There was a small town that was overrun by wild squirrels...

From Diary of a Wimpy Catholic:

There was a small town that was overrun by wild squirrels. The town leaders had a meeting to decide how to get rid of them. First, the Lutheran pastor spoke and said that his church was prepared to round up all of the squirrels, take them out to the country, and admonish them for their frivolity. The pastor was certain that the squirrels would not return. The Lutheran congregation did as they promised, but, the next day the squirrels were all back and wreaking havoc in the town. Next, the town rabbi offered to round up the squirrels, take them out to the country, and, make them feel guilty for the problems they caused. He was sure that the squirrels would not return. The rabbi did as he said, but, the next day the squirrels returned and were even more bold and destructive. Finally, the Catholic priest offered to round up the squirrels, take them out to the country and make them all members of his parish. The priest did as he said, and now the squirrels only come back to the town on Easter and Christmas.

Penn State and Planned Parenthood

There's an irony in the media's obsession (some of it justified) with Penn State's coach Joe Paterno's failure to report sexual abuse of boys by his colleague Jerry Sandusky when he was made aware of the abuse, and the media's relative whisper about a much much more egregious scandal-- a crime actually-- involving Planned Parenthood clinics concealing the identities of child rapists to protect their abortion-mill income.

From Steve Aden at LifeNews:

A fourteen year old Ohio girl is impregnated by her twenty-two year old soccer coach, a man that she and her parents trust. The coach knows that he needs to get this “problem” taken care of as quietly as possible since the pregnancy is now proof of his statutory rape – repeated statutory rape, in fact, that began almost a year earlier. He turns to Planned Parenthood and they don’t let him down.

With no questions asked, the Planned Parenthood clinic allows him to sign for the minor’s abortion in place of her mother and father and to speed up the process and perform the abortion quickly in violation of the state’s 24 hour waiting period. Planned Parenthood staffers don’t report the sexual abuse to the authorities either – leaving the coach with the opportunity to continue molesting his victim.

In another Ohio case, Planned Parenthood staffers failed to report a father’s sexual abuse of his thirteen-year-old daughter – resulting in his continued abuse of his daughter, Denise Fairbanks, for over another year. According to a staffer’s handwritten note, their policy is “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Sadly, there is strong evidence that these are not isolated incidents, only examples of a Planned Parenthood policy of empowering sexual abuse of minors. Live Action investigations have revealed that Planned Parenthood clinics across the country have a similarly nonchalant approach to sexual abuse of young girls. Posing as a thirteen-year-old girl seeking an abortion due to intercourse with her thirty-one-year-old boyfriend, Lila Rose called a Bloomington, Indiana Planned Parenthood clinicand was encouraged to lie about her boyfriend’s age and to go out of state to skirt parental notification laws. Calls to Planned Parenthood clinicsin Indianapolis, Tucson, Phoenix, Memphis, Birmingham, Milwaukee, and Louisville revealed similar willingness to hide sexual abuse against children.

Where's the outrage? Where are the soul-searching editorials? Where are the headlines, the candlelight vigils?

When the failure to protect children is that of Planned Parenthood, on a massive scale, the media response is... birds chirping.

Planned parenthood has a long record of protection of complicity with child rapists. They make money from killing the babies conceived by rape, fail to meet their statutory responsibility to report the child rape, conspire keep the rapes secret and the rapists' identity secret, and destroy evidence when under state investigation. And unlike the Penn State football program, they are subsidized with taxpayers' money to the tune of a half billion dollars annually.

We are seeing a fascinating and deeply evil dynamic. Ingenious, really. The atheist left is fanatically publicizing sins that plague all sectors of our society-- sins such as child abuse-- and selectively using these evils to bash selective targets they've chosen to advance their agenda. Joe Paterno and the blue-collar conservative folks at Penn State get the third degree. The Catholic Church gets the third degree, despite the fact that child sexual assualt by public school employees is more common by orders of magnitude than assault by priests. How many scorching articles have you read about the sex abuse rot in our school system? Has the Secretary of Education been asked to publicly apologize for sexual assault by teachers, as the Pope is incessantly asked to apologize for assault by priests?

And Planned Parenthood, the darling of the atheist left, protects child rapists on a massive scale in order to increase profits. It gets a pass.

The hypocrisy of the media and the atheist left in the selective outrage against Joe Paterno-- a transparently good man with a lifetime of service and integrity who has transformed for the better the lives of thousands of young men and who for whatever reason made one very bad decision-- and the utter silence of the media and the atheist left on the decades-long organized aiding and abetting of child rape by Planned Parenthood-- is breathtaking. 

Is moral law objective or subjective?

Commentor bachfiend:

Cripes, from where do you get your definition of 'objective' to mean 'god given'. Cite some references... Atheists do recognize objective moral law. Just not your bizarre version of it.

Atheists are confused about the objectivity and subjectivity of moral law. I believe that the confusion is feigned; the difference is obvious, but atheists can't admit the truth.

But, here goes. The difference between objective (Christian) and subjective (atheist) moral law:

A moral law is a proposition-- it proposes something  (it's wrong to steal, etc).

Propositions come from minds. Mindless things cannot generate propositions.

We are moral actors-- that is, we are things with minds that generate moral propositions (it's wrong to steal...).

The propositions we as human beings invoke can come from two places- from our human minds or not from our human minds.

Subjective means in the subject. From our human minds.

Objective means outside of the subject. Not from our human minds.

When human beings recognize a moral proposition, it can come from human beings or from outside human beings.

If it comes from human beings, it is subjective.

Of it comes from outside human beings, it is objective.

If you are an atheist, you can only believe that moral propositions are subjective, because there is no "Supermind" outside of human beings that can generate a proposition. You must believe (implicitly or explicitly) that only human opinions make something right or wrong. There is no objective right or wrong, outside of human opinions.

If you are a Christian, you believe that moral law is from God's mind, and exists independently of human opinion. Humans should try to understand His moral law-- from the Bible, and from our conscience, in which he creates a sense of moral law. But Christians believe that moral law exists independently of our opinions of it. Moral law is objective.

The simplest way to express the difference between atheist and Christian views of moral law is this question:

Could something be morally wrong, even if every human being thought it was morally right?

Atheists answer no. Moral law is subjective, and if it does not exist in any human mind, it does not exist.

Christians, or people who are implicitly using Christian ethics, answer yes. Moral law derives from God, and even if every human being disagreed with it, it would still be valid moral law.

Philosophers have recognized this difference for millennia. Kant saw objective morality as the Categorical Imperative, and believed that this was the most powerful evidence for God.

Now you see why atheist confusion on this obvious point is feigned.

My reply to anonymous on the separation of church and state

Commentor anonymous on my post on the constitutionality of school prayer, with my commentary:

What you don't seem to understand is that the rights enumerated in the Constitution are supposed to be beyond the normal legislative process.

I understand that. My critique is that the Establishment clause does not ban voluntary religious expression in government or in schools.

Your constant bleating about how Doug can go and get a legislator to make a law to function that way Doug says the law operates is flawed in two ways.

First off, he doesn't have to. The law works the way he says it does. A century of jurisprudence that you dismiss with a wave of your hand is on his side in this.

Establishment clause jurisprudence is a garbage heap of self-contradiction and non-sequiturs. We can't post a small prayer on a school wall, but we can have "In God We Trust" on every dollar bill printed and religious passages posted on National Monuments across the country. A school teacher can't lead a voluntary prayer in school, but the President can ask Americans to pray for our troops and God to bless America. Establishment clause jurisprudence is junk law, just like Dred Scott and Plessy v Ferguson and Buck v Bell and Roe v Wade are junk law. A mistake repeated for a (half) century isn't any less a mistake.

And this isn't going to change any time soon. You're engaged in revisionism and your historical and legal scholarship is so weak and shoddy that one wonders if you got your arguments from a pack of bubble gum cards.

Yea. What role would an American citizen have in American government? We have to leave it to rabid atheists to tell us what our Constitution says.

Second, just as we don't vote on things like whether your home can be subjected to a search without a warrant, or whether you are entitled to due process of law, we don't vote on the Establishment clause.

Banning religious expression in schools and government isn't required by the Establishment clause. The Establishment clause bans an Establishment of religion-- a National Church. Offering a voluntary prayer to a class in a public school does not Establish a National Church. And banning voluntary prayer violates the Free Exercise clause. Ya know, the clause you never mention.

Mouthing "democracy" is not a get out of jail free card for your arguments.

Why would an atheist use a metaphor about "jail" to refer to people who affirm the right to free exercise of religion? A Freudian slip, comrade?

We live in a limited democracy in which certain issues have been determined to be beyond the legislative process.

Appropriate insulation of the use of government force (which you advocate) from the legislative process must be based on the Constitution, which your "separation of church and state" is not.

To push the argument back at you, if you want the Constitution to work the way you think it should, there is a process for doing that - it is called Amendment.

Here's an Amendment: "The Establishment clause shall be enforced according to what it says".

If your ideas concerning how religion should be wedged into the public sphere are as wildly popular as you seem to think they are, you should have no trouble getting the Establishment clause amended forthwith.

Americans want the Establishment clause interpreted rationally and enforced, not amended.

But I doubt it. I think that if you tried, it would just expose what a lunatic fringe you sit on.

An lunatic fringe atheist brownshirt-- who thinks that a student leading a voluntary prayer at a school graduation creates an Official National Religion that violates federal law-- calls three-quarters of the American public who believe in free exercise of religion "a lunatic fringe."

Pretty funny.

My comments on P.Z. Myers' reply to Taylor

In my prior post, I commented on Taylor's guest post on Pharyngula. Taylor is a Christian, and he made some excellent points. P.Z. Myers responded to them, and I'll comment here on Myers' responses.

First, Taylor's post:

Why I am a Christian – Taylor

December 1, 2011 at 8:50 am PZ Myers

Hi PZ, I know this isn’t exactly what you called for, and you probably won’t post this on your famous blog (understandably), but I feel quite strongly that I have two very good reasons for being a Christian:

1) Existence

2) The Uniqueness of Christianity

Now I’ll elaborate a little:

1) The universe exists. Disregarding modern philosophy for a minute, I think this one is fairly obvious. As far as I can know anything, I know that the universe exists. That means it had to have a beginning. Now, the existence and order of the universe may or may not be explained by the Big Bang (I’m no theoretical physicist), but it seems to me that the Big Bang still needs a Big Banger. Someone or something to start the whole thing off. Multiverse theory? I think it still needs some work. And evidence. An eternal Universe? Ok, but I think there are some problems with assigning non-material properties (namely eternal existence) to material things (namely matter). I’ll come back to that. But for now, I’m at the point where I admit that there has to be a beginning, an “uncaused cause” as the philosopher’s put it.

2) That “uncaused cause,” that “Big Banger,” the being that caused everything else to exist, must be the God of the Christian Bible. Why? Because of Christianity’s uniqueness. Say what you will, but after years of studying world religions, Christianity is entirely unique. To oversimplify my case: Every other religion requires an action (service, certain words or actions, good works, etc.), in return for a reward. Christianity is the exact opposite. You are called by Christ first, saved from yourself (that’s the reward), and then the good works flow out of gratitude, or a desire to be more like God. You don’t have to do good works to be saved. Can you see how this is unique?

Now, as to the point about assigning eternal properties to material objects, I don’t see how this is beneficial. Christianity says God created the universe, and He is eternal, intelligent, and caring. Atheism says that the universe created itself, and it is eternal, unintelligent, and uncaring. Is that really better? Personally, I can’t believe that this universe is unintelligent, nor that all of the pain and suffering I see is purposeless.

It seems pretty straightforward to me, but I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

God bless, and stay warm up there,

Taylor

United States

Here's Myers' response to Taylor's post, with my commentary.

Myers:

...#1 is meaningless. Physics has evidence that our universe had a beginning, but there is absolutely no reason to suppose a cosmic benign intelligence was behind it.

The classical proofs of God's existence have nothing to do with a temporal beginning of the universe. They are valid even if the universe is eternal in the past.

The cosmological proofs are based on the impossibility of infinite regress in an essentially ordered series of causes (I discuss Aquinas' First Way in some detail here.) The agency of the First Cause is demonstrated by the cosmological arguments. The Intelligence that grounds existence is demonstrated by  Aquinas' Fifth Way, which proves the existence of a Final Cause for the universe.

Myers of course understands none of this, and cares about none of it. He's an atheist, and, despite the hype, reason has nothing to do with his opinions.

An avalanche also has a beginning, but we don’t assume it was a little man triggering it by intent.

Myers confuses primary and secondary causes. Avalanches can be investigated and explained using natural laws, which are secondary causes. The existence of a primary cause is independent of demonstration of secondary causes. To demonstrate secondary causes is not to disprove primary cause.

In fact, classical and modern philosophers and theologians have observed that secondary causes can't exist without a Primary Cause.

Myers understands none of this.

#2 is absolutely the dumbest reason I’ve ever heard (and I’ve heard it many times) for believing Christianity is true. Here, I’ve just invented a religion: you achieve salvation by hopping precisely three times on one leg every morning. If you forget and die unhopped, you go to hell; so long as you have hopped, you are forgiven and go to heaven. That’s entirely unique, but it doesn’t make it true — in this case, and in Christianity’s case, it’s just stupid.

Christianity is certainly unique, in that it posits the necessity of a personal relationship with God as the basis for salvation.

I believe Christianity is true because I have that personal relationship (as do millions of Christians). I am a very imperfect vessel for God's fellowship, but He deigns to associate with me, which is striking evidence of His mercy. The uniqueness of Christianity is this relationship, and I believe that is much of what Taylor means.

Myers:

Now compare this Christian entry, selected as the best of the religious submissions so far, to the atheist submissions, which were chosen entirely at random.

Taylor's essay is wise and truthful. The atheists' entries are various expressions of juvenilia and narcissism.

New Atheism is an amalgam of those traits, held together by vincible ignorance. 

Why Taylor is a Christian

Taylor has a guest post at Pharyngula explaining why he's a Christian. Kudos to Taylor for sticking his toe in the Pharyngula cesspool. P.Z. Myers graciously allowed Taylor to post, and Myers added this note:

(Want a chew toy? I’ve had a number of submissions to the “Why I am an atheist” series from Christians trying to play the apologetics game. Most of them are embarrassingly illiterate and incoherent, and I just throw them away; this one is at least competently written, even if the ideas are nonsense cribbed from William Lane Craig. Have fun tearing them up.)

Myers included a sweet graphic showing Jesus giving us the middle finger. I'll leave that out.

Taylor's post is here, with my comments. Myers commented as well, and that'll be tomorrow's post.

Why I am a Christian – Taylor

December 1, 2011 at 8:50 am PZ Myers

Hi PZ, I know this isn’t exactly what you called for, and you probably won’t post this on your famous blog (understandably), but I feel quite strongly that I have two very good reasons for being a Christian:

1) Existence

2) The Uniqueness of Christianity

Now I’ll elaborate a little:

1) The universe exists. Disregarding modern philosophy for a minute, I think this one is fairly obvious. As far as I can know anything, I know that the universe exists. That means it had to have a beginning. Now, the existence and order of the universe may or may not be explained by the Big Bang (I’m no theoretical physicist), but it seems to me that the Big Bang still needs a Big Banger. Someone or something to start the whole thing off. Multiverse theory? I think it still needs some work. And evidence. An eternal Universe? Ok, but I think there are some problems with assigning non-material properties (namely eternal existence) to material things (namely matter). I’ll come back to that. But for now, I’m at the point where I admit that there has to be a beginning, an “uncaused cause” as the philosopher’s put it.

Taylor is right. The existence of the universe alone is clear evidence for God's existence. God's existence is logically demonstrable (Aquinas' Five Ways, etc).

Atheism's greatest logical failure is its inability to account for the existence of the universe itself. The boilerplate Humean answer-- the universe needs no explanation for its existence-- demolishes the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which asserts that everything in nature has a reason sufficient to explain its existence (even if we do not know the reason).

The Principle of Sufficient Reason is the basis for all logic and science. Denial of the PSR for the universe makes science impossible, because the assertion "it just happened without reason" can be applied to each thing in nature just as readily as it can be applied to all of nature. "Shit happens" doesn't get you to science or logic.

2) That “uncaused cause,” that “Big Banger,” the being that caused everything else to exist, must be the God of the Christian Bible. Why? Because of Christianity’s uniqueness. Say what you will, but after years of studying world religions, Christianity is entirely unique. To oversimplify my case: Every other religion requires an action (service, certain words or actions, good works, etc.), in return for a reward. Christianity is the exact opposite. You are called by Christ first, saved from yourself (that’s the reward), and then the good works flow out of gratitude, or a desire to be more like God. You don’t have to do good works to be saved. Can you see how this is unique?

Christianity is certainly unique. It posits a personal relationship with the Creator. It is emphatically historical. It posits that God came to earth in one place at one time as one Man in order to redeem humanity.

I believe that the leap from the existence of God (which is logically demonstrable) to the Lordship of Christ is a discovery of the heart, one of Pascal's 'reasons that reason knows not of.' It is a love affair that must be experienced, not deduced.

Taylor:

Now, as to the point about assigning eternal properties to material objects, I don’t see how this is beneficial. Christianity says God created the universe, and He is eternal, intelligent, and caring. Atheism says that the universe created itself, and it is eternal, unintelligent, and uncaring. Is that really better? Personally, I can’t believe that this universe is unintelligent, nor that all of the pain and suffering I see is purposeless.

Atheism of course adds no wisdom. The assertion that existence has no purpose and no origin is nihilism masquerading as philosophy. Atheists typically find that God interferes with self-worship, and wish Him away.

Taylor:

It seems pretty straightforward to me, but I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

God bless, and stay warm up there,

Taylor

United States

Here's Myers' reply (I'll answer it tomorrow):

(My response: #1 is meaningless. Physics has evidence that our universe had a beginning, but there is absolutely no reason to suppose a cosmic benign intelligence was behind it. An avalanche also has a beginning, but we don’t assume it was a little man triggering it by intent. #2 is absolutely the dumbest reason I’ve ever heard (and I’ve heard it many times) for believing Christianity is true. Here, I’ve just invented a religion: you achieve salvation by hopping precisely three times on one leg every morning. If you forget and die unhopped, you go to hell; so long as you have hopped, you are forgiven and go to heaven. That’s entirely unique, but it doesn’t make it true — in this case, and in Christianity’s case, it’s just stupid.

Now compare this Christian entry, selected as the best of the religious submissions so far, to the atheist submissions, which were chosen entirely at random.)

Weigel on Benedict on Europe

Happy New Year to all!

To begin the year on a thoughtful note, George Weigel reflects on Pope Benedict's comments in Germany.

Weigel:

Europe is dying, and Benedict knows it. It is dying demographically, which is one root of its current fiscal and political mess. But self-destructive birthrates do not just happen, absent wars, plagues, and natural disasters; Europe’s self-destruction is a by-product of a deep spiritual malaise that has led to both demographic winter and cultural crisis. Thus Benedict XVI in Germany intended to be far more than Professor Ratzinger, teaching a needed lesson in cultural history. He was also the pastor, speaking to what he described to seminarians in Freiburg im Breisgau on September 24 as a “poverty in human relations and poverty in the religious sphere” in a country of great material abundance.

That abundance, he suggested, had corrupted the Church and weakened its evangelical edge: “The Church in Germany is superbly organized. But behind the structures, is there also a corresponding spiritual strength, the strength of faith in the living God? We must honestly admit that we have more than enough by way of structure but not enough by way of Spirit . . . [for] the real crisis facing the Church in the Western world is a crisis of faith.” And the only answer to that is evangelization: The Church in Germany and elsewhere in Europe must “resolutely . . . set aside her worldliness,” as Benedict put it the next day to a mixed group of clerical and lay Catholic activists, and take up once again the task of becoming a community that offers the “nourishment of love [in]concrete friendship with others and with the Lord” — an evangelical task that can only be accomplished by regular worship in the Sunday Eucharist (which some 7 percent of urban Germans attend).

The future of Europe, in other words, depends on whether Europe becomes, once again, a continent of saints. It may seem a quaint, even quixotic, notion. But as the pope put it to a large gathering of young people, it’s wrong to think of saints as “remote from the world, naïve and joyless,” men and women of impossibly great “ascetic and moral achievements . . . who could never be imitated in our own lives.” This is a wrongheaded view of sanctity, for “Christ is not so much interested in how often in our lives we stumble and fall, as in how often with his help we pick ourselves up again. He does not demand glittering achievements . . . but [rather] wants to make you his friends,” who can be holy “if we allow his grace to work in us.”

Benedict understands Europe's death spiral. Western civilization is under siege from the idolatry of material prosperity, from scientism, from simmering Marxism and fascism, from functional and confessional atheism, from resurgent Islam. Europe, brought to life by Christian spirituality over two millennia, is dying spiritually.

The Pope is right. Sanctity alone can save Europe, just as sanctity gave birth to it.