Reasons for Arguing

Secularists argue so they can feel superior, but Christians argue for Truth.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/arts/people-argue-just-to-win-scholars-assert.html?_r=1

Protecting marriage to protect children

By David BlankenhornSeptember 19, 2008

I’m a liberal Democrat. And I do not favor same-sex marriage. Do those positions sound contradictory? To me, they fit together.

Many seem to believe that marriage is simply a private love relationship between two people. They accept this view, in part, because Americans have increasingly emphasized and come to value the intimate, emotional side of marriage, and in part because almost all opinion leaders today, from journalists to judges, strongly embrace this position. That’s certainly the idea that underpinned the California Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage.

But I spent a year studying the history and anthropology of marriage, and I’ve come to a different conclusion.
Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving, and many of its features vary across groups and cultures. But there is one constant. In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. Among us humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition. It is primarily a license to have children.

In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation. Marriage (and only marriage) unites the three core dimensions of parenthood — biological, social and legal — into one pro-child form: the married couple. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and a father, accountable to the child and to each other.

These days, because of the gay marriage debate, one can be sent to bed without supper for saying such things. But until very recently, almost no one denied this core fact about marriage. Summing up the cross-cultural evidence, the anthropologist Helen Fisher in 1992 put it simply: “People wed primarily to reproduce.” The philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell, certainly no friend of conventional sexual morality, was only repeating the obvious a few decades earlier when he concluded that “it is through children alone that sexual relations become important to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution.”

Marriage is society’s most pro-child institution. In 2002 — just moments before it became highly unfashionable to say so — a team of researchers from Child Trends, a nonpartisan research center, reported that “family structure clearly matters for children, and the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage.”

All our scholarly instruments seem to agree: For healthy development, what a child needs more than anything else is the mother and father who together made the child, who love the child and love each other.

For these reasons, children have the right, insofar as society can make it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. The foundational human rights document in the world today regarding children, the 1989 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, specifically guarantees children this right. The last time I checked, liberals like me were supposed to be in favor of internationally recognized human rights, particularly concerning children, who are typically society’s most voiceless and vulnerable group. Or have I now said something I shouldn’t?

Every child being raised by gay or lesbian couples will be denied his birthright to both parents who made him. Every single one. Moreover, losing that right will not be a consequence of something that at least most of us view as tragic, such as a marriage that didn’t last, or an unexpected pregnancy where the father-to-be has no intention of sticking around. On the contrary, in the case of same-sex marriage and the children of those unions, it will be explained to everyone, including the children, that something wonderful has happened!

For me, what we are encouraged or permitted to say, or not say, to one another about what our society owes its children is crucially important in the debate over initiatives like California’s Proposition 8, which would reinstate marriage’s customary man-woman form. Do you think that every child deserves his mother and father, with adoption available for those children whose natural parents cannot care for them? Do you suspect that fathers and mothers are different from one another? Do you imagine that biological ties matter to children? How many parents per child is best? Do you think that “two” is a better answer than one, three, four or whatever? If you do, be careful. In making the case for same-sex marriage, more than a few grown-ups will be quite willing to question your integrity and goodwill. Children, of course, are rarely consulted.

The liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously argued that, in many cases, the real conflict we face is not good versus bad but good versus good. Reducing homophobia is good. Protecting the birthright of the child is good. How should we reason together as a society when these two good things conflict?

Here is my reasoning. I reject homophobia and believe in the equal dignity of gay and lesbian love. Because I also believe with all my heart in the right of the child to the mother and father who made her, I believe that we as a society should seek to maintain and to strengthen the only human institution — marriage — that is specifically intended to safeguard that right and make it real for our children.

Legalized same-sex marriage almost certainly benefits those same-sex couples who choose to marry, as well as the children being raised in those homes. But changing the meaning of marriage to accommodate homosexual orientation further and perhaps definitively undermines for all of us the very thing — the gift, the birthright — that is marriage’s most distinctive contribution to human society. That’s a change that, in the final analysis, I cannot support.

David Blankenhorn is president of the New York-based Institute for American Values and the author of “The Future of Marriage.”

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-blankenhorn19-2008sep19,0,6057126.story

“[W]e cannot judge the validity of our beliefs based on the reluctance of others to embrace them.”

Many new apologists get right to work trying to convince others of the truth of the Christian worldview. When they meet with limited “success,” they often lose heart. A recent email to PCM expressed this view; the writer acknowledged that his inability to convince people that his faith was truth caused him to become discouraged. This discouragement often leads to doubt… and eventually to a loss of faith.

There is, of course, a certain logic to this. After all, ideas that are false – that lack persuasive power- are not likely to be accepted by others. That is one of the strengths that the 1st Amendment supports – the notion that in the marketplace of ideas, good ideas prevail while bad ones are eventually weeded out.

But implied in this understanding is the assumption that the listener will give the ideas a fair shake. If the listener has already decided not to accept the claim, even before he considers the evidence and arguments, then all the persuasiveness in the world will not alter the outcome. Moreover, if the listener is motivated by emotion rather than reason, then evidence and arguments are not likely to have an effect.

One way to test for this is to ask the listener what it would take to get him to change his view. Oftentimes, it’s not so much the person’s answer that you are looking for but the hesitation in answering, which reveals the person’s commitment to persisting in his views despite the evidence. This is especially evident when discussing “hot button” issues such as abortion. When you see hesitation, or a commitment to maintaining one’s position, then your apologetical efforts will likely prove futile.

As a prosecutor, identifying hidden biases is of great importance. The jury that is selected to consider a case must be open to hearing and fairly evaluating the evidence. Otherwise, the verdict will be a reflection of their preexisting biases and not of the truth of the underlying charge. Whether its a case of possession of marijuana, or a decision on the death penalty, it’s simply not possible to overcome strongly held biases. For this reason, much effort is devoted to excusing jurors who will not consider the evidence so that the trial itself is not simply a waste of time. The point of the trial is to determine whether the claims as to what occurred are true – that is, whether they conform to reality – and not a referendum on the wisdom or efficacy of the law. Similarly with apologetics efforts,the point is to demonstrate that the Resurrection is an historical event, so that the listener might then consider the claims that Jesus and his disciples made. A listener who already believes that all religions are bad, or that miracles don’t occur, will not consider the evidence from history.

There are, of course, arguments against the existence of God, or against the truth claims of Christianity. But as a “one dollar apologist,” I don’t often encounter these. Most people I have discussed Christianity with are simply apathetic. They are living good lives, lives that are full of relationship and activity. They have been led to believe that this life is all that really matters, so they try to live it fully and with gusto, never thinking about what lies beyond. Trying to get them to consider ultimate things is often times frightening and off-putting.

The other type of person I’ve encountered is not apathetic, but is instead quite opinionated. He might insist that the “telephone game” is a valid description of how the Bible developed, leading him to conclude that the Bible cannot possibly be reliable. Or he will begin with the firm conclusion that miracles are not possible, so that the core belief of Christianity – the miracle of the Resurrection – is simply not a conclusion he will reach.

This is not to say that we should stop trying to convince people that are open to discussion. The Great Commission directs us to engage, as does 1 Peter 3:15, admonishing us to always be ready to provide a reason for our hope. But it does mean that we should have realistic expectations as to what we can accomplish. We may only plant the seed, and may never know what impact our words or deeds will have somewhere down the road.

And, most importantly, we cannot judge the validity of our beliefs based on the reluctance of others to embrace them. To draw conclusions about truth, we need to consider the evidence for and against the claim. A biased jury will not reach the truth. But by the same token, their mistaken “verdict” doesn’t alter the truth either.

 

http://networkedblogs.com/jFODB

New Testament Documents

“One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect.”

– F.F. Bruce (The New Testament Documents , p. 22)

Tolerance

 

 When Tolerance Is Intolerant

 

 Gregory Koukl

 

      There’s one word that can stop you in your track.  That word is “tolerance.”

 

      Let’s take a look at the confusing and mistaken ways tolerance is used in our culture today. 

 

      Using the modern definition of tolerance, you will see that no one is tolerant, or ever can be.  It’s what my friend Frank Beckwith calls the “passive aggressive tolerance trick.”  Let’s start with a real life example. 

 

      I had the privilege of speaking to seniors at a Christian high school in Des Moines.  I wanted to alert them to this “tolerance trick,” but I also wanted to learn how much they had already been taken in by it.  I began by writing two sentences on the board

 

“All views have equal merit and none should be considered better than another.”

“Jesus is the Messiah and Judaism is wrong for rejecting that.”

 

      They all nodded in agreement as I wrote the first sentence.  As soon as I finished writing the second, though, hands flew up. “You can’t say that,” a coed challenged, clearly annoyed.  “That’s disrespectful. How would you like it if someone said you were wrong?” 

 

      “In fact, that happens to me all the time,” I pointed out, “including right now with you.  But why should it bother me that someone thinks I’m wrong?”

 

      “It’s intolerant,” she said, noting that the second statement violated the first statement.  What she didn’t see was that the first statement also violated itself.

 

      I pointed to the first statement and asked, “Is this a view, the idea that all views have equal merit and none should be considered better than another?”  They agreed. 

 

      Then I pointed to the second statement—the “intolerant” one—and asked the same question:  “Is this a view?”  They studied the sentence for a moment.  Slowly my point began to dawn on them.  They’d been taken in by the tolerance trick.

 

      If all views have equal merit, then the view that Christians have a better view on Jesus than Jews is just as true as the idea that Jews have a better view on Jesus than Christians.  But this is hopelessly contradictory.  If the first statement is what tolerance amounts to, then no one can be tolerant because “tolerance” turns out to be gibberish.

 

      “Would you like to know how to get out of this dilemma?” I asked.  They nodded.  “Return to the classic view of tolerance and reject this modern distortion.”  Then I wrote these two principles on the board:

 

“Be egalitarian regarding persons.”

 

“Be elitist regarding ideas.”[1]

 

      The first principle is true tolerance, what might be called “civility.” It can loosely be equated with the word “respect.”  Tolerance applies to how we treat people we disagree with, not how we treat ideas we think false.  Tolerance requires that every person is treated courteously, no matter what her view, not that all views have equal worth, merit, or truth. 

 

     Don’t let this new notion of tolerance intimidate you.  Treat all people with respect, but be willing to show them where their ideas have gone wrong.  The modern notion of tolerance actually turns this value on its head.  It’s one of the first responses deployed when you take exception with what someone has said.  “You’re intolerant.”

 

      To say I’m intolerant because I disagree with someone’s ideas is confused.  The view that one person’s ideas are no better or truer than another’s is simply absurd and contradictory. To argue that some views are false, immoral, or just plain silly does not violate any meaningful definition or standard of tolerance.

 

      The irony is that according to the classical notion of tolerance, you can’t tolerate someone unless you disagree with him.  We don’t “tolerate” people who share our views.  They’re on our side.  There’s nothing to “put up” with.  Tolerance is reserved for those who we think are wrong, yet we still choose to treat them decently and with respect.

 

      This essential element of classical tolerance—elitism regarding ideas—has been completely lost in the modern distortion of the concept.  Nowadays if you think someone is wrong, you’re called intolerant no matter how you treat them.

 

      Whenever you’re charged with intolerance, always ask for a definition, then point out the contradiction built in to this new view.

 

      Most of what passes for tolerance today is intellectual cowardice, a fear of intelligent engagement.  Those who brandish  the word “intolerant” are unwilling to be challenged by other views, to grapple with contrary opinions, or even to consider them.  It’s easier to hurl an insult—“you intolerant bigot”—than to confront the idea and either refute it or be changed by it.  In the modern era, “tolerance” has become intolerance.

 

      As ambassadors for Christ, however, we choose the more courageous path.  In Paul’s words, “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God”  (2 Corinthians 10:5).  In a gracious and artful way, we accurately speak the truth, and then trust God to transform minds.

 

---

[1] This way of putting it comes from Peter Kreeft.

http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6742

‘Gay’-rights leader quits homosexuality Rising star in movement says God liberated him from lifestyle

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=42379

Is atheism to be correlated with science? And, on “Material Creationism”

For some odd reason, it is ubiquitously promulgated (as a well within the box atheist group-think talking-point de jour) that atheism has commandeered science (by definition and necessity, some claim). On the other hand, it is a historical fact that science itself, along with its methods and fields, were premised upon the belief that the universe was created by a rational God whose creation could therefore be rationally discerned.

Part of the issue has to do with terminology, how we define the terms atheism and science. As for atheism see, Definition of “Atheism”and Variations of Atheism. What we are dealing with in this context is a naturalistic (naturalism) or materialistic (materialism) worldview. This is in reference to believing that the natural, the material, is all that there is:

John Post (Metaphysics, A Contemporary Introduction),

“…the universe contains everything there is or ever was or will be.”

Carl Sagan (Cosmos),

“The cosmos is all there is or ever was or ever will be.”

These, of course, are faith based statements.

Thus, it is supposed that science must be conducted on the basis of an atheistic, naturalistic, materialistic framework. This is to be done for the very reason that we need science in order to explore that which we know to exist: material objects (subatomic particles, etc. are another issue).

However, the Biblical view, for example, may, perhaps, be referred to as Material Creationism. This would be a useful term to employ in order to distinguish those worldview philosophies which view the universe as an illusion or some such thing form those that view the universe as being a creation which is outside of, separate from, beyond and thus, not an extension of God.

On this view, God created the box, the universe, to function according to a material cause resulting in a material effect. This is not only what makes chronological/linear time function but is the very premise upon which science is based.

Thus, science need not presume atheism or materialism but recognize that it is a tool which explores the material. From this point, science can seek causes for effects and an open mind would follow the evidence where it leads: it may lead to a natural cause or a supernatural cause. Science is a tool which changes in order to meet the job at hand. If scientific evidence accumulates for the existence of God then science will change—or, a new field of science will be developed—in order to accommodate the evidence.

What we are dealing with is the difference between material causes and efficient causes. Think, for example, of you conceiving with your mind that you will hit a ball with a bat. What was the efficient cause of the ball’s movement? Your immaterial mind (here, materialists would say the material brain, for more on this distinction, see On God and the creation: how does the immaterial interact with the material?). What was the material cause? The bat’s force/momentum. From here we would ask how the stick came to be in motion itself and would conclude that it was due to its being grasped by a hand which swung it. And how did the hand come to grasp it? By the contraction of muscles. And on, and on you would go in a regress that would take us to the efficient cause: the exercise of volition as expressing that which the mind had conceived, etc.

Now, it would be to bring the polemic to a childish school yard level to state something to the likes of, “Well, simply running away from the hard work of science by saying, ‘God’did’it’ is a science stopper which is why religion is superstitious and its adherents are ignorant.”

Rather, the Material Creationism position would claim that the evidence points towards a creator and goes on from there to explore God’s creation: this is actually the view upon which science is premised.

The real problem, for atheists, when they claim that science implies atheism, proves atheism, etc. is that they are admitting to being purposefully close minded. How so?

First, they claim that science is based on materialism—either by presupposing it or by concluding in it—and that this is how it concludes in atheism (there is a certain amount of circular illogic here). In other words, science is purposefully designed to function only within material parameters, uses only material tools, explores only the material and comes only to material conclusions. Bottom line: science is a tool that is meant to explore only that which is within the box.

Next, they claim that science only comes to material conclusions based on only exploring the material and so: the material is all that there is.

This is tantamount of sitting in a corner, refusing to turn around, and claiming that the corner is all that exists. It is like wearing red colored spectacles, seeing everything in shades of red, refusing to take off the spectacles, and concluding that red is the only color that exists.

In conclusion, what can we conclude about atheists who claim that atheism is to be correlated with science and moreover, that it is science which concludes in atheism? They are admitting, even without realizing it, that they are purposefully refusing to look beyond the materialism which they presuppose in the first place.

They have buried their heads in the sand of a material method, they only see the material sand, and they conclude that the sand is all that there is. This is none but circular illogic.

Thus, when an atheist claims that atheism is backed by science, smile, feel the confidence of truth and elucidate the facts to them.

http://www.examiner.com/messianic-jewish-in-national/is-atheism-to-be-correlated-with-science-and-on-material-creationism?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook

Why So Many Atheists on CNN Belief?

 

 

 

By Father Robert Barron

The CNN Belief Blog, which has graciously featured a few of my pieces, just celebrated its first anniversary, and for the occasion, its editors reflected on 10 things that they’ve learned in the course of the year. The one that got my eye was this: that atheists are by far the most fervent commentators on matters religious.

This completely coincides with my own experience as an internet commentator and blogger. Every day, my website and YouTube page are inundated with remarks, usually of a sharply negative or dismissive nature, from atheists, agnostics, and critics of religion.

In fact, some of my YouTube commentaries have been specifically targeted by atheist webmasters, who urge their followers to flood my site with “dislikes” and crude assessments of what I’ve said. And one of my contributions to the CNN site — what I took to be a benign article urging Christians to pray for Christopher Hitchens — excited literally thousands of angry responses from the haters of religion.

 

What do we make of this? I think we see, first, that atheists have come rather aggressively out of the closet. Following the prompts of Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Bill Maher, and many others, they have found the confidence to (excuse the word) evangelize for atheism. They are no longer content to hold on to their conviction as a private opinion; they consider religion dangerous and retrograde, and they want religious people to change their minds.

 

This fervor has led them, sadly, to employ a good deal of vitriolic rhetoric, but this is a free country and their advocacy for atheism should not, of course, be censored. But it should be a wake-up call to all of my fellow religionists. We have a fight on our hands, and we have to be prepared, intellectually and morally, to get into the arena.

 

Most of the new atheists employ variations of the classical arguments of Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud, namely, that religion is a pathetic projection born of suffering, that it is an infantile illusion, that it is de-humanizing, etc.

 

How well do Christians know the theories of our intellectual enemies? Can we identify their blind-spots and the flaws in their logic? Have we read the great Christian apologists — G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Ronald Knox, Fulton Sheen — and can we wield their arguments against those who are coming at us?

 

In my own Catholic Church, we sadly jettisoned much of our rich apologetic tradition in the years after Vatican II, convinced that it would be better to reach out positively to the culture. Well, at least part of that culture has turned pretty hostile, and it is high time to recover the intellectual weapons that we set aside.

 

Today’s atheists also eagerly use the findings of contemporary science — especially in evolutionary biology and quantum physics — to undermine the claims of religion. Are the advocates of the faith ready to meet that challenge? How carefully have we read the scientific critics? And have we bothered to study the works of such deeply religious scientists as Fr. John Polkinghorne, Fr. George Coyne, Fr. Stanley Jaki, and Fr. Georges Le Maitre, colleague of Einstein and the formulator of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins?

 

We shouldn’t imitate the Internet atheists in their nastiness, but we should certainly imitate them in our willingness to come forward boldly and showing some intellectual teeth. But the fierce and vocal presence of so many atheists on the CNN Belief Blog and so many other religious sites also speaks to what I call the Herod Principle.

 

The Gospels tell us that Herod Antipas arrested John the Baptist because the prophet had publicly challenged the King. Herod threw John into prison but then, we are told, the King loved secretly to listen to the prophet, who continued to preach from his cell.

 

St. Augustine formulated an adage that beautifully sums up the essentials of Christian anthropology: “O Lord, you have made us for yourself; therefore our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” A basic assumption of Biblical people is that everyone is hard-wired for God in the measure that everyone seeks a fulfillment that cannot be had through any of the goods of this world. Long before Augustine, the psalmist prayed, “only in God is my soul at rest.”

 

My wager, as a person of faith, is that everyone — at that includes Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher, and Richard Dawkins — implicitly wants God and hence remains permanently fascinated by the things of God. Though the fierce atheists of today profess that they would like to eliminate religious speech and religious ideas, secretly they love to listen as people speak of God. This goes a long way, it seems to me, toward explaining their presence in great numbers on religious blogs.

 

So I say to Christians and other believers: be ready for a good fight, and get some spiritual weapons in your hands. And I say to the atheists: I’ll keep talking — because I know, despite all of your protestations and sputtering, that your hearts are listening.

http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2011/06/17/why_so_many_atheists_on_cnn_belief_106270.html

 

 

 

Students and critical thinking

http://networkedblogs.com/jfp0G

Dr. Turek discriminated

http://townhall.com/columnists/mikeadams/2011/06/16/the_cisco_kid