Conspicuously Lacking a Latin Title

18 Catholic Democrats in the House of Representatives issued a statement basically saying that Catholic bishops violate the seperation of Church and State when they enforce the rules of their religion on public figures. I find it hard to believe that members of the House of Representatives could either be so ignorant or so unAmerican.

Ignorance is one thing. The "wall of separation" between the Church and the State isn't mandated as such by any legal document. The constitution prohibits the state from establishing a church and the supreme court has interpreted that broadly to mean that the state cannot in many circumstances endorse a religious viewpoint. The freedoms of religion and of association that humans are entitled to and which this country aims to protect, however, demand precisely the opposite of what these 18 Catholic democrats would like them to.

First, they are welcome in this country to associate (according to the regulations of that entity) or disassociate (according to any contractual obligations) with any entity at any time. Likewise, entities are allowed to make their own regulations and bylaws and especially their own religious practices according to their beliefs, customs, and traditions (as they don't grievously harm the public good).

It is the Catholic belief that the Eucharist is a free gift given to Christians for their salvation. The Catholic Church further believes that all of the gifts that Christ gives to us, and especially the seven sacraments, must be mediated through the Church, therefore the Church designs rituals around these gifts to demonstrate both how wonderful and beautiful they are as well as to teach us about them.

There seem to be solutions here which do not involve issuing public statements. If the congressman believes he is being unjustly prohibited from communion he can contact the bishop, set up a meeting, and demonstrate to the bishop why in one circumstance or another the congressman's voting record may be misleading as to whether he formally supports abortion (for instance, perhaps a federal politician believes that it is not within the purview of the federal government to regulate the abortion industry for one reason or another). Or they can change their behavior to match the teaching of the Church. Or they can leave the Church (the least desirable option).

Their 4th method is to challenge the authority of the bishops to administrate the Church is shaky. If the bishops do not have authority to administrate the Church, then when the Church teaches that they do She is wrong. If the Church is wrong about that they are wrong about possibly dozens of other things, not least of which the contention that She is infallible. The Church is thus either a liar or has delusions of grandeur, either way why would you want to remain a member?

The Story.
The Statement.

The purpose of my previous entry was to analyze whether or not I believed in Theism apart from the Resurrection, that is, if my Theism was separate from my Christianity.

The question is important to me because it helps me separate what I may know about God as revealed to humanity in reason and what I may know about God as revealed by the Scripture and the Church. If somehow Christianity were debunked in it's entirety, that is, if the Resurrection was disproved, than which of my theistic beliefs would remain?

The more I consider it the more I believe that if my Christianity were removed from my mental framework than I might maintain Theism but it would become much more meaningless. I would, for instance, have no more reason for a belief in a personal God so I would probably stop praying. My views on morality wouldn't change too much but I would have to find a new source for what seems to be an elevated dignity reserved specifically for humans (I might have to consider veganism or cannibalism to reconcile that. If I go the latter I might have to become pro-choice as well).


My theism, apart from my Christianity, doesn't draw too many positive assertions in my mind. In fact, my theism itself, because it doesn't draw too many assertions, wouldn't even be necessary for me to consider for most of my life. Apart from Christianity I could imagine myself to be a very comfortable atheist or agnostic.

The conclusion, I guess, is that I don't know if I can coherently or honestly discuss theism apart from Christianity. I wonder if I should be working on that. My instinct, for now, is no.

I'm sitting here this morning trying to figure out if I can possibly seperate my theism from my Christianity. That is, if I found out through some reliable means that Christianity was all a hoax would I remain a theist for some reason?

Is my Christianity informed by my theism or my theism informed by Christianity? The question is important in the fields of evangelism and apologetics to non-theists. I appreciate the intellectual honesty of someone from the conversation this past Wednesday who pointed out that in philosophical demonstrations of God's existence versus his non-existence one cannot conclusively prove anything convincingly (or else all intellectually honest people would be one or the other) but can demonstrate the plausibility of an atheistic or theistic worldview.

That said, in my mind the best demonstration of theism only works for Christianity: the Resurrection. Jesus said he was God and that he would demonstrate this by rising the third day from his death. If he did not rise, than he was a crackpot. If he did, than it feels like a safe bet that I should take what he says as reliable.

There are alternate hypotheses, of course, to what the resurrection means. For instance, of Jesus was a powerful being other than God who mischievously wanted to play a trick on humanity it is possible that he could have "faked" his death. Jesus could be an alien or an organic robot being controlled by an alien. I've considered this, but it introduces unknown elements.

Jesus said he would rise from the dead by his own authority and power. Jesus said that he was God. Jesus accomplished the first, the second seems to be a safe bet. So the resurrection, I feel, is a good basis upon which to build Christianity and theism. With God it is possible, without God it is astronomically improbable.

Besides Christianity I wonder if other world religions can make the same claim that they are based not in Revelation but in a historical event like the demonstrable incarnation of God. I wonder if any non-religious person were ever converted to a religion besides Christianity by the testimony not of followers but the testimony of history itself.

It bears more thought and study.

This past week at UMBC has been Atheism Week, where students have organized a week of events that don't really celebrate or promote but really just discuss Atheism and critical thought from an atheistic worldview.

Wednesday evening was open discussion night on the topics of theism, atheism religion, spirituality, philosophy, morality, ethics, whatever. The night was great, it started at 730 and lasted until a bit after 1am. The rules instituted were excellent at keeping the discussion charitable and I think that some relationships were forged across our usual tribal lines.

The discussion challenged me in surprising ways: I was not nearly so challenged by the Atheists as I was by my fellow Christians and their surprisingly experiential faith. It seemed to me that the faith of some Christians in the room was entirely based in experience - often their stories were centered around when they began their relationship with Our Lord.

This boggled my mind and around the fourth testimonial I heard from a fellow Christian I became very frustrated. It seemed to me that this method for presenting how the Gospel can change lives perhaps works fine and may open the heart of someone who does not have such fundamental mental blocks to accepting the Gospel.

I asked one of the leaders of the group afterward what evidence, if any, would be sufficient to convert him to theism. His reply that he couldn't imagine anything: even a direct encounter with God (think road to Damascus or something) he would fit that into his materialistic worldview. Why then, talk about experience or miracles if they don't challenge an atheistic point of view?

Further, the first principal of several brands of Christianity represented seemed to be based upon the infallibility of Scripture. How do you convince an atheist that it is reasonable to choose a book (a single tome from a gallery of many, in fact) and it alone is infallible and all reality must be judged against what it says. It can be argued whether or not that is reasonable, it certainly isn't convincing.

What is a reasonable set of first principals to work from? I don't feel that the infallibility of scripture is self evident in the way that I would like a first principal to be. Are such first principals even necessary? Perhaps the more important question for whether a worldview is valid is whether it is comprehensive and internally consistent.

Something to reflect on this week.

Via Dawn Eden, an article about how there was no measurable difference in risky sexual behavior among groups of teenagers that received abstinence only education versus a group that received comprehensive sex education.

This is a big deal only because no one can claim now that abstinance only education does a disservice to teenagers and denies them the tools to make informed decisions. Turns out, though, that teens make similar decisions no matter what program they are in.

What does matter? The obvious stuff: parental involvement and expectations, religious involvement, and community involvement.

Sounds to me like a good time for the Federal Government to get out of the business of writing curriculum since it doesn't matter what they write anyway. Sounds like this study just saved the taxpayers a few million dollars.

Oh, but wait. It's not about doing what's good for kids. It's about ideology. I forgot. This is a fight we'll be fighting until we're invaded by Martians and/or IndiRussioChina.

I think it's funny to evaluate something like this anyway. Which program gives kids the right information at the right time shouldn't be measured by how many kids are engaging in risky behavior, it should be measured by what the parents think and what these kids say 15 years down the road. Will some say "I wish someone had told me..." or "I wish I had asked..."? What do parents think today about sex education? They are ultimately responsible for the behaviors of the minors under their care anyway, right?

There is a rather recent and growing phenomenon of online confessionals over the past several years where anyone can anonymously bear their souls to willing audiences. The best one, I think, is PostSecret, an art project (read: profit scheme with the appearance of a public service) which allows people to send beautiful postcards to a mailbox in Germantown, MD bearing whatever secret they would like. This and any online confession service give me hope for a couple reasons:

• People, even people who don't necessarily have any specific reason to, feel bad when they've done something wrong.
• People, when they do something wrong, feel the need to tell someone else. They kind of recognize that they are responsible to the community for their private behavior.
• While many will read these just for entertainment value, there are a few (like me) who see here a stark display of human frailty and human dignity.

What started this morning on PostSecret.

The day that I admitted my liberterian leanings I felt like I was seeing the world clearly for the first time. It is the experience of everyone that bureaucracy can be soul crushing (whether it is the bureaucracy at McDonald's or the bureaucracy of the Church or that of the Department of Motor Vehicles) but what is interesting is when there is an intersection of bureaucracies competing for seemingly mutually exclusive goals. From the Action Institute PowerBlog was this article, from the Richmond Times-Dispatch which illustrates the damned if you do, damned if you don't situation that Virginia finds itself in:

Just in case you lost track of the bouncing ball, here it is: Virginia has finally put the crisis-ignoring haters of truth in their place by passing a roads package to encourage the use of cars that are destroying the planet, so people can reach their sprawling subdivisions that Virginia is trying to keep in check with tax-subsidized conservation easements that will grow less popular as corn grows more expensive thanks to ethanol mandates from a federal government that is also mandating a cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay whose pollution will be made worse by corn farming.

This also reminds me of the situation in Montgomery County, which in the 90's spent something like $1.5 billion on revitalizing Downtown Silver Spring: trying to make Route 29 safe for Starbucks and Caribou Coffees. Well, it turns out that in spending all of that money in construction projects and subsidies to attract all those big names they made it impossible for those mom-and-pop shops to compete. The solution? Subsidize them too. Subsidize the rent of the small operations, subsidize the construction costs of the big operations.

There isn't too much more than a square inch of unsubsidized retail space in Downtown Silver Spring. But Montgomery County has more money than they know what to do with anyway.