First Principles

Bill Vallicella (better known as the Maverick Philosopher, blog linked at right) posted this interesting tidbit on a quote attributed to Martin Luther in Table Talks. You can click on the link, but I will summarize and address my concern anyway, so you don't need to.

The quote is this: contra negantem prima principia non esse disputandum. In English: one should not dispute with those who disagree on first principles.

In context, Luther was referring to arguing with those who disagree on Biblical authority. The Maverick criticizes this take on theological debate, but goes on to apply it to the nature of truth. There is an absolute truth, and anyone who disputes that ought to be ignored, as arguing is merely a waste.

I agree with Dr. Vallicella on his second point, but I can't help but be irked at the simplistic response to the first. Luther was hardly an intellectual lightweight, and it does not seem particularly charitable to characterize this as a misapplication, and I have lately been exposed via experience to the wisdom of this quote of Luther's.

I belong to TheologyWeb where "we debate theology...seriously!" I am fascinated by apologetics, ethics and the nature of theological (and by correlation philosophical) truth. It was therefore hardly a surprise that I ended up finding myself drawn to discussions on the nature of God with Muslims, who explicity deny the Trinity and Christ's divinity. Now, I am okay with this if they are willing to debate from a Biblical foundation. The catch is that they are not.

It has been my observation that the entirety of Christian doctrine is principally a straw man Islamic construction. For example, in a thread on the Trinity, I invoked the Narnian Trilemma citing Jesus explicit and implicit claims to godhood in the Gospels, saying that Muslims could either revoke Jesus as a prophet of Islam or accept Christianity. Naturally, if they chose the former, the claim to Abrahamic succession falls flat and Muhammad becomes a standalone prophet. In response, a member effectively said "Muslims don't believe in the Gospels, so your argument doesn't count." He then went on to speak of gnostic writings and pseudepigrapha which are historically removed from the life of Jesus by at least a hundred years, whereas the Gospels are removed from Jesus by at most 50 years.

So, here is Islam saying they reject the most historically reliable sources, and when Old Testament is cited instead, they state that the Old Testament was corrupted by Jewish tradition instead of faithfulness to the actual revelation of God, therefore it was unacceptable. Try applying the same argument to the Koran, and you get shouted down because the Koran is the word of God.

I have since started to ignore any posts challenging Christian theological constructions from Muslims. When someone disputes first principles, it can be addressed such that this first principle can be shown to be true or false. (For example, I can disagree whether the Bible is true or false.) However, once a person denies first principles, it is pointless to argue with them as no argument, even from an Islamic contextual understanding (e.g. that all Biblical prophets are prophets of Islam), proves useful.

One really should not dispute with those who deny first principles. It's a waste of time.

From the Mouths of Babes

Wow, two posts in one week, let alone one day! How impressive am I today!?

The mention of "existential angst" in my previous post brought to mind something that had me suppressing my own laughter in church this past Sunday. I was using my audial aptitude and technical skills to master the sound during service (in non-geek terms: running the "sound board"), which included singing by our church's children's choir.

Now, I wish for a moment I could remember the title of the song, or even more of the lyrics, but there was something immensely humorous about hearing first- thru sixth-graders utter the words "I cannot do this alone / Say I'm forgiven." What incredible existential angst from elementary schoolers! I doubt any of them realized the gravitas of the song, or why that guy in the back who was controlling their soloists' microphones was hunched over with a gentle rolling motion running through his body from stomach to shoulders, but upon reflection, there is something more heartbreaking than humorous about this song.

These kids do not at present understand the grave theological truth that they indeed "cannot do this alone." They don't realize how true it is that their sins cry out to the Living God of their own humanity, of the brokenness they have existed in since the moment they were conceived. Now, it is heartbreaking, the human condition, but what makes this song heartbreaking is that our children do not understand. They utter empty words, they sing, and their parents smile and clap...but no one cried, and I think now crying may have been a more appropriate response to the song's sentiment.

We say we want to protect our children's innocence, but the truth is, the very concept that they are innocent is a standing fallacy, if not an outright lie. Thankfully, the gift of the Spirit and baptism (Greek baptizo, the washing) is a "gift for you and your children." Does that mean we should expose them to all the more sin? Indeed not, as Paul notes in Romans. Yet I think we ought to instill in everyone the sad truth of their being.

I will attempt to the get the lyrics to the song they sang so I can post them in the near future.

I Deny the Holy Spirit...

...Now Give Me My Free DVD!

The Blasphemy Challenge is fairly old news for the religion/philosophy blog circuit, but I've been wasting time at work today and it involved a good deal of incidental reading of material regarding it on various blogs and even news sites. I think it started at IrContent where Doug Beaumont chided the "Rational Response Squad" (the group person behind the Blasphemy Challenge) as being "too stupid for Hell" due to the apparent lack of understanding as to just what "blasphemy of the Holy Spirit" means.

First of all, blaspheming the Holy Spirit in the context it appears in the Gospels is the attribution of Jesus' divine authority to the power of Satan. That is to say Jesus drove out demons and healed people by the power of God and the direction of His omnipotent Spirit; but a blasphemer would say Jesus ordered about demons and cured diseases because the Devil gave Him this power. But there is something more to it than that, insofar as something that has been revealed as True (note capital T) is denied by one who knows it to be true. Essentially, it would be an effective an exercise of doxastic voluntarism (if such a thing can/does exist) against the One True God. It would be akin to me saying, having read Scripture, prayed, seen the work of God, come to believe and know His Truth, that He does not exist at all.

However, this post does not concern definitions and how silly the aforementioned Rational Response Squad is being. I actually wrote this fine monologue. See, the RRS says the video must explicitly state "I deny the Holy Spirit," using those exact words, to claim a free DVD of The God Who Wasn't There. If I am to read this exhortation correctly, it requires a declarative statement in that exact sentence structure. So, for anyone with a webcam who feels like getting a free DVD and perhaps subverting the Blasphemy Challenge from within, perhaps you can say this:

The God my church taught me about in Sunday school doesn't exist. He didn't pour out a million dollars when I prayed for it, even though it says "anything you ask in my name will be given to you." He doesn't "love the little children, all the children of the world." I remember the story of Noah that they taught: flooding the world, which must have involved in some dry, rocky locations flash floods, sweeping small children out of the arms of their mothers, only to dash them, terrified and screaming, against craggy rocks to instantaneous death. But that would require that book being true, which it isn't, because that god doesn't exist.

I deny the Holy Spirit.

[Beat.]

If you thought that was the end of my video, where I stared intently at the web camera as if to convey my teenage rebellion and existential angst in a moment of silent, solemn certainty, you were wrong. The God I learned about in Sunday school doesn't exist. That much is true. My God isn't a childhood image concocted to make me feel good.

He is a God of Wrath and a God of Love. He sent a flood into the world that really did dash screaming children against craggy rocks. But then He sent another child into the world, His Son. Jesus did worse than suffer instantaneous death after a brief, terrified moment. He endured agony on a cross, a crown of thorns affixed to His head, the strain on His arms tearing open the barely scabbed over wounds of being whipped as blood and sweat flowed commingling down His back, gasping for air, nails in His hands and feet. How much worse than that baby in the age of Noah!

This is not a children's story, this is not foolish. This is what is to understand reality--the need for a Creator God, further on to the need for a moral force, which requires something intensely personal. And since this world is so screwed up, it seems intellectually (and personally) convenient to think that God loves enough to save us.

Now give me my free DVD for saying "I deny the Holy Spirit."

Classics and Me

Ladies and gentlemen, honored readers, I am looking to you for advice. After letting myself wallow in cultural degeneration during the early part of this year, I have decided my book a week resolution from last year must be reborn in another form. Therefore, I am declaring this year to be The Year of Classics™. That is to say that for the remainder of the year, I shall select one well-regarded classic author per month and read selected works, preferably two or three of their better-known and/or best-regarded works. The schedule currently appears as follows:

1. January -- Not part of resolution.
2. February -- Not part of resolution
3. March -- Dostovesky Depression Month®, consisting of The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment and The Idiot
4. April -- Austen Acrimony Month®, consisting of Emma, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice
5. May -- Tolstoy Tedium Month®, consisting of War and Peace (duh, hence the tedium) and Anna Karenina
6. June -- Someone Something Month
7. July -- Someone Something Month
8. August -- Hugo Social Justice Month® (I couldn't think of a fair synonym for Hugo's thematic sentiment that started with H), consisting of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Miserables and Last Days of a Condemned Man
9. September -- Someone Something Month
10. October -- Someone Something Month
11. November -- Someone Something Month
12. December -- Dickens Dreams Month®, consisting of Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol (duh, December)

What do you think? I need five authors comprising 10-15 books from the vague category "classics." Let me narrow it down. Whereas I consider writers like James Joyce to offer amazing classics, and I consider Dante Alleghieri's Divine Comedy to be a classic piece of poetry, I keep these fine authors-cum-poets off the list for specific reasons. For Joyce, it is because he is a well-regarded twentieth century author, and I would very much like to dedicate a year for twentieth century writers in the future (Rand, Joyce, Faulkner, Kerouac, et al.). And for Dante, it is because I would like to read his work in accordance with a poetry year in the future, suffused with Longfellow's Hiawatha, Milton's Paradise Lost, the Homerian epics and Virgil's Aeneid. In many ways, poetry is a whole other category to novels, despite that they are both literature.

So here is the criteria: authors from between 1500 and the early 1900's (Twain would qualify if you would think he was recommendable, but I've never actually finished one of his books, so I kept him off the list off-hand) writing on periods in that time frame, or, say, Jules Verne with sci-fi writing in that era. They must be fairly well-known to the general public, not just in academic cricles (say goodbye to most Gothic authors) and their works must be fictional novels or novellas written in prose.

Let the recommendations flow!

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue...

...Shakespeare is art,
...and Sixpence, too!

About a week ago, the fine blog Mere Comments (linked at the right) offered this post regarding love poetry through the ages. Anthony Esolen, the contributer who made the post, questioned whether his selections from the past were useful in measuring popular culture and comparing those cultures with this. I immediately cried foul when he selected What a Girl Wants (lyrics here) by Jessica Simpson as our modern representative.

The problem with bubblegum pop typified in Brittney Spears, Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Lopez and the general hip crowd c. 1999 is that their songs are mass-produced by a few common writers. My Backstreet Boys albums' liner notes list the songwriter Max Martin on almost every track from their first three discs (Backstreet Boys, Millennium and Black & Blue) before Brian Littrell took on more songwriting duties for Never Gone. Therefore, we do not consider this the poetry of the masses, but the poetry of one individual put into mass production. For true popular poetry, we have to turn to rock music, a few pop groups (Sixpence None the Richer, Five for Fighting) and even hip-hop.

Consider even further this notion: it has been 500 years since Shakespeare. What crap from his generation has been filtered out of our cultural memory over that time? More importantly, with the advent of acid-based printing in the late 18th century, the mass publication of written material went too whole new heights. Prior to this era, that which was valuable survived in quality print and nothing else. Now, anyone can print something. So, in 500 years, what musical lyrics will survive? Will Jessica Simpson be filtered out? God, I hope so. In 500 years, I want my great-great-[...]-grandchildren to know I listened to stuff like this:

I packed his books up, left the office
Went to tell the wife the news
She fell in shock, the baby kicked,
And shed a tear inside the womb
I breathe in, I breathe out
Soak the ground up with my eyes
It's hard to say a healing word
When your tongue is paralyzed
(Sixpence None the Richer, "Paralyzed," Divine Discontent, 2002)

Babies underneath their beds
(In) hospitals that cannot treat them
All the pain that money causes,
All the comfort of cathedrals
All the cries of thirsty children,
This is our inheritance,
All the rage of watching mothers,
This is our greatest offense
(Jars of Clay, "Oh My God," Good Monsters, 2006)

I was just guessing at numbers and figures,
Pulling your puzzles apart
Questions of science, science and progress
Do not speak as loud as my heart
And tell me you love me, come back and haunt me
(Coldplay, "The Scientist," A Rush of Blood to the Head, 2002)

And I am nothing of a builder,
But here I dreamt I was an architect
And I built this balustrade
To keep you home, to keep you safe
(The Decemberists, "Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect," Castaways and Cutouts, 2002)

Little boy prays to God to answer his song
To hold her hand when everyone else's are gone
Time goes by and the wounds slowly turn into scars
So he makes his final wish on the midnight stars
(Vertical Horizon, "Children's Lullaby," There and Back Again, 1992)