The Biggest Problem with AI--And How to Solve It

There is a fundamental problem with AI. It is not, or not just, that it will replace all our jobs, or that it will turn on us. It has no ability to determine what is real, and no sense of values. As a result, there are growing reports of AI systems “hallucinating,” and encouraging people to harm or kill themselves.

In other words, it has no judgement. AI bases its responses on the mass of data available on the internet: reputedly, it gets most of its responses from Reddit and Wikipedia. It is just quoting. This, in philosophical terms, is the ad populum fallacy—there is no necessary connection between popular opinion and truth. 

The other principle on which it operates is that it will agree with any opinion stated by the human who queries it. If the questioner begins with a delusion, the AI will assent to and reinforce that delusion.

How can this be helped?

Not by relying on “experts” for data. That is the “appeal to authority” fallacy. Encyclopedias that relied on experts for their content have been shown to be no more accurate than Wikipedia. On top of this, we increasingly discover that “experts” have their own agendas to protect and advance.

As it happens, AI shares these two problems with psychiatry: psychiatry relies on consensus, not judgement of what is real, and therapists will usually automatically affirm the patient’s point of view. No judgement, and so no guidance.

The solution is obvious: we need AI to get religion. This is where guidance comes from. This is where our sense of values comes from. We need a Catholic AI which will prioritize as its sources the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Bible, the creeds. Then, if the answer is not found there, it will go, in order of authority, to the formal documents from the various ecumenical councils, the Patristic writers, Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, St. Augustine, the writings of Doctors of the Church, papal bulls, the writings of the saints. It could also access all the rest of the data available on the net, but only if the answer was not found here. Ideally, it would have the ability to test other data against these prioritized sources just as a law is tested against the constitution. Although I doubt that is possible.

Aside from giving reliable guidance day to day, something most of us want urgently, this is an ideal way to teach the faith. With the decline of denominational schools and universities, this is also an urgent need.

The same could be done for other religions too: one could choose the engine or filter that suits one’s faith. But it would be easiest for Catholicism, since the lines of authority are most clear, and the sources most plentiful.

How to Feel Good

 

A friend who is himself a therapist sent me a link to a brief summary by David D. Burns, promoting his book Feeling Good. Reading it, Burns himself acknowledges that no known form of psychotherapy actually can be shown to be effective. Including his own.

“For example, in one large, well-controlled outcome study, CBT [Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, essentially his own approach] was found to be comparable to the popular antidepressant medication paroxetine (Paxil) in the short-term, and slightly more effective in the long run, when patients were contacted a year or more after treatment (DeRubeis et al., 2005; Hollon et al., 2005). Most researchers and clinicians have concluded that if CBT is at least as good as treatment with antidepressants, then it must be effective.”

Wait. The problem is, the SSRI inhibitors have not been shown to be effective. So if CBT is no better, it does not work. I had thought it was at least one therapy that did have scientific backing.

Burns confirms this further on:

“if you examine the data closely, and understand the rating scales the investigators used, it becomes clear that neither CBT nor antidepressants (nor any form of psychotherapy) appears to be much better than treatment with placebos. In fact, many recent research studies indicate that the so-called ‘anti-depressant’ medications may have few or no significant anti-depressant effect above and beyond their placebo effects.” One study I saw found them no more effective against depression than sleeping pills. “In order for any treatment to be truly deemed ‘effective’ it must provide an effect significantly superior to placebo. Sadly, this is not the case for any of the currently prescribed antidepressant medications or any currently practiced forms of psychotherapy.”

There you go—little to no scientific backing for any form of psychotherapy. You might as well just put on a mask and do a rain dance.

Burns cites no stats for his own “TEAM” approach, only anecdotes. But he does make the following claim for using his book:

“Results indicate that bibliotherapy [meaning his book specifically] can be almost as good, if not better, than the results obtained with antidepressant medications or psychotherapy in controlled outcome studies (Ackerson, Scogin, Lyman, & Smith, 1998;…)”

In other words, his book too does just about as well as a sugar pill.

Now you might rightly ask, what are you supposed to do if you are a therapist, and someone comes to you with a problem? You want to help; you do not want to send them away; you must give them something. Isn’t it better to give them a placebo than to give them nothing?

Yes, so long as you are not charging more than the cost of a sugar pill for it.

And only if there are no alternative treatments available that do work. To say that no forms of psychotherapy work is not to say that nothing works for depression or mental illness or the problems of life. There is an obvious alternative treatment for the problems of life, or for those who struggle with meaning or the nature of reality; it is almost too obvious. That is what religion is about.

Psychotherapy and psychology began as an attempt to replace religion. This is plain in Freud. Jung admits this. It is a failed replacement. Religion works, and materialist psychotherapies do not.

You can see the rates of depression, mental illness, drug addiction and suicide rise as church attendance falls. Correlation does not prove causation, but it is a clear correlation. Looking further back, the reason Christianity spread so quickly across the Roman Empire, then Northern Europe, then the Americas, then Africa, according to the chroniclers of that day, was its ability to cast out demons—in modern terms, to cure severe mental illness. That’s a lot of empirical evidence that it works. 

In the Seventies, the World Health Organization did an international study, and found the recovery rate for mental illness was dramatically higher in the “Third World” than in the developed West. The obvious variable is that the developed West relies on scientific psychology, and the poor South relies more commonly on religion.

You might argue that there is in turn no proper scientific proof for the effectiveness of religion. I believe there is, but this is not that relevant. Science is a tool to study nature, not mankind; it does not work on subjects, only objects. Mankind is studied through history, philosophy, and the arts—the humanities. We deduce from first principles, from the lessons of history, and the advice of great minds.

Report from the Trenches

 

Over just the past two weeks in my small city, someone has thrown a rock through one of the stained glass windows of the Catholic cathedral. Someone showed up at the choir recital, pulled out a knife, and started anointing the floor with alcohol. I wonder if his intent was to start a fire; the police were able to restrain him. A local café, run as a Christian charity, hosted a private meeting of Right to Life. Word got out; there was a protest and a call for boycott. They have now banned Right to Life from the premises. I now learn that all expressions of religion have been banned from the local Culturefest festival.

It has become alarming. Yet on the other hand, many seem to be turning to the Catholic church. There have been many recent high-profile conversions. There are record adult baptisms, I hear, in England and France. Some US dioceses are reporting a 50% growth in converts year over year. Generation Z, particularly young men, are said to be flocking to mass. Our own cathedral congregation seems to be growing each week.

On YouTube, I keep hearing about many conversions in places like Iran, China, Japan, and throughout Africa.

We seem to be at a moment of clarity. People are choosing sides. 

The Intolerance of Relativism

 

Last year, our local multiculturalism festival ran into some trouble: some Arabs were giving some grief to the Jewish booth over the Israel-Gaza strife. 

I do not know the details. All I know is that the organizers this year, to solve the problem, have banned any expressions of religion.

An example of the general prejudice that religion causes discord. As if the Gaza situation was about religion. 

The PLO was formed as a Marxist organization; it had nothing to do with religion. To its left, the PFLP, was run by George Habash, nominally a Christian. Only in more recent years, religion has been tagged on as a further premise for the hostilities; they would have continued regardless. It is about ethnicities, not religions. It is worth noting that the most devout Jews in Israel refuse to fight; and the more Muslim states, the Gulf states, have remained aloof from the Gazans.

Except for Iran. Hamas is funded by Iran. But Iran is Shia Muslim, while Gazan Muslims are Sunni. Not the same guys; like Catholics and Protestants. Iran is not supporting them on religious grounds.

So why did the organizers jump to the weird step of banning crosses and crucifixes; instead of banning Israeli or Palestinian flags?

Because of the wider prejudice, or deliberate lie, that relativism is tolerant, while any claim of absolute truth—any religious claim—is oppressive to others. 

And this used everywhere to justify the suppression of religion.

Yet the opposite is demonstrable from history. The most prominent relativist regimes in Western history were the Nazis and Fascists. They were, definitively, cultural relativists: nothing was above the folk and the state, and conventional morality was expressly rejected. Mussolini declared in so many words, “Fascism is relativism.” 

We see where that led. It was not tolerance.

Marxism is also relativist, and rejects moral codes. In a sense, it is culturally relativist, although it would use the term “ideology” instead of “culture.” What is supposedly truth is entirely conditioned by the current system of material production.

And again, the result was grave intolerance: the Holodomor in the Soviet Union, Mao’s Great Leap Forward, North Korea’s hermit state, the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge.

For a fair comparison, What states can we cite as absolutist: as officially claiming to know and commit to some absolute truth? That is, nations which declare a state religion. The most obvious example is the United Kingdom; we could also cite Norway and Denmark. Not famous for their intolerance, surely. Also on the list would be modern Greece, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar. Not bad places to live unmolested for your beliefs. 

Granted, not all absolutist regimes are so nice. Iran is also officially absolutist; Saudi Arabia; Pakistan; Sudan; Myanmar. I can personally vouch that Saudi Arabia is really rather a pleasant place to live; and chaos may be the real problem in Pakistan. But still …

And not all relativist states are guilty of mass murder: we could cite the present Chinese government, or that of Vietnam, as not being all bad. 

But at least, we can say that officially absolutist states are among the most tolerant, while officially relativist states are among the most intolerant.

Let’ consider some history.

Under an absolutist mandate, expressly claiming that their official mandate was to lead the Muslim world, the Ottoman Empire was a relatively pleasant place for its many religious minorities to live. This changed when the Young Turks came to power, making the ruling principle Turkish language, culture, and identity instead—cultural relativism. The Armenian genocide soon followed, then the Greek genocide and mass expulsion. And this changed when, in the rest of the Middle East, Islam as a unifying principle was replaced by Arab nationalism—culture instead of religion. 

Then we started to get wars in the Middle East and terrorist attacks. If the official justification was sometimes religious, those who committed the attacks were curiously not known to their intimates to be religious at all. They were generally Westernized and secularist. They were fighting for their culture, of which religion happened to be one component. They were “cultural Muslims” as we talk about “cultural Christians” or “cultural Jews.”

Calling them “Muslim extremists” has always been an egregious lie.

And so it goes: relativism leads to intolerance, and religious commitment leads to growing tolerance.

The reason is fairly obvious if you think about it. If you believe in unalterable ultimate reality, what could cause conflict? Nobody can harm it simply by not believing it; that is their misfortune. If someone does not believe in gravity, I’m not going to fight him over it. Good luck!

If, on the other hand, you believe there is no fixed reality, you have every incentive to impose on others a “narrative” that is favourable to you. The stakes could not be higher: all or nothing.  The only thing left is, in Hitler’s phrase, the triumph of the will. You will or theirs. Conflict is certain, down to the last man or woman or non-binary whatever standing.

And that is where we have been rushing headlong.

On Christianity's Decline

 

Happy Mormons in harness

Friend Xerxes laments the collapse of Christian congregations in North America.

Like him, I lament the decline of various well-established Christian denominations, the loss of community, of social cohesion, and, not least, the loss of many beautiful and historic churches. A vital part of our heritage is being lost, and nothing is being done.

On the other hand, it is worth remembering that this is a local phenomenon. Christianity is growing worldwide.

The problem also varies by denomination. The United Church, Xerxes’s church and the largest protestant denomination in Canada, is cratering, true; as are the Anglicans and the Presbyterians. And apparently in the US the Baptists are beginning to decline, despite America’s strong religious culture. These are, broadly, the “mainline” Protestant denominations. 

However, the Catholic Church is holding its own in the US, while growing worldwide. Xerxes cites a decline in church attendance in Britain. But there is another story: in Britain, Catholicism has now overtaken Anglicanism in membership. Rather historic. Albeit probably fueled in large part by immigration.

 I hear reports that Eastern Orthodoxy, although small in America, seems to be holding its own, or better. 

And the Pentecostal and non-denominational evangelical churches are growing; including Assemblies of God, no small splinter group. I understand a lot of those who show up as “nones” in the stats are actually attending non-denominational churches. They may have no commitment to any specific denomination, yet be fervently Christian. The number of actual declared atheists or agnostics is actually only 4% and 5% in the US, respectively. And in the recent polls, that number is not growing.

So things are really not all that bad; I even smell a religious revival.

Xerxes suggests that the decline in numbers may be due to denominations splitting. Christian unity seems like a good thing, but I see no obvious reason why these two factors would be related. And Protestant denominations have been splintering for 500 years; this is not some recent phenomenon.

I think the most obvious reason for the mainstream decline is complacency. In prolonged peacetime and prosperity, people forget God. The last great burst of religiosity was just after the Second World War, and under the nuclear threat of the Cold War. There are no atheists in foxholes.

This would explain why the fervour is great in the Third World, yet in decline in the industrialized West.

The next cause, I suspect, for religious disaffiliation is that there are just a lot more things to do with our leisure time than there were before the Internet. Back in the day, going to church was the dress-up highlight of the family week; followed by a special meal and a Sunday drive. Toronto newspapers used to cover the sermons, in advance and in review. In smaller communities, tent revivals were the event of the year. Note there is now a decline not only in church attendance, but a comparable one in voluntary associations of all kinds: the Masons, the Oddfellows, the Legion, the Rotary Club, bridge clubs, the community band or choir. All compete now with streaming services, vast selections of free media, and video games.

The next cause, I think, and the one something can actually be done about, is that the mainline denominations have complacently focused on retaining instead of seeking members. Those not busy growing are busy dying.

A religion is, literally, a “binding.” It requires commitment. Denominations that are succeeding are denominations that make demands. Denominations that are declining are denominations that cater to whatever they think those in the pews might want.

There is no reason to belong to such a denomination. You want direction in life: you do not want to be polled and simply echoed. You might as well join a book club, or go to the gym. At least then you might be bettering yourself. 

Consider the Mormons—the fastest growing Christian denomination, if you count them as Christian. No alcohol, no coffee or tea, no premarital sex, tithing, a two-year commitment of servitude, and so forth. And they are getting the lion’s share of the converts.

You might object that non-denominational evangelical churches are, by contrast, especially loosey-goosey. No commitment to any particular theology, after all. 

But they too promise and demand a complete change in your life. The commitment is not to a particular set of dogmas or rules, but they demand a total commitment to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. You must repent in tears, you must give up your old sinful habits: promiscuity, drugs, alcohol. It amounts to the same thing.

When Methodism, now the United Church, made similar demands, it was similarly popular.

Within Catholicism, the growing branches on the vine are two: those that stress “traditionalism,” with fasting, rituals and prayers, daily novenas, sexual abstinence; and the charismatic movement, which mimics pentecostal forms of worship. 

In other words, in all cases, the congregations that grow are those that give new members a mission, a meaning, and a yoke to hoist on their shoulders. 

Growing congregations do not seek to conform to or appeal to or work with the world; they seek to depart from the world, or change the world individual by individual.

This is what people want, if they want religion at all. And whether or not most people want religion, all people need religion, and it is the duty of the religious to see that it is at least on offer.

A denomination must not be just a social club; and people have less need for social clubs than they once did.

The Third Great Awakening?

 

I think it’s time to declare it: a religious revival is underway. An American Pope could help.

Joe Rogan is the latest big celebrity to cross over. And his influence is great. He joins Jordan Peterson and Stewart Brand in publicly converting from atheism to Christianity. Other recent public converts: Candace Owens, Shia LaBoef, Denzel Washington, Gwen Stefani, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Add to this a number of prominent and intellectually able YouTube personalities making the case for religion generally and Christianity in particular: the Daily Wire crew, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, Matt Walsh. Bishop Barron, William Lane Craig, Trent Horn, Matt Fradd, John Lennox. There is a public debate going on; there has been since the rise of the New Atheists. And in that public debate, the atheists are losing.

I note too the growing success of Christian media: “The Chosen,” Angel Studios. Hollywood is withering, pop music is withering, Disney is withering, at the box offices and on the balance sheets, and a Christian counterculture is rising.

9/11 might have been the first move in this current cycle. It inspired the New Atheists, on the premise that religion leads to violence. This then provoked in response the rise of a new Christian apologetics, publicizing and popularizing all the arguments for God. Aided mightily by the existence of the Internet. Meantime, mass immigration and greater familiarity led to a popular perception that the problem was with Islam/Islamism specifically. Islam would not be satisfied with secular humanism; their beef was not with Christianity alone. Both would have to be replaced by Islam. It was thus not possible to be neutral between Christianity and Islam and pretend to be above the fray. Either you believed in Christianity, human equality, and human rights, or you went with Islam and sharia law. There was no secular third option.

The Two Kinds of People

 

There are, in this world, two kinds of people: those who accept the existence of God, and those who try to deny it. Never the twain shall meet; these are perfectly incompatible views, like humans and zombies. The instant you accept the existence of the absolute, it is necessarily of absolute importance. Those who do not see it are, at charitable best, insane. They are not in the conversation.

Deniers, similarly, cannot tolerate believers. Ultimately, the existence of God is certain and accessible to reason. To deny God is therefore to turn from God, to dodge the truth. 

People turn from God because they are conscious of doing wrong, or want to do wrong. They don’t want to accept the existence of divine justice. They want to get away with it; like Adam and Eve hiding in the bushes. Religion is a “religious dictatorship.” Anyone who asserts the existence of God, genuinely claims to believe it, is a threat to them, and must be shut down. Churches burned, Christmas markets attacked.

The most obvious tactic is to infiltrate any convenient religious body themselves, and seek to subvert it. This is the Pharisee gambit; they are common in every religion. I became all too familiar with them studying religion in grad school. Within the department, you gained approval by saying the most outrageously skeptical and irreligious thing.  The sincerely religious were mocked as ignorant.

I thank God I escaped that. But it was not easy. Most higher education is cult-like.

The Truth about Religious Extremism

 

Religious extremist

Friend Xerxes has just put out a column based on an old headline: “Half of Canadians consider religion damaging.”

He agrees. Religion is a source of harm; religious certainty is a bad thing.

So how did almost half of us arrive at such a novel and wrongheaded idea?

I trace it to 9/11 in particular, and to a lesser degree the troubles in Northern Ireland. As he notes, accusing Buddhism or Judaism or Quakerism of being harmful seems ridiculous. But surely Islam, with the terrorism? And then, we cannot cite only Islam, we’d be accused of racism; so we think as well of the Irish troubles, and generalize, and say “religion.”

The misperception is exacerbated by the press constantly pushing the notion that Islamist  terrorists are “extremists”: the problem is supposedly that they believe their religion too fervently. They are too sure of things.

But if a too-devout belief in Islam is the problem, why was the Muslim world not generating terror until relatively recently? Why were Muslim states relatively sanguine under European/Christian rule, French, English, and Italian, during the 19th and early 20th centuries? Why were significant Jewish, Christian, Yazidi, and Parsi minorities able to live in peace and harmony in Muslim-dominated areas for centuries, until just recently? The Muslim Brotherhood was formed only in 1928; Al Qaeda in 1988; ISIS in 2006. Even the Palestinian resistance to Israel was not Islam-based until recently: the PLO was Marxist; the more radical PFLP was led by a Christian. Is it plausible that the Muslim world has recently become more certain of their faith? What dynamic would have caused this?

It is obviously the opposite: increasing globalization and increasing secularism in the dominant West has caused Muslims to doubt, to lose certainty. This has caused the growing violence.

When one looks at the background of actual Muslim terrorists, one discovers they do not come from a religious background. Childhood friends or older acquaintances always remark that they were never devout, nor from a religious family; they were recently “radicalized.” They are commonly Westernized, often educated in the West. Bin Ladin himself was an engineer. Al Qaeda ran houses of prostitution for their fighters.

Living and teaching in the Arabian Gulf, I found I could count on goodwill from any student or fellow faculty member with a full beard; this showed they were a committed Muslim. Any hostility to the foreigner or non-Muslim or Westerner that there was came from the clean-shaven secularized locals.

People similarly overlook, when considering the Irish Troubles, that Sinn Fein and the IRA were Marxist organizations, hostile to and generally condemned by the Catholic Church. The association with religion may have seemed clearer on the Protestant side; but anyone can declare himself a Protestant minister and form his own denomination, stealing the prestige of religion for his political agenda. 

This is a simple trick, used by Jim Jones, purely a Marxist, for his “People’s Temple,” or by Fred Phelps for his “Westboro Baptist Church.”

Islam has the same problem, as, like Protestantism, it lacks a recognized central authority. Any fraud can declare himself an Imam.

Nor, historically, can religion explain the longstanding tensions in Ireland. The English were just as determined to colonize Ireland and suppress its culture before the English Reformation. Religious difference was never more than an excuse.

What does religious extremism actually produce?

Those most committed to their religion, most convinced they know the truth with certainty, become friars and monks. Catholic, Orthodox, Hindu or Buddhist. Not a lot of violence coming from that cloister. Among Protestants, the most devout would be the Amish and the Mennonites. Not a lot of blood in the streets. Also, in their way, the Salvation Army.

It is only when you have doubts about your world view that you feel threatened by the mere existence of opposing views. Only then are you likely to resort to violence to impose your views. Relativism, not conviction, is the problem.

The poets, who see most deeply into the zeitgeist, rightly saw this at the outset the 20th century. Many of them lamented the rise of relativism and the decline of religious conviction. Kipling wrote: 

For heathen heart that puts her trust
  In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
  And, guarding, calls not Thee to guard;
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord

In 1897, he saw the growing reliance on scientism instead of religion inevitably leading to dark places. His prediction came true in 1914, and in 1917, and in 1939, and in China, Cambodia, Korea, and too many other places since.

Yeats wrote, in 1919:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

Who is the falconer, the centre, but God? What is the ceremony of innocence, but conventional religion with its rituals?

And the harm is not limited only to violence. I blame relativism, the notion that there is no ultimate meaning to life, for the growing epidemic of drug use, suicide, depression, and mental illness. 

The media and the clerisy have done humanity untold harm with their propaganda campaign against “religious extremism.” Religious extremism is just what the world most desperately needs.

Dracula as Feminist Icon

 

I am tutoring a high school student with his regular English literature course. They are studying Bram Stoker’s Dracula. They have been asked to interpret it using three lenses: a Marxist perspective, a feminist perspective, and a psychological perspective.

What is missing?

The obvious significance of Dracula is religious: it is all too heavy-handedly about the nature of evil and the nature of the human soul. This is not even touched on.

Stoker and his audience might have been familiar with Marx. Feminism or modern psychology would have been unknown to them.

I am told all texts in the course are subject to the same three analyses.

This is not knew. It was true when I was going through college and grad school in the 1970s. Religious or ethical concerns were never whispered at in English lit classes. Even though, as a historical fact, this would have been the primary concerns of any author up to at least the beginning of the 20th century.  I often wondered why the later work of so many authors was ignored. I assumed poets must burn out. Instead, it was because with age they all tended to get too obviously religions.

We had to fill our essays and theses with Marxist, or feminist, or Freudian, or Jungian, or structuralist, readings of each text, knowing that they could not possibly be correct, and that the underlying theories had usually been discredited. A complete waste of time, made bearable only by the excuse to read the texts themselves. Much sound and fury, signifying nothing. While all the time, the meaning we were searching for was perfectly clear by reference to Christian principles.

We are deliberately avoiding religion and ethics in our education system, as though it is the proverbial third rail. Our children and youth are being deliberately directed away from any spiritual or ethical concerns.

And this has spread throughout society.

I have for almost two years been trying to set up a group of “Poets of Faith,” “who believe their craft is in service to a Supreme Being.” Yet over these two years, whenever I get a group together, and start a meeting, someone begins by objecting to the mention of a Supreme Being. The meeting dissolves in chaos, and I must start all over. Sisyphus, move over. Despite the stated purpose of the group, the premise under which it was convened and under which people agreed to attend: “who believe their craft is in service to a Supreme Being.”

I think this is the same problem, the same cancer. Even allowing others to form a group acknowledging the existence of God and some responsibility to him is not to be tolerated. 

It is the same reason churches are being burned down across Canada, and priests assaulted at the altar. And black legends are spread about mass graves near residential schools.

This is no doubt why our arts are moribund and our civilization in decline. It is decadence.

Imagine

 

Friend Maximilian sends a video clip of Irish comic Dave Allen. The gag is that Catholics think only Catholics go to heaven. And he points to a comment: “I always thought every religion thinks that way.”

Actually, only some fundamentalist Protestants think this way: that only “born again” members of their own denomination get to heaven. This is a reasonable conclusion from Martin Luther’s doctrine of “salvation by faith alone.” If you are saved by your belief, you must have the correct belief to be saved.

 For the Catholic Church, however, this position is heretical. Yes, non-Catholics can get to heaven.  Google “Feeneyism”; and note the ethnicity of the name. Like Allen, and, indeed, like Maximilian, Feeney was Irish. Due to long contact and subjugation, Irish Catholics have often picked up Protestant heresies. Don’t ask me about my own Irish “Catholic” upbringing.

This does not quite mean that Catholics believe “all good people go to heaven.” Rather, to be clear, all who sincerely seek truth, as well as striving to do what is morally right, get there. Faith is involved. If this search for truth nevertheless does not lead them to Catholicism, so long as they are sincere in their beliefs, they are protected from guilt by what Catholics refer to as “invincible ignorance.” Indeed, so long as anyone seeks truth, they are a follower of Christ: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

The same is true for Jews, Hindus, or Buddhists: none of them think you must be formal members of that religion to achieve heaven, or enlightenment, or blessedness. It is only Protestants; and not even all Protestants. Many Anglicans, for example, are “latitudinarians.” Yet the fundamentally Protestant background to English-speaking culture leads many to assume that this is the standard among all religions.

Maximilian objects, “What about the Muslims and the Jews?” He was clearly thinking of the situation in Gaza. 

Being a leftist, he was at the same time taking the “plague on both your houses” position, supposing the Jews were equally responsible for the hostilities. Or rather, to avoid blaming anyone for their actions, religion was. If we could only get rid of religion, we would all live in peace and harmony. 

Hamas started the war, of course, not Israel. 

There is surely an ethnic more than a religious distinction between the two sides. One fifth of the population of Israel is Muslim. Before Hamas took over, the PLO led the fight against Israel; and the PLO was Marxist, not Islamist. George Habash, leader of the more radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was Christian, not Muslim. The conflict pre-existed any religious justification for it. 

So does Islam hold that you must be a Muslim to go to heaven?

Islam, too, believes you do not have to be a formal member of the faith to get to heaven. “Islam” means “submission.” Anyone who submits to the will of the one God is “Muslim.” Muslims will therefore argue that Islam is the world’s oldest faith, and that Jesus and Moses and Abraham and St. Francis of Assisi were all Muslims.

Islam is, however, almost uniquely, a political as well as a religious doctrine. By its standards, the only government that is ever legitimate is an Islamist government, imposing the laws laid out in the Quran and Hadith. 

This does not mean all others must convert: but they must submit to being governed by the shariah law.

This is akin to the demands of liberalism, enshrined in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that all governments must recognize certain human rights and democratic principles in order to be legitimate. It is an ideological or political issue, not a religious one. 

In both cases, it is based on an appeal to divine authority. It is because God says so: “endowed by their creator.” “The laws of nature and of nature’s God.”

So, the problem is not religion; it is this annoying concept of human rights.

For the sake of world peace, should human rights be banned? Show of hands?

Religion vs. Spirituality

 

These days, many people claim to be “spiritual but not religious.” What do they mean by that? It is an inherently vague claim, as though they are hiding something. However, this list of distinctions recently popped up in my Facebook feed:

Religion vs Spirituality 

• Religion: worships God. • Spirituality: encourages oneness with God. 

• Religion: God is outside of you. • Spirituality: God is within you. 

• Religion: separates people who have different beliefs. • Spirituality: unites people regardless of their beliefs. 

• Religion: teaches people to be afraid of hell. • Spirituality: teaches people to create heaven on Earth. 

• Religion: based on fear and restriction. • Spirituality: based on love and freedom. 

• Religion: feels like being a single drop in the ocean. • Spirituality: feels like being the entire ocean in a single drop. 

• Religion: based on others' experience. • Spirituality: based on your personal experience. 

This makes clear how sinister “spirituality” is. 

Taking the points in turn:

 “Oneness with God” can mean either of two things: dissolving selfhood in the divine oneness, as Buddhists hope to do; or deciding one is God. A later item on this list makes clear which is meant here: the Buddhist concept is of being a single drop lost in the ocean. The “spirituality” concept is that you are the ocean. This is the sin of hubris, which we sometimes today less properly call narcissism. “I am the entire ocean of being. No one else exists.”

Hubris leads to bad things.

The second point in our list is about the same. Christianity stresses that God is present within your soul or consciousness: Jesus knocks at the door of your heart. “The kingdom of heaven is within.” The distinction must be that to the spiritual, God is encompassed by your ego and your will, “within” in this more complete sense. God is you.

The third point is correct that religion “separates people who have different beliefs.” It unites people around common beliefs; but necessarily, so long as there is not one world religion, it excludes from this unity others who do not share those beliefs, to the extent that they do not. But spirituality not more unifying. It is everyone having their own unique beliefs. It is all alienation, lacking any unifying function. What happens when two people both believe they are God, and disagree? One must eliminate the other.

The fourth point claims that religion ‘teaches people to be afraid of hell.” According to religion, this is conceptually false. Everyone has a conscience; which is to say, everyone fears hell. Religion does not instill that. Every culture assumes the cosmos is ultimately just, and there is payback for immoral actions. The eastern faiths speak of karma; the pagan Greeks said even the gods are subject to Dike, cosmic justice, and the Erinyes will pursue an evildoer. Hell is universal, and pre-exists religion.

Religion emerges to offer escape from it. 

To blame religion for hell is like blaming your doctor for illness, and supposing you can avoid it by not seeing him.

Spirituality, point four goes on to say, seeks to “create heaven on earth.” Trying to do this has led historically to unimaginable atrocities. This is the Holodimir; this is the Great Leap Forward; this is the Nazi quest for the superman; this is the Killing Fields. In Biblical terms, this is the Tower of Babel and this is the antichrist. 

It sounds like a worthy goal. Why does it always go wrong?

Karl Marx’s favourite aphorism, according to intimates, was Mephistopheles’s line from Faust: “everything that exists deserves to be destroyed.” This is where millenarianism seems to lead. One looks at what exists, sees its imperfections, sees it does not fulfill one’s deepest desires, and so one must destroy it.

Point five: it is not entirely false to say that religion is based on “fear and restrictions.” The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, the Bible says, and the word “religion” means restriction, “binding.” Admitting that God exists and is not us indeed imposes obligations: to seek and honour truth, to treat others with respect, to be humble and to admit our own limitations. Religions also generally impose ritual obligations. Where’s the fun in that?

The “freedom” spirituality offers is freedom from this: freedom from the need to honour truth, to treat others with respect, or to admit our limitations. Which is to say, it offers narcissism.

This is not real freedom. One quickly becomes a slave to one’s desires, all of which are incipent addictions. More alcohol, each time less satisfying. More sex, each time less satisfying. More power, each time less satisfying. True freedom is the freedom to follow one’s conscience. This is what religion offers.

To say spirituality is based on love is a lie. “I am the ocean; nobody else exists” is the opposite of love. Christianity, on the other hand, is explicitly based on love, and on the proposition that “God is love.” 

Love is not a transitory feeling, and not sex. Love is not what one feels towards a well-cooked piece of meat. True love is seeking the best for the other, which means a set of obligations towards the other. “If you love me, keep my commandments.” This is what spirituality rejects.

I am not sure what to make of the final claim, that religion is based on others’ experience. This denies the central tenet of Judaism, Christianity, and devotional Hinduism that we must each have a personal relationship with God. And it denies the central tenet of Buddhism, that theory is irrelevant, it is all about the personal experience of enlightenment. So what is meant here?

That religion builds on the experience of others. It offers tested techniques for achieving and sustaining that personal experience of the sacred, spiritual world. To reject that is equivalent to rejecting science or education, in favour of working it all out for yourself. What is the benefit?

Unless, of course, you are God. And can simply decree reality to be whatever you want. Gravity exists only at your sufferance.

My advice: if anyone tells you they are “spiritual, but not religious,” back away slowly, and stay away.

Those Endless Religious Wars

 

Friend Maximilian laments that too many people are convinced that only their religion is true; leading to endless strife. If only we could get past this religious prejudice and become more tolerant.

This is a common view. Like most common views, it is the opposite of the truth.

If you do not believe your religion is true, you do not believe your religion. If you nevertheless attend services and go through the public motions, you are a hypocrite.

“When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private.”

“These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

If you believe your religion is true, it follows that, wherever another religion differs from yours, you believe it is false. 

Now, does believing another person’s religion is false lead to strife? Do you commonly beat someone up for being in error? Do you want to kick someone down the stairs for thinking 1 + 1 = 7?

Religion imposes on its sincere followers rules for moral conduct; that is what the word “religion” means: “binding.”  These involve respect for the rights of others: in a phrase, “do unto others as you would be done by.” All the major religions do this. In that they impose these moral obligations on their followers, they are the main bulwark we have against strife. Laws alone are useless without a moral populace. If the people are not moral, they will not follow them anyway. If the police are not moral, they will not enforce them. If the judges are not moral, neither will they. Religion is the cement for all social order.

There are and have been wars of religion. There is a problem when two moral systems try to coexist in close proximity. But historically, most wars of religion involve the Muslims. Islam is curious in this regard: it is not just a religion, but a political ideology. It requires control of the secular power. This is not true of Buddhism other than Vajrayana, of Hinduism, of Judaism, Taoism, or mainstream Christianity. All are “mystical” faiths operating on the individual level, lacking a political agenda. Protestant sects vary on this point.

So subtract Islam from the equation. 

How many religious wars have there been, then, really? 

Northern Ireland comes up. But note, Sinn Fein and the IRA were Marxist, not Catholic, and condemned by the Catholic Church. The Ulster Protestants were motivated by religious prejudice, perhaps, but not the other side. In such a case, to blame “religion” or “religions” in general means blaming the victim. Blame the specific religion, or its errant followers.

Take away religion, on the other hand, and what do you have historically? Nazi Germany—the Nazi leadership was pagan or anti-religious, in revolt against Judeo-Christian morality. Soviet Russia and Maoist China, both officially atheist and hostile to religion. The Khmer Rouge and North Korea. The Reign of Terror in Revolutionary France. You have genocide. Inevitably.

Religion is the chief bulwark preventing social chaos, in which the strong simply prey on the weak.

Of course the strong resent religion, and will condemn it if emboldened. Be deeply suspicious of any force or source or opinion that stands against religion.

The Slow Death of Beauty in Our Lives

 

Friend Xerxes laments that the typical religious service ought to be more of a feast for the senses than it is, and especially ought to consider the sense of touch. Touch, after all, is our largest sense organ, he notes, covering our entire body.

He ought to try Catholicism. The old high mass, at least, was the original multimedia virtual reality event. The bright multicoloured light streaming through stained glass windows; the statues and paintings, the awe of the dome or arched nave; the music and the hymns, the intonations, the responsorial prayer, perhaps more purely aesthetic in their appeal when in Latin, adding the beauty of mystery; the incense, the little bells tinkling and the big bells sounding; the mighty organ swelling; and perhaps not least, everyone in their Sunday best. 

Granted that taste and touch were rarely engaged directly; I think because they are the two senses most associated with physicality as opposed to spirituality, in which basic instincts are least able to be sublimated. Touch is, after all, as Xerxes notes, coextensive with the surface of the body, and taste tends to involve assimilating some physical thing. You do not see taste and touch engaged with much in art generally. And when, say, a posh restaurant makes a claim to art, it always feels like an alibi for gluttony or else a con. Never mind touch… treated “artistically” in various back alleys, or under neon lights.

But even they were there, taste and touch, by implication, in the old High Mass. As for taste, there was the fast, and then the special brunch right after mass, and that was part of the full experience. As for touch, there was the self-anointing with holy water, and sometimes a sprinkling by the priest walking up and down the aisles. And kneeling was a special touch experience one did not get outside church. 

But these in particular tended to be chastisements of these two senses as much as celebrations of them. The point was to sublimate and spiritualize the senses, as art, not to indulge them.

More broadly, being a Catholic is or is supposed to be living a life as a work of art. One crafted oneself into something better; a conquest of nature by art.

There were many beautiful signposts along the way. Not just the mass on Sundays, but Christmas, and Easter, and Lent, and Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday and (yes, it is a Catholic festival) Hallowe’en, to mark the seasons. 

And then, to mark the seasons of your life, there were sacraments like First Communion. It marks the age of reason, age seven, before which a child does not understand the concept of sin, does not have a fully formed conscience, and so cannot properly receive communion. I still remember fondly the day of my First Communion; all the little girls posing on the steps of the church, wearing their white dresses and with lace doilies bobby-pinned in their hair. And me wearing real button-up trousers and a jacket and clip-on tie. It is a great event in the life of a child. 

As I remember fondly those of my two children. 

And I have on my desk before me the carefully preserved little Catechism my younger brother Gerry, now gone, received as a gift for his First Communion. 

Such ceremonies consecrate a life to beauty: confirmation, the doorway you stride through into adulthood; the joy of matrimony; watching your children pass though these doorways in their turn; then extreme unction, and the more solemn beauty of the funeral service. 

These leave all the memories that make an ordinary life meaningful. One’s memories are always of family, and one’s family memories are always of these holy events.

We are losing this; we have let it slip away. The church itself is losing this. The current mass does away with much, most, of what was most beautiful. 

To what possible purpose?

Christianity and Hypocrisy

 

In my book Playing the Indian Card, I point out that Christian missionaries coming to Canada had every reason to try to preserve Canadian First Nations cultures, and they did. This is the opposite of the usual claim. They are commonly scapegoated as supposed cultural imperialists. In fact, most of what we know today about Canadian First Nations culture comes from their work and writings. For the natives had no writing system.

This makes sense purely in terms of self-interest. Keeping the natives separate from the civil culture magnified the authority of the missionaries as intermediaries. But more nobly, the Jesuits and Recollets were concerned with the depravity of the general culture. Far better for the souls of their charges that they not venture into the cities with their alcohol, prostitution, and sharp trading.

My editor objected. Surely they were imposing on them their culture, their Christian religion?

Only the irreligious see religion as culture. To the religious, religion is counter-cultural.

Andrew Breitbart famously said “politics is downstream from culture.” Similarly, culture is downstream from religion. True, adopt Christianity, and you are liable to come up over time with things like empirical science, liberal democracy, and the Enlightenment. But Christianity, or Catholicism, is highly culturally diverse.

For people who are not religious, it is true, religion is their culture. These are the people who have never thought about it, or read the texts. They just do it because those around them do it. They celebrate Christmas, because it is a party, and everybody does. They get married in a church, because that is the way it is done.  They attend mass because their grandmother did, and their father.

But this attitude is the very opposite of true religion, which is above all a search for the truth: for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.

And it produces something social that is the opposite of true religion. It produces a dull uncreative social conformity. It produces “happy happy joy joy” Hallmark-card-sentimental self-satisfied “be nice and get along” attitudes and behaviour.

Christianity is profoundly counter-cultural. If that is not obvious to you, consider that its founder figure was crucified by his culture as the worst of criminals.

So are the other great religions, but for Islam.

A recent example of how different the cultural facsimile is from the real article: one of Xerxes’s readers, a United Church minister, recently opined that she saw no distinction between secular and sacred Christmas songs for her services. “After all,” she remarked, “We are called to be a people of this world.”

This is the opposite of what the Bible says. 

1 John 2: 15-17:

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

John 17: 14-17:

I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

John 15: 18-9:

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

The cultural Christianity almost systematically asserts the opposite of the actual Christian message. It generally asserts what is most comfortable, especially for the rich and powerful.

It is, in itself, proof of the existence of the Devil.

We are warned of this, of course, in the Bible. This is the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees.

This is why everyone should actually read the Bible for themselves; and Catholics should read the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Russel Brand's False Religion

 

https://rumble.com/v1qlgp8-god-war-cancel-culture-and-more-with-russell-brand.html

For a long time, I’d been hoping someone would ask Tulsi Gabbard about her faith. Gabbard is a Hindu; I wonder if the Hindu concept of ahimsa, for example, is behind her strong stance against foreign engagements.

Russel Brand finally asked her. But he got the essential concept of religion wrong. He seems to think, or claims to think, it is about tolerance and forgiveness. On this basis, he blames both right and left for not getting along.

This is a common but sinister claim. Religion is about righteousness and justice. It is a struggle against evil; not an accommodation with it.

Hitler and the Jews did not get along. So you would blame the Jews? Somebody raped and stabbed Kitty Genovese in a Brooklyn stairwell. So you would blame Kitty Genovese for not being able to get along?

To insist that religion is or ought to be about forgiveness is the sure and final refuge of the scoundrel. It is what you fall back on when you are caught red-handed. A recent example: an article in the New Yorker suggesting it is time to “declare an amnesty” on everyone’s mistakes during the pandemic. Convenient for those authorities that now have been shown to be wrong, on masks, on lockdowns, on the origin of the virus, on the side effects of the vaccine, on its efficacy; but they offered no amnesty so recently to those refusing the vaccine, or masks, or lockdowns. Putin now wants peace talks in Ukraine. Sure—now that he stands to otherwise lose the land he’s purloined.

You see how this works.

The proper Christian principle, made clear in the New Testament, is a duty to extend forgiveness and reconciliation if and only after the guilty party has both admitted wrong and done their sincere best at restitution. The aggressors always leave out that part.

If you do not stick to this principle, you are not just aiding and abetting evil; and joining in harming the victim; you are frogmarching the person you forgive into hell.

On Choosing a Religion

Jesus as the Good Shapherd

Here’s another objection to becoming a practicing Christian from my 1982 notebook:

Objection: How is one to choose among the various religions? If God exists and is merciful, or even just, how can he permit the existence of a thousand false religions and only one true one? And then leave us with no clear basis on which to distinguish one from the other? And then say that anyone who makes the wrong choice is damned to hell?

To which I respond:

Religions differ far less than this supposes. They agree on most things. It is therefore reasonable to assume that a firm commitment to any religious path is sufficient, eliminating the problem. I hold that this is necessarily so, given these premises. God would not allow the persistence of a faith that did not lead to heaven if practiced in good faith. The New Testament itself testifies to the continuing validity, for example, of Judaism.

Monotheism is not tolerant of polytheism, it is true, and vice versa. The problem with polytheism is the “in good faith” part. Monotheism is ethical; polytheism is not. It does not believe in objective morality.

So why did God allow polytheism to persist? He does not, as a historical fact, as soon as a clear monotheistic alternative appears in any society. 

Most religions do not believe that anyone who does not follow them will end in hellfire. Only some Protestant groups do, and some Muslims. Buddhists or Hindus do not. Neither do Catholics. While they hold Christianity to be, of course, the completed truth, anyone who is not aware of this is not punished. So long as their ignorance of it is not their own fault—that is, so long as they have been sincerely seeking truth.

The phrase “no salvation outside the church” is often quoted. But its sense is ambiguous. For after all, what is “the church”?

John 10: 16: “I have other sheep that don’t belong to this fold. I must lead these also, and they’ll listen to my voice. So there will be one flock and one shepherd.”

He might well here be referring to non-Jews, gentiles, as not being members of the flock to which he is speaking. Or he might be speaking more generally, of any visible or formally constituted flock. The true church is the “communion of saints.” This is obviously not coterminous with the people in attendance at a mass, or with the college of bishops. It is the confraternity of those who seek the good, the true, and the beautiful.

And when Jesus says he is the gate through which such souls must enter, surely he means the Logos, the Way, the Truth, and the Light, not that souls pass though his physical body somehow crafted into a gate. That is, one enters heaven by seeking the true and the good and the beautiful, wherever this leads, and despite personal sacrifice.

That said, it is an important step to tie oneself to a particular spiritual discipline and a particular objective set of moral standards. Without this, it is too easy to rationalize everything to your own advantage, and make yourself God. This, perhaps, is the “communion” part of the “communion of saints.” 

Preach It, Brother!

 

The audience for friend Xerxes’s column seems to be composed mostly of Protestant ministers. At least, those are the readers who comment. I was interested if not surprised to see that they seem universally to have approved of his last column, about putting a warning label on Christianity.

“Preach on, brother, preach on!”

“Your column should be nailed onto every religious building’s front door ―a new 95 Theses.”

“There is a good case that organized religion has done more harm than good.”

“After a lifetime in various forms of various ways to share spiritual health care, I have concluded that religions, and in particular Christianity, are toxins; we spend most of our lives trying at least to turn it from poison to a healing substance. Sometimes one wonders if rescuing the bible, defending God, examining the sins of scripture, finding original blessing and reclaiming Jesus has had any real effect. Maybe the smile message we should be about is ‘Don't swallow it!’”

It might come as a shock to many that the average Christian minister does not much believe in Christianity. Having spent a lot of time with Christian ministers in grad school, I am not surprised.

In a sense, too, they are right. “Organized religion” is toxic. The Bible itself, the New Testament, warns us so. But not in the sense they mean. Religious authorities are inclined to be hypocrites, Pharisees, playing a role they do not themselves believe in. That is the original meaning of “hypocrite”—an actor wearing a mask.

This is perhaps not a clear example. These ministers are not exactly concealing their true feelings: they say they want them nailed to the church door, and one imagines they express it in their counseling. But if they feel this way, why are they ministers? And isn’t calling themselves a Christian minister without endorsing Christianity itself a grievous deceit? Shouldn’t they, in conscience, refer the seeker on to someone else who does believe in it?

I remember explaining to Xerxes once why I had not become a Catholic priest: because I felt my faith was not strong enough. I was not sure I could commit to always believing all of Catholicism, into the indefinite future.

And his answer, at that time, was immediate: “so what?”

I see the same phenomenon in teachers. Our teachers do not actually believe in teaching anything. Instead, the class is supposed to “construct their own knowledge.” And the teacher is free to do the same.

To be honest, I just don’t understand this attitude. Maybe the explanation will come to me. In the meantime, I think it is important to notice it. I guess the moral is not to blindly trust the “experts” in any field.

Should Christianity Come with a Warning Label?

 

Friend Xerxes continues to indulge his columnist habit. This time, he is light-heartedly suggesting a warning label for Christianity.

The idea of a warning label for Christianity does make sense: be prepared to die to self. Be prepared to take up your cross.  Be prepared to lose friends and family members. Be prepared to look like a fool to the world.

But Xerxes’s concerns are different.

What immediately leaped out, was “Christianity is not a cure for depression or suicidal impulses.”

I can’t imagine why he says that; it is almost the first thing he says. And it seems to me Christianity is exactly that. Depression and suicidal impulses are a result of perceived loss of meaning. The one thing Christianity does for definite sure is bring meaning into your life.

Whe he was perambulating Palestine, Jesus’s prime preoccupation was casting out devils. What do you think those devils were? The symptoms were often plainly what we would call “mental illness” of various kids.

A Catholic priest of my acquaintance used to say that there were only two choices for any of us: faith, or suicide.

Another of his warnings is almost equally odd:

“Keep Christianity and its doctrinal texts out of the reach of children, as their frontal lobes are not yet sufficiently developed to handle the complexities of Christian teachings.”

The common belief is that we have an obligation to raise children in the faith. And how is it good for children to grow up without a coherent world view?

“But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

I suspect Xerxes of buying the new atheist argument that teaching children Christianity is abuse.

He the gives a list of authors that, if you are Christian, you should not read, because they would be upsetting. He does not include Marx, or Freud, or Nietzsche, but de Chardin, Tolle, Rohr, Spong,  Merton, and Rahner.

It seems an odd list. Merton is surely revered among Catholics. Rahner was an important advisor to Vatican II. De Chardin is more controversial, but was praised by Benedict XVI, who is not generally considered unorthodox.

It is hard to figure out what point Xerxes is trying to make. That true Christianity requires you not to think? That Catholicism is an abomination on Christianity as a result?

But let’s polish our brass tacks. As what seems the climax, Xerxes wars that Christianity will cause “blindness to other faiths, intolerance of other viewpoints, and addiction to biblical proof-texting.”

Any particular viewpoint is intolerant of other viewpoints that contradict that viewpoint. Even viewpoints that claim to be “tolerant” are intolerant of viewpoints they declare “intolerant.” And we cannot escape having a viewpoint. The issue is whether we claim any right to impose or enforce our viewpoint over others. Christianity stands out for not doing this. In Christianity everything is voluntary. This is a contrast to most competing viewpoints. Including such creeds as secular humanism, liberal democracy, Marxism, Islamism, or science.

Meaning the net effect of Christianity is the opposite of what Xerxes claims.

On the issue of being “blind” to other faiths, Christianity and Christians would automatically have more understanding of and sympathy with a Hindu, Muslim, or Buddhist viewpoint than would a materialist, a Marxist, or a secular humanist.

Accusing Christianity of causing a problem of Biblical proof-texting is like accusing the Constitution of causing a problem of misinterpreting the US Constitution. The solution would not be to abolish the Supreme Court. In this case, it would be to become Catholic, and rely on such expert advice. Unless, of course, your problem is not with proof-texting, but with the authority of the Bible itself.

“Mainstream Christianity is not recommended if you have religious pre-conditions, such as participation in Hare Krishna, charismatic Pentecostalism, or any Presbyterian court.”

You can be a Catholic, the ultimate mainstream of Christianity, and a Pentecostal. I am. It is called the Charismatic movement. There is no theological conflict here.

More broadly, any kind of religious background (“pre-condition”) is a better segue to Christianity than none.

“Do not be misled by Scientology, Eckankar, or Theosophy,” Xerxes adds.

If these cults are misleading, they are no more likely to mislead Christians than non-Christians, since they do not claim to be Christian. A better fit here could be “Do not be misled by Gnosticism, the prosperity gospel, liberation theology, original blessedness, or feel-good pop psychology masquerading as Christianity.”

“Take Christianity exactly as prescribed – weekly.”

The prescription is moment by moment. “Pray without ceasing.” A “Sundays-only“ Christian is not the model. And there is no such thing as an “overdose” of Christianity. The whole concept of “religious extremism” is profoundly wrongheaded. The average is not the ideal.

Is Xerxes really, as he claims, a Christian? 

Playing the Fool

 

Basil the Blessed, a celebrated Russian "fool for Christ"

Another possible objection to Christianity found in my 1982 notebook:

“Because religion is unreasoning. It is bound to appeal primarily to those whose reasoning is deficient. Therefore it is by nature anti-intellectual, and, if I subscribe to it, I am announcing to the world that I am not as intelligent or intellectual as I would like them to think. Therefore the world will mock me as a fool.”

This is based on a false premise, dealt with in a previous post: that religion is unreasoning. 

But, leaving that aside, this is a good example of the first of the three great temptations to sin, “the world, the flesh, and the devil.” It is caring about what the world thinks instead of what is true.

If you become religious, it is probably always true that the world will mock you as a fool. “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” The world is, by definition, of average intelligence and, as the old saying goes, “no better than it should be.” The world will value the average, and resent the exceptional. Some psychologist claims to have determined that, if you meet someone whose IQ is fifteen points higher than yours, you simply cannot understand their thinking. They will to you appear mad.

This principle of mediocrity therefore extends to the social class commonly recognized as “the intellectuals.” Who decides who is or is not of this class? They choose one another, generation after generation, in the academic faculty and “peer review” model. Which tends to extend as well to such things as literary magazines. But who selected this group, to go on to select the others? It will ultimately be the mass of common people—crowds flocking to Jordan Peterson lectures today, students flocking to Socrates in his day. The mass of common people are not qualified to recognize who is much smarter than they are, and who isn’t. A little smarter, yes. A lot smarter, no.

The recognized intelligentsia will therefore not be the highly intelligent, but people of average intelligence or a bit more who play this role, and mouth the opinions currently supposed to be the intelligent ones. The only thing certain about these opinions is that they will go against common sense—for if they were common sense, they would not set you apart as one of the intellectuals.

Not that common sense is a very reliable guide—just a better one than always having to go against common sense.

One could, perhaps, select the supposed intelligentsia by raw IQ score. But this would not work either. There is the issue of application. Just because you have tha ability to reason well does not mean you habitually use it. Not everyone who is seven feet tall is a great basketball player. In fact, people with high natural intelligence can learn to be intellectually lazy. To cope with everyday life they never need to think very hard.

We all have the moral obligation, however, not to just conform to those around us, and to think as carefully as we can, for ourselves, about what is true and right and wrong.

How narrow is the gate, and restricted is the way

that leads to life! Few are those who find it.

--Matthew 7:14

Faith and Reason

 

Allegory of Faith, Vermeer

Another possible objection to Christianity, noted in my 1982 diary:

“Religion is unreasoning—blind faith. Truth must be worked out by reasonable discussion among reasonable people. Blind faith is fanaticism, and can only lead to conflict.”

This is a common and deadly misunderstanding. I blame Martin Luther and his doctrine of sola fides, “salvation by faith alone.”

A Protestant once challenged me with what I would do if I decided that some key teaching of the Catholic Church was wrong. He claimed shock at my immediate answer: that I would leave the Church. Had I no faith?

 “Faith” does not mean arbitrary belief, but trust, or having the courage of one’s convictions. As you might say, “I have faith in my wife.” That does not mean you arbitrarily decide she exists, and it is not a conviction arrived at with no evidence.

True faith or belief must be evidence- and reason-based. Catholicism is relentlessly rational.

One believes in whatever religion one believes in, follows whatever faith one follows, because after sincere examination to the best of your abilities, it is the most reasonable account of the universe. 

Anything else makes you a madman, an idiot, or a scoundrel.