The horrible secret weapon of
Christianity


This post on CARM, by atheist Darklady, reminded me of another post on this blog years ago:

In response to a discussion about hell I had joked that hell was having to listen to Petula Clark's song "Downtown" Over and over angain for eternity. This atheist say "how dare you try to scare with such a threat." He was not playing along wiht the joke. From the things he said it seemed very clear he really thought I was seriously threatening him. That's why I put up the picture of the album with that as the secret weapon.

This is the post by darklady that reminded me of that:

Anyone who has been in an abusive relationship will recognize this:

First the put downs
“You're NOTHING without me."
Then the threats
"If you even THINK about leaving me..."
And then blame game
"You BROUGHT this upon yourself"

But wait, this seems familiar…

"Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. " John 15:4-6

God thinks we are nothing without him …

"If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,”and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.”" 2 Pet 2:20-22

Then there are the threats

"Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned" Rom 5:12
And the bible plays the blame game very well

This is the post I put up in response to the statement about "how dare you try to threaten me." It was called "to know God is to love God."

I just finished this page yesterday.Why I don't believe in hell. It's too long for the blog (4 pages). So I put it up on Doxa. I really should have done it years ago, it's such a basic issue. I write this in response to a commenter on the comments section who was posting in response to the piece "no Will Greater than My Own."

9:14 PM
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Goliath said...

Ah, at last, you've begun to realize that even if your god exists, not everyone would want to follow him.

Not that I believe that either exists, but I would MUCH rather follow Satan than the xian god. In fact, I would rather die and spend eternity in hell than follow the xian god.

9:36 PM


My response that's your prerogative and your problem. I will just say that you don't know God. you don't know what God is like. Maybe I dont' either but a i have a general idea. you can't go by the OT. you have to go by Jesus. So far all the atheist attempts to show that Jesus was no good have been less than impressive, for me.

I'll look you up in a million an and see what you think then. I just warn you of one thing:

I do happen to know, a little known secret of the universe, a large part of hell of his having to hear the replay of "Down Town" Petula Clark over and over again forever. think about it.


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Goliath said...

I know everything I need to know about the xian god, and I know everything that I need to know about your vile faith.

I hate Jesus, I hate the xian god, and I would destroy both of them if I could.

"I do happen to know, a little known secret of the universe, a large part of hell of his having to hear the replay of 'Down Town' Petula Clark over and over again forever. think about it."

ROFL! Is that the best you can do to scare me into groveling before your god? You're pathetic.


Metacrock said...



I am not interested into scaring you into anything. You are only hurting yourself.

6:38 PM
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Goliath said...

Then why try to intimidate me by telling me what hell might be like?

Again: I would rather burn in hell than follow your god. Deal with it.


Metacrock said...

that is nuts. to really think that is a serious attempt to scare anyone? I can think of a lot more scary fates than having to listen to "Downtown."

this is something called "humor." Are you so demented you don't even know what "funny" means?

If you bothered to learn more about my ideas you would know that I do not believe in hell as a place of eternal conscious torment. So you are just hurting yourself because you are missing the very essence of what love is by rejecting God because God is love.

scary hu?

If you are just looking for fight you wont get one. I have better thins to do. Go troll someone else. If you really care bout ideas I am wiling to talk but you have to shed the bad boy image thing and grow up and really think.


I am not trying to humiliate this guy or to ridicule him for thinking my joke was a serious threat, although I think it should be obvious it was not. Three things occurred to me as a result of this exchange:

(1) again we see the real issue underneath it all is power. Notice his idea of accepting the existence of God is "groveling." For one reason or another its a power issue. I don't know anything about this guy by my imagination is working overtime playing on images of overly zealous religious people trying to manipulate people into doing their will. Ultimately I don't believe that all the hurt feelings and bitter hatred of hate group atheism is all the fault of religious people. But I certainly don't think we've handled things right.

(2) atheist assumptions about religious people are stereotypes that cause them to cast the issues in certain preset terms.

(3) Perhaps we condition people to think they know what God would be like, or what the Christian idea of God would be like by dealing with Christians. How else could it be? That they think they know what God "is" or would be like is purely a function of two things:

(a) how Christians have treated them

(b) the why they have been conditioned by Christians to read the Bible.

This is why I think it is important up front to get out the message about hell. I urge you all to read those pages because I feel I make a pretty good case for the idea that the Bible does not even teach that hell is eternal conscious torment. It's important for people to understand this because the atheist agenda is wrapped up in propagandizing about Christianity as a punitive and operant notion of religious experience.

two paradigms: operant vs existentialist

The choice of paradigms on the nature of religion lies between two poles, a punitive-operant religion vs an existential religion. Punitive I think we all get drift, hell is thought to be punishment for disbelief, sin and generally doing bad. It is also seen as a means so scaring people into compliance as our friend above thinks.Operant (like B.F. Skinner's positive and negative reinforcement) because through the promise of heaven and the threat of hell one is manipulated into changing behavior on a punishment/reward basis. Existentialist means it is not about punishments or manipulation but a response to one's existential experince of life in the world--based upon personal experiences and aimed at understanding individualistic goals and ends of a person's life rather than fitting into a preset mold of behavior.

While we can't do that much about the way other Christians react to people, we can try to check our own reactions (I do know I still have a long way to go in that area) and we can try to clarify problems with the atheist reading of our belief system. Toward that end I would explain that since I don't believe that hell is eternal conscious torment, I can't really try to scare compliance out of people. There have been instances on message boards where I have told atheists about my view son hell and always some group of them will say "then how can you scare people into being good?" I can only think that they approach the problem from this angle because they feel people have tried to scare them into being good and that's the only way they can see to do it.

The existential paradigm of religion is so much more effective because scaring compliance. Scaring people into obedience defeats the purpose of knowing God and it's really ineffective in the long run. It's much more effective if people internalize the values of the good. This is why God sets up the world in the way it is, why we have to seek truth instead of being issued briefings in press conferences when we are born. Because the search leads to internalizing values and values give us commitment for a life time. Belief in hell is a waste. It's childish and it is wasted because no one learns in hell. You cant' come back and try it again, by the time you know you were wrong its' too late to change. Punishment may be just and there should be consequences for evil, but I think ceasing to exist is consequence enough, and humane. Please read the link at the top about Why I don't believe in hell. So I don't believe God's aim is to scare but to enthrall and to bring us to a point of internalizing God's values. We do that by knowing God.

Atheists will no doubt see it as a game and a pretense, but, it is a relationship. One cannot "know enough about the Christian God." you can't get the idea from words on paper or sermons on Sunday. It's not a fair test to go by how Christians treat you because Christians are at all different stages in their walk with God, some don't even have any idea they can know God in a personal way. That being said that is no excuse to treat people badly. We as Christians have to understand how we come across and respond in love, not manipulation. I know I am the worst at responding in love. I have some real idiotic mistakes in lashing out in anger to abuse of atheists. But this doesn't give any clear picture of God, even though they will draw conclusions about God based upon the way we act.

That is no better than trying to know a person by what others tell you. You ever had a friend who had another friend he was always talking about. This guy is the greatest ever, and when you meet that person, nothing like the description. You have to know someone before you can really see how great that person is. You have to actually know God. This brings up the invisible friend effect.


Atheists use this as derision, its' like a child with an imaginary friend. Well is it? In some ways it is. Imaginary friends are said to be positive things by child psychologists.Through the assumption of God's active presence in our lives we can model holy living just as through imaginary friends children are modeling real friendships latter for life. It really depends upon the extent to which people take it. I've never been comfortable with "Jesus is here invisibly" idea. I am not comfortable with the way of relating to God that assumes God is saving me a parking place. Some Christians sort of assume they are experiencing God and then letting God step into such occasions. That's actually not all bad really. The sense of God's presence, or what we call "God's presence" is documented over and over again in empirical studies as a valid life transforming experince and something that really changes people's lives for the better in dramatic ways. Some studies show that the mystical type experience is the most mature form of Christianity. The study by Robert Voyle shows this, and it links Christian experience to mystical experience.



That being the case we have no choice but to assume that the experience is the sensation of a reality that is actually present to us at the time.

The atheist can't evaluate this by just hearing about or reading about. I thought people who had such experiences were insane until I had one my self. It's as simple as this, you have to experience it. Its' a say of life, it is not not just one more hypothesis in a life of hypothesis testing. It's a relationship and develops over time. Not all Christians think they hear God, or even believe in that sort of interactive interpersonal relationship with God. There are many kinds of spirituality and many ways of relating to God. I went through my Charismatic phase in the 80s. I still believe some of what I picked up in that era, the "gifts" for example, miracles and healing. But I have not tried to interact in that way, that God is my invisable friend, in some time. That is, in my opinion, a phase. Its' the lower level of stages along the road to mystical union. Mystical union is the highest level of relationship with God and most Christians don't even know about it and will never get there. I will never get there in this life. But it is something, I beileve, we will all experience in after life.

Mystical union is not in the Bible as such. There are verses that pertain to it, but its' not stated explicitly as such. It's part of the voluminous literature of Christian mysticism.

Diverse Expressions of Spirituality


There are as many different views of spirituality and styles of relating to God as there are people to do the relating. Christians are very different. G.K. Chesterton was as different from Billy Graham as was Adli Stevenson from Barry Goldwater. Which is to say as different as Clinton from Bush. Even within the closed ranks of Christian mystics is very diverse. You don't have to relate to God like a big guy in the sky.You can relate to God like a principle or an idea. We can internalize the values and just learn to discern the will of God without having to "hear" or sense works or ideas. Atheists can't understand this because they have to assume it's all made up and so they can only go by words on paper. But they don't even bother to read anything except the bible and that they read for loopholes rather than understanding.

Atheists often confuse popular piety with Christian doctrine and spiritual experience. Popular piety is neither, it is not doctrine nor is it spirituality, at least not in a deep sense. The real depth in spirituality is the mystics; St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and mystical writers not saints, such as blessed John Riseborke, Madame Guyon, Baron Von Huggle. There are hundreds, or thousands. They are all different. They are a different form each other as Plato from Thomas Kuhn. Reading them will only give us a clue. You can't know God until you open your heart to ho him and begin a relationship with him. Until then it's only stuff you hear about and assumptions not in evidence. The first step is open your heart to God's love. Let God love you. If you think love is control and manipulation then you are just missing the boat on what life is all about.

Being a Christian is about knowing God in a personal way. This means experiencing God's presence, but it means a lot more than that too. It's a personalized relationship which fits the individual's own style; it's a love relationship:

1Jo 4:7

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
1Jo 4:8

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

This is something that has to be experienced to be understood. Once it is experienced it is known. The atheist claims to "just know" there's no God don't stack up to that because they are by their very definition the absence of a relationship. One cannot experince the fact of a thing not existing. We can experience the lack of food, clothes, shelter, taxes, peace, whatever, but that doesn't prove these things don't exist, merely experiencing a want and a lack is not proof of anything.Experiencing the presence is proof of something. Atheists may assume or speculate as "what that really is experience of" but that is not the same as experiencing it. To have this kind of relationship with God is to know God. To know God is to love God because God is love. It is also knowing that God loves us. No one can understand this fom outside the relationship and no one can judge God. People who think they are rejecting God are really just rejecting love.

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The Question of Belief: Brute fact or Deep Structure?

This will begin a three part series on the question of Cosmological argument vs. Infinite Causal Regression (ICR).


The meaning of the controversy is the difference between Paul Tillich's view of God as being itself, and the atheist understanding that "the universe just is." Tillich said that if we know that being has depth that it's not just "surface only" then we can't be atheists (Shaking of the Foundations, chapter seven). The atheist understanding has long been their answer to arguments like the cosmological argument. When theists divide up mobes of being into necessary and contingent,the atheist merely says "well what if being just is, it has no meaning or reason for being its' just there?" Of course that's a possibility but it doesn't answer the question, and saying it doesn't make the depth we can see in being go away. What is meant by "depth" of being is that there more to being than just the surface fact of things existing. That's what the concept of "the universe just is" tries to convey, the idea of no reason, not no scientific cause necessarily although they do sometimes try to say that too. These are two totally diametrically opposed understandings. The atheist view says being just is, no reason, nothing to consider or worry about, it's just there for no reason, absurdity. The theists seems more to the nature of being than meets the eye from the surface level. There has to be more to it than just the fact of things existing.

The cosmological argument, for example has different versions, but in generally all CA's assert that there must be final cause to account for the existence of the whole of reality. The atheist's often counter this final cause with an infinite series of contingent causes such as the oscillating universe of big bangs and big crunches. This is called an ICR (infinite causal regression). The atheist asserts that the universe just happens to be for no reason and it's made up of a series of little universes that come in and go out of existence. The whole chain, contingent though it may be (some deny validity of the category "contingent") passes on existence to the next version in the form of a big crunch that then expands avian in another big bang. Some argue that the crunch (contraction of gravitational forces) becomes a blog hole and "punches out" the other side as a new big bang. This is not the only mechanism for ICR. They also posit the notion of quantum tunneling and string membranes. The oscillating universe, however, is the most popular form of ICR becuase it's the only one with proven potential, even though the evidence disproves it (scroll down to (2) Cyclical Universe). As ICR for origin of the universe quantum tunneling invovles self causation where the singularity, or some original element or fragment of reality keeps tunneling back to cause itself at another point in time. This would involve being just having no logical origin but causing itself over and over eternally. String membrane in the sense of ICR is more or less the idea of a floating dimension just drifting along, bashing into another floating dimension and causing a third dimension. Since it posits the idea of a dimension just floating for no reason (2 actually) why bother with the mess? Why not say the universe needs no origin?

There's no absolute proof in any of this. If we want to get technical there's no actual proof that we are even living in a state of "reality." We assume the reality of the world, and thus our ability to study it and formulate hypothesis that "explain it" but if we want to start special pleading about explainations we don't like and just asserting the unproved nature of origins to hedge bets on those we do then we cant' be too picky when the other guy calls our bluff and says "now it's the skeptic's burden of proof." Why? Because presumption is on the side of explainations. Science assumes we need them. No one ever hears a scientist say "we don't need to explain that, let's forget it." The problem is atheists fool themselves. They demand science so much when they need to reach back to philosophy (Kant--the question about brute facts begins with Kant) it's reaching beyond science to philosohpy, which most atheists condemn anyway. There's a loss of credibility there. More importantly, they have already promised explainations then special plead and say "we don't need them in this area." Hey, for religious experiences we need them and they must be naturalistic!

The idea of "the universe just is," in philosophical terms is called a "brute fact." It means there is no reason it' just there. The problem with brute facts is that philosophers usually avoid them excusable they are meaningless, they are provoking and they beg the question. They are not satisfying. As stated, the explainable has been established as the proper procedure for dealing with unknowns, yet in this one reach of the metaphysical nature of being they are willing to just let it go. It's a true case of special pleading. The unsatisfying nature of the brute fact is set off against the basic intuitive sense of being meaning one finds in the question of existence. Meaning is part of the depth of being and we sense the depth of being in even asking the question "where did it all come from?" The issue seems like an arbitrary stand off, either there is a reason or not. Either there is meaning or not. We can't really tell why think there is when the only thing that we can be sure of is the blind random existence of what is? The scietnific evidence does suggest bind random accident and evolution.

The problem is the brute fact in terms of ICR or universal origin is just made up of contingent things. The states of bang and crunch that make up the oscillating universe, for example, consist of constituat parts such as space-time, gravitational field, and naturalistic things. Naturalistic things are contingent. To posit the whole totality of all universal meaning, eternal truth, the nature of all that is upon a meaningless happenstance that just happens to be, while everything else about existence requires explaining and implies something greater than itself (such as truth) creates a state of dissatisfaction. If we are disatisfied metpahyically we have the right to question that state. ICR and brute facts don't answer the questions we ask. The atheist is content to lose the phenomena and pretend there is no meaning and no answers but in so doing is no better off or no more intellectually justified than the faithful making excuses about "no one knows the mind of God." There is a deciding factor or two and they are a prori part of the basic fabric of the question. There's an aspect to the nature of the contingent happenstance that makes up the brute fact of existence that suggests depth of being in a greater sense.

The eternal and necessary nature being suggests the distinction between being as a brute fact and being as depth. The very mechanism the atheist seeks to ply aging final cause is the disproof of the brutish nature of fact. To explain this I must explain the difference in my CA and that of others. For example the Kalam argument is a version of the CA. This says anything that beings to exist needs a cause. That argument, therefore, turns upon the nature cause. Thus arguments about Kalam revolve around efficient cause in nature, and thus ICR (if allowed to stand) is a valid answer. ICR contains cause even though it means an endless series of meaningless cause the whole of which cannot be explained, our own particular universe has its cause then in the previous big crutch and it's blowing back out as a big bang. My version of the CA, however, the Argument from Cosmological Necessity doesn't turn upon causes but upon attributes of God. The argument turns upon demonstrating that the attributes that make up the God concept already exist and are known to us as aspects of reality, thus it's just a matter of understanding their relation to being we can see that they spell out something deep inherent meaning in being that disproves brute fact. After all if being has a deep inherent meaning it can't be a brute fact, that is a prori truth. The deciding factor is the eternal nature of being. There is another version of the argument that turns upon the eternal nature of being.

The reason it's not a moot stand off between the two concepts is because the ICR itself has to be eternal. the individual aspects of the regression that move from one universe to another are contingent and temporal, but the whole string in so far as it must stretch back eternally is both eternal and infinite. Both states evoke the sense of the numinous. That means it's a fit object of worship because anything that evokes the sense of the numinous is a fit object of worship since that state is the very reason religion exists in the firs place. That's what worship is, its the nature being moved by the sense that there is something profound and special in being. The atheist protest that "the universe just happens to be" is self negating becuase it's eternal and infinite nature suggest the quality of the numinous and are thus more in and of themselves than they perpetual to be. That in itself is depth of being. In seeking to posit the whole they actually must suggest something that triggers religious devotion and thus prove the depth nature of being.

Atheists logically should have to support the concept the universe moving from a state of absolute nothing. This is because the ICR just moves the problem back eternally but never really confronts the issue of origins anyway. Since the atheists affirm the idea of brute fact, meaningless accident, irrational existence, and so on they should actually just take their lumps in abandoning ratinoal explanations. This is not all there, however, the issue is not a done deal. We can't just leap from eternal being triggers the sense of the numinous to "therefore God is real." We have to deal with the other attitudes. Even though they all actually flow out of the eternal nature of being, necessity is the more independent one of the lot. The attrubites I emphasis are:

Eternal
necessary
ground of being
first cause

I am also challenged by atheists constantly to include "consciousness" or "personal being." There is no necessity in theology to assume God is personal. Even though I do assume so that is not a priamry quality because other things are personal as well. I'm concerned with the qualitaties that make God God and that God can't share with anything else. Whatever is eternal is by definition necessary (at least ontologically so) because it's not dependent and can't cease to exist. Nothing else really is necessary in the sense that God is (totally, no nature as the effect of a prior cause), so these are primary qualities. If there is eternal necessary being then by definition it is the ground of being. That would only be logical to assume that it is the first cause since nothing else is on a par with it ti would be the best candidate to assume that all else has it's origin in that which is eternal and necessary.

That brings us to the issue of necessity. This is a very important issue because the whole about ICR includes a large part about necessity vs. contingency. That will be discussed on Monday.

The Original Christian Concept of the Supernatural

For years I've been arguing that the modern world has hold of the wrong concept of the supernatural (SN). The concept of the supernatural that atheists love to mock and ridicule and that people think modern scinece disproves is the highjack version that came about in the enlightenment as a result of pressures from both philosophes and Calvinists. In this paper I more adequately explore the nature of the original Christian version of the Supernatural.

Secular thinking writes SN out of reality as primitive and superstition and unscientific. They justify this by pointing to the ability of science to amass a huge fortress of facts while no facts can be found that prove the existence of a Supernatural realm or any Supernatural events. Yet the problem is that the original concept of the SN was about a set of experiences that are empirical and that have easily documented to exist and to have effects that make them unique.

The supernatural is the tendency of divine encounter to raise human nature to a higher level (which means human consciousness). This means the scientific fortress of facts is a house cards because it’s self selected and ideological motivated. The object of opposition for this fortress of facts is a counterfeit and false premise. The actual supernatural is empirically documented to exist.

Therefore, secular skepticism is ideological and not scientific, it uses the mystique of science to interject its’ own metaphysical assumptions while triumphing over the assumption of a straw man argument. One of the major aspects of the atheist ideology, even though it plays off of historical developments stemming form Christian thought, is the distorted concept of the supernatural and the war atheist wage against what really amounts to a straw man. The new atheism makes “the supernatural” into a construct that bares the brunt of all their criticism about the unscientific and un-provable nature of religious belief. Atheists expositors have constructed their own ideas of what “supernatural” means and then use that to attack the concepts of religion which they fill into it. For a popular understanding of what supernatural is constructed into by atheists we can turn to Austin Cline, blogger and atheist talking head:

Belief in the supernatural, especially gods, is one of the most obvious characteristics of religion. It's so common, in fact, that some people mistake mere theism for religion itself, yet that is incorrect. Theism can occur outside of religion and some religions are atheistic. Despite this, supernatural beliefs are a common and fundamental aspect to most religions, while the existence of supernatural beings is almost never stipulated in non-religious belief systems.

According to supernaturalism, a supernatural order is the original and fundamental source of all that exists. It is this supernatural order which defines the limits of what may be known. Something that is supernatural is above, beyond, or transcendent to the natural world — it is not a part of or dependent upon nature or any natural laws. The supernatural is also commonly conceived of as being better, higher, or more pure than the mundane, natural world around us.[1]

No religions are atheistic. Calling Buddhism “atheistic” is a trick of atheist on message boards who try to bolster the numbers of atheist in the world. That is not reason to associate Buddhism with Dawkins and his cronies. He’s got the idea that Supernatural is an overlay or a superstructure which determines the nature of reality; he apparently sees it as a realm beyond. We will see that this is only half right. While Superanture is the ground and end of the natural, it is also I the natural it’s not necessarily only transcendent of it and it’s not a realm. It’s not a world beyond this world. Christianity has posited the idea of worlds beyond worlds that doesn’t make them the supernatural.

Richard Dawkins writes about quasi religious experiences of scientists and an extrovertive mystical experience of a Priest who was once one of his teachers, he then builds upon this in undertaking to explain the nature of religion:

Much unfortunate misunderstanding is caused by failure to distinguish what might be called Einsteinian religion from supernatural religion. The last words of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, "For then we should know the mind of God", are notoriously misunderstood. Ursula Goodenough's The Sacred Depths of Nature clearly shows that she is just as much of an atheist as I am. Yet she goes to church regularly, and there are numerous passages in her book which seem to be almost begging to be taken out of context and used as ammunition for supernaturalist religion. The present Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees, goes to church as an 'unbelieving Anglican', 'out of loyalty to the tribe'. He does not have any supernatural beliefs, but shares exactly the sense of wonder which the universe provokes in the other scientists I have mentioned. There are many intellectual atheists who proudly call themselves Jews, and observe Jewish rites, mostly out of loyalty to an ancient tradition but also because of a confusing (in my view) willingness to label as 'religion' the pantheistic sense of wonder which many of us share.[2]

In making these statements Dawkins pays no heed to the work of Ralph Hood Jr. or to any of the empirical scientific studies that have been done on religious experience. He’s created a phony distinction works along the lines of his likes and dislikes in juxtaposing two different kinds of religious experience; something he calls “Einstein religion” vs what he calls “supernatural.” He has no data and no empirical basis in study of religious experience stet up this dichotomy. It’s clear constructed based upon his scientific heroes’ vs his religious foils. Why shouldn’t we think of this “Einstein religion” type of experience as another sort of supernatural experience? There’s good reason or doing that since it’s a well known form of mystical experience called “extrovertive.” We can see that his fist example is that of someone who became a priest so it does lead to religious belief. That he can produce a variety of people who don’t accept organized religion and who had these kinds of experiences he takes to be proof that it’s not supernatural but that’s clearly just because the uses the term as a catch phrase for the organized religion he doesn’t like.

Atheists segregate reality into realms of natural and supernatural. They so construct the situation so as to screen out any sort of evidence for supernatural on the basis that such evidence would have to be supernatural. Popd cast: “Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling discuss whether there can ever be evidence for the supernatural in an unmoderated, unrehearsed armchair discussion. The event was sponsored by the British Humanist Association, and organized as a part of Oxford Think Week by the Oxford Atheists, Secularists and Humanists (OxASH) in conjunction with Oxford Humanists, Oxford Skeptics in the Pub and Oxford Sea of Faith.”[3] The major idea expressed is that any evidence supernatural must be natural therefore can’t really be of any value. The point being that no evidence for supernatural could ever exist because it would have to be supernatural but it can’t be so because we have no evidence to prove that it exists. The assumption here is that supernatural is an unwelcome visitor crashing into a party given by nature at which it’s not welcome. In reality, however, the experiences of which Dawkins writes so fondly,a strange love for nature growing though a child’s fascination with bugs in the grass, is actually a certain type of supernatural.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman writes about the dichotomy between natural and supernatural and how unnecessary it is. He quotes a question ask him form the general public, a question that shows the extent to which supernature has been discredited and slandered:

The supernatural seems irrational, superstitious, archaic and primitive. So far, the natural world has provided explanations for the previously mysterious unknown: social psychology, psychiatry, chemistry, mathematics, biology, medicine, physics, astronomy, geology and history have aided humanity and preserved our mental and physical health and extended our lives.

So why do we refer to G-d to as a supernatural being? Where is the evidence that the supernatural exists, or has any bearing on our lives? Does the word "supernatural" even mean anything, other than "I don't understand this (yet)"?[4]

Here we see several of these misconceptions about the supernatural, not only because it’s linked to superstition, which it clearly has nothing to do with, but also the idea that God is “a supernatural being” (whatever that is) and that there’s no evidence for it, when in reality the evidence everywhere, in the previous article Dawkins gives us a bunch of it, even though he thinks it’s disproving supernatrue. The questioner puts this dichotomy in terms of the known (nature) and the unknown (supernature). The Rabbi’s answer takes off along these very lines; known and unknown. “Superntural” he deduces is based upon whatever doesn’t’ fit the categories of knowledge listed; all of course are scientific categories. That’s the only form of knowledge that atheists will think about or accept. Everything must be scientific or it doesn’t exist. Dawkins concept of a rational form of religion is a scientific (“Einstein”) religion.

The Original Concept of Supernature

All of these objections assume a certain version of the supernatural. The supernatural has become a catch-all for anything non materialistic or naturalistic that scientistic types want to snub without really having to disprove it. Supernatural today means anything from ghosts, Bigfoot, UFO to psychic powers, and angels and demons and God in heaven. Not so with the original concept. In the early centuries of Christian philosophy the original Greek fathers thought of God as transcendent but they did not necessarily conceive of that as “supernatural.” The Supernatural was something very different then than it is now. This is important because that original meaning, which Christian spiritually was predicated upon, is empirically probable and completely naturalistic and can be shown to be real by simple scientific means. We have to understand the original concept, there are two thinkers who tried to restore the concept to it’s original form and we need to listen to what they tried to say. The first one was Matthias Joseph Scheeben (born, 1 March, 1835; died at Cologne, 21 July, 1888.) His major work was Nature and Grace.[5] Scheeben was a mystic who contemplated and studied divine grace and hypostatic union. He was also of greatly accomplished academically and was a fine scholarly of scholastic theology. He studied at the Gregorian University at Rome and taught dogmatic theology at the Episcopal seminary

at Cologne. Scheeben was the chief defender of the faith against rationalism in the nineteenth century.

In the summer of 1888, Scheeben died in Cologne, having spent most of his fifty-three years teaching dogmatics and moral theology in the archdiocesan seminary there. He was Germany's most persuasive defender of Vatican Fs decision on papal infallibility and an impassioned advocate of religious freedom in the Kulturkampf, Bismarck's determined but finally unsuccessful effort to subject the Catholic Church to the control of his new German state. He was also the author of three major dogmatic works: Nature and Grace (1861), The Mysteries of Christianity (1865), and the massive Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, left unfinished at his death.

The generations that followed Scheeben regarded him as one of the greatest minds of modern Catholic theology. His books were repeatedly republished in Germany up into the 1960s and translated into other European languages, including English (the Dogmatics, alas, only in highly truncated form). Since the Second Vatican Council, though, he has mostly been neglected by theological teachers and students who have wrongly imagined the nineteenth-century Catholic tradition to be a period of antimodern darkness.

The Catholic world of a hundred or more years ago was quite right, I think, to see the Cologne seminary professor as perhaps the finest modern Catholic dogmatic theologian. His writings not only yield rare insight into the mysteries of Christian faith, they draw the attentive reader ever more deeply into the mysteries themselves. Scheeben is more important now than he has ever been. He can teach a theological generation that has sold its inestimable birthright how to restore and renew dogmatic theology.[6]

The other thinker is Eugene R. Fairweather (2 November 1920-) was Anglican scholar and translator of Church fathers from Ottowa. MA in Philosophy form University of Toronto (1943) Ordained priest in 1944 and became tutor at Trinity college Toronto same year. He studied theology at Union theological seminary and earned his Th.D. in 1949. He had an honorary doctorate from McGill University. At the time he wrote his article “Christianity and the Supernatural” he was editor of the Canadian Journal of Theology and professor of dogmatic theology and ethics at Trinity College, Toronto.[7] Fairweather quotes Scheeben and bases part of his view upon Scheeben’s.

Fairweather’s view of the supernatural is contrary to the notion of two opossing realms, or a dualism. He uses the phrase “two-sidedness,” there is a “two-sidedness” about reality but it’s not a real dualism. The Supernatural is that which is above the natural in a certain sense but it is also working in the natural. There are supernatural effects which in the natural realm and make up part of human life. Essentially we can that “the supernatural” (supernature) is an ontology. Fiarweather doesn’t use that term but that’s essentially what he’s describing. Ontology is a philological description of reality. Supernature describes reality in that it is the ground and end of the natural. What that means is unpacked by Fairweather to mean that it is an ordered relation of means to immediate ends with respect to their final ends. “The Essential structure of the Christian faith has a real two-sidedness about it, which may at first lead the unwary into a dualism and then encourage the attempt to resolve the dualism by an exclusive emphasis upon one or the other [side] of the severed element of completely Christianity.”[8] He explains the ordered relation several times through paring off opposites or supposed opposites: human/divine; immanent/transcendent; realm of Grace/realm of nature. All of these he refers to as “ordered relations.”[9] If this was Derrida we would call them binary oppositions. In calling them “ordered” he is surely saying one is ‘above’ the other in some sense. They are not necessary oppositions because that’s his whole point, not a true dualism.

Supernature is working in nature. It’s not breaking in unwelcome but is drawing the workings of nature to a higher level. Fairweather describes it as the “ground and end of nature.” In other words is the basis upon which nature comes to be and the goal toward which nature moves. Now it’s true that science removes the teleological from nature it doesn’t see it as moving toward a goal but that’s because it can’t consider anything beyond its own domain. Science is supposed to be empirical consideration of the natural realm and is supposed to keep its nose out of the business of commentary on metaphysics. Of course modern science does the opposite it become a form of metaphysics by infusing itself with philosophical assumptions and then declaring there is nothing beyond the natural/material realm. That is to say, when it is dominated by secularist concerns that are the direction science is put in by ideological interests. Be that as it may, theological we can take a broader view and we see a goal oriented aspect to the natural. Supernatural effects draw the natural toward supernature. That is to say human nature responds to the calling of God in elevating humans to a higher level of consciousness. Another example of the ground and end of nature that Fairweather doesn’t give, but I like to use, is Martin Luther King’s statement about the arch of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. Nothing in nature bends toward justice, if by “nature” we mean rocks and trees but there more to the natural realm than just those aspects that science studies. Humans are part of the realm of the natural and it’s part of our social world that we understand concepts of justice. Due to our own purposive nature we bend the arch of the moral universe toward justice.

The term Supernatural (SN) comes to us from Aquinas.[10] He gets it from John Scotus Erigena and Burgundio of Pisa, who in turn take it from Pseudo-Dionysius and John of Damascus.[11] The latter used the adverbial form Supernaturaliter. This is coming from the Greek hyperphuos.[12] “From an early period the concept of ‘that which is above nature’ had been seized upon by Christian Theologians as an appropriate means of stating the core of the gospel, so far example, Origen tells how God raises man above human nature…and makes him change into a better and divine nature.”[13] John Chrysostom speaks of speaks of humans having received grace “health beauty honor and dignities far exceeding our nature.”[14] “In the West the most concise expression of the idea is to be found in the Leonine prayer ‘grant us to be partakers of his divinity who deigned to become partakers of our humanity.’”[15] “In these and a multitude of patristic texts the essential point is just this, that God, who is essentially superntrual perfects with a perfection beyond creaturely comprehension. Nevertheless elevates human creatures to a true participation in divine life an indwelling of God in man and man in God.”[16] The important point here is that human nature is being raised to the higher level of divine. We can see this manifests itself through the experience commonly known as “mystical.” That I will take up shortly, First, let’s turn to Scheeben to document further that is the nature of the supernatural. Supernatural is the power of God to raise us to this higher level.

Scheeben deals with the distinction between natural and supernatural faith. Throughout his writings we see this typified in terms of the tendency of the power of God to elevate humanity to a higher spiritual level. This means consciousness as well as habit. He speaks of “supernatural effects,” the effect that the pull of the supernatural has upon the natural. This is why it’s valid to think of the supernatural as an ontology, it’s a description of reality, or what is. Empirically that description tends toward the realization of human consciousness reaching to a higher level as a result of certain kinds of experiences. Scheeben expresses this in terms of “higher nature.” Super nature is the higher nature to which human nature is being elevated.

If the lower nature is raised in all of these respects to the level of a higher nature, and especially if this nature modifies the lower nature so deeply and affects it so powerfully that the limits of possibility are reached; if God, purest light and mightiest fire, wishes through to permeate his creature with his energy, to flood it with brightness and warmth to transform it into his own splendor, to make the creature like the father of spirits and impart to it the fullness of his own divine life, if I say, the entire being of the soul is altered in the deepest recesses and in all its ramifications to the very last, not by annihilation, but by exaltation and transfiguration. Then we can affirm that a new higher nature has come to the lower nature, because it has been granted a participation in the essence of him to whom the higher nature properly belongs.[17]

He seeks in one point of his work to resolve a fine point of difficulty between the Thomist-Molinist dicthotomy. Scheeben didn’t like dichotomies and thus seeks a third way. His solution is to see the natural as a mirror of the divine. The dichotomy deals with predestination, grace and free will. That’s not the issue I don’t want to get off into that. For Scheeben the authority of God is the sole formal object of faith. Thus faith is divine both in its source and object.[18] According to this position faith is neither the result of rational self interest nor a consequence of the human spirit. We must not mistake the manifestation in experience for the motive of faith. Faith is the result of obedience to the drawing power and call of God.[19] Nature (Greek Physis, Latin natura) is the realm of life from life, according to Scheeben. Super nature is the overarching principle toward which nature strives

The whole point is that the life of the children of God is directed to such specific objects and ends as cannot be striven for or attained, at least in a way that corresponds to their loftiness, except by acts of a supernatural perfection, that is, of a perfection unattainable by nature, —in other words, by acts which are kindred and similar to the proper life of God in its loftiness.[20]

We can see in his answers to the Thoamsit/Molinist issue the basis of the claim that Super nature is the power of God to rise us to a higher level. This is how Schebeen construed it. In summarizing Murry speaks of “power which flow from the new nature,”

that is his starting point(16). One conclusion follows immediately: the new powers which flow from the new nature must themselves be “an image of the divine vital powers”(17), i.e. the specific perfection of the divine vital powers must reflect itself in their working. That is Scheeben’s “Grundanschauung”, on which rests all his theorizing about supernatural acts. In a word, to the divinization of man’s nature corresponds a divinization of his activity(18). And Scheeben is occupied wholly in drawing out the nature of this divinization and its consequences. The immediate consequence, in which I am here interested, is that man’s divinized activity must be directed to objects of the specifically divine order. The essence of Scheeben’s thought is revealed in this sufficiently characteristic passage:[21]

The passage in Scheeben to which he refers:

If we have truly become partakers in the divine nature, and by this supernature have become most intimately akin to the divine nature.... then we are taken up into the sphere of its life; then the Godhead itself in its immediacy and in its own proper essence as it is in itself becomes the object of our activity. Then we shall know God Himself, illuminated by His light, without the mirror of creatures; then we shall love God immediately in Himself, no longer as the Creator of our nature, but as One Who communicates His own nature to us, —penetrated as we are by His fire, and made akin to Him in His divine eminence . . . In a word, if we become partakers of the divine nature, our life and our activity must be specifically similar to the divine. To this end it must’ have the same specific, formal, characteristic object as the divine activity has.[22]

Murryay summarizes again:

This one passage, out of many(20), is sufficient to show how the theory of the supernatural object enters into Scheeben’s system, namely as a consequence of (or if you wish, as a postulate for the completion of) his favorite parallelism between the divine life of God Himself and the life of grace in His creature(21). That parallelism suggests the formula that man’s supernatural activity is “an image of the divine activity”, and this formula in turn commands on the one hand the introduction of a supernatural object (i.e. “God as He is in Himself”), and on the other hand dictates the consistent use of the term “immediate” to characterize the nature of the union with God that is effected by supernatural knowledge and love(22). In this last detail, — that supernatural activity unites the soul immediately to God, — Scheeben’s theory culminates. The idea appealed immensely to him, though practically speaking it merely means that “God as He is in Himself” is the immediate object of supernatural activity. Its contrary is that natural activity effects no immediate union with God, since it reaches God only through the medium of creatures, and not “as He is in Himself”[23]

In all of these descriptions we see one standard concept: that supernature is a life, an experience, an inner relation between the divine and human nature. He says supernture is that which we partake of divine life. Human nature is elevated to the higher level by super nature and this primarily the way Scheeben speaks of supernature. This is what super nature is, the power of God to elevate to a higher level. There is an indication form what is said that “the supernatural” is a level of being above he realm of the natural. That must be the case because the power of God to elevate would surely be centered upon a higher level than then natural. That doesn’t mean that we are free to associate the supernatural with psychic powers and ghosts and unexplained phenomena and anything “x-files” like. The sense that the supernatural is above the nature is an implication of the ontology; the ground and end of the natural would sure be on some higher level in a sense. The more important aspect that all of these writers speak of is “participation” in divine life. Shceeben speaks directly of super nature just that, the divine life in which we are elevated to participate in.

The important aspect of all of this in relation to science is that super nature is not some juxtaposed belief in the unseen that has no analogy in the empirical. The experience of being raised to a higher level through contact with the divine life is clearly empirical. It may be a matter of interpretation as to the cause of the effects, but the effects of what is called “religious experience” are certainly empirical. It’s not hard to link those experiences with the divine; the content of them is that of God and the divine relation to the world. This is what most of those who experiences these things think they experienced.

---

[1] Austin Cline, “Religion is Belief in Supernatural Beings—How Religions Involve Theism.” About.com; Agnostiicsm/Atheism, blog URL http://atheism.about.com/od/religiondefinition/p/TheismGod.htm viisted 1/23/2012

[2] Richard Dawkins, “Einsteinian or Supernatural” The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, 5/15/2006. on line source URL: http://richarddawkins.net/articles/123-religion-einsteinian-or-supernatural visited 1/23/2012.

[3] James O’Malley, The Pod Delusion “Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling Discuss Evidence for the Supernatural This week At Oxford. 2/23/2011.URL http://poddelusion.co.uk/blog/2011/02/23/richard-dawkins-ac-grayling-discuss-evidence-for-the-supernatural-at-oxford-thinkweek/ visited 1/23/2012

[4] a reader writing to Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, “What is the Supernatural?” Chabad.org Essentials. Blog URL: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/356494/jewish/What-Is-the-Supernatural.htm visited 1/23/2012

[5] Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Nature and Grace, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2009 (paperback) originally unpublished 1856.

[6] Bruce D. Marshall. “Renewing Dogmatic theology.” News Edge. Blog URL: http://dialog.newsedge.com/portal.asp?site=2007100814443105593225&searchfolderid=pg2007100814522209759333&block=default&portlet=ep&nzesm=on&display=Religious+Cults&action=sitetopics&mode=realtime&nzenb=left&criteria=[topic%3Dcults]&searchID=730376&datetime=[t-minus%3D7]&hdlaction=story&storyid=[storyid=zFhV9A4ingKfyJKkM7SYF60h7bzyuSst6cpLFPeF_KF10rs2TkU8gQnIhJL0BsKdSpTF6QIOR0rsVM2GIwVDyw**]&rtcrdata=on&epname=EFORE&

Visitied August 14, 2012. Bruce D. Marshall is professor of Christian doctrine at Perkins School of Theology.(c) 2012 Institute of Religion and Public Life

[7] Editor’s introduction to Eugene R. Fairweather, “Christianity and the Supernatural,” in New Theology no.1. New York: Macmillian, Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman ed. 1964. 235-256.

[8] Ibid. 237

[9] ibid

[10] Fairweather,ibid, 239

[11] ibid

[12] ibid

Pseudo-Dionysius Ep 4, ad Caium (PG 3:1072)

[13] Fairweather, ibid (239).

[14] ibid

[15] Fairweather quoting Leonine prayer, ibid.

[16] ibid

[17] Maithias Jospeh Scheeben quoted in Fairweather (239-240). Fairwether fn Scheeben the version he uses. M.J. Scheeben, Nature and Grace, St. Lewis: Herder, 1954, 30.

[18] Avery Dulles, S.J. An Assurance of Things Hoped for: A Theology of Christian Faith. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, 90.

[19] Ibid.

[20] Scheeben, quoted in Works by John Courtney Murray Chapter II “Natural and supernatural Faith.” Website, Woodstock Theological Center Library. P100 URL: http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/library/murray/1937-2.htm visited August 14, 2012

Mathias Joseph Scheeben on faith, Doctoral Dissertation of John Courtney Murry

Woodstock Theological Center Library.

This volume in the Toronto Studies in Theology reproduces the doctoral dissertation John Courtney Murray, S.J. (1904-1967) completed in the spring of 1937 at the Gregorian University in Rome. From then until now, the Gregorian University archives contained the original typescript of “Matthias Joseph Scheeben’s Doctrine on Supernatural, Divine Faith: A Critical Exposition”. A carbon-copy was incorporated into the Murray Archives housed by the Woodstock Theological Library in the Special Collections Room of the Joseph Mark Lauinger Library at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. John Courtney Murray eventually published the third chapter, modified and disengaged from its original context (1). The complete, original text is published here for the first time.

URL: http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/library/Murray/1937.htm

[21] John Courtney Murray summarizing Scheeben, ibid.

[22] Scheeben quoted in Muarry, ibdid, p101

[23] Murray, ibid.

The Fall of Humanity: Not An event in History

Recently an atheist, call him "George," on a certain Message board was outraged and alarmed by my habit of looking at the fall from a different perspective than the one he knew as a fundamentalist. In his mind there's only one possibility for view points, that's the one he's into at the moment. Of cousre he sees the fall as a historical event, so he assumes that if the Genesis creation myth is wrong (as in evolutionary) then all of Christianity is wrong becuase then there's no fall, we don't need redemption the point of having a religion is blown. My answer alramebed becuase it wasn't the fundamentalist banter he expected. I discussed. What rally "blew his mind" as we used to say, was the idea I advance that it's actually a coming of age myth. Maybe I'm over the top in calling it that, perhaps I should clarify that I don't mean it in a form sense, but it does have overtones of being a coming of age myth.

First, let me set out exactly how I deal with the fall, how it can still be a valid category even though it's not an event in history. My view was influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr whom I read in seminary; Niebuhr was one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, and the more concise and insightful of the Niebuhr boys.* Reinhold Niebuhr sets out his view in his great work The Nature and Destiny of man Volume I. He separates the fall from the historical view derived from the text in Genesis and based that upon Augustine's understanding of the nature of sin. Sin is an inherent aspect of sentient being. Augustine understood sin as a response to anxiety. I wont go into that I merely mark that in the lectures of Dr. Carney this was the frame for the issue. Niebuhr modernizes the concept of anxiety and sin by casting it in terms of self transcendence. We project into the future by remembering the past and extrapolating. So we think "If I don't get my rent paid I'll be on the street, that will be very miserable I know form past experience I don't like pain." So this sense of anxiety leads us to steal to pay the rent. Of course this is a very simplistic example and motives can get much more complex.

The basic sense is that the fall is something that happens in each of us as we grow. That's where the coming of age bit comes in. Rather than see it as a point in time that marks human history the action of one man became part of something like the genetic code the actual real life fall is distributed throughout all of history and marks the lives of each on an individual basis. It can be described as a fall in the sense that it represnts the loss innocence. We move form the state of being blameless due to youth to being blameworthy because we have come of age (or the "age of accountability"). We can pull back from seeking to resolve the anxiety through injustice ot others and and seek to resolve it through faith. That's the hard part because faith requires confidence to be placed in God, and that is much easier to come by once we have already experienced God's grace. So that's where redemption comes in.

By this account falling from Grace is just a natural part of life. It comes with the territory of growing up, thus I call it a "coming of age myth."Of course this outraged George the atheist. I'm not quite sure why. He produced a quote saying that all modern scholars are sure the authors of Genesis understood it as literal history. The quote actually spoke about six day creation not the fall. It did not say "there is no mythology in Genesis." It's pretty clear the redactors of the text were working form pagan myth such as the Sumerian and Babylonian/ Akkadian creation myth. Cornfled shows that the outlines are the exactly same event for event (see Genesis). It has all the ear makrs of mythology including non specific mythical time frame ("in the begining") an enchanted world (talking serpent--God Walks with man in the cool of evening). Clelarly we are dealing with a mythological text. According to Campbell mythology is a technique o dealing subconscious truth through archetypes. The selection of archetypes need not be conscious.

Tom Collin's Interview
with Campbell:Context
Institute

Tom: What does myth do for us? Why is it so important?

Joseph: It puts you in touch with a plane of reference that goes past your mind and into your very being, into your very gut. The ultimate mystery of being and nonbeing transcends all categories of knowledge and thought. Yet that which transcends all talk is the very essence of your own being, so you’re resting on it and you know it. The function of mythological symbols is to give you a sense of "Aha! Yes. I know what it is, it’s myself." This is what it’s all about, and then you feel a kind of centering, centering, centering all the time. And whatever you do can be discussed in relationship to this ground of truth. Though to talk about it as truth is a little bit deceptive because when we think of truth we think of something that can be conceptualized. It goes past that.

It doesn't matter that the redactors thought the events in the Genesis story really happened. Myth functions at a psychological level and the symbols are not necessarily chosen knowingly.


Joseph Campbell: from Interview
with Bill Moyers on Myths-Dream-
Symbols.

Experience of life. The mind has to do with meaning. What's the meaning of a flower. There's the Zen story about a sermon of the Buddha in which he simply lifeted a flower. There was only one man who gave him a sign with his eyes that he understood what was said. Now, the Buddha himself is called "the one thus come". There's no meaning. What's the meaning of the universe? What's the meaning of a flea? It's just there. We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it's all about....Read the myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols.

There is no statement in chruch council that the events of the Genesis creation myth are literal history.There is no chruch council that mandates that we believe Genesis literally as history. The only we have this feeling that it's some kind of holy law that we must understand it this way is because it's been drummed into the culture since the nineteenth century by the fundamentalists. The fundamentalists largely exist today because they represent a visceral reaction to the modern world and resistance to Darwin. It's only because they drummed it into our heads that we think we have to support it as literal history.

*see H Richard Niebuhr
see Reinhold Niebuhr