“Post-Denominational”

                The front page of the April 22, 2012 Denver Post had a story, “United by Faith, Divided by Politics”, which highlighted the growing rift between 18-34 year olds and their elders; there is apparently even a growing movement among them called “post-denominational”.  To quote “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, the movie not the TV show, “Does the word ‘duh’ mean anything to you?”

                “Post-Denominational” heralds the death of denominations and of centralized, hierarchical, and conservative religion.  Also out this month is the “5280” story, “A Religious Experience: We want to know: What do Coloradans Believe?”  What the numbers show is that 60% of Coloradans are Christian and of those Coloradans, 20% or 1 in 5 are Catholic (that is 31% of the Christians), 13% of Coloradans are “other”, 11% are nondenominational, and all other denominations combined make up just over the decimal point of 20% and that makes 64% not 60.  The story does not reconcile the numbers between its pie charts; this leaves an overlap the size of Colorado’s Jewish community, but we will use the numbers anyway.

What I have noticed first of all is that the media, even local media, highlights the anomaly in religion in order to distort the reality of religion; in the 5280 story, for instance, not one Catholic was interviewed, but who would want to speak to a member in the majority of believers?  They instead spoke to a Lutheran pastor who has her service in an Episcopal Church and a pastor of a Mega-Church.

   The “other” has to include the Church of Christian Science, the Unitarians, Salvation Army, various Orthodox Churches, Pentecostal, Anglican, Assembly of God, Bible Churches, Church of Christ, Church of God, Episcopal, Mennonite, Messianic, Nazarene, Seventh Day Adventist, Fellowship, Zion, home churches, etc., etc.  The point is that “post-denominational” churches may share some of the 13% of the “other” and they may share some of the 11% of the non-denominational numbers, but they cannot reasonably be a significant portion of either of those numbers, as “others” 13% is carved up at least 20 or 30 different ways, at least, and non-denominational tends to actually mean that rather than “post-denominational”.  So can we give them logically like 5-10% of the total Colorado Christian experience?  It’s a stretch perhaps but the Post made no attempt to actually quantify anything which gives the story undue weight.

                Why do they matter at all to the Denver Post, let alone giving them a front page cover story?  Because it propagandizes the liberal minority of a conservative voting bloc; it reminds the reader who is not Orthodox that they have choices; they have all the choices in the world!  Every aspect of their faith is constantly in play and up to them to determine; which is a reality for us all, however, many of us require map and signpost or at least the sun and stars of the Church by which to navigate. 

                The options when “seeking” God are as open as the sky, they are truly unlimited.  Christians agree that the bible is instrumental in describing the Christian faith.  It was St. Jerome who said, “Ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of Christ.”  The way the bible is interpreted is not self evident regardless of what virtually every Protestant theologian has said since the Reformation, thus the proliferation of denominations up to this post-denomination precipice.  To illustrate this point I was listening to a preacher on the radio who held the Bible in one hand and the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the other he said, “Catholics place more trust in this book (I assume he raised the Catechism) than this book (raising the bible).”  This is a flatly false statement of course; he made many false and anti-Catholic statements in the surrounding sermon, but this is the one which is most pertinent.  He then expanded upon how he used his intellect and the bible alone to become a preacher.  As soon as I was able I looked up this preacher on the internet I did and guess what?  He had a library of books for sale so we can understand the bible and the Christian faith as clearly as he does!  He had his own fractured, more expensive, and much less complete catechism; the real difference is it would never occur to him to raise one of his own books in place of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

                His catechism was not peer reviewed, as he really has no peers, his catechism draws not upon two thousand years of scriptural interpretation and thought, as his mind is only about 50 years old, his catechism relies upon his own understanding of Jewish tradition, and so on.

                What the post-denominational set propose is even more callus.  The reason, at least most denominations start with some, even one, biblical precept; the post-denomination people start with themselves and assume biblical precepts based upon nothing but their own feelings.  The bible is subject to them and they are not subject to it, period.

                The further point is not that there is no place for individualism, but that individualism as proposed is a sham.  One assumes that one is simply what one is and that is all one has ever been or could ever be; this approach negates the influence of environment and antecedent inflections and reconditioning upon ones habits, inclinations, and personality.  Anyone who takes this approach is incredibly shallow, myopic, and lacking in examined experience; thus they tend to be reactionary.  The 18-34 year olds are prime persons for these pitfalls; though many tend to grow out of it by 34, unless they have become addicted to their own pride or crutches.  As one gains in intellectual ability but lacks the perspective of age, one often generalizes their immediate condition as universal and galvanizes those misconceptions against a misperceived world at large.  It may seem a rather harsh appraisal, but I assure you I have come through harsh personal examination myself.

                The resulting personal philosophy being: 1) I care not for my own opinion, 2) I long to do as St. Benedict prescribes and, “Prefer nothing to the love of Christ.”  Actually the first rule is redundant in the light of the second but I needed to keep it crystal clear for myself, this clarity keeps me from wandering anywhere near post-denominationalism.

                I understand that denominationalism was a fatal error in the first place; opening up the Pandora’s Box and releasing the tempest which batters the church into smaller and smaller splinters.  These tiny splinters may be held up and examined as the possible trend of all other splinters, but that will never cause the splinters to spontaneously reassemble into a whole.  That requires the self sacrifice which should be inherent of Christianity, but is ever diluted by the lure of convenience and self interest endemic in the philosophy of post-denominationalism.

The Death of “The Selfish Gene”

                Charles Darwin saw the paradox of his evolutionary theory; how could altruism survive in the midst of a “survival of the fittest” reality?  The commonly accepted theory to this point had to do with the utility of kinship and has been referred to as “The Selfish Gene”.  The theory posits that genetic altruism is passed along as a result of the relative similarity of the genetic make-up of close relatives; if I sacrifice or even die to defend a close relative my genetic make-up will still be passed on, more or less, by that relative.  Thus, even in altruistic events one is acting in the best interest of one’s own genetics, the selfish gene.

                There have been problems with this theory as it has aged, as it has not produced the flourishing of discovery one sees in successful scientific theory.  The theory does not explain how it broadens out without merely becoming nepotism.  It marginalizes competition among social groups and competition among individuals within groups as it pertains to altruistic outcomes.

                Edward O. Wilson in his book, “The Social Conquest of the Earth” (2012) asserts a rather simple rule which has yielded quite a bit of insight as of late, that is; within groups selfish individuals beat altruists but between groups of individuals groups of altruists beat groups of selfish people; Wilson’s theory is called eusociality.  These dynamics play out simultaneously in the social makeup, thus altruism and selfish behavior are both competing choices we face and choose as applicable and kinship is almost nonexistent on any real level. 

                The fact that altruistic tendencies are working in concert with the individuals desire to be “selfish” are factors which cause societies to progress.  As on one end of the social spectrum one has individuals competing against one another as completely independent social and moral agents and one has no society at all shortly; on the other end one sees a society of mechanized individuals who have no “ego” to function as anything but a robotic automaton.  The progress of society has to do very succinctly with the balance of these two endpoints and are thus in flux based upon the decisions of individuals and groups of individuals and not strictly determined by “selfish genes”.

                As one looks across the behavioral sciences one sees a recent trending away from genetic explanations of individual behavior.  Kerry Ressler, Joseph Ledoux, Antonio Damasio, David Anderson, and Eric Kandel were the panelists on Charlie Rose: The Brain Series, which originally aired on May 26, 2010.  They made mention of something which caught my attention, people who had a genetic predisposition towards addictive behavior were only “about 10%” more likely to develop that addictive behavior.  The debate about genetics as pertains to altruism is a circus sideshow of self indulgence.

                The main actor within the sideshow is Richard Dawkins the author of “The Selfish Gene” (1976) and his cohort of self proclaimed a-religious zealots.  The fever pitch of the “discussions” reminds me of “discussions” between Sunni and Shia regarding the legitimate legacy of the prophet.

                This shows how rare a bird altruism actually is and how ironic science makes the process of altruistic expression.  Thus the paradox Darwin initially identified is even more paradoxically heightened in the exploration of altruism.  One puts a microscope over it to watch it vanish into thin air, much like the Christian who talks of virtue and never practices virtue, the scientist who dares speak of altruism is never know as a practitioner of altruism and this is alright because the individual is simply a scientist.  Science is not a religion after all and this debate highlights just how it is not.

                The true practitioners of altruism would never wonder how it has simply occurred; as it has never simply occurred.  The knowledge science lacks lies in what it takes for granted.  It takes altruism for granted and assumes it is a result of selfish genes.  Eusociality at least begins to understand that there is an interplay among persons and situations which gives value to and reason for altruism.  So the “selfish gene” is dead, but it is only the death of another mythology, so buck up.

Sarah Silverman: Mirror for the Pro-“Aborsh” Movement

                There was a picture of a happy pregnant couple, Sarah Silverman and her boyfriend.  They were smiling and apparently happy about the baby on the way.  I would have guessed she was in her second trimester at least.  Beside that photo was a second photo with a not pregnant Sarah Silverman.  The first photo labeled before and the second after; the message, “Got a quickie aborsh in case R v W gets overturned.”

            By the second trimester the baby has a beating heart, functioning nerves, muscles, and organs.  The baby’s sex becomes apparent at fourteen weeks.  The developing skeletal system becomes apparent at fifteen weeks, which is thirteen weeks after conception.  The eyes are moving and the baby is able to suck about week sixteen.  Fat begins to accumulate at seventeen weeks and in week eighteen the baby begins to hear.  For girls, the uterus begins to form at week nineteen, seventeen weeks after conception.  At twenty weeks, the halfway point and eighteen weeks into the pregnancy, the mommy may begin to feel the baby’s first movements, week twenty-one the baby begins to swallow, week twenty-two baby grows eyebrows, week twenty-three baby has finger and foot prints, week twenty-four real hair grows, week twenty-five the baby responds to familiar sounds such as mommy’s voice with movement, week twenty-six, twenty four weeks after conception the baby’s fingernails grow.

                The first picture represented a pregnancy somewhere in this neighborhood.  It is mocking not only the pregnancy at that stage but also the joy of couples who are unintelligent enough to actually want children.

                The second picture shows not the absence of a child but the absence of any care for anyone or anything save her own sense of humor; again the problem is that the offended are unintelligent.  It is not that it is offensive to talk about abortion but it is irresponsible to belittle the experience of other women, unless there is only one prescribed response that the feminist intelligecia will allow to women in the post abortive state.

                The argument that she was actually posting about a burrito in the first place is irrelevant after the second post and accompanying message.  After all the burrito was not aborted but digested thus fulfilling the expectations of the natural world for ingested nourishment.

                The same cannot be said of abortion.  Which makes the false and mocking joy of the first photo ironic; as the intelligent couple understands the completely natural cause and effect inherent in and distinct to sexual intercourse and it’s the unintelligent couple who posts burrito pregnancy/ abortion photos to twitter.

Lives engineered like the Titanic

                What if the Titanic didn’t hit an iceberg and sink on its maiden voyage?  One could reasonably project a scenario in which the Titanic would have carried on indefinitely never hitting an iceberg.  What would that have meant for the progeny of luxury liners?  Larger, faster, even thinner hulls all based upon the design flaws of the successes of this “alternate universe” Titanic.  How many generations into the future do we think we would get before the basic design flaws would cause an even larger catastrophic accident?  Many insist that the Catholic Church is out of touch with modern society; but society is continually engineering boats which hit icebergs and sink.  Society insists, however, that something must be done about the nature of icebergs, as they are sinking all our ships.  Think about it.

“Newsweek” Theology- Heresy for Heresy's Sake

                In his Newsweek article “Christianity in Crisis” Andrew Sullivan encourages us to leave the Church and follow Jesus.  Andrew Sullivan doesn’t know what he is talking about. 

                On the road to Damascus, Saul, who was zealously persecuting Christians, has a supernatural encounter with Jesus Christ who asks Saul,”Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And he said, “Who are you Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting…” (Acts 9: 4-5)  Jesus as anyone could quickly understand was already crucified by this time.  Yet Jesus asks Saul why he persecutes Him, Jesus.

                Saul was actually persecuting Christ’s Church and Christ makes it apparent here that there is no difference between the Church and Himself; so one wonders aloud as if Andrew Sullivan were listening, “How would one leave the Church and follow Jesus?”  One goes schizophrenically, as has become normative in our culture.

                In his 1907 dystopian masterpiece “The Lord of the World” Robert Hugh Benson asserts, “Men do recognize at last that a supernatural Religion involves an absolute authority, and that Private Judgment in matters of faith is nothing else but the beginning of disintegration.”  For later in the novel priests are drawn away from the Church by the lure of the prevailing Humanist movement. Father Francis is one of them and Father Percy Franklin accepts his resignation in the paragraph below,

“Percy had nothing to say. He had talked to this man during a period of over eight months, ever since Father Francis had first confided in him that his faith was going. He understood perfectly what a strain it had been; he felt bitterly compassionate towards this poor creature who had become caught up somehow into the dizzy triumphant whirl of the New Humanity. External facts were horribly strong just now; and faith, except to one who had learned that Will and Grace were all and emotion nothing, was as a child crawling about in the midst of some huge machinery: it might survive or it might not; but it required nerves of steel to keep steady. It was hard to know where blame could be assigned; yet Percy’s faith told him that there was blame due. In the ages of faith a very inadequate grasp of religion would pass muster; in these searching days none but the humble and the pure could stand the test for long, unless indeed they were protected by a miracle of ignorance. The alliance of Psychology and Materialism did indeed seem, looked at from one angle, to account for everything; it needed a robust supernatural perception to understand their practical inadequacy.”

                Secularized faith is what Andrew Sullivan proposes through Jefferson and his neatly cropped Bible and through, my patron saint, Francis of Assisi.  Jefferson is misguided in his appreciation of God and man; it seems that Jefferson’s secular God is conjured up as man’s personal moral and secularly philosophical guide of which he is quoted in the article as articulating, “Above all: give up power over others, because power, if it is to be effective, ultimately requires the threat of violence, and violence is incompatible with the total acceptance and love of all other human beings that is at the sacred heart of Jesus’ teaching.” The revelation of this statement must have been extremely personal as Jefferson was a slave owner.  Sullivan’s myopic slant bends humorously as he states,” Jefferson’s point is crucially important. Because it was Jesus’ point. What does it matter how strictly you proclaim your belief in various doctrines if you do not live as these doctrines demand?”  Umm… slaves, does he not see the slaves?  Hello? Jefferson… slaves… ownership of living God created persons… Thomas… Jeff…oh never mind.  Sullivan will simply prop up his vision of Saint Francis and really pound this home or so he thinks.

                The Francis depicted in the article is embraced through the fact that he would surely be called insane in the modern world of acute mental diagnostics, but Sullivan doesn’t also touch upon the fact that Francis was unfailingly Orthodox in the living of his faith.  The article has Francis reclusively kicking around with his friends and this is how his order, the Franciscans or the Order of Brothers Minor, began.  The Francis of history, however, sought the permission of Pope Innocent III to form his order as there would be no point in having an order dedicated to God which was separate from His Church.

                A Church which believes that Jesus actually said, “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church.”  Who believes there is importance in the fact that although Jesus had many followers he chose twelve to give special authority to and from those twelve we have apostolic succession; except Judas of course who killed himself and was replaced one for one through the authority of the other eleven.  Is all of this scripture too obvious?  Does Sullivan want to follow the simple biblical Jesus or not?  He says he does, but then the Church becomes indispensable.

                Saint Francis also lived in a time of religious politics, as much of the middle class was clerical as a form of revenue and not piety or service to God.  Francis refused to be anti-clerical, even towards priests who were well know adulterers.  He knew that the person of the priest was the vessel by which Jesus delivered the grace of the sacraments and even if the vessel was flawed the vessel was indispensable.  Francis’ sentiment is still valid today; regardless of individual feelings, God has chosen his means of providing sacramental grace to His world.

                Andrew Sullivan suggests that Francis lived his faith outside of the public square, as we all should.  Francis, however, was more often in the public square than out of it.  He would cover himself in ashes and shout out his sins in the piazza tearfully begging the people who happened to be there for forgiveness.  He would then move the audience to tears as he recited Psalm 51 his wet ashen eyes lifted to Heaven.  The crowd was then itself compelled to seek the sacrament of reconciliation, though not right there in public.  Francis did say, “Preach the Gospel always and when you have to use words.”  That however does not eliminate the need to verbally preach the Gospel; Saint Francis daily saw the need to actually use words in that respect.

                Sullivan is proposing a soft Albigensian heresy; that saw the spiritual and physical worlds as being antithetical.  Sullivan has flipped the dualism of the Albigenses, however, which saw the world as evil and the soul as pure and good.  The Sullivan heresy proposes the world and it’s passions as good, any path which seemingly leads one to happiness being evidence of its inherent goodness.  The soul on the other hand is the source of hypocrisy as it betrays the goodness the intellect seems to perceive in the world and calls it into question.  One cannot be anything but a hypocrite for holding public or political conclusions in regard to one’s faith as one’s faith damns the asserter of said faith as soon as that assertion leaves one’s mouth.  In the heresy the soul is subject to the body rather than the anti-thesis.  Which is very often the case but this heresy asserts that it is inevitable so one must shut one’s pie hole; which is why he gave Saint Francis this lone saintly quality, which is the lone saintly quality, to always and ever to have his trap clamped.

                The Church understands humanity’s propensity for concupiscence.  It understands the propensity of sin and the glamour of sin.  It understands its own sinful history but is not chained to that reality as perpetually pervasive, for itself or anyone.  Knowing the truth and speaking the truth one may work towards the truth.  Living the truth is a painful proposition but those who believe in that truth struggle on towards that singular light upon the horizon which is Jesus Christ. Unity with Him is the one true goal of our very existence. 

            Jesus gave us one command in John 15: 12, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” And to explain more clearly what that means Jesus had explained in John 15: 9-10, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.  If you keep my commandments you abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”

This love is not the love of man for one another or of his desires; no, this is the love of the Trinity and it calls us into perfect communion with that love. It is the love of self sacrifice. It is the love which illuminates the Gospels with meaning.

It is rightly taught that the sacramental life of the Church began as the blood and water poured from the heart of Jesus, opened by the soldier’s lance; the self sacrifice of God which saves the world was begun as the annunciation opened the very heart of heaven and placed the Kingdom of God within the womb of Mary in the person of Jesus Christ.  God has always given everything of Himself; everything including his practical application of the truth which He came to witness to. 

Christians of every stripe, outside of the Catholic Church, point to Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees and Sadducees as a condemnation of religion and of the “organized Church”, but those public condemnations of Jesus actually point toward our obligation to be Christians in the public square not away from it.  For the Synagogues were the centers of public life.  People have stated Jesus hated religion.  Jesus came to perfect religion through himself not abolish it.

Jesus said to the twelve, “this cup is the New Covenant in my blood.” (Luke 22:20)  I have written above about how Jesus himself established His Church; I also want to show how personal that Church is to Jesus.

Paul continually describes Jesus as the head of the body of Christ, which is the Church.  In much the same way, in the Gospel of John, Jesus illustrates the sentiment saying, “I am the vine and you are the branches.”  We are to bear fruit in the world but we do so as a direct result of the nourishment of the vine.  Jesus has provided His nourishment to the world through the sacramental life of the Church.  What the Newsweek essay proposes is that we can easily bear fruit as independent and distinct branches separate from the vine.

For Thomas Jefferson or Barrack Obama, or even Andrew Sullivan, to say that their understanding of our religion should be sufficient for us is absolutely absurd.  They criticize the fact that I have a Pope and hierarchy, instituted by Jesus Christ and upheld in historical reality for over 2000 years, and then substitute their own brand of totalitarian idea which is more far reaching than any Pope would be comfortable with.  Alas, they are not Popes, they do not have the help of the Holy Spirit and the gates of Hell easily overtake their religious doctrines.

 We see this with Darwin and Hegel’s help the Catholic Church has not been synthesized into the dust bin of history but those which have broken off and conform to the culture at large are synthesized and discarded like once fashionable socks.  The Catholic Church’s numbers dip and soar from year to year but are over a billion members; the actual endangered species are the denominations, and the smaller the grouping of Christians becomes the more susceptible they become.  In the evolutionary sense the fittest is still the first, the Catholic Church. 

The more one separates oneself from that reality the easier one is to be picked off by the culture and made into a practical if not actual atheist; as one’s views become increasingly one’s own taste and have nothing to do with Christ and His Scriptures and are through that avenue contrary to Church teaching. 

The Narrow Gate. 13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many 14How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.

False Prophets.15“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. 16 By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. 18A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. 19Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. 20So by their fruits you will know them.

The True Disciple. 21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ 23Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’(Matthew 7: 13-23)

How can there be a narrow gate of our own creation?  How can we lead ourselves on the narrow road and through the narrow gate?  How could Jesus have left us without any direction until Andrew Sullivan’s saving words?  The prospects are grim as we keep reading Matthew’s Gospel for those who choose for themselves or follow the latest self-serving Jesus fads; odd as Sola Fida would seem to give one an awfully wide berth, or what about the ever popular “once saved always saved” theory of justification?

 Our service must be to Jesus hidden as He has told us “in the least” of us; the most defenseless, such as the unborn, the most in need, such as the poor or the unborn, and the most vulnerable, such as the illegal immigrant and the unborn.      

The first to say, “I will not serve!” was Satan.  May we, through the grace of God, not be the latest to say it.  In order to assure this end one must not take the spiritual direction of Andrew Sullivan and his advocate Newsweek magazine, and say, “I will not serve!” in any arena though they be public and/or political.  Jesus has called us to serve and the unadulterated lives of His saints reflect that truth; regardless of the heresy of Andrew Sullivan. 

Where is the Great Atheistic State?

                Atheistic states have always fallen apart.  We see also that the more atheistic a state becomes the more it disintegrates.  For examples one looks to the Communists but one can now look to the secularists too.  Europe is in dire need of some financial direction and this has everything to do with its spiritual reality and its lack of spiritual direction.

                Pope Benedict XVI commented on the European financial crisis and stated that European Financial Institutions need to put people at the center of their policies, rather than profits.  Putting people at the center if one were a secular humanist would this not be obvious?  The problem with a humanistic world view is that one human is placed at the center of that view and that is the individual who holds it.  “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” (George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1945)

                How does this affect me?  The call of faith is not first to question how this affects me but my relationship with God.  God leads us into the community, to reference Pope Benedict XVI again,

“God is not solitude, but perfect communion.  For this reason the human person, the image of God, realizes himself or herself in love, which is a sincere gift of self.” (Angelus, Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, May 22^nd, 2005.)

                As stated above atheism has not produced a sustainable answer to the problem of creating a state which flourishes.  Atheism has only progressed within theistic states which were sufficiently pluralistic in nature to tolerate them, these are primarily Christian states.  Atheists then start pushing hard within these states to create an atheistic society rather than the pluralism they enjoyed.

                Suffice it to say Europe is now a very atheistic place and the financial crisis echoes that statement. There are roughly 20-30% of central and western Europeans who are atheists; there are also majorities in most of these states who agree with the idea of a “life force” rather than a religion.  The idea of a life force makes sense in the midst of Europe’s descent into chaos as a life force demands nothing of us, arguably less than atheism.  It has to do with making oneself feel good about eternal issues without the self discipline required by a real code of ethics.

“Joan of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy, or by accepting them all like Nietzsche. She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. Yet Joan, when I came to think of her, had in her all that was true either in Tolstoy or Nietzsche, all that was even tolerable in either of them. I thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy, the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back. Joan of Arc had all that and with this great addition, that she endured poverty as well as admiring it; whereas Tolstoy is only a typical aristocrat trying to find out its secret. And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche, and his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time. I thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his hunger for the rush of great horses, his cry to arms. Well, Joan of Arc had all that, and again with this difference, that she did not praise fighting, but fought. We know that she was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was afraid of a cow. Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other. Yet she was a perfectly practical person who did something, while they are wild speculators who do nothing. It was impossible that the thought should not cross my mind that she and her faith had perhaps some secret of moral unity and utility that has been lost. And with that thought came a larger one, and the colossal figure of her Master had also crossed the theatre of my thoughts. The same modern difficulty which darkened the subject-matter of Anatole France also darkened that of Ernest Renan. Renan also divided his hero's pity from his hero's pugnacity. Renan even represented the righteous anger at Jerusalem as a mere nervous breakdown after the idyllic expectations of Galilee. As if there were any inconsistency between having a love for humanity and having a hatred for inhumanity! Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist. In our present atmosphere such cavils are comprehensible enough. The love of a hero is more terrible than the hatred of a tyrant. The hatred of a hero is more generous than the love of a philanthropist. There is a huge and heroic sanity of which moderns can only collect the fragments. There is a giant of whom we see only the lopped arms and legs walking about. They have torn the soul of Christ into silly strips, labeled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by His insane magnificence and His insane meekness. They have parted His garments among them, and for His vesture they have cast lots; though the coat was without seam woven from the top throughout.” (Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton, 1908)

                Europe’s crisis with finance is that finance is not a suitable substitute for the Church and the psychoanalyst is no substitute for the confessional.  Like Tolstoy and Nietzsche it produces theories which cannot be lived in reality.  The end result is that the supposed superman has a nervous breakdown as the tools he used to deconstruct the world turn inward in response to the lack of actual positive effect they seem to have on the world.  The problem is not with the modern philosophy but with the phantom of those who cling to the old world.  “If only I could be free of the effect of a dead religion and its dead morality I would be happy!”  Yet the further society travels down this road the larger the problems loom.  The Church is not a huge factor in Europe and the humanists still blame it for their failures.  The fact that humanism may actually be lacking in the humane is not sufficiently explained by a call against a moral agent which now numbers in the minority, even among those claiming to be Catholic a very small number of those attend Mass even once a month; so these are in the state of mortal sin and not effective moral agents for the Church anyway. 

                Finance is indeed not the major attribute of a great state at any rate.  One looks to China which has to have the largest percentage of atheists in the world, at least officially.  One sees a very disturbing picture as one examine very “humanist” policies.  There is a void of young Chinese to care for the rapidly increasing elderly population; one finds this played out throughout the world but very acutely in China as it was lacking in any old world  hangers on due to the totalitarian control of the Communist regime.

                The lack of able bodied Chinese is, of course, due to China’s one child policy and is further exacerbated by the violence against female babies especially due to abortion; resulting in a ratio of 10 boys to 1 girl.  Forced sterilization is also common place and so China has become the logical conclusion of the fruits of the great atheist Margaret Sanger’s work, congratulations Margaret.  It may be considered backwards, however, that the way one eliminates the exploitation of women is simply to eliminate the women; that is only my small critique.

                What one finds also is a system in which a handful of Chinese families have 2.7 trillion dollars or more in assets each.   So one sees a professed Communist state, a people’s republic, in which the government owns everything and in which the disparity in the distribution of wealth in greater than anywhere else in the world. “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” (George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1945)

                The state most atheists would claim as the fruit of their secular ideas is obviously Sweden.  Sweden is a rather singular country; however, I do not believe one could replicate it.  Sweden never had a feudal state of land distribution; Swedish farmers have always freely held their own land, even though the country they held it in was backwards and poor it was theirs.  Sweden’s agrarian culture influenced the development of their parliamentary system which occurred during the same time as Sweden’s industrialization; which wasn’t until the latter half of the 19^th century.  Democratizing factors enabled Sweden to avoid a Communist revolt in 1917 and the country has held firmly to a strongly democratic ethos ever since.

                Great so far right!  Here’s the issue with Sweden, they can’t pay people enough to reproduce.  All efforts to incentivize an increase in the birth rate have met with no result.  Since Sweden has only been progressing as a country for about 100 years there was an initial flourishing in the nation which made the modern socialist experiment go like gangbusters; but as the next generation levels that population off and the one after drags it down the thing goes top heavy and short of a comprehensive and egalitarian (of course) die off of the extremely fit elderly one wonders how far one can take such an experiment as Sweden.

                There is one section of Sweden’s population which could bring the numbers up; Sweden’s immigrant Muslim population is booming.  Sweden is a totally secular society, but the Muslim’s are not a secular people in the least, there is but one logical outcome- the complete conversion of the Muslim populace to a wholly secular worldview!  Well maybe not, maybe what will happen is a sharp increase in prayer mats in IKEA followed by Sharia law.

                Talk about Social Darwinism!  How will the evolutionist ever win if his philosophy keeps trying to rub him out?  Only time will tell but it is not looking very good for the Great Atheist State!

Flesh is not Flesh

                I was discussing the recent death of a patient with one of our doctors at work and to conclude she stated, “Flesh is flesh.  It really doesn’t matter if it’s road kill or a patient here in the end there is no difference.  Flesh is flesh.”  To which I responded, “Except its not.”  The doctor simply was expressing her atheistic worldview and it disturbed me for some time, this even though I would have stated something similar for the same purpose five short years ago.  Conversions change us deeply and that is why I am writing on this topic.

                  Flesh is not flesh.  There is a difference between human beings and animals.  The doctor is a vegetarian but her argument would justify cannibalism.  Why?  Because as much as she wants to elevate animals what she is actually doing and all she can do is dehumanize human beings. 

                Feminists stated they wanted to be like men, but they chose the worst men to want to be like.  Animal activists can only want humans to acknowledge they are animals but that news won’t cause animals to stop eating each other; animals can only be what they are- animals.  Feminists and animal rights activists believe in lazy virtue, they may call it natural virtue but there is nothing natural about virtue.

One cannot be freed of constraints sufficiently to simply create a virtuous individual.  Virtue is the product of sufficiently constraining oneself.  Human beings are the only creatures capable of such an unnatural feat and most of them are not even game for the effort.

People instead desire justification for their own misguided actions.  Bullies have no virtue and that is why they are bullies; but their victims are not conferred virtue by their victimhood.  Many victims themselves become bullies because they feel they have earned the privilege via their own awful experience.  My own experience could be cached in this niche, although my preferred method of revenge has been words bile not sweetness was the fuel.

We justify ourselves, we know too well our justifications.  We lose our empathy in those justifications and we dehumanize our victims.  Just as we make sexual objects we make straw men of every form and so animals seem an innocent receptacle for affection and they become greater than humans for many.  The truth is however they are not; nor are they less than living creatures, they are what they are- animals.

The answer is not projecting a perfect human nature upon animals but acknowledging our own tendencies toward selfish justification and regaining our empathy for other human beings.  For we and they are similar except in the fact that we excuse ourselves and demonize others.  The answer is mercy.

Mercy is the fuel of virtue.  One cannot turn the other cheek unless one realizes that the first strike is never justified and so the answer is not weakness but strength in highlighting that difference, to turn the other cheek.  We must do what is good and elevate the world rather than doing what is justifiable in our own misguided hearts and bringing the world down to a justifiable hell.    

Flesh is not flesh.  There is flesh which has the potential to be more than that and that is our human potential.  It would be unfair to chastise a cat for killing a mouse but it is always tragic when a dog kills a child.  The answer should be obvious but only to a human being.

Recognizing the Invisible: Our God, our Mind

                Our minds are incredible.  We can close our eyes and be transported virtually anywhere.  We can visualize virtual worlds and recall past ones.  We can ponder mathematics and memories.  Yet all that we see is not actually there it is not projected upon the back of your eyelids or anyplace it does not exist in the form in which we perceive it.  Our visions are never more than electricity jumping across myelinated cells and firing neurochemicals across synapses, but they are more than this.  They are after all what they are, they are our minds.

                It is easy to take so much for granted we dream, we awake we dread our working day in Technicolor, we go to work and dream of something other than work, we go home and read Roman Missiles, we think about what a jerk that guy must be, we go to bed, and we start again, with much in between.  It is easy never to consider the fact that all those Technicolor visions of dread have only ever existed inside of your mind, it would be easy to say head but our minds are not seemingly that small.  Our minds project alternate worlds in front of us; a mind seems to be able to inhabit more than the world let alone our head and yet we accept it as the most mundane of facts.

                We have done this also with God.  We accept Him or we don’t as a result of our ability to take God for granted; to be blind to the obvious and the too tangible.  To say God does not exist because of science is to say the mind does not exist because of science, except much more so.  We can say that the mind is only neurological functioning and that is all and that would diminish every aspect of the mind except the neurological functioning.  Science would have the last word and our dreams would have no meaning outside of the ability to connect the neurological dots.

                That is what science has done with God.  Connecting the dots of nature is only ever just that.  Science misses the point and the meaning because it cannot see the invisible.  If it were to map your thoughts neurologically all of the data collected would never be able to be turned into a three dimensional vision of what you are experiencing simply by inhabiting your mind.  That corner of reality is solely your own.

                God inhabits the world in a very vaguely similar way; metaphors of God are inherently flawed.  None the less, we look as the scientist does at the processes for the image of God but God is only in the processes as much as the mind is in the processes of the brain.  Just as the observation of the brain will not produce an image of a thought the observation of nature will not produce the image of God. 

                There is a clue in this process, however.  Our minds are special and they remind us of the original mind which created everything we seek Him in.  We are the image of God.  Stated in first Genesis, a book no one could logically believe right, except it’s true.  We are the image of God.

                What we have done with this knowledge has left a lot to be desired because we have understood it only as well as our neurology, which is not at all.  It is not, however, hard to embrace the mind though we know very little of it neurologically.  If we embrace God in the same way I assure you we will not be disappointed.  Though the mind and God be invisible it is in their invisibility where we gain our true depth.