I appreciate Dinesh Dsouza's linking the New Atheism to the fallacy of the Enlightenment, but Kant is not an ally to revealed religion as he suggests. Kant did attempt to make room for faith against the Enlightenment skepticism of his day, but he accomplished this by putting faith in a completely separate room from science. Hardly anyone questions whether these two should be separated anymore, but that move made the objects of faith utterly unknowable to reason. It turned religion into a subjective sentiment.

Kant's noumena—reality as it is in itself before the human mind filters it through its categories—is no friend to revealed religion. read more »

In another blow to the critics of the term "Left-wing media bias", MSNBC is reporting that out of 144 journalists they identified, 125 contributed to Democratic or liberal causes in 2004. However, this is not the point of the story. The chief concern of senior editors and media board members is that the records of their reporters' donations are available to the public. As a result, many news organizations are prohibiting political donations altogether, but this has stirred up a conflict with the rank-and-file journalists.

The donors said they try to be fair in reporting and editing the news. One of the recurring themes in the responses is that it's better for journalists to be transparent about their beliefs, and that editors who insist on manufacturing an appearance of impartiality are being deceptive to a public that already knows journalists aren't without biases.

Essentially, the moral dilemma for senior management is how to maintain the appearance of fairness and neutrality. It's interesting that they prefer restricting donations over hiring more conservative journalists. read more »

A friend of mine recently told a discussion group that he was amazed to find himself "squarely in the middle" amongst us on a political issue. Although he wasn't trying to claim the higher ground, I was taken by how his staking out the middle ground had that effect anyway. It led to this end-of-the-week rumination:

Even as he was amazed to find himself "squarely in the middle", so I am amazed at how deeply entrenched political discourse is in mathematical metaphors. In one sense, all language is metaphorical--I think this is a result of God revealing Himself through ectypal figures while He Himself is incomprehensible as archetype. However, what amazes me in this case is how the mathematical metaphor itself carries persuasive force.

One might trace this back to the Pythagoreans, who believed that all of reality could be reduced to mathematical relationships. The Pythagorean theorem was, for them, not simply a geometric truth; it was a metaphysical truth. In fact, it was a religious truth. The Pythagoreans had a significant influence on Plato and when regarding his Doctrine of the Forms, it is important to keep this influence in mind. Plato's Forms (or Ideals) are not cookie-cutter semblances of the material objects; they are closer to something like a form(ula). read more »

In Ray Bradbury's classic sci-fi short story, A Sound of Thunder, an entrepreneur has created a business called Time Safari, Inc. Customers pay to travel back in time to hunt dinosaurs. Great care is taken not to cause a time paradox. The hunters must remain on hi-tech pathways that don't touch any of the flora or fauna. The hunters must remove the bullets from their trophies and never, never, never step off the paths. Well, of course, that's exactly what happens in the story. A man named Eckels steps off the path, kills a butterfly, and when his party returns to the present, everyone is speaking in Old English and, in place of the democratic leader who was in power before they left, a Hitleresque despot name Deutscher has won the election. read more »

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, issued a recommendation for the FDA from their Handbook for Congress on their RSS feed yesterday. The recommendation is simple:

Congress should modify the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act of 1938 to allow pharmaceutical companies to opt out of Food and Drug Administration testing requirements and to use alternative organizations to certify product safety and efficacy ... and allow individuals the freedom to use any non-FDA-approved product. ... As an agency, the FDA has a strong incentive to delay allowing products to reach the market. After all, if a product that helps millions of individuals causes adverse reactions or even death for a few, the FDA will be subject to adverse publicity with critics asking why more tests were not conducted. Certainly, it is desirable to make all pharmaceutical products as safe as possible. But every day that the FDA delays approving a product for market, many patients who might be helped suffer or die needlessly. read more »

The criticism that capitalists have an irrational faith in the free market is often heard from their critics. While I think the confidence to which this criticism refers is neither irrational nor fideist, the criticism itself hides an irrational faith in the government to fix the alleged failures of the market. Confidence in the free market is not a blind assumption that individuals will work in the best interest of others. In fact, capitalism assumes that individuals will act according to their own interests, whether they be altruistic or selfish. Neither is confidence in capitalism a naive assumption that the free market will right all wrongs. read more »

It would be easy to turn conservative cheerleader with John Stossel's 20/20 report. The report indicates that, in general, conservatives give more to charity than liberals. However, in light of exchanges on this blog regarding the minimum wage and the plight of the poor, I'm more inclined to say people act in accordance with their ideology. Conservatives—real conservatives, not the latest DC "conservatives"—believe the poor can be cared for in the private sector and the less money the government takes, the better. Therefore, in general, conservatives are more inclined to give to charity. Liberals doubt the private sector can handle the burden and seek the power of government to solve the problem. In general, then, they give less to charity. read more »

Christians do need to listen to some of the criticism advance by Jay Bakker and Marc Brown. For instance, insisting on a party affiliation from the pulpit is not only obnoxious, it suggests a foolish understanding of the ideologies motivating either party. In addition, it is true that some Christians have not heeded the admonition in 1 Peter 3:15 to give an answer with gentleness and respect. The level of public discourse amongst Christians is often appalling. However, the trouble with advancing this criticism in public is that it creates the impression of a two-sided issue: our faith community vs. the rest of evangelicalism. There are numerous individuals within the Conservative Christian and Moral Majority communities that do not live up to the stereotype advanced by Bakker and Brown. The rest of evangelicalism is not monolithic. When it is treated in this way, it suggests to me that the critics have not spent a lot of time outside their faith community although they often protest to the contrary. read more »

The actual writing on the wall was "Mene, mene, tekel, Parsin". The first parts mean "God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting." This passage from Daniel in the Hebrew Bible has been a longstanding idiom in the English language, but our idiomatic use does not capture the occasion of the original utterance. Darius the Mede had arrayed his armies against Belshazzar, the king of Babylon. Belshazzar hardly needed a prophet to know that his end was at hand. His response to his immanent doom was to throw a wild orgy: we refer to it tamely as "Belshazzar's Feast". The king of Babylon was determined to go out with a bang.

The New Atheists are in a parallel situation. Their arguments are threadbare and their history is tainted. They are a sound and fury signifying failure. You don't need to seek out a Christian apologist for rebuttals: not even mainstream secularity is impressed. In his review of Dawkins' The God Delusion, John Holt says

"Dawkins's avowed hostility can make for scattershot reasoning as well as for rhetorical excess"

and

"Despite the many flashes of brilliance in this book, Dawkins's failure to appreciate just how hard philosophical questions about religion can be makes reading it an intellectually frustrating experience."

Even the mockers of South Park recognized the absurd hypocrisy of Dawkins' hostility in an episode where—in a future devoid of religion—rival sects of scientists engage in Holy War, crying out things like "in the name of Science".

This crusading, dogmatic expression of atheism is an old throwback to Enlightenment Rationalism and that ship has sailed. As Richard Shweder observes in his article yesterday, Enlightenment predictions have failed to find fulfillment. Religion did not fade under the might of Reason. The 20th century body count proves that secularity is not a cure for the so-called "wars of religion". Our reasoning has not exhausted the big questions of meaning, purpose, or even existence. The gap between what we know and what can be known—not to mention how we know—should lead us to expect many reversals of intellectual fortunes.

I'm all for sustaining a debate and dialogue between belief and unbelief, but the New Atheists are hardly worthy of rebuttal.

I was wrong. I predicted the mainstream media would not report on the Haggard story unless there were further revelations of impropriety or disruptions within his former church. The New York Times--yes, it's the only paper I read on a daily basis--has an excellent article on the structure of accountability that Ted Haggard formed at New Life Church in Colorado. Although the headline editor gave it a "hoisted on his own petard" spin, Laurie Goodstein provides a sensitive insight into the meaning and mechanics of Christian accountability. read more »

The New York Times didn't cover the Haggard story yesterday, but there was a triumphalist Op-Ed piece this morning by Dan Savage. This seems appropriate since the real unfolding of this event has fallen off the news radar. The response of New Life Church and Haggard himself doesn't fit the popular philosophy of identity either; so, it has become fodder for opinion only. I suspect the only news items we might hear now are further disclosures of impropriety, recriminations, and defections. read more »