More New Age heresy...

It's staggering how much of this is in our midst and we don't realize it.

So back in the first week of March, we had our annual faculty retreat. Before then, we had chosen one of three different sessions to experience during the course of the day. I chose "Chasing the Divine in the Evolution of the Cosmos" (or something like that).

The presentation was basically a synthesis of cosmology and spirituality. The presenter showed some videos, but mostly just gave us one tidbit of insight about the spiritual nature of the universe after another. I'll spare you the details; it amounted to more feel-good New Age pantheism.

She advocated a new way of thinking about cosmology and spirituality (or one might substitute "science" and "religion") as not mutually exclusive, but coextensive enterprises. While I'd agree with her in regards to dismissing claims of religion and science's incompatibility (such that a religious scientist would be akin to a round triangle), I do think science and religion need to keep to their own purviews. Certainly there is some overlap; empirical evidence from cosmology can be used in arguments for God's existence (for example, the cosmological and teleological arguments) and a few mathematical and scientific facts can be derived from Scripture (the use of pi in Solomon's building projects... I Kings, maybe?). Ultimately however, each must recognize where its purview ends and the other begins. The best example of this is the evidence for the beginning of the universe. Science can take us back to the singularity, but no further. To ask, "What came before the singularity?" or "What caused the singularity?" is not to a scientific question, but a metaphysical one. This is the arena of philosophy and theology, not physics and cosmology.

Back to this speaker. I discerned a couple of strategies she employed when I pressed her on specific aspects of the view she was propounding:

1. Decry the limits of language. At one point she said, "What if 'God' isn't a noun? What if 'God' was an adjective? Or a verb?" By undermining our confidence in language's ability to correspond to reality, New Agers can easily side-step tough questions. The problem with this is immediately obvious, though: if language is so limited, how does the New Age position have any more claim to truth than the traditional one?

2. This leads to the second strategy. The presentation was not advertised as a worldview, but that's what it is. As much as New Agers tout that their views are about personal experience and validation, it also comes with serious metaphysical contentions. Is God distinct from, or one and the same as, the physical universe? How you answer is not simply a matter of looking at things in a different way, it represents a truth-claim. And personal experience can only take us so far in terms of evidence for that truth-claim.

These lead to New Agers being quite slippery when pressed on the particulars of their worldview. Call 'em like you see 'em! That's what I'm trying to do.

In other news, my wife never ceases to amaze me. She is no less the superhero I thought of her as when we were just acquaintances. Creativity just bursts forth from her; I don't think she can control it (like Phoenix... remember her?).

Also she can edit HTML. Jaw-floor.

New Age heresy comes to Catholic school retreats

On Friday I attended my school's annual faculty retreat to kick-off the school year (even though I won't see my first students for another week and classes don't REALLY get going til after Labor Day). According to staff surveys at the end of last year, most of us wanted a retreat that teaches stress management techniques. So on Friday we got that, and much more.

First of all, I want to say that I don't have a problem with EVERYTHING "New Agey". I think the techniques using meridians and chakras to reduce stress are actually helpful and you might catch me "tapping it out" after a particularly stressful day in the future. Even the energy and auras and all that I don't find particularly problematic from an orthodoxy standpoint. But the theology usually attached to these techniques is certainly heretical.

I caught three distinct heresies in what we were learning on Friday: deconstructionism, pantheism, and the all-sufficiency of the self.

Interspersed with practicing various stress reduction techniques (such as reiki, cranio-sacral, and "energy medicine"), was singing New Age "hymns", viewing videos, and reading excerpts of books on these subjects. During these times, she (or the authors or songwriters) would equivocate on "God," "the universe," and "Being". Several times she insisted that we are discovering that "everything is one." One "hymn's" lyrics read: "we are the heart... of the Spirit." At the end of the retreat, she read from a book by a woman who, at the end of her life, after suffering from a painful terminal illness, rejected "belief" and embraced not any "ultimate truth" but "her truth," for this is what sustained her in the end. The speaker shut the book and then proceeded to heap praises on the author for her bravery, beauty, and other such virtues, as if at the end of her life, she had attained enlightenment. The video we watched spoke in vague terms of a "revolution in consciousness" whereby humans everywhere are beginning to realize they have what it takes to make the world a better place. All this while images of cultural diversity play on the screen.

The problem with all this isn't the sentiment it expresses, for there's nothing wrong with making the world a better place, awakening your latent potential, or human solidarity. Rather, it's what is being taught. Christ is all-sufficient, not us. I am not one with the Holy Spirit, or my fellow man, or the earth, because I am sinful and God created us as distinct individuals. Sure I may share human nature and being created in the image of God with my fellow man, but ultimately I am an individual soul, specially created by the Heavenly Father. And no matter how comfortable "a truth" or "our truth" makes us, even on our deathbed, it's irrelevant to it's really being TRUE. Truth is objective and not in any way dependent on us.

It's for these reasons that on my evaluation at the end of the retreat I labeled the content not only un-Catholic, but un-Christian. The philosophy of Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle (whose books were out on a display table the speaker had set up) is heresy. It contradicts the Christian worldview which we must take as a whole, not in just the bits we like.

Oh, and on top of all of this, the speaker was a nun.

Dang. Almost Two Years Later...

I forgot I already have this blog. I almost started a new one.

So in Tremont on Tuesday, while Emilia and Helen galavanted around the Lincoln Park playground, I had a discussion with two friends: Jeff, and his wife Pandora. Jeff told me that he likes to read books that are against Christianity (he and Pandora are evangelical, I believe). He asked me if I knew about Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion," then proceeded to give me two of the arguments from the book. The first had to do with similarities between the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern literature (in this case, the Egyptian Book of the Dead). The second was the classic atheist question/argument: "Well, who created God?!" I told them I was familiar with these objections.

Pandora asked me if this made me question my faith. I told her no, because there are good responses to them. First, alleged parallels between other Near Eastern literature and the Bible usually break down when one really looks at the passages or stories in question. For example, the resurrection of Osiris in Egyptian mythology bears little in common with resurrection in Jewish thinking (the former being tied to the Egyptians' cyclical view of reality; the latter reflecting a linear view of reality, culminating in the end of the world). Also, similarity in stories (for example, the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh and Noah's Ark) may simply reflect two accounts of a common, historical or cultural event. I submit that it would be shouldering an nearly unbearable burden of proof for one to assert that this is definitely plagiarism. Simply saying that one is earlier than the other is not enough.

In response to the old atheist "Who made God?"-line, I defer to William Lane Craig's two principal responses: 1. In order to recognize something is the best explanation, you don't need an explanation of the explanation. To require this would destroy science, for it would imply an infinite regress of explanations. If astronauts find a pile of ancient machinery on the dark side of the moon, they are justified in inferring this to be the work of intelligent extra-terrestrial life, even if they can't explain where these life forms came from, and other such questions. 2. The traditional concept of God in Christianity is one of a metaphysically necessary being. That is, a non-contingent being that exists by the necessity of its own nature. So therefore, the question "Who made a metaphysically necessary being?" is utter logical nonsense.

A Conclusion for Jehovah's Witnesses

So since last spring I have been in regular dialogue with a JW named Don.

We've discussed a lot of things. It's obvious I've been taken through the routine evangelism process, covering issues like Christ's divinity, war, holidays, the soul, and eschatology.

I think this last topic ("last things") is an appropriate time to end the visits. Here are my thoughts in the matter, and what I plan to discuss with Don next time I see him.

One of my intial challenges for him (and really any Christian sect or denomination besides Catholicism and Orthodoxy) was to establish authority for the Watchtower Society's interpretation of Scripture, since this would be the basis for any discussion of doctrine to come. Don's response was to turn to Scripture, citing Jesus's parable of the "narrow path" and "fruits" as indicators of religious authority.

Specifically, the "fruits" Don identified as the good works, pleasant demeanors and the ethnically and nationally diverse nature of the JW's. This he contrasted with the "pagan" influences of celebrating holidays, encouraging Voodoo, and pronouncing the impeccability of the pope.

The problem with this is that approx. one-sixth of the world is Catholic, a tradition that's been around for 2,000 years. I can say with great confidence that for every "good" JW, I can produce a "good" Catholic. This renders his argument ineffective as a means of establishing authority.

Authority to interpret Scripture in the Catholic faith is largely historical. The Church was the institution that arose from the early apostolic Christian communities. No other Christian faith but Orthodoxy can make that claim.

I've tried to get Don to examine the historical roots of his own church, which, the more I read, are pretty dubious. Some highlights:

1. Unlike the founders of Catholicism, namely the Apostles and Christ himself, Charles Taze Russell (and Joseph Smith for that matter) had historically documented motives for establishing a non-traditional Christian sect. Russell questioned his faith at an early age and was uncomfortable with hell and predestination. He bounced around between Presbyterianism, Adventism, and Congregationalism before founding the movement that would become the JW's.

2. Also unlike the founders of traditional Christianity, Russell had some serious character flaws which are indicative of a deceptive personality. In 1913, Russell sued Baptist minister J.J. Ross in the Ontario High Court for libel for a tract Ross wrote about Russell the previous year. Ross accused Russell of being undereducated in areas of religious concern, such as theology, classical languages and philosophy. Ross also discussed Russell's divorce with Marie Ackley on the grounds that he was cruel and had "wrong relations with other women". Court transcripts show Russell perjured himself by lying repeatedly on the stand regarding his; knowledge of Greek, education, ordination, and separation from his wife, to the point that his suit against Ross was dismissed. Russell had lost another libel suit a few months prior. He sued the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for publishing a piece of investigative journalism regarding his "miracle wheat" advertised in the Watchtower magazine. The seed was claimed to grow five times as much as any other seed and proceeds were to go to the Watchtower and for publishing Russell's sermons. During the course of the trial, a government panel tested the wheat and found it un-miraculous in its growth, and the suit was dismissed.

3. Russell's credentials as a religious leader were poor. During the Ontario trial, Russell himself admitted to having never taken a philosophy or theology course, dropping out of school at age fourteen, and he knew nothing of Latin, Hebrew or Greek.

More concerning is the nature of JW doctrine, especially its contradictory and sometimes dishonest date-setting:

1. In 1881, Russell wrote about his short-lived partner Nelson Barbour's prediction that Christ would return physically in 1874. Russell then argued that Christ had come, but his coming was invisible. Originally, Russell himself also believed in a physical return, but in the 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witness, his first pamphlet (which he wrote in 1877 about Christ's invisible coming in 1874) was back-dated to 1873 in order to look like Russell knew the return to be invivsible all along!

2. Russell then went on to formulate a chronology with Barbour in 1876 that predicted the rapture of the church in 1878 and the beginning of the earthly golden age in 1914.

3. Two books expliciting setting dates for end time events, The Time is at Hand (1912) and Thy Kingdom Come (1901), were later doctored to salvage failed prophecies (the former in 1920 and the latter in 1907).

4. After 1914 came and went, Russell and Rutherford (2nd president of the Watchtower Society) returned to old tactics and dishonestly claimed Russell had predicted an invisible return of Christ in 1914.

5. Rutherford next fixed 1925 as the date the resurrection of "the faithful men of Israel", including "Abraham, Isaac, Jacob". He even built a mansion and bought a luxury car for the occasion.

6. The Watchtower sets 1975 as the date of the end of Armageddon, but finally, learns somewhat from its mistakes and remains ambiguous as to whether this is doctrinally true or just speculation.

All this undermines any claim to authority. More disconcerning is the dubious New World Translation, which uses poor knowledge of biblical language to justify JW beliefs.

But for me, the historical evidence is enough. How can a founder so flawed as Russell and the Watchtower be convincing as a candidate for truth? I don't get it.

All in al,l Don may be right that the JW's are a narrow path, but it's in the wrong direction. They might have some fruit, but no more than other trees, and their roots are rotten.

Cosmological Argument

Warburton points out that the design arguments are empirical; that they are based on direct observation of the universe. The First Cause or Cosmological Argument is instead based merely on the fact that the universe exists. This is important for understanding the Argument, its objections, and the responses to those objections.

The Argument states:

1. Whatever exists has a cause.
2. The universe exists.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Notice God is not attributed to being this universal "cause". If he was, we would have the objection Warburton raises first. The Argument is self-contradictory because it shows that nothing exists that is uncaused and yet doesn't apply this premise to God. He is the uncaused cause. By the logic of the Argument, wouldn't we be justified in asking, "what caused God?"

The atheist conversely promotes the view that the universe is eternal, an infinite regression of causes. But that would violate premise (1) because the infinite string of causes, namely, the always-existing universe, is causeless. It is the one exception. Just like God in the alternative.

This is why I prefer the Argument as structured above for its simplicity and its invitation to investigate the nature of the concluded-upon cause. Inevitably we are forced to "empiricize" the Argument further than simply that the universe exists in order to improve its force in proving God's existence.

Let's return to the idea of an infinite regression of causes. This is preferred by atheists to the standard Big Bang model because it escapes the need to explain the original cause, the "big banger". An eternal universe is not a new idea, the Greeks assumed it, and the modern cosmologist seeking to avoid the implications of the Big Bang devises clever alternate theories all based on an infinite universal past. (Multiverses, for example)

But can an actually infinite number of real things actually exist? A potentially infinite number of things can surely exist: a given distance can be divided in half, those halves into fourths, those fourths into eighths, on and on into infinity. But can an actual infinite number of things exist?

Contemporary mathematics says no, simply because real, actually infinite progressions produce self-contradictions. For example, what is infinity minus infinity? Zero, you might respond, but consider this: if you had an actually infinite progression and subtracted every odd item, 1, 3, 5, etc. on into infinity, your math problem's solution, infinity minus infinity, now equals infinity (every even item), not zero! So an actually infinite series cannot exist, they are just ideas.

Now, accepting that the universe has a cause, and since time and space itself came about as a result of the Big Bang, we can deduce that that cause is transcendent, that is, outside space and time. Since the idea of casuality is bound to time-space, we have ample reason to conclude the universe's ultimate cause is an un-caused cause, so as to avoid Warburton's objection of self-contradiction.

His final objection is the same as with the design arguments: that the Argument is limited in what it proves of the theists' traditional definition of God. I concede this, with some modifications to what Warburton says the Argument does show about God. We agree the Argument shows an all-powerful God able to create everything within time and space. Warburton however denies that the Argument proves omniscience. I contend it does, since an effect cannot be greater than its cause (the so-called Principle of Causality). It would be absurd to claim that God created a universe that contains more knowledge than he as Creator possesses. He would have to possess at least as much knowledge as is in his "effect," or Creation, and since the idea of knowledge existing outside our universe is pure speculation, we may at this time conclude God to be omniscient from the Cosmological Argument.

Theist philosophers also contend the Argument shows a personal, rather than mechanical, first-cause, because for a transcendent cause to make a temporal effect, it has to be a personal agent freely choosing to cause an effect in the temporal realm. If the transcendent cause were mechanical, its effect would be, logically, likewise transcendent, not temporal.

The Cosmological Argument is mute on God's all-goodness, due to the fact of the existence of evil and suffering in the universe he caused to exist. This will be addressed in a later argument.

Design Arguments

The basic design or teleological argument goes as follows:

1. Every design must have a designer.
2. There is evidence of design throughout the universe.
3. Therefore, this universal design must have a universal designer.
4. This universal designer is "God".

Inherent to this argument is an analogy: what we define as design as it is embodied in what we know are designed objects, pocketwatches for example, and natural elements of the universe. Warburton calls this a weak analogy because the similarities between a pocketwatch and say, the human eye, are very general. Both are complex "machines" that fulfill their intended purpose. Compare this to a stronger analogy: a cat is like a kitten, where similarities are much more precise. Being a weak analogy doesn't nullify the logic of the argument, but it does reduce its force, since conclusions drawn from vague analogies will be correspondingly vague. I agree with Warburton on this, which is why I prefer other versions of the design argument.

However, there are other objections to the basic argument I'd like to respond to before going on. First is the explanatory power of Darwinian evolution in relation to design. Granted that design appears in nature, evolution by natural selection (or survival of the fittest) explains this without God. Organisms appear "designed" because genes advantageous for the organism to flourish in its natural environment are passed on from previous generations via the mechanisms of natural selection.

Evolution has great significance for biological design, but what about cosmological design? What bearing does evolution have on the physical laws and constants in place since the beginning of the universe that allow natural selection on Earth to even take place? None. Thus the explanatory scope is limited and therefore has limited efficacy in reducing the force of the design argument in general.

Warburton's next objection is that God's omnipotence can not be discerned from universal design because of certain "design-flaws" observed in nature, such as the human eye's tendency toward short-sightedness or cataracts. This objection is deeply flawed for its unstated assumption: that we know what God would or wouldn't design the universe to be. Warburton assumes efficiency and neatness, or comfort and happiness would be God's only purposes in design. He imposes a very human presupposition on God. Warburton would first have to prove that God's purpose in design can even be known, then that that purpose is one of efficiency and neatness, or happiness and comfort. But he does not.

His last objection I agree with: that God's all-goodness and omniscience cannot be discerned by the design argument. Warburton cites the long-dicussed philosophical conundrum: the Problem of Evil, which makes reconciling God's goodness with the reality of human suffering difficult. I want to address this later but for now let it be that I agree the design argument is mute on the all-good and all-knowing attributes of God.

So what does the argument show? I'll return to this question after we examine what I think to be more favorable versions of the design argument I alluded to earlier.

The first is the Anthropic Principle, which states that the probability that the universe turned out to be conducive to human survival is so tiny, that we must conclude a divine designer. Indeed, science has shown us that initial conditions at key moments in the development of our universe (namely, the Big Bang and the origin of life) to be so narrowly and arbitrarily defined as to suggest a Designer who set all the "dials" to their appropriate numbers in order that we humans might be here today.

Warburton's only objection is a lottery analogy. If you won the lottery, and the initial probability that you'd win was extremelly tiny, but you played and won anyway, you wouldn't be justified in thinking something other than random chance was going on, since statistical improbabilities can still happen.

Granting improbabilities can happen by random chance, Warburton is however guilty here of his initial objection to the design argument: the weak analogy. As previously explained, science has shown numerous, independent factors that had to be just right in order to permit life (entropy and the gravitational constant for example). If you won the lottery, you might not be justified in suspecting anything other than chance, but what if you won three lotteries in one day, all equally improbable? You would begin to suspect a conspiracy. This would be a better analogy to the Anthropic Principle but Warburton does not use it because of its implications, namely that suspecting a Designer becomes more reasonable.

A variant of the Anthropic Principle is the argument from fine-tuning, which simply expands the scope of the Principle from the universe designed for human life to the universe designed first to be stable, then to permit any life (although in some versions of the Principle, these extentions are implicit). Fine-tuning is not design, but a dozen or so constants or parameters seemingly set arbitrarily so as to permit a stable and life-permiting universe. If you come across a stereo that is set to certain levels of volume, bass and treble so as to produce the best sound, you would be within reason to assume someone set them that way.

Two objections to this: chance and physical necessity. Some would say that the universe had to turn out stable and life-permitting, but this would require one to prove that it's impossible for a universe hostile to life to exist. Contemporary science cannot do that, and in fact, most research is proving the opposite: that it was more likely that the universe have collapsed after the Big Bang than otherwise. Scientists that ascribe blind chance to the fine-tuning of the universe are forced to concoct Multiverse theories so that if one had an infinite progression of universes with different values for those constants and parameters, we would eventually see a universe with life-permitting values... and lucky us! We just happen to be in one! There are a lot of problems with positing multiple universes, not the least of which is the complete lack of empirical evidence for such a claim. I'll discuss this subject more later but for now let it suffice to say science has repeatedly confirmed the standard model of the universe: that of the Big Bang, in which the universe had a beginning in the finite past, which will lead me into the next set of arguments.

So again, what do the design arguments prove? Not all of what theists believe God to be, but a good chunk. If we accept the Anthropic Principle and fine-tuning argument, we have an entity great and intelligent enough to set up a life-permitting universe with special attention to human beings. If we accept the broader design argument we have an intelligent designer great enough to account for all design in the universe.