My post on Mary’s visit to New York has drawn rebuke (here and here), and for good reason: its tone was clearly self-indulgent and insensitive. I apologize and thank Joe Carter and Tom Piatak for their civility in responding.
But however poorly phrased, the post was an honest cri du coeur. (Not that I’m claiming that honesty justifies every callous indiscretion.) I don’t think that I’m the only person to have ever been mystified or at least unpersuaded by the use of idols. Mr. Piatak and Mr. Carter may have so absorbed secular tolerance that they would see in a Yoruba tribesman’s devotion to his wooden Juju simply a wonderfully diverse manifestation of human spirituality. But many missionaries have demurred from a tribesman’s claims about the role of his ancestor’s effigy in maintaining civil order and protecting the tribe.
Mr. Piatak points out the magnificent artistic legacy of Catholic practice. No argument there; I am hopelessly indebted to the great Masses, as well as to Bach’s Lutheran works. Shallow baby-boomer snake-oil offers no competition to these inestimable treasures or to the ethical and intellectual tradition of Christianity.
Mr. Piatak also observes that people have committed great acts of heroism and compassion inspired by Mary worship. People have also wreaked cruelty and destruction motivated by Catholicism and almost every other flavor of faith and non-faith. None of this tells me whether the supernatural tenets of any given faith have sufficient empirical support to justify rational adherence to them.
Mr. Carter writes:
If Marian devotion is indeed similar to believing in the healing power of crystals or the predictive power of entrails, then Mac Donald would be warranted in her disrespect.
The gratitude for the innumerable blessings of our life that is directed towards Mary’s image is admirable. Her image is also approached as a means of intercession. I would wager that Marian devotion has an identical track record to crystals and other forms of talismanic power in protecting worshippers from the vicissitudes of fortune. For every remembered moment where a prayer seems to have been answered, there are countless other instances where nothing happened or worse: where innocents trapped by earthquake, fire, hurricane, flood, or landslide were not pulled out alive or where cancer, plague, or a genetic abnormality claimed its victim, despite the fervent prayers and petitions of worshippers.
But I don’t want to fetishize the fetish. Believing that human affairs are “under the direction of a loving, personal God” who knows each of us “by name” and shows his “care every day,” as Michael Novak puts it in No One Sees God, strikes me as equally contrary to the daily experience of innocent human suffering, whether that belief is directed to a wooden image or no image at all.
Carter: “How could an intellectual—a conservative intellectual at that—still think that Catholics worship a wooden icon?”
Because, despite plenty of obfuscation, they do. That’s how.
This part was funny:
“It’s distressing enough that she intimates that the Catholics in Mexico might not be as bright as those in Manhattan. But where does she think Marian devotion originated? Does Mac Donald think the doctrine was fleshed out by day-laborers in Mexico City rather than by theologians in Rome?”
It’s distressing that Carter intimates that the Catholic day-laborers in Mexico City might not be as bright as theologians in Rome.
Unless this was meant sarcastically, Ms. MacDonald has just lost major face with me.
Apologizing when you’re is in the wrong is laudable; doing it when you aren’t is not.
Way to go, Heather. Cower and apologize when confronted by believers in magic fairy superstition. Your critics’ whining about you pointing out the insaneness of their delusion is the same thing liberals do. And you cave in and admit to “insensitivity”, oh my, how liberal and tolerant of you. Jesus Son of Mary, why don’t you just go ahead and convert? To the Democratic Party, I mean.
If you ask me, the world could use some more cold, hard, objective truth and do without some of the rampant “sensitivity” to inferior, outdated, anti-scientific ideas.
Thank you for your civil response as well.
It would be interesting to compare and contrast the things that humanists spend time thinking about (say, The Millennium Clock and its quasi-spiritual mission) with the things that religious people think about (say, Our Lady of Guadalupe).
I wonder if, in the larger sense, we might be willing to admit that both Millennium Clocks and Marys are irrelevant?
I argued against MacDonald in the previous post, but I don’t think she needed to apologize. From her POV, it makes sense to raise an eyebrow when a secular area suddenly begins hosting novel religious ceremonies. I certainly wouldn’t like if it some foreigners showed up in large numbers on my street practicing some weird ritual. In fact, I’m not happy about a lot of that as it is. Why get touchy-feely about that?
MacDonald’s later point about artwork not justifying belief in God is logically correct, but it’s irrelevant to the first post, which was seeking a distinction between idolatry and iconography. She’s pretty much clarified that point here by citing several works of art. Idols are objects of worship; icons are a means of worship and communication. They are often abused and turned into idols, but when they’re done right, they can be quite excellent and worthy of respect, even if the object of their worship doesn’t exist.
As I think about it more, I think we’re simply seeing a symptom of the human condition — the brain is an image-processing machine, and a incredibly persistent one, so there is a natural tendency to associate images with more abstract moral concepts.
So the Virgin Mary, the loving mother, is associated with a whole range of emotions and abstractions. Whether those emotions or abstractions have any intrinsic legitimacy is almost irrelevant; you either associate those feelings with the symbol (perhaps because of your upbringing) or you don’t. If you also happen to believe in the story of the Virgin Mary and her role in the history of your religion, then obviously those associations are stronger.
Yet we also have symbols that have no modern spiritual component (say, a Christmas Tree or Batman*) that also bring strong emotional associations.
* http://xkcd.com/616/
Heather….look.
Religion isn’t bad…it is the greatest fitness enhancer that exists for left side of the bell curve.
It is EVANGELIZING that causes all the problems.
Proselytizing….mine is better than yours and you are going to hell if you don’t convert.
Missionariism, and spreading “the good word”.
Fundamentalism isn’t evil….it is the desire to push fundamentalism on other people that is evil.
Dawkins and the New Atheists aren’t fundamentalists….they are evangelicals. They want to replace religion, with their infinitely superior atheism. 😉
And I’m surprised you haven’t had any thing to say about Bush’s Gog/Magog fantasy war….do you think we will eventually find out Bush was crafting policy Israeli/Palestinian policy with John Hagee and they were planning on using Israel as a staked goat to bring down the Rapture?
Heather has no reason to apologize. Certainly the worship or idolization of Mary has a long and colorful history and is part of our Western tradition, but rationally it is no different than worshiping a voodoo doll. I raised my daughter in the Episcopal Church so she would learn the traditions of our ancestors, not so she would become a believing Christian.
Umm, does anyone here have a picture of a loved one on their desk? Has anyone stopped for a moment of silence in front of the Lincoln Monument, the Vietnam Memorial, or the Holocaust museum? If you answered “yes”, then you have felt the same emotions that draw people to statues and images of God and His saints. You might think that believers are mistaken about His existence, but they’re not inconsistent or illogical in wanting to have reminders of God around, if they believe in Him. A heart overflowing with love and wanting to channel that love via beautiful works of art is not a weird thing, it’s a human thing.
Is the irony here intentional?
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“Because, despite plenty of obfuscation, they do. That’s how”
I cannot determine whether the ignorance on display here is feigned or genuine. Is it even possible that someone in America, much less a self-styled “conservative”, could come to the age of majority so profoundly ignorant of the history of Western Civilization that they honestly do not understand the essential, categorical difference between the worship of an idol and the worship of God through an icon, not to mention the historical import and ramifications of that difference? Surely this is disingenuous, puerile play-acting. Although the public school systems being what they are I shouldn’t be surprised if that ignorant assertion was made in earnest.
“It’s distressing enough that she intimates that the Catholics in Mexico might not be as bright as those in Manhattan”
I fail to see how that would be “distressing”. Surely there are IQ tests and so forth one might use to compare the relative “brightness” of these different populations.
“It’s distressing that Carter intimates that the Catholic day-laborers in Mexico City might not be as bright as theologians in Rome.”
You secularists sure are an easily-distressed lot. I, for one, would be shocked if Mexican “day-laborers” were as “bright” as “theologians in Rome”, considering the education and accomplishments of the great theological minds of Rome compared to those of Mexican day laborers.
I raised my daughter in the Episcopal Church so she would learn the traditions of our ancestors, not so she would become a believing Christian.
Well, you certainly seem to have picked the right church.
None of this tells me whether the supernatural tenets of any given faith have sufficient empirical support to justify rational adherence to them.
I’m not trying to pick a fight here. You actually seem to be someone that can carry on a civil conversation on this topic. I am, however, mystified by comments like this. Perhaps you could explain. I’m Catholic. To me, this is a contradictory statement. Let me explain…
You mention “any given faith”. That last word there is critical – FAITH. Christianity is a faith. Without faith, it’s meaningless. Yet you attach to a faith a requirement for “sufficient empirical support”. You’re not expecting faith of Christians, you’re expecting evidence (correct me if I’m wrong here). Evidence will not be forthcoming.
If God supplied you with sufficient evidence to prove His existence in a sufficiently empirical way, then there would be no need of faith at all. In that case, you could replace the word “faith” with “submission”, I suppose. If He asks faith of us, why would he want to give empirical evidence?
Another flaw in the logic, in my opinion of course, is the idea that the supernatural can be subjected to scientific rules of evidence. Science is limited to the natural world. No matter how hard you try, you can’t stretch scientific inquiry into the realm of super nature. Since super nature is, by definition, above nature, why would you assume that natural science would be able to measure something above nature?
No, science is limited to the observable world. Nature includes all that exists, whether we can observe it or not. Science attempts to understand nature through observation and reason.
None of this tells me whether the supernatural tenets of any given faith have sufficient empirical support to justify rational adherence to them.
Do you believe that your mother loves you? Can you prove empirically that she loves you? Does the lack of empirical proof mean that your belief that she loves you is an unreasonable one?
Do you believe that Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15, 44 BC? Can you prove empirically that this actually happened? Can any event that history teaches us occurred 2,000 years ago be proven empirically to have happened? Does that render unreasonable our belief in those events as facts?
Take a fact that CAN be proven empirically– for example, that most water molecules are composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. How many facts such as this one that can be proven empircally are as important to us as humans as our belief that we are loved by our mothers? Is history really less valuable to us than chemistry because the former is not an empirical science and the latter is? I propose that we can elevate empirical science over other methods of evaluating factual claims only at a tremendous cost to our humanity.
It seems to me the question of whether one ought to accept as true certain claims made by Christianity, or by any religion, should be guided by whether those claims are reasonable to believe and not by whether they can be proven in an observable and repeatable experiment.
I am a Christian. I am prepared to defend my Christian beliefs as not only being reasonable, but also as the most reasonable belief in the face of historical evidence and of what we know about our own humanity. The case for Christian faith is, to be sure, based on what lawyers would term circumstantial evidence. But so is the case against Christian faith. American courts regularly send people to prison for long stretches of time (and occasionally render death sentences) based on evidence that is circumstantial and not empirical. To dismiss belief in a fact simply because the fact cannot be proven empirically is to place limits on the things one is willing to believe that are always arbitrary and often quite silly.
But the basic idea of religion, in general terms, is that it is supernatural. Science can’t measure a nature above nature. You implicitly agree with that.
But your point doesn’t touch on the requirement of proof for a faith. It’s illogical.
Also, it’s quite reasonable to believe in God. Failure to believe is irrational.
It seems to me the question of whether one ought to accept as true certain claims made by Christianity, or by any religion, should be guided by whether those claims are reasonable to believe and not by whether they can be proven in an observable and repeatable experiment.
Caledonian, you seem to like reason. To take Rick’s point a step further, I’ll say this – it is easily possible to use reason alone to arrive at the logical conclusion that God exists. Would you like me to explain?
@Mark Windsor
. Yeah, science doesn’t have much to say about incoherent concepts, beyond noting that they are incoherent.
Declaring something “supernatural” is merely taking an asserted and hypothetical aspect of the natural world and exempting your discussion of it from the principles of logic that we apply to everything else. There’s no such thing as a supernatural [whatever]. If unicorns and psychics and UFOs with rectally-obsessed aliens exist, they’re all natural entities.
No, I’d like you to leave. This site isn’t for you.
Aw, Caledonian, you almost had me thinking that you’re a liberal. You kinda sounded like one there for a minute. C’mon, what’s wrong with a little healthy discussion? I am in fact a conservative. One who’s read a fair amount of Russell Kirk, and knows that the first of the six canons of conservative thought begins with the belief in a transcendent order. One who’s read enough Dostoyevski to know that, “without God, all things are permissible.” And one who’s read St. Augustine: “They love truth when it enlightens them, they hate truth when it exposes them. Because they do not wish to be deceived and so wish to deceive, they love truth when it reveals itself, and hate it when it reveals them.”
Simply put…
When you breath your last in this life, one of two things will be true. There either is a God, or there is not. Like it or not, you will eventually be faced with this reality, as will we all. You have a 50/50 chance of being right – no more, no less. As a result, there are only four possibilities from this question:
1.God exists, and I believe in Him.
2.God exists, and I do not believe in him.
3.God does not exist, and I believe.
4.God does not exist, and I do not believe.
You must wager on one of these four outcomes. You have no option. Eventually, you will pass from this life and face one of these four outcomes. You only have a 50% chance of being right, and you only have four outcomes.
You wager on the fact that God does not exist, and you do not believe in him. I wager on the fact that God does exist, and I believe in Him. If I am right, then I win everything. If you are right, then I lose nothing. You don’t have a winning wager; if you’re right, you loose nothing, if you’re wrong, you lose everything. You must wager. Everyone must.
To each of these outcomes there are only three answers: yes, no and evasion. Death removes evasion as an option. Thought experiment: Suppose Romeo proposes to Juliet. Juliet puts him off. She says to wait for the answer, but the waiting goes on and on. Eventually, she dies. Her evasion became a de facto “no”. Death turns agnosticism into atheism; tomorrow turns into never.
If I offer you a lotto ticket, free of charge, with the understanding that it’s a 50/50 shot at winning. That’s right, you have a 1:2 chance of winning. The prize is a billion dollars. No strings attached. Is it not reasonable to accept the gift freely given, to at least hope in the 50/50 chance coming in on your side?
You simply cannot pin your salvation on the infallibility of your own reason. It is certainly rational to believe. What holds you back is not, therefore, rationality but irrationality; not reason, but passion.
My mistake was in thinking that this might be a site where a discussion might be had. It seems not, since half the discussion isn’t welcome.
Wow! Who knew that probabilities worked that way?
I’ve also heard that President Obama is a secret Muslim (or a Nazi, or the Antichrist, or a Martian). For each of these options, there seem to be two choices: either he is or he isn’t. I guess that means each side has a “50/50 chance of being right.”
Creation Science, meet Theistic Math.
Oh, c’mon, Peter, you can do better than that. One toss of a single coin is still a 1:2 chance of landing heads, right? You don’t factor in vague notions of psychology and political science to skew your odds. Remember, the coin lands only once. We’re not talking about Obama and his many machinations. A singe toss of a single coin.
It’s really, really simple and you have no option but to wager on the outcome of the toss.
Mark, you have given the Pascal’s Wager argument.
The reason why it is invalid is that there aren’t just two possibilities. The possibilities are
1. There is no God.
2. God exists, and anyone who doesn’t worship the Christian God will be punished.
3. God exists, and anyone who doesn’t worship the Muslim God will be punished.
4. God exists, and anyone who doesn’t worship the Wiccan Gods will be punished…
You have to pick the right choice from an infinite number of choices, and I think that the most probable is #1.
No, John, that’s not quite right. Paschal’s Wager is not about an infinite number of options. It’s about the existence of a Christian God. It says so in the Pensees, but I’m headed to the airport and don’t have time to look up the cite. Paschal’s Wager is a distinctly Christian argument. To go beyond this is not possible in a combox.
What is seen in nature indicates neither the manifest presence of God, nor the absolute absence, but rather a hidden God – just like it says in Isaiah 45:15.
It’s been interesting, folks, but I’ll leave you alone now.
One last point. Thank you, John, for at least taking the time to answer rather than posting simple ridicule or ill manners. The previous are exactly what I would have gotten on a liberal blog (less the profanity here), so it’s nice to see that there is still a modicum of difference.
@Mark Windsor
Mark,
I don’t think you have tried yet (in #23) to understand or answer my original point (#22). I’ll attempt to be clearer.
My point was that, sure, you can show me that potential states of affairs have two and only two possible outcomes (heads/tails; alive/dead; God/no-God). But that fact doesn’t make those outcomes equally likely — i.e., that doesn’t mean you have a 50/50 chance of getting one or the other.
Consider the following, each of which has binary, non-overlapping options:
1. Roll a six-sided die. Did you get a multiple of three? There are only two options: Yes or No. Is that a 50/50 chance?
2. Randomly select a current inhabitant of Earth. Was he or she born in Canada? There are only two options: Canadian-born or non-Canadian-born. Do you have a 50/50 chance of selecting a Canuck?
3. Will I wake up next Tuesday with telekinetic abilities? There are only possible outcomes: I will or I won’t. Do I have a 50/50 chance of moving things with my mind?
Not all two-outcome situations are like coin flips. In fact, most aren’t — and the number of logical possible outcomes tells you nothing about the probabilities of those outcomes.
Given that, why should I think that the probability of God’s existence is closer to a coin-flip than to my possible telekinesis?
And that’s not all. You also completely missed the point of Pascal’s Wager.
For Pascal, the issue isn’t that the existence and non-existence of God are equally probable. Probability isn’t the issue. The real issue is potential costs/benefits and consequences.
Pascal said if I bet on God’s non-existence and I’m right, I get nothing. But if I’m wrong, I’m screwed for all eternity.
On the other hand, if I bet that God does exist, and I’m wrong — I don’t really lose anything. I won’t even know that I lost. If I’m right, however, then I (potentially) win the universe’s biggest jackpot.
For Pascal, there are no practical downsides to “betting on God” — even if you lose — and there are some extreme downsides to betting against Him. That’s what makes it, for Pascal, a no-brainer.
BUT AGAIN, this has nothing to do with the ODDS of God’s existence. Like a lottery, the odds could be against you, but the (possible) prize makes it all worth it.
OK. I just noticed that in your last post (#25), you said that you’re now leaving this issue alone. After a too-long reply, so am I.