Dialogue with an Unbeliever Continued
by "Grace"
(Susan Fox's Note: We previously published a Dialogue with an Unbeliever It was part of a three-way conversation
between a man, we simply called “Brother,” and myself and my
friend, “Grace,” who first appeared on this blog in a piece called Sex and the Mystery of Gravy In this post you see the portion of the dialogue that
occurred between Brother and Grace. Brother's posts are labeled "Anonymous.")
Anonymous:
If God is so good, then why does he punish us when we don't follow his word?
Why did he supposedly wipe out millions of sinners with the Great Flood, an act
akin to mass genocide? He created all of these people with the ability to sin,
and when they did sin, he murdered them for it. What kind of god does that? Not
a loving god - a cruel and testing god.
I don't
want to offend your belief but I have spent a lot of time reading objective
theological material, particularly on the history of the Christian god. I am
convinced, without a shadow of doubt, that he was created by man.
Gods have
always been, and will always be, the greatest way to control a society. Why?
Because they often rule with:
1: Fear
2: Guilt
3: The
promise of a glorious afterlife.
And best
of all, you can't argue with them, assassinate them, or vote them out. If you
manage to convince a large number of people that your god is real, then you can
tell them to do whatever you want.
I truly
believe that if Christianity didn't come with the promise of reward after
death, it wouldn't have a fraction of the followers it does today.
I refuse
to be made to feel the way I do by the sheep of a social marketing campaign.
 |
| Are we Meat Puppets? |
“Grace”: I don't know,
Susan. This guy seems not to have a
hunger for the transcendent. It is very
difficult to convince people of God's existence when they think they don't need
Him. If they are content with being just
an accidental creation of a random meaningless universe, and they have no fear
of death, or even a little concern about it, then what can religion mean to
them? Most religions are an attempt to
make sense of the fact of our existence, and to help us make our way on the
path of life, and to give us hope.
Various religions approach these goals with very different beliefs, but
what can you say to a convinced materialist?
If he has made "science" his god, and believes that he is an
accidental electronic meat puppet, then conversation with him is not possible. Many people have that belief system today.
Of course, very few of them believe it consistently. A true materialist would have no reason to
condemn any action by a fellow human being.
True anarchy would reign everywhere, at all times, if there were no
moral imperatives. And society would
quickly self-destruct. In the end, moral
relativism equals NO morality. Do
whatever you want. But most materialists
have never heard of the principle of non-contradiction, and even if they have,
refuse to observe the rules of logic in conducting their own lives. A good thing, too, or the world would be even
more wicked than it is. Many people who
believe they are materialists continue to behave in conformity with at least
some of the moral precepts that God writes on our hearts, and that the religion
of the Jews and the Catholics have encoded.
I will grant that it is very difficult to understand why God
allows us so much freedom. If the Jews
are His chosen people, and the Catholic Church is the fulfillment of Judaism,
then why did He permit the Jews and the Church to suffer so many reverses? Why are so many people blind to the truth of
the Church? Why did God permit the
fracture of Christendom into thousands of competing denominations? Why did He permit the rise of an evil
competing cult called Islam that swept away the Body of Christ in one country
after another, and continues to do so in our time? Why did He permit the Holocaust and all the
other holocausts, which have killed so many millions? Why does he allow us to be so confused about
our sexuality that we treat it as trivial entertainment and kill the
by-products—our children—in the holocaust of abortion?
As St. Faustina said in her diary, I am amazed that God permits
humanity to exist at all. It is another
great mystery. It is not wrong at all
that Brother asks the profound question of why a good God permits evil and
suffering. It is THE question, and one
that we will never answer to anyone's satisfaction during our time here on
earth, though many have tried.
But it is even harder to answer this question: Why does anything exist at all? Why is there so much goodness and beauty in
the world? Why have so many people given
their lives in loving service to their fellow human beings in the name of
Jesus, if they are just accidental electronic meat puppets who should logically
think only of their own desires? If
Brother has any curiosity left in his soul, let him read the story of St
Damian, who cared for the lepers in Hawaii.
Of St Maximilian Kolbe, who gave his life for another in a concentration
camp. Of Mother Teresa. But even Mother Teresa's story cannot reach
angry atheists. They have a great hatred
for her, and call her hell's angel. Cf.
Christopher Hitchens.
 |
| Mother Teresa of Calcutta |
Her existence is the greatest challenge to their beliefs. But even the thousands of loving saints, and
the great miracles of Fatima and Lourdes cannot convince those who are so
heavily invested in following their own will that they must deny God.
Why was I given the grace of conversion and other people, much
more worthy of this grace than I, have not been favored? I have no idea. But I pray that Brother will someday receive
this grace.
P.S. Christians, myself
included, often forget about the best reason to believe: joy. Yes,
the fear of the Lord is holy and salutary, but it can be servile fear. A slave fears to offend his master. But a Christian is the adopted son or
daughter of God the Father, and he or she runs to the Father with joy. Yes, I may fear offending God, the way I
would fear disappointing a loving earthly father, but more than that, I just
want to love Him and be in His presence.
I am His beloved daughter, and He is my everything. Christians are so full of joy that they
created the great art and music and architecture of the Catholic Church to
praise Him and express their love.
Sometimes when I think of one of the great truths of the faith, I get a
silly grin on my face and I just want to burst out singing. Since I'm not a very good singer, I ask the
angels to praise him as they did on that first Christmas Eve. This joy is what the saints experience to an
even greater degree. The patron saint of
my city, St Joseph of Cupertino, (1603-1663,) would literally fly when he heard
the names of Jesus and Mary. He would
fly for joy, and remain suspended in the air for long periods. This is a saint who lived in modern times,
and his flights were witnessed by hundreds of people. Why have most people nowadays never heard of
him? When they see Cupertino on their Apple
products, why do they not say, "Oh, a town named for St. Joseph of
Cupertino!”? Why do they just say "Huh?
What's Cupertino?" It is
literally a conspiracy by the enemy to make sure as many people as possible are
ignorant of modern day miracles. Just as
it is Satan's object to make more people ignorant of the miracle of
Christmas. The devil wants to trample on
the joy of Christmas and the joy of the saints, but so far he hasn't managed to
win completely. Dear Jesus, may your joy
reign in every heart.
Some time
went by and “Grace” responded to Brother’s third post already addressed by
Susan Fox in Dialogue with an Unbeliever
“Grace”: Brother,
I am sorry it has taken so long for me to reply to your posts. I am a mom, and this is a very busy time of
year for moms. Also, I am doubtless not
the right person to address your many points of discussion; although I have a
couple of master's degrees, I am nonetheless just a housewife, not a
scholar. But I will try to reply to a
few of your topics as best I can.
Anonymous:
"I don't see us as simply "meat puppets". We are the result of a
truly incredible billion-year-old biological journey. To call us "meat
puppets" is unfairly belittling the absolute wonder that is nature,
science, and mathematics. This is the true language of the universe. And that
is something you can't actually logically deny. It's black and white truth.
Maybe God created this language. Maybe evolution is the creation of God. Why
not? Would you ever accept that theory - that God created the wonder that is
evolution? I love that idea. It's harmonious."
I am so happy to know that you do not see yourself as merely a
"meat puppet." You have awe
before the wonder of nature, and that means we share a value. Why should I care that a fellow human shares
one of my values, such as awe in the face of nature? Because it makes dialogue possible. It is impossible to have a deep conversation
with people who have no awe before the wonder of nature. Such people most often believe that we are
merely animals, material products of blind forces in a meaningless universe; as
such, they also believe that human beings, themselves and others, have only
relative value, not intrinsic worth.
Such people are scary. The only
thing one can do when confronted with one of them is to take cover and prepare
for self-defense. But with someone who
marvels over nature, one can have a conversation—always better than
combat. And I am grateful for this
shared value. Awe is the beginning of
the virtue of religion. (What is the
virtue of religion? True religion means
giving God His due. And what can God
justly expect of us? Praise, thanks,
love, and respect for the lives of His creatures, our fellow humans.)
I am surprised that you would think that all Christians would
have a problem with the theory of evolution.
I believe that God created everything that has being, and that would
include the means of evolution. Here we
have another shared value: I, too, enjoy
the idea that God created human beings through evolution.
It is true that some Christians have a problem with evolution,
or other scientific discoveries, based on a faulty understanding of the Bible,
but not Catholics. The Church has never
condemned the theory of evolution.
Neither has she provided a detailed endorsement of it. The Church has the wisdom to know that
scientific theories themselves evolve, as scientists make further
discoveries. For example, all we needed
to travel to the moon was Newtonian physics, but by the time men had made the
trip in 1969, that older system of physics had long been superseded by quantum
mechanics as a deeper mode of explaining the universe. And cosmology continues to evolve today, as
will the theory of evolution. (Today we
have only begun to wonder about the natural processes that brought about life
as we know it in the world, and we have labeled our theories about these
processes with the name of evolution.)
The Church encourages and applauds the progress of scientific
knowledge, but her mission is not primarily to advance science, though many
great scientists have been Catholics.
Her mission, rather, is to give man the wisdom to use scientific
discoveries for good. And that mission
is part of her larger goal to help men and women lead lives of virtue as they
make their way toward Heaven.
Anonymous: "There are rules
in the Bible that we now ignore as they are simply far too brutal and insane
for modern society. Well, how do we know which rules to ignore if we are
incapable of morality outside of the Bible? Where do THOSE moral judgments come
from?"
“Grace”:The Bible is not the
easiest book to read, as anyone who has ever tried to plow through it on his or
her own can attest. For starters it is
written in Hebrew and Greek over a long span of history, perhaps a period of
more than a thousand years. Most people
would not try to read even well-known ancient writers such as Plato or Virgil
without Cliff Notes or the equivalent at hand, so why should they expect to
"get" the Bible without reliable scholarly guides? People who just take the Bible and run with
it often end up inventing whole new religions, such as Mormonism and Jehovah's
Witnesses, to name some modern examples.
There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such inventions down
through the centuries. And many of them
have gone seriously wrong, such as Jim Jones and the People's Temple, or David
Koresh and the Branch Davidians.
The Catholic Church has a long, coherent, uninterrupted
tradition of interpreting the Bible. It
never makes the mistake of treating it like a science textbook, or a Big Book
of Rules, or a crystal ball to read the future, as so many have. The Fathers of the Church from earliest times
have recognized that there are many genres of writing in the various books of
the Bible; Catholic biblical commentators explain which are eye witness
accounts, like the Gospels, and which are the expression of important religious
truths in poetic story form, like the account of creation in Genesis.
Although the creation accounts in Genesis are written in poetic
story form, The Church has always insisted that they contain important truths
of faith and morals, despite the ridicule of those who consider themselves the intelligentsia,
from ancient times to the present day.
Here is the first truth: God
created the world. "Let there be
light". And then He created the
sun, moon, stars, the earth, the oceans, plants and animals. Whether the biblical "days and
nights" represented a short period of time or eons is incidental to the
story. The author is using figurative
language that the listeners of his day will be able to grasp as the story is
told around the campfire. But the
essential idea is that there is a Creator, a transcendent being who existed
before the universe was created, and who, after the initial "fiat",
developed the world over time—here one can easily see that the Biblical
creation account is consonant with the theory of evolution, although it is
expressed in poetic form.
In addition to the development of the world over time, or
evolution, Genesis also describes something that is very consonant with the Big
Bang. We have become so accustomed to
mention of the Big Bang that we forget that it is a relatively new theory. Many ancient philosophers believed in a
cyclical universe. Still others believed
in creation, but thought the universe was static. Scientists proposed a static universe into
the 20th century. Then in 1927 a Belgian
priest named Fr. LeMaitre proposed the Big Bang theory. The idea was not well received by other
scientists. Being prejudiced against
religion, they thought it was too much like the story in Genesis —(Let there be
light)--and therefore couldn't possibly be true.
At present there are still many scientists who are so biased
against the idea of a Creator that they cannot accept a universe with an
absolute beginning, ex nihilo. To get around the necessity of a Creator they
propose an infinite series of "multi-verses", essentially the old
idea of cyclical universes, even though there is no empirical evidence to
support such theories.
If you enjoy reading about current cosmological theory, you
might enjoy the book, “New Proofs for the Existence of God” by Robert Spitzer. The book details the amazing balance of
forces that makes our anthropic universe possible, and describes the current
state of theoretical physics, including many discoveries made since 2003. The book is written for the intelligent
layman. Even if one remains unconvinced
by the arguments for a Creator, the book is still enjoyable for the
descriptions of recent discoveries in physics.
Although the creation stories of Genesis are consonant with
evolution and the Big Bang, it would still be a mistake to try to read the
Bible like a science textbook. You would
not go to a science fiction movie to learn about science, even though the
writers might have done their best to be compatible with current scientific
knowledge. But while being entertained,
you might also find some valuable ideas embedded in the plot of a science
fiction movie. For example, Ender's Game
proposes the idea that it is wrong to commit genocide.
The stories in the Bible have tremendous variety, but they all
follow the thread of a larger Story, the Story of salvation history, God's
efforts to save His fallen children. And
there are important truths in those stories that can help us lead good
lives. Truths like these: "You are not just accidents of an
uncaring Universe. You have a Creator, a
Father who loves you, and He has created you in His own image, with an eternal
soul, and He wants you to live, not like an animal, but like his child, because
you are destined to live with Him in Heaven.
Furthermore, every human on earth is literally your brother and sister,
because every person has Adam and Eve as their first parents."
The teaching that we are all part of one human family has been
confirmed by modern genetics, and scientists even speak of the first human
mother as the African Eve. But well into
the twentieth century, this truth, insisted upon by the Church in all its
centuries of teaching, was disputed by scientists and fanatically rejected by
the likes of Hitler and a long line of eugenicists and racial superiority theorists
that stretched back into the 19th century.
They used a poor understanding of the theory of evolution and ersatz
science to propose an "Aryan" super race that deserved to dominate
"sub-human" populations. Thank
God the Nazi "supermen" were defeated.
Why does the Genesis story matter? Not because it is consonant with modern
genetic discoveries, but because It teaches us an important truth: all humans
are literally one flesh, bone of one bone, brother and sister, a family. And what are we supposed to do with our
family? We are supposed to love
them. Not kill them, exploit them, and
torture them. We are supposed to love
them. We are supposed to do unto them,
as we would have them do unto us.
That is what God is trying to teach us in Scripture, but we need
the guidance of the Church that He founded to understand Scripture. Only a God with a really cruel sense of humor
would give us a book as complex as the Bible and expect us to understand it
without a guide.
The truth is one. There can be no compartmentalization of the
truth, as in religious truth vs. scientific truth. Otherwise, the term is meaningless. No truth of Catholic dogma is going to
contradict a scientific truth. For
example, when science teaches, "all humans are mammals," the Church
will not say nay. But dogmas, for the
most part, are not concerned with science.
They are concerned with morals, such as "Do not kill," and
with truths of the faith. The latter are
beyond the ken of science. Scientists
can neither prove nor disprove the truths of the faith, such as "God is a
Trinity," or "Christ is truly God and truly man." Science describes truth based on empirical
knowledge; faith does not contradict empirical knowledge, but goes beyond it.
If there is a Catholic teaching about faith and morals that
contradicts a scientific fact, I would like to know about it, because I have a
passion for the truth, and I don't want to believe as truth, something that is
false.
Just as religious truth and scientific truth must be consonant, so
must truths about history. Here follows
one of your statements which contradicts verifiable facts of history:
Anonymous: "And yes, I do not like Mother Teresa in
the slightest. She was an incredibly cruel woman. The many accounts I have read
about her infuriate me. She was a horrible, greedy, hypocritical, and deluded
woman who was knowingly responsible for the suffering of countless people. She
could've saved lives but she was so obsessed with suffering that she let people
die in agony - because "that's what Jesus would want". She refused
people simple antibiotics because it would mean that the Vatican would have to
fork out the bill. Of course, when she became ill, she received the best
medical treatment money can buy. Go figure.
All that
she did was make millions of dollars for the Catholic Church, often through
cruel, dishonest, and illegal means. I have no respect for her, and anybody
that does either knows very little about her, or is equally deluded. Go tell
the families of the people who suffered under her hand about how great she is.
Something tells me they will not agree. The world is a better place without
her. Please don't tell me you respect this woman, Susan..."
“Grace”: You are right to not
take everything written about celebrities for granted. The Church has always been plagued with
people who are "faking it" for their own ends, witness the sex
scandals. This goes all the way back to
Judas. But the case of Mother Teresa
should be rather easy to resolve. If you
want to know the truth about Mother Teresa, just follow the example of any good
professional historian. She lived so
recently that she is our contemporary; we are not trying to find out if
Socrates was really a good guy or not.
This is someone who died in 1997, for Pete's sake! So be a good
historian: read primary sources and talk
to eyewitnesses.
So many people went to India to volunteer with her that she
could have been running a Hilton. Look
at the accomplishments and continuing work of the convents and charities that
she founded all over the world. I have a
friend on my block who worked with her nuns in California. My sister-in-law met her at a religious
conference. Mother Teresa was one of the
most accessible celebrities the world has ever seen. And to be fair and honest to yourself, don’t
just read "accounts" written by her enemies who have an ax to grind,
enemies who dislike her faithfulness to Catholic moral teaching and want to
discredit her for that reason. Grant to
Mother Teresa the same objectivity you would want if someone were investigating
you. If you live in a large American
city, you could probably find one of her missions and volunteer there in order
to get to know her followers yourself.
One thing in your writing tells me that you, like many people, have
no knowledge of how the Catholic Church is organized.
Non-Catholics often think the Church is a big centralized
corporation, but nothing could be farther from the truth. The Church is organized like a family. It is a family. Just as every diocese in the world is an
independent entity, the various religious orders like the Franciscans, Jesuits,
and Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity, all have to manage their own
finances. Think of a religious order as
a grown-up child that has left the nest to form a new nuclear family. They are financially independent. They don't send money to Mom and Dad, in this
analogy, the Vatican. And the Vatican does not send money to them, except
occasionally, in very token quantities.
For example, maybe one of the Pope's charities will send some modest
funds for an order to distribute to the needy if there has been a big natural
disaster as an expression of solidarity.
But, if a religious order goes bankrupt—too bad. It has to disband. The Vatican is not going to come to the
rescue. And the idea of Mother Teresa
sending the Pope the bill for anti-biotics is just ludicrous.
Anonymous:
"Nothing on this earth has led to more ruthless bloodshed than
religion."
“Grace:” This is a belief that
is often tossed into debates with no facts to substantiate it. Most wars and bloodshed and human suffering
have been caused by people who want to kill/enslave others and take their
stuff. It is true that sometimes there
is an additional religious or ideological component. I am a reader of history, not an
historian, but it is difficult to imagine a belief system that has led to more
human deaths and suffering than communism or Nazism, and both of those belief
systems were profoundly committed to atheism, and the extirpation of
Christianity. But it is right to condemn
war and bloodshed, whatever the motivation.
In closing, I will only say that I hope we share another
value: a passion for the truth. I want to follow the truth wherever it
leads. I want to be a seeker. My belief in the Catholic faith does not mean
that I have arrived at the end. I feel
like I have just begun to discover the truth.
And truth discovered only leaves one hungry for deeper truth.
Regards,
Grace
"Grace" and Susan Fox's dialogue with Brother ended here for the time being. Anonymous, who truly
had become our Brother, said:
I very
much cherish both of your feedbacks. I will take some time to mull all of this
over!
Take care.
You are
both such well-balanced and intellectual people. I really do love reading your
replies.
Susan and Grace: God bless you Brother. We enjoyed the discussion. Please feel free to respond any time.
Susan and Grace: God bless you Brother. We enjoyed the discussion. Please feel free to respond any time.
