Contending For The Faith---Part 6

 

In St. Jude 1:3, we read, "Dearly beloved, taking all care to write unto you concerning your common salvation, I was under a necessity to write unto you: to beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints." [Emphasis mine]. Contending For The Faith is a series of posts dedicated to apologetics (i.e.,  the intellectual defense of the truth of the Traditional Catholic Faith) to be published the first Monday of each month.  This is the next installment.

Sadly, in this time of Great Apostasy, the faith is under attack like never before, and many Traditionalists don't know their faith well enough to defend it. Remember the words of our first pope, "But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect..." (1Peter 3:16). There are five (5) categories of attacks that will be dealt with in these posts. Attacks against:

• The existence and attributes of God
• The truth of the One True Church established by Christ for the salvation of all 
• The truth of a particular dogma or doctrine of the Church
• The truth of Catholic moral teaching
• The truth of the sedevacantist position as the only Catholic solution to what has happened since Vatican II 

In addition, controversial topics touching on the Faith will sometimes be featured, so that the problem and possible solutions may be better understood. If anyone had suggestions for topics that would fall into any of these categories, you may post them in the comments. I cannot guarantee a post on each one, but each will be carefully considered.

The Attack on Religious Belief

Catholic countries are no more. We live in an increasingly secular world. Due to the Modernism of Vatican II (and the sect it spawned), "faith" is seen as more or less "fuzzy feelings" of God's love. (I was literally taught that by one teacher at the V2 sect high school I attended in the early 1980s). It will not be uncommon for you to meet someone who discovers your faith and will ask you such questions as "How can you believe in such nonsense you can't prove?" or "What evidence do you have for those silly beliefs?" When you have a sect that teaches all religions are more or less good and lead to Heaven, nothing is seen as true or false, good or bad. It's just "true for me" or "true for you." Relativism reigns supreme and apologetics and reasons for the faith were jettisoned, because it really doesn't matter anyway.

In this post, I hope to demonstrate that there is good evidence to know that God exists and no equally good reasons to think that atheism is true. As a result, the rational person has nothing to fear in embracing the God of the universe, Who came down from Heaven and died for us. He established One True Church to which all must belong in order to be saved.

 Attack #1: Faith is "pretending to know something" or "having no evidence."

In a YouTube video, Neil De Grasse Tyson makes the following statement:

I have no problems if as we prove the origins of things we bump up into the bearded man. If that shows up, we’re good to go. Okay. Not a problem. There’s just no evidence of it. And this is why religions are called faiths, collectively: Because you believe something in the absence of evidence. That’s what it is. That’s why it’s called faith. Otherwise we would call all religions evidence! But we don’t for exactly that reason. (See youtube.com/watch?v=I0nXG02tpDw).

The first thing I would do is ask Dr. Tyson, “What do you mean by faith and how did you come to that definition?” Those pushing this idea about faith frequently characterize it in one of the following ways:

• Belief without sufficient evidence 

• Belief in spite of contrary evidence

• Pretending to know what you don’t really know

• Just believing something without questioning it

I would ask Tyson to consider an alternate definition. According to St. Paul, "Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not." (See Hebrews 11:1; Emphasis mine).From the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith from the Vatican Council of 1870:

Canon 1. If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.

Therefore, faith in Traditional Catholicism does not require ignoring evidence, but rather it is normative for faith to be accompanied by evidence, that is, motives of credibility. The Vatican Council's Constitution states further:

But the Catholic Church professes that this faith, which is the beginning of human salvation, is a supernatural virtue by which we, with the aid and inspiration of the grace of God, believe that the things revealed by him are true, not because the intrinsic truth of the revealed things has been perceived by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.

So God helps us and provides grace at the level of our wills to make our faith firm and lasting. We have the Five Proofs of Aquinas on the existence of God. We have the miracles and prophesies fulfilled in the Bible concerning Jesus Christ, especially His physical Resurrection from the dead. The Catholic Church is the One True Church He founded. Of course, the person attacking faith will deny all of this because he does not believe. However, that is not the point. Tyson and his ilk put up a defective definition of faith and knock down a strawman of their own making. 

Clearly, Tyson, as an atheist scientist, thinks that physical evidence is the only kind of evidence that counts. This is incorrect. At the beginning of the video clip, Tyson talks about evil in the world. How can empirical science prove something to be good or evil? Moreover, in a world without God, there can be no objective moral values. To have an objective moral value means, e.g., even if the Nazis won WWII and brainwashed everyone into believing that the systematic killing of people they considered "undesirable" was good--it would still be wrong independently of what anyone thinks. Yet, Tyson can only say that the systematic killing of people is wrong in his opinion. The Nazis hold a different opinion. The Traditionalist can point to the Ten Commandments, an expression of the attributes of God's external and eternal Nature, against which things are known to be right or wrong. 

Ironically, science cannot prove the existence of the external world, upon which its very endeavor depends. How does Tyson know he's not in a computer simulation like the movie The Matrix? Science presupposes and cannot prove the external world. Faith is having plenty of evidence. When you have a misconception about what faith is, only then do you think there is no evidence.

Attack #2: Faith as a "crutch" for the weak, and "wishful thinking" in the face of death.

The "professional wrestler" Jesse Ventura was elected Governor of Minnesota in 1998. He served for one term (1999-2003). During an interview with the pornographic rag, Playboy magazine, Ventura had this to say about faith:

Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers. It tells people to go out and stick their noses in other people's business. I live by the golden rule: Treat others as you'd want them to treat you. The religious right wants to tell people how to live.

(See goodreads.com/quotes/116680-organized-religion-is-a-sham-and-a-crutch-for-weak-minded; Emphasis mine). 

Although aimed at "organized religion," people like Ventura will make similar claims such as stating, “Religious faith is a crutch for weak people that don’t know how to deal with the difficulties of life.” If God exists, then he is the crutch we need to lean on in troubled times. Also, Christianity holds that human beings are a fallen race and wounded badly by Original Sin. In such a condition, they need "spiritual medical attention," which makes the metaphor of a crutch appropriate not disparaging. I would ask Ventura, “Isn’t it appropriate for us to have a crutch if we’re part of an injured human race?”

What about the charge that faith is "wishful thinking" in the face of death? If God exists, then it’s true that He could conquer death by providing us with everlasting life. It seems fitting that He would make us aware of His intention to do so.

Theistic philosopher Alvin Plantinga (b. 1932), in his book Knowledge and Christian Belief (2015), distinguishes what he calls de jure objections to theistic belief from de facto objections. De jure objections purport to show that belief in God is in some way defective without necessarily aiming to show the belief is false. De facto objections target the truth of a belief and attempt to show that belief in God is false, and, conversely, that atheism is true. As you can see, unless someone targets the truth of belief in God or a specific Christian belief, the de jure objections do not hold up.

Therefore, labelling Traditionalists as people who have faith because "they are wishful thinkers, afraid of death, and who need a crutch" does nothing to show the object of faith is false or that having this faith is somehow deficient.

Attack #3: "The absence of evidence is evidence of absence."

There are two famous versions of this attack known as "Russell's Teapot," and "Hitchens's razor."

Russell's Teapot is so named after the infamous atheist Bertrand Russell. Russell claims that faith in God is just like faith in a floating teapot in outer space for which we have no evidence. This absence of evidence for God should be taken as evidence of his absence; i.e., He does not exist and faith is futile.

In his paper “Is There a God?”[pgs. 542-548 in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. 11, ed. John G. Slater and Peter Kollner (1997)], he has this to say:

If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

Russell’s point is twofold. First, just because an assertion cannot be disproved, that is no good reason to think it is true. Second, that comprehensive inculturation could lead to belief in an interplanetary teapot just as it leads to belief in God. As to his claim that "because an assertion cannot be disproved, that is no good reason to think it is true," there is evidence of God's existence--proof actually, as has been explained already. As far as inculturation is concerned, I once wrote that Russell and his like-minded individuals should be asked, "Do you believe that women should have equal rights with men?" Of course, he will respond "Yes." (If they start with the "What about trans-women" nonsense, change the question to "Do you believe in equal rights for LGTBQIA+ people?") Then say, "Well you only believe in that because you live in America. If you were living in Saudi Arabia, you'd be a Moslem and would be against equal rights for women and homosexuals, right?" They will protest that they believe in equal rights  not only because of where they live and how they were raised, but because they studied the issue and came to this conclusion. Then flip it on them: "Well that could also be equally true in matters of religion."

This anti-religious statement claiming that circumstances determine religion is based on what is called the genetic fallacy in logic. The fallacy says that a proposition is wrong (or correct) based on where the idea originated. A claim is ignored in favor of attacking or exalting its source. 2+2=4 is true and doesn't become false because Stalin said it. 2+2=5 is wrong, even if St. Francis of Assisi said it. 

Hitchens's Razor is named after one of the so-called "Four Horsemen of the New Atheism," the late Christopher Hitchens (d. 2011). His stated "razor" is a principle in which he claims "what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." Once more, there are proofs of God's existence, so his vaunted "razor" does not apply. Hitchens's Razor is basically another way of saying that "the absence of evidence is evidence of absence." This rule will only apply if two conditions are met:

1. The person has thoroughly searched for evidence in all the appropriate areas. 

2. Reasonable persons would expect to have more evidence than they actually do, in a given case.

If someone asked me, "Is there an elephant in your backyard?" I would first look to see if there were an elephant here in my NYC yard. If I don't see one, I look for the big footprints it would leave. I would check the news for reports of a missing elephant from the Bronx Zoo. I would ask my neighbors if they heard or saw any such creature. I would check with my local police precinct and fire department to see if any such sighting was reported. If nothing came back affirming an elephant, the absence of evidence would be evidence of absence. Both conditions were met: evidence was searched for in the appropriate areas and what more evidence could you reasonably expect? 

Now, suppose someone asked me, "Is there a flea in your backyard?" Looking in my yard, searching for footprints, asking my neighbors, checking the news, and asking the police/fire departments wouldn't prove anything. Here, the absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence. It does not meet the two criteria. 

In the case of the existence of God, absence of evidence is evidence of absence if and only if:

1. The skeptic has fully canvassed the appropriate areas in philosophy and history. He has carefully inspected the arguments for God and shown why they fail. 

2. We would expect to have more evidence than we do if, in fact, God exists.

Don't expect them to be able to get past #1! 

Conclusion

The attack on religious belief has never been greater. We must always be prepared to give a defense for our faith. As the great St. Joan of Arc said, “One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.”