The Differences Between Jesus and Mohammed

While it's not exactly the theme of this post it is in the background:

The Appeal of Islam in a Poorly Catechized World:

Are We Losing the Apologetics War with Islam?


Islamic cultures are honor cultures, and the religion of Islam might justly be described as an honor religion. Allah is in charge and he...

Read the whole thing.

(Via .)

My List

includes reading some contemporary philosophers. Among those would be Alasdeir Macintyre. Pending that being checked off here is some interesting tidbits to whet my appetite. (Be sure the read the whole of the original essay):

Francis, Benedict, and MacIntyre:

I enjoyed this essay, by John Haldane, called "Francis, Benedict, and MacIntyre," which is up at Ethika Politica.  Here is a taste:

MacIntyre shares with Benedict and Francis three central beliefs: first, that contemporary Western culture is at sea when it comes to thinking about the foundations of morality; second, that it is characterised by a pervasive relativism; and third, that this relativism is not only “cognitive” but is also affective and practical.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Mirror of Justice.)

Why Jesus is God: A Response to Bart Ehrman | Catholic World Report - Global Church news and views

Besides the brief critique of Hume's reasoning on miracles (circular) Father Barron uses a wonderful term: Semiotics.

Why Jesus is God: A Response to Bart Ehrman | Catholic World Report - Global Church news and views:

...In this most recent tome, Ehrman lays out what is actually a very old thesis, going back at least to the 18th century and repeated ad nauseam in skeptical circles ever since, namely, that Jesus was a simple itinerant preacher who never claimed to be divine and whose “resurrection” was in fact an invention of his disciples who experienced hallucinations of their master after his death. Of course Ehrman, like so many of his skeptical colleagues across the centuries, breathlessly presents this thesis as though he has made a brilliant discovery. But basically, it’s the same old story. When I was a teenager, I read British Biblical scholar Hugh Schonfield’s Passover Plot, which lays out the same narrative, and just a few months ago, I read Reza Aslan’s Zealot, which pursues a very similar line, and I’m sure next Christmas or Easter I will read still another iteration of the theory.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Insight Scoop|The Ignatius Press Blog.)

The Black Legend

as it is called by some, is beginning to disintegrate, at least among the educated and disinterested. The popularity of Monty Python's send-up of it might be a marker of the ebbing of that tide. Check out the video that is in the link below from (of all sources) the BBC. It's interesting and educational:

Cosmos in the Lost offers Praise…:

…for the Inquisition.  I always enjoy it when pseudoknowledge gets spanked.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

What I Believe

The recent attempt at a dialogue with a Bible-only commenter hasn't borne fruit, yet. That's ok, not everyone is into discourse.

Perhaps what is needed is to first establish the common ground that we have. To effectively disagree with someone you must first have something you both agree on. Otherwise you have no common terms or concepts which you can both appeal to. The debate ends up being two unrelated soliloquies interrupting each other. So what, potentially, do I have in common with most Bible-only Christians?

First and foremost, we have Jesus Christ, Lord and Saviour. No one and nothing takes precedence, once you have recognized Him. As a Catholic I feel obliged to point out that this includes, logically speaking, the Bible. Not that they are opposed to each other or in tension somehow. Rather, that the Bible only stands–directly and indirectly–on Jesus Himself:

“[S]cripture cannot be broken”


(John 10:35 RSV)

And I find the ancient Roman baptismal formula (via Tertullian) to be an excellent summary of Christian beliefs about Jesus:

We,...believe that there is one only God...that this one only God has also a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Him we believe to have been sent by the Father into the Virgin, and to have been born of her-being both Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and to have been called by the name of Jesus Christ; we believe Him to have suffered, died, and been buried, according to the Scriptures, and, after He had been raised again by the Father and taken back to heaven, to be sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that He will come to judge the quick and the dead.

Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, eds., Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian (ANF III; Accordance electronic ed. 9 vols.; New York: Christian Literature Company, 1885), n.p.

This testimony [circa A.D. 213] is an early example of the ancient belief of those who eventually defined for us the canon of Scripture. Of course the remainder of the formula will refer to "the Holy Church". And examining what the First Christians meant by that may well divide us.

Second, we have the Scripture, though my Protestant brethren have a truncated version. We will both profess, I hope, verbal plenary Inspiration of Scripture. For the meaning of this the Wikipedia gives a good summary:

This view gives a greater role to the human writers of the Bible, while maintaining a belief that God preserved the integrity of the words of the Bible."[18] The effect of inspiration was to move the authors so as to produce the words God wanted.[17] In this view the human writers' "individual backgrounds, personal traits, and literary styles were authentically theirs, but had been providentially prepared by God for use as his instrument in producing Scripture."[18]

Admittedly that might actually separate me from some Catholics today but it doesn't have to. This language is generally associated with Evangelicals but is fully compatible with orthodox Catholic thought.

If my interlocutor avers the Dictation Theory of Biblical Inspiration then we must part ways and begin our conversation there.

Is that enough to begin with?

Evangelization and Arguments

I recently deleted a comment because it had no relationship the post it was allegedly commenting on. I’ve been thinking about the comment, the writer’s purposes, his assumptions and his method.

HIs topic was the Catholic honouring of the Saints. He argued against it by citing Bible passages that contain the words Saint or Saints and showing that none of these passages refer to a dead saint. HIs purpose, seemingly, would be to lead me from Catholic “error” into Biblical truth. There’s nothing wrong with trying to increase the amount of truth on the Internet.

The assumptions he makes about the Bible are interesting. He seems to assume that the Protestant canon of Scripture is correct and so ignores the clear testimony of 2 Macc 15:11-17. But that book is one of those which isn’t in his canon so he ignored it. And I’m wondering if he’s assuming the Perspicuity of Scripture based on his doing an English word search and basing his conclusions on that. That is not at all unusual amongst "Bible Only” Christians.

I assume that he didn’t do this study especially for me since it wasn’t related to the post. So how to rate his effectiveness? In the end my intellectual curiosity was aroused by his comment, even if I deleted it. But what chance did he have of persuading me when we’re so far apart in some key beliefs?

 The kinds of issues he would need to deal with would include: 

• The process and authority of the closing of the canon of Scripture;
• The clear Scriptural reference to the difficulty of interpreting Scripture (2 Pet 3:15-16);
• The failure of Scripture to claim for itself the authority that “Sola Scriptura” claims for it;
• The fact that both written and oral Tradition are honoured in Scripture.
• The ultimate circularity of the Bible-Only position.

That’s a lot of ground to cover. Perhaps you would like to comment on this post.

Gay Parents Are Just Like Other Parents?

Is there some room to express doubt about that?

Life on GLAAD’s Blacklist | LifeSiteNews.com:

America doesn't know that this is part of same-sex parenting, because Americans have been blocked from hearing from me, Dawn Stefanowicz, Jean-Dominique Bunel, "Janna," Manuel Half, Rivka Edelman, and the blogger known as "the Bigot" -- just some of the many people I've come to know over the last year and a half, who have the human stories to dispel the myth that all is well with "gay families." This scares the crap out of people at GLAAD. It scares the crap out of them that I'm a professor and fluent enough in the way research works to know that the "consensus" on same-sex parenting is a fraud. It scares the crap out of them that I have a scholarly record in African-American Studies and queer readings of Thoreau and Whitman, so they can't write me off as a wacko, unwashed homophobe.

Read the whole thing.

(Via LifeSiteNews.)

I Agree with Mark Shea

and Simcha Fisher:

Simcha Fisher Talks Sense…:

…to bedwetting panicmongers.

If some stranger came to me and said, “I thought I overheard your wife say that she is a Zoroastrian who spits on Jesus Christ” my first thought would not be, “Could this possibly be true? Is everything I know of her a lie? What do I do? O what do I do!!!!!”

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

William Lane Craig Does Nifty Work

Your lesson in Natural Theology today:

William Lane Craig Does Nifty Work:

(Via Mark Shea.)

Let's Start the New Year Right

By reducing the irrational biases in our thinking:

The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational:

The human brain is capable of 1016 processes per second, which makes it far more powerful than any computer currently in existence. But that doesn't mean our brains don't have major limitations. The lowly calculator can do math thousands of times better than we can, and our memories are often less than useless — plus, we're subject to cognitive biases, those annoying glitches in our thinking that cause us to make questionable decisions and reach erroneous conclusions. Here are a dozen of the most common and pernicious cognitive biases that you need to know about.

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent.)

Let's Start the New Year Right

By reducing the irrational biases in our thinking:

The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational:

The human brain is capable of 1016 processes per second, which makes it far more powerful than any computer currently in existence. But that doesn't mean our brains don't have major limitations. The lowly calculator can do math thousands of times better than we can, and our memories are often less than useless — plus, we're subject to cognitive biases, those annoying glitches in our thinking that cause us to make questionable decisions and reach erroneous conclusions. Here are a dozen of the most common and pernicious cognitive biases that you need to know about.

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent.)

A Little Ecumentical Dialogue

This is an interesting exercise:

Dialogue between Christ and a Muslim:

Very enjoyable read.

H/T Foolishness to the World

Read the whole thing.

(Via SoCon Or Bust.)

A Little Ecumentical Dialogue

This is an interesting exercise:

Dialogue between Christ and a Muslim:

Very enjoyable read.

H/T Foolishness to the World

Read the whole thing.

(Via SoCon Or Bust.)

Jesus as Myth: a Losing Battle

I love the analogy employed here. In any case this is the least troublesome aspect of Christianity's claims: There was a man named Jesus who was crucified under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius. I especially appreciate the criticism of Dawkins for relying on an inappropriate authority (German language?) who has since retracted his position.

A fight they can't win: The irreligious assault on the historicity of Jesus – Opinion – ABC Religion & Ethics (Australian Broadcasting Corporation):

It is time for the evangelists of unbelief to give up the nonsense that the figure at the heart of Christianity may have never even lived.

Read the whole thing.

(Via First Links.)

Monsignor Teaches Logic

Our inability to communicate with one another when there is significant disagreement may arise in part because of faulty thinking. I'm particularly struck by the observation that a kind of skepticism supported by an unreasonable demand for perfect proof paralyzes dialogue. If you enjoy this the follow-up post is here.

Thinking About Thinking – A Reflection on some of the Modern Pitfalls and Logical Fallacies that Hinder Us
By: Msgr. Charles Pope

- - - - - - - - - - - A Logical Fallacy

A lot of breakdown in modern communication comes down to logical fallacies and cognitive distortions that have us talking past each other. Perhaps, as the new year draws near, we might spend a little time reflecting and “thinking about our thinking.”

All of us fall into these traps. I have spoken before on the blog of the problem of “all or nothing thinking” and also our tendency today to take everything personally, to be thin-skinned. Perhaps some of the following reflections on the nature of our knowledge and how we both argue and reason, may also be instructive, since, as a group, we tend today to be ver

Read the whole thing.

(Via .)

Logic and It's Misuses

While Philosophy is my first love, Logic has been only a passing fancy for me. It's on my list of things to do: study at least beginning-level Logic. But the mini-controversy over Aristotelian versus Symbolic Logic is worth a read:

More on Symbolic v. Aristotelian Logic:

I’ve learned much about logic in the week and a half since my previous post here. In that little missive, I wrote about a Peter Kreeft essay that I had trouble making sense of. Kreeft argued that symbolic logic “has serious social, moral, and even sexual implications, and it is one of the unrecognized indirect causes of ‘the culture of death’,” but I hardly recognized in his description the logic I used in undergraduate studies and in work with computers.

Read the whole thing.

(Via First Thoughts.)

GroupThink Makes Objectivity Difficult

Take Climate Change for example: A story in the MSM that ballyhoos the "conversion" of a sceptic to a CACC(GW) believer is way overstated. Not only does he have a clear (Google-able) trail of belief in GW but at least one scholar seriously disagrees with the conclusions of his study.

With this kind of rah-rah journalism how do we sort out the conflicting claims? That the earth is warming is more or less given. How much is the earth warming and to what degree is this warming anthropogenic are the questions that need a sober, scholarly answer.

*More on that Global Warming "Convert" and his paper proving:

More on that Global Warming "Convert" and his paper proving Global Warming.

Like I noted yesterday, there is solid research that the temperature data for ground warming is systematically biased in favor of the "warmist" conclusion.

But - wait! - there's more:

I’ve reached Dr. Judith Curry of Georgia Tech, who was a co-author of the first four BEST papers but who declined to be listed as an author of this one.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Lex Communis.)

If the Mind and the Brain are Identical

who will judge what is true and what is false? It still fascinates me that people can argue persistently that they have no mind except that biochemical factory between their ears. Neuroscience is a fascinating area of study but sometimes you wonder if it's either attracting or creating bad philosophers, i.e., people who can't think straight.

This article attacks the neuroscience issue from a different perspective, asking the question does neuroscience disprove the mind-brain identity hypothesis?

Mike Flynn has an absolutely fascinating piece…:

…on the problem facing materialists who insist on saying the mind *is* the brain:

In The Instrumentality of the Brain, we noted a boy born without a cerebellum — the part of the brain that controls motor skills, balance and emotions — and who “has the MRI of a vegetable”; yet who has learned to walk and interact. He is also missing his pons, the part of the brain stem that controls basic functions, such as sleeping and breathing. And yet he breathes and sleeps just fine.

Other cases are known, such as the French civil servant, whose brain was virtually absent, reduced to a thin layer around the skull, a condition known as Dandy-Walker syndrome. Pause here for jokes about civil servants. Or Frenchmen. But he functioned more or less normally in society despite having water where his brain should have been.

The British neurologist John Lorber reported on the case of a slightly hydrocephalic math student with an IQ of 126, who also was almost lacking in brains (cf. Is the brain really necessary).

The current sexy thing among the cognoscenti is the use of fMRI to “prove” that there is no free will, a topic which, for some reason seems to obsess the likes of Jerry Coyne. Or at least the brain atoms collectively known as Jerry Coyne. It seems that at least some of these folks believe that by attacking free will, they are attacking religion; but they are actually attacking humanism.

Read the whole thing. Amazing stuff.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

Did Muhammed Exist?

(subtitle: "An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins") a book by Robert Spencer. A quick review with just a couple of observations.

The author's avowed aim of subjecting Muhammed and the Quran to the same sort of rigorous analysis that Jesus and the Christian and Jewish Scriptures have been experiencing for more than a century intrigued me. Given that, as a believing Catholic Christian, a lot of this so-called analysis seems tendentious and poorly grounded in reason, I was curious to see what the author would make of Islam's founder and principle scriptures based on his survey of scholarship.

To recap the classical Muslim understanding of the events: Muhammed is called by Allah from the middle of Arabia to preach a re-purified message to everyone. His locutions are given to him by the Angel Gabriel in perfect Arabic which sayings, stories and pronouncements are gathered together a few decades after his death into the Quran as we now know it. It is perfect and complete and there are no variant versions, such as Christians deal with. And it is perfectly comprehensible.

This is roughly parallel to some Protestant systems of thought that treat the Scriptures as if they were dictated by God, word for word. While Catholicism has the highest regard for the Scriptures (Inspired and, therefore, Inerrant) it doesn't regard the authors of Scripture to be mere transcriptionists. Nor does it deny the thousands of variant versions from the ancient world.

The author aims, in part, to contrast the facile view that Mohammed, the Quran and early Islam happened in the "clear light of history" with his view that, in fact, we know very little about any of them and have little reliable information to base any firm conclusions on.

I was particularly struck by the author's dismissive attitude towards oral tradition, comparing it to the children's game of telephone. First of all, scholars have been and are continuing to study oral tradition in relation to history. In cultures where oral tradition predominates, such as First Century Judea, it can be a highly developed system for reliably transmitting information from one generation to the next. If scholars were to turn their attention to the first three centuries of Islam and study the oral transmission they might come to more meaningful conclusions than the author. The Quran, the biography of Mohammed and the Hadith might all be analyzed in a sober manner. From these studies we could then talk about what we can and can't know about early Islam, its Scripture and it's founder.

Alas, the threats of violence will probably keep most scholars away from any such project. At least for raising these issues, albeit in a flawed manner, the author deserves credit.

Science and God

A formal materialist is forced to deny his own personal existence. If a purely physical description of events could explain *everything* then we only experience the illusion of choice and responsibility. In fact our actions only appear to be decided on by ourselves but, in fact, are determined by natural processes over which we have no control.

Certain amusing results can be observed from espousing materialism: a materialist believes himself not to be free and must logically deny freedom (and therefore responsibility) to everyone else as well. Yet they frequently will work hard to *persuade* you that your belief in freedom is false. How does *persuasion* work in a materialistic world?

And if it were theoretically possible to actually describe the process of a *decision* being in completely materialistic terms *who* would be making this description and to whom would they be describing it? How would *we* know that description was *true*? If being *convinced* that something is *true* is just the result of physical forces how does one distinguish *true* from *false* beliefs? Who or what stands outside this circle to pass judgment?

Enter Quantum Mechanics. In trying to describe and predict events in the atomic and sub-atomic universe it has unexpectedly introduced a severe problem for the materialist:

Does quantum physics make it easier to believe in God?:

Quantum mechanics, however, throws a monkey wrench into this simple mechanical view of things. No less a figure than Eugene Wigner, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, claimed that materialism --- at least with regard to the human mind --- is not “logically consistent with present quantum mechanics.” And on the basis of quantum mechanics, Sir Rudolf Peierls, another great 20th-century physicist, said, “the premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being ... including [his] knowledge, and [his] consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing.”

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent.)