Thinking Christian

The “Dearborn Four” are to be arraigned this morning. Here’s a local news report on their situation (via answeringmuslims.com).

What shall we say about this, especially the mayor’s remarks? I don’t recall it being illegal to talk about one’s faith outside a “designated free speech area.” I wonder what name you give to public places surrounding such a zone. Maybe, “designated First Amendment-free zone.” The city of Dearborn has published a letter explaining their position on this.

For those of us with limited access to the facts, it all remains to be sorted out. It seems odd, though, that Dearborn would not have returned this group’s video equipment to them. The city clearly wants not to be condemned for their actions (see the title of their letter, linked above). If they did nothing wrong, they have been taking unusual pains to hide the evidence thereof.

Now, even though I’ve been building a friendship with Nabeel Qureshi, one of the Dearborn Four, since last November, I don’t know enough about the circumstances there to be convinced their evangelistic methodology was the best. Other Christians I respect strongly, especially Josh McDowell, have been developing positive relations there while also sharing Christ. I’m suspending judgment on that while we all wait for further information. But there is another issue in question here, which is liberty and the rule of law.

With respect to Mayor O’Reilly’s comments, I wonder especially what law there is against “motives” that “violate the spirit of the Constitution.” What were this group’s motives? How does the mayor know them, and how does he know that he knows them? Usually we infer motives from what people say and what they do. This group has not provoked controversy in other Muslim-centric venues, only in Dearborn, where in 2009 (based on video testimony) it seems it was others besides themselves who escalated the confrontations. How do we infer evil motives from that? They’ve said they came for respectful, peaceful dialogue. How do we infer evil motives from that?

Motive and intent are relevant when an actual crime is being contemplated or has been committed. They form part of the distinction between first-degree murder and other lesser crimes. They are obviously relevant to laws against conspiring to commit a crime.

But this has more the flavor of a bad Western movie plot line:

“I’m locking you up for disturbing the peace, Smith.”

“What for, Sheriff?? I was just sitting and talking peaceably with the bartender here.”

“Sure, but you knew when you rode into town that Big John is here, and Big John wants to pick a fight with you. You came here just to stir him up.”

“Is that right, Sheriff? How does that work, then? I’m sitting here as peaceful as can be, and I’m doing nothing wrong. Big John wants to pick a fight with me, and for that, you think I’m the one disturbing the peace?”

“That’s right, Smith.You came to town wanting to get Big John to pick a fight with you. That makes it your fault, clear as day, and that’s why I’m putting you behind bars.”

What’s wrong with that scene? First, the peace was not yet disturbed. Second, if it were to be disturbed, it would be Big John who would be doing it, not Smith. And third, the Sheriff claimed he knew why Smith came to town—and he made that the cause for arrest.

If we are going to have elected officials in this country who think they can decipher motives that way, then we’ll have elected officials who will think they can have us arrested based on what—their impressions? or their telepathic abilities?

As for violating the “spirit of the Constitution,” what on earth does that mean? Probably whatever anyone wants it to mean. Suppose, though, this group actually did go there to stir up trouble by talking about their religion. I don’t think so, but suppose they did. Where in the Constitution do we find a “spirit” violated by that intent?

I don’t know what’s in Mayor O’Reilly’s mind, but I know where his words could lead, if he or anyone else took them seriously: arrests made without any actual crime in view, just on the basis of some mysteriously interpreted motive, or for violating some privately inferred “spirit” of the Constitution. What do you think—could the rule of law survive?

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… even I can see that this Slate author hasn’t done his “grade-school” homework on Thomas Aquinas.

And so atheists really exist on the same superstitious plane as Thomas Aquinas, who tried to prove by logic the possibility of creation “ex nihilo” (from nothing). His eventual explanation entailed a Supreme Being standing outside of time and space somehow endowing it with existence (and interfering once in a while) without explaining what caused this source of “uncaused causation” to be created in the first place.

This is—or should be—grade-school stuff, but many of the New Atheists seemed to have stopped thinking since their early grade-school science-fair triumphs.

[From The rise of the new agnostics. - By Ron Rosenbaum - Slate Magazine]

Need I spell out the problems here? Or are they too grade-school obvious?

The most difficult thing about it all is figuring out how he could get anyone to publish it.

More interesting yet is the way Rosenbaum closes out the piece. It’s quite consistent with the theme of the whole:

Wilkins’ suggestion is that there are really two claims agnosticism is concerned with is important: Whether God exists or not is one. Whether we can know the answer is another. Agnosticism is not for the simple-minded and is not as congenial as atheism and theism are.

The courage to admit we don’t know and may never know what we don’t know is more difficult than saying, sure, we know.

As Errol Morris put it in the conclusion of one his epic multipart New York Times examination of anosognosia—not knowing what we don’t know:

We have “the desire but not the wherewithal to make sense of experience. One might easily forsee that this would lead to unending unmitigated frustration and suffering. But here’s where self-deception [and] anosognosia … step in. We wouldn’t be able to make sense of anything, but we would never be aware of that fact.”

Like I said, it’s complicated. But the world has suffered enough from oversimplifications. The agnostic moment has come.

Theism and atheism are both for the simple-minded, he thinks. I won’t defend or even comment on atheism in that respect. But I’ll note that Rosenbaum has provided further evidence he’s never read Aquinas. Or Calvin, or Augustine, or maybe even Lewis. Nor does it seem likely he has spent much time in any decent theological library.

And theism is for the weak-willed, too, he says. That would come as quite a surprise to a lot of Christians.

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Here’s a brand new magazine for southern Virginia, available online for everybody: The New James. Check out my piece on intelligent design! (If you’ve been reading here a while it may look familiar.)

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This week’s Christian Carnival is now posted at Other Food: daily devo’s. I especially appreciated Adam Faughn’s reflection on my favorite hymn, “Be Still My Soul” (followed closely by “Be Thou My Vision” and the much more recent “Blessed Be Your Name” from Tree63). I was also glad to see Matthew Keegan’s news about a short course to help students prepare for college.

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The Scientific American piece ends,

Is it possible that some future genius will discover an alternative that supplants Darwinism as our framework for understanding life? Will we ever look back on Darwin as brilliant but wrong?

Is it a crack in the Darwinist monolith? Maybe. But not, alas, much of a nod in the direction of Intelligent Design. It begins,

Last year, on the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species, Darwin’s stock soared higher than Apple’s. It’s 2010—time for a market adjustment.

The philosopher Daniel Dennett once called the theory of evolution by natural selection “the single best idea anyone has ever had.” I’m inclined to agree. But Darwinism sticks in the craw of some really smart people. I don’t mean intelligent-designers (aka IDiots) and other religious ignorami but knowledgeable scientists and scholars.

SciAm still can’t say “religious” without adding something like “ignorami.” Too bad for them, I’m afraid.

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Here are the answers to my June 17 “Fascinating Matching Game.” I encourage you to go back to that post and try your hand at it before you look at the answers here.

Repeating what I said about this last time: wasn’t that fun? Well, maybe not. If American churchgoers all tithed, we could do everything listed in C3 completely independent of government, and have $75 billion left over to spend any way we wanted. Here’s one suggestion: find some additional way to give to the rest of the world, to match the amount of foreign aid our government sends to other countries. Twice.

Doesn’t that sound like it would be a good idea?

It’s not entirely clear from the source I used, by the way, whether the $65 billion figure  for eliminating extreme poverty includes or is in addition to some of the other items listed here. I’ve listed it as in addition to; if it includes those items, then the American church, if we tithed, could accomplish this and have considerably more than $75 billion left over at the end.

Source: The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? The Answer That Changed My Life and Might Just Change the World by Richard Stearns, pp. 216-218

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