»ἕως θανάτου ἀγώνισαι περὶ τñς ἀληθείας, καὶ Κύριος ὁ θεὸς πολεμήσει ὑπὲρ σοu.« • »Pro iustitia agonizare pro anima tua, et usque ad mortem certa pro iustitia: et Deus expugnabit pro te inimicos tuos.« (Sir. 4:28/33)
This 2.0 post contains additional reflections on this topic.
Interesting post at Chronicon, "Sol Invictus evidently not a precursor to Christmas", about the allegation that Christians "stole" or "borrowed" December 25th from paganism. His conclusions:
A feast to Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun) did occur on December 25, but the earliest evidence for it dates from the mid to late 4th century. There is no evidence that Emperor Aurelian established a Festival of Sol Invictus (or anyone or anything else) on December 25.
Saturnalia did not occur on December 25 and had nothing to do with the birth of any god or anyone else.
Egyptians apparently presented an infant as a representation of the newborn Sun on the winter solstice, but this evidence also dates from the fourth and fifth centuries.
Hippolytus in 202-211 AD set the date for the birth of Jesus on December 25, because he thought Jesus was conceived 9 months earlier on the Passover, the day in which he also thought the world was created (5500 years earlier), the Vernal Equinox March 25.
Clement of Alexandria (193-215 AD) quoted various anonymous sources about the birth of Jesus and roughly agrees with Hippolytus, claiming that Jesus was born in late fall to early winter. Clement’s sources clearly seem to believe that Jesus was conceived on the Passover and was born roughly 9 months later; in fact the only difference between them and Hippolytus is that they differed on when the Passover actually occurred.
Of course, even if it could be established that Christians had borrowed a pagan date, or various other pagan "elements", this would not entail Christianity is secretly pagan, nor that it is derivative, since the meaning of various "pagan" elements (e.g. wedding rings) in Christian use are distinctly Christian. The argument that Christianity is derivative because it has parallels with paganism is little more compelling than the claim that there's no authentic Christian discourse because it used verbs, nouns, and other parts of speech after pre-Christians had done so. Orthocath offers his own prefatory remarks in the same vein to yet another piece he cites about "pagan Christmas".
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” ...
The argument is a sophistry one could use to prove anything. A parallel example is the quickest proof:
Flag waving American: God bless the USA! The greatest government on Earth!
Anarchist: Actually, you and I are both anarchists.
FWA: No, I love government. I’m nothing like you at all!
Anarchist: That’s not true. You’re an anarchist about Communism, Socialism, Monarchy, Oligarchy, and every other government that has ever existed. I just take things one step further.
This led to an unusually long thread of comments, mostly driven by the irenic exchanges of an atheist and various apparently mostly theist commentors.
I came into the thread the when it was mostly over but I wanted to add the following:
I wonder how the solipsism vs. realism debate would figure into this.
“I contend that we are both solipsists. I just believe in one fewer ‘world’ than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible worlds, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
There’s no way to get ‘behind’ thoroughgoing solipsism. You either embrace it or reject it. Likewise, I think there is no getting ‘behind’ the kind of logic at work in the opening atheist argument of this post. There seems to be a quantum shift from the positivist evidentialism on which the opening atheist argument here rests to even a chastened evidentialism. Non-atheists mutually debate the coherence and plausibility of their various worldviews but they all agree on at least a rejection of materialism and the viability of metaphysics.
The atheist in the thread replied on various points, to which I replied:
The point I want to make is that the reason Christians reject other gods is not because they deny there is any evidence for “that kind of being”, but rather that the evidence in each specific rival case doesn’t match up with the evidence for the Christian worldview. The opening atheist argument, by contrast, implies there is a categorical lack of evidence for the very kind of being proposed by theists and polytheists. In this sense, it might be more correct to say the atheist is a kind of theist (not the least for etymological reasons), since the atheist, presumably, rejects each and every specific case for a specific god. If he were to assume from the outset that it’s not even coherent to speak of evidence for “a god,” he would be begging the question with old-school positivism, and, more to the point, differing from the theist’s rejection of specific non-theist deities. The upshot is that, at the end of his analysis, the atheist claims there really is no evidence for any such kind of being (deity), and therefore resigns himself to a retroactive positivism: all previously claims about gods which he thought were worth examining turn out, in the light of his atheism, to have been meaningless––categorically vacuous––from the get-go. And it is this positivism––whether antecedent or retroactive–– which distinguishes the atheist from the theist. The former says no being matches up to a certain ontological category, while the latter says only one does.
The categorical atheist is, thus, much like a solipsist, since a solipsist cannot believe in something called “a world”––the category of “everything else outside his own experience” is categorically vacuous. His metaphysical position prevents him even fomr assessing evidence against it, since there can’t be evidence for what is categorically meaningless. (As an aside, it is not obvious that theists would deny the reality of different religions’ gods, only that theists deny those “powers” or “beings” deserve the name “God”. Many Christians grant the existence of non-Christian gods, but see them as demons.)
To this I would like to add another reason it’s more correct to reverse the opening argument (i.e. atheists are kinds of theists) is this: naturalists say that all the things theists have been trying to articulate with talk of gods/God actually resolves into confused, pre-scientific claims about the universe. In other words, the “gospel” of naturalism is that everything theists wanted God to be with respect to the universe, is actually true of the universe with respect to humans. The universe is a) eternal, b) necessary, c) absolute, d) immutable, e) beautiful (in a transcendent way), f) known apophatically (i.e. by the progressive but never-ending “march of science”), and g) ordered to its own ends, ends which order all other things. I suppose other attirbutes could be added, even something about the moral superority of the universe, in so far as its absolute “thereness” just is what grounds “good” and “evil”. The upshot is that naturalists have taken up the mantle of theism by giving an absolute explanation of the source of all and thus situaing human existence in a larger narrative. The opening argument claims the opposite and is false (for confusing the orders of intent and for the logical confusion Mr Chastek pointed out to begin with).
[Posting it here cuz it won't stick at Feser's blog! Must be a sign. No more blogivanting today!]
As for you, JT, I'm at a loss for words. I agree you show strongly bipolar tendencies on this blog (cf. e.g. your "fatherly" response to the young Boots McKenzie guy vs your sauntering sophomoric sophistry on most other occasions). You need a break from the blogosphere. You've hunched yourself into a self-caricaturizing embarrassment to progressive Catholics and I want to be charitable by interpreting your increasingly arch behavior as a manifestation of grief over losing your dog. Replying to someone as a "fart smeller", as a genuine retort means only one thing: you lose at the Internets. You lose, sir! I encourage you––and myself, while I'm at it––to spend more time before the Blessed Sacrament and less time before your computer screen.
First of all, here is the latest (late December–early January) for BBEDU.
Second, I think I invented a new drink last night. A week earlier I had told some students of mine about egg nog. They were very intrigued and asked to bring some the following week. Well, as I don't know where to buy it, and as I don't have a kitchen in which to make the Nog, when Friday came I knew I'd be empty-handed. A failed missionary of the Nog. But as I was driving to class, I got to thinking… what is egg nog, really? It's sweet, rich, somewhat tangy milk, no? They have all those gustatory elements in Taiwan, no? Eureka!
Minutes before class, I bought two cups of "ginger tea" and a carton of papaya milk––Taiwan-style Egg Nog was at hand! (I also bought two cups of hot cocoa for them, lest they refused to try my concoction.) There was no time to drink in class and they all left pretty promptly afterward––with the hot cocoa, mind you!––so I had a bowl of semi-chilled Taiwan-style on the table to deal with. I took a sip. Pret-ty good––prettyyyy, prettttyyyy, pretttttttyyyyy, pretty good! At first it tastes like papaya milk but then the aftertaste of ginger fills out the palate and gives it a distinctly noggish kick. I'm going global!
Third, it's winter here and, as we all know "Anthropogenic Global Warming" is turning up the heat. No… wait [LINK1 and LINK2]. As I drove to tutor this morning, it was about 7ºC and on a scooter, with the wind chill, I'd put it at maybe 4ºC (44º–39ºF, for you non-Metrics out thur). And it will get colder. It's all about the sun [LINK1 and LINK2]!
In any case, as we subtropical dwellers face Old Man Winter, I am once again faced with one of my least favorite social drills: the Myth of Cold America. Here's a typical instance:
Well Meaning Taiwanese: "Do you think it's cold?"
Me: [removing my top two jackets and gloves] "Uhh, yeah. I mean, cold is cold."
WMT: "But in America isn't it really cold? Aren't you used to it?"
Me: "Uhh, well, America's really big. Some places are hot most of the time. I'm from Florida...."
WMT: "A lot colder there than Taiwan, right?"
Me: "No, it's just like Taiwan: hot and humid, with occasionally tough winters. Plus, I've been in Taiwan seven years. My blood is thin here. I don't––"
WMT: "So even you get cold?"
Me: [defeated sigh and nod]
Am I not an animal! If you strip me, do I not shiver!
I suppose the equivalent drill in the States for us Floridians is assuring people that we don't have alligators in our backyards and living rooms most of the time without warning.
[This is a reply to a commenter at Dr Feser's blog. The comments were having so many glitches that, once I glued my hair back into my scalp, I decided to post it here. Effing technology.]
First of all, the very ability to make false predictions, and then correct them, is proof that science works with contingency. A necessitarian cannot coherently say both "Science shows X is true" and "I might be wrong that X". As a devotee of the scientific method, you admit this or that scientific claim can be falsified––well, there's more contingency for you. Or are you really a full-blown fatalist?
Second, specific quantities are inherently contingent: it is not an a priori truth that the atomic weight of carbon is 12.01 (if it is, of course, that's no longer a scientific claim but a Platonic demonstration in the making). What is of-a-specific-amount could have been, and could be, of a different amount, by the very notion of what "specific amount" means. Only an infinite object is free of quantitative contingency: the quantitatively specific is what it is, and not something else, and is therefore confined to its proper, contingent features. The act of measuring implies there is a contingency in our knowledge of the object, otherwise there would be no need to measure. If you reply this contingency is merely due to our ignorance of otherwise necessary circumstances, you still grant the point by admitting at least the contingency of our knowledge/ignorance.
Third, radioactive decay (emission rates, exactly which atoms get emitted, etc.) and quantum indeterminacy are inherently contingent. Along the same lines, nearly all evolutionists agree a "second run" of terrestrial evolution would not result in the world as we now know it, even despite metaphysical necessity. Moreover, the notion of evolution itself demands contingency, for a necessary change is incoherent. Why? Because insofar as the state of affairs named by that change (SOA:c) includes the conditions for its coming to be, SOA:c can not not-exist, otherwise its conditions for being would not in fact be necessary. That which includes absolutely necessaryr conditions of being exists from all time, and therefore cannot come to be from not-being. Evolution literally cannot happen if, necessarily, only what happens can happen. That's called contingency, my neo-Darwinian friend.
Fourth, let's not forget Gödelian incompleteness and Turing-Church undecidability. There's contingency even in them thar "formal" hills you love so much.
Fifth, there is the contingency of our competing claims in this very exchange. You claim D: that contingency is unverifiable and probably even unreal. I claim C: that contingency is real and evident. One of us is right. And yet which of us is right is intrinsically contingent (obviously so if C is granted even without the point I'm making now). Even were D true, however, it would still only be so contingently. Why? Because there is no analytic, apodeictic necessity in D. It is not an identity statement, nor is it manifestly "evident to the senses" (otherwise we couldn't even be having this dispute). Insofar as it's up for debate, the truth of D is contingent, since truth only exists in a mind, even if the truthmaker of D is not contingent.
Now, only if you mount a radically actualist ontology (á la A: necessarily, whatever is, is, and whatever is, necessarily is, since only that which is can possibly be)––only on such a teratological Parmenidian-Meinongian hybrid could you defend thoroughgoing necessitarianism of the kind needed to eliminate contingency even as a meaningful category. If you were to mount A, however, you would commit yourself to death by "Ockham's" razor and suffocation in a grotesque Borgesian ontology (have fun barbering Plato's beard). You're not a philosopher by trade, so you might not be aware that it's actually necessity which has taken more of a beating than possibility in the last century or three of analysis (Scotus, Ockham, Hume, Sartre, Quine, et al.). Even if you accept a Kripkean essentialism, with its attendant modes of necessity, you still only have the resources for subsequent necessity, not antecedent necessity per se.
Finally, my point about the fallacy of affirming the consequent and evolutionary science is that your confidence in the latter is vitiated by your own claim that "Any logically invalid argument is always logically invalid, even when it is accidentally true." Ergo, evolution is logically invalid. You're being parsimonious with your logicism. You've admitted you come here to be antagonistic. You have the stink of sophistry about you in more than one pair of nostrils. You have five children and a wife: perhaps more time with them and less time online pedaling ineffectual and seemingly willful pedantry would be for the good.
2. Read at least one book about Einstein and relativity each month.
3. Read at least one book about the philosophy of science each month.
4. Finish all the books by Stanley Jaki I own but have not read (in whatever order): Newman to Converts, Genesis 1 Through the Ages, Cosmos in Transition, Theology of Priestly Celibacy, The Paradox of Olbers' Paradox, The Milky Way, Planets and Planetarians.
5. No alcohol. (I will toast myself every night I succeed! No, wait….)
+ + +
I was eating lunch today and writing a reply to someone at his blog. Meanwhile, a second-grader and her friend were hovering by me, playfully antagonizing me with questions like, "Are you a dinosaur? Are you a English? Are you a chocolate? Are you a ugly woman?" (For the record, I answered no to most of these questions.) Then one of them asked me (in English and Taiwanese), "What are you doing?" Without really thinking, I said, "Defending the City of God." This of course set them on a chattering tangent about not knowing what I was saying, could someone help them translate, am I a pig, and so on. So they asked again: "What are you doing?" I said it again, with feeling: "I'm defending the City of God." More chatter from the pixies.
That exchange helped put a lot of this past year, and many of my past years––as opposed to my nonexistent future years?––in perspective. What am I doing with all my reading, writing, blogging, teaching, etc.? Although I am generally a moral failure as a Catholic, the fact is, what drives me, even when I'm in prodigal depths and wonder if I rightfully bear the title "Catholic", is the desire to defuse objections to the Christian faith and defend God's inexhaustible goodness with my wee scraps of power. Then it hit me with nearly equal force: if you don't believe what you're doing is at least motivated by a desire to glorify God, why are you doing it? I can only hope my erratic animadversions in the blogosphere and my only slightly less erratic pontificaitons here do bring both glory and my readers to God. I hope you can find peace this year in knowing what you are doing is ad majorem Dei gloriam, or, failing that, that you can find peace in relinquishing frivolous efforts as beneath both you and the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
