Folks vs. Upper Middle Class Overly Educated Atheists

Christopher Orlet of The American Spectator has a fabulous critique of Susan Jacoby's The Age of American Unreason. Some highlights:

"Jacoby, not surprisingly, is unable to see the contradictions in her own deeply held convictions. Here is an elitist who envisions an egalitarian society. She longs for a more democratic, Jacksonian nation, but she also expects it to be peopled not by the rednecks who voted for [Andrew] Jackson, but the enlightened litterateurs who voted for John Quincy Adams (and lost).

Like all liberal snobs, Jacoby dutifully admires the poor and the working man, but cannot abide their colossal ignorance, their petty superstitions, their techno-savvy, their bigotry, and worse, their anti-intellectualism. Ultimately, one leaves this book with the suspicion that the only "folks" -- to use a word the author rails against ad nauseum -- the author can stomach are folks like herself, e.g., Upper Middle Class Overly Educated Atheists.

Jacoby claims she started out to write part two of Hofstadter's 'Anti-Intellectualism in American Life'. Instead of a scholarly study of American culture she produced this bitter 356-page rant."

Love it!

Try a Little Civility if You Want People to Listen to Your Argument

Susan Jacoby, the author of The Age of American Unreason, laments that most Americans today are not interested in listening to points of view that differ from their own. She writes:

"The unwillingness to give a hearing to contradictory viewpoints, or to imagine that one might learn anything from an ideological or cultural opponent represents a departure from the best side of American popular and elite intellectual traditions....Americans in the 1800's, regardless of their level of formal education, wanted to make up their own minds...That kind of curiosity, which demands firsthand evidence of whether the devil really has horns, is essential to the intellectual and political health of any society. In today's America, intellectuals and nonintellectuals alike, whether on the left or the right, tend to tune out any voice that is not an echo. This obduracy is both a manifestation of mental laziness and the essence of anti-intellectualism."

Ms. Jacoby makes an excellent point here. Too often people act as the choir being preached to, rather than seeking out a diverse range of opinions on a topic. But how can one really even figure out what one believes after only hearing one side of an argument?

However, in the next chapter of The Age of American Unreason, it quickly becomes apparent why Ms. Jacoby in particular is encountering difficulty getting her message across to others. Her tone is what some like to call "snarky" but that usually comes across as mean-spirited hostility. Think Michael Moore on the left or Ann Coulter on the right. This type of arrogant insulting of those with whom the author disagrees often completely overshadow the legitimate merits of his or her argument. Incivility has the tendency to "turn off" anyone who does not already 100% agree with him or her.

Take, for example, Ms. Jacoby's commentary on a 2002 Time cover story on the Apocalypse. The point she's trying to make is a valid one, which is the article only included religious viewpoints of different types and no secular viewpoint dismissing the belief in Revelation entirely. Fair enough. But just listen to the kind of inflammatory language she uses to make her argument [emphasis added]:

"[The article] gave no space to those who dismiss the end-times scenario as a collective delusion based on pure superstition and who understand the civic danger inherent in the normalization of ideas that ought to be dismissed as the province of a lunatic fringe...On a deeper level, though, the aritcle exemplifies the journalistic conviction that anything 'controversial' is worth covering and that both sides of an issue must always be given equal space- even if one side belong in an abnormal psychology textbook. If enough money is involved, and enough people believe that two plus two equals five, the media will report the story with a straight face, always adding a qualifying paragraph noting that 'mathematicians, however, say that two plus two still equals four.'"

Ms. Jacoby goes on to describe religious believers as "willfully ignorant", the Bible as "supernatural fantasy", a belief in anything other than atheistic Darwinian evolution as a "cockamamie idea", and calls faith a "toxic" force that is one of the chief "enemies of intellect, learning, and reason". She approvingly quotes PBS journalist and noted liberal Bill Moyers, who calls Christians "ideologues [who] hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality." And that's just in the first chapter of the book!

I really do think that Ms. Jacoby has some valid points to make, especially when it comes to the media, pop culture, and government-run schools. Unfortunately, her obnoxiously arrogant rants against religion make it very difficult to for me to get through her book. If I had wanted that kind of screed, I would've picked up something by Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. But I had higher hopes for Ms. Jacoby's book...

The "Labeling" Question

Via J.J. Ross at "Cocking a Snook", I read a very interesting post by Dale over at the "Parenting Beyond Belief" blog about his 6 year old daughter Laney's calling herself "humanist" when asked her religion. Dale and several of the commenters on the thread expressed a discomfort with parents raising their kids within a religious tradition because they feel it's "imposing" a "label" on them. Writes Dale:

"I am adamantly opposed to labeling children, or even allowing them to label themselves, with words that imply the informed selection of a complex worldview....Once a label is attached, thinking is necessarily colored and shaped by that label. I don’t want my kids to have to think their way out from under a presumptive claim placed on them by one worldview or another."

This attitude is one that I've run across before. The playwright Julie Pascal wrote an article for The Jewish Chronicle last spring where she called religion a form of child abuse:

"Perhaps organised religion should carry a health warning and only be made available at 18 with the right to vote. Isn’t it child abuse to imprint religion and identity on an infant? In our Western democracies, we say we believe in the freedom of the individual to make their own life choices but we allow parents to enforce their own dogma on their offspring. Why not teach children about all religions, as well as secularism and humanism, and let them decide how they wish to identify when they become adults? The 1989 UNICEF Convention on the Rights of the Child expressed the importance of 'respect for the views of the child', but which son or daughter is ever consulted about which religion they wish to follow? You get what your parents give you."

The question I have for Dale, Ms. Pascal, et. al. is whether they feel the same way about parents who are vegans for ethical reasons raising their children as vegans. Isn't that "enforcing their own dogma on their offspring" too? Would they truly advocate forcing vegans to feed their children animal products against the parents' deeply held ethical beliefs? Or would they be okay with the argument that the children will be perfectly free to eat animal products once they grow up should they choose to but until such time the parents have the right to raise their offspring in accordance with their values?

I suspect that the same atheists/agnostics who are so vehemently against religious believers "imposing" their family's faith on their offspring would be perfectly fine with vegans raising their kids as vegans. Which just goes to show that their criticism isn't really about "respecting the views of the child" but really about hostility to organized religion.

Debunking the Myths About the Church & Science

James Hannam, a PhD. candidate in the history of science at the University of Cambridge in England has written a book called God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science. His goal is to translate the recent scholarship about medieval science for a lay audience. Most people outside of academia are unaware of how historians have debunked the popular misconceptions about the Church being allegedly "anti-Science". Not just Catholic apologists but respected secular scholars as well. Mr. Hannam has made the first chapter of God's Philosophers available for *FREE* download at his website. He is also building a registry of people who would be interested in possibly purchasing his book to demonstrate to skeptical publishers that there would be a market for the title.

I definitely think this book is needed because I was very frustrated with the way Joy Hakim perpetuated myths about the Church in her book The Story of Science Volume 1: Aristotle Leads the Way. I'm still using the first part of it about ancient times but the misinformation about the medieval times means we're going to skip the later chapters. I hope that God's Philosophers is published by the time we reach medieval history!

Pope Benedict XVI Speaks Out on Evolution

The more I hear from Pope Benedict XVI, the more I like him! I'll admit that I was a bit unsure of him when he took over from John Paul II because he seemed to lack the warmth of his predecessor. However, I've come to believe that he is absolutely the right pontiff for a post-9/11 world. With Christianity under attack from militant Islam and also secularism, we need a strong defender of the Faith.

Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI spoke to around 400 priests in the Diocese of Belluno and Feltre in Italy. He vigorously defended the idea that Reason and Faith are complementary ways of knowledge:

Christians believe that human beings are special precisely because they have a capacity for puzzling over and groping for meaning in a way that goes well beyond concern for their material needs.

"Our being is open," [Pope Benedict XVI] said. "It can hear the voice of being itself -- the voice of God. The greatness of the human person lies precisely in the fact that he is not closed in on himself, he is not reduced to concern about the material and quantifiable, but has an interior opening to the things that are essential, has the possibility of listening."

Pope Benedict also told the priests that evolution and the existence of God the creator should not be seen as two ideas in strict opposition to one another.

"Evolution exists, but it is not enough to answer the great questions," such as how human beings came to exist and why human beings have an inherent dignity, he said.

Father Lombardi said the pope had told the priests that when they encounter young people who think science has all the answers and they do not need God, priests should help them see "the great harmony of the universe" and ask if science alone can explain how it all works together and leads to such beauty.

"A world without God would become a world of the arbitrary," the pope told the priests.

This is what makes me glad to be Catholic! We are not forced to ignore science in the name of faith, but realize that they answer different questions. Science deals with "efficient" causes (HOW something happens) while faith deals with "final" causes (WHY something happens). To use Dr. Owen Gingerich's example from God's Universe, it's the difference between saying that water is boiling because it has been heated to 212 degrees Fahrenheit and saying that the water is boiling because I want to make a cup of tea.

Harvard Astrophysics Professor on Why Christianity and Science are Compatible

In light of the whole ugly battle between proponents of atheistic Darwinism and proponents of "Young Earth" literal reading of Genesis 1 creationists (which recently caused a bit of a ruckus over at PZ Myers' blog Pharyngula), it's refreshing when eminent scientists who are also devout Christians speak out about the compatibility of science and belief.

Dr. Owen Gingerich, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and History of Science at Harvard University, has written a book entitled God's Universe. It is based on a series of lectures he gave in 2005 on religion and science. He notes Aristotle's distinction between "efficient" causes (a description of how something happens) and "final" ones (a description of why something happens). The former is about mechanism, the latter about purpose. Dr. Gingerich makes the case that science explores efficient causes and should be neutral about final ones while the converse should be true for religion.

Dr. Gingerich, a Mennonite, argues that evolution as a mechanism is fully compatible with a belief in divine purpose. He writes: "One can believe that some of the evolutionary pathways are so intricate and so complex as to be hopelessly improbable by the rules of random chance. But if you do not believe in divine action, then you will simply have to say that random chance was extremely lucky, because the outcome is there to see. Either way, the scientist with theistic metaphysics will approach laboratory problems in much the same way as his atheistic colleague across the hall."

Dr. Sarah Coakley of Harvard Divinity School writes in her review of God's Universe that Dr. Gingerich demonstrates theistic scientists flout "no actual epistemic duties in holding scientific and theological beliefs alongside one another". Like St. Thomas Aquinas so eloquently asserted in Summa Theologica, Reason and Faith are complementary ways of knowing.

Dr. Gingerich contends: “We cannot conclude either that God is absent or that God does not act in the universe....We can hope that our increased scientific understanding will eventually reveal more to us about God the Creator and Sustainer of the cosmos."

I highly recommend anyone interested in the topic of science & religion read God's Universe!

Does Jesus Want Academic Mediocrity?

A cliche among a certain subset of the Christian homeschooling community is the saying "I'd rather my child get into Heaven than Harvard" as if the two were mutually exclusive destinations. A recent Christian Broadcasting Network news article comparing socialization in traditional schools vs. homeschools and a post on an email list to which I belong got me thinking about this type of anti-intellectual bias.

In a discussion of Dr. Michael Mitchell of Oral Roberts University's research, the CBN article contrasts the aims of traditional schools with that of Christian homeschools as "selfish ambition and self-aggrandizement" and a drive "to achieve high marks in order to attain lucrative and prestigious jobs" vs. "integrity, responsibility, respect for others, trust in God, biblical soundness and an amiable disposition." Academic excellence is set in direct opposition to Christian ethics.

I wrote the following in response to a fellow Christian homeschooling parent who felt frustration about the perceived lack of interest in the pursuit of academic excellence in the Christian homeschooling community:

"As a Christian who strongly believes that individuals have a duty to maximize their God-given talents, this attitude really bothers me. Yes, Christ preached humility and cautioned against materialism, but I certainly don't think He intended his followers to underachieve. Matthew 5:14-16 calls Christians to be a 'light unto the world' and to not 'hide it under a bushel basket' but to 'shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Heavenly Father'. How exactly does wasting one's potential glorify God?

Of course I want my children to build character and become good disciples of Christ. That is the central mission of my homeschool. However, I also want to provide them with a strong academic foundation that will allow both my son(s) and daughter(s) to serve God in whatever vocations He chooses for them. Currently, my DD says she wants to be a physician for the poor when she grows up. That is a very noble calling, and one that requires a high level of academic preparation. I'm committed to doing my best to provide that for her."

Faith and Reason are complementary ways of knowing as St. Thomas Aquinas famously discussed in his Summa Theologica. Academic excellence is perfectly compatible with Christian ethics and both should be important parts of a Christian homeschool.