Asymmetric Catholic

We can all agree that something like this happened.

Even Christopher Hitchens can agree that on a Friday just before Passover, approximately 1975 years ago, the Roman authorities crucified a person named Jesus Christ who claimed to be the son of God and whom some believed. It's what happened on Sunday that people disagree about.

"If Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless" (1 Cor. 15:14)

No great faith-based belief system lists "tolerance" as a virtue. Neither do Roman or Samurai belief systems. William Bennett wisely didn't include tolerance in his Book of Virtues.

The BOOK OF VIRTUES by William J. Bennett

"Justice" is there as is "mercy" and "self-restraint."

The reason tolerance doesn't appear is that toleration requires no effort (character). In fact, its essence is the opposite of strain; it merely demands one to do nothing when confronted with a decision- to not care. Justice, the closest virtue to tolerance begs restraint and the application of some concept of fairness. Justice also obligates one to judge.

Tolerance can be as negative as it can positive. People can tolerate bad behaviors and toleration of the malevolent may lead to the increase of the tolerated evil. I can list hundreds of examples, but let's say that Giuliani would have been more circumspect had he sought office in Hester Prynne's day, and a Victorian-era Brangelina may have married before Shiloh.

Tolerance can be a good strategy to an end. It certainly makes living in a religiously diverse society easier. Companies can be less tolerant of poor performance if it tolerates differences in bottom-line irrelevant traits like race.

It is because of the uniqueness of our society that tolerance is preached in schools (My daughter just told me of a movie she saw in school called Marisela about a Salvadoran girl who's ostracized by the white kids, and two-thirds of all textbook stories have to do with "accepting" and tolerating.) and by politicians. It's also emphasized because our weaker society naturally gravitates towards the easy. It's easier to look away than to confront, give, or assist.

So, the next time somebody lists tolerance as one of his virtues, just shrug your shoulders. Good for you!

Just following the logic of her beliefs

In Chapter 13, Ambush, of Tim O'Brien's Vietnam novel, The Things They Carried, O'Brien's daughter asks him if he ever killed anybody. He replies "no" even though, in the previous chapter, he describes how he did. Obviously, O'Brien felt bad about killing somebody when he lies to his daughter, but why would O'Brien find such a revelation embarrassing? Does he think that his daughter would think less of him? It seems reasonable to conclude that O'Brien finds something wrong with killing people.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

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A recent article in the New York Times by Cornelia Dean quotes the astronomer Owen Gingerich as saying that, by simultaneously advocating evolution and atheism, 'Dr Dawkins "probably single-handedly makes more converts to intelligent design than any of the leading intelligent design theorists".' This is not the first, not the second, not even the third time this plonkingly witless point has been made (and more than one reply has aptly cited Uncle Remus: "Oh please please Brer Fox, don't throw me in that awful briar patch").

It seems witless to Dr. Dawkins except that people instinctively realize that without God, life is meaningless, and recoil from such a conclusion. I don't mean that atheists can't have fun or love or think their life is meaningful. What I mean is that anybody who thinks about it realizes that being a living creature whose existence depended on nothing more than lightning striking some chemical compounds and whose fate will be the same no matter how they conduct themselves in life logically means that their life only has value if people (or just himself), for some phychological necessity, agree that it does. If Dawkins wasn't animated by a hatred for religion, he would admit as much. Oh, and seeing Dawkins interviewed probably sends more people rushing to church than free bingo cards. Standard Asymmetric disclaimer.

Chamberlainites are apt to quote the late Stephen Jay Gould's 'NOMA' - 'non-overlapping magisteria'. Gould claimed that science and true religion never come into conflict because they exist in completely separate dimensions of discourse:

To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists.

This sounds terrific, right up until you give it a moment's thought. You then realize that the presence of a creative deity in the universe is clearly a scientific

hypothesis. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a more momentous hypothesis in all of science. A universe with a god would be a completely different kind of universe from one without, and it would be a scientific difference. God could clinch the matter in his favour at any moment by staging a spectacular demonstration of his powers, one that would satisfy the exacting standards of science. Even the infamous Templeton Foundation recognized that God is a scientific hypothesis - by funding double-blind trials to test whether remote prayer would speed the recovery of heart patients. It didn't, of course, although a control group who knew they had been prayed for tended to get worse (how about a class action suit against the Templeton Foundation?) Despite such well-financed efforts, no evidence for God's existence has yet appeared.

This is just silly reasoning. Except that Dawkins brings up a good point. Why doesn't God just appear (again), rent an office downtown, and start settling arguments? For some reason, God thinks faith is one of the three most important virtues. By making the question of God merely a matter of making an appointment with him, God would render that virtue obsolete.

I have too many flaws to really hold myself up as a moral model, however, I think about these things and try to apply them to my life. So, in order to carry out my obligation to love, I try to think thusly: Unless the person I'm dealing with plans to use his well-being to do bad or to hurt me either physically or by other means, I will try to behave in such a manner that he will benefit or, in other words, do what's best for him. It's kind of like Covey's win-win except that I only think win-for him. I may win as well but only indirectly or cosmically. I don't have too many examples yet as I'm still practicing, but let's say my wife and I both want to see a movie that's showing twice a day and each showing will force one of us to miss something important to them. Well, I'd go to the show allowing her to preserve her event. Try it one day and report here at Asymmetric. Below is the Catholic dictionary example of love.

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Link: http://www.jewcy.com/dialogue/monday_why_are_atheists_so_angry_sam_harris

Battle of the heavyweights. Sam Harris' first post relies on the atheist trick of associating religion with universally discredited beliefs such as Greek mythology. I'll summarize the entire debate later. I've posted comments on the site as well.

Article

Schroeder says Bush's religious talk worried him
Gulf News Berlin: Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has written in a new book that George W. Bush's frequent references to God in their meetings before the Iraq war had made him wary of the US president's political...

I wonder how much is just the normal secular reaction to any mention of God.

Link to article

OK, so this guy asks the question:

Dennis Prager is an Idiot?
I've commented many times on the writings of Dennis Prager. The poor quality of this arguments, the ahistorical nature of his ideas, and the outright bigotry of his positions has often merited critique. I'm not the only to feel this way, it seems.
Foreign Dispatches quotes Dennis Prager:

If there is no God as Judeo-Christian religions understand Him, life is a meaningless random event. You and I are no more significant, our existence has no more meaning, than that of a rock on Mars. The only difference between us and Martian rocks is that we need to believe our existence has significance. Then comments:

Speak for yourself, buddy! Your life may not be of significance without some Bronze Age sky god to confer meaning on it, but my life has tremendous significance to me, and that is all that matters. The yearning for external validation by supernatural beings is a sign of mental midgetry and nothing more. Why does anyone pay any attention to Dennis Prager, expect perhaps to laugh?

Wow! what a brilliant response! No idiot, this guy. Let me summarize:

Atheists say that they exist as they are because of the very slow process of evolution-without any guidance or plan from a superior being. So, when somebody says that a person's life has no greater meaning than that which he places upon it because evolution has developed a phychological necessity to do so, the atheist gets upset. His answer: My life is significant because I say so! OK, so unreasoned assertion is good enough for him. Fine. Why is that any less infantile than believing that something is significant only if acknowledged by something qualified to do so (presumably something outside of the original thing itself)?

Now, an atheist can believe that his life is meaningful, but why would he? Could the act of saying so make it so? I declare my file cabinet of special significance. I consider it of more significance than the thousands of Thais who died in the Tsunami. Is it so? Can anybody argue against it? If significance is an act of self-recognition, what about people who are incapable of asserting their significance?