Just want to say thanks for posting this.  I need to memorize it in my heart and in my words so I can explain this to others and remember it for myself when I need a reminder.

I love that you say “that God does heal amputees” and then put up a picture that demonstrates science (with engineering) has succeeded where religion has failed (yet again).

The old no pleasure without pain rationalization…so to have a child die in pain via some horrible parasitic infection (or the black death - which wiped out over 40% of the European population) is about teaching people how wonderful God is?  Prior to medical science about 50% of children died as infants - I hope those babies learned their lesson of love! 

I think I may follow in the footsteps of how your God rears his children -  while bringing up my children - once in a while I should chop off one of their fingers just so they can appreciate better their remaining digits.

What is also interesting about this proposition is that, why would God heal anyone at all?  By this logic the people healed at Lourdes (never verified via independent medical analyses) would be better off living with their mark also - bringing them closer to god through a lifetime of potential pain and suffering.

I wonder if this all would make more sense if there was no all-good being and that life was the product of trying best to survive and reproduce (evolution).  Since the process is unguided, there is no rationalization needed for why your God would mark the children he/she/it loves with a branding iron.

Humor-Impaired Atheist

@Humor-Imparied Atheist:  Perhaps you missed this part, “We don’t have the option of escaping the Cross.  We only have the option of refusing to let it do its work.”  You may deny all here in this life because that is your choice.  Emphasis: “in this life.”  [BTW… Have you ever read Blaise Pascal?]
No response necessary.

I’ll respond anyways.  Your comment does not address a single objection I had with the horrible rationalizations the author has to come up with to justify why a all-good god would essentially allow the torture of his children just so they can appreciate his love better.  Instead, you’ve decided to fall back on the old “The fool in his heart: says there is no God” - this is not an argument as it can be used to justify almost any nonsense.  “We don’t have the option of escaping thetans, we only have the option of refusing to let them do their work”....

Dkeane:

Make up your mind. You are falling between two stools and your argument winds up being, “God doesn’t exist, the heartless !@#$%.”  A lot of atheist arguments do this.  If God doesn’t exist, why are you blaming him for being cruel?  If you are blaming him for being cruel, why are you insisting he’s not there?  You come off, not as rational, but as speaking out of a deep and angry wound.  From a purely rational perspective (something atheists pride themselves on though seldom really practice, your argument is yet another example Padding the Case for Atheism.  There are only two decent arguments for atheism in all of human thought.  All the rest is table-pounding from people who know the weakness of their case.

Oh, DKeane, don’t you realize that we believe that God made science and gave us the gift of using it to heal one another? Don’t you see that the Church is not anti-science, for being anti-science is spitting in the face of God. What we believe is that while science is a gift to be used to heal and make sense of our world, it isn’t a pass to do whatever we wish with it. Just as God allows suffering, science allows the H-bomb. Science, however, is not God, nor are we.

Dkeane:  I don’t address your details because all is based on the objection to the existence of God.  That’s your basis.  Nothing else.  Mark Shea is correct in asking, “If God doesn’t exist, why are you blaming Him for being cruel?”  Why are you talking about Him at all?  Why do you care about anything argued pertaining to Him? Since I believe that He exists then I want to live with Him forever in the next life.  If I am correct then my desire will be fullfilled (His will be done).  If you are correct then it won’t be.  Again, why do you care either way?  BTW, I care because I want everyone to live with him forever.  That’s fundamental to Christianity.  That’s what I believe.  That’s why I’m even taking time to join this discussion.  So why are you really here on this blog?  (If you are here to try to change my opinion then that’s even less likely as me changing yours.  Also, don’t pull the “logic card” on me.  I have a degree in Chemistry and a graduate degree in Applied Mathematics.  I’ve worked in both fields in my relatively long lifetime.  So, the more I “understand” about human “logic” then the more intrigued I am in its application.  I suggest that your “logic” is just as “human” as mine.)

Atheists seem to devote a great deal of energy on an entity they claim does not exist.I don’t know if that’s better or worse than the average person who doesn’t give God a passing thought.
Atheists, in their fashion, keep God in the conversation.So, thank you.

DKeane assumes that “an all good god” MUST, by definition, prevent all suffering.  He/She is unable or unwilling to believe that good can come from suffering, and so there is no contradiction between a “good” and “allows suffering.”

“DKeane assumes that “an all good god” MUST, by definition, prevent all suffering.”

I don’t agree; he’s just pointing out the absurdity of claiming that some suffering is some kind of lesson from a god.  And the “Why doesn’t God heal amputees?” question is why, if god supposedly heals some people miraculously (e.g. Lourdes), why aren’t amputees ever healed in that way?

Okay a variety of items to address not directly related to the article:

1) Atheists argue that the christian concept of a god is cruel.  If I were to run the planet in such a way as the christian god, I would be considered a monster.  We obviously do not “hate” god (because there is no such thing) - just the concept

2) Why do atheists spend so much time trying to show god does not exist?  Because the religious use the fact they are aware of the one “truth” to try and get special privileges.  Specifically, we have the spread of AIDS associated with mis-information about birth control, we have recent (and past) sexual scandals (any other org. would have been metaphorically burned to the ground for this - see ACORN), tax exemptions, creationism trying to be taught in schools, and so on and on.
3)  God made science.  Show your evidence for this - because if I remember science had a difficult time at first with the Vatican (Pope represents God’s perfect will?) and still does on occasion, because science directly conflicts with truth claims in the bible (via revelation).  Give humans the credit they deserve - it took centuries of hard work to get where we are today.

DcnKevin:  My objection has nothing to do with the existence of God.  I start out by asking if it does exist then he would have to be indifferent to the suffering of humans and animals.  Think about it.  Evolution says that 99% of the species that ever existed have died off.  3 billions years of adapt or die.  Half of the humans that ever lived died in infancy.  Humans have lived for 200,000 years before Jesus supposedly died on the cross for our sins, what about all of those people that suffered before medical science came along?  Look up Filarial Worms, your god either made them or allowed them to evolve.

Posted by DKeane:
2) Why do atheists spend so much time trying to show god does not exist?  Because the religious use the fact they are aware of the one “truth” to try and get special privileges.  Specifically, we have the spread of AIDS associated with mis-information about birth control…”
*******
Actually, oral contraceptive use appears to increase the spread of AIDs & other STDs.There’s a good article about that on the NCR site today.The “misinformation”, or better, lack of information given to women, is more in the hands of the manufacturers of contraceptives & the agencies who distribute them.
Thank you for bringing this up.

Dkeane:  OK.  The closing remark in your #1 actually rules you out of the conversation about God, “because there is no such thing.”
But since you brought it up, let’s go on about groups that get special privileges.  Are you also opposed to some minorities getting “special” treatment?  What other groups are you opposing in this regard?  The Congress of the United States?  Married couples (tax breaks)?  If your beef is really about special treatment then why single out the “God people”?  If you are not being treated fairly then take it to the courts.  Are you actually taking any such actions?  I mean, are you actually DOING anything about this?  Again, it goes back to your basis:  “there is no God” so you’re always out to prove your point.
Do Christians make mistakes?  Yes.  Have they ever been guilty of crimes?  Yes.  Should the church have done better at things in specific or in general?  Yes.  We Christians go on and on being human just like you.  Now substitute for “Christians” in the previous sentences the words “Atheists,” “US Congress,” “Hindus,” “Latinos,” “Frenchmen,” “People with brown eyes,” “Canadians,” etc.  Need I go on?  No one has a monopoly on being decidedly any more “human” than another.  So the guilt gets spread around quite well.  But clearly your perspective is different.  Again, it goes back to your basis:  “there is no God” so you’re always out to prove your point.
So, from a Christian perspective (clearly not yours), since we are made in the image of God then we do get some credit.  But, as Christians, we give God credit, too.  That’s what I believe.  You don’t have to believe it (God gave us free will as part of the “creation-thing” that you don’t believe in.)
You clearly don’t agree so why are you here?  I personally don’t go to “atheists” webpages and argue the “God-thing” (although I’ve heard that some do).  So, you pick items to argue about but it all goes back to the chip on your shoulder that many (if not most) in the world believe there is a God so you’re always out to prove your point.

“I don’t agree; he’s just pointing out the absurdity of claiming that some suffering is some kind of lesson from a god.”

But he didn’t “point out” that it was absurd.  He just asserted it as if it were obvious.  In fact, it’s not obvious at all for believers who have struggled with issues of theodicy.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn said he wouldn’t undo a single second that he spent in a Stalinist labor camp because it brought him closer to Christ.  Sure, the whys and wherefores are inscrutable sometimes, but there just isn’t any logical contradiction between “good God” and “allows suffering.”

DKeane on Friday, Aug 17, 2012 9:37 AM (EST):
Again, you can’t have it both ways.  You start by saying, “My objection has nothing to do with the existence of God.”  Then you go on about the Falarial Worm and the existence of a God that allowed the worm to evolve.
Again, you are here because you don’t believe that there is a God of the Universe—and its a BIG universe.  So you pick and choose arguements without admitting why you are even on the blog.  Nothing new here.  You’ve seen the Christian responses to these types of objections here and on other blogs.  You can agree with them or not but do you really think Christians are going to change to a pronouncedly secular view of the world?  Really?  From a decidedly mystical view to a purely physical and secular view with these types of objections?  Really, is that what you think?  If so then I propose that you do not know your audience very well.

CJ on Friday, Aug 17, 2012 10:14 AM (EST):
Yes, “brought him closer to Christ.”  Thank you for this reminder exemplified by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

“Alexander Solzhenitsyn said he wouldn’t undo a single second that he spent in a Stalinist labor camp because it brought him closer to Christ.”

I love this.  One person says it and therefore it is justified.  Let’s ask the 6 million Jews if they are closer to christ or a good portion of North Korea.  If we can bring people closer to christ via torture and starvation, shouldn’t the people who ran the camps be saints?

DcnKevin - the having it both ways, you are not reading my posts correctly.  Whenever an atheist talks about “god”, they are talking about the christian concept of god.  Additionally, 2 rights don’t make a wrong - there may be other groups out there that have undeserved special privileged, but let’s stay on topic here.  We are talking about the monster I would be if I created a whole bunch of miniature versions of people in my likeness and then proceeded to allow them to suffer (assuming it is within my power to stop their suffering) so that they would love me more.  One interesting question is, if we are currently still evolving (nothing in evolution states that we are the ultimate goal of evolution), then if we change form, are we still made in God’s image?  Or what if we become extinct and another form of life (or none of them) become the dominant species on the planet?

Kathleen:  Excellent point, I should have been more specific and talked about condoms.  Regardless, my point about the religious demanding special privileges stands.

@DKeane- Science is a work of Religion.  Without Religion, there could be no science- for it is only the concept of a rational God that allowed science to develop in the first place.

Ted:  Really?  Because as a geologist myself, one of the basic tenets of science is methodological naturalism in that things can be measured, quantified and studied methodically.  The idea of super-naturalism in science would be absurd, you would be scared to death to get into your car in the morning.

What I find very interesting, is that everyone wants to argue about minutiae, but my question has not been answered.  Isn’t the act of using suffering to get someone to love you a horrible concept?

@DKeane- really.  Under Islamic theology, for instance, nothing can be quantified or studied, because God changes it when you’re not looking. 

It’s the difference between *supernaturalism* and *petrenaturalism*.  The God that Catholics worship is rational- He follows His own Rules.  We may not know what those rules are, we can discover some of them with Science, we can discover even more with simple observation, but we’re finite beings and we’ve got the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in the way of discovering everything.

But without that *religious belief that God is faithful and doesn’t change the rules when you’re not looking*, NOTHING else in science can possibly make any sense at all.

You see, the problem is, you think Atheism is the default.  It isn’t.  Atheism is the result of bad theology combined with an overdose of reductionism that ends up using the contradictions in the bad theology to eliminate too much evidence.  The result- is a denial of evidence, which is highly unscientific.

The preponderance of evidence in the universe, while not conclusively proving that God exists, does indeed point to a God existing, and is rather against alternate theories.  If you actually follow the evidence without reductionism, and without going off on theological tangents and politics, the conclusion is quite clear.

Now for your specific theological tangent you’re trying to go off on:
Isn’t the act of using suffering to get someone to love you a horrible concept?

No, in fact, it isn’t.  YOUR assumption is that people love you for not causing them to suffer, or for preventing their suffering, when in reality, the way the human brain works is loving people who choose to suffer voluntarily with those who are suffering involuntarily.  This isn’t a horrible concept at all- it’s called caritas, a concept that you seem to be severely lacking.

DKeane on Friday, Aug 17, 2012 11:45 AM (EST):
Thank you for continuing to post.  Unfortunately, I do not have much more time to dedicate to this string so I’ll read your reply but will unlikely say anymore.  You really have interesting views to consider.  However, we are worlds apart as would be expected.
If we understood God (or the concept of God) fully and found that he was “forcing” people to suffer in order to love him then that, indeed, would be horrible.  But for all I can see, He is not “forcing” anyone to suffer. There is a lot we don’t know about God—never have and won’t until we are with Him.
A friend of mine recently wrote, “People of faith are indeed free – and they are thinkers who weigh all factors in making a decision about how they will live as whole human beings. They give attention to how they fit into God’s creation – how they are part and parcel of God’s plan for the world.”
God’s children (who are part and parcel of the “concept of God” from my view) think of the universe as a plan by the omnipotent.  Naive, perhaps, from your standpoint but surely not without precedence. We are looking for meaning in becoming a “whole human being” and find it in our faith.
I’ve read the following about the Christian faith:  “Our experiences of evil and suffering, injustice, and death, seem to contradict the Good News; they can shake our faith and become a temptation against it.”  This is very, very true for all serious and thoughtful Christians.  We, too, think of many of the seemingly contradictory things you think of.  So we look to examples of those who have gone before us in “witness of faith”:  1) Abraham of the Jewish Testament, who “in hope…believed against hope” (Romans 4:18); 2) to Mary, the mother of Jesus, in her “pilgimage of faith” sharing the darkness of her son’s suffering and death.  There are many, many others into this day.
But it appears that you cannot get past the “mystical” idea of a God that you cannot or will not understand; the concept of a God who is so much more than we see and touch.  In our secular world today, many must have a reason for everything so they continue to deny God since he is not a “good enough reason” for them.  So be it.  Take your stand as you alone must do.  I will take mine, also. 
We are all looking for reason for and meaning in our existence.  The reason which I embrace holds much more promise than yours.  You will say that I am naive.  If naive is believing in God then I am guilty.  We must become, in some ways, like children in order to appreciate the magnificence and beauty of this short life and of its Creator.
Although you may not think it of any consequence, I will pray for your good health and your continuing search for wisdom.

The latest issue of Sports Illustrated has a lovely story from this college town, about two of our baseball players who were paralyzed in separate accidents, and how their teammates and friends and family members have coped. It’s an inspiring and encouraging story in many ways, and it might just serve to flesh out some of Mark’s points as well. I highly recommend seeking out the story in the print mag.

DKeane: Good God/bad God/no God; which?
‘No God’- not my area of expertise. :-)
The God of the Bible- the only one I know- begins his account of man with a paradise in Eden. Specially-created couple; honest, rewarding work to do; no sickness or death (all limbs in place BTW); great environment. And he went the extra mile for his creation: Gen 2:9 (Douay) says the food was “fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of”. No ‘hospital food’ here.
The next important topic is the One Command: ‘Eat all you want, except from that tree over there.’ Impossible task? Why? Many children could obey such an instruction in re cookie jars e.g. And A & E were created as adults; say the equivalent of 30 yrs old; intelligent and with understanding of the situation. (Adam passed the instruction to Eve, who was able then to tell the snake about it.) Death would have been understood by watching animal life around them, which died in its time just as it does today.
At the instigation of a snake, which had never been a given to her as a guide or confidant, Eve believed two lies: ‘You will not die by disobeying God’s lead and governance’ and ‘God is withholding valuable information from you.’ Adam followed her lead also (instead of God’s), so he also rejected God as having a say in the activities of his own creation. God then instituted the death penalty, which operated over time and applied to A & E’s offspring. (They had no children before this- look it up.) Looking at disobedience [sin] as a ‘birth defect’ we’re all subject to sickness, disease, “death or loss of limb(s)” as the insurance folks put it. That is, every problem of man since has been the fault of Adam indirectly or man himself. (Smoking, greed, theft, homicide ...) In so many words, God allowed us to govern ourselves.
I understand you don’t believe the Bible, but do you see it may be a more to the story, and perhaps a quite different story? And this question can be asked whether the Bible is seen as fact or fiction.

Posted by DKeane on Friday, Aug 17, 2012 11:27 AM (EST):
I love this.  One person says it and therefore it is justified.  Let’s ask the 6 million Jews if they are closer to christ or a good portion of North Korea.  If we can bring people closer to christ via torture and starvation, shouldn’t the people who ran the camps be saints?

I used the Solzenhitsyn quote to illustrate how believers who have experienced suffering find something positive in it.  I could’ve multiplied the examples, but didn’t for brevity’s sake.  I didn’t anticipate that doing so be an opening for trolling.  And no, the camp guards aren’t saints for the same reason Judas isn’t.  Their actions are evil, but God brought something good out of their evil.  This, by the way, is all that Christians are promised.  Not that we’ll be spared suffering, but that God will see to it that it works to our good.

God not healing amputees is the lamest objection against God yet. As if the will of God should fit into their own pet ideas of what God would or would not do.

Sorry, at the lake with the family. Nice discussion guys. Couple of last point. I like the idea of the Islamic god being able to change oir actual peceptions, look up the Flying Spag. Monster. Also still no one has addressed the idea that not preventing pain and suffering when you have the ability to - just to bring them closer to you is similar to battered wife syndrome. Have a good weekend everyone.

Matthew 17:19 Jesus said to them: Because of your unbelief. For, amen I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain: Remove from hence hither, and it shall remove: and nothing shall be impossible to you.

Last time I checked, no mountains have been removed from hence hither…

I am always amazed at the utter lack of understanding of the word faith when it comes to moving mountains.  I suggest that anybody who thinks that faith cannot move mountains need to research Japanese Airport construction.

Japanese Airport construction?  I would never insult the Japanese people with such a claim that they would invoke Matthew 17:19 to construct an airport.

The question is “was Jesus Christ correct about the power of faith?” Not “do japanese people quote him for engineering projects”.  Christ was talking about the power of faith and perseverance: and such faith does indeed move mountains.  Does not matter what the faith is in: the ability of your engineers to build an airport in a bay after moving the mountains off of two minor islands, or my own faith that with Fr. McGivney’s intercession I could bring Knights of Columbus to a liberal parish.  Faith moves mountains indeed!

Mr. Patton:

You really need to learn how to read Jewish literature.  The remark is directed at the hostility of the Temple elite.  “*This* mountain” is Mt. Zion, upon which the Temple was built, center of the hostility that Jesus encountered and shortly to put him to death.  The line is referring to the fact that the apostles would, by their faith overcome that hostility and the Church would, in time, spread to the Gentiles (“the sea” is a common image of the Gentile nations in New Testament parlance).  If you do not locate Jesus’ language and imagery in the Jewish prophetic tradition, you can no more hope to grasp his point than you can understand Abraham Lincoln without reference to the Civil War.  “This mountain” is, for Jesus simultaneously the sign of the promise to David that the nations (the Gentiles) shall be called into relationship with God (see Isaiah 2) *and* the center of opposition that will kill him and face judgment (see Matthew 24).  That’s because the stone building is just the sign pointing to the reality.  The *real* temple for Jesus is not a big stone building in Jerusalem.  It is his own body (“Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”).  He is telling his disciples that the new covenant in his blood is going to triumph over the hostility he and they are going to face.

He is not promising a magical earth-moving service any more than the parable of the prodigal son is the chronicle of a domestic dispute in a Judean household or his remark about taking the log out of one’s eye is an Iron Age Health and Safety report.

You really need to learn how to read Jewish literature. ...
... He is not promising a magical earth-moving service

My apologies!  I didn’t realize Mr. Seeber was Jewish…:)

God wants us all in heaven with Him. How many times have I looked at an amputee and thought how trivial my sufferings and anxieties are. BY GOD’S GRACE my heart is changed. How many times in a day does a happy, joy filled amputee change hearts? An athiest could look at a miraculous healing of an amputee and could still find reasons to deny God. By their logic, what kind of God would heal just one person why still allowing all this suffering? They would still be stuck between Mark’s two stools.

Although I think that “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?” is an invalid argument against belief in God, it is what Alvin Plantinga would call a potential defeater for Christianity. Jesus Himself said, “if you ask anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:14) and “Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven” (Matthew 18:19). Before anyone accuses me of being over-literal, let’s not forget that the New Testament depicts Jesus as raising the dead. So it would be very, very strange if there had never been a case of an amputee being healed.

Fortunately, there are at least two cases of amputees being healed in history. Luke 22:49-51 records one such healing: “When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, ‘Lord, should we strike with our swords?’ And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, ‘No more of this!’ And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.” The other healing was the miracle of Calanda. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Calanda . Read this article first before you read the skeptics’ “debunkings” because they are surprisingly misinformed about the key facts of the case.

So in order for God to exist, there must be no suffering. What kind of world would that be? Well there would be no gravity since little babies learning to walk, mountain climbers, swimmers.etc. all suffer fighting against gravity. A teenage boy would desire a girl and the girl would have to simultaneously have to desire him. Otherwise one of them is going to suffer. We would have to say goodbye to all the microbes,insects, and animals that cause us the slightest bit of grief. The sun could not be as bright as it is since people can blind themselves looking at it too long. Volcanoes could not exist since they spew poisons and ash which sometimes cause suffering. Say goodbye to Hawaii at that point. Earthquakes caused by shifts in the tectonic plates cause suffering. Say goodbye then to every mountain range. In fact say goodbye to all the land since eventually erosion would level everything and we would all be under water. Say goodbye to rain since my goodness flash flooding causes suffering. Finally, think of all the suffering going on now in the minds of scientists that are trying to resolve the great mysteries of science. Say goodbye to science. Poor Newton got some of it right but not all. Imagine his suffering (of course he would not have died) when Einstein developed the general theory of relativity. So in my mind, I have no trouble believing that God would create such a wonderful world with all of its beauty and mystery and love and still ALLOW not command that suffering to exist.

I think that the lives of recent saintly people ought to demonstrate that these people accepted suffering rather than end their lives because of it. Blessed Pope John Paul II suffered with his Parkinsons while in the public eye, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta suffered her depression with a smile while doing for others in greater need, Mother Angelica who founded EWTN wor a back brace and two leg braces for years, probably most of her life before a miraculous healing took the need for braces away. None of these people would have chosen suffering on purpose, but each bore their sufferings for the love of God. And God made holy people of them.

Specifically, we have the spread of AIDS associated with mis-information about birth control…”

I’m going to keep asking this question as long as it takes: Why should people in southern Africa, where AIDS is the worst in the world, care what the Pope says about anything?

They’re 90%+ non-Catholic

As it happens, my best friend lost his leg in the second grade when a man brought the son he had kidnapped to enroll him in school. He also brought a suitcase bomb which killed him, his son, the school principle, another person, and injured a bunch of kids, including my friend. Now what kind of intellectual (not to mention moral) pygmy blames that human act on God?

An atheist, of course.

DKeane asks: “Isn’t the act of using suffering to get someone to love you a horrible concept?” Of course it is. And applying it to God is making God in man’s image, the opposite of what the Bible says. It’s a libel.
If you were libeled, wouldn’t you want a chance to redeem yourself, to clean up the dirt on your name? Jehovah does, which is why is son told us to pray for the “hallowing” [cleaning up] of his name.

Suffering is the number one example given for the non-existence of God and frankly is a cop out for not looking within oneself.
Suffering is a result of imperfect people living in an imperfect world. 

Mankind does the allowing of suffering and is responsible for the needless hunger, malnutrition, disease, living in poor conditions, war, pollution, etc.. The selfish choices of men who believe that there is not enough to go around will hoard money, homes and possessions leaving little to those less capable of achieving the same; dump toxic wastes into the clean air and water which cause deformities and health issues; men who use power selfishly to manipulate, abuse, and coerce others and those who cause war and hatred, that can bring down entire villages for their own purposes.  Those that condone this behavior are just as guilty of stealing lives from others less fortunate.

The fall out from all of this selfishness is always to man’s disadvantage… disease, cancer, birth defects, war casualties, health issues, homelessness, poverty,etc..

No, God does not allow suffering, man does. Man created it, maintains it and increases it every day, dispite the technological advancements in health and science.  Whatever suffering there is, God uses it for our good when we enter into it with Christ on our side. 

Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.”

Jeremiah 29:13 says, “For I know that thoughts that I have for you, thoughts of goodness not evil, thoughts to give you a future and a hope.”

God does not allow suffering, man does.  God promises to repair the damage caused by sufferring if the sufferer is intent on serving God and not himself. 

We have, as human beings, the ability to REASON right from wrong and the ability to choose those things that are right from those things that are wrong.  We have the “freedom” to make that “choice” for ourselves.  We also must understand, and accept the consequences, that go along with being free, to make the choices that we do.

MORAL DILEMA in the face of good and evil becomes a hard choice for us all when added to personal desire.  Adam and Eve doubted in the sincerity of another and were overwhelmed with their own personal desire which hampered their ability to reason correctly.  This is what the story of Adam and Eve is all about.  The story, if read metaphorically is a wealth of moral and ethical learning.  Literally read it becomes a field ground for attack. 

The story of Adam and Eve, I believe was told as a metaphor for imbalanced lives.  Adam and Eve were perfectly balanced in mind, body and spirit which coincides with the balance of nature.  When they eat the fruit, they create an imbalance between nature and themselves by ELEVATING DISIRE above all else.  They created the EGO of man.  They saw all the things that they could have and didn’t have and now wanted.  They put themselves in direct competition with nature and/or God.

This story and God’s command is a reminder, if you will, to not put yourself in situations that would be ‘overwhelming’ for yourself and your desire(physical needs). The lens of love is the very reason that the command to not eat is given.  Adam and Eve, asleep in their niativity and innocence are rudly awakened.

We do this with our own children when we tell, explain and threaten not to do something because of the consequences we KNOW will occur, BUT they go ahead and do it anyway.  They are surprised that what we said was true and they try to hide behind lies and pointing fingers.  They are awakened to the possibility that life is not what they believed it to be.  In order to feel balanced again they keep testing life (and us as parents) as a result. 

Fighting back can only be accomplished by going backwards and becoming like children again.  Through seeking awareness of your true spiritual self; by knowing who you are and using the experience of others to guide you, the Tree will get chopped down to a manageable size. 

In my opinion, since we live in a relative world, we will always have opposing thoughts, words and deeds. It is just a fact of this life, at this time, in this world.  In this same sense, Athiests are playing what the world considers the negative hand while Christians are playing the opposite positive one.  On top of all of this, lay the concepts of awareness, consciousness and spirituality. 

We are all spiritual beings living within a material body, having experiences, each day, which lead us in becoming aware of who we are. This awareness of ourselves occurs at different levels for everyone, just as there are many different ways to learn.  Criticism of one another has no place in a world of learning and self awareness.

It is a superficial and shallow mind that faults God for suffering.  That a person might have nine fingers rather than ten neglects the very simple reality that they have fingers at all, or for that matter, hands. 

That I have sight, for instance, and someone born blind hasn’t does not in the least suggest caprice on the part of God, any more than favoritism.  I have not merited sight, the blind have not merited blindness, and none of us have merited anything so extraordinary or exceptional as the gift of even a moment of life, much less a lifetime.

If I were to take my sight for granted, I will most certainly take for granted that I cannot see all things, no matter how diligently I might look.  But that I can see anything at all is a gift, and one that I can only truly appreciate if I realize that it might otherwise be lost.

“the world is chockablock with various accounts of miraculous healings.”
Except, of course, that is a lie.
“who does not fearlessly follow evidence”
You have no “evidence”.
“who is constrained to ignore evidence of the miraculous by his creed”
That is a lie.
“Somebody without a theology of the crucifixion or the resurrection doesn’t get this.”
Because it doesn’t make a lick of sense.
“St. Thomas tells us that God allows evil so that his glory will be shown even over evil.”
That’s silly and stupid.
“We don’t have the option of escaping the Cross.”
Of course we do.

@DKeane: If you are truly interested in the problem of evil and suffering and how it fits with the reality of God, please read this article: http://catholicexchange.com/the-problem-of-evil/ . It is the best I have read on the issues. And, no, I don’t think your caricature of God as the abusive husband is fair or accurate for reasons given in the article. On the other hand, if you aren’t really seeking for truth, it won’t help you.

Mr. Cummings,

You demonstrate in spades why atheists have no place in public conversation. There is ample documentation of miracles and healings, but you lack the honesty to address it. 

Just another atheist.

“If God doesn’t exist, why are you blaming him for being cruel?”
What a silly thing to say.
“If your beef is really about special treatment then why single out the “God people”?”
Because their special treatment is more “undeserved” than other such special treatments.  Freedom versus theocracy - a spectrum.  Why not freedom and no special political privileges for “God people”?  One estimate is that tax breaks of various kinds in the US are worth many billions of dollars every year.
“You clearly don’t agree so why are you here?”
To point out your irrationality.  Remember, this posting started out “trendier pieces of atheist agitprop”.  You are bating atheists to respond.
“You’ve seen the Christian responses to these types of objections here and on other blogs.”
And they are uniformly called absurd and irrational by atheists of course.
“Without Religion, there could be no science”
That’s stupid.
“If we understood God (or the concept of God) fully ...”
Always the fallback - out god is mysterious - cannot be understood.  That’s simply a cop out.  You can’t criticize something you don’t understand.  Ridiculous.  The term Sophisticated Theologian has been trademarked by Jerry Coyne.  Go read his blog and you are welcome to comment there.
“the concept of a God who is so much more than we see and touch”
Better known as “making stuff up” due to “wishful thinking”.
“The reason which I embrace holds much more promise than yours.”
My opinion is that your opinion is “wishful thinking”.
“begins his account of man with a paradise in Eden”
Bible mythology is not “evidence”.
“That is, every problem of man since has been the fault of Adam indirectly or man himself.”
What a silly concept based on a ridiculous mythology!
“Fortunately, there are at least two cases of amputees being healed in history.”
Hilarious.  Your mythology is not “evidence”.
“Now what kind of intellectual (not to mention moral) pygmy blames that human act on God?  An atheist, of course.”
Ridiculous.  Why should someone who does not believe that any gods exist blame anything on any non-existent gods?
“Mankind does the allowing of suffering and is responsible ...”
Now about the suffering caused by evolution over the last 3 billion years—- 99% of all species went extinct.  I don’t mankind deserves any blame.  And there is no god to blame.  The natural world just “is”.

From your link:
“If the universe and all things in it are the unintended result of the purposeless ebb and flow, expansion and collapse, explosion and fusion of matter and energy, then we have lost the grounds for complaint about all the evil in the world.”
Pretty much correct.  But humans do hold those who have “free will” responsible for their actions.
“Paradoxically, then, eliminating God because of the existence of evil means embracing an impersonal, que será será cosmos utterly indifferent not only to our complaints but even to the distinction between good and evil itself.”
Why make this assertion?  Humans do make a distinction between good and evil.  Many distinctions are codified in laws.  There are different laws for different societies.  Do you want to live under Sharia?  Why not?  Obviously it’s “God’s Law” according to Muslims.
“The problem of evil, then, resides not merely in the presence of evil. In no small part, evil is problematic because we do not agree upon what things actually are evil.”
Quite so.  So what?  What does this have to do with any god?
“the intelligibility of the universe lies within but also exceeds our human intelligence.”
An interesting assertion.  What is the evidence?  None?  Why is this important?
“if we recognize that in order to retain evil, the cosmos and its contents must be the intentional result of an intelligent creator”
Oops.  This is a non-sequitur.  So his “argument” fails.
“With the Incarnation, the reality of evil is absorbed into the deity”
Hilarious.  Evil mysteriously “went away”.
“Of course, this answer can only and ultimately be grasped as the answer by the gift of faith.”
So, this makes sense only if you believe without evidence.  Oops.

@E. Cummings

“With the incarnation, the reality of evil is absorbed into deity.”

Christ paid the price for our sins, took them on and washed them clean by the blood of his death on the cross.  What he took to heaven within him was NOT EVIL but the Treasure of Israel ... God’s chosen (144,000) golden refined by the fire of their trials souls…the lost souls of Israel.

Christ came to save the LOST SOULS OF ISRAEL ONLY!  By these souls , from the time of Christ’s assumption into heaven to sit at the power seat (right hand) of GOD, all the world has been seeded (new souls have been made). EVERYONE IS OF CHRST or a CHRISTIAN.  Even Atheists…....no one has a choice in this.  GOD’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  The Lord’s Prayer IS the entire plan.  Before this time having faith or receiving the gift of
faith was the only way to be accepted as a Christian.

EVIL NEVER WENT AWAY.  EVIL WILL NEVER GO AWAY.
we live in a world that is relatives….good/bad, hot/cold, up/down, etc., while our Lord lives in the world of absolutes.
He cannot be anything but go, just as man can be both good/just and bad/unjust.

The ultimate bottom line, IMHO! is that with REASON, KNOWLEDGE of GOOD and EVIL and FREE WILL we get to CHOOSE which side to work for.  In doing so, we REAP and SOW that which is associated with them.  Everything else is just window dressing.

Yet scour the Lourdes healings database and you will not find a single instance of an amputated limb growing back. Presumably the faithful travel there to pray for a miracle, and God answers some. Is there any doubt that thousands (millions even?) have prayed for a limb or digit to be regrown? Why has it never happened? And from the “you can’t have it both ways” department, if God ‘allows suffering to proceed”, why do Christians pray to Him for relief from it, and insist that miraculous cures happen frequently? And what do Christians make of the fact that Hindus, Muslims, Mormons and even atheists also report the same “miraculous” healings?

Why has [an amputated limb regrowing] never happened [at Lourdes]?
 
I don’t know. God’s miraculous work is not subject to statistical analysis, only his Providence is (through the methods of natural science). Moses said, “You shall not test the Lord your God.” You seem to want to subject God to a scientific test, but the Church has known that this was bogus since before there was science. Which isn’t to say the Church is right, just that she has never imagined that more data would ever “prove” God in that sense. That’s not the kind of proof or evidence that would ground the kind of relationship she wants to have with God. That kind of relationship would end up being like the relationship we moderns have with the natural world: manipulation and control. If God is subject to manipulation and control, if we can harness his power like we harness the oxygen-hydrocarbon reaction to drive our cars, then he is no longer God.
 
The church might be completely wrong. God might not exist. But if he does, he is certainly not what you imagine us to imagine him to be.

@Jon W

Well said!

James H writes, in re AIDS and birth control:
“I’m going to keep asking this question as long as it takes: Why should people in southern Africa, where AIDS is the worst in the world, care what the Pope says about anything? They’re 90%+ non-Catholic.”
Not so, I believe. Example: in Rwanda in 1994 the Church expressed dismay at Hutu killing Tutsi when 70% or more of both cultures were nominally Catholic. Most other African countries, when colonized by Europeans, also were “converted” to the predominant form of Christianity in the colonizing country. Today it’s acknowledged that the lay people ‘go to church’ whether or not they also practice their indigenous, mostly animist, religions. Consider that one of the prominent native clergymen, Desmond Tutu, is an Anglican Bishop.

In re Lourdes: Archaeologists have found a site on the Seine that overlays an ancient, previous place of worship. There are the usual votive offerings of stone or metal body parts, in gratitude for healings of the respective areas. I don’t know if any are thought to represent limb replacement.
This may be the one I have in mind, or a similar one:
http://www.interfaithmarianpilgrimages.com/pages/Bar-sur-Seine.htm
In any case, it seems there was a pre-Christian “our Lady”.

Doug, I see no mention in your article of pre-Christian metal limbs (metal prosthetic) which would really amaze me because most pre-Christian cultures didn’t do work in metal (Bronze is too soft to use for human prosthetics, as is gold, you need iron or steel or modern alloys for that).

Add healings: At John ch. 9 the blind man whom Jesus healed told the Pharisees, “From the beginning of the world it has not been heard, that any man has opened the eyes of one born blind.” (Douay) But Jesus may not have encountered any missing limbs. Such problems of a congenital nature were and are rare (no Thalidomide then!), and traumatic loss in those medically-primitive days was usually fatal.
That doesn’t mean the problem is incurable, but it will be handled on God’s timetable, not ours. Isaiah, talking about the future restoration of earth to paradisaical conditions, says, “Neither shall he that is near, say: I am feeble. The people that dwell therein, shall have their iniquity taken away from them.” (ibid.; KJV has, “And the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick: the people that dwell therein [shall be] forgiven [their] iniquity.”) Since “the wages of sin is death”, even that will be “no more”: Rev 21: 3,4.
Begs the question: How do we get into such a wonderful ‘dwelling’?

Ted, I’m not sure what point you’re making.
The ‘metal limbs’ I did mention were models, meant to thank the “goddess” for restoring lameness e.g.
The pre-Christian industrial world often obtained its tin from Cornwall. Iron is mentioned in scripture as being of ancient use.
The link was taken from a Google search on healing miracles on the Seine. I remember an article in Scientific American decades ago on the topic. “Bar-sur-Seine” translates as “Bar on the Seine”. However, the one in the SA article may have been another site. Not part of my belief system anyway; I just offered it for perspective.

In any case, it seems there was a pre-Christian “our Lady”.
 
I hope so. I would hate to think that a society’s only high and holy symbols were exclusively masculine ones.

Bad news: The Bible’s ‘highest and holiest’ person (not a symbol) is Jehovah. Ex 15:3, Douay: “The Lord is as a man of war, Almighty is his name.” And angels are always masculine.
Sorry. :-)

That’s why I said, “high and holy”, not “highest and holiest”. Furthermore, that’s a pretty flat-footed reading of scripture. The Christian church is well aware that God is not, literally, male, and that the masculine imagery is analogous. Always has been. Ancient people were not as dumb as modern, scientific man.

@Jon W
“You seem to want to subject God to a scientific test”
-
Nothing quite so sophisticated as a test Jon, just something that meets the requirements of basic and probability. This has nothing to do with the Church’s relationship with God, nor would having evidence of miracles be manipulative. In fact, I don’t see how proof of a miracle could be anything other than wonderfully positive for the Church.
-
BTW, I appreciate your sincere “I don’t know” answer, which is perfectly acceptable. You even go so far as to say “God might not exist”. I would also state that “God might exist” because I don’t have an understanding of the universe. Yes, of course this is unknowable, but if there is a God, why would He rig the game by making His existence most apparent to the poorly educated and gullible, while smart, well-adjusted, and well-educated people have to make spurious statements like “God’s miraculous work is not subject to statistical analysis”?

“Yes, of course this is unknowable, but if there is a God, why would He rig the game by making His existence most apparent to the poorly educated and gullible, while smart, well-adjusted, and well-educated people have to make spurious statements like “God’s miraculous work is not subject to statistical analysis”?”

Mostly because the “poor and gullible” are the ones who aren’t prideful enough to subject God to such arbitrary tests and take reality as is.  The so-called anointed “smart, well-adjusted” are the least qualified to attribute such qualities to themselves, and conveniently enough those who consider what make up those qualities just happen to find it in themselves.  Shock!

Honestly, the hubris exhibited by some people.  I’ve met wiser people at my local McDonald’s than some Phds.

@Zeke
Well, I guess that I would say that requesting that someone fulfill the requirements of “basic probability” before trusting them is, in itself, a kind of a test. You wouldn’t do it with anyone you were planning on marrying. Scientific knowledge quite properly has to be subject to mathematical modeling and subsequent prediction, which would be insulting to any real person. Your trust in a person is not a prediction based on an application of the scientific method and consequent prediction of their behavior within reasonable tolerances of error. It’s a gift of yourself to them. Now, you may have good reasons why you think that your lover is, in fact, sincere, but they are not, in the end, strictly scientific ones.
 
So basically, the Catholic attitude is to look at the universe like you would look at a potential lover, and say, “Well, hmm. Not perfect ... there’s a lot of bad, here ... but then there’s a lot of good as well. And the good is so incredibly, wonderfully good that I’m willing to believe what the Church says about God having a way of taking the bad upon himself and fixing it [Jesus and all that]. I don’t understand it, exactly, but I see similar patterns of self-sacrifice in loving relationships, self-sacrifice that turns bad into good, so maybe, just maybe, it’s all true and it’s all more beautiful than I ever expected. Maybe it’s worth believing in God.”
 
And believing in God is supposed to be a way of living without hedging your bets. (Pascal’s Wager is bull——.) One of the ugliest things in the world is evil committed by desperate people trying to guard the goodness they possess. If we really believe in God, then we should give ourselves to the goodness without ever feeling like we need to commit any injustice to guard that goodness because, in the end, God will take care of it all. The Church, whether realistically or not, teaches that he has taken care of it and is taking care of it, and that’s the Cross.

One reason God MIGHT rig the game that way is to create a reason for humility.

I would point out that by the strict rules of the game, all Catholics are *officially* agnostics.  We can have moral assurance that the faith is true, but absolute assurance is not possible for any soul living in a human brain.  Absolute assurance is a limitation of the species, and if you find somebody claiming absolute assurance without any evidence at all (not even subjective evidence) you should run away from them VERY quickly.  A person who knows for sure and who never doubts, is the mark of somebody who is severely undereducated on the subject.

“Ancient people were not as dumb as modern, scientific man.”
But they could read, write, and understand Hebrew, a gendered language.
“Christian church is well aware that God is not, literally, male”
Like the proverbial 300-pound gorilla, he is what he says he is ... just IMO.
“pretty flat-footed reading of scripture.”
On the whole, I take that as a compliment. :-)
Do you have a point?

It seems that my main point about probability has been miscontrued. I’m talking about the probability of miraculous healings being authentic, the topic of Shea’s article. Either God intervenes in human affairs and chooses to eliminate the suffering of those who pray to him, or he doesn’t. Each year millions pray for healing at Lourdes alone, and a statistically insignificant number are healed. As the medical community knows, sometimes people just get better.
-
The reason atheists like the “God hate amputees” argument is that a regrown limb is the type of non-self limiting miracle that would be unexplained without divine intervention. Medical experts have organized studies on the effectiveness of intercessory prayer and healing, and found no correlation. The fact that Muslims report the exact same miraculous healings should tell you something. And of course then you must ask why God would choose to ease the suffering of only some of his flock.
-
Or you could rightly conclude that if millions of people annually prayed to a potted plant for relief from their ailments, statistically a few will get relief. It doesn’t mean that the potted plant has performed a miracle.

The reason atheists like the “God hate amputees” argument is that a regrown limb is the type of non-self limiting miracle that would be unexplained without divine intervention. Medical experts have organized studies on the effectiveness of intercessory prayer and healing, and found no correlation.
 
If this is the kind of God you would believe in - that is, one who subjects his miraculous interventions to the analysis and control of “believers” -  then it would be far better not to believe in God. Whatever that “thing” would be (Thor, Odin, Zeus, FSM, alien), it would not be God. Seriously, if after examination you find Christian prayer always working with a 28.3% greater effectiveness than any other kind of religious prayer, let me know. Because that would mean we’ve been worshiping some kind of super-powerful alien or something, which is disgusting.
 
Miracles are the suspension of God’s ordinary actions (which we study with the tools of natural science) done in order to communicate a particular and personal message of love to particular people. Furthermore, God is way, way, way too smart to get caught by moderns looking to analyze his miraculous gifts with the tools of Western science. Now, I totally admit: all this looks like special pleading. And it is, if what we’re aiming at is that relationship of analysis, mathematical modeling, prediction, and control that is natural science. But if we are aiming at a relationship with a person then we would not expect anything else. That’s why I keep bringing in the lover analogy. If you are prepared to fall in love with goodness and give yourself to It, totally and without reservation, then you are ready to “believe” in God in the sense which Catholics mean. If all you want is some kind of abstract assurance of his existence, then you would be far better just to study the creation and appreciate and be astounded at its beauties. You will be honoring God by that far more than you would be honoring him by “praying” in a lab coat with a clipboard and stopwatch. There are a good number of honest agnostic scientists, marveling at the beauty of creation and loving it, who are closer to the Kingdom of Heaven than all the Catholics who walk around with bitter and angry hearts because God hasn’t answered their prayers.

@Doug
Your replies remind me of the time I tried to argue evolution with one of the guys from the Creation Research Institute (or whatever). He was smug, slippery, dishonest, and unwilling to engage in any actual discussion.

@Zeke- projecting much?  I find YOU to be smug, slippery, dishonest, and unwilling to engage in any actual discussion.  You insist that YOUR narrow definitions of evidence and statistical significance are the ONLY possible definitions, and you refuse to listen to anybody else’s axiomatic definitions.  If you actually bothered to listen to what Doug was saying, you’d find out that God Heals Amputees all the time- just for a different definition of the word “Heals” than you were previously familiar with.  You’d also see why your definition of statistical significance is simply not valid when it comes to testing prayer- and in fact why your expectation that I assume somebody taught you as a child for the relationship between God, Miracles, and Man is simply bad theology.

To paraphrase a children’s book about God written by CS Lewis, Aslan is not a Tame Lion.  God, like nature, works by his own rules, not by yours.  Why not adjust your expectations to fit God instead of forcing him into YOUR narrow definition?

Oy! Ted Seeber: The “smug and slippery” comment was from me to Doug. Zeke is being very polite and thoughtful. He just disagrees.

@Jon, @Zeke- sorry.  I just assumed that it was a critique of the last thread I had seen- these are coming through in e-mail but for some strange reason the name is being stripped.

“But if he does, he is certainly not what you imagine us to imagine him to be.”
Very slippery.  What do you “imagine” him to be?  Why can that not be discounted as “wishful thinking”?  You have no “evidence”.  Supposedly you have “miracles”, but those are discounted as mere unreproducible anecdotes.
“If this is the kind of God you would believe in - that is, one who subjects his miraculous interventions to the analysis and control of “believers” -  then it would be far better not to believe in God.”
Prayer seems to be an attempt at “control”.  So it is the kind of god you believe in.  So apparently you agree that it would be better to not believe in that kind of god.

Prayer seems to be an attempt at “control”.
 
That right there is exactly the problem. A son who asks his father for a bicycle for Christmas is not attempting to “control” his father. Likewise a man who asks his girlfriend to marry him. These are not relationships of control. These are relationships of love. The greatest commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, etc,” not “You shall take the objective evidence for the existence of the Lord your God into account when you plan your agendas”.

Thank you Jon, I now understand the atheist mind better.  It’s all about control.  The rejection of authority, the attempt to domineer God, is why they think prayer doesn’t work- because it doesn’t work for that situation, if what you are seeking with your prayer is anything other than the relationship, then the answer to the prayer is going to be NO.

And that’s exactly how it should be.

Jon,
In case there is any confusion, I am an atheist, so whether we’re talking about Thor, Odin, Zeus or any of the countless dead Gods now found in the trash can of human history, I have no more (or less) belief in them than the Christian God. My point, which I think you are missing, is that there is no reason (or scientific evidence) to support religious claims that miraculous healings occur, or indeed that prayer has any effect. Am I completely misunderstanding the Catholic faith to state that the Church teaches that this is true?
-
You mention that this may look like special pleading (with a big “if” afterwards) but surely this is besides the point. The Church has decreed numerous miracles at Lourdes authentic. Pilgrims travel there by the millions annually to pray for relief from suffering, and the Church affirms that this actually happens. Does it really, and if so, why? Muslims also can attest to any number of miraculous healings performed by Allah. Is it even remotely likely to you that they are delusional but Christians who report the same experiences are not? We don’t need a lab coat and a clipboard to arrive at the correct answer here, just some basic honesty and willingness to look at the facts.

@Zeke, why is reason limited to science?

Zeke,
 
Yeah, I figured you were. But as long as your interested in keeping up our civil conversation, no problem.
 
It seems to me - correct me if I’m wrong - that you’re falling into a little bit of confusion about God. “God”, as the Christians talk about him, is not a super-powerful being like Thor, Zeus, Odin, et al. The reason why Christians believe in only one God is because there cannot be more than one. God is not a single powerful being compared with all the other beings, or even the whole creation itself. God is Ultimate Reality itself.
 
To talk about Jehovah, the God of Christians, or Allah, the God of Muslims, would be a completely wrong way of talking about it. If I can offer an analogy, the different accounts of God in Christianity vs. (say) Islam would be like the difference between the Lamarckian Theory of Evolution and Darwinian Theory of Evolution. They are two different theories, yes, and one of them is significantly wrong and the other mostly right, but they’re talking about the same objective reality: the common descent of all life on earth. So Christians view Muslims like Darwinians view Lamarckians: they’re wrong about exactly what’s going on, but they are talking about the same thing, and that’s good.
 
Now, because God is an objective reality, like common descent, and the Creator of everything, including people in other religions, he has some sort of relationship with them, too. He is, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, drawing all men (human beings) to himself. Therefore, it is not outside of the realm of possibility that he should do miracles for non-Christians, and Christians do not claim that he doesn’t. That does not, of course, mean that any old religion will do. A Lamarckian could make many true observations and even predictions about the process of evolution, but he would not, in the end, be right. In many things he would be wrong.
 
This is why the Church, while it judges miracles “authentic” or “worthy of belief”, does not require Christians to believe in them. I could privately denounce the whole Lourdes thing and remain a good Catholic. The “authentic” or “worthy of belief” label just means that the Church has checked it out and there doesn’t seem to be anything sketchy about it, so you can’t be a jerk to Catholics who believe it. People can offer it as evidence if it speaks to them and to you, but you don’t have to listen to them.
 
As a matter of fact, I, myself, tend to skepticism in these areas. I grew up in a somewhat hysterical charismatic church, and heard a lot of bogus miracle claims and never once ran into an actual miracle. I’m not saying they don’t happen. I think they do. I just have never run into one. I have, however, talked to people who have seen queer sights and whom I hesitate to call crazy or deluded. In any case, my faith in Jesus Christ does not rest on experiencing a miracle.
 
So, no, I don’t think people in other religions are delusional. I think they’re people whom God is drawing to himself and occasionally sending messages of love to and who sometimes misinterpret those messages. And I think the Catholic Church is carrying a message about God, from God, a glorious good message, almost too good to be true, and that message is the story of Jesus Christ.

Jon W ,
Nice post, thanks!

Ted,
I don’t think I’ve argued that reason is limited to science. I will state though that scientific reasoning and religious reasoning are completely different animals. Religious reasoning lacks the fundamental ability to consider new sources of information, disregard old dogmas that new information contradicts, and come to a conclusion based on where the data leads. There is no Islamic science or Hindu science or Mormon science, there is just science. Believing something to be true on poor evidence is openly ridiculed in scientific society but admired in religious circles (faith is a virtue, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed). In 2012, how many scientists believe the earth to be 10,000 years old? How many Christians believe this? Can there be any doubt that religious reasoning is to blame?
-
I don’t believe that spiritual questions are best answered by the scientific method (so far at least), but certainly some specific religious claims should not be immune to science. In this case, the authenticity of miracles or efficacy of prayer. Ted, a few posts ago you mentioned that “a person who knows for sure and who never doubts, is the mark of somebody who is severely undereducated on the subject.” We agree on this point it seems. Do you ever doubt that had you been born in a Muslim country that you would be making the same fervent defense of those denying that Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged horse, and that Jesus wasn’t divine?

Jon,
I see no reason whatsoever why we can’t have a civil conversation, as we have done so far, and thanks for defending me from Ted’s previous attribution of other remarks to me (BTW Ted, apology accepted, no harm done).  That said, I don’t exactly buy into your nuanced definition of the Christian God, whom the Church teaches is all-powerful, all-knowing, cares for each of us individually, and has and continues to intervene in human affairs.
-
I like your analogy that religious differences are akin to different perspectives on the mechanics of evolution. Others are glimpsing the same God, so to speak, but misunderstand the truth of Him. Fortunately, there are ways to test the validity of such theories, and Lamarckism has been determined (mostly) to be false. As I wrote above to Ted, because religious reasoning is immune to the same critical analysis that modern science uses to test the truth of a proposition like evolutionary change, it is not possible to determine which religion is the better description of the nature of God. You are clearly too kind to call out Muslims as delusional, but you seem to have no problem believing that they are wrong on some very important things. But this really goes to the heart of the problem – you adhere to a faith that likewise makes some truly fantastic claims about reality, and are compelled to give a pass to other religions that make claims that a 5 year old would find suspicious. If Islam is true, then Jesus was not divine, and Christianity is false, full stop. Did Jesus visit the Americas and the angel Moroni reveal sacred writings to Joseph Smith in the recent past? Is the Garden of Eden in present day Jackson County, Missouri, or are Mormon’s delusional to believe this? It’s clear what I think. Yet religious beliefs benefit from special treatment in our society, and we are told we must respect claims that we should label, in the ordinary sense of the word, delusional.
-
Back to miracles, of which you are skeptical, where do you draw the line on what you believe the Church is right about? Why doubt them at all? If you doubt that the Church is correct about these, why believe they have the correct interpretation of God’s views on contraception, for example?

Zeke, I was responding to this phrase:
“My point, which I think you are missing, is that there is no reason (or scientific evidence)”

Which is why I responded with my question on why the only reasoning you accept is scientific reasoning.

Religious reasoning does NOT lack the ability to consider new evidence.  The Church Councils are the method by which evidence is criticized and debated within Catholicism; they are called whenever they are needed.  Wikipedia has a great explanation of the different types of councils and synods, and why they are called.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synod#Roman_Catholic_usage

Now of course there are definitions that can’t change (dogma) but those exist in science as well (it would be ridiculous in science to insist that 2+2=5, for instance, but there’s about as much proof for that as the Dogma of the Virgin Birth).  It’s hard to have a system without some definitions to start out with.  But the test should be how well those definitions make the model fit reality, not if the definition itself is valid.

Reasoning is more about what Catholics call Doctrine than Dogma, and it is demonstrable that doctrine changes as new evidence is gathered.  Doctrine is what having an informed conscience is all about- it’s the information that goes into an informed conscience, and it’s the stuff that we believe not because we have faith, but because we have reason and are convinced of it’s validity.

And finally there is discipline, which changes all the time- kind of like a teaching plan in physics.  The physical laws (dogma) and theories (doctrine) are the same regardless of the class and professor, but the discipline, how he chooses to teach those dogmas and doctrines, varies widely from teacher to teacher and changes constantly.

So it’s quite incorrect to say that religion can’t accept new evidence.  The assumptions between science and religion differ, but metaphysically, any rational system of thought MUST accept new evidence.

My basic problem with Islam as a religion is that it is specifically NOT a rational religion.  Even before you get to those claims about Jesus and flying horses, you have the basic incompatibility of a definition of Allah that changes from day to day, hour to hour, that says one thing to one prophet and something completely different to the same prophet a couple of seconds later.  In such a system rationality is not possible.  In such a system, miracles happen all the time because you can’t even expect the sun to rise in the east tomorrow morning.  Everything happens by the whim of Allah and we can understand none of it. (Pope Benedict XVI mad this point early on in a speech at the University of Regansberg, and several nuns and priests died for the insult).

Science can’t exist in a deep philosophical way without a rational God to drive it; no God or an irrational God logically means a chaotic universe that will defy all understanding and by which no principles or laws can be discovered.

Ted,
Well to be fair, you left off the end of my quote about reason, which is more to the point of this article. I wrote that “there is no reason (or scientific evidence) to support religious claims that miraculous healings occur, or indeed that prayer has any effect.”
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I understand the dogma-doctrine-discipline relationship, but let’s be honest Ted, your reasoning is bound by constraints not found in the secular world. I’ll concede that Catholicism seems to be the most enlightened of the various strains of Christianity, but I am of course referring to religious reasoning in general. I don’t really understand your analogy about 2+2=5 and the virgin birth, please clarify.
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You insist that religious reasoning is NOT lack the ability to consider new evidence, yet how do you explain why millions of Christians still believe that the earth is 10,000 years or so old, that there was a literal Adam and Eve, or that Noah built an ark that saved mankind? Is the jury still out on these preposterous claims in the Bible? Is anything other than religious reasoning at fault here?
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I’m with you on the irrationality of Islamic dogma, but that wasn’t my question. My question is do you even doubt for a moment that you would be championing the rationality of Islam and declaring Christianity a false religion if you were born and raised in a Muslim society?

I left off the end of your quote because the beginning is irrational enough to affect the conclusion.  Prayer is effective, but not in a way that you are measuring it; because you have blind spots in your assumptions.  You do not seem to recognize the difference between data, assumptions, axioms, and derived conclusions, and that is why you think religion has different constraints when it really does not.

The 10000 year old Earth and other YEC theories are 19th century interpretations of Protestant sects that have not been through the Councilar method.  I disregard them for that reason.

Same with Islam- no controls to show truth leads to a chaotic mess.  I doubt very stongly that I would even be a theist if born into such a culture.

Ted,
Of course you disregard the YEC theories, as do other Catholics and all virtually all scientists. It doesn’t change the fact that millions of Christians hold this as true due to religious reasoning. On one hand we have evidence about the age of the earth from all the natural sciences, and on the other hand we have the Bible. Since the Bible is the inerrant word of God, they reason, it cannot be false. There’s the constraint. The result is we have a Christian museum in the most scientifically advanced nation that ever existed that teaches our children there was a literal Garden of Eden, has an ark exhibit, and shows early men existing with dinosaurs.
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If the efficacy of prayer to ease suffering is completely beyond the scope of any measurement, how do you know it’s true? Is there any reasoning you have that doesn’t end with “it’s a mystery” or “I just know it’s true”?

Zeke, what is your problem with axiomatic definition?  After all, science has things that are true by definition as well.  2+2=4 regardless if people build museums to show that 2+2=5.

As for prayer, I think the problem is not that prayer is effective, but that you have a different definition of effective than I do.

Ted, before you get all worked up, my problem is that you seemed to state that there’s about as much evidence for the virgin birth as there is for 2+2=5. I mean, yes I agree with you on this, but it surprises me to hear you say it.
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OK then, what’s your definition of effective when it comes to prayer? Is there a better word than effective?

@Zeke- if you’ll look, there’s a NOT in the original statement.  The Virgin Birth is true for the same reason 2+2=5 is not true.  Because it’s an axiomatic definition.

You can’t prove an axiom.

I don’t believe that what prayer does for us, can be fully expressed in English.  Effective is at best a bad translation.  Almost all the effects of prayer are psychological and are internal to the person praying rather than to the wider world. There does seem to be a slight statistical link in group prayer, but I find it indistinguishable from friendship. 

When you’re looking for the effectiveness of prayer- you shouldn’t be looking at the physical effects, but rather for a mental effect, a change of expectation.

Sorry, an implied not.  My original statement is “It would be ridiculous in science to insist that 2+2=5, but there’s as much proof for that as the Virgin Birth”.  I see now how it could be read both ways.

The That I meant to refer to is the ridiculousness of 2+2=5.  The reason this is ridiculous is because of the definition 2+2=4.  The Virgin Birth in Christianity is also axiomatic.  It’s an assumption for which, at this late date (and likely even by the time St. Helena was researching it) there can be no proof.

New atheists in general remind me of the western university professor who went to visit the great Zen Buddhist Guru Nan-In back when Japan was first opened to the west.  Nan-In started by inviting the professor to tea.  When pouring the tea, Nan-In did not stop pouring when the cup was full, he kept pouring until the professor said “the cup is full, no more will go in”.  Nan-In replied “Like the cup, you are full of your own pre-conceptions and opinions; how can I teach you Zen until your cup is empty?”

http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/1acupoftea.html

We are so wedded to our preconceived notions of what words mean that we think we understand what the Church teaches, without bothering to ask what the Church means by those words rather than what we mean by them.

Heavy, Ted. And more than a little disappointing. At the end of all this discussion about the effectiveness of prayer, after slamming me for something another person posted, and getting all verklempt at my inability to understand your mis-worded analogy, you underwhelm us with
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“I don’t believe that what prayer does for us, can be fully expressed in English.  Effective is at best a bad translation.  Almost all the effects of prayer are psychological and are internal to the person praying rather than to the wider world.”
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and then close by criticizing all atheists in general for failing to ask the Church their particular meaning of ordinary words. This is religious reasoning in a nutshell.
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I could rattle off scientific axioms until next Thursday that became axiomatic BECAUSE they’ve been proven. The virgin birth may indeed be a Christian cornerstone, and it cannot be proven, but it requires the qualifier “Christian” axiom because it has no basis in factual discussions. The power of prayer to heal is another Christian axiom. Problem is, it’s one of those things that CAN be proven true or false, but Christians rig the terms of the experiment by using statements like the effects aren’t apparent to anyone but the prayer. How disingenous.

@Zeke- and yet, that is exactly how atheists have always treated religion.  Every single complaint you have of me, is one I have of the New Atheists.

You can’t prove an axiom, no matter how hard you try- it’s a DEFINITION.  There is no such thing as a proven axiom.  If you could prove it, it wouldn’t be an axiom- it wouldn’t need to be taken on faith.

The Virgin Birth is as much a fact as 2+2=4.  It is exactly the same type of fact- a definitional axiom.  It can’t be proven true or false, because all the evidence is long lost, just like all the evidence of why 2+2=4 is long lost.

I find your closedmindedness to be far more disappointing; you can’t even judge a different logical system by it’s own axioms.

And that, in the end, is EXACTLY what I was complaining about; and why I posted the koan of Nan-In’s cup of tea.

I cannot fill a cup that is already full, and I cannot teach a man who is so arrogant that he thinks his way is the only way and he can never be wrong.

Ted,
Ah, it’s semantics and this business about the definition of “axiom” that’s the problem. That, and I’m closeminded while your empty teacup is ready to consider all possibilities (unless they contradict what the Church teaches). As if an ex-Catholic like me never considered the likeliness of things like the virgin birth until I decided to post on this blog.
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By your reasoning, we could build an entirely new religion in this very comment section by declaring some tenets of this new faith axiomatic and definitionally unprovable yet true. It could be utter bullcrap, but it’s logic would be impenetrable, and non-believers of Tedzekeism could not refute the truth of our faith. And if others attempt to use common sense and rational thought to point out that there is no evidence to suggest that Tedzekeism is true, we could call them arrogant and closeminded. Then all we’d need is a shrine and a few people to testify that our healing waters cured their acne and watch the money come rolling in.

Yes, Zeke, which is even how atheism got started.  A Syphalic idiot in Germany started making up nonsense and people like you believed it.

Well Ted, I don’t know what syphalic means, or what German idiot you are referring to, but I suppose you mean to imply that atheism was “invented” sometime in the recent past. This is demonstrably false. If you were living in ancient Greece, would you be arguing for or against those who couldn’t quite accept the premise that Mt. Olympus was teeming with invisible Gods? Would you have been an unbelieving atheist? If not, what does that tell you?
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You assert that my teacup is full of my own (or others) preconceived notions and as such I’m unable to consider other ideas. As an ex-Catholic, I plead not guilty. Not only do I freely admit that I would change my philosophy, there is absolutely nothing preventing it. Your argument seems to be that all non-Catholics need to empty their cups and refill it with Catholic dogma, which implies that they are mistaken about their God. Yet we both disbelieve in all of the other past and present Gods that mankind has imagined to exist, except I disbelieve in one more than you - yours. But I’m the arrogant one here somehow.
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You maintain that Christian faith is not in conflict with reason, yet any reasonable questions are close-minded. Despite the fact that the secular world of science, untainted by religious reasoning, arrived with the truth about the age of the earth, Noah’s flood, and other Biblical nonsense, these first century ideas survive to this day for only one reason – the inability of believers to consider that their holy books might be wrong, lest the whole thing fall apart. The virgin birth of Jesus and 2+2=4 may be axiomatic statements, but to argue that both are equally worthy of consideration is absurd on its face, as is the notion that prayer heals. Rather than ad hominem criticism, why not respond to the questions posed?
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When asked about the lack of evidence that God heals the faithful that pray to him, you offer “when you’re looking for the effectiveness of prayer - you shouldn’t be looking at the physical effects, but rather for a mental effect, a change of expectation”.  In other words, nothing that praying to any other deity would produce. And what do you make of the fact that people who pray to Allah, Odin, or Poseidon report the same miracles? Yet your teacup has no room to admit anything other than Church dogma that tells you that this is true. You have a dilemma while I have none.
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You doubt that you would be a theist if born and immersed in Muslim culture. Why do you doubt this? Is it just a coincidence then that the vast majority of children born in Afghanistan become Muslim while the vast majority born in this country becomes Christian? Is it a sheer accident that you happened to be born and indoctrinated into the One True Faith, or is it much more likely that you subscribe to the particular religion you were born into due to social pressure, emotional consolation, attachment to tradition, etc.?
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Religious reasoning gives us statements like those made by Todd Akin that raped women don’t become pregnant, so there’s no need to permit abortions for even rape victims. Yet bounce over to the comment section on the article about this right-wing Christian nutcase on this very website and you’ll find nothing but support for him, and more than a few who share this absurd idea.

Hey guys, sorry I’ve been absent for the last few days. Pressing concerns in the real world and all that.
 
Zeke, the “syphilitic idiot in Germany” that Ted is referring to is Nietzsche.  And, Ted, while I think Zeke is significantly wrong about a number of things (esp. his application of naturalistic arguments against “gods” to that which cannot nor ever has fallen into that category), he is in a sense squarely in the Hebraic/Christian tradition of denouncing the gods of men as utterly false. Think of the stories of Daniel, like Bel and the Dragon, or the martyrdom of the early Church Father Polycarp where he was required to denounce the “atheists” (meaning the early Christians, who were called such by the Romans because they denounced the deities of the civic religion). Jews like Daniel and Christians like Polycarp sat in the same court as Greeks like Socrates and Plato, who condemned the powers we call “gods”, whatever they were, as beings utterly unfit to be worshiped by men who had within them the divine spark of reason and, hence, could understand for themselves goodness and the Natural Law, and by their free will choose the good for themselves.
 
Nevertheless, Zeke, I think you’re ignoring an interesting bit of data: that all these people who did stand at the beginning of the “atheistic” tradition were nonetheless convinced of the reality of the divine. There was something higher than man. Call it “heaven” or “the divine” or “the Way” or “the sum total of reality” or whatever, they all continued to hold that it was good, it was glorious, it was incomprehensible, and it was the origin of all things. And it wasn’t that all these guys recognized all the other local gods as utterly false but found themselves unable to go the last step and so kept their childhood god as the one true god. No, they all said this was something else entirely, and they recognized that they were each talking about the same thing: the fact that when man looks into his own being, he sees that he is not complete or sufficient in himself. He sees that there is a law that he must obey (or else be a bad man) but which he does not have to. He is not like an animal that merely obeys the instinct bred into it by evolution. Rather, man recognizes that his freedom and his reason give him a kind of separation or distance from this law, so that he realizes that it is not merely the pattern of his instinctive actions, but he also - at the same time - recognizes that he must obey this law. It is the Truth. You Shall Not Murder. What is it that is so integral to man that he recognizes it in the depths of his heart and reason, but so different from man that he experiences it as a call or a command from outside himself, so to speak? This is what we call “God”.
 
You say, Zeke, that you do not quite buy my nuanced understanding of God. But it is the one the Church (and the greatest philosophers of mankind) have always taught. Popular misconceptions notwithstanding, theologians like Thomas Aquinas (as central to the Catholic Tradition as you can get) are the teachers that the Church has endorsed as capturing the heart of the Christian (indeed, the broad classical theistic) understanding of who and what God is. This was practically the first thing my professors tried to hammer into me when I began my theology MA, and coming to understand it all of a sudden made so much sense out of what seemed strange and incongruous about my faith. Sure, lots of Catholics have a more Zeus-like conception of God. This is something the Church would love to root out. Baby steps, you know?
 
You’ve raised some interesting questions about miracles and God’s divine action that I’ve been thinking about these last few days. Hopefully, I’ll have enough time this afternoon to get my reply down in 1’s and 0’s. If not, coming soon….

Okay, now as regards miracles and divine action:
 
I need first to point out that Mark Shea’s article above is not an attempt to prove the faith by pointing to miracles. All he’s doing is defending the Church from the claim that unless the Church can produce a particular kind of miracle then that invalidates what we believe about God. He did not (and, more importantly, the Church does not) claim that miracles validate the Church’s belief in God or offer them as proof of his existence.
 
In fact, the Church does not ever, officially, point to current miracles as evidence for God’s existence or care for human beings. One of the fascinating incongruities between Thomas Aquinas and William Paley is that Thomas’s arguments for the existence of God are premised upon the consistency of the world, whereas Paley’s arguments are premised on the inconsistency of the world. Thomas says, “Look how the world acts according to consistent laws. That points to the existence of God.” Paley says, “Look how the world sometimes does not act according to consistent laws. That points to the existence of God.” It would all be hilariously incompetent duplicity on the part of the Church, if it weren’t for the fact that Paley (and his modern followers, the Intelligent Design guys) are utterly, utterly wrong. There is absolutely no public case to be made for the existence of God from the fact of miracles (even if they’re real). Because, remember, miracles are a particular message to a particular person for a particular (essentially private) purpose: as such, they cannot be held up to mankind in general as proof of God. The Church has always held that the final public revelation of God to the world was Jesus Christ. Any further supposed message from God might be true, might not be, but it cannot bind Christians or mankind in general, so you can’t demand that anyone - Christian, Muslim, atheist, or pagan - recognize it and respond.
 
Zeke, the more I’ve tried to take seriously the charge that if God was real we would see more, and more strongly attested, miracles, the more I cannot see the reasonableness of the challenge. Arguments like that are based upon the assumption that we can know (or guess) the peculiar relationship and the conditions of the relationship. But we just can’t.
 
A father might send one son a dozen care packages and another none, and you might reason that the father loved the first son more than the second. But it might be that the first son was in prison, while the second was on a covert mission for the CIA. There is no abuse there, no battered-wife syndrome, no special pleading, and not even any favoritism. There are just vastly different situations.
 
And the arguments that apply to individuals apply even to nations, cultures, and times. It says in the gospels that Jesus was unable to do any miracles in a particular town because of their lack of faith and resistance to his message. The culture of the town as a whole effected their individual relationships with God in such a way that someone observing the town would not have observed any uptick in the number of inexplicable healings after the arrival of Jesus. You might say: well, just compare that town to other towns and watch the trends, but, again, that assumes you know what the relative units of comparison are. Do you compare across towns? countries? neighborhoods? districts? synagogues? clans? eras in time? what? The complexity of the relationships that pertain only among humans and the justice that governs them is mind-boggling. How much more so if you bring in One whose care is not just this family or that religious community, but the whole Universe?
 
Again, the argument is sometimes made that if God cared for people (or his people) then he’d perform more miracles for them. But that’s not what we find in the Bible, and that’s not what the Church teaches. The Bible is not chock-full of miracles which suddenly stop as soon as people start learning to read and write. There are only a few times of miracles - particularly the Exodus, the ministries of Elijah and Elisha, and then the time of Christ and his apostles - and the rest of the time just the same-old same-old. Maybe 300 years of greater-than-average miraculous occurrences and then only in particular spots in response to particular people and to communicate a particular message, and this is over (roughly) a 2000 year period.
 
Most of the time the signs of God’s care and Providential provision are rather his governance of the creation and the regular cycles of nature. “Your Father in heaven sends his rain upon the just and the unjust”; “God levels the earth, softens it with showers, provides the grain”; “He sends rain in due season”; etc, etc, etc. The Hebrews saw nature not as merely a neutral mechanism, but rather as a constant sign and sacrament of God’s love for humanity. Again, as in the case of St Thomas’s proofs: it’s the consistency of natural laws that points to the existence of God.
 
Again, I cannot emphasize this enough: a miracle is not just an inexplicable occurrence. A miracle is rather an inexplicable occurrence in a particular situation, given to communicate a particular message. Most of the time, God communicates his love by giving us a creation that operates by rational laws, a creation that we can use our God-given reason to figure out how to cooperate with, so as to make our lives full, beautiful, and rich. This is the dignity he has granted to us and the care he lavishes on us.
 
Every once in a while, God wants to communicate a special message beyond this, for someone who needs it. It seems to me it is the height of presumption for me to assume that I know when, how, and what kind of message he would be communicating. And demanding a particular kind of miracle strikes me like a 16 year-old boy demanding a Corvette from his father before he’ll believe in his father’s love.

Frankly, most wise fathers would see that as a reason not to give him a Corvette.

Hi Jon,
Glad to hear from you, it is a pleasure to exchange thoughts with someone so polite, reasonable, and well spoken. I never really considered that early Christians were considered atheists with respect to the deities of that era. I suppose by that same token, we’re both atheists with respect to Jupiter!
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I agree that Mark Shea is not attempting to point to miracles to prove the truth of Christianity; he is clearly a bright man and well-educated in Catholic thought. But to your point, I don’t think it’s a caricature of Christianity to state that it is at least predicated on the reliability of gospel accounts of miracles. It seems at best, legalese, to assert that the Church refrains from “officially” endorsing miracles as proof that God is real and regularly intervenes in our affairs.
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While your nuanced understanding makes far less outrageous claims about God, perhaps it is tempered by the claims of virtually every other religion, past and present, that their God visits wondrous miracles on its faithful. I assume that you are likewise unswayed by the ten megaton displays of faith healing by the likes of Ted Haggard and Peter Popoff. The Church, if nothing else, consists of some very smart people with the benefit of 2000 years of defending and distancing itself from true quackery. They know that arguing the same is a trip down a very blind alley. But what are we to make of the fact that at least one miracle must be authenticated by the Church as a prerequisite for beatification? What’s a humble atheist to conclude? Are we really just arguing about what the Church labels as “official teaching” and what they publicly declare to be true?
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There should be no disagreement however that the veracity of miracles or other such suspensions of natural laws would indeed be excellent proof of God’s existence. True, these would not necessarily support the notion of the Christian God, but nonetheless it would be impossible to reach any other conclusion than there is something outside of our natural world that cares a lick about us. Where Aquinas and Paley differ, it seems, is on what constitutes evidence. I agree with you that Paley is wrong to claim that God suspends natural laws when he sees fit, but Aquinas’ views are just the other side of the same coin. It was the mother of all miracles that started this ball rolling, creating consistent natural laws, and thus we can observe them. The problem is that we have gradually developed scientific explanations for what Aquinas, in the 13th century, could only view as divine. But when it comes to virgin births, healing the sick, raising the dead, the resurrection, and any number of Biblical miracles that support the divinity of Jesus, Paley is clearly in the right. These ancient miracles are at the very core of Christianity, and indeed are the only things that differentiate Jesus (apart from some truly revolutionary, brilliant, and compassionate teachings) from the thousands of ordinary self-proclaimed prophets of the 1st century.
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You seem to want it both ways Jon. You assert that miracles offer no proof for the existence of God, yet maintain that they are “a particular message to a particular person for a particular purpose”. Please excuse me for saying that it’s time we recognized the narcissism and self-deceit of such statements. Gospel accounts of Jesus’ inability to perform miracles in towns where faith was lacking should be no less mysterious that the scarcity of reported miracles at football games compared to places of worship (Tim Tebow aside).
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Atheists are fond of arguing that God’s existence should produce an abundance of miracles, or truly amazing miracles of the amputee variety, because we are told that are by no means rare. This is somewhat true, but it would be more accurate to say they seek the confirmation of even ONE miracle, in the ordinary sense of the word. Yes, yes, I hear that we simply don’t accept the evidence for these, but you must admit that evidence is pretty weak. The evidence for events that Christian accept as miraculous would not hold up in the weakest of courts. What is the difference between healing a faithful Christian’s lameness, while declining to regrow a limb? Both these events require supernatural changes to the human body that defy scientific explanation. Salamanders do this daily, presumably without prayer - what’s the big deal?  Lest this sounds like your Corvette analogy, I believe there is a vast difference. A father buying a Corvette for his son (damn, I always wanted a Corvette…..) simply to prove his love is indeed absurd, as it proves no such thing. But if my father was invisible, and there were several other people who also claimed to be my father, and I desperately wanted to know that I actually had a father, a shiny new Corvette in my driveway with a note from my real father would be a very compelling reason for me to believe he exists. Assuming that such a thing was well within his capabilities, why wouldn’t he? Whispering in my ear that he really does exist and indeed loves me and that there are things in store for me that will pale a Corvette in comparison if I simply believe that he’s real is not substantially different. I realize that this all sounds rather silly right now, but I am simply trying to finish off this post before dashing off to work.
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Related to all this, I suppose, we disagree on what constitutes signs of God’s care. Ancient Hebrews (and Christian fundamentalists today) see regular cycles of nature as such as sign. Is it impertinent to note that they also view normal interruptions in these cycles as proof of God’s displeasure with us? Or the existence of Satan? The cycles of nature, which are not always kind to humans, do not exist for our benefit. On the contrary - evolutionary theory confirms that we are what we are and where we are because of them, and despite of them. It is indeed miraculous that we are here, but not in the religious sense of the word. Have a great day, hope to hear back from you.

“One of the trendier pieces of atheist agitprop is the “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?” game.”

## So what is the answer ? I think it is a perfectly fair question, not a game. A good answer will be an an answer, won’t duck the question, and will treat the asker with respect; not as someone who as been tiresome enough to expose a weak spot in how Christians think. I’m all for having the weaknesses of Christianity exposed - for then something can be done to remedy them. Atheists do Christians a great deal of good by asking such questions; they are using the minds God gave them, instead of swallowing Christianity hook line and sinker. If Jesus really healed people, & if the Apostles did so - why do those who say they share the faith of the Apostles not heal people ? Why are such stories exceptional, instead of normal ? Talking about the Cross is no answer here - if Jesus wanted cripples & lepers & blind & dumb & bereft to think like that, why did He relieve their suffering ? Because He had compassion on them.

@Mark P Shea:

“If God doesn’t exist, why are you blaming him for being cruel?”

## STM this is a misunderstanding of the OP’s objection. Which is - AFAICS - this:

God does not exist; because if God existed, He would not be cruel. According tot those, he exists. Unfortunately for what Christians want to claim, this God they believe in must be a cruel God. We can tell this because according to them He used to heal people. They also claim He is good, merciful, all-powerful, & lots of other good things. So by their argument, He must be willing to heal, able to do so, ready to do so. But he doesn’t - so either he is cruel, or he is non-existent. And if they are right & he does exist, he is cruel, and should for that reason be hated for his cruelty.

A reason to hate a god one is sure is a fable, is that if this god has a repulsive character, it is appropriate & good to hate such a perverted idea. Such a god would be unworthy of worship - the very thought of it would be a pollution of the moral sense of mankind. Atheists do right to hate God *if that is the sort of being they think God is*. Evil is hateful, & the notion that human beings can be so degraded as to worship a god who is evil, is a horrible one. What human being with a trace of decency would not reject such a god with indignation ?

tot those, = to those who believe in Him,

Hey Zeke,
Likewise. Your comments and politeness have led to this being one the more satisfying internet exchanges I’ve had in a long time. Admittedly, the bar for internet exchanges is usually pretty low. ;-) But this is good. Thank you.
 
While your nuanced understanding makes far less outrageous claims about God, perhaps it is tempered by the claims of virtually every other religion, past and present, that their God visits wondrous miracles on its faithful.
If the nuanced understanding had come just recently, you might have a point (although I do not think it would be conclusive). But it didn’t. My nuanced understanding is the ancient understanding. It came long before science. Some argue it was the prerequisite for science. It’s the understanding of Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Jesus, and the later prophets.
 
I assume that you are likewise unswayed by the ten megaton displays of faith healing by the likes of Ted Haggard and Peter Popoff.
Of course. I say to them, “Show me the money.” And I mean that in every possible sense of the phrase.
 
There should be no disagreement however that the veracity of miracles or other such suspensions of natural laws would indeed be excellent proof of God’s existence.
No. It would be excellent proof of some super-powerful being. But I am in full agreement with the atheists that the worship of a super-powerful being merely because he has shown himself to be powerful is disgusting and immature.
 
The problem is that we have gradually developed scientific explanations for what Aquinas, in the 13th century, could only view as divine.
Ah, this is a historical mistake. Aquinas had a very robust understanding of secondary causes (what we would term “scientific reasons”), and never made any stupid “God of the gaps” arguments. He didn’t ask where this thing or that thing came from. He asked where it all came from. An atheist might come back with a very Bertrand Russell, “[The universe] just is,” but that moves the argument on to philosophical ground, not scientific ground at all. Science has no answer to why everything exists. It just assumes that it exists and goes from there. (Which is good, btw. I’m all for science doing that job.)
 
You assert that miracles offer no proof for the existence of God, yet maintain that they are “a particular message to a particular person for a particular purpose”.
But don’t you see? This is what I’m trying to say. A miraculous event considered in itself cannot be proof of the existence of what I’ve been attempting to describe above as “God”. Any devil or sufficiently advanced aliens (assuming these things exist) could produce these kind of “miracles”. It is only once you are in a proper relationship with God (that mysterious metaphysical ground of all being who is love) that he can communicate some message to you.
 
Take our example of the father and son and the Corvette. If the son had a serious misunderstanding about what his father was, such that he was tempted to think of him as just some sort of fantastically wealthy patron who dispensed material gifts in exchange for the son giving him good press or something, that father would not improve his relationship with his son by giving him a Corvette. The son would infallibly misinterpret the gesture, and would, moreover, think his attempts at manipulation had worked. It would still be a relationship of use, not a relationship of love. And you can’t argue that the son could just look around at other fathers. Humanity’s relationship with God is absolutely unique. How do we know God is a loving father? It was Jesus who told the world our relationship with that mysterious-metaphysical-ground-of-all-being-who-is-love was a relationship like that of father and son. (More than that, it was obvious by the way he lived his life that he believed it.)
 
So, while it’s possible to take miracles as confirmation of the father’s love, you cannot use them as proof, since there’s no guarantee in such events that you are in touch with God, the loving father. It could just be some power fattening us up to eat us (so to speak). You scoff at that only because you kind of believe what Christians say about God. Other cultures do not have such a robust understanding of the goodness of the “gods”.
 
But if my father was invisible, and there were several other people who also claimed to be my father, and I desperately wanted to know that I actually had a father…
Aye, there’s the rub. Do we desperately want to know we actually have a father, or do we desperately want to get a hold of some source of power that will let us have our secret, greasy heart’s desires? To be an atheist and the first is to be more than halfway to the kingdom of heaven. To be a Christian and the second is to be on the road to hell.

“never made any stupid “God of the gaps” arguments”
“Science has no answer to why everything exists.”
Science does not YET have the answer to HOW something rather unusual happened about 14 billion years ago.  It would seem that you have made a “god of the gaps” argument.  Your use of the word “why” is interesting.  Why should anyone care about “why”?  Why do you think there must be an answer to “why”?  What if there is no answer?

“It is only once you are in a proper relationship with God (that mysterious metaphysical ground of all being who is love) that he can communicate some message to you.”
Completely circular.  Why is the morality of your particular religion correct?  Do you really need to impose your morality on others?

“on the road to hell”
Define “hell”.  Is your definition circular?  Why do you need to think that there really is a “hell”?  Is the point that one should behave in certain ways in this life because of fear of an “afterlife”?  You have no “evidence”.  Why should anyone accept such an opinion?

Science does not YET have the answer to HOW something rather unusual happened about 14 billion years ago.  It would seem that you have made a “god of the gaps” argument.
Again, that’s not the question Thomas Aquinas (and the church) is answering, and we do not invoke the divine to explain the mechanisms of the Big Bang, so there is no “god of the gaps” argumentation, here. It would only be a GOTG argument if we were invoking God to explain a missing physical mechanism. But we’re not. Never have been. Scientific arguments do not apply, here.
 
Why should anyone care about “why”?  Why do you think there must be an answer to “why”?  What if there is no answer?
But what if there is? It strikes me as somewhat dogmatic and closed-minded merely to assert that there is no answer to a question human beings have been asking and answering since pretty much day one.
 
Why is the morality of your particular religion correct?  Do you really need to impose your morality on others?
Yeah, see, this is the crux of the argument, right here. This is what all the yelling’s about. First of all, the morality of the Catholic religion is the morality of Natural Law. You shall not kill. You shall not steal. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother. These are pretty universal and easily recognized by an open-minded, reasonable virtuous, human being. Other aspects are more complicated, true, but that’s to be expected. Relativity is more complicated and counter-intuitive than Newton’s three laws, but no less true.
 
Second, anyone not completely hide-bound by a crazy religious commitment to absolute autonomy recognizes that quite a lot of morality has to be imposed on people. We don’t wait for rich people to give enough money to provide for public institutions like civil defense and welfare. No, we impose taxes on them. We don’t let deadbeat fathers abandon their children and the mothers who take care of them. We impose child-support on them. There are lots more. (There are even more that are imposed by very real, though non-governmental, human pressures.)
 
I could go on. There are only two real arguments for not imposing morality on people: 1. it’s not actually moral, and 2. it would do more harm than good.

“we do not invoke the divine to explain the mechanisms of the Big Bang”
Well, the “creation” is often used as “evidence” for a “god”.
“It strikes me as somewhat dogmatic and closed-minded merely to assert that there is no answer to a question human beings have been asking and answering since pretty much day one.”
Hilarious.  Silly humans.  Always asking “why?”.  “Why me, Lord?”  Why did I get cancer?  Why did I get Alzheimers?  Why did that drunk driver kill my friend/son/parent/neighbor?  Why does this universe exist?  To “glorify” a “god”?  How silly.  I note that you did not actually attempt to provide an answer.
“First of all, the morality of the Catholic religion is the morality of Natural Law.”
Of course that an easy assertion to make.  Why should I believe you?  What if I don’t accept your version of the “morality of Natural Law”?  Death to heretics and blasphemers?
“Other aspects are more complicated, true”
Quite so.  Why should I accept your “other aspects”?  Why do you think the Catholic Church has such authority?  I think it’s simply a question of power.  Then it’s a political question.  Let’s have a vote.  You vote for a Catholic theocracy and I vote against.
“quite a lot of morality has to be imposed on people”
Of course.  We call such things “laws” for example.  So what?  Do our representatives have the “consent of the governed”?  We also have the “shunning”.  Like the pastor that came out as a atheist.  Divorced and homeless.  Such love for a fellow human being.  Why do Catholics think that their particular morality should be forced on people?  Who knows the future?  Perhaps a Republican president and the Supreme Court will force certain things on the American people in the future.  Only time will tell.
“No, we impose taxes on them.”
But they are paying 13% - we certainly would not want to actually increase their taxes, would we?
“1. it’s not actually moral”
Who gets to decide?  The Pope?  The Catholic bishops?  The Congress?  The President?  The Supreme Court?
“2. it would do more harm than good”
Who gets to decide?  No condoms or birth control in Africa?  Why is that not “more harm than good”?  But Catholics don’t care about that.

JD Hughes,
Given the attitude of adolescent mockery displayed in the post above, you are not worth talking to, and I’m not going to waste my time. Take a page from your fellow atheist Zeke, and learn how to dispute intelligently and generously.
Yours,
Jon W

“learn how to dispute intelligently”
WHO GETS TO DECIDE?
Obviously you ignored the fundamental question.  Perhaps you realize that you have no case for your demand for Catholic privilege.
“and generously”
You demand respect and privilege and you are not going to get either from me.
Comments from Zeke:
“Please excuse me for saying that it’s time we recognized the narcissism and self-deceit of such statements.”
“Whispering in my ear that he really does exist and indeed loves me and that there are things in store for me that will pale a Corvette in comparison if I simply believe that he’s real is not substantially different.”
Your reply:
“Do we desperately want to know we actually have a father, or do we desperately want to get a hold of some source of power that will let us have our secret, greasy heart’s desires?”
It seems to me that Catholics want the latter - political power.
“To be an atheist and the first is to be more than halfway to the kingdom of heaven. To be a Christian and the second is to be on the road to hell.”
What a silly thing to say.

Hi Jon,
Sorry for the delay in responding - partly due to work, but mostly due to feeling that nothing less than a well thought out response was worthy of yours. I suppose asserting that most Catholics, including myself before I left the Church, are not able to elucidate the true essentials of the faith so well is mere complaining, but I think it’s worth noting. I’ll try to keep this topical and resist wandering off into the usual atheist vs. Christian minefield.
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But I admit I’m confused. You are unimpressed by various testimonies of modern day miracles, at least as evidence of the truth of the Christian version of God, yet surely 2000 year old reports of miracles attributed to Jesus are less compelling testimonies than these. Moreover, these ancient events are far more specific and wondrous – raising the dead, walking on water, turning water into wine, controlling the weather, etc. Many of these events were performed specifically to provide proof that Jesus was divine and operating on behalf of the Christian God. This is at the very core of Christianity. Without these, there is nothing particularly special about Jesus apart from some very fine ideas on how to live and treat others.
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So what are critics of such dogma to make of this? Back to the canonization process, the attribution and authentication of miracles by the Church verifies that dead person has entered heaven, and now has the capacity to intervene on behalf of those who pray in his or her name. This is a pretty specific claim, and please correct me if I have got this wrong. It maintains that God (not just any super-powerful being, but the Christian God) supernaturally intercedes in human affairs to confirm that the candidate is in heaven and has God’s ear. Besides seeming somewhat unnecessary, and the fact that the so-called miracles are inevitably of the unimpressive medical healing variety, it signals to the faithful that God indeed will take their pleas under advisement. It is no wonder that wide-eyed assertions of miraculous healings are taken as a given. So let’s call a spade a spade here Jon, and recognize that the Church points to miracles as evidence for the truth of its dogma, though certainly not the only evidence.
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Along these very lines, I don’t think it’s accurate to say that atheists consider Christians immature because they worship a being shown to be all-powerful. Personally, I would consider this an excellent reason to worship. Rather, the atheist view is that there is statistically no evidence for claims that prayer has any effect other than psychological or placebo effects, and understands that humans are poor judges of cause and effect. Yet the Church, despite the benefit of this knowledge and 21st century medical understanding, insists that such events are somewhat routine. On one hand, you seem to recognize the flaws of such reasoning, yet continue to peg your spiritual life to rumors of ancient miracles reported in an overwhelmingly superstitious and backwards era of human history.
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To complain that praying for the sake of “our secret, greasy heart’s desires” is substantially different that praying for relief of one’s (or another’s) suffering seems, at best, an effort to rig the rules of the game to provide immunity from rational discussion. True, praying for a lottery win or victory in a football game is certainly less noble that praying for a child suffering horribly from cancer. But how about the most basic of desires – to know with certainty if there is a reason for our existence, how we should act, and the true nature of our reality? If God cares for us, he has a terribly non-committal way of showing it. Why would he make the truth of his existence most readily apparent to the gullible and poorly educated, while remaining invisible to virtually all of the members of the National Academy of Scientists? Is the response to the evidence that healing miracles are no more than wishful thinking “it’s a mystery of the faith” more reasonable than “there is no evidence of miracles, so we should refrain from endorsing them”?
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Ah, but here lies the heart of the problem: the very soul of dogmatism. Any admission by the Church that they got this whole miracle business wrong could result in a stampede for the exits. Declaring modern miracles suspicious might raise questions about the ancient ones that underpin the faith, and the whole enterprise might fall apart. So they cannot. These are very smart people. And in the wake of this are intelligent people like you, forced to cling to spurious mysteries, barricading themselves behind euphemisms, and splitting hairs rather than admit what they feel to be true. The Church does a disservice to itself and by supporting these ridiculous claims, but such is their hand to play.
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Let me ask you a question Jon. What if, tomorrow, a blue-ribbon panel of archaeologists and biblical scholars demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the miracles attributed to Jesus never happened? Would this steal the ground out from under your spiritual life? It would be a shame if it would. And if it wouldn’t, in what sense is your spirituality really predicated upon the veracity of ancient miracles?

Hey Zeke,
I, too, feel similarly. Every time I see that there’s a new message from you I hesitate to load the blog page, since I know that whatever you say will be measured and reasonable and will require a well thought-out answer. Most online disputants are much more easily dispatched or dismissed.
 
I understand the power of your objection to the church’s “endorsement” of miracles. After all, we know that things like confirmation bias and misinterpretation of evidence exist, whereas we don’t know God exists (in the same way). Doesn’t it make so much more Occam-y sense to explain whatever few anomalies we may encounter with the likely known rather than the unlikely unknown? And if so, why not assume that the same dynamics operated back when Jesus was alive? I get that.
 
You have also put your finger on a discomfort I have with the church’s use of “miracles” to confirm sainthood. I think that if I was asked (I haven’t been), I would argue against such a use based on the church’s own teaching. In the past, saints were declared based on other things, popular acclaim among them, and it is not out of the realm of possibility that the church could change its method of vetting examples of Christian holiness. Since individual judgments about the holiness of someone’s life or the genuineness of a particular miracle are not in the “deposit of faith”, they can’t be dogmatic and infallible, and the church can’t require us to believe them. I have not, however, researched my position and argued it out with other Catholic theologians, so my opinion on this must be taken lightly.
 
But in any case, the move from, a) these miracles are not well-established, to b) no miracle is well-established, is unfounded. It is not a logical necessity. Rather, it is, at best, an inductive argument based on our own experience. A couple of paragraphs back I asked whether it would not make more sense to discard the “unlikely unknown” explanation than to continue to pound it as it becomes less and less likely. Here’s why I think that’s not a good move.
 
The theory “God” (if I can describe it as that) is not, in fact, becoming less and less likely. True, for people who propose this theory (or grab a hold of it) to account for physical phenomena they could not explain, it is becoming less and less likely. I feel sorry for fundamentalists whose sons and daughters want to study biology or geology. There must be a kind of tragic inevitability to their children’s loss of faith. But the Catholic Church, the ancient Hebrews, the Platonic/Socratic Greeks, et al, never proposed this theory to explain mere physical phenomena. No, this “theory”, if you will, was proposed to explain a much greater set of phenomena. It was proposed to explain existence itself, and the utter goodness of good, and the strange parasitic nature of bad, and the fact that justice properly has a hold on us stronger than our own instinct for life. As such, there is exactly the same evidence available to us today as there was 2000 years ago.
 
The argument that the miracles of Jesus’ virgin birth and bodily resurrection are impossible is grounded upon a dogmatic presupposition that such things cannot happen. Call a spade a spade, Zeke, and admit that this is what it is. I will freely admit that I make the dogmatic presupposition that such things are possible. But I do not make that presupposition on the ground that I have seen them or that there are physical phenomena that science has not yet explained. I make it on the ground that I cannot, absolutely cannot, accept the atheist argument that there is nothing higher to existence than man, the universe, and the circle of life. Their account of existence is milquetoast, banal, and waterish. When Richard Dawkins tells me to stop worrying and enjoy my life, I throw up my hands. I don’t worry that God exists. Never have. I sometimes worry he doesn’t exist and that all the !@#$% that happens to good people is for nothing. And “enjoy” my life? If Dawkins means merely having fun, then of course you don’t need God to have fun. But that’s not human life. Life is manifestly not just for fun. It’s so much higher, greater, more awesome than that. Real love is not fun.
 
I know there are atheists who are stronger than Richard Dawkins and his ilk. There are the stoics and the existentialists, who see the awful dignity of man (“awful” in all senses). But they are high, tragic figures, and they do not love the universe. Rather, they look down on creation and scorn it for being less than they.
 
But the dignity of man that the stoics and existentialists rightly preach, the physical unity of the universe assumed by the natural sciences, the awesome beauty and fierce danger of the natural world, the music of Bach and Beethoven, the art of Michelangelo, the delightfulness of little girls and their sparkly ponies, the pride of a father looking at his son - these have been summed up and explained by Jesus Christ in a way that no one else has ever done. And he might have been wrong. It might not be true. But it’s a damn sight better story than anything else I’ve heard.
 
Okay. That’s very prosy and all. Sorry. I fully believe that our capacity for art and our sense of justice evolved over billions of years. But I cannot believe that they have no significance beyond that process and the happenstance of survival. No, they evolved and survived in us because they reflected a reality out there. Just as our evolved capacity for math reflects the fact that existence itself is mathematical, our capacity for justice reflects the fact that that existence itself is - somehow - just.

“It was proposed to explain existence itself”
I have no need of that hypothesis.
“and the utter goodness of good, and the strange parasitic nature of bad”
Philosophical psychobabble.
“and the fact that justice properly has a hold on us stronger than ...”
Which, of course, is not actually an agreed upon “fact”.
“The argument that miracles ... are impossible is grounded upon a dogmatic presupposition that such things cannot happen.”
You are simply wrong.  There is no real “argument that miracles are impossible”.  There is the observation that no “miracles” have been properly subjected to “science”.  Therefore the absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
“I cannot, absolutely cannot, accept the atheist argument that there is nothing higher to existence than man, the universe, and the circle of life.”
It’s not an “argument”.  It’s an opinion based on observations of reality.  But we can agree to disagree.  Of course you have no “evidence” that there is something “higher”, but that does not seem to bother you very much.  Now why is the HHS mandate a “tyranny” against “religious freedom”?
“If Dawkins means merely having fun”
Strawman.
“these have been summed up and explained by Jesus Christ”
You are entitled to your opinion.  Now about the real world - why is contraception such a problem for Catholics even though surveys indicate that 90% of Catholics use contraception?
“But it’s a damn sight better story than anything else I’ve heard.”
It’s just a story.  And you wonder why many call it a “fairy tale”.
“they evolved and survived in us because they reflected a reality out there.”
You are entitled to your opinion even though there is no evidence that this is “true”.  Now whom are you going to vote for and why?  Do you really think that converting Medicare to Vouchercare is a good idea?

Dear Zeke,
 
I am dissatisfied with my first response to you, mostly because I let it rest so much on my ability to describe the goodness of life, the universe, ad everything, and it is obvious that my poetical skills are unequal to the task. Furthermore the more I make my argument “poetically”, the fewer concrete specifics you have to respond to and refute, which makes this a less productive exchange.
 
It seems to me that in the end our two sides come down to this: you’re making an argument from evil, and I’m making an argument from good. You’ve said that you do not see evidence for the Providential guidance of the universe that the Catholic Church teaches in the chaos, randomness, disorder, pain, and evil we see all around us. Essentially, you’d say, Dawkins is right: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” I, on the other hand, am saying that all this good, all this rationality, the physical consistency of the universe and the moral absolutes of justice, must all be tied together, must all be unified somehow, and whatever it is that unifies them is what we call “God”.
 
The weakness of your position is that it is an argument from ignorance. The fact is, Dawkins has no way of knowing the necessary conditions of a Providential universe. He thinks this universe is unguided and unjust, but he has no way of knowing whether it is or not. All he can say is that his own sense of justice and order is offended, therefore there is no justice and order. But how does he know that he, Richard Dawkins - I use him just as a convenient and articulate example - has all the relevant information? He can’t. Ironically, he’s making a case exactly parallel to the one the Intelligent Design guys are making: “We know of no natural law that can produce complex organisms. We know all the relevant natural laws. Therefore, there is no natural law that can produce complex organisms.” Obviously, the glaring flaw in William Dembski’s argument - even before we get to the science - is that second premise. He doesn’t know all the relevant natural laws. Furthermore, if he’d humble himself long enough to consider the evidence that scientists were showing him, he might learn enough to realize he doesn’t know all the relevant natural laws. Which isn’t to say he’d become a born-again Darwinist, but just that he’d see his case isn’t as rationally compelling as he thought it was.
 
The argument from good, however, is not an argument from ignorance, but an inference from knowledge. It’s an argument from what we know, and what we know is that goodness, rationality, etc, is unified and unifying. It ties together disparate things and makes them one.
 
When I was growing up as an evangelical, I was a special creationist, and biology was my least favorite science. I thought chemistry and geology were interesting, I loved astronomy and physics, but biology was just a bunch of collecting, naming, and museum curating. It was interesting if you had that kind of mind, but I did not. Then, after I became Catholic and in the midst of my theological studies, I started researching evolution to see what was behind the controversy, and I found, a. the Catholic Church had no real theological quarrel with Darwinism, and b. biology was suddenly fascinating. I frankly fell in love with evolution, because here was a way of tying together and understanding that whole tangled mess of facts that was biology. While I was supposed to be reading theology I was writing computer programs to illustrate for myself the Darwinian processes I was reading about. I saw, like Theodosius Dobzhansky said, that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution, and was blown away.
 
And that’s how truth works. It unifies. When I was an undergraduate physics major (before I switched to English), we used to joke that biology was really chemistry, chemistry was really physics, and physics was really math. Which is sort of true. The natural sciences really are, at heart, one thing, and that one thing is rationally discoverable. And knowing that that is how reason works, all I’m arguing is that it is rational to think that all rational existence, including both the natural physical laws of the universe and our sense of morality and justice, is unified as well. And since it cannot by unified merely in our minds and maintain that aura of absolute authority over us, that unifying factor must be greater than our own minds. And whatever it is that unifies all truth and rationality and is greater than our own minds and understanding - that is what Catholics call “God”. (And it can’t be an evil or a finite being that unifies, since those things are not able to unify everything. Evil is disunifying, destructive; and any finite being also needs to be judged according to the moral law.)
 
So my argument is that, yes, perhaps there’s no unity to everything. Perhaps our sense of justice is entirely disjunct from the universe or else is not really as absolute as it claims to be but is merely the accidental detritus of an evolutionary strategy, nothing more than one of Gould’s spandrels. You can take that position, I guess, but it does not do justice, it seems to me, to the nature of truth as we experience it every day.
 
Yours,
Jon

Your other argument, if I’m not mistaken, is more the agnostic one: I don’t know for 100% sure what the nature of all existence is, but I do know that the Catholic Church’s account of it is incoherent.
 
And this is what I’ve been at pains to refine. The fact is, the Catholic Church has the greatest respect for reason and is always trying to refine her understanding of her own theology and philosophy. The fact that many if not most Catholics have irrational expectations or understandings of miracles and such does not mean that the Catholic Church is committed to their irrational positions. It just means she needs to do a better job of communicating her own teaching. Although I think that a country that can’t agree on whether or not to use a fraction of its wealth to provide adequate health care for people who have no way of getting it and is perfectly satisfied taking care of difficult pregnancies by killing the baby, a country that thinks it’s just to destroy and rebuild entire countries in order to push its economic and political agenda in the Middle East and can’t muster enough political and social courage to brave terrorist attacks without systematically torturing innocent people, has more important things it needs to be taught first than the nature of miracles and whether they do, in fact, provide proof of a God.

“I, on the other hand, am saying that all this good, all this rationality, the physical consistency of the universe and the moral absolutes of justice, must all be tied together, must all be unified somehow, and whatever it is that unifies them is what we call “God”.”
MUST???  MUST???  Absurd.
“The weakness of your position is that it is an argument from ignorance.”
Hilarious.  Ignorance of reality???  I think not.
“It’s an argument from what we know, and what we know is that goodness, rationality, etc, is unified and unifying. It ties together disparate things and makes them one.”
Philosophical gobbledegook that has nothing to do with reality.  This is not “what we know”.  It’s simply “wishful thinking”.
“the Catholic Church had no real theological quarrel with Darwinism”
WRONG.  The Catholic Church requires the insertion of a “soul” somewhere in human evolution and that is contrary to science of course.
“I’m arguing is that it is rational to think that all rational existence, including both the natural physical laws of the universe and our sense of morality and justice, is unified as well.”
Phooey on your assertion.
“but it does not do justice ... to the nature of truth”
Hilarious.  Define “truth”.  Define “justice”.  Circular?
“taking care of difficult pregnancies by killing the baby”
Do you have any idea what the rate of infanticide was in the not all too distant past?  Appalling!

Hilarious quote for grants up to $200,000 from the Templeton Foundation:
“And finally, just in case you might be wondering.  No, there’s no danger the study will provide answers the Templeton Foundation doesn’t want to hear. They already know the “truth”, and their plea to scholars (meaning theologians who can do math) is quite explicit:
“join us in exploring the truth that all creation glorifies God—even randomness!””

Jon,
Sorry for the delay in responding. Ironically, I was having trouble composing an adequate response precisely due to the poetic and esoteric nature of your reply from Tuesday. As you note in your later post, the lack of specifics makes for a less interesting exchange and I found it difficult to even figure out what I was really disagreeing with :) So I started over.
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At this point, I believe our differences over miracles are clear. My position is that they are exhibit “A” for wishful thinking and self-deception. I re-read your previous posts to attempt to properly characterize your position on miracles and will state it as follows: you seem to allow for modern reports of miracles being suspicious; other that some “queer sights” you don’t find the evidence for actual miracles compelling, but it doesn’t follow that they are impossible. Have I got that about right? Because I am also leery about declaring many things impossible, it seems that there is scarcely anything to even disagree about here. But I think the general agreement is less due to a true meeting of the minds here, and more of willingness on your part to distance yourself from certain (unofficial) Church positions that are difficult to defend. Frankly, it seems a little evasive.
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Now that this conversation has officially moved beyond the evidence for miracles into evidence for God, it is hard not to notice some parallels. The concept “whatever it is that unifies all truth and rationality and is greater than our own minds and understanding - that is what Catholics call God” doesn’t have much in the way of specifics. There’s not much there, apart from claims of messages of love. You seem comfortable retreating to the safety of a majestic mystery, and remain there with the notion that anything transcendent enough to have created our universe must be so far beyond our comprehension as to perpetually elude our powers of explanation. This seems plausible, as far as it goes, but of course, it isn’t an argument for the existence of God, much less a good one. In any case, this misty conception of God allows you to say that your religious beliefs do not substantially conflict with those of others. This concept of God allows for multiple, and even contradictory doctrines to co-exist peacefully. Faith in the absence of specifics seems to make a man humble.
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Being no stranger to religious discussions with Christians, I’m familiar with the charge that atheists are no less dogmatic that the religious. But coming from someone as well grounded in the sciences as you, I find this a surprising claim. Are you suggesting that we grant equal authority to ancient Biblical tales of the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus with scientific evidence for Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species? Pretending to know things one doesn’t know (or can’t possibly know) is a profound liability in science. Yet this is the life-blood of faith-based religion. When considering questions about the nature of the cosmos and our place within it, atheists tend to draw their opinions from science. This isn’t dogmatic or arrogant; it is intellectual honesty. Certainly there are many atheists who reject the claims in the Bible without having read a single page, but for the majority of us, people like me who were born and raised in Christian culture, we’ve read the books and simply found the claims wanting. There is no dogma at work here – there’s nothing that an atheist needs (or is required) to believe on insufficient evidence in order to reject the Biblical God. Am I (or yourself) likewise dogmatic to disregard the Koran or the Book of Mormon as I go about my life? If anything, atheism is the antidote for dogmatism.
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As a former evangelical with a keen understanding of the methods of science, the discovery that the Church has no theological quarrel with Darwin must have been refreshing and exciting for you. But let’s examine the Church’s so-called embrace of probably the most incredible scientific discovery by mankind. After about 100 years of silence on the issue, the Church accepted Darwin’s theory with some fairly substantial caveats. Pius XII grudgingly agreed that evolution should be given at least as much consideration of the Biblical account in Genesis, provided that (i) humans are regarded as a special creation, (ii) that the existence of God is required to explain both monogenism and the spiritual component of human origins, and (iii) the process of evolution is a planned and purpose-driven natural process, actively guided by God. Sometimes the caveats to an assertion loom too large to ignore. In this case they directly contradict and undermine the implications of Darwin’s theories, which is that there was no longer a need for a Designer to explain all that in nature that gives the appearance of design. The conclusions that Darwin drew (and later written brilliantly about by Dawkins) were difficult for him to accept because of religious dogma, and we know that he struggled mightily with their implications.
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If some here are not completely bored by our exchange, and complain that going back 60 years to Pius XII is dishonest, in the mid-1980s Pope Benedict XVI, while Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (rebranded due to the negative connotations with its previous title, The Inquisition, I will snarkily add), wrote a defense of the doctrine of creation against Catholics who stressed the sufficiency of “selection and mutation”. Humans, he insisted, are “not the products of chance and error”, and “the universe is not the product of darkness and unreason; it comes from intelligence, freedom, and from the beauty that is identical with love.” In the collision between dogma and true scientific inquiry, this is the aftermath. There is no mystery why the Church must insert footnotes to Darwin’s theory, and this sort of nonsense undermines the beauty and simplicity of Darwin’s theory, and is downright detrimental to us as a society. The “progressive” position of the Catholic Church aside, the majority of your Evangelical brethren simply deny that evolution is true and seek to remove it from science curricula. One of the monumental ironies of religious discourse is that those who feel they are in possession of a magic book praise themselves for their reason and humility, while claiming to know facts about cosmology, chemistry and biology that no scientist knows.
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As someone like you who has studied biology and evolution Jon, can we at least agree that the mode of thinking that produced Darwin’s groundbreaking theory is free from the theological manacles that Pius and Benedict impose on their thoughts? We must ask ourselves: is the endorsement of a diluted version of evolution an example of how the Church has the “greatest respect for reason and is always trying to refine her understanding of her own theology and philosophy” or mere damage control? Sure, the Church refines her understanding of the claims in the Bible from time to time. Being a bogus book to a remarkable degree, it has to. An exploration of physical, ethical, or spiritual questions that begins with the utterly unjustified premise that one of your books is an infallible guide to reality is not a particularly promising approach. The fact that Popes freely use terms like “reason” and “truth” does not at all guarantee that they are on good terms with the former, or would recognize the latter if it bit them. OK, done venting now, sorry for that.
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I suppose that I indeed make the argument from ignorance to some extent. There is no evidence for God, so it cannot be considered true, and is therefore false. I never fully understood this line of attack from Christians, since it presumes that the burden of proof is somehow on the atheist. I’m sure you would not be surprised to learn that I would be willing to accept, and even welcome, evidence of a Creator. Sunday mass attendance may interfere a bit with my quest to cease sucking at golf, but I can’t see how it would change the way I presently relate to others or live my life a single bit. Other than being tremendously thrilled to know that there is life beyond this terrestrial one, it makes absolutely no difference to me. I suspect you would likely conduct yourself much the same if it was revealed to you to your satisfaction that there is no God. If you did change, I suspect it would be mainly due to the judgment of other Christians when you came out as an atheist, who as you know are reviled even more than Muslims in our Christian culture.
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Yes, I agree completely with Dawkins (as the evolutionary scientist) about how mankind came to exist. I’m uncomfortable with Dawkins (as the atheist) because his willingness to belittle religious types is not something I share. But I think you do him a disservice by portraying him as someone unable to frankly consider the arrival of relevant information that suggests he is wrong. He has never claimed certainty that there is no God, merely that there is precisely no scientific evidence at this point. As with any scientific endeavor, there is an underlying assumption that new evidence may arrive to modify or even contradict what is accepted now. This is encouraged and even cherished in all fields of science. It is the willingness of scientists to integrate doubt into their view of the world that lets them occupy the higher ground with respect to judgments about the truth of a proposition. It seems that you also have more of an issue with Dawkins’ religious views than his scientific views. I get that. You clearly aren’t charmed by his militant atheism, but accept that there is no significant scientific disagreement over evolution. Or am I missing something? Is there something about his science that you dispute, or simply the conclusions that he draws?
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You mention somewhere that “there is exactly the same evidence (for God) available to us today as there was 2000 years ago.” I couldn’t disagree more. When it comes to the adequacy of answers to the Really Big Questions, the ceding of religious ground to the process of scientific conquest is relentless, unidirectional, and highly predictable. Some smart people begin to doubt the sanctified opinion about the causes of illness, the movement of the stars and planets, the age of the earth, etc. and they observe the world more closely and make predictions that can be verified by others. Yet the result, inevitably, is the general reluctance of religious people to seriously interact with this discourse (and even an eagerness to stifle the messengers) whenever it challenges doctrines to which they are emotionally attached. Eventually, however, the power that comes with actually understanding the world becomes too seductive to ignore, and even the priests, rabbis and imams give in. Atheists and Christians cannot disagree about the causes of malaria, for example, because whatever their holy books might say about disease, a genuine understanding has arrived from science. Epidemiology trumps religion (or it should), especially when people are watching their children die.
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“Although I think that a country that can’t agree on whether or not to use a fraction of its wealth to provide adequate health care for people who have no way of getting it and is perfectly satisfied taking care of difficult pregnancies by killing the baby, a country that thinks it’s just to destroy and rebuild entire countries in order to push its economic and political agenda in the Middle East and can’t muster enough political and social courage to brave terrorist attacks without systematically torturing innocent people, has more important things it needs to be taught first than the nature of miracles and whether they do, in fact, provide proof of a God.”
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I agree with you here, but I will note that your complaints have more than a little to do with the stultifying affects of religion. The notion that a fetus is ensouled at the moment of conception prevents many women from controlling their reproductive lives, and remains an impediment to stem cell research. Muslims who believe their holy books command them to murder infidels has led to full-scale war and incalculable losses of blood and treasure. Elsewhere is the Middle East, decades of misery and agony has resulted from the belief that God has literally promised the land of Israel to the modern-day Jews. I’m not imagining a secular utopia free of conflict; I doubt religion will ever go away. I’m just suggesting that no society ever suffered from thinking too reasonably.
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It’s been great chatting with you, all the best. I hope my tone wasn’t too offensive, and that you’ll reply back. Cheers.

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/two-takes-on-miracles/

Hey Zeke,
 
I think I begin to understand the elaborate ceremonial compliments that pre-modern ambassadors always seemed to have to go through. When there’s lots of disagreement, it’s almost imperative to begin with long assurances of mutual esteem. ;-) I definitely appreciate your thoughtful comments, and they have given me much to think about. Sorry I’ve taken so long to respond. I’ve been pretty busy lately.
 
Your characterization of my approach to miracles is close, but I wouldn’t say I was skeptical about evidence for modern miracles per se. I just haven’t seen convincing evidence for any particular miracle, and I know that people often see what they want or expect to see. But to be honest, I haven’t looked at any evidence for any significant modern miracle claim. Finding just any old miracle isn’t going to increase my faith in God. I’m already convinced he exists, even if I never see a miracle in my whole life. It would be nice if he’d sometime perform a miracle for me when I asked him to, but the job of the Almighty is not to wait on Jon W, and I suspect I would find out, when all was said and done, that it would have been better for me if I hadn’t won the lottery that time.
 
I’m not being evasive by making the best judgment I can about the wisdom of current practices of the Catholic Church. Being a Catholic doesn’t mean having to endorse everything the Church does. It means believing what she teaches, praying with her for my own and everyone else’s salvation, and bearing the burdens of Christ with my Christian brothers and sisters, some of whom are pretty annoyingly superstitious sometimes. The church teaches that miracles are possible and that they have happened in the past. I see no reason to discount the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection beyond either A. an absolute insistence on my understanding of the way God ought to run the universe, or B. a general suspicion of miracles per se based on a materialist metaphysic that I think is false for other reasons. I don’t think the materialist is wrong because of miracles (or because of miracles primarily). I think the materialist is wrong because of reason, free will, the moral law, and the inability of the universe to account for itself, etc, etc, etc.
 
The materialist can describe the evolution of our sense of the moral law and can provide insight also into the peculiar characteristics it has because of our existence as the kinds of creatures we are (e.g. because we’re social primates and such). But he cannot account for its absolute character - for the absolute authority that truth and good have over us who wield them. Morality and reason are not to be explained away by some evolutionary process. The process is a decent description of how they came to be in us, but not what they are in themselves.
 
And while I love evolution as a scientific theory (and think it, frankly, far more consonant with medieval Catholicism than Paleyesque Watchmaker creationism), I think you’re being a bit absurd to expect the Church to snap to attention for a scientific theory. It’s a pretty awesome theory, yes, but so is universal gravitation, and no one gets in a tizzy because the pope isn’t preaching out of the Principia. When Origin of Species came out, some people got overly excited and started using it to slice their bread, some people flipped out and said it was the end of civilization, and some people said, “Let’s wait and see.” The Church waited and saw. Turns out evolution has a mountain of evidence to support it. Good. Now she looks for a way to integrate her understanding of theology (the whole Adam and Eve thing) with the genetic evidence she’s getting (which appears for the moment to confirm some sort of polygenism). We might have to revisit our idea of where Cain got his wife. So what? We’ll figure it out.
 
And refusing to chuck the whole thing just because we’ve got some unexplained or contradictory data is not unreasonable at all. Before the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics and the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis of Dobzhansky and Mayr, et al, Darwinists were having a hard time responding to some powerful critics who pointed out that natural selection didn’t work given the current blending theory of genetics. But the Darwinists knew they had good evidence and a strong theory elsewhere and were right to hold on, even in the face of an “irrational contradiction.” It took 30 to 40 years, but they were vindicated.
 
Your characterization of the “march of science” against religion is just plain wrong. It wasn’t the march of science against religion. It was the march of science against popular misconceptions of how the world worked. The medievals didn’t think that God personally and directly caused disease until Pasteur came along with germ theory. They thought it was an imbalance of humors, bad air, and the influences of the planets. Their theory was wrong, but it was a natural theory. The discipline of science is about carefully researching and discovering the secondary causes in the universe, causes that St Thomas Aquinas argued were real and genuine rational causes. He didn’t just think “God did it”. Your insistence on making the uneducated and unreflective speak for Christianity is poor sport. It’s like a Creationist refusing to debate Stephen Jay Gould and taking on some poor, first-year biology student.
 
And if I can be permitted one more rant: if that’s all you can say about the Bible, than I don’t believe you’ve really read that much of it. You certainly haven’t read it well. The first few chapters of Genesis aren’t very good biology. True. And that would suck for the Church if she thought the Bible was a biology textbook. But she didn’t. Perhaps in the past some Christians did base their biology on Genesis. So what? While they didn’t know otherwise, it was no better or worse than anything else. But when the question arose about other areas of natural philosophy that seemed to contradict passages in the Bible (and this in the early 400’s, Zeke), one of her wisest bishops said it would be foolish to insist that the Bible was making claims about natural philosophy that everyone knew were false. There were other things she was reading from the text.
 
In reality, there is so much good, so much beauty, so much wisdom, etc, contained in the Bible as a whole and certainly in its culminating and definitive figure, Jesus Christ, that describing it as a “bugus” book is like when a Creationist insults The Origin of Species for containing a weak and ideological argument. When he says this, I know he cannot have read it with the kind of attention a difficult and complex text demands.
 
Zeke, your arguments about miracles make me think, and I appreciate your challenging me on those. I don’t think you’re right, but I will admit you have pointed out weak and inconsistent areas in my thinking. But from what you write about science and the Church, I cannot help but think that you are almost wholly ignorant about what the Church actually teaches and how she really thinks.
 
Dismissing the Church’s teaching on the purposefulness of life and evolution because those teachings are not good science is just ignorant. We never said they were scientific. Scientific knowledge is not the only kind of knowledge. When the pope says that human beings are “not the products of chance and error”, he is not making a scientific argument. He is saying that even though the process by which humans developed on this planet may have involved a good deal of chance and error, that process of evolution does not contain or determine the whole meaning of humanity. It’s a metaphysical and theological argument. This is no different than saying that God willed me especially, even though, on a scientific level, that particular sperm had a one-in-a-million chance of fertilizing that particular egg, and therefore my identity was, in a natural scientific sense, radically contingent and undetermined by any natural process. As St Thomas says, “Things God wills to happen necessarily, happen necessarily. Things he wills to happen contingently, happen contingently.” Things can be contingent and undetermined at one level (for instance, the scientific level) and yet be purposed and determined on a different level.
 
The Church does not argue against good or bad science but against bad philosophy and bad theology. When Gould says, “Rewind the tape of evolution and play it again, and you will get something wholly different from us”, the Church says, “Interesting.” But when a philosopher says, “Therefore, there is no sense in which we are intended by any supernatural God,” the Church says, “That doesn’t follow.” And it doesn’t.
 
Sorry if I got a little hot under the collar just there. As a science teacher and a theologian, I am passionate about the proper understanding of the relationship of science and theology, and it hurts me to see the misconceptions that so much of our society labors under. I love science. I love evolution. But I also love theology, and I love Jesus Christ. And I hate to see people uselessly pitting these things against each other based on philosophical and theological misunderstandings.
 
Yours,
Jon

Hi Jon,
As we gradually approach the roots of our differences, things seem to be heating up a little. I suppose this is inevitable when examing the very core of what someone believes.
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You remain convinced of Biblical and modern miracles despite an absence of any personal experience and very good reasons to be skeptical. In any case, you could live your whole life without witnessing one, and that experience would neither increase nor decrease your faith. Yet Muslims, Mormon, Jews and Hindus report the exact same miracles; they also hear voices, find consolation in the presence of death, etc, and we both can agree that they are simply mistaken. In fact, all other religions, past and present, make similar claims. What are we to make of this? How can you discount the truth of these without calling into question your reasons to believe in Christian miracles, and raise serious doubts about why you believe the claims of the Bible?
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You seem to want to have things both ways Jon: your faith is reasonable but not in the least bound by reason; you are searching for the truth, but your faith is immune to any conceivable challenge from the world of evidence. This is often termed a “paradox of the faith”, but to me, they are mere dressed-up contradictions. Personally, the gradual realization that I was deluding myself with the faith in which I was raised was the beginning of my departure from this world of contradictions. It was painful and difficult to admit that I simply had no good reason to believe in the faith in which I was indoctrinated. Once I realized that my Christian faith was simply an accident of birth, and that I could have been similarly questioning the claims of the Koran, or Judaism, or Mormonism if I had been born into those cultures, the curtain gradually lifted.
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Your observations on the differences between materialist and metaphysical thinking on morality highlight the major differences between us. I believe that we have evolved a morality that enabled us to prosper as a species. From the very beginning, we created imaginary Gods to explain what we could not. On the other hand, without any evidence, you assert that a supernatural moral law exists; we evolved to sense this moral law and this is captured in the Bible. You maintain that morality comes from God, yet fail to notice (or admit) that His inerrant word, the Bible, is probably the worst source of morality outside of the Koran. Human sacrifice, genocide, slaveholding, and misogyny are consistently celebrated. Of course, God’s counsel to parents is refreshingly straightforward: whenever children get out of line, we should beat them with a rod (Proverbs 13:24, 20:30, and 23:13–14). If they are shameless enough to talk back to us, we should kill them (Exodus 21:15, Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18–21, Mark 7:9–13, and Matthew 15:4–7). We must also stone people to death for heresy, adultery, homosexuality, working on the Sabbath, worshiping graven images, practicing sorcery, and a wide variety of other offenses.
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It is not an accident that Aquinas thought heretics should be killed and that Augustine thought they should be tortured.  Do you think that these icons of the Church hadn’t read the Bible closely enough to discover the error of their ways? WE decided what is good in the Good Book, and what should rightly be discarded. We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. We read that a woman found not to be a virgin on her wedding night should be stoned to death, and we decide that this is the most vile lunacy imaginable. Our own subjective ethical intuitions are, therefore, primary.
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In evolution, we have a scientific theory that explains how humans came to be. Note that evolution makes no claims beyond that, or about the universe. How rational is it that the Pope and Catholics can agree with the mechanics of it yet while denying the implications? The point of evolution is that the process does not require (and in fact is absent of) any divine guidance whatsoever. This is an example of the unwillingness of the religious to engage in discourse of this sort where it contradicts dogma. Evolution is far more consonant with medieval Catholicism than Paley’s creationism? The Church deserves no points for (relatively recently) dismissing the absurdities of Paley. I’m not sure what you mean by “snap to attention” - how about merely embracing it?  Newton’s theories, because they don’t tread on theological ground, are immune to decrees from the Pope. The Pope cannot deny universal gravitation, yet there should be no disagreement that he indeed would, or footnote it like he did with evolution, if it contradicted Church dogma.
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Natural scientists (note: there should be no such word as Darwinist, just as there are no longer Newtonists or Einsteinists) weren’t merely “holding on” to evolutionary theory as you say; they were continually crash-testing it by examining new evidence and fresh observations to measure its fit with the theory. Modern genetics have only reinforced the truth of Darwin’s theory. Can the same be said of the Bible? If Darwin was shown to be useless as an explanation of our origins, would there still be value in studying and teaching it because it was beautifully written and had value as allegory or a collection of parables? Of course not, we would admit was wrong chuck the whole thing, as you say.
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So genetic evidence that there could not possibly have been a literal Adam and Eve means we might have to revisit our idea of where Cain got his wife. Really?  Is the jury still out on this anywhere outside the walls of the Vatican?  What is your idea Jon? In the set of all possible explanations, is the painfully obvious “there was no Cain” among them? I think you should be more concerned with its implications on the repulsive concept of original sin, and why a Savior was even required to atone for the inherited sins of mythical people.  When seeking to “integrate” theology with science, science takes a back seat to dogma and the will to believe triumphs in a very unfair fight. The Bible was used to explain a whole host of natural world phenomena which have since been ceded to the domain of science. All that remains in the 21st century are the claims that have no basis in reality and cannot be examined rationally, much less scientifically.
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That said, my intention is not to characterize science as a protagonist in a battle with religion. The job of science is certainly not to disprove religion - this is merely a consequence. The “medievals didn’t think that God personally and directly caused disease until Pasteur came along with germ theory”? I don’t understand how you can assert this Jon, the Bible and history suggest otherwise. Even as you read this, millions of Christians will affirm that hurricanes, earthquakes, and the AIDS virus are directly caused by God. The discipline of “Christian Science” teaches that prayer heals, since the root of all disease is sin. Where do you think Christians get these ridiculous ideas? From the Bible of course (this might be a good time to re-read Leviticus 26:15 & 16).
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Jon, I won’t pretend to have studied the Bible, but I have read it. What have I missed? Does the Bible contain a great deal of good, beauty, and wisdom? Of course it does. However there isn’t a shred of evidence that it was, as your friend the Pope would have it, “written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost.” Christians believe that a book showing neither unity of style nor internal consistency was authored by an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deity. Yet when pointing this out to people like yourself, I am accused of mischaracterizing religion, overlooking a vast ocean of nuance, and always, of not reading the Bible properly. I assume that you, like me, have never read the Koran or the Book of Mormon with the “kind of attention a difficult and complex text demands”. Does this in any way remotely increase the likelihood that Joseph Smith received golden plates from the angel Moroni, or that Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged steed? Is “bogus” a fair description of the Book of Mormon, or are you simply too polite to say so? Yet you take offense with the observation that the Bible makes equally outrageous claims for which there is the same degree of evidence. Why not admit that they are just books, written by fallible human beings like ourselves? Given that, is it remotely a good guide to organize our life around them?
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You state that Genesis isn’t very good biology. True, the Bible isn’t a book about biology, or slavery, or homosexuality; the problem is that wherever it touches these areas, it gets either the facts or the ethics completely wrong. I presume you live in the USA, so I’m baffled by your statement that “in the past some Christians did base their biology on Genesis”. At this very moment, some 46 percent of Americans take a literalist view of creation. They place the Big Bang some 2500 years after the Sumerians learned to brew beer. The majority of the population in the most scientifically advanced country on earth rejects evolution. Is there any doubt why? Is it a mere statistical anomaly that evolution denial varies directly with religious observance?
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I did not intend to characterize science as a protagonist in a battle with religion. The job of science is not to disprove religion, this is merely a consequence. The “medievals didn’t think that God personally and directly caused disease until Pasteur came along with germ theory”? I don’t understand how you can assert this Jon, the Bible and history suggest otherwise. Even in the 21st century, there are millions of Christians that affirm that hurricanes, earthquakes, and the AIDS virus are directly caused by God. The discipline of “Christian Science” teaches that prayer heals, since the root of all disease is sin. Where do you think Christians get these ridiculous ideas? From the Bible of course (this might be a good time to re-read Leviticus 26:15 & 16).
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I also disagree with your assertion that I’m treating the uneducated as if they speak for Christianity (or any religion). My only point is that when education arrives from any quarter other than the Bible, there is an unwillingness to accept it. In Italy, Galileo announced other worlds and evidence for the heliocentric model; Giordano Bruno noted that our sun appeared to be just one unremarkable star in a sea of millions and speculated on extraterrestrial life.  While these men suffered horribly at the hands of the Church for presenting such evidence, was it because the Popes and his Inquisitors were uneducated? Of course not; they simply realized the implications of this information and acted to suppress it, to the present day shame of the Church. The reasons that Aquinas and Augustine endorsed torture is that the teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for educated Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries.  You are, of course, free to interpret the Bible differently - though isn’t it amazing that you have succeeded in discerning the true teachings of Christianity, while the most influential thinkers in the history of your faith failed?
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Jon, I appreciate you say that some of my past comments have given you food for thought. I wish I could say that some of your arguments give me reason to think that God exists, or that the Christian religion is any more valid than any others, but perhaps that wasn’t your intention. In any event, please note that I am not on a crusade to eradicate religion; I can respect other’s rights to believe in God or Allah or L. Ron Hubbard. The vast majority of my friends and family are Christians, and we all get along just fine. In fact, my kids attend Catholic school, as I did, and I think Catholic teachings (for the most part) are wonderful. I only get my back up when the pious seek to regulate our society according to the utter certainty of religious beliefs. A fine example is this very website, with its daily articles advocating banning abortion in all circumstances, claiming that contraception is evil, ridiculing atheists as immoral and ignorant monsters, and labeling all who disagree as enablers of the “culture of death”. What I find even more puzzling is the concerted push to elect a Mormon with fruit-loop beliefs over a fellow Christian simply because he recently discovered that he was “pro-life” after a lifetime of demonstrating the opposite, and embracing social and economic policies that cannot be further than what Jesus taught. Then again, if people believe that the Bible is the actual word of God, believing that someone coincidentally realized that abortion should be banned just in time for a presidential election bid is not much of a stretch.
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I really enjoy the opportunity to converse like this Jon, so I hope I wasn’t so offensive that you don’t reply. Cheers.

The evidence of God’s incarnate resurrection power that is most amazing to me are persons who have suffered much yet chosen to embrace life, to find and join life in the midst of their suffering. These two pictured seem to be doing just that. To be sure this is one moment captured, and each, most probably, also have or will have many moments of anger, discouragement, social alienation, etc. However this one moment could not exist were their not the ecouragement and support of others and the choice to engage life and love. God bless them. They take the wind out of any complaints I have today. I am Douglas Schoeninger and can be reached through http://actheals.com.