Martin Scorsese’s film, Silence, explores important parts of Christian faith through the historical example of Japanese Catholics and European missionaries during the Tokugawa Shogunate. I consider the film’s lesson to be essentially contrary to orthodox Christianty (I believe conservative Catholics generally disapprove of this film).
Our faith is tested in various ways. In the West Christians may not face the horrible persecution that their brothers and sisters are suffering in the South and East, but that does not make their experiences and doubts meaningless.
A few weeks ago, I was catching up with an old friend. I mentioned my own “existential” concerns in passing and X told me that s/he did not agree with organised religion (I think this was a hint at the Pharisaism that characterises a number of Christians), but agreed with the general ethical basis of loving people.
This sort of point is not new to me (most Christians who evangelise will encounter such a position at some point). It can lead to some analysis and attempts to solve the problem. Examples are:
- Distinguishing between the big organisations (denominations) and the simplicity of house churches and simple fellowships.
- Distinguishing between the sinfulness of ordinary humans and the life of Christ, who was without sin.
- Reminding the person that Christ is the Good Shepherd. He will bring His sheep to the Father – one way or another.
Our duty to the truth can make us question what we should do when faced with challenges of the kind mentioned above. In Silence, the question arises as to whether formal apostasy is the correct thing to do in the context, in order to save lives. Orthodox Christianity – and I will not disagree – says that apostasy of that kind is not the answer.
But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.
-Matthew 10:33
Apostasy in that context is wrong because it is unconscionable. Silence jars with orthodox Christianity because it presents a distorted version of what is going on subjectively and objectively. It posits that calling people to remain publically true to Christ at the cost of their lives is selfish – a form of pride.
This is not the case. While there may be sinful motives in a particular case that pollute the subjective part of the ethical act, that does not mean that it is morally acceptable to deny Christ if you still believe in orthodox Christianity. Such denial is unethical in its context because it is a lie.
Lying for the sake of saving lives can be justified. The common example cited in this regard is the person sheltering a fugitive from the Gestapo and telling the Gestapo that there are no fugitives in the house. The Silence apostasy temptation does not fall within this category.
In that instance, telling people to apostatise so that they will be spared torture and execution is (subjectively speaking) asking them to trade the promise of eternal life for security in this life (which incidentally is not guaranteed in any case). This is not acting in the victims’ best interests.
The calculus changes for the person who no longer believes in Christianity. But there is always the epistemological difficulty of knowing deep down inside what one really believes. Epistemology and psychology are difficult matters.
Christians do experience doubt. Silence is, among other things, about doubt. Doubt is an important tool in philosophy and science – but it has a curious life of its own. In truth, it is an awesome power, and it would be naive to treat it simply as a tool. Once questions have been asked, they cannot be un-asked. Viewed from this perspective, doubt can appear like a contagion, an evil to be isolated and cast out.
I believe it is important for Christians to offer ministry to agnostics and atheists who desire it, be they former Christians or people who never were Christian. I have been saddened by the animosity that AATW has experienced in the course of this year. I have no desire to see its return, but I do wish that people who have doubts and questions can receive an appropriate kind of ministry here.
By ministry, I do not mean attempts to bludgeon people into believing or facilitation of debates that may cause more heat than light. Rather, I simply mean companionship – walking with people through the darkness.
These are incredible times, and it may be that miracles will multiply as the darkness deepens. On the other hand, miracles, happening within the empirical realm, can always be doubted. The Christian is tasked with giving the most authentic testimony that he can, with relating why it is that he believes in God – not arguments advanced by others that he personally finds unpersuasive. Authentic Christianity is the light of truth in the darkness, the whisper of hope in the silence.
All Along the Watchtower 
I wrote about this film and book when the movie was first announced. I disapproved the conclusion or what appears to be the conclusion, but I find certain elements of it fascinating to think about during the course of the movie like the struggle of the supporting Character who apostasies many times but seems to finally go to a martyrs death.
There’s a conflict in your overall sentiment that i think is admirable but a tension rises nonetheless. Of course this blog was started by an Anglican who conveys the idea of Mere Christianity which is inherently English in many respects as we can point toward NT Wright’s Simply Christ.
Some of the difficulty is maneuvering around the faith as experienced in the ancient Apostle’s Creed and that of Religion in practice. Faith in Christ is not a faith in between the ears but rather a faith of action and trouble tends to brew up when we discuss the theology that may call us to action and how this play out in our day to day lives.
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Indeed. Thank you for those honest thoughts; I thought of your earlier post as I was writing this. I actually feel God closer to me in my daily life than in worship at church etc.
I find the religious aspect of Christianity increasingly problematic, and I am not sure going forward how much I will have to do with it.
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I suppose the question would whether what your proposing in a form of immanence and whether immanence leads not to the God of Israel and Christ Jesus but rather to paganism.
I think what this blog suffers from the most is a lack of direction. I think it would be interesting if we could take a document like Bonaventure’s A Soul’s Journey into God and whoever wants to participate give a short 500 word commentary on a chapter of that short treatise. In that respect, I think we can help return to what this blog was at it’s best.
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I still believe in orthodoxy, but Iquestion the state of the Church at present. Israel is evidence that there is a God and that God is the God of the Bible, but God’s people are in a mess- at least as far as the West is concerned.
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We believe in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Christ promised the gates of Hades would not prevail against Her. If you doubt this, you *are* doubting orthodoxy.
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The state of the Church in a mess?
Jesus chose in his inner circle the one would betray him and all the others abandoned in him.
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I question what we have done to the mission. Do I believe God has a flock in this world? Yes. Do I believe that the flock makes mistakes (with the 12 acting as an archetypal example, recapitulating the story of Israel in the OT)? Yes. Do I believe God appoints overseers, teachers, servants, financial helpers, prophets, etc? Yes. Do I believe the Western church is fit for purpose at the moment – no. I also question the attempts of some Christians to “protect” the faith at all costs. We have a duty to the Truth, and that duty includes being as objective and honest as we can be. It is my belief that we are in serious need of a fresh breath of life, as it were. The Holy Spirit is sufficient for our needs, but perhaps we need a dose of persecution or something to snap pull us out of the mire. There is some sickness that ails the Western church, or some cloud of fog that it is difficult to pierce. Something troubles my spirit and I think I must be as honest as I can about that, and my intuition is that part of the cause is the church structures themselves, but that is, as I say, only part of the problem. I know a lot of people will say, “Just keep the faith and plough on.” We certainly should keep our faith in Christ, but I think we need to fix, with God’s help, what we are seeing right now. My fear is that when bad times come, many indeed will fall away, as said in Matthew 24.
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The most interesting aspect that comes to mind with your comment is your view of the Western Church. Perhaps, what unifies all Western churches is Augustine, as I am aware of your distance from him. However, the East may not have the West’s problems but it certainly has its own problems formed by its own theology primarily what I its ethnic sectionalism that is dividing Greece and Russia communion.
Of course, the age of the Holy Spirit is a sentiment that divided the Church during the Carthur heresy. The issue at end and protecting the faith is part of Christ’s mission in its totality that you’re seeming at odds with as some frame Jesus as anti-dogmatic—this isn’t a true representation of Jesus nor of the Gospels.
“If you love me, keep me commandments.” And he has more than just do unto others, as you would done unto you.
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I would certainly understand Christ as dogmatic. He claimed to be Yahweh and He said that we must be in covenant with Yahweh to live. I’m no pagan or new ager. I am aware of the East’s ethnic problems, which have been discussed on “Anglican Unscripted” in the past. But I find myself wondering if in the West we have substituted something for direct communion with God, if church has stopped being a living connection in some (but not all instances). I am not sure it is appropriate for me to continue here either because my outlook is distinctly Protestant. I do not feel able to engage with Catholics anymore – at least traditionalist ones.
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I consider myself an orthodox Catholic, not traditionalist, but anymore I think many would label me as such, but I would hold to the faith as described by Cardinal Mueller in his Manifesto of Faith.
Nonetheless, I’ve enjoyed your company here. And may the grace of God lead you where you need to be.
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Thank you. And I yours.
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Regarding your point about the blog, please feel free to write as many posts as you like. Time is not afforded me to do this anymore, given my work and travel hours, excepting weekends. I am not sure how much I really want to write or engage here anymore, although I may make some posts if I feel something big geopolitically (e.g. rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple) warrants a comment.
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Two things from an outsiders point of view; the church itself is this gigantic bureaucracy of appointed stooges that have no accountability (Pope Francis anyone) But the people in the trenches still have to answer for them. I do think that this generation has the all-time biggest challenge of faith in the history of the world—information. To continue faith in the face of overwhelming knowledge that there are better ways of seeing the world.
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That certainly is a problem. I prefer the housechurch/independent model.
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The office of Bishop is evident in the New Testament and is of Divine institution.
The Devil yearns to strike the Shepherd that the sheep might be scattered.
An atomised church will not withstand what is about to be unleashed on the world.
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The lack of accountability of church men exists because it has suited secular powers to keep these stooges in place in certain parts of the world (mainly, the post-Christian west). In other parts of the world, actual Christians – clergy and laity alike – suffer bloody persecution because of the Faith lived as it should be. There are no timeservers in the persecuted Church. Not even among bishops!
What better way of viewing the world could there possibly be than as the product of a benevolent Intelligence who wants us to be happy? What do you mean by “better”? How does an Atheist measure “better”?
In a Godless universe, there is no better or worse – there is only what must be by necessity, or what is for no reason at all. In my universe, I have Hope – even though I know I must die, and so must everyone I love. In your universe, what hope you have is – by your own lights – an illusion, a trick of your genetics to keep the genome ticking over. A true empiricist accepts the testimony of his own senses and reason. Hope is real. Love is real. Justice is real. Right and wrong are real. None of this would be possible for mortals in a Godless universe.
I don’t see that information has anything to do with this. Christians have always had to deal with the realities of sin and suffering in this world. Modern science reveals a world of far greater complexity than our forefathers could have conceived.
The West, where Faith is at a very low ebb, has debauched itself with all kinds of sensual indulgence to the point of collapse. Sin – and even to an extent legitimate enjoyment of worldly goods – darkens the intellect, and makes it hard to respond to God’s grace. We have exchanged mundane technical know-how for the knowledge of God, and are the poorer for it.
If Atheism ever produced something beautiful, or good, or noble, good people might take notice of it. But it is a bankrupt position, which has only power for evil.
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* Correction: we have exchanged the knowledge of God for mundane technical know-how.
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The knowledge of god is fleeting into obscurity because it is merely filling in the blanks til we actually have knowledge. Only 300 years ago did men start exploring the mountains, for in them were devils and gods. Moses actually used this nonsense to exact control and obedience, while now it is a field of study. Religion has its day. There are better explanations for all of it. It is not a benevolent intelligence that is opinionated, but men seeking control. Better? Why does Christianity have to deprecate in followers to get obedience? We’re not nearly as worthless as were made out to be.
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Well, that description is alien to my understanding of my own religion. I admit religion, like anything else, can be used to manipulate people. It is documented among the pagans in the old testament.
I believe in God – and that liberates me. Obedience and control are, considered by themselves, positive things – but there is no servility in true religion.
Even if someone threatens to kill me, I know that God will give me the strength to endure in the Truth. So if I defer to any man, I do it, only honouring God, and not him. And if any man tries to oppress or tyrannise me, he cannot, because God upholds me. I will never obey man rather than God.
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I don’t know where this idea that Christianity discounts the dignity humanity comes from. It seems to be from the cake-and-eat-it school of scepticism, which at the one minute ridicules Christian doctrine for making man the apex of creation (which is a commonplace of our everyday experience), and at the next mocks it for making man out to be hopelessly flawed (again, an obvious bit of common sense).
In a Godless universe YOU MEAN NOTHING. Another reason I don’t believe in atheism.
In the real world, you mean a lot. This is too frightening responsibility for many people to face up to. You are an eternal creature – you have a rational, spiritual soul. You are loved, hopefully by other rational creatures, but first and foremost by God who made you and gives you all the graces necessary to attain heaven. You are capable of virtue, and vice, and you are accountable for your voluntary acts.
Christian humility means acknowledging that we fall far short of the mark. This is true. Our own conscience tells us this. It is impossible, if you have any self-respect, for us to excuse a deliberate, culpable moral lapse in the tribunal of our own conscience. It is unworthy of man to sin. We know it. We feel ashamed to do it.
And yet we keep on doing it.
Humility is just realism. The degenerate self-worship of the modern age, which places the ego at the centre of everything is the worst kind of idolatry. There’s less true generosity in it than in a savage worshipping of a lump of rock. At least of the rock, it is true to say that it has committed no sin. Not so of our selves – and we know it.
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“The degenerate self-worship of the modern age, which places the ego at the centre of everything”. That is faith in a nutshell. The ultimate display of stubborn pride. Our own conscience does not at all tell me I fall short of anything at all. That was your job. Only through unbelief can it be seen how ridiculously limiting religion is to human potential. If you don’t believe me, just see how easy it is for you to unravel any religion other than your own. That is how I see yours. The key to the mysteries is unbelief.
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Well – does religion puff up man’s pride, or does it denigrate him? Make your mind up.
I don’t understand your remarks about conscience. I was raised as an atheist – I certainly had a conscience. It comes of knowing what the right thing to do was, and failing to do it.
I believe there is a some amount of good sense in most religion. In most religion, there is a more or less faint recollection of the basic truths transmitted from the primordial religion of our first ancestors. The errors of false religions crop in as more or less understandable accretions from confused and flawed human beings – some of them sincere, others out and out charlatans, coupled with the direct influence of evil spirits, which tends to take the shine off somewhat.
We are about to find out how limiting unbelief is to human potential in our own society. Proof of its limiting nature in the societies of Communist China and Soviet Russia has already been evinced.
In this country, it manifests in increased rates of mental illness, suicide, and an inability to have sex correctly and raise happy children in a stable family unit.
If Christianity dies in England, it will not be atheism that replaces it, but Islam. That’s because Atheism offers nothing positive at all – only despair.
And, to be fair – I wish the Muslims all the best. At least they believe that children should have a mummy and daddy. Rather Islam than Atheism any day of the week.
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Faith and pride are the same thing. Just a little wordplay to give virtue points. Rather than rewrite, here’s a snippet in faith, the ultimate display of pride. https://jimoeba.wordpress.com/2019/04/07/faith-or-pride-why-not-both/
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If you think religion is false, then the people who believe in its tenets are not necessarily prideful; they are simply deluded, or ignorant, or stubborn.
Stubbornness does not entail pride necessarily. There can be perfectly good reasons to be stubborn about things. A woman may be quite properly stubborn in her refusal of the advances of a philanderer.
If the believer’s reason is in fact illusory, but he believes it to be a good reason, then his subjective motive for stubbornness is no more prideful than that of the chaste woman.
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Your conflating belief with personal autonomy. Defending belief (mere convictions of though without evidence) is well documented. Norepinephrine is the greatest ally of beliefs. Overcoming belief mode is the greatest challenge of modern man. The founders played very well on the foibles of human nature, simply defending the validity of hope, that same hope that is needed only because of belief. It’s a neat trick.
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As a side observation, hoping when the situation is hopeless can be the difference between life and death in a survival situation. Be careful that in “overcoming” belief you don’t end up severing the psychological thread that holds body and soul together. My prediction is that as Atheism rises in your country, your suicide rates will go up. And your rates of insanity.
To your broader point, and to speak frankly, I would say there are some parts of what I believe which are based on rational deduction from certain evidence, and parts that I believe on Faith (though, the conviction of Faith does cover all these tenets – but that wasn’t always the case for me).
Why do I believe (with a capital B!) the Gospels’ account, for example? Because it engages the deepest and best desires of my heart and promises their fulfilment.
I profoundly want it to be true that all things work in the end for those who work righteousness, that there is mercy for the penitent and justice for all, righteous and unrighteous alike.
The proof of that will be in the world to come. Christ promised that those who thirsted after justice would have their fill; so I devoutly believe and hope.
What Atheists never speak about is why they so hate this quality in religious believers – why do they try to destroy it? Are they simply envious of it?
Why do they *need* to believe there is no God?
The question comes down to this – where do these desires come from? Are they a mere freak of evolution, or are they put there by the good God who made us and loves us?
I need, – and I don’t think I’m alone in this – to make some sense of the world I live in and my place in it. I do not think that this endeavour is possible if you run roughshod over the primitive human belief that there is a benign gentlemen behind the scenes who designed the cosmos and is keeping the whole thing ticking over.
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There are plenty of ways to make sense of the world. I find it interesting that you speak of primitive belief , but your faith destroyed most of them at the point of a sword and the flames of Europe and Latin America for a thousand years. There were (and are) beautiful ways of being in the world that are more legitimate and productive than the ongoing failure of Abrahamic religions. Things you’ve never even heard of. My wife is a Babaylan, which faces more persecution from Catholicism and Islam even today, than any Christian sect in the world. Are they a threat? Your missionaries continue to proselytize the Amazon. Nothing can be left as beautiful, as we head into a monochromatic world of bland belief without substance.
The US suicide rate will not change. “The incidence of suicide in Scandinavia resembles the rest of Europe, North America and Australia. In Europe, the average suicide rate was 11.7 per 100,000 for both sexes in the years 2006-2014 (European Commission, 2017). Atheism is an awakening, not a curse. To see the world through your own eyes and not indoctrinations. Religious areas are not exempt from this.
Your faith has blunders and blinders to reality. The spread of Christianity would be unimaginable without the power of government and the sword. You are not who you think you are.
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The Church condemns forced conversion.
However, child sacrifice – for example – is a crime, and merits death. Forcing someone to believe in Christianity, and preventing them from acting on the worst impulses of their false religions (e.g. chucking a man’s widow alive on his funeral pyre) are two very different things.
Given that you presently enjoy the fruits of Christian civilisation to that of paganism, I wonder why you don’t leave your own society and join the pagans, if their way of life is so beautiful?
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Why does a batting coach have to deprecate their players to have them straighten out their swing and perform better?
In pursuit of the end; Christianity follows more or less the same principle. Of course, most anyone can swing a bat but hit a ball is another matter. The coach doesn’t think his players are worthless but rather the admonishment yo straighten a swing is in the pursuit of the end of goodness which is the perfecting of the swing.
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Esteem issues from bad parenting vs tough coaching are quite different. Convincing people they need to fear the afterlife if they don’t believe a certain way is ultimately just silly. There is no sting of death in nature but only in religious anxieties.
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Who or what is the authority on bad parenting? Morality in a secular humanist sense is nothing more than borrowed capital in a worldview of stardust only bumping other stardust.
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Says who? Certainly not me. Forging more self discipline and restraint than any supposed morality dispensed by god, humans refrain because of what others will think—and will even claim to believe in god for the same reason. They also will do in private with only god watching, what they would never do in front of even the most vile humans.
Morality among mankind is nothing more than consensual dance of personal opinion inside a framework of what societies are collectively willing to tolerate, evolved into fairness bit by bit through trial and error, cause and effect, fear of exclusion (and indoctrination, of course)
If god has placed morality into the hearts of men, explain feral children? Morality is a learned behavior.
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And can you offer anything specific that your religion has ever produced which we would all ( in general) regard as beautiful?t
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Some examples. Rule of law. Equality of men and women of all degrees before the law. End to trial by ordeal. Trial by jury. The establishment of the first hospitals. The establishment of universities for both men and women. Recognition of poor people as human beings deserving of love rather than contempt. Destruction of child-murdering barbarian cultures and end to human sacrifice. Gothic architecture. Plainchant. Polyphonic ecclesiastical music. Just war theory. Moderation, curtailment and finally the abolition of slavery (though this was a movement that extended beyond the Catholic Church herself, and the execution was effected – it must be said – by a Protestant England). Stigmatisation of male fornication. Abolition of bigamy and polygamy. Establishment of the Montes Pietatis to provide cheap credit on charity to poor people, which formed the basis of the modern banking system and laid the foundation for the economic explosion that gave us the modern economic age.
The sacred music of innumerable eminent Catholic composers.
That’s a start.
Now give me something beautiful or noble that Atheism has produced.
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Rule of law.
False. The Cyrus Cylinder predates anything Christian.
Equality of men and women of all degrees before the law.
False. Discrimination against women is a hallmark of Christianity (and several other religions)
End to trial by ordeal. Trial by jury.
False. The church merely banned clergy participation.
The establishment of the first hospitals.
False. But I know you will say I am splitting hairs.
The establishment of universities for both men and women.
Evidence?
Recognition of poor people as human beings deserving of love rather than contempt.
False. See the Cyrus Scroll
Destruction of child-murdering barbarian cultures and end to human sacrifice.
Ironic when one considers that the entire Christian religion is based on the worship of a human sacrifice and Christians have been guilty of several high profile genocides.
Just war theory.
I suppose they felt they had to considering how much slaughter they instigated.
Moderation, curtailment and finally the abolition of slavery
Somewhat ironic considering Christians were the major exponents of the trans Atlantic slave trade for centuries. Oh, and the Chinese banned slavery long before the Christians developed a guilty conscience.
Stigmatisation of male fornication.
Please elaborate.
Abolition of bigamy and polygamy.
Evidence?
Establishment of the Montes Pietatis to provide cheap credit on charity to poor people, which formed the basis of the modern banking system and laid the foundation for the economic explosion that gave us the modern economic age.
Now give me something beautiful or noble that Atheism has produced.
Atheism is the absence of belief in gods. It is not a worldview.
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Did the Cyrus Cylinder bring these things into Britain?
I was referring to concrete achievements. I allow the possibility that some of these good things have also been achieved by others. That does not mean that, where they were absent, and my religion brought them, they are not its achievements and should not be credited to it. But you are a hate-filled lying atheist, so far be it from you to give credit where it’s due.
Re male / female equality before the law, I mean that 1) male and female testimony carried (carries) equal weight, 2) men and women were subject to the same rule of law, 3) women could not be disposed of as chattels, in the way they are in Islam and were under the Mosaic law.
This is all true. It does not mean that in Christian societies the roles of men and women were differentiated. Equality before the law does not mean equality tout court. There has been progress in Christian civilisation – it didn’t all become wonderful overnight. Again you won’t give any credit, because you are a hate-filled atheist.
Trial by ordeal was superseded by trial by the system we have in Britain, following very consciously a tradition of Jurisprudence dating back to the Old Testament. The first mover in this was Alfred the Great in the 800s.
Bigamy and polygamy are banned in Christian countries.
Stigmatisation of male fornication. Female fornication is stigmatised in non-Christian cultures, but from men it is tolerated. Cato the Elder (if memory serves) is recorded to have praised the action of a youth who visited prostitutes, on the grounds that in this way he was not tempted to molest Roman matrons. More generally, fornication was rife in the pagan world, as it is today in post-Christian Britain. Christianity reserves sex for the marital bond, and stigmatises bastardy and fornication. This means that more children, proportionally, are born into stable homes.
According to Thomas Sowell’s “Intellectuals and Society”, the rate of births outside of marriage among Black Americans in the 1920s was around 20%. As moral standards declined and in wake of social reforms enacted in the name of the anti-Christian “sexual revolution”, this figure rose to 80%.
Re slavery – it was effectually abolished, at great national cost, by the British empire, in a single-handed effort which succeeded because of Britain’s overwhelming naval power.
The maltreatment of native populations in the Americas was censured by the Popes. Slavery is undesirable in all forms. But only some forms are absolutely and in every case immoral; debt bondage, for example, is moral (though again, I am glad it does not exist today). There is also a moral distinction to be drawn between enslaving people in the first place, and inheriting a dependent population of enslaved people.
Christians were heavily involved in the transatlantic slave trade, but they were buying wares put up for sale by Africans. Arabs conducted a far more hideous slave trade from the same source; they did not want healthy workers of both sexes, but rather concubines to service wealthy owners. Male slaves were routinely castrated, and most perished en route. Christians were themselves subjected to slavery by the Barbary states.
Atheism produces hatred, violence, tyranny, murder and death.
Christianity has curbed the worst excesses of men. It has a long history, tainted, by the misdeeds of those who did not abide by God’s law.
However, none of that is in any way supported by the teaching of the Church.
But it is very convenient for you, again, enjoying all the benefits hard won from nature and from the jaws of bloody conflict by your forefathers, to carp at them and judge them by today’s effete standards.
I am glad I do not live in a world where enslaving people and burning heretics is necessary. The Christian world came out of that epoch of history, and into something better; the Islamic world – not so much, save where forced to by the (brief) pre-eminence of Western imperial powers in the middle east (cf. the photograph of the last Caliph in his study, wearing a tweed jacket).
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How very Christian of you.
And I hate nothing, with the very rare exception of Manchester United on a bad day. Oh, and I do not lie.
Are pedophile Catholic Priests exempt from this stigmatizing?
Re slavery. Ah yes … point the finger at the Arabs.
And who could forget Torquemada?
And the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.
Isn’t there somewhere in your Good Book (sic) that warns about the beam in your own eye?
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More on women’s education:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_education
Also note the acumen of the two female Doctors of the Church, Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila, the even greater number of female saints (highly-regarded authors of spiritual texts among them), and the fact that the greatest Saint of them all is Our Lady (to whom I am personally consecrated in a bond of Holy slavery – one kind I would not seek to abolish!).
Christianity honours womanhood. Atheism undermines natural law, and seeks to impose a progress, procrustean equality, which denies the distinctive and complementary nature of women and men, and attempts to supplant it with an idealised view that has no basis in empirical evidence. (Of course not all atheists believe this, but this is the direction that a godless Britain has taken in my lifetime).
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Didn’t old Saul of Tarsus say that women must keep quiet?
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@quiavideruntoculi
This is the typical asinine response of the religiously indoctrinated when presented with evidence that demonstrates just how vile their religion truly is.
Far from being ”civilised” the Abrahamic religions are founded on the deaths of millions and millions of human beings, many of whom were from the same religion that were butchered simply because they were declared heretics.
The level of hubris on display here is galling.
I was tempted to include ignorance as well, however, I’ll take a bet you are fully aware of the atrocities your religion is directly and indirectly responsible for, but you either choose to ignore or justify them as all part of your god’s plan.
Such an attitude is utterly disgusting, and vomit worthy.
You should be ashamed.
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Returning to the main question you asked Jim, over which I have spent some time thinking (even before you asked it), my answer is that I do not believe atheists are in a position philosophically to prove their position. I think the atheists who believe this themselves and who are intellectually honest will say that they simply consider their position to be more reasonable than the alternative. In that sense, the debate for people like that is rather like a civil trial in which the case is proved on the balance of probabilities – “more likely than not” – rather than in a criminal case which requires proving beyond all reasonable doubt.
Now some people will say that God’s existence can be known, that once relevant things are properly considered, we move beyond all reasonable doubt. There are people who exhibit great certainty – and I myself have experienced this for a large part of my life. However, we have to be careful to distinguish between psychological certainty – the feeling of being certain – and epistemic certainty – actually knowing, i.e. having proper justification, properly acquired.
I am going through a process now of considering my doubts, whether they are reasonable. I want my faith to be based on a firm and proper foundation, not simply believing because I cannot live without meaning in my life. In that sense, I seem to have taken a new path or begun the journey again. I am looking for God. I think I am finding Him, but at this stage I would like a more humble approach. I find myself troubled by Paul’s words in Romans 1 about people having no excuse because a basic knowledge of God can be derived from nature (i.e. experience). I am still working on that one. Based on the Big Bang Theory, I think that statement holds by recourse to Thomas Aquinas – but the ancients did not have the BBT. So, for Paul to hold true for them, they must have had an appropriate justification in their own time based on what they were in a position to properly know and infer and deduce.
Speaking philosophically, I do not think science is in a position to disprove the existence of God, because science is subordinate to philosophy. Philosophy is logically anterior because it sets the terms by which science is to operate and have meaning. All that stuff about isolating and controlling variables, about methodology, is fundamentally a priori, not a posteriori. So we have to look to philosophy to really dig into the questions about God’s existence and nature.
The atheist attach usually comes on two fronts philosophically speaking – trying to show incoherence in the concept of God (or in Christianity if they are attacking the religion) or trying to show that God/Christianity is incompatible with how the world is. The former involves arguments such as the problem of omnipotence; the latter typically concerns variations on the problem of evil.
I believe there are problems with the atheistic arguments and that Christianity has offered good defences to these attacks. Space does not allow me to outline these here, but there are plenty of books, videos, and websites on these topics, and they could be dealt with in future posts (though probably not by me). Given what i believe (and probably know having gone through the philosophy), I think agnosticism is the more appropriate position for those with doubts, rather than atheism. It is probably more intellectually appropriate to say, “Case not proven” rather than “Case refuted”.
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This is not what science is about at all.
It makes no pronouncements one way or another.
The onus is always on the proponent to provide evidence for their positive claim. So far no religiously inclined individual has ever produced a single piece of evidence to demonstrate the veracity of any god claim.
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So why do you believe?
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In a Godless universe, there is no place for the question “why”.
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The question was why do you believe?
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Meaningless question coming from an atheist. In your universe, there is only a What – there is no Why.
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MY universe is the same one you live in.
Again …. why do you believe.
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I answered it in my first post.
In a Godless universe there is no Why.
But the question Why? can be parsed by the human intellect. Therefore either 1) the human intellect is fundamentally deceptive, 2) God exists.
Route 1) is a dead end. Therefore I take route 2).
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Conversely, in a universe that contains your god there is no ”What” only ”Why?”
So why do you believe in your god?
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