"On the Nature of Love"

Love is probably the most overused and misunderstood word of our generation.

Most especially, agape love, the love of Christianity, is abused and misused over and over again. And not even by just Christians, but also by atheists.

And to make it worse, I feel horribly cliche even writing on the subject, but it is simply something that has to be addressed. Why? Because the constant mis-usage is confusing people, and leading them to think that agape cannot exist, or that they cannot experience it, or that they cannot have it.

This is all wrong though. It's all just horribly wrong.

Before beginning, first I will have to address the conjoined issue of "charity," or as Chesterton calls it, "the merely mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity," for the phrase is so conjoined in the Christian sense of agape as to be synonymous, and at the same time, it has come to exemplify something absolutely different, and in fact utterly contrary to agape in the secular world, and to the secularist in general. And that thing is philia.

A common mistake made by Christians nowadays is equating charitable contributions of members of society, churches, governments, whatever, with charity/agape and thus with Christianity. Any atheist with even a reasonable amount of intelligence will be quick to point out to you that the world's number one individual donors to charity are Bill Gates and Warren Buffet (unless the numbers have changed since the last time I debated this subject...), both of whom are avowed atheists. The charity of the modern secular world is not charity. Charity in the modern secular world is philanthropy. Agape has been upstaged and replaced by its cousin (in terms of gross amount), in what is essentially a battle between reasonableness and Christianity.

If we are to speak on philanthropy, we must admit that it is everywhere in this world. The world over flows with philia. And yet, comparatively, philia is nothing compared to agape. Does the philanthropist donate millions when he has billions? What of it? The person with agape gives hundreds when all he or she has are hundreds! Does the empath do good because he feels bad? There's nothing impressive in this! The man with agape does good no matter how he feels, he does it not to assuage his guilt, or to lessen the pain he receives from others, or even because he'll feel good as a result but because it is his love! Does the reciprocal altruist give when it harms him not? What of it? The lover in agape gives even when he knows it will harm himself, and even when he knows it will be his life in payment.

And now the question of reasonableness enters into it. Charity is a merely mystical and almost irrational virtue in Christianity, because charity demands a sacrifice of the self. Yet in our current world, it is not reasonable (I do not say it is not rational), to demand true self sacrifice of anyone, let along ourselves. Let me illustrate what I mean by this.

It is because the world is so abounding in love of brothers and sisters that it is lacking in love for a man's neighbor as himself. A reasonable man might give a dollar to a stranger in need, but how many reasonable men will abandon their lives for the stranger? Chesterton also once noted that only a Catholic Church could have produced a St. Francis of Assisi. Why? Because only Christianity has ever demanded of people not just philanthropy, but charity. Christ did not say to the young man with many possessions, here, give me a donation of 10 silver pieces and you're good to go. Christ said to the rich men and the poor men, sell all your positions, give everything you have to the poor, then come and follow me. Likewise, Christianity does not say, donate ten dollars a week at Mass out of your $50,000 salary, and we'll call it square. This may be what people do, but it is only because people are too reasonable. What Christianity teaches, has always taught, and will always teach, is that we too should give all our things away, and come and follow Christ. Christianity is the only system in the world that has ever espoused the rather controversial idea that a man should not only voluntarily give to the poor, but that a man should voluntarily make himself poor for the sake of keeping the poor alive, and in so doing make himself rich in all that actually matters. Did Marx seek to even the playing field? Catholicism did it earlier and did it better, through choice. Through love. The difference in loves is astronomical, it is the difference between loving everyone like family and maintaining your place in that family, and loving everyone so much that you do not care about yourself at all if by some means you might aid them. Philia demands that we make brothers of all men, and that we make ourselves a brother in return. Christianity demands that we make masters of all men, and that we make ourselves a servant instead. Now, this is not to suggest that philia and agape cannot mutually exist or support each other. Many are the families where agape and philia abound I am sure. The problem is that the world, both Christian and secular, itself has attempted to replace agape with philia. The secularist does this because it does not require him to be any less reasonable, and yet lets him feel moral, while the Christian does it because it lets him be so much more reasonable while still feeling like he has done good.

I mentioned choice before, and this is the next issue that must be addressed in terms of the misunderstandings of love.

Of the 5 easily identifiable loves (narcissism, agape, storge, philia and eros) at least three are immediately identifiable as emotions. Erotic, brotherly, and motherly love are all emotional loves (and narcissism may well be), and this cannot be denied. And as many atheists will eagerly note for you, there is little to no choice involved in them. A favorite equivocation of the modern era is that when a man claims to do something out of love, everyone else claims that he's done it because some chemicals in his brain brought about the onset of an emotion. Emotions are then written off as traits advantageous for our evolution, and ones that are specifically, and totally, biological. Worst is the challenge some atheists love to present that God, who is postulated as an immaterial being, cannot love. Ahhh! Checkmate! The atheist believes he's finally cornered the Christian, the Christian God cannot possibly be love. For love is merely a sequence of complex chemical reactions in our heads that brings us to feel something, and then act upon that feeling. Right?

Wrong. This is the worst of misunderstandings of Agape, worse even than the madness of replacing charity with philanthropy within Christianity itself. Because it reduces agape to some mere, petty emotion. To a feeling! Agape is not a feeling! And it is this myth, this fallacy peddled by the secular and popular Christian worlds both that is hurting honest Christians everywhere, and hurting us far more that atheism alone ever could. A world teeming with philia is not a bad thing, for at least some good is being done. But a world where agape is reduced, butchered, and humanized, is an evil thing. It is the most evil thing to have been done since the worst manifestation of sin in human history. The Crucifixion.

"But Evan!" I can hear the objections, "The Crucifixion was a good thing! It was the means by which Christ saved us from our sins, the supreme gift of Grace from God!"

And to all this I agree. The Crucifixion was a good thing. But not in and of itself. The act of crucifying someone is not a good act. Scourging someone before hand is not a good thing. And in Christ's case, the mental and spiritual anguish associated with the Crucifixion are not good things. They are horrible things. We call the Crucifixion the supreme gift of Grace from God, and we are right to do so. But what we so often forget is the how and why. The Crucifixion is not good because it is good to be crucified, the Crucifixion is good because it demonstrates once and for all that God can take even our worst sin, and bring about Good from it. It is this very power that makes Grace so amazing for the Christian, for Grace takes all evil and turns it to God. Did we sin? Yes. Was it sinful to crucify Christ? To whip Him bloody, smash two inch thorns into His head, beat Him, spit on Him, nail Him to the boards? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and YES! Even worse was the abandonment, the mental trials, the rejections of His closest friends and companions. Let us never forget that, oh no. And in that ultimate manifestation of sin, of despair, hatred, rage, fear, greed, and most of all MADNESS, God's Grace turned it all against us. In our greatest act of sin, we wrought the means of salvation.

But how? How does Grace work? How does it transform evil? The answer, of course, is simple, and it is precisely how I can make the accusation that humanizing agape is the worst evil in history since the Crucifixion. Agape is the source of the Crucifixion. Agape is the source of Grace. God was able to take our sins, our hate, and lust, envy, greed, pride, our very fear, and even our despair, and in one act of perfect self-sacrifice, turn it all to love. Forgive it, forget it, bear the price of it Himself, and bring us back. Agape is divine. Plain and simple. To humanize it, to treat it as the mere by-product of a chemical process in our brains is an insult.

And what is worse, it attacks 2000 years of Christian Grace. It seeks, in one fell swoop, to reverse the choice of God. To reject God as incapable of the very thing that was first and best expressed by God. In short, it negates the Crucifixion. A more powerful blow could not hope to be struck against Christianity than to make Christians believe that agape love is a mere emotion, a paltry biological pleasantry designed to aid in the reproduction and survival of our species. The humanization of agape doesn't just seek to diminish it to philia, it even goes so far as to make it into that which is no more than utilitarian and no less than hedonistic. That of eros. That of lust. And what's worse, it is degrading further into narcissism. Into a love of ourselves, a love of us because of what we did for others. Do you fear atheism, Christians? You should fear yourselves even more. For you are the ones who have allowed your ideal love to be turned into an emotional high for the manipulation of your conscience and your will.

And now we have reached the heart of the matter. I didn't write this piece to deal with atheist claims, nor even to make note of the fact that we have confused all our loves, and turned the highest into the lowest. I do not write this even to combat the growing trend in Fundamentalist Christianity in the States to seek an emotional high and call that the love of God. I write, because we are falling into despair.

I cannot be the only one to have noticed that many people are suffering in their spiritual lives from a lack of the realization, or perhaps even a purposeful misguided belief away from the fact that agape is not an emotion, agape is a choice.

There are people who are trapped within the cynical confines of the modern world. They believe that no matter their actions, and no matter their choices, they cannot give agape love to others. They believe themselves to be purely incapable of it. And because they believe themselves incapable of it, they make themselves capable of it. They have fallen into despair, the despair of not being able to believe, and thus not being able to recognize that all one has to do is choose to love to be able to love. They are unable to, not because they can't "feel" it, but because they cannot choose it. And they themselves are the reason why they cannot choose it. Unless they can will to love, and will to break the cycle of their broken reasoning, they are lost. Lost for despair is the one, the only unforgivable sin. We were made for love. We exist to love. To despair of our very purpose in existence is to despair so utterly that there is little we can do against it. Let us remember, for the sake of our Christian family, that Faith, Hope and Love are all intertwined, but greatest of all is Love. Let Love die, and Faith will die. Let Love die, and Hope will die. Let them all die, and Grace itself will avail us nothing. We are truly confronted by the greatest possible evil here. This is the defining evil of our generation. This is the great heresy of the 21st Century, and this is a greater threat to Christianity that Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Mohammed combined.

And so I write.

I recently had a conversation with a good Catholic friend who is suffering from this very problem. It was he who brought me to the realization that this problem was getting so widespread. Moreover, while I had always had misgivings about the emotional highs and the love "feeling" I saw peddled in fundamentalist Christianity, only after this conversation did I realize that these things were all inter-related to our perception of love.

I want to address some key points that my friend brought up with me. I will not name names, but I will use quotations of what he said at various points to illustrate important factors.

Upon reminding my friend that agape is a choice, his reply to me came as follows, "Yesterday, I went to the chapel for adoration and as I left, I put some money in the "donations for the poor" box. And then I reflected on the act and realized that I put that money in the box mechanically. I can verbally say I feel compassion for the poor, but the word compassion literally means a sharing of pain. And when I see a box as abstract as "donations for the poor," I don't share any feelings with the object of my gift. And even when I do see a real homeless person, as you say, I have to choose to feel compassion for him. That seems so unnatural to me. Why should I have to choose to feel compassion for another human being who is suffering? Why can't that be my natural reactions instead?"

I want us all to note the very important and near omnipresence of the concept of compassion in these statements and questions. Compassion is a feeling, as my friend so beautifully noted. It is a sharing of pain. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with compassion (we are Catholics, after all, offering up our suffering is all about compassion). But compassion is not agape, and compassion does not lead to agape. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Agape leads to compassion. I said before, and I meant it, "Does the empath do good because he feels bad? There's nothing impressive in this! The man with agape does good no matter how he feels, he does it not to assuage his guilt, or to lessen the pain he receives from others, or even because he'll feel good as a result but because it is his love!" And now I would note for you an incredibly beautiful thing that this despairing friend of mine accomplished.

He chose to share pain. He is increasingly woeful and distracted that compassion is not his natural state, and yet when presented with the opportunity to, he not only feels compassion, but he chooses to feel compassion. He chooses! If I could somehow make this seventy-two size font with little firecrackers around it, I would, because it is so absurdly important, and so marvelously beautiful. I told him to his face (virtually) that he was missing the very fact that what he was describing was agape, the same love he believed himself utterly incapable of doing. My friend's heart was not motivated by excess, altruism or empathy. He did what he did, almost mechanically, he even admitted, but he still did it with choice, and not for a reward, or because he had plenty to spare, or because he had to assuage his feelings of pain, or to feel good, or from some petty altruism.

And now for something even more beautiful. Did he say, and I note, that there was something mechanical in his actions? Certainly one can argue that this is not a good thing. But I would rather argue that it is not only a good thing, but it is well nigh on the best thing. While he could probably improve his self-sacrifice, and his motivations, we all could. What is important is the nature of his action. It operated within him, this amazing love, and only afterwards did he stop, and think, and go, "Why?! Why did I do that? I don't feel sorry for them! I don't feel their pain!" My friend is not rich, and he's not an empath, pretty clearly. While agape can be beautifully expressed by choosing to feel compassion, as I noted above, that isn't the point. An even more beautiful expression of agape is that we can and do choose to sacrifice even without compassion. That without sharing the suffering of any person, by choice or by nature, we can still give of ourselves, and give where it hurts.

As one final point I would like to give a visualization of how agape works within our souls for us to meditate upon.

Agape is like a tiny fiery light in our heart and soul. It is God striking a match in the darkness of our sins and selfishness. In doing so, God first exposes to us more than we can possibly take in, and the light is more bright than we can possibly believe. Even a little light will shine brightly and overwhelmingly after the darkness we find within ourselves alone. But as the initial shock of that brilliance wears off...we find that the darkness hasn't receded as much as we thought it had. And we find that it's very easy for that little light to go out again. One breath of foul, fetid air and it winks out.

To maintain, and better yet grow, to go from a match, to a candle, to a torch, to a bonfire, and to a very star, we have to add to the fire. We have to bring fuel, and get more heat. We need to open up the doors of our hearts to let in fresh air as well. And we have to protect the fire from sin, from the winds and waters that would snuff it away from us. (This, by the way, is embodied in Catholic penance and Confession, we get rid of the sin, light our match, and then work to remedy the negative effects of sin upon us and rebuild our flames of true charity.)

We've struck our match, and now we need kindling, and logs and anything else that will burn! We can throw away everything in our lives for the sake of our little flame, and it will get bigger, and warmer and brighter, and not just for us but for everyone around us. Do we remember the letter of St. James? Faith without works is dead. When we let our Love die, we let our Faith die.

And that's the end of us...

Omniscience and Free Will, Part I

I'm interrupting my series on the hideous sense of entitlement to post elements of a debate I've just begun in the facebook group, 100,000,000 Christians worship God. The debate can be found in its original form by clicking the title of this post.

In this post, we'll start with the opening question and definitions and my response. Mr. Owen is a noted atheist member of the group who usually asks great questions. Here we go!

Mr. Owens,

"Assembled party of good, intelligent, and honest people, we are here to discuss omniscience and its effects on free will. Let's start by agreeing on definitions of both. I propose:

Omniscience: infinite knowledge, free of all bounds. The state of knowing literally everything about everything - past, present, future. For the sake of this thread, omniscience will be paired inseparably with infallibility. That's the context of Christianity, after all.

Free will: the ability of an agent to make choices and act completely unrestrained by circumstances external to the agent, such as fate, destiny, predetermination, what have you.

Everyone happy?"

Myself:

"Good topic! And a great opportunity to consider the questions involved. And bravo to you sir for making certain the terms were clear before we begin, as I do indeed have objections to them.

'Omniscience: infinite knowledge, free of all bounds. The state of knowing literally everything about everything - past, present, future. For the sake of this thread, omniscience will be paired inseparably with infallibility. That's the context of Christianity, after all.'

I would note two things. Omniscience, like all properties of God in the Christian tradition, is a logical derivative of His nature. This means for our purposes that it is "bound," by God's own nature and properties, in that it refers to all things logically possible to know, all things that can be known. This also means that, if we're going to treat fully with the issue, we need to understand HOW the property is derived.

For the sake of discussion, I hope you'll forgive my assumption of God in the Christian context without attempting to prove Him. Christian theology dating back at least as far as St. Thomas Aquinas has called God that Being whose essence is equal to His existence, in other words, God is an eternal act of existence, and the means by which all other existence begins. This was in conclusion to the problem of the origin of existence taken in light of infinite regression, and causa sui being impossible. It is from this understanding of God that we understand Him to have the properties commonly associated with Him, like omniscience. And the derivation works essentially as follows: Because God's nature is existence, we argue that all existence draws upon His existing to sustain itself. In other words, wherever anything exists, so too does God exist, even if that something should deny Him. This is because to exist, a thing draws upon the act of existence, which is rooted in God. This is how God is omnipresent in the universe, or immanent. Simultaneously, God, as an eternal act of existence, does not reside within the universe or as part of the universe, nor is He bound by it or its properties, He transcends it and is beyond it, giving Him an outside and objective perspective into it. Essentially, to use a metaphor, take a piece of paper with a circle drawn on it. The circle represents the universe. What is in the circle is everything that exists in that universe, including us. The paper would be God. The paper is simultaneously beyond the circle, within the circle, and the underlying fabric which the circle requires to exist, as you cannot write on nothing, so to speak. Due to this combination of transcendence and immanence or omnipresence, God is able to observe all moments of existence objectively, simultaneously and intimately, thus giving Him this perfect knowledge of all things that can be known.

If you desire to argue omniscience with Christianity, you must first accept the nature of that omniscience, since as I'm sure you realize, if we can't agree on that, we can't make any headway.

'Free will: the ability of an agent to make choices and act completely unrestrained by circumstances external to the agent, such as fate, destiny, predetermination, what have you.'

This isn't actually the Christian conception of Free Will, though it is the most common idea of it among Christians and from my understanding most other people religious or non-religious alike.

Christianity, however, would never claim that human choices and actions are unrestrained by circumstances external to the agent, that's the entire doctrine of Original Sin and the Fall and Grace. Christianity would in fact argue that humanity as a whole, due to humanity's Fallen nature, is bound to sin unless redeemed by the Savior. It is only through cooperation with God, whom Christianity says IS good, not defines Good, or adheres to Good, that humanity can be good and do good, it is not in and of ourselves. Even conversion is inspired and aided by God, and is not a wholly independent and separate human action. Our moral wills likewise are clouded by concupiscence, which is the tendency to sin regardless of our redeemed or fallen state, an effect of existing in a fallen world, necessitating again the need for God's Grace in our lives in order to stick to the narrow path of Good.

Christianity would argue that we have a will, and that that will is supernatural, and free only in that it can reject the prompting of God's Grace to unite itself to God's Will or it can accept those promptings. Without those promptings and the aid of God to our wills, we are "slaves of sin" as it were, or bound to act in a fallen and imperfect manner. True Free Will of the sort your describe was lost at the Fall, if it ever actually existed."

Please note, I'm confining these posts to whatever arises out of the discussion between Mr. Owens and myself, and not including the posts and questions of others, like Mr. Hedrich, which may also arise. Perhaps in another series, haha.

That Hideous Sense; Part II

1: "Why doesn't God heal amputees?"

In recent times, atheist writers and debaters have made much of this supposed problem when dealing with Christians. I have seen it numerous times in the last several days even, hence its inclusion in this piece, as its popularity is undoubtedly growing. Atheists make the claim that God does not heal amputees, no matter how much they pray to have their limbs regrown, etc. Or at least there is no account that these atheists know of where such a miracle is reported. My purpose here is not to try and offer such an account. My purpose here is entirely different. My purpose is to destroy this argument's very foundation in entitlement, and thus to destroy the argument itself, as opposed to trying to reply with examples of how it isn't true, thus giving it credence as a legitimate attack. It is not legitimate, and should never be dealt with as such. It is the bastard child of our human selfishness, and it is horrific in its consequences.

The first issue to be addressed is the manner in which atheists, apparently inadvertently, are treating amputees. What, precisely, does it mean to "heal" an amputee, or anyone else for that matter? When someone with cancer is healed, that person's cancer is cured, killed, stopped, etc. That person's life is saved. If a child dying of pneumonia is healed, it is the child's life being saved and the disease afflicting him being stopped that we call healing. Likewise, with a disease like leprosy, or polio, etc. healing is stopping of the disease, curing it, ending it, etc. This seems to my mind quite different from the "healing" of an amputee. I think we have two very different ideas of healing here. Normal healing is that of righting what is wrong, or perhaps fixing that which is broken. Healing a broken bone, for example, is fixing that which is broken. Healing psychological or emotional wounds would qualify is righting that which was wronged. Failing either of these two possibilities, in instances where medicine simply cannot remedy the problem, we do what we can to stop threats, save lives, etc. But what, precisely, is this idea of "healing" an amputee? The amputee is, by definition, someone who has had a limb removed precisely for the objective of saving that person or helping that person in some way. People are generally not amputated for no reason, they are amputated to save their lives.

Do we ask why God doesn't "heal" amputees? First perhaps we should remember why we made them amputees in the first place. Their lives have been saved, they are still people, still living, etc. Amputation, in other words, is medically speaking the righting to the best of our abilities of the various wrongs of horrible frostbite, gangrene, land mines, grain threshers, and all other manners in which people are so injured, and medical science cannot do anything but stem the threat. Amputation is done to save someone's life. But the atheist argument treats the amputee as someone who is still sick, or who is still threatened. The amputee is no longer a normal human, the amputee is now special, sick, disabled, and in need of curing and healing. Personally, I rather suspect that some amputees might take issue with being treated as such. The biggest problem here is that the atheist is using amputation without understanding it. Answering the following question might prove extraordinarily illuminating for us in regards to this issue. "What is wrong with an amputee?" An amputee is not sick. An amputee is not in danger of losing his or her life (at least not strictly because he or she was amputated), and an amputee is certainly not less than human, nor are their "rights" (ironic, yes?) violated by amputation or because they are an amputee (in strict point of fact they are technically given even greater privileges, such as coveted parking spaces). An amputee can be happy, successful, and loved, can he not? The average amputee can live a full and satisfying life, can she not? It is not only insulting, but absurd to suggest otherwise, for there are plenty of examples of amputees living and excelling while doing so. Let us have no more pretense that there is anything wrong with amputees. That which is "wrong" is that they are missing one or more limbs or body parts that most of the rest of us possess, and generally they lost those limbs or body parts as part of the solution to a problem, not as the problem itself. When dealing with amputation, we are not talking about righting a wrong, we are talking about talking replacing or filling up a lack. And in this particular case of argumentation, we are dealing with a sense that amputees are entitled to having this lack filled, but the why of this is never addressed.

And that brings us to our second issue. That which more expressly deals with entitlement, as it grows and develops from the first. Why are amputees, or anyone, for that matter, treated as being entitled to healing? The question isn't, "Why doesn't God 'heal' amputees?" the question is, "Why does God heal anyone at all?" What obligation is God under to heal anyone, let alone an amputee, whose amputation was most likely our solution to the problem that person faced? Where is God obliged to "fix" the "mistake" of ours that saved a person's life? Is this not the most ridiculous argument imaginable?

To challenge God in this regard, we must first determine that amputation is bad, that it is a problem that needs to be fixed, when that problem is in fact a medical solution designed to save a person. Moreover, we treat God as if God must heal amputees! As if amputees somehow deserve it, or even that amputees somehow need it. The atheist, by making this argument, relies on his sense of entitlement, and in so doing, not only does he create an utterly useless and baseless argument, but he dehumanizes and objectifies amputees. None of us "deserve" healing from God. There is no reason to suppose we do, especially knowing as we now know, that what Good we have is a gift. We don't deserve a bit of it. Moreover, how can we possibly argue that amputees need to be healed, when we have already admitted that any accurate and fair treatment of amputees as a subject would lead us to conclude that there is nothing preventing an amputee from living a long, full, and beautiful life? To demand healing for amputees demands that we view amputees as somehow less than a person with all their limbs, someone who is less human, and less capable of enjoying the human experience. This is patently false, and I for one refuse to play along. I will not turn amputees into demi-humans who cannot function without divine intervention, nor will I treat them as mere objects in a point against theism, to be used and exploited. To do so would be to risk the kind of Social Darwinistic and eugenic philosophies that riddled the early part of the 20th Century with death and madness. Amputees are not an ill that need to be remedied, and to treat them as such is a very dangerous proposition.

That Hideous Sense; Part I

Many of the fundamental arguments of the atheist camp in this present day and age revolve around a fundamental, and horrific, sense of entitlement. By entitlement, I refer to that obvious and obsessive belief of the human being that things are due to him, whether they be life, liberty and property, happiness, success, peace, health, or anything else. Examples of the most common arguments regarding this sense of entitlement are arguments concerning 1) God healing amputees, 2) the Bible condoning slavery, 3) genocide in the Old Testament, and of course, 4) The Problem of Evil, or "why Bad things happen to Good people."

To treat the subject of entitlement, it will first be necessary to analyze and examine the origins of this, the most selfish of human traits. Certainly this sense that we are entitled to certain things simply by virtue of having been born is not NEW in human history and society. Humans have always been selfish, it is no great leap of the mind nor mystical expression to know this to be true. But our modern entitlement is a very special kind of entitlement. It is the entitlement of the Enlightenment. It is the entitlement of "rights." It is the idea, miraculously arrived at, that all humanity is equal, and endowed with certain inalienable rights and liberties, such as the right to live and the right to be free. This beautiful expression of pious platitude was first and best expressed, perhaps, by the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. Those gentlemen of 18th Century America, who grew and were influenced by the brilliant political minds and thinkers of libertarian ideology in Europe at the time, most especially Mr. John Locke, were the first and most eloquent in expressing this notion that humans are entitled to certain legal protections, that they have a "right" to life or liberty or property. Thus, to treat with entitlement, first we shall have to treat with rights, before we can ever address the arguments of atheism which have grown out of them.

Rights. A more powerful political idea has never been espoused, in my sober opinion, than that of "rights." The idea that we are automatically endowed with "rights" from the moment of our birth is extraordinarily appealing to human kind. Unsurprising, really, given our history of selfishness. Leaving aside the antiquated and nonsensical idea that our rights are only conferred through some magical and mystical natal ceremony when we completely exit our mother's body, and never before hand despite our existence as unique, individual humans, let us consider the idea of rights, as well as the practice.

Why do rights exist? Rights, in purely political speech, are not liberties from the Government, they are privileges granted by the government. The right to vote, for example, is a privilege bestowed upon certain American citizens by the government. It is historically undeniable that the current people allowed to vote were not able to vote at the founding of this nation. Thus there is certainly nothing "inalienable" about this kind of right. So what we must really be looking for, at least first, are not strictly "rights" but in fact liberties. Liberties are those things which are enshrined properties, hopefully protected from government interference in, and considered to be entitled to citizens of the United States. Those Liberties are mainly expressed in the mis-named Bill of Rights. First we must note that there is absolutely no espousing of rights to life, liberty or property. Second, we must note that whatever liberties we examine, when we deal with them in that purely political sense in which they were created, we deal with them as they are noted and granted, or protected from, a certain governmentary body. The first problem that we must recognize with rights, is that they are not universal. Rights exist within the society or government that enshrines and establishes them. The rights allegedly possessed by a citizen of the United States do not apply to a citizen of Darfur or Pakistan. Next, if we are to be honest in our historical studies, we must note that while the Declaration of Independence alleges that humans have "inalienable" rights, we must note two things. The first is that those rights are allegedly granted to humans by their Creator. The second is that history shows us that the concept of truly "inalienable" rights is an absurdity, and one hypocritically preached, for instance, by the honored representatives of Virginia, South and North Carolina, and Georgia. Yes indeed, all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, such as the rights to life, liberty and pursuit of property, unless of course one happens to have a black or brown skin tone and live in the Southern United States between the 16th and 19th centuries. Inalienable? Not even in the practices of those who first made the claim, let alone in the history of man.

So we have two major problems, and one major contradiction, for the atheist position in this regard. Rights are things that are directly related to government, whether as privileges or as protections. They are not universal. Likewise, rights are obviously not inalienable in practical terms, as the number of times our supposed "rights" have been alienated from us is astoundingly high, even in the United States. Taken together we must realize the following: That a right, if it is NOT inalienable, cannot actually be anything other than a privilege granted by the government. Even our most precious civil liberties, those things which are supposed to be protected from the encroachment of the power of government are violable. That is to say that it is still only the whim of the government, and its own choice to adhere to the paper protection of our Constitution that allows us to keep those rights. There have been many times in history when the United States government has alienated those liberties from us, for example, the Alien and Sedition Acts of the early 1800s. In the end, civil liberties only practically amount to privileges that that the State is only less likely to infringe upon, and they are certainly still granted to the people. Ironically, this is quite obvious, in an examination of the very nature of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was a statement from the United States Government, written and adopted two years AFTER the Constitution was adopted and the United States was formed, stating that the United States government would not do the following things. This is still a granting of privileges though, and the US government has shown itself willing and able to violate the pleasant platitudes of our Constitution.

This then is the inevitable conclusion of what "rights" truly are. They are nothing more than lip services to an ideal, as well as a false and flimsy shield erected by governments (and only a bare few at that), to give their citizens a sense of calm and relief from fear of government power. They are the lies that have been propagated against humanity since their creation, the lie that makes people lazy, indolent, and selfish. They are the lies that have become a greater tool for political control and power than any other political ideology in history. They have triumphed over all other contenders, not monarchy, nor communism, nor fascism, nor any other political scheme or idea has ever withstood them for long. And because they are a lie, because there is obviously no substance or truth to their claims, as we have just seen, all arguments based upon them by the atheist camp are likewise false. No challenge to God based on a sense of rights or entitlement can ever succeed, for it is an argument based on the absurdly false premise that we have rights, or that we are entitled. We are not. We bought our rights with blood and bullets, and we have traded them in the present for "security."

But I digress. I mentioned one major contradiction for this position as well. And it is one of the most amusing and ironic contradictions that I have yet observed in the atheist position. This contradiction is at the source of the only possible solution to the problems of "rights" that an atheist can attempt.

You see, the earliest Libertarian thinkers were not atheistic at all. Likewise, the Founding Fathers, to whom we Americans at least, owe a great deal of our political consciousness, were not, by and large atheists. They were certainly not all Christians, or even strictly theists, but nearly all of them believed in a higher power, whether it be the Christian God, the God of Deism, or some God in between. This is precisely how we came to have the interesting passage, earlier noted, in the Declaration of Independence which notes that it is "by their Creator" that all men have been made equal and granted certain inalienable rights. By their Creator. Creator? Creator of Man? The Creator, regardless of your perspective regarding the nature of God, is always God. We do not go around calling anything else (and those gentlemen of the 18th Century certainly didn't then either) "Creator." The Creator is God, of one sort or another. And the concept of inalienable rights that are shared by all humanity are indelibly tied to that Creator in early libertarian thinking, and in the establishment of the United States. And of course it is. It is the most sensible thing we have yet encountered in our treatment of rights, to note that these political philosophers and government builders acknowledged that it is from God that those rights come.

Why? Why is it purely common sense for them to conclude as such? Because of the very same solution to the problems of rights that I noted before, and will now explain in depth. I have noted the fallacies of "rights," I have examined and even thoroughly abused them. But nothing I have said here is strictly new. I am not the first person to realize this, nor the last, and one must remember that the men who first espoused, propounded and made practical use of these ideas were not unintelligent. I myself rather suspect that they saw the exact same problems as I have, and they solved them exactly as I would.

If rights must be granted by some governing authority, and we desire to make them universal and hope that they are truly "inalienable" then there is only one authority to whom we have logical recourse. For there is only one source of objective authority in the world, and that objective source of authority is God. Likewise, there is only one way to explain the merely magical or mystical means by which we humans are presumed to acquire such rights! That means is God. Only God can be considered truly authoritative over the whole of humanity, for we certainly do not have, have never had, and likely will never have, a true government of the entire world. Moreover, even were we to have a world government, those "rights" would remain the idealistic and poetic prose that we noted before. They are like a thin sheet of tissue paper attempting to stop a bullet, for if there is one world government, who precisely is to stop that government from doing as it wills? The problem of rights is not solved so easily as that! To truly remedy it, we need God. We cannot have rights without God. Rights as we want them, as we need them, to exist can only be granted by the Divine, and if they are granted by the Divine, simply by virtue of us being human, then two things become very clear. First is that these things, if we have them at all, are gifts. We do not earn them, we do not work for them, we cannot be entitled to them, for God does not have to give them. God chooses to, for God's reasons, and who is to say that God cannot choose to take them away, or never bestow them in the first place?

Herein lies the difference between the Christian concept of rights, and the secular concept of rights. The Christian can speak of, and even use, rights with far less hypocrisy, for the Christian can believe that his rights, and the rights of others, are not "rights" at all, but are instead the gifts of God, which we are not to abuse. To the Christian, the "right to life" is not the idea that a human is entitled to life, but the idea that a human has been given the tremendous gift of life by God, and that the rest of us would be doing evil in stripping them of that gift. In other words, the "rights" of the Christian, are the rights to not do something. We as Christians have no right to murder. We have no right to covet or possess. We have no right to anything, which is the most precise and perfected form of rights imaginable. Instead of a right to speak freely, we have only the right to not speak at all in consideration of others, a right that one might wish the whole world would remember when vitriol and hate are all we seem to hear. Everything that we have, all good and all justice and all mercy and all love, all of it is a gift. And none of us have the right to attack, strip away, assault, or otherwise malign those gifts. Of course, the second thing to become clear is that rights are not dependent upon "birth," nor status in life, etc. If we have rights and are to speak honestly of them, they apply to all humans. Any being that meets that basic criteria possesses these "rights," and thus we have resolved that which we left aside at the beginning of this piece.

The secularist, meanwhile, apparently believes precisely the opposite of the Christian. In far too many cases, he enshrines his entitlement without examination of its nature and origins, and likewise without conscious realization of its implications. His rights are dependent upon a God whom he rejects, or upon the final and fallacious claim that because we possess a body, we are entitled to it, when possession never inherently demonstrates entitlement or ownership. He claims that humans have universal rights, that we are entitled, without ever truly grasping how it could possibly be that we have "universal" rights. And then, worse and worse, our secularist friend will take his sense of entitlement, and use it to assault God. And it is this that brings us to the heart of this essay, for now we have reached the problems I enumerated before, and which are often dropped upon the poor, unsuspecting Christian by the atheist with an axe to grind, and too much Dawkins literature littering his mind. And so, we must deal with them in turn, the children of entitlement, and some of the supposedly greatest arguments against God and Christianity there are.

Faith Alone

Faith and Reason are two things of the same type. They are of the same type in that both Faith and Reason tend to lack value in and of themselves, and instead are valuable in relation to those objects which they are focused upon. For example, Reason is not valuable in and of itself, it is only valuable in that we use it to examine other things. If there is nothing to think about, then thinking serves no purpose, and it cannot possibly work. Thought, by nature, requires a subject. Thinking requires subjects, it is the very act of linking them in the mind, a theme Chesterton touches on in Orthodoxy. Likewise, Faith too is an instrument that does not, and perhaps cannot, stand alone. For Faith, if we take my standard definition, is belief, trust and acceptance of something which we then act upon. Without the thing to be believed, trusted and accepted, what is faith? Action based on nothing? Does it even exist? Can it possibly have any value?

I have been challenged multiple times recently with regard to a singular question, related to the above. "What is the value of Faith?" And we are not speaking of religious faith, or faith in Christ, or even faith in reality, but the value of faith, separated from all possible things in which one might PLACE their faith. It was this question, asked repeatedly, that led me to begin this essay. It is somehow thought by atheists that if we examine this thing called "faith" in a vacuum seperate from everything that gives it meaning, that we will see straight away how worthless it is, and therefore, that we need it not. Indeed, I was even challenged on this by a Catholic I know, who I fear has listened to far too much modern criticism of faith, and to too little G.K. Chesterton. I say this because, as always, Chesterton makes an interesting point that I think we must relate to the present question. What is the value of Faith, separated from the object of faith? It is precisely the same as the value of Reason separated from all manner of things that one could think about.

Mr. Chesterton makes the following point in "Orthodoxy," ironically while dealing with evolution, yet another common point of argument between the Christian and Atheist worlds (though God only knows why...);

"But if [evolution] means anything more, it means that there is no such thing as an ape to change and no such thing as a man for him to change into. It means that there us no such thing as a thing. At best, there is only one thing, and that is a flux of everything and anything. This is an attack not upon faith, but upon the mind; you cannot think if there are no things to think about. You cannot think if you are not seperate from the object of thought."

Of the same type and kind is faith, for you cannot have faith if there is nothing to have faith in, you cannot believe, when cut off from all that is believable. The atheist asks me to give him the value of faith, seperate and isolated, alone and desolate. And I cannot answer, for faith is not faith without that which we place our faith in. And even worse, the atheist has brought us to questioning the "value" of something seperate from that which it is related and dependent upon, which destroys not faith, or not JUST faith, but reason and logic and all manner of thought.

So our first recourse, in defense of both Faith and Reason, these two peculiar means of judgment for Man, is to note that it is simply absurd to attempt to weigh them independent of the objects in which we we might invest them. It is silly to look at Faith or Reason in a vacuum. Yet if the atheist insists that it be done, what can we do to defend these now toppling towers?

I must admit that I wrote the first half of this essay some time ago, and I have now returned to it to answer that which was before unanswerable. I would like to argue that it is perhaps possible to defend both by noting that they have a certain value in terms of their potentiality. Even separated from the objects necessary for the mechanics to function, Faith and Reason are valuable. The sheer ability to exercise either one is an important and valuable ability to have, precisely because without them we simply could not go on living. The ability to act upon something we believe, instead of being paralyzed by a lack of knowledge, regardless of what that belief might be, and taken in as much of a vacuum as we can, must be a valuable skill, for it is the only possible skill that defeats the trap of solipsist thought. While the solipsist may not know whether anyone or anything else exists, he can still choose to act based on the belief that is informed by his senses. It is that ability to act that is valuable. Likewise, with Reason, it is, as an ability, an important tool. But unlike Faith, it is not indispensable in quite the same way. Reason truly cannot be assessed separate of objects, for while faith has a certain potentiality to it, a certain ability to act that gives it value, reason is an intellectual exercise, not an exercise of the will. Without objects to use, Reason simply is not. Which means that we may conclude, at least, that an attack upon the value of Faith certainly will not threaten it, but will always threaten Reason. So by what means may we find value in Reason, then?

If we accept that Faith has a certain intrinsic value as the ability to act on a belief, regardless of what that belief is, then it is possible to resuscitate Reason by highlighting its potential relationship with Faith. For we must remember that Faith itself has no means by which to judge the object one places faith in. The very act of locating something to have faith in requires an exercise of reason, though not necessarily a strong exercise of it. Likewise, a reasonable search for a truthful belief to live one's life in support of will require the use of Reason to find that Truth. It is simply unavoidable for the responsible, intelligent person who wants to have faith, he must use reason to first locate his object. Thus we may note that the value of reason in a vacuum doesn't lie in itself, but in its relationship to faith, in that of its supporting role and searchlight function. Reason is what informs, guides, and directs our faith, or at least it is what most of us try to use to those ends. Reason and Faith then, not only are two things of the same type, but are intrinsically and intimately related. They cannot, in fact, be separated, as so many atheists attempt in their challenges to Christians. Moreover, we can now rest assured that any attempt to isolate one from the other, or from all objects in which they might be invested, will simply lead us back to the conclusion that they are not only valuable, but indispensable and inextricable.

The Trap of Heaven and Hell

I have noticed a disturbing trend in many Christians recently. I suspect that they are caught in a trap that a great many Christians in modern America are caught in. It is that of looking at their religion simply as a grand scheme of punishment and reward and acting accordingly. If they're bad they go to Hell, if they're good they go to Heaven. This results in a religious system of belief that focuses far too much on the duality of Heaven and Hell, resulting in over-emphasis on these two things. This is observable in any street corner preacher working himself or herself into a lather condemning everyone they see to Hell. This is also observable in things like the idea of "getting saved" where people are told all they have to do is "accept Christ into their hearts" and they will be saved once and for all. Thus they condemn sinners to Hell, and rest assured that they've guaranteed themselves entrance into Heaven.

Of course, this neglects a rather large amount of Christian theology. Most especially it forgets utterly the very reason historically that Christianity appealed to so many people, or more correctly, it perverts that reason. I'll try to avoid going into it at length, at least in this first posting, but can it truly be the Grace of God that called to so many people in the Roman Empire while Christians were being turned into human candles, that is now being expressed as, "unless you're 'saved' you're Hell fodder!"? This dichotomous view of Christian, or even theistic theology, is worthless, because instead of properly understanding fear to be something to keep us from arrogance, they have instead become arrogant, and use fear to try and force others into the same arrogance. When someone doesn't fear as they do, they think that person is 1) damned, and 2) a horrible sinner who will go around doing evil because they're not ridiculously afraid all the time. The bitter irony of course is that too many people who fall under this style of thinking become so arrogant that they are unable to practice what they preach, and are of course sinners and also are just as, if not more, likely to commit crimes, or do things that might be considered morally questionable (like divorce), than those who do not fall into this thought category.

If I had to sum up the flaws with this kind of "Christian" or "theistic" thinking, I would say it is an improper understanding and perversion of God's Grace. That Grace is probably best expressed in these three words, Faith, Hope and Agape. Their philosophical stance fails in terms of Faith because their Faith is nothing more than a statement made during an emotional high, and is something they often fail to live. Their stance fails in terms of Hope because theirs is a message of fear, their reasons for converting were because of fear, their reasons for staying are ultimately out of fear, their means and motivation in proselytizing are fear, and ultimately this fear expresses itself in despair as people "backslide" and are considered to have never been "saved," in the first place, and as people spend all their time feeling pitiful and sad about those they haven't "saved" (as if REAL salvation and REAL Faith were something they could cause in another person!). And finally they fail in terms of Agape love perhaps the most of all. For the very nature of their system rejects love. Not just in the frothy mouthed zealot pronouncing damnation at the street corner; not just in the rejection of those who were "never saved in the first place," or "aren't saved yet;" not just in the lack of love shown in their ignorance of all others; but finally, and most of all, in their lack of that love which is of self-sacrifice.

The Heaven-Hell dichotomy they subscribe to is utterly selfish in its orientation. Afraid of Hell and desiring Heaven, they do what they do to avoid the punishment and get the reward. Where is the true Love of God, and Love of Neighbor that Christians are called to? How many of these people do you honestly suspect would die for you at the drop of a hat? How many would die for their God? Jesus Christ says that no greater love exists than this, that one would lay down his life for the sake of another. How many of these Christians are willing to do that?

The REAL reason Christians are called to do good is not out of Fear of punishment, or even Hope of reward, but out of Love for God and God's Creation, our brothers and sisters. St. Paul tells us that we can have all the faith, all the mighty works, and mystical gifts in the world and they will be nothing if we do not have Love. It frustrates me greatly to see so many Christians who do not understand this, who don't understand the absolutely radiant joy of this love, who are utterly focused on getting themselves to Heaven at whatever the cost, or harp on others about how they'll go to Hell if they don't accept Christ. That was NEVER the reason people in the past accepted Christ. Romans converted to Christianity because Christians were obsessed with Love of God and each other. They were so in Love they were HAPPY to be made into human candles for God, something no Roman would ever have done for Jupiter or Vulcan. Peter was so in Love with Christ that he even asked the Romans to crucify him upside down because he did not feel worthy of dying in the same way as Christ. It is this religion based on Grace that I follow and I pray that I will have that same courage and that I can show that same Love as my spiritual ancestors did. To desire anything less would be to fail my Brother, and the very thought wrenches at me.

Introduction:

Hello.

I'm the Unread Apologist. Contrary to what you might think, this doesn't mean that no one reads what I write (as an unhappy few could tell you). What it means is that I'm an apologist who is startlingly uninformed and not particularly well read or versed in apologetics material. Whether it be magesterial documents, books of theology and philosophy, or news articles and current events, be prepared for my apparent ignorance.

I chose the name since my status has become a bit of an inside joke among my fellow apologists. Even I wonder how I became arrogant enough to pursue this vocation while I yet remain unread. Apparently I'm a bit crazy. Be that as it may, this is where you'll find my writings on all subjects apologetics related!

Welcome, and enjoy!