrines, the morality, and (*gasp*) the dogmas—is seen as a hindrance to this kind of relationship.

Read the rest on the Virtuous Pla.net site.

Nicene Guys: Happiness and the Highest Goods of Man

2011-10-11T09:47:00.000-07:00

Note: This post is meant as a sort of "bridge" piece which ties together a few loose ends from other previous posts. Thus, it is in part a review of previous posts both here and on y other sites.

In his book Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law, Professor J Budziszewski discusses happiness as understood by Aristotle and his disciples, and also by other philosophers. He begins by suggesting a few "wrong" answers, each of which has been held out as "true" happiness by one school of thought or another. Thus, happiness is not pleasure, it is not honor, it is not the acquisition of bodily or material goods (that is, health and wealth), nor is it even excellence of mind, body, or moral character (e.g. Knowledge [1], strength, or virtue). That is not to say that a happy person must eschew all of these things, but only that none of them lead to ultimate happiness. Rather, ultimate happiness is tied to the ultimate Good.

"We have been asking in what the good of the human soul lies; maybe we should make better progress by first asking in what we think the good of anything lies—the good of a racehorse, the good of a knife, the good of an eye or what have you. The good of a racehorse lies in racing, the good of a knife lies in cutting and the good of an eye lies in seeing; that’s easy. But do you see what we’ve done here? In each case we have defined the good of a thing as an activity; not as any old activity but as its proper work or function....the function of a human soul will be whatever a human soul can do that nothing else can do, or at least that nothing else can do as well...Christianity points out that the human soul seems designed for at least two things, not one—at least two activities are unique to it and belong to its proper work. One is to understand, the other is to love; the former employs the reason, the latter employs the will. Both are directed to God and neighbor. To the extent that love and understanding are connected, any defect in one implies a defect in the other, and any defect in the comprehension of one also implies a defect in the comprehension of the other."

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

VP: The Hollow Worlds of Scientism and Cynicism

2011-10-10T09:17:00.000-07:00

It is frightening to think of the extent to which people are now being encouraged to banish from the minds of their children great questions as devoid of all meaning; to dispel the wonder that is a young mind’s birthright; to confine their spirit to petty problems that can be answered once and for all to the satisfaction of reasoners incapable of raising a question to begin with. We now have a philosophy to show that there are no problems but those which it has shown to be no problem; and to decree that there is no philosophy other than one that is a denial of philosophy. Under the twinkle of a fading star, Hollow Men rejoice at a hollow world of their own making.

So warned Dr Charles de Koninck in his “The Hollow Universe.” And indeed, it is alarming to see how widespread is this general philosophy against philosophies. On the one hand we have the cynics who claim that there is no such thing as truth, goodness, or beauty, and that besides this the traditional approaches to these things are especially wrong. On the other hand, we have the scientistic insistence on the absolute truth of empirical and observational science–especially the former–to the exclusion of any other knowable truths.

The cynical nihilist need not ally himself with the scientisically inclined one. There is, after all, a sense in which the two are opposites. The cynic finds himself opposed to all wonder, since for him there is no Truth to seek, no Beauty to contemplate, and no Goodness to strive for or attain to. For him the world of science is as meaningless as the world of art, or of philosophy; though none is so appalling as theology. He never permits himself to pause and ask how the traditional approach to Truth can be especially wrong if there isn’t such a thing as especially right, nor how traditional morality can be exceptionally bad if there is no such thing as an absolute good, nor how it is possible that there can be a worse ugliness in traditional art if there is no ultimate beauty.

Read the rest on the ~~Virtuous Pla.net~~ Ignitum Today site.

Seven Quick Takes (v 11): Happy Lepanto Day

2011-10-07T09:40:00.000-07:00

--1--

First and foremost: happy Lepanto Day! Chesterton's poem is much too long for a "quick" take, but it is worth reading in celebration:

WHITE founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

--2--

We should also take a moment to remember both the brave souls who dies defending Christendom from the threat of the Muhammedans. Had We lost at Lepanto (or at Tours, or Vienna), the west would be under the heel of the Muhammedan aggressors. It's also worth taking a moment to remember all those who have died n modern times to keep us safe and free of tyranny. At least as important is remembering those whose intercede on our behalf. Most important of all is thanking God for the victory which helped to preserve our freedom, and which prevented the whole of Europe from falling to the Turkish Marauders. Mater Dei, ora pro nobis; et Deo gratias. Non nobis Domini, sed nomini tuo da gloriam. Amen.

--3--

My wife, being the happy Catholic homemaker aspirant that she is, is constantly trying to come up with new way to celebrate various feast days. She's looking for ways to improve (and in many cases, to begin) some little traditions to celebrate through the year: themed foods, especially. I found a themed food for today:

More accurately, my wife's voice/piano student who is a connoisseur of sorts and an occasioner of Speck's found this, and I tried some and like it. Then I went and got some for myself, to have a sip tonight in celebration. It's especially fitting, since I wouldn't be able to enjoy this if the Holy League had lost the battle, Muslims' being teetotalers and all.

--4--

Both of the images I got from the Mary Victrix website. They also have a rather fitting anthem, "The Anthem of Lepanto." Here's the first verse of it:
I cast myself before Thee, Thy bondsman and Thy fool;
Thy patronage is freedom, Thy slavery my school.
I offer Thee my sword hilt and wait for Thy command
To serve among Thy servants who pledge to take a stand.
That I might die in battle, a victim of Thy love:
My wish, my prayer, my promise, thus written in my blood.

There appear to be two more verses, at least, plus an explanation of the tune it was meant to be sung to. "Check thou it out," as Mr Mark Shea would say.

--5--

In other news, now that homework assignments have been due, I have a little bit of student artwork to show for the semester. Actually, I have a few art majors this semester. One of them just draws me, both in class and on assignments. Unfortunately, my favorite was something she scribble while I was lecturing: a cartoon of me saying "Anybody, anybody? Bueller? Somebody just give me an answer. Any answer...I hate you all." I never actually said all of that, other than that I do frequently ask questions which receive blank stares and then "Could you repeat the question? I wasn't paying attention." Such is life.

This would be what inspires me to write intricate story-problems for homework, quizzes, and/or tests. I may need to dust of the one which was inspired by "The Hunt for Red October" just for the epic artwork. On the other hand, I'm not sure they necessarily need encouragement in that category (regular readers will recall this selection of sketches from a few semesters ago).

--6--

Speaking of daydreams. An email announcement was sent my way by the university: "The US Air Force will be flying over campus on Friday, October 7 at 1:50 and 3:00 pm. They will be in small jets, (T-1s)." Sadly, these are just the training jets, not the cool jetfighters. Still, it may be worth taking a break to see what I see.

--7--

We've instituted a new anonymous question box at RCIA, and I will be the one fielding most of the questions (a few are directed at specific people). Basically, they get to ask us questions anonymously, at the end of each session, and then I write up a short answer to give in-session the next time, and a longer one to be sent out by email, which I try to keep under about a page or so. The first question was "Doesn't all this dogma and doctrine that the Church teaches get in the way of a "personal relationship" with God? " My longer answer can be found on the Nicene Guys site.

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Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Nicene Guys: Some Revelations of God the Father to Us

2011-10-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

Note: This is part five of a series of five posts about God. These were originally written as an RCIA presentation about God the Father. These posts are in an expanded form, and the presentation as given does not necessarily follow the posts exactly. I was constrained in the presentation itself to keep the time to under about 45 minutes or so, and to be somewhat conversational (sine it was their first formal session). Here is the full written transcript, which goes beyond what I did in the presentation. Here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

I want to conclude with a few instances of God’s revelation to us in the Scriptures. The definitive and complete revelation of God to us comes in the Person of the Son, of Jesus Christ—but that is the subject for another talk and another day. I want instead to look briefly at some passages in Scripture in which God reveals Himself to us.
The first pair of passages are from Exodus, in the Old Testament. In Exodus 3:13-15, God reveals His name to Moses:

Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO AM.” And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I Am has sent me to you.’ …this is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

VP: Faith and Knowledge

2011-10-03T14:13:00.000-07:00

Is faith a type of knowledge? This question gets asked often in modern time, and has quite probably been asked time and again since time immemorial. There is a variation of this question which was asked (and fielded) by Monsignor Charles Pope over the weekend, concerning whether theology counts as a “science.”

On his “popular” television show The Great Ideas (the transcript of which is published in a book “How to Think About the Great Ideas“), the Philosopher Mortimer J Adler discussed the ideas of Truth, Knowledge, and Opinion. At some point during the discussion of Opinion and Knowledge, his co-host, Mr Lloyd Luckman, asks him whether faith ought to be counted as knowledge or as opinion. Professor Adler answers him by quoting Saint Thomas’ Aquinas’ The Treatise on Faith, Hope, and Charity:

Read the rest on the ~~Virtuous Pla.net~~ Ignitum Today site.

Nicene Guys: Faith and Doctrine, Relationship and Dogma

2011-09-28T09:52:00.000-07:00

Note: This is part four of a series of five posts about God. These were originally written as an RCIA presentation about God the Father. These posts are in an expanded form, and the presentation as given does not necessarily follow the posts exactly. I was constrained in the presentation itself to keep the time to under about 45 minutes or so, and to be somewhat conversational (sine it was their first formal session). Here is the full written transcript, which goes beyond what I did in the presentation. Here are Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

"There are two kinds of people in the world, the conscious dogmatists and the unconscious dogmatists. I have always found myself that the unconscious dogmatists were by far the most dogmatic." (G.K. Chesterton)

After hearing that faith is ultimately about a relationship, it is tempting to turn to a common objection concerning doctrines and dogma. Don’t all the ritualism and morality, the doctrines and especially the dogmas of the Church ultimately get in the way of a genuine “personal relationship” with God?

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys Site.

TMM: What Is Sin?

2011-09-27T15:58:00.000-07:00

"Does sin exist? Of course. It is what we do to really and truly harm our neighbor."

Here is one definition of sin which is given for sin. Whether the person making the definition is Jewish or liberal Christian or an agnostic's/atheist's "devil's advocate" matters little, since I have heard this definition from all three source, with some frequency. My critique is that it's incomplete, since it leaves out ourselves as the target of our own sins. If we must love our neighbors as ourselves (Luke 10:27), then we must first learn to love ourselves. But what does this second commandment of love mean? Or, alternatively, what does sin mean as "harm to neighbor or self" (a more complete if shorthand definition)?

Before answering this, allow me a quick excursion to consider another verb: to love. To love somebody does not mean to have good feelings towards them, or even to act consistently kindly towards them, though these two things may be consequences of loving a person. Rather, it means to really desire happiness for them, that it to desire for them that which is good. The greater the good or the greater the happiness, the greater should be the happiness. This also means desiring the greatest good with the greatest desire, and ordering all other goods subordinate to this greatest good.

Since I have already cited the second commandment of Christ, I might as well cite the first (Deuteronomy 6:5). We must love the LORD our God with all our heart, with all our mind and strength (Matthew 22:37). This means that God Is the greatest--the perfect and total--Good*. Thus, to love means first and foremost to desire God and heaven for the beloved. This means that the first commandment is to desire God and Heaven for myself, and the second is to desire it for my neighbor, and that moreover these must be my two greatest desires. That is, we should hope for happiness for ourselves and for our neighbors: that is, for eternal life in heaven with God. We can hope for nothing more, and we should hope for nothing less.

Now, back to the question of sin. What does it mean to harm somebody? To "harm" somebody--whether ourselves or our neighbors--means to deprive him of a good. But the greatest good of all is God, and to live with him forever in heaven is next (the two might arguably be combined into one good). Thus, depriving somebody of God is to deprive him of the greatest good. This in turn means that to deprive somebody of God is to do him the greatest harm. Thus, it is the greatest sin. This means that the definition for sin--"to harm our neighbors or ourselves"--contains within it the other definition of sin, that is "to turn away from God": and vice-versa. In other words, all sin harms the sinner because it causes him to turn away from God. Additionally, some sins may harm additional victims by likewise causing them to turn away from God. Sin may have additional deleterious effects, that is they may harm ourselves or our neighbors by depriving us or them from additional goods.

But the worst effect of sin is also the most common in that it is common to some extent to all sin: and that is a rejection of God, the highest, perfect, and total Good. We cannot sin without doing this; we cannot do this without sinning.

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* Another interpretation of the first and greatest commandment renders loving oneself as implicit in this first commandment.

Virtuous Planet: Copenhagen Universes

2011-09-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

There is a claim which runs essentially like this: “Quantum mechanics says that the universe can create itself from nothing.” I have previously addressed the implications of this claim from the perspective of the universe’s contingency–a universe which can come uncaused form nothing can also return uncaused to nothing, and hence any guarantee of its continued existence must come from an outside source. There is a somewhat popular appeal of the scientistic worldview to quantum mechanics as the source and cause of all existence. There are, of course, some problems with this reliance on quantum mechanics.

The first problem is that “Quantum mechanics” does not say that a universe can create itself from nothing, or really that any amount of matter or energy can create itself from nothing. Rather, the Copenhagen Interpretation (among others) of quantum mechanics attempts to say this, though even then there is a problem in translation.

Read the rest on the ~~Virtuous Pla.net~~ Ignitum Today site.

Seven Quick Takes (v 10): Adventures at a Career Fair

2011-09-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

--1--

This week, the University of Texas held a pair of career fair job expos, one on Monday for the College of Natural Sciences, one on Tuesday and Wednesday for the College of Engineering. I made a trip over to the Erwin center each day to check out the organizations which are hiring just to see what's "out there" (I don't think I'll graduate for at least another two years and maybe 3). The first thing I learned is that there are more organizations which are relevant to me at the engineering expo than at the science expo, even though I am studying physics and thus a natural science. Go figure. The second thing that I learned is that computer sciences are lumped with the natural sciences, and that roughly 75% of the booths were just looking for C.S. majors. Who knew that artificial intelligence was a natural science?

--2--

I did make a few good contacts while at the expo (really, at both expos), but I also discovered that none of them are really there necessarily to hire or even conduct interviews towards hiring. This didn't much matter to me since (as I said above) I am not currently looking for a job, but I'm still puzzling over the logic of sending someone a thousand miles to tell prospective hires to apply online.

--3--

And now for the other motivation for my having gone to this expo: all the cool free stuff they give away. I scored two of those nice metal water bottled, and then three more of the "collapsible" (and BPA free!) water bottles which you can roll up and put in your pocket when empty (thanks Schlumberger and Boeing), one of those little foldable book lights (the kind which comes as a special gift with a Snuggy, thanks FBI), several pretty nice pens (various companies)< several USB sticks, a combination tape-measure/level/sticky-note holder (thanks NSA), and interesting LED book light which has the coiling which can wrap around things...But I think the two best deserve their own stories.

--4--

The first is BHP-Billiton, an oil/natural gas/energy type company which wasn't at all looking for physicists.They are, however, based in Australia, so they were giving away little wooden boomerangs. Needless to say, upon getting back to campus i tested mine out, and it seems to work. I need to improve my skill in throwing it, but I did get it to start coming back to me.

--5--

The other company was Boeing. I mentioned above that they had the collapsible water-bottle, but that wasn't all. When I dropped by the booth to talk to them, I got a young lady who asked what I study, and after listening to my explanation essentially said, "Well, we do hire physicists. However, today THE Boeing (don't forget the "THE") is looking for computer sciences. You could check out our website though...." I thanked her for her time and she responded with "Oh, do you want a toy airplane and a water bottle instead?" I found this to be an entirely satisfactory outcome.

--6--

It wasn't all just fun and games, though, and I found that there are quite a few companies which are looking not only for physicists but specifically for high-power optics guys. This ranged from some of the national labs to John Hopkins' Applied Research Laboratory to Raytheon. The future is looking bright for me.

--7--

A complete aside for all of the men who read this blog. I wore a bow-tie every to the career expo--and a different one each day--and I really stood out in a crowd of tie-less or neck-tie wearing people. I know this, because I drew some more professional compliments from some of the men, often in passing. I also saw plenty of women at the booths pointing towards me, and could lip-read "bow-tie" and see smiles of appreciation. I even had one pair of ladies actually come from the booth and flag me down to talk to them, even though they were not recruiting physics guys. Since I am happily married and thus not in competition with any of you, there is no reason for me to horde this bit of information: gentlemen, the ladies dig the bow ties (and the jacket is not even necessary!).

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Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jenifer Fulwiler at Conversion Diary.

A Short Review of "The Mass in Scripture" (Lectio Divina Bible Study Series)

2011-09-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

With the new English translation of the Mass set to go "live" in the US in Advent, many dioceses and parishes have long since begun catechizing the Faithful concerning the the changes. Some dioceses have even taken a "break it to them easily" approach of implementing the new translations one or two parts at a time over the months leading up to advent.

There is something else which is every bit as important for us as Catholics as the actual words to say, which is the meaning behind those words. What is the reason not only for the changes in what we'll be saying--which is simply an improved translation of the same Latin text for the Mass--but also for the actual Latin text from which these translations are coming? Why, for example, does it matter whether we say "I believe" or "We believe" in the Creed? What is the origin of the Act of Penitence, or the Gloria, or the Acclamation (Sanctus)?

The Mass in Scripture leads us to the answers to these questions and more. "The Mass" is Mr Stephen J Binz's first installment in his four-part "Lectio Divina Bible Study," and it is a very helpful guide to both the Mass as a whole and the new English translation thereof. Binz walks the reader through the Mass in a series of thirty short lessons, each focusing on some part or aspect of the Mass. Lessons consist in five parts: Listening, Understanding, Reflecting, Praying, and Acting. Each lesson begins with "listening" to (or reading from) a passage or two (and occasionally three) of Scripture. This then forms the basis of the study.

The next step is understanding: Mr Binz explains the meaning of the passages as it applies to our Liturgy. Sometimes the meaning is obvious but the connection requires some explanation, other times the meaning is obscure even if the connection to the Mass is not; and sometimes both require a bit of explanation. Mr Binz does a good job here of keeping his explanations simple and easy to follow. One of my personal favorites among his explanations can be found in Lesson 8--"Marked with the Sign of the Cross in the Name of the Trinity." After reading Matthew 28:19-20, Romans 6:3-11, and Revelation 14:1-3, Mr Binz explains the significance of signing ourselves with the cross:

"In the ancient world, soldiers and slaves, as well as animals, were 'sealed' with the insignia of their owner. With this physical marking, often either a brand or a tattoo, the owner laid claim to them and protected them from danger or theft. At baptism and confirmation, Christians are anointed with the oil of chrism as the ordained minister marks the sign of the cross on their forehead. Imprinted with the sign and the seal of the holy Trinity, the believer is claimed as God's own and authenticated as a baptized disciple of Jesus Christ. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, addressing candidates for Christian initiation in the fourth century, invited them to 'come, receive the sacramental seal so that you may be easily recognized by the Master.' "

Is this not evocative of several more passages of Scripture, which warn us (for example) to be ever on guard against the thief (John 10:10, )? It can also be compared to the Baltimore Catechism, which tells us that "Confirmation is a Sacrament through which we receive the Holy Ghost to make us strong and perfect Christians and soldiers of Jesus Chris" (Q 166): we are soldiers for Jesus Christ, and are even now on the battlefield in a spiritual war.

After reading a brief exegesis to further undertanding, the reader is asked to pause and reflect on what he has read*[1]*. This reflecting helps to tie the reading part together with the praying part of this book, and the reader is asked a series of three short questions to help him think about what he has read and how it might apply to his life, in particular how it might apply to his participation in the Mass. I actually found this section to be a helpful transition into praying, because (ironically enough) the questions actually helped to quiet my mind in preparation for just spending time with God. In a sense, it fits nicely with the type of person who begins by thinking and ends by exhausting the intellect so that it can "rest" in the presence of God. And of course, this is exactly what the next step is in the lesson's sequence: praying.

Each lesson could be read through in a couple of minutes: but then the point of the lessons is not just in the reading. "The Mass" may be useful for Catechetical purposes, but it (as the "Lectio Divina" series title implies) it is also meant to be a book for prayer*[2]*. A short prayer is provided by Mr Binz in each section, which I often found myself repeating a few times to help me meditate (compare this to saying a Rosary, for example), and eventually the words themselves would fade into the background as I entered into meditation, and let my mind repose in the presence of God. After praying there is the final step of acting. Here Mr Binz provides a short piece of practical advice for how to apply the lesson to get more from--and to be a more active participant in--the Mass.

I unfortunately have not yet tested this book in a group setting--the 30 lessons are broken into 6 sections which are meant to be more conducive to group study--though I will happily recommend either this book or one of the other titles in the series to my local chapter of Dominican Laity for our own prayer and study in the future. I would give my hearty recommendation of this book to any Catholic who wants to gain a better understanding of the Mass or who is wanting to try the Lectio Divina form of prayer. Binz has composed a very good guide for both.

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[1] This actually helps to transition to the prayer, and in general helps to tie each lesson together. However, should probably be noted here that a side-effect of this is that a review which is written in the time frame which I used to write this review cannot really do justice to the book.

[2] I would therefore recommend having at least a half hour of quiet time for each lesson. I found that when I gave myself more time to spend in reflecting and praying, I got more out of the lessons in question. It's a book which is really meant to be prayed through over a month (30 lessons in 30 days) or even longer.

Nicene Guys: The Fatherhood of God

2011-09-21T09:33:00.001-07:00

Note: This is part two of a series of five posts about God. These were originally written as an RCIA presentation about God the Father. These posts are in an expanded form, and the presentation as given does not necessarily follow the posts exactly. I was constrained in the presentation itself to keep the time to under about 45 minutes or so, and to be somewhat conversational (sine it was their first formal session). Here is the full written transcript, which goes beyond what I did in the presentation. Here are Part 1 and Part 2.

We now know something about God, so it is worth asking something about ourselves. Why did God make us? Why did He create the world, and populate it with people, why did He create you? He did not create it because He needed something, since God is perfect and thus lacks nothing. If He did not make the world for His own sake, then He must have made it for some other reason: He created the world for its own sake, for our sake. He created it because of His love, and it was good (see Genesis 1:31).

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

Virtuous Planet: Scientism, Knowledge, and Truth

2011-09-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

Today I want to briefly introduce a heresy against which I have had to contend. I do not mean necessarily that I am myself tempted by it–as far as I am aware, I am not–but rather that I have encountered it fairly frequently, and even more frequently than has the average person, due to my own line of work. I am a physicist, that is a scientist, and thus much of my “social network” includes other scientists and especially other physicists. As with any other group of people, there is a heresy which is uniquely tailored to appeal to scientists, that is to appeal to the pride of the scientific community and especially to the pride of individual scientists. Our heresy is called “scientism,” and though it is not unique to scientists (professional or armchair), it is especially prevalent among scientists and (atheistic) philosophers of science. It has, however, also become prevalent in our culture at large since, as the late Fr Stanley Jaki was known to quip, nothing sells quite like the three S’s: Sex, Sports, and Science.

If you have never heard the term before, you may be asking yourself what is scientism? Scientism may fairly be summarized by four propositions.

Read the rest on the ~~Virtuous Pla.net~~ Ignitum Today site.

Seven Quick Takes (v 9): Haiku Edition

2011-09-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

Seven quick takes in five-seven-five form. Yes, that's right, it's the week in haiku. This is pretty much how my week went.

--Sunday--
Mass in the morning,
RCIA 'til afternoon,
Then Compline at nine.

--Monday--
The homework is posted
Refer to blackboard's website:
It's due on Friday.

--Tuesday--
Surprise visitors,
Both Japanese scientists:
I gave a lab tour.

--Wednesday--
Didn't work Tuesday,
Have to work harder today:
NO MORE VISITORS!!!

--Thursday--
My experiment works,
I say callooh and callay!
When can I publish?

--Friday--
Homework is now due
Office hours are crowded
Thank God it's Friday.

--Saturday--
The week is over,
I have one pressing question:
Bourbon, scotch, or beer?

TMM: What's Worse than a Strawman?

2011-09-15T08:27:00.000-07:00

Strawmen arguments are rightly derided as being counter-productive (at the least) in a dialogue or debate. I can, however, think of plenty of worse things. After all, a strawman might be created by sheer accident. It is possible for a person who is sincerely attempting to engage "the other side's" arguments to engage a strawman instead, by misinterpreting his opponent's position; this is especially true when the discussion is not "live" but rather is a discussion held through reading books and tracts and having to apply one's own interpretations to these. Parroting the other side's arguments is a lot easier than understanding them, especially if we can't actually talk in person with them and ask for clarifications.

This is not to excuse the strawman, since at best it is a waste of time to refute an argument that the other side does not make, with very few exceptions*[1]. I can say that I've had my own positions mistaken (and honestly) by others before, and that I have likewise made honest mistakes in interpreting theirs. These misinterpretations might technically be strawmen, but they are at least honest strawmen searching for a brain.

Far worse is the dishonest strawman, that is, "putting words in my mouth," trying to make out that the other side holds a position which they do not and which I should reasonably know that they do not. It would be (if I didn't know better) and honest strawman for me to believe that Protestants as a whole monolithic group insisted that all authority comes through the Bible alone (it comes from God alone) and that there are no other legitimate sources of moral or spiritual authority (e.g. pastors, reverends, etc)*[2]. It would be a less honest--or at the very least, a much more lazy--strawman for me to refute an all-literal rendering of the Bible and claim that I had thereby refuted all of Protestantism.

There is one thing which I will have time to add for now*[3] which I find to be at least as contemptible as the dishonest (or lazy) strawman.This is the tin-man argument. The tinman argument is one which lacks a heart--though unlike the real Tinman, he's not particularly interested in finding one. By this, I mean that his argument consists in a dismissal of the the other side's argument without any refutation, followed usually by a warrantless ad-hominem attack. This, in the context of an argument which actually is well-reasoned, and not one which is obviously disingenuous.

This is the way of a great many blog commenters (or critics or sorts), unfortunately, though the majority of the comments which I personally have received have been thoughtful or at least kind. More broadly, it is the reaction of the kind of person whom Dr Edward Feser would classify as a "Type A-1"--though I think we can expand this to include more than just atheists (the New Atheists get the lions' share of the A1's in my experience). Sure, the tinman's argument may be couched in gentler (or at least less vitriolic) terms than would be used by, say, Professor PZ Meyers. It may or may not be overt cynicism--the tinman is sometimes too lazy to muster this much contempt, though he's much the worse for it when he does. It is, however, the mark of a man too intellectually lazy to learn of the other side's positions before discounting them, and deliberately so. It's the attitude of saying "Your philosophy is worthless, so I won't learn what it says, even if you sit here and attempt to explain it to me" and "I won't bother to refute any of your specific claims even when you present them to me, because before hearing any of them I have judged them to be foolish." The tinman's argument is ad-hominem before it even becomes articulate, since its premise is that the other person has nothing of value to say even before he's actually said it.

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[1] One such exception is the case of, say, Saint Thomas Aquinas, who at times offered defenses of the other side's positions than the arguments offered by any of his opponents. I think it's fair to say that a strawman argument is generally less defensible and more easily refuted than the actual arguments being offered from the other side.

[2] Unless I am mistaken, at least some Protestants recognize some form of moral and/or spiritual authority in other persons. It may not be the same kind of authority as, say, that we I would accord to my bishop. But the pastor of a given Protestant community may or may not be accorded some sense of authority as someone who "knows" the Bible better than the average congregant, and parents will certainly be accorded some moral authority--admittedly based on the 4th (or for Protestants, 5th) Commandment, itself a distillation of Scripture--over their children, even after the point in time at which those children are able to read the Bible for themselves. Hence, I would rightly be laughed out of the room if I scolded a parent for disciplining his misbehaving child on the grounds that the child was just following her own "personal interpretation" of the Bible.

[3] This is, after all, a Thirty Minute Musing post, meaning that I am working with a 30 minute time limit.

Nicene Guys: Who or What Is God?

2011-09-14T09:55:00.000-07:00

Note: This is part two of a series of five posts about God. These were originally written as an RCIA presentation about God the Father. These posts are in an expanded form, and the presentation as given does not necessarily follow the posts exactly. I was constrained in the presentation itself to keep the time to under about 45 minutes or so, and to be somewhat conversational (sine it was their first formal session). Here is the full written transcript, which goes beyond what I did in the presentation. Part 1 is posted here.

My previous post concerning God concluded by saying that not only does He exist, but He also sustains our existence. Not only is He the fullness of Truth, the Perfection of Beauty, and the Highest Good, but He is also the source of all three of these things. Not only did He once create the world, but He continues to create it now. You may be wondering, after all this, Who or What is God? Who is this Creator Who cares enough for us to keep us in existence, and even to occasionally suspend or alter the very laws of the universe which He sustains? I’ve hopefully shed a little light on the subject with some of these apologetics—God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent; God is loving, creative, and eternal; He is perfect and infinite and indivisible. These are all some facts about God, but they don’t necessarily tell us Who or What He is.

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys Site.

VP: Creation and Contingency

2011-09-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

~~VirtuousPla.net~~ Ignitum Today is up. In it, I revisit the so-called argument from contingency, with a cosmological twist. It's a similar post in some ways to one I made about a year ago on the Nicene Guys, but written for a more "popular" audience still. Excerpt:

Would it be strange if I said that one of the people who helped to strengthen my faith in God is himself an atheist [1]? And that he strengthened my own mental “case for God” by attempting to weaken the case for a Creator? It might be accurate to say that Dr Hawking helped me to see the importance of a particular “way” which we can know that God exists by doing his best to disprove another “way.” This all happened about a year ago, and actually Hawking’s argument against the “Cosmological Argument” for God’s existence was exploded by both apologists and professional philosophers (not to mention the occasional physicist); nor was Hawking the first (or last) to make such claims, only to have them refuted. Leaving these refutations aside, I’d like to look at the hypothetical (if somewhat farcical) scenario in which the universe could create itself from nothing.

Read the rest on the Virtuous Pla.net sit.

Original Sin and Original Parents

2011-09-10T15:23:00.000-07:00

For an interesting take on the question Adam and Original Sin, refer to Mr Mike Flynn's recent post, here. I shared this post via Facebook because I found it interesting, and in particular his discussion concerning original sin--though I did not give the post a thorough fisking then, nor will I do so now. It seems to me that his main point was in providing a philosophical argument to show that even if we assume that the common gene-pool of humanity can be reduced only so far as to 10,000 members, that nevertheless all men may share a single common ancestor, and that moreover original sin itself is not necessarily a particular transgression (e.g. eating of the forbidden tree)*[1], but rather a predilection inherent to human nature.

As I said, I posted the link to Facebook without comment, and soon thereafter my friend Mr Shawn Nelson posted comment: "Hold on...not you too? You dont believe God formed Adam out of the dust of the earth as the first human?"

I replied with

I'm fairly ambivalent on this point, by which I mean that none of my beliefs are particularly affected either way. These fb comments aren't conducive to a good explanation though. :( Let's just say that I found this article interesting, and especially interesting as an explanation of how the doctrine of Original Sin does not hinge on Man's literally being created from dust (or clay).

And his response was

That's a fair reply. On some level exactly what happened back then doesnt necessarily impact today. But, I think that the beliefs that Andrew and Nate espoused, that we evolved from monkeys, are in direct blatant conflict with Genesis. I think saying "non literal interpretation" is just a cop out. If God didn't form Adam from the dust then Genesis is fatally with error. That and I sincerely believe there is no fossil evidence that we descended from apes. A few half-there malformed skeletons found in caves does not make comprehensive fossil proof.

The main thrust of this post is actually to expand upon my reply, which might also address some of the points which he brings up. The secondary thrust is because my friend Mr Nathanael Blake (as well as others who occasion this blog but not my facebook profile/feed) might (or might not) want a piece of the action. Let me note that there are two general parts to this reply--some of my own speculation regarding the science, and then an address to the interpretation of Genesis (which will alrgely come in hte last few paragraphs).

Some Science and Some Interpretation

As I mention, I am fairly ambivalent concerning whether God literally took some dust (or clay) and breathed upon it and thereby made the first man, Adam. By this I mean to say that I do not think that this is exactly how it happened, but that if God (or one of His agents, that is, an angel or a saint) were to appear to me and say, "The Genesis account is literally true," my reaction would be "O.K., guess my speculation was wrong," but largely this would have little affect on the rest of my doctrine, theology, spiritual life, morality, etc.

Actually, I must amend that previous statement. I would probably faint if God appeared to me in all His glory; and I would almost certainly be a at least slightly terrified if He merely sent an angel instead. Other than that, my outlook on metaphysics--and thus on practically everything else--would be more-or-less unchanged. Sure, I would then have a direct revelation that much of our scientific evidence concerning the age of the world and the development of human life was wrong--and I imagine that this would be a mandate to preach as much, though I also suspect that even fewer people would take me seriously than do now, even though my hypothetical preachings would be technically true. I hope that I would not mind this, since the end of the intellect is truth, not recognition, fame, respect, or honor.

I can indeed think of several possible scenarios under which the evidence itself which points to an old universe is incorrect, and yet the science itself is not. It is possible for God to create an "old" universe after all. That is, He could create a universe in which the sun appears to be 5 billion years old when it is, in fact, only 5 days old, or to create an earth in which a tenuous fossil record points back hundreds of millions of years. Of course, what scientific evidence we have would then be false evidence--it would suggest that life began a billion years ago, that dinosaurs became extinct tens of millions of years ago, that men have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. All of which would certainly make me wonder why a) God created all of this false evidence in the first place and b) why He waited around for so long to give a new and definitive revelation that our best scientific evidence was in fact false.

But note well that whether mankind was evolved from the beasts or whether he was made directly from the clay, the really essential thing is that man has a soul, whereas the beasts do not. Even Mr Flynn notes this in passing when he writes that

Nor am I sure how Dr. Coyne's assertion necessarily entails a falsification of human specialness (whatever he means by that). I never heard of such a doctrine in my Storied Youth though it is pretty obvious from a scientific-empirical point of view. You are not reading this on an Internet produced by kangaroos or petunias.

That God gave Man his form by creating him in God's Own image and likeness is not here being contested, since I believe that in men the soul is the form of the body. This soul exists in the image and likeness of God--it is rational and free, that is, we have an intellect and a will. That we got that soul from God is far more relevant than the actual process which He used to make the soul and blend it with the body.

We can have faith in a literal Genesis account, either by way of the sketch I gave above or by some other explanation. We can also have faith in a literal Genesis account in-as-much-as a metaphor relies on the literal meaning of the words. There is a sense in which a metaphorical interpretation is also a literal one. Or we can trust pure reason--which in this case means "science"--in its theories that there is macro- as well as micro-evolution, that is to say that by taking small and gradual steps, some living things--beasts--which were not homo-sapiens eventually became a new thing which was homo sapiens. Are there some holes in the evidence, some "missing links"? Yes--and these may or may not ever be discovered; the theories themselves may or may not evolve.

It may be worth here quoting from the late Fr Stanley L Jaki, who was arguably the greatest philosopher of science of the last century.

"About quantities, insofar as they are embodied in matter and drawn out of it by measurements and mathematical operations, science alone is competent. In that sense, and in that sense alone, science is unlimited, while remaining limited to quantities. All other considerations that relate to non-quantitative features, are beyond the quantitative competence of science which is its sole competence. Conversely, quantitative considerations, insofar as they are to be empirically verified or measured, are beyond the competence of philosophy or theology, to mention only the principal fields of inquiry that do not aim at measuring anything in sensible matter." (The Limits of a Limitless Science)

Science can make no claims regarding the existence of the soul, particularly regarding that most important part of the soul which is the will. These stand outside of natural science, because both have a supernatural origin--both come into existence at some point in time. It can tell us nothing about the existence of good and evil, or of the essence of morality or virtue or sin. These things are not qualitative nor merely physical considerations, but rather are ontological and metaphysical. They are the subjects of philosophy and theology.

What science itself can tell us about the material processes involved. Whether it does so correctly or not is based ultimately on how good it data is--the completeness and reliability of the fossil record, the reliability and accuracy of carbon dating (and other forms of dating), and so on--and how good the theories are. But a theory is good if it correctly interprets the data which is available and reliably predicts some new thing which is not yet measured or discovered but which nonetheless is measurable or discoverable. It is therefore a bad (or false) theory is it either misinterprets the data or is based upon false data. Epistemologically, we can only know that a theory is false if we can show that the data and evidence underlying it is false, or if we can demonstrate that it misinterprets this data.

Now, it is always possible that the theory is incorrect, or incomplete. The theory most certainly is incomplete to the extent that it governs purely natural processes, the process of material evolution. It does not, and it cannot, determine when men as such started to exist: who was the first man, the first of these hominids to have a soul proper? Prior to the existence of a soul, we had beasts; perhaps they were relatively clever beats, as an orangutang is clever relative to a slug. Perhaps they even had the power of an intellect as man now has an intellect, but lacked a will; perhaps in lacking that will, they therefore lacked the ability to choose good or evil, and thus could not with their intellect grasp the difference between good and evil. There was hunger, and feeding the hunger; thirst, and quenching the thirst; a need for shelter, and the ability to find or build shelter; and a knowledge of how to protect the family or tribe from danger. None of this requires any decision regarding good or evil, vice or virtue, sin or sanctity.

It can, however, legitimately make claims concerning the natural physical and biological development of species. This it has done. These claims are scientific as such, and therefore must be refuted by either showing that the scientific reasoning itself is wrong, or that the data upon which that reasoning is based is either incomplete (and thus inconclusive) or incorrect, false. As far as I know, there is nobody who questions the former--the line of reasoning--but plenty of people who question the latter, which is the evidence trail.

Most of this questioning tends to hinge on the "holes" in the data, as I mentioned above. It is focused on the lack of one or several "missing links", or on on the poor quality of many of the fossils from which we have built our record. There is certainly something to be said about Chesterton's observation that it is dubious that we could really reconstruct an entire mammoth from a single jaw bone. There is also something to to be said about the literal idea of creating a man from dust directly--namely, that it would leave no record of his own development, and thus that what records we do have are ultimately a lot of sound and fury which signify nothing.

However, in staking the argument against evolution on missing links, we have ultimately made a sort of "God of the gaps" theory. We would commit ourselves not only to the observation that there are some links missing from the fossil record which may not ever be found--but to the explicit assumption that these links can not ever be found. That's a bit of a gamble to take, and one which is based less on good scientific objectivity and more on philosophical (or theological) considerations: we turn Christianity into an ideology as well as a religion. We call the data into question based on our assumptions, rather than calling our assumptions into question based on the data. The difference between this and calling into question any other observation of reality is I fear ultimately one of degree and not kind.

There is a third option, which is to say that faith and reason should not be in conflict, meaning in this case that the essential points of the Genesis accounts are not whether or not God made the world in six days and literally made man directly from clay, but rather such things as that the creation accounts are meant to teach us about the importance of the Sabbath, or that they are there to teach us about the uniqueness and specialness of men as opposed to all other beasts. That they were to tell us about the inherent dignity of man above and beyond--even perhaps ontologically separated from--that of the animals: a dignity which differs form theirs not only in degree but in actual kind.

And Now to the Main Objection

How does this tie back to Mr Nelson's objection: "If God didn't form Adam from the dust then Genesis is fatally with error." This demands an actual literal interpretation of the text, or it is with flaw. I disagree with this assertion, and I think that if he thought about it, Mr Nelson himself would come to realize that he actually disagree with the assertion. Before I explain this rather bold statement, let me put forth that I believe that there are four senses of scripture: literal (which I think includes not only historical but also perhaps metaphorical), typological/allegorical (spiritual reality), anagogical (journey of the soul to God), and tropological (practical/moral). Thus, a literal/historical interpretation of Genesis tells us that God made the world about 6000 years ago over a six day period of time, and that Man was made from dust (or clay, or dirt, or mud) on the 6th day, and that he came to life when God breathed life into him. Tropologically we get the moral lesson of the necessity of "resting" for a day--and there is a lot to be said about rest and leisure--which God modeled for us by working for six days (and what could possibly be the work of God but to create the universe?). Allegorically, we can see a foreshadowing of the day on which Christ "rested" in the tomb--the day between His death and His resurrection. Anagogically, we see the introduction of sin, and also that without God we are but dust, that is, our lives are worthless and without meaning. Notice that the latter three of these senses can be true regardless of whether or not the former is.

Sometimes the literal sense is not strictly true--and that does not destroy the meaning of the text in question. To use an obvious example, Christ tells his disciples that they "are the salt of the earth." Does He literally mean that these people are salt? No, and I do not know of anybody who believes that he did. There is an obvious metaphorical meaning here, which does rely on the literal meaning of salt (it flavors--or brings out the flavor of--those things which it seasons). And what of Genesis? Is there not a metaphorical meaning which can be drawn from it? I contend that there is. Dust is a perfectly good description of what we would be without souls--worthless. Clay might be formed through a process of molding and shaping, as we might be formed and shaped and molded through the years, both as individuals and as a species which slowly descends from other animals.

Finally, an animal might die and return to the earth--becoming "dust" as it rots. It will not participate in the resurrection, so this death and return to dust is its ultimate fate; but that dust may also be dirt, which becomes the nutrients of a plant which in turn becomes the nutrients of an animal: so that any animal's body does, in a sense, come from dust (or dirt). Hence, it is not a great stretch to say that when God "breathed" a soul into the first man, He was in fact breathing a soul into clay or dust. Therefore, I do not believe that the theory of evolution poses a challenge to the validity of Genesis.

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*[1] For what it's worth, I actually do believe that there was some sort of transgression between the first men and God, and that the actual effects of this transgression include that Man is not only capable of sinning, but is predisposed (or "inclined") to sin. As the Catechism tells us,

"Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called 'concupiscence'....The doctrine of original sin, closely connected with that of redemption by Christ, provides lucid discernment of man's situation and activity in the world. By our first parents' sin, the devil has acquired a certain domination over man, even though man remains free. Original sin entails 'captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the power of death, that is, the devil'....As a result of original sin, human nature is weakened in its powers, subject to ignorance, suffering and the domination of death, and inclined to sin (this inclination is called 'concupiscence')....As a consequence of original sin, man must suffer 'bodily death, from which man would have been immune had he not sinned'" (CCC Paragraphs 405, 407, 418, and 1018).

I don't want to do exegesis on what, exactly, is meant by such things as "deprivation of original holiness and justice" here, but suffice it to say that original sin carries guilt, too. Note, too, the closing line, which implies an actual transgression on the part of the first men, and not merely the "awareness" of sin.

Seven Quick Takes (v 8): No Theme This Time

2011-09-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

--1--

I count yesterday as the day on which the semester officially started. Some people may be wondering how I figure this, since classes began about 3 weeks ago. Well, Tuesday and Thursday were the days on which i gave out the first official homework assignments to my students. Yesterday saw three things happen, by which i mark the real beginning of my semester. First, a new guy came to class and introduced himself--he had just added the class; as of today, no new students can add without my express consent--which means that as of yesterday, i have officially met all of my students for the semester. Second, yesterday was the first day in which my inbox was flooded with questions about the homework. Third (and most importantly as a constraint against my free time), yesterday was the day on which my own first homework was posted online.

--2--

Last week after I posted one of these quick-takes for the seventh consecutive week, a friend asked how I manage to do these so consistently. I imagine that with the new influx of homework, I will be a bit less consistent. In the meantime, I might as well tall my secret: I hold office hours each week for my class. The only person I have yet seen in my office from either class is my learning assistant--for about 30-45 minutes per--and she's paid to show up. I then have to kill the next two hours (or so).

--3--

Speaking of student no-shows, so far the emails which I have received have almost unanimously followed the same pattern. "Dear (Mr/Professor/Dr/no appellation--only the first one is really correct) Sanders, I have a quick question and don't want to come to your office hours because (it would be inconvenient for me/they're too early in the morning/I can't find my way around RLM/I'm not really interested in learning this, I just want the answer for my homework). My quick questions is, how do you find the uncertainty for a group of numbers." This is, of course, not a "quick question" in the sense of being a question which could be quickly answered by email. It's also the one thing which we have done at the beginning of every single class so far this semester, which suggests that even if there were a quick email answer, it probably wouldn't be as helpful as biting the bullet and arriving in person.

--4--

The only other email I received was "What is the conversion between meters to square meters?" In his defense, the guy who sent this one replied to my response (there is no "conversion" between these things, one measured distance and the other area) by writing "Yea I figured it last bight. Im sorry, that was a dumb question." Don't be too hard on yourself.

--5--

Speaking of getting lost in RLM, here is what I spent the other half of my office hours last week doing:

--6--

A couple of weeks ago, Mr Stephen Binz contacted me and asked if I would be interested in receiving a pair of books for his Lectio Divina Tetralogy. Earlier this week, I got both The Mass in Scripture and The Sacraments in Scripture in the mail. I will review these at some point, probably here (though I've been trying to move most of my longer review/discussion pieces to the Nicene Guys). I've already started in on The Mass in Scripture, and it looks like it's going to be a good pair of books, which is nice because I've been wanting to incorporate more Lectio Divina into my prayer life. On the other hand, I may have to give them the usual 1-2 week read-through and then come back to them more slowly and intentionally for prayer, in the interest of writing a timely review.

--7--

We can't seem to catch a break with the weather in Austin. Other places have scarcely had a summer yet (Pacific Northwest), some had a brief hot/humid spell (and maybe a hurricane). We had the hottest summer on record, with well over 70 days which had temperatures over 100 degrees. The only two days in July which didn't have triple-digit temperatures reached highs of 99. It's finally cooled off a bit this week (we been in the mid 90's), the hot temperatures and sheer lack of rain (not once this summer!) means that now we have fires to contend with. I'm mildly surprised that this wasn't a bigger issue earlier, though ow it seems that Bastrop (just about 20 miles from here) is ablaze. More than a thousand houses have burned, and some lives have already been lost--and the fire is only about 30% contained. Oh, and our fire chief is on vacation in Colorado, though the Austin Fire department has been lending its resources to help combat the blaze. Pray for rain, and for the firefighters and people who are in the fire's path. I am not sure whether we are in much danger in Austin--yet--though the smoke sits thick in the air.

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Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jenifer Fulwiler at Conversion Diary.

Nicene Guys: Five Ways We Can Know That God Exists--And What These Ways Tell Us About Him

2011-09-08T07:25:00.000-07:00

Note: This is part one of a series of five posts about God. These were originally written as an RCIA presentation about God the Father. These posts are in an expanded form, and the presentation as given does not necessarily follow the posts exactly. I was constrained in the presentation itself to keep the time to under about 45 minutes or so, and to be somewhat conversational (sine it was their first formal session). Here is the full written transcript, which goes beyond what I did in the presentation.

In their Handbook for Christian Apologetics, Professors Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli (S.J.) present twenty different arguments for the existence of God. These range from physical to psychological, and form historical to relatively modern: and different of these ways of knowing that God exists will be helpful to different types of people. I want to begin today by outlining briefly a few of these as a sort of extension of the last two of your reflection questions, because each of these arguments also tells us something about God.

Read the rest on the Nicene Guys site.

TMM: The Arithmetic of Souls and the Resurrection of the Body

2011-09-07T10:02:00.000-07:00

In his Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris attempts to make an argument against ensoulment via looking at microbiology:

Take for a moment that there are souls in this petri dish, and that every three day old blastocyst is en-souled. Well unfortunately embryos at that age can split into twins. So what’s happening there? We have one soul turning into two souls?

Embryos at a later stage can fuse back into what is called a chimera—a single individual born of two embryos. So do we have two souls becoming one soul? This arithmetic of souls doesn’t make much sense.

Interesting question, though of course at best this is an argument for ensoulment sometime after the blastocyst stage. I, however, believe that the soul comes into being from conception. On first blush, this argument seems damning to that position. Then I gave it another moment's thought, and realized that the argument is not so damning after all, at least not after a brief moment's reflection. If I cut off my finger, it does not die immediately; it may not continue growing much, and may not continue to replace the cells of which it consists (at least, not for long), though this is more because it has been deprived of additional nutrients, oxygen, etc. I can, however, re-attach the finger, and expect a reasonable rate of success.

Then there is the case of organ transplants. Consider two people, an organ donor and and organ recipient. The organ donor is on his death bed, and the recipient needs a kidney--so he receives the organ donor's kidney. He does not thereby receive also the organ donor's soul. This would be still true even if he received the organ donor's heart, lungs, kidneys, and liver--the donor has died, and his soul now resides in heaven, hell, or purgatory, whereas some parts of his body continue to live in the organ recipient's body.

Perhaps the second blastocyct is likened to the severed finger, which might be re-attached. Or perhaps (and I think this is more likely) the scenario of the chimera is more like that of the organ donor, in which thee are two people and two souls involved, one has died an "donated" his or her entire body to the other.

Saint Thomas Aquinas deals with a similar problem--both in his Summa Contra Gentiles and in his Compendium Theologiae--when he discusses the resurrection of the body. Of course, they didn't do much in the way of organ transplants in St Thomas' day: but there are cannibals. Here is his discussion of the resurrection of the body with respect to the problem of cannibalism, in chapter 161 of the Summa Theologiae:

This enables us to answer the objections that some raise against the resurrection. For instance, they say that a cannibal may have eaten human flesh, and later, thus nourished, may beget a son, who eats the same kind of food. If what is eaten is changed into the substance of the eater’s flesh, it seems impossible for both to rise in their full integrity, for the flesh of one has been changed into the flesh of the other. The difficulty apparently grows if semen is the product of surplus food, as the philosophers teach [Aristotle, De generatione animalium, I, 18, 726 a 26; for the semen whereby the son is begotten would then be derived from the flesh of another person. And so it seems impossible for a boy begotten from such seed to rise, if the men whose flesh the father and the son himself devoured rise intact.

But this state of affairs is not incompatible with a general resurrection. As was pointed out above, not all the material elements ever present in any man need be resumed when he rises; only so much matter is required as suffices to keep up the amount of quantity he ought to have. We also pointed out that if anyone is lacking in the matter required for perfect quantity, divine power will supply what is needed.
We should note, moreover, that the material elements existing in man’s body are found to pertain to true human nature in various degrees. First and foremost, what is received from one’s parents, is brought to perfection within the reality of the human species, as its purest element ‘ by the parents’ formative causality. Secondly, what is contributed by food, is necessary for the proper quantity of the body’s members and lastly, since the introduction of a foreign substance always weakens a thing’s energy, growth must eventually cease and the body must become old and decay, just as wine eventually becomes watery if water is mixed in with it.
Furthermore, certain superfluities are engendered in man’s body from food. Some of these are required for special purposes, for instance, semen for reproduction and hair for covering and adornment. But other superfluities serve no useful end, and these are expelled through perspiration and other eliminating processes, or else are retained in the body, not without inconvenience to nature.
At the general resurrection all this will be adjusted in accord with divine providence. If the same matter existed in different men, it will rise in that one in whom it fulfilled the higher function. If it existed in two men in exactly the same way, it will rise in him who had it first; in the other, the lack will be made up by divine power. And so we can see that the flesh of a man that was devoured by another, will rise not in the cannibal, but in him to whom it belonged originally. But as regards the nutritive fluid present in it, it will rise in the son begotten of semen formed from that flesh. The rest of it will rise in the first man in this series, and God will supply what is wanting to each of the three.

Sam Harris was attempting to present a novel new argument against the existence of the soul. What he really gave was an old (and answered) argument against the resurrection of the body. The second blastocyst which is absorbed into the first presents no more difficulty than cannibalism nor an organ transplant. There really were two souls and two bodies, then one body died and the soul departed to await its resurrection. The second body absorbed the first, be it as a form of cannibalism, organ transplant, or something else. It will one day die, and then be resurrected. whole and complete, with the divine power providing whatever is lacking in material to both.

Original Sin and Internet Comments

2011-09-06T09:16:00.000-07:00

In Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton observed that of all Christian doctrines, the most easily verifiable was the doctrine of Original Sin, and that it was nevertheless among the most widely denied and denounced. Fast forward about a century, and the observation remains. For example, for the last week or so my every visit to Dr Stacy Trasancos' blog--and the comment boxes thereon--has been a near constant reminder of why I don't mind having a relatively unread blog. She's very patiently been treating with these comments: I probably would have shut down my com boxes, or at the least switched over to only allowing approved comments a long time since.

Her first thoughtcrime was voicing her disapproval of homosexual relationships in general and public displays of affection between the same in particular. Her second thoughtcrime was in defending herself regarding the first thoughtcrime. I don't think she's had a post with fewer than 100 comments (most are in the 200-400 range) since, with the exception of new posts which haven't had the time to build up comments; most of those are not merely negative or disagreeing--there's not necessarily any sin in that*--but are downright hateful, spiteful, bigoted, even perhaps diabolical. But the comment types? "Drop-dead, bigot" or the like is hardly a rebuttal to any arguments presented, and still less is it a paragon of tolerance.

To be fair, this is not just a gay/atheist thing, though in the case of Dr Trasancos, this is the majority of the detractors. We Christians have a ways to go in this department too (and I include myself, as the rhetoric in many of the posts from the first couple years of this blog will particularly attest)--it takes a lot of charity and tact to call a sin a sin without tearing down the sinner himself. On the other hand, the fact that these kind of comments are still popping up in posts which have nothing to do with homosexuality suggests to me that they are not so much aimed at the message, but rather at the messenger. That is to say, they are not merely wishing that those of us who think homosexual relationships are immoral would cease to think that way: they want us to suffer for having had those thoughts. When there is no such thing as grace, conversion and repentance become impossible, so charity in turn becomes optional.

Again, there is a lesson to be drawn from this for us as Christians. Some of the comments are surely left by trolls who don't care either way what happens, but rather enjoy watching the world burn; others are left by people who are simply filled with hatred and are beyond reasoning**. But how many are left by people who are venting frustrations on the nearest available target/victim? I suspect more than a few, and it is worth remembering that even if those frustrations are wrongly motivated, they are nevertheless human frustrations. Do we not suffer form the same at times? And are our frustrations always rightly motivated? It's tempting to say yes, that our are since we are only trying to share the good news of salvation with an ungrateful people--but then again, some of that evangelization can very quickly become self-aggrandizement, or proselytization carried out for the sake of "winning" converts, as if we and our arguments or actions are the driving force behind conversions.

How much of this wrath is coming from frustration, and how much of the frustration is coming from pride? It is tempting to attempt one or two or ten arguments and then give up and consign the other person to hell with a torrent of Jeremiads. They can do that, and they do. We should not, but one of our failings is that like them we are fallen men, and so like them we do let frustrations get the best of us. The result may not be quite so violent or explosive--we may retain a shred of justice or temperance in our apoplectic rants, a shred which they discard in their own vitriolic screeds--but the point is that we should not do it at all. We know we shouldn't, and indeed we belong to an institution which tells us that we shouldn't, but we still do. That is the effect of original sin, and we seen it on full display not only with the trolls and the truly hateful bigots, but among the frustrated folk who want to register their disagreement civilly, but who nonetheless find themselves sinking into the same quagmire as everybody else.

I should add with some irony that this whole grand demonstration of the doctrine of Original Sin began as an exercise is trying to shout down those of us who state time and again that there is such a thing as sin.

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*I'm going to ignore the question of whether willfully disagreeing with Church moral doctrine counts as a sin or not, since said sins are generally at the worst venial when committed by a non-Catholic, excepting those who very deliberately and consciously subvert their own consciences.

**As a second example of this, I can think back to my undergraduate days. I belonged to the pro-life group at OSU, which every year did a large display of grave-markers on the lawn of the Memorial Union quad. We had one simple maker--a single cross--for each child aborted daily in the US. The 3000-ish crosses filled the quad. As a part of this demonstration, we left up a "free-speech wall," which was a large sheet of butcher paper on which people could leave their anonymous comments without having to speak to any one of us. There were always a handful of positive comments left tin support of us and our cause. There were also usually dozens if not hundreds of comments left to tell us what evil and hateful people we were, and how the writer of the comment wanted us to die in a fire, etc. Those are not the comments of a person who is frustrated by his inability to get his point across.