Trying to Fly With One Wing

Chapter 26 The Classification of Things

2008-10-24T16:27:00.000-07:00

Some years ago a Christian friend and I found ourselves discussing angels. My friend talked as if he had just returned from heaven and his first Angel Conference. To substantiate his claims of how angels are involved in our lives, he began telling stories about angels and what he had read about them in the Bible. The only problem was that my friend’s narrative was laced with the names of characters and towns that were more likely to be found in contemporary North America than the ancient plains of Mesopotamia. Something was wrong, and it had to do with the most fundamental aspect of logic: how do we know what something is, and what it isn’t?

Most of this series has been about the problems we face during informal arguments when we use fallacies for the superstructure of our position. Recently I was asked to tutor a group of middle school home-schoolers in formal logic, which is about the foundations of logic. It has been years since I was exposed to these basic concepts, and I felt chagrined at not including them earlier in this series of articles. So, I’m going to take time to dig some deeper footings. The problem I hope to point out is that when the foundations of our arguments are weak, we are like an architect who uses a sandy beach as the foundation for an elaborate beach house. Even if we use steel for the superstructure, poor footings and a vulnerable foundation will weaken its ability to withstand a storm.

One of those foundational concepts is how we define the essence of things; that is, we need to make sure we’re taking positions about things that are true and not false. We need to be arguing on the side of substance and not non-substance. We need to be FOR something, and AGAINST nothing.

Something or Nothing?

On the popular DVD interview titled Common Ground, Protestant Pastor Steve Andrews interviews Catholic priest Fr. John Riccardo about the theological issues that bring them together. A great deal of the discussion centers on correctly defining terms, and identifying the essence of things. One of the theological issues that separate Christians is the concept of “justification.” Reaching back to the Protestant Reformation, some Protestants think Catholicism teaches that a person can be justified by the merit of his own works, without God’s grace, while some Catholics (and possibly some of the bishops attending the Trent Ecumenical Council), believed that Protestants entirely discounted the necessity and high importance of works performed in cooperation with God’s grace. It was this confusion that gave rise to the concept, within Protestantism, that a person can be saved by “faith alone” and not by works.

In the Common Ground dialogue, to a question by Andrews about whether or not Catholics believe they can work their way to heaven, Riccardo begins his answer by saying, “We [as Catholics] can say…that we’re saved by ‘faith alone,’ so long as we understand what we’re talking about by faith.” At first, it sounds as if Riccardo has just sided with a heresy. But, as he continues, we realize he’s about to teach us something important — that at the level of faith’s essence Protestants and Catholics agree. That is, when properly defined, when identified truthfully and fully, Protestants and Catholics agree on what it means to be saved by faith — that faith is an action that involves our acceptance of Christ’s work and God’s grace, followed by our obedience. Faith is not the simple mental ascent to a concept, but rather, as Fr. John says: “Faith is clinging to Christ…it’s His action on the cross that saves me, which I have to respond to. I’m saved by His work alone, period. But I have to cooperate with that. I’ve got to welcome (Him) into my life and I got to do it every day.”

It took 30 years of dialogue, but the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) agreed in 1998 that the essence or the crux of the Protestant Reformation no longer exists. What changed was the groups’ agreement on how to define justification. They defined their terms, and realized they never really disagreed at all.

The Crux of a Thing

The definition of things is the crux of philosophy, logic, and truth. But just how do we go about deciding what something is? How do we decide if a statement is true or false, or if a thing is real or not? How do we decide if we are contending with “something” that demands our attention, or if what we have is “nothing” — which demands our disinterest?

To many people, such a question makes no sense, and asking it is a waste of time. If we have nothing then how can we ask anything about it? If it’s nothing, shouldn’t we ignore it? Only if it’s something should we pay attention. (Dave Armstrong suggests that atheists might heed this advice.) Unfortunately that’s not what is happening around us. Our society is filled with “things” that are “nothing,” and judgments that are “false” and toward such things men and women hurry with abandon — chasing, ogling, and genuflecting.
Political Proposals
As I write this, it is three weeks before the 2008 national election — a particularly intense political season. Everyday in print, on the radio, on television and on bumper stickers we hear many claims that the other party is embracing concepts that are “nothing” or barely “something.”
In California, where I have plenty of acquaintances, Proposition 8 is on the ballot. Prop 8 defines the concept of “marriage” as the union between one man and one woman. The proposal’s language would add this sentence to the state constitution: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Citizens collected signatures to put Prop 8 on the ballot, in response to rulings by some judges who decided that natural law and mother nature were being unfair to homosexuals. (That’s sarcasm). So, with a stroke of the pen and a rap of the mallet, the justices proclaimed that gay couples should be allowed to procreate. God’s curious how that’s going to work. (More sarcasm.) Such is an example of the irrationality among supposedly the wisest human beings on the planet. It is a case of “nothing” being called “something.”

In the State of Michigan, where I live, the airwaves are filled with commercials about Proposition 2, which, if passed, would allow unrestricted embryonic stem cell research and subsequently the cloning of human embryos. Both are grave sins in the eyes of the Catholic Church.
One particular ad claims the other side is against “all stem cell research,” and that stem cell research offers our best hope for curing illness and disease. They claim that their political opponent has voted both FOR stem cell research and AGAINST it, and therefore cannot be trusted. What they don’t tell you, in any of the multiple ads, is that there are TWO kinds of stem cells and consequently two kinds of research. One type of research uses ADULT stem cells: It does not threaten a life, is legal everywhere, is morally acceptable to Catholic teaching, is supported by all parties, and has produced dozens of usable therapies that are alleviating suffering among thousands of people. The other type of research requires the destruction of EMBRYOS to harvest stem cells, takes a human life, is contrary to Catholic teaching, is not supported by all parties, is illegal in most places, and has produced NO usable therapies but only unusable mutations. The ads falsely claim that “nothing” is “something.”

Porphyry’s Tree

The attempt to describe or label something correctly goes back to Plato and his descriptions of reality and shadows, Aristotle and St. Thomas in their work to categorize being (the study of ontology), and many other philosophers and scientists like Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist, who created the schema that we use today to label any living thing.

In the third century, Porphyry, a Greek philosopher who reportedly wrote 15 books against the Christians (only fragments can now be found), devised a useful device to help identify things. The Porphyrian Tree, simplified in Figure 1, forms the basis that allows us to begin to answer the old quiz show question: “Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?” The tree allows things to be classified into five bi-polar divisions: substance or non-substance (e.g. reality or not real); material or non-material (physical or spiritual); living or non-living (organic or mineral); sentient or non-sentient (consciousness or plant-like); rational or non-rational (moral reasoning human or instinctual brute).
The traditional way to use a tree of this type, and it’s still used today and taught in traditional logic courses, is that if something requires classification along one of the “non-” branches, the classification dead-ends. Thus, a chair is a substance that is material, but non-living (Stop). That sounds okay, just as a human can be described as a substance that is material, living, sentient, and rational.

But how do you classify an angel? Per Porphyry, an angel is a non-material substance (Stop). It is not, nor can it ever be material, living, sentient (conscious) or rational. While Christians might not have a problem with an angel being a non-material spirit, they would have a problem declaring it is also non-living, non-sentient, and non-rational, which is what the tree suggests by truncating the definition of its essence as non-material spirit. This probably didn’t concern Porphyry so much because he was against Christianity. But then again perhaps he designed this paradigm to aid his anti-Christian, materialistic arguments.

The problem Porphyry’s Tree presents is basic: It demonstrates that even when a seemingly rational schema is presented to us, unless we are particularly insightful, or particularly silly, we can find ourselves trapped in a disagreement without knowing how to get out of it. (Way out hint: Remember the story of the maiden, and her parents who sat crying under the ax stuck in the ceiling of the cellar worrying about how if she married the gentleman that had come calling on her, and they had a boy, and the boy should come down into the cellar, and if the ax would fall on the boy’s head and klll him, how terrible it would be? Well, Prophyry’s tree is like that.)

Change the diagram (See Figure 2). Use the same terms, but restructure the schema’s relationships to align more closely with reality (See Figure 2, and Footnote 1).

Thus, a chair is still a non-living, material, substance, and a flower is a non-sentient, living, material, substance. But now we can properly describe, name, and identify an angel as a rational, sentient, living, non-material, substance.

Remember, however, that this diagram is nothing more than a bunch of lines on a computer screen (or paper if you print it out). Reality is a lot more complex. The reality we know as Christianity is filled with mystery that simple diagrams and the complexity of science will never unravel. Fr. Mitch Pacwa yesterday morning on EWTN suggested that even when we get to heaven and understand a great deal more, we will still not understand the mysteries of God; for if we did eternity would be boring.

Okay, so we’ve solved one problem by removing the ax from the ceiling. But using only the Porphyrian Tree and our powers of observation to determine the essence of a thing has its limits. To the observing scientist, the day-old human embryo is only substance, material, and living. We cannot recognize, until about week five of gestation a heartbeat, and we cannot measure electrical activity produced by the brain until about 6-12 weeks. Even some measures of sentient consciousness (recognition of self in a mirror), will not be recognized until months after birth, as well as signs of rational thought and moral reasoning.
Using either schema and only direct observation, therefore, does not provide us with a human being until months after it is born, and some would argue that we don’t have a fully developed human until the child has developed language skills. That could take years. Using such a reasoning chain alone is also problematic when sickness and disease strike. When consciousness and language skills disappear for a period of time due to accident, disease or old age, does human life cease to exist? On what basis, then, is a conclusion about human life made? When does a thing cease to be the thing it was? When is a thing that was something no longer that something and now suddenly nothing [Footnote 2]?

There are many ways to define something; what is described here is only one. But the problems illustrated above can be found in every other rational schema or device known to man that attempts to accurately define what something is, except for one. And that one method is faith — God’s Word carried to us through the life and words of Jesus and the prophets. Here we are introduced to and reminded of things that reason alone cannot explain, but which reason does enlighten and support.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you” (Jeremiah 1:5).
“Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1: 42-43).

What happened in the case of my friend’s stories about the angels of North America? It turned out that he had just finished reading a particularly long and exciting story by a Christian novelist about Biblical angels involved in 20^th century America. While the essence of Biblical angels indeed is that of substance, the essence of the characters and situations in my friend’s novel were non-substantive or unreal. So good was the writing, however, and so true to the natural character of real angels, that it became difficult to tell the difference between stories of 4,000 years ago, and the fictional stories today.
My friend’s situation seems impossible, but it demonstrates just how easy it can be to believe in something that is not true, and why reliance on faith, diligent study, prayer, and the teachings of the Church are so critically important in our pursuit of truth and the good of all humankind.

[Footnote 1: Some of you who are familiar with the discipline of assigning the essence of something with the Porphyrian Tree may disagree with my seemingly arbitrary revision, with lines going every which way, and my apparent lack of discernment. My reasons for the diagram cannot be entirely defended, but I’ll try. (1) Such lines on a paper can only help us define the essence of being in a crude way. Reality is far beyond what we will ever understand and thus I put lines every which way to remind us of our limited understanding. (2) Can something be non-living and sentient? Depends on how you define “sentient”. If you limit the definition to things that can “sense” then most scientific measuring devices (sensors) are such things. (3) Can something be “non-sentient” and “rational”? Not that I know of. But then I know very little.]

[Footnote 2: Science and the Church both recognize that human life begins at conception with the formation of a human embryo. This discussion casts no doubt on that fact, but only on the limitations of using certain philosophical arguments to determine what is true.]

Logic 25: Thirteen Principles of Discovering the Truth

2008-09-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

Hopefully you’ve had the privilege of hearing and seeing the Abbott and Costello comedy routine “Who’s on First” [Footnote 1]. In it, Costello has been offered a baseball contract to play for the New York Yankees, and Abbott is offered a coach’s position as long as Costello is on the team. Before the fearless duo leave for New York, Costello wants to know the names of his fellow players — and Abbott offers to tell him. Thank logical and linguistic fallacies for the entertaining results. Here’s a small excerpt of the entire routine.
Abbott: Well, let’s see, we have on the bags, Who’s on first, What’s on second, I Don’t Know is on third…
Costello: That’s what I want to find out.
Abbott: I say Who’s on first, What’s on second, I Don’t Know’s on third.
Costello: Are you the manager?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: You gonna be the coach too?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: And you don’t know the fellows’ names.
Abbott: Well, I should.
Costello: Well, then who’s on first?
Abbott: Yes.
Costello: I mean the fellow’s name.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy on first.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The first baseman.
Abbott: Who.
Costello: The guy playing…
Abbott: Who is on first!
Costello: I’m asking you who’s on first.
Abbott: That’s the man’s name [Footnote 2].
Man’s Search for Truth
The humor of the routine is based “soundly” on linguistic fallacies such as equivocation, question-begging definitions, ambiguity and others that we’ve been studying. Equivocation occurs when a name like “Who” is defined by Costello as an interrogative pronoun, and by Abbott as a declarative noun — the player’s name. Question-begging definition occurs when,”accidentally”, Costello asks questions that do not define “who” in the same way Abbott is defining the word. Ambiguity is involved because the known player’s names are also confused with what is unknown.
But it’s an “evergreen hit” because it plays off humanity’s deepest desire — to know the truth — and how easily the truth is obstructed, not by maliciousness or evil intent, but simply by faulty communication and reasoning.
Such is the guts of the human condition in the presence of sin. God has placed us here on Earth to know Him (the way, the truth, and the light), but sin continues to throw obstacles in our path.
To help us find and use truth successfully, God left us the Church and the pairing of faith and reason. As John Paul II writes in the opening paragraph of his encyclical Fides Et Ratio:

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth — in a word, to know himself — so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.

John Paul the Great then dutifully references a number of Bible verses, which hopefully everyone looked up, read and studied; i.e. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2. (Catholics, open your Bibles pleas, or if you’re like Steve Ray, “Turn on your G3 iPhone.” Last night at a local apologist party, hosted by Gary and Chris Michuta, Steve showed me how he uses his iPhone to access his Bible and the daily readings — for any date plus or minus 100 years — on his iPhone. So, if you see Steve at Mass staring at his PCD [”Portable Communication Device” — we’re beyond simple PDAs — “Personal Data Assistants”], you’ll know he’s probably reading his Bible… or at least that’s his story.)
Argument Structure
All arguments, which are discussions whose purpose is to discover truth, take on the form of presenting evidence, piece after piece, until enough of it is compiled to lead us to a conclusion.
Evidence A
Evidence B
Evidence C
Evidence D
etc.
———————-
Conclusion
This is what happens in a court of law, as well as in the myriad stories and movies that are structured around a moral premise to lead us to a conclusion about how to live our lives [Footnote 3]. The individual pieces of evidence, how they’re presented, upon what they’re based, and the synergy they produce when juxtaposed, all have to be true in and of themselves, if the conclusion they lead us to is going to be properly supported.
Principles of Knowing with Reason
I must remind us all that reason, without the supernatural revelation of faith, is half blind or flies with a clipped wing. What follows are rules or principles for using reason. While we could say they have nothing to do with truth given to us by faith, that is not true. Why? It is because faith and reason are part of the same system of knowing. You can’t have one without the other. In fact you cannot read a book about faith without using your powers of reason, which allow you to read in the fist place.
The process of compiling the evidence, keeping it focused on the intended conclusion, and the methodology of the argument, works best when we also conduct ourselves rationally. To help us do that here are brief descriptions of the principles of a good argument. Twelve are from Damer [Footnote 4] with my own additions and comments. (Several of these principles we’ve discussed already, and the others will be covered in more detail in later articles.)
The first three principles (Fallibility, Truth-Seeking, and Clarity) are standard practice for all serious intellectual inquiry.
Principle 1. Fallibility Principle.
Let humility be your guide. Realize that even though you’re smart, well-read, a world class theologian, and have lunch with the pope (or at least read one of his books during lunch), you’re not infallible. It just may be that something is wrong with your logic and facts. The same may be true of your opponent. Agree beforehand, that both of you may be wrong. (See Part 14 in this series for more.)
Principle 2. Truth-Seeking Principle
In any discussion both parties need to make truth, not their personal perspective of truth, their goal. Their perspective may be wrong. Everyone involved in the discussion should be willing to examine the various positions and be willing to have others rebut their own position. (See Parts 18 & 19.)
Principle 3. Clarity Principle
Every part of any discussion needs to be clear and understood. Do not hesitate to scrupulously apply every one of these principles, be sure to define all of the key terms of the debate so every term is understood the same way by all parties, and avoid all fallacies.
Principle 4. Burden of Proof
A position must be defended by the party holding that position. The proof or disproof of a position by someone antagonistic against or ambivalent toward the position does not lend the position credibility, and in fact, can indicate subterfuge.
Principle 5. Principle of Charity
When restating the position of an opponent, you should restate the argument in the best possible terms, giving your opponent the benefit of the doubt. Never marginalize the argument of another (unless they have done so as part of their best shot). You can only arrive at the truth without prejudice or distortion.
Principles 6 through 9 represent the four evidentiary criteria of a good argument. (See Part 4.)
Principle 6. Relevance
When arguing in support of or against a position, only use evidence that is relevant. If you don’t, you open yourself to committing fallacies of irrelevance.
Principle 7. Acceptability
When arguing in support of or against a position, only use evidence that is acceptable to all parties, both those that are for and against the position. The term “acceptable” does not mean the evidence must be infallible, but should be reasonable and possible. When antagonists refuse to accept certain evidence you present because they disagree with your presuppositions you’ll have to work harder to find acceptable bases for your discussion.
Principle 8. Sufficiency
When arguing in support of or against a position, use evidence that is sufficient in number, kind, and weight to support the conclusion.
Principle 9. Rebuttal
When arguing in support of or against a position, provide evidence that challenges the best and strongest arguments against your position.
Principle 10. Resolution
A position should be accepted if it meets the evidentiary criteria requirements of relevancy, acceptability, sufficiency, and mounts a credible rebuttal against its best challenge. If the opposition cannot demonstrate how the argument fails to meet these four criteria, the position should be accepted. If some elements of the four criteria of a good argument cannot be mounted by either side, the position with the best argument should be accepted as valid until more evidence can be presented.
Principle 11. Suspension of Judgment
This principle complements the Resolution Principle. If neither argument can mount satisfying evidentiary criteria to achieve some level of resolution, then the argument (its evidence and conclusion) should be tabled until more evidence can be found. If a decision must be made due to urgency, then the best position is the one that provides the strongest evidence, even though it’s less than ideal. (See Part 7.)
Principle 12. Reconsideration
All arguments will conclude under the terms of Principle 10 or 11 — until additional, unconsidered evidence is discovered, or some of the previously presented evidence is discovered to be false or invalid — at which time the argument should be reconsidered and all the evidence again weighed in light of what is now known.
Principle 13. Forgiveness Principle
Truth needs to be pursued even when arguments become heated and one or more of the first 12 principles are sidelined. The Forgiveness Principle comes in handy when one of the parties forgets The Fallibility Principle and dons the mantle of omniscience. For the discussion to continue, forgiveness needs to be sought and offered. Or, if the discussion is terminated because one or more of the parties throws a frying pan through the discussion, shattering the relationship all over the landscape, then the situation has to be restored before discussion can continue. (See Part 15 in this series for more.)
Homework Assignment
As I work toward the manuscript that will incorporate these articles into a book, I will be adding student exercises at the end of each chapter. Here’s one that you may find of some interest now, and one that will also motivate you to open your Bibles, or PCD.
Each of the above principles can be found in the book of Proverbs. For each of the 13 Principles of a Good Argument, cite, quote, and explain the related Proverb. (That should keep you busy for a while.) When you’re done, send me your results for a grade. (Actually, with your permission, I’ll probably use your work in an upcoming chapter.)
———–
Footnote 1: This routine was not entirely original with Abbott and Costello, although they perfected it and made it popular. It descended from earlier burlesque sketches like “The Baker Scene” and “Who Dyed”. “In the 1930 movie Cracked Nuts, comedians Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey examine a map of a mythical kingdom with dialogue like this: “What is next to Which.” “What is the name of the town next to Which?” “Yes.” (Ref. wikipedia.org.)
Footnote 2: The entire WHO’S ON FIRST routine is posted on my blog, HERE.
Footnote 3: See www.moralpremise.com.
Footnote 4: T. Edward Damer (2001). Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments, 4^th Edition. Wadsworth, Belmont, CA.

Chapter 24 Ambiguity and Eucharistic Instruction

2008-08-31T13:18:00.000-07:00

Recently, I wrote about how the linguistic fallacy called ambiguity contributed to the 1839 martyrdom of John Williams — one of my ancestors, and a pioneering missionary to Polynesia. I also related how the religious instruction we often get as Catholics is logically ambiguous, causing many Catholic to believe that in order to live a full and abundant Catholic life all they have to do is just show up for Mass and take the Eucharist — even ambivalently. Yet, Christ reacts to such ambivalence with words like: “I will spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:15).

Dr. Robert Fastiggi, a theologian at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, agreed to an interview about this problem and the prevailing attitude that going to Mass and taking the Eucharist is all anyone needs to lead a solid Christian life. Here is an edited version of our conversation. Consider this the second half of that earlier article, the part that tells us what to do about certain aspects of ambiguity in the Church.

Williams: Dr. Fastiggi, Catholic pastors communicate a great deal about the importance of just showing up and receiving the Eucharist, regardless of the parishioner’s disposition. Isn’t it true that taking the sacraments unworthily is a sin?

Fastiggi: The sacraments are instituted by Christ so it’s not as though we should deemphasize the sacraments. Especially the Holy Eucharist. These are wonderful gifts and there’s no more powerful way of drawing close to our Lord than receiving the Holy Eucharist in this life. So, I don’t think the emphasis on taking the Eucharist whenever possible is misguided.

Williams: But, where do you think…

Fastiggi: …the problem lies? I think that some people are not well catechized in terms of the need for a preparation beyond just showing up to receive the Holy Eucharist. St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that we are to “discern the body and blood of our Lord” when we receive…we are to examine ourselves and make sure we are in a state of grace…

Williams: In paragraph 1127 of the Catechism, the very first phrase says, “Celebrated worthily in faith the Sacraments confer the grace that they signify.” So, people have got to want to be there, don’t they?

Fastiggi: Exactly, exactly. While, I suppose, it might be better for them to be there just in body rather than also in heart, there is a difference. It’s what we call in theology the difference between ex opere operato and ex opere operantis. In the first, the body of Christ becomes present if the sacrament is done in the proper form with the proper matter and the proper intention and with the proper minister.

But in the second, ex opere operantis, if the person takes the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin, the person receives the body and blood of Christ only sacramentally, not interiorly. That is, such a person does not have a spiritual benefit because they are unworthily receiving.

Williams: Apologist Marty Barrack writes, “Our good disposition determines the amount of grace we obtain”…even in sacramentals. “Praying a Rosary will give little or no grace if we make no effort to focus on the mysteries or if we simply pay no attention to what is going on” [On the web link]. That’s what the Catechism means when it says that the fruits of the sacrament depend on the disposition of the one who receives them.

Fastiggi: Exactly. Spiritually there has to be a preparation. As the Council of Trent said — and it has been repeated numerous times — after the consecration, the whole Christ, body, blood, soul and divinity, is really, truly and substantially contained in the outward appearances of bread and wine. That’s what we’re talking about. That presence is there even if someone were to receive the Holy Communion unworthily.

But to receive both, as the Council of Trent said, sacramentally and spiritually there has to be proper preparation: spiritual preparation. This is one reason why minimally one should fast from solid foods and liquids other than water at least one hour. Now, when I was growing up it was 3 hours. And my parents would remember when it was from Midnight the night before so that one was really spiritually prepared. Something we don’t like to mention is that, in the 16th Century, it was in the catechism of the Council of Trent that married couples should abstain from conjugal relations several days before receiving Holy Communion. That was considered a pious practice.

Williams: Several days before?

Fastiggi: Three days.

Williams: No sex for three days before receiving Holy Communion?

Fastiggi: Yes. It was very difficult to enforce. But, that is what was specified in the Roman Catechism in 1566. That is what was taught. It was a sense of the awesomeness that one made a great spiritual preparation to worthily receive our Lord. Now in the present Catechism of the Catholic Church, there’s just some beautiful but very brief admonitions:

To prepare for worthy reception of this sacrament the faithful should observe the fast required in their Church. Bodily demeanor, (gestures, clothing) ought to convey the respect, solemnity, and joy of this moment when Christ becomes our guest (CCC 1387).

So we are to dress modestly.

Williams: Someone should tell that to the folks at our church who come in beach wear, and we’re nowhere near the beach. I think it’s pathetic. I think this is one of those things where, although the Church is teaching the right stuff, Catholic parishes should take a lesson from Evangelicals. My mother would refuse to sit next to me during Evangelical services if I wasn’t wearing a suit and tie in the dead of summer.

Fastiggi: In the warmer months this is an issue. Even though our outward bodily appearance should convey the respect, there should be an interior preparation. This is where I would recommend that part of John Paul II’s great encyclical, the last encyclical he wrote before going to the Lord, Ecclesia De Eucharistia (On the Eucharist in Its Relationship to the Church), where he talks about learning in the School of Mary and developing a Eucharistic demeanor in the School of Mary. Because she held the living God in her womb for nine months, so she can help us to receive the Lord into our bodies for that brief period of time where the outward appearances remain. So, I think that the Church is trying to cultivate that interior sense and those who say, “Well, the Catholic Church teaches externalism” really have not taken the time to read the sources.

Williams: But the typical lay person is never going to read an encyclical. You have to because it’s your job as a theologian. But how do we help the common person understand what’s supposed to go on inside of them?

Fastiggi: There are so many ways that we can improve the catechesis. One way of beginning is teaching people about the proper atmosphere at a church. Their actions should convey that sense of awesomeness of what is going on. There is great power in the words of the Eucharistic Prayer. Gestures mean a lot. We’re told to make a sign of reverence before the Eucharist before receiving like a small bow. This is not, I think, taught well enough. And also to genuflect, or, if one is not able to do that, to bow when going past the tabernacle because of the Lord’s presence there.

Williams: Today during the Eucharistic prayer I heard a noise coming from the Eucharistic chapel, which is at the front of our church to one side. I looked up, and there was a mother letting her small toddler run around between the kneelers, while she stood with her back to the tabernacle. Finally, the father came and took the kid to the back of the church and sent the mother back to the pew. But never did any of them show any reverence to the Tabernacle or even hint that they knew Who was there.

Fastiggi: I just heard this last night from Fr. Groeschel — the chit chat that goes on during Mass. It should not be. People should not be reading the bulletins or so on. There should be teaching and preaching about these things, not just on Corpus Christie, but on other Sundays encouraging people to become spiritually prepared.

Williams: What does taking the Eucharist mean practically for my day to day life? If we can be idealistic for a moment: I take the Eucharist every Sunday. What should that do to my life practically in terms of what people see in my life?

Fastiggi: Well we have to ask ourselves what is the Christian life all about? It’s growing closer to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s growing in the love of God and the love of neighbor. So receiving the source of grace into our very bodies — Christ, the source of our life, of Grace, our sanctification — catches us from sin and really cleanses us from venial sin. Now it doesn’t cleanse us from mortal sin. Iif one is conscious of grave sin, you go to sacramental confession before receiving. But these non-mortal sins, these venial sins, these weaknesses we have — the receiving worthily of Holy Communion not only purifies us of those sins but it strengthens us, strengthens our character so that we are less likely to commit these venial sins in the future. So if we worthily receive our Lord in the Eucharist we grow in the knowledge and love of God, we become more like Christ, it’s the process of becoming divinized.

Williams: Or becoming the body of Christ.

Fastiggi: Yes, that’s right.

Williams: As an extraordinary minister, I hold up the Host, and I am conscious, so much of the time, that when I look past the Host and look in the person’s eyes and I say ‘the body of Christ,’ I am holding and presenting the body of Christ literally and substantively in my hand, but I am looking to the person that is the body of Christ as well. And when they are united they should become more like Christ in every way.

Fastiggi: Well that is paragraph 1596 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: that those who receive the Eucharist are united more closely to Christ. Through it, the Eucharist, Christ unites them — all the faithful — in one body, the Church.

Williams: But it does take their conscious effort to become like that. As I look into people’s eyes I sometimes wonder if, in spite of the Real Presence, if taking Christ internally is really going to change some people. It doesn’t happen magically without their will.

Fastiggi: No, no. It becomes much more fruitful with their will. We do have to judge by appearances but we have to realize that even our human judgment is sometimes flawed. Man judges by appearances and God looks at the heart, as the book of Samuel tells us. We keep that in mind, yet on the other hand we do pick up clues in terms of body language and facial expressions, and you as an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion see this and you wonder “Well, what’s going on?”

Williams: I’m always praying that they get it.

Fastiggi: This is the living God. This is the Creator of the universe you are going to receive under the form of what seems to be bread and wine but it is the living God. It is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It’s the same Christ that Thomas bowed before or prostrated before and he said “My Lord, and my God.”

Williams: But how do we inculcate that? How do we help people understand?

Fastiggi: This is where Eucharistic adoration, even if it is for a couple of hours a week or one day a week, helps the whole parish, and then we should get people to participate in Eucharistic Congresses.

There’s this group called Generation Christ in Ann Arbor, young adults 18 to 35. They give up an hour of Sunday night to spend in Eucharistic adoration, hear a little reflection and then socialize afterwards. What better place to meet someone, even a prospective spouse, someone who loves the Eucharist?

Williams: What a great date night!

Fastiggi: There’s so much more that could be done. We have the right teaching but we just don’t live up to it.

Williams: Yes, we have the right teaching but there’s not enough of it or people aren’t exposed to it. In some of my other writing I’m trying to encourage Catholic parishes to start thinking about adult faith formation more like evangelicals do, where there’s Sunday school for all adults every Sunday for an hour — an hour of instruction before worship, every Sunday, all year long. The evangelicals do a better job at this. And, of course, evangelicals pile on top of that Bible studies during the week that a lot of people go to, and then there are the 45-minute homilies, with Bibles open in every lap.

Fastiggi: Wow! There’s a lot we could do. He wants to give us His very Self. He wants to give of Himself all that He is — body, blood, soul, and divinity — and to enter into us so we can become more like Him, because that is what is preparing us for our eternal life, where we are transformed and transfigured after the pattern of our Lord’s resurrected Body.

Williams: Let me ask you this one last question. One of the characteristics of Gnosticism is the rejection of the physical realm’s association with grace. That is, the physical realm is evil, and the spiritual realm is good. Is there a name for this opposite kind of Gnosticism that says “All I gotta do is show up for Mass, and what goes on inside doesn’t matter”? Is there a name for that?

Dr. Fastiggi: Hmmm. How about superficialism?
Williams: Superficialism, that’s it. The new heresy. You heard it here first, folks.

Dr. Fastiggi: I think what needs to be stressed is if one is conscious of grave sin, one is not to receive Holy Communion. I know a priest in Ann Arbor — of a homily that he gave where he stressed this and apparently some people got up and left. They said “I’m worthy to receive. Who’s he to tell me?” But I saw him afterward and he told me: “I heard many wonderful confessions after that homily.” So, there’re some people who just don’t know if you’re cohabitating and you’re not married and you’re having conjugal relations when you’re not entitled to them, you shouldn’t be receiving Holy Communion.

Williams: That’s good.

Fastiggi: Mother Teresa’s sisters spend an hour each day in Eucharistic adoration and then they go serve Christ and the poor. Some people set one against the other. It’s not Eucharistic adoration against the poor. It’s both. This is the Catholic faith: that we have to emphasize both. If we’re not rooted in Christ then social action could just be some kind of secular activity. We need “to be animated by the love of Christ,” as Pope Benedict so beautifully put it.

Williams: Dr. Robert Fastiggi, thank you so much.

Fastiggi: Thank you Stan, and may God bless you.

Williams: God Bless you too.

Fastiggi: Pray for us.

Williams: And for us.

Chapter 23 WHY LOGIC DOESN'T ALWAYS WORK?

2008-08-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

I suppose it was because it was the 1960s. That might have been the reason. College and university students around the country were up in arms, literally. There were sit-ins, break-ins, love-ins, and shoot-outs. Trustees, administrators, police, and sometimes the National Guard were called in to deal with rebellious students. Yes, there were reasons for revolt, and there were reasons for not revolting. The lack of logic was revolting.

Rebels All

There was the war in Vietnam which some had reasons for claiming was unjust and unnecessary just as others claimed, with reason, the opposite. There are always good reasons for marriage, but others had other reasons to replace it with “free love.” Not satisfied with the paper-thin reasons for a bar on every corner (prohibition was part of the forgotten past), many argued in favor of laws legalizing (and rationalizing) dope and marijuana — the new symbols of the pursuit of happiness, always ending with a crash.

It was a time of irrationality that would later morph into various regrets, paranoia, and psychoses. We’re paying the price today, with practically everyone forgetting the role of good reasons and logical arguments, in favor of their selfish, stupefying will. The current political season should shake us awake. Last night I heard both a liberal and a conservative commentator say of both presidential candidates: “They’re lying to us.” And yet we’re going to vote one of them into the most powerful, temporal job on Earth. What we sow, we reap.

The Pursuit of the Will

I attended, with my future wife Pam, Greenville College (G.C.) in Greenville, Illinois. It was (and still is) a small Evangelical School associated with the Free Methodist Church of North America. The school was located in Bond County, which at the time was “dry.” That means prohibition was still the rule of law. There were no bars; it was illegal to sell alcohol in the county. That helped to keep the riff-raff out, and the student “rebellions” to a minimum. Actually, although we read about such craziness at state universities, we were dolefully ignorant and naïve… and I mean that in a good way. We did, however, experience a little unrest. I’ll tell you of two events, both of which will help illustrate why logic doesn’t always work.

One spring our otherwise very strict administrators contracted with The New Christy Minstrels, a touring folk singing group of a dozen or so individuals, to put on a concert — a Hootenanny — at the school. The event was “big” for our small school of 800 students. In our mind the Pharisees (as we nicknamed the administrators) were going to open the gates of the “Holy City” and let us brush up against barbarians of the real world. We were excited. It was our opportunity to “rebel” — as much as we knew how. For my rebellious part I “rationally” skipped a week of classes and worked on promoting the event. The specifics of my promotional effort have totally escaped my consciousness, but I’ll never forget the consequences of skipping classes. I had my reasons and logic, but there were stronger reasons that I ignored. My will temporally trumped reason. It was the first week of Integral Calculus — something impossible, for me, to catch-up on. I flunked the class and had to retake it during summer school.

The concert went off without a hitch, but not without conflict behind the scenes. In order to get paid, the Minstrels were told they could not sing certain songs in their repertoire. The reasons were given. Certain songs, which we had all heard on the albums in our dorm rooms, made light of certain behavior that, although in keeping with the 60’s, were not in keeping with the moral standards of an Evangelical Christian college. The songs were not sung — but the locker room the group used for a dressing room was trashed. The school’s reasons for avoiding certain ideologies were proven true by the group’s reasons for singing them. The trashed locker room made physical the dangers of irrational, rebellious ideologies. Not only was the group not invited back to Greenville, but word was passed to other small colleges, and The New Christy Minstrels found it difficult to get dates in other similar venues.

From both perspectives, personal wills were confronted by reasons. Will always wins in the short haul, reason always wins in the long.

I was given good reasons about the dangers of skipping so many classes, but there was something more important at stake, for me, at that time — it wasn’t The New Christy Minstrels, it was my will. I rebelled against natural law and there were consequences to be paid. The reason of natural law, and the reason for my attendance at college were replaced by the reasons that fed my ego, my will, my pride. The Minstrels similarly discovered that there is a logic in a capitalist society that demands respect for business agreements.

Hair Line

The 60s had had their impact on G.C. and the campus saw several “radical” changes. When I first arrived, the Pharisees had effective control of the rebels in our midst, with the attentive cooperation of parents who were spending a lot of money sending their charges off to a private school. The control was enacted by parental backing. Modesty was the norm and shorts of any kind, even knee-length Bermuda shorts were not allowed outside the dorm. In 1969, my senior year, the Bermuda Shorts Resolution was accepted by the administration and Bermuda Shorts could be worn on campus after 6 PM. Supposedly by that time, all the older, rich, patrons of the college would be off campus and not take offense at our scandalous attire. I know, this does not sound “radical” as the topic sentence of this paragraph “promised.” Times change. I have a letter written in 1941 by my missionary grandmother, Edith Willobee, who at the time was in India. She wrote to my mother and her sister (my aunt) in Michigan where the two had just landed teaching jobs. To celebrate they put on their best teaching attire, took a picture and sent it to their mother. Edith’s letter, in response, is awash in scandalous language because of her daughter’s worldly and immodest attire — the girls were showing too much skin in their elbow-length sleeved blouses. Their will temporarily trumped their mother’s reasons… until my mother had kids of her own, and suddenly modesty was all the rage… as it should be, although burkas for the male wrestling team seemed a bit much.

After I graduated from G.C., Pam and I were married and then rented an apartment in town as she finished up her last year of college and student teaching. It was now 1970, and the student leaders at Greenville College decided that the rebellious 60s were better late than never. Another rule that was still in force was that students were forbidden to wear facial hair. When I was a freshman the rule was no hair below the ear-lobe. Half-way through college the standard was “lowered” and hair would not be allowed to the upper lip. Mustaches suddenly became vogue, and pictures of me during this period show my sideburns were strangely connected to my mustache, as I shaved down along a straight line from my upper-lip.

The student body leaders (always very conservative and devout Christians — the elections always seemed rigged) decided that there was a double standard about this hair business, and that the constantly changing rule (once in two years) about where hair could appear and not, seemed duplicitous. It wasn’t that the Pharisees or the professors were sprouting rebellious beards, but the walls were covered with pictures of the college’s founders and Christianity’s founders and they all had beards, in fact, the more important these individuals seemed to be, the more facial hair they had. For God’s sake, Jesus had a beard in every picture ever painted, mounted, and displayed of Him.

The G.C. student body president was Glen Snyder, the son of a well-known missionary doctor to Africa, as Glen and his wife would eventually become for short medical missionary stints. Always well-groomed, with his thick black hair trimmed neatly, no lower than the bottom of his ear lobe, Glen was the epitome of convention and cooperation. Consequently, Glen and the other student officers (3 of which were male) were always trotted out to meet VIPs and benefactors that came regularly to visit the campus. College funding depended on such “show and tell” events.

I’m not sure who decided that the 60s rebellion was better late than never, but suddenly, one Monday morning, Glen and the student officers showed up for a meeting with the college president and the Board of Trustees. That morning, the “pursuit of happiness” as defined by the will of the Board of Trustees took a hit by reason. The three guys had shaved their heads. Behind the three students, hanging on the wall were three paintings of men the college held up as role models: Jesus, Free Methodist founder, B.T. Roberts, and college founder John Brown — all with full beards.

The Board of Trustees had willed that beards were a sign of rebellion and were not to be tolerated. And in the short haul, such strong wills can prevail… at least until some infallible and embarrassing reason is unavoidable. By the end of the year, half the professors and every male student who could grew a full beard.

The moral premise of these stories is this: Selfish will and a false pride lead to embarrassment and insecurity, but the selfless portrayal of truth leads to virtue and solidarity.

END OF CHAPTER

27 Abbott and Costello's WHO'S ON FIRST

2008-07-31T09:42:00.000-07:00

The good thing about logical and linguist fallacies is that they can provide a lot of good humor. In fact humor is only possible because of such fallacies. They allow human beings to laugh at themselves. Humility is a virtue. As was be discussed in Chapter 25: The 13 Principles of a Good Argument, both the humor of fallacies, and mankind's incessant search for truth are no more better illustrated that in Abbott and Costello's comedy sketch "Who's On First?"

The ARTICLE AT WIKIPEDIA on this routine is a good read. Here's an excerpt:

"Who's on First?" is descended from turn-of-the-century burlesque sketches like "The Baker Scene" (the shop is located on Watt Street) and "Who Dyed" (the owner is named Who). In the 1930 movie Cracked Nuts, comedians Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey examine a map of a mythical kingdom with dialogue like this: "What is next to Which." "What is the name of the town next to Which?" "Yes." In English variety halls (Britain's equivalent of vaudeville theatres), comedian Will Hay performed a routine in the early 1930s (and possibly earlier) as a schoolmaster interviewing a schoolboy named Howe who came from Ware but now lives in Wye. By the early 1930s, a "Baseball Routine" had become a standard bit for burlesque comics across the United States of America[

And now, on with the shew...

Abbott: Well, Costello, I'm going to New York with you. Bucky Harris the Yankee's manager gave me a job as coach for as long as you're on the team.

Costello: Look Abbott, if you're the coach, you must know all the players.

Abbott: I certainly do.

Costello: Well you know I've never met the guys. So you'll have to tell me their names, and then I'll know who's playing on the team.

Abbott: Oh, I'll tell you their names, but you know it seems to me they give these ball players now-a-days very peculiar names.

Costello: You mean funny names?

Abbott: Strange names, pet names...like Dizzy Dean...

Costello: His brother Daffy

Abbott: Daffy Dean...

Costello: And their French cousin.

Abbott: French?

Costello: Goofe'

Abbott: Goofe' Dean. Well, let's see, we have on the bags, Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third...

Costello: That's what I want to find out.

Abbott: I say Who's on first, What's on second, I Don't Know's on third.

Costello: Are you the manager?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: You gonna be the coach too?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: And you don't know the fellows' names.

Abbott: Well I should.

Costello: Well then who's on first?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: I mean the fellow's name.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy on first.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The first baseman.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy playing...

Abbott: Who is on first!

Costello: I'm asking you who's on first.

Abbott: That's the man's name.

Costello: That's who's name?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: Well go ahead and tell me.

Abbott: That's it.

Costello: That's who?

Abbott: Yes. PAUSE

Costello: Look, you gotta first baseman?

Abbott: Certainly.

Costello: Who's playing first?

Abbott: That's right.

Costello: When you pay off the first baseman every month, who gets the money?

Abbott: Every dollar of it.

Costello: All I'm trying to find out is the fellow's name on first base.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy that gets...

Abbott: That's it.

Costello: Who gets the money...

Abbott: He does, every dollar of it. Sometimes his wife comes down and collects it.

Costello: Who's wife?

Abbott: Yes. PAUSE

Abbott: What's wrong with that?

Costello: I wanna know is when you sign up the first baseman, how does he sign his name?

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: How does he sign...

Abbott: That's how he signs it.

Costello: Who?

Abbott: Yes. PAUSE

Costello: All I'm trying to find out is what's the guys name on first base.

Abbott: No. What is on second base.

Costello: I'm not asking you who's on second.

Abbott: Who's on first.

Costello: One base at a time!

Abbott: Well, don't change the players around.

Costello: I'm not changing nobody!

Abbott: Take it easy, buddy.

Costello: I'm only asking you, who's the guy on first base?

Abbott: That's right.

Costello: OK.

Abbott: Alright. PAUSE

Costello: What's the guy's name on first base?

Abbott: No. What is on second.

Costello: I'm not asking you who's on second.

Abbott: Who's on first.

Costello: I don't know.

Abbott: He's on third, we're not talking about him.

Costello: Now how did I get on third base?

Abbott: Why you mentioned his name.

Costello: If I mentioned the third baseman's name, who did I say is playing third?

Abbott: No. Who's playing first.

Costello: What's on base?

Abbott: What's on second.

Costello: I don't know.

Abbott: He's on third.

Costello: There I go, back on third again! PAUSE

Costello: Would you just stay on third base and don't go off it.

Abbott: Alright, what do you want to know?

Costello: Now who's playing third base?

Abbott: Why do you insist on putting Who on third base?

Costello: What am I putting on third.

Abbott: No. What is on second.

Costello: You don't want who on second?

Abbott: Who is on first.

Costello: I don't know. Together: Third base! PAUSE

Costello: Look, you gotta outfield?

Abbott: Sure.

Costello: The left fielder's name?

Abbott: Why.

Costello: I just thought I'd ask you.

Abbott: Well, I just thought I'd tell ya.

Costello: Then tell me who's playing left field.

Abbott: Who's playing first.

Costello: I'm not...stay out of the infield!!! I want to know what's the guy's name in left field?

Abbott: No, What is on second.

Costello: I'm not asking you who's on second.

Abbott: Who's on first!

Costello: I don't know. Together: Third base! PAUSE

Costello: The left fielder's name?

Abbott: Why.

Costello: Because!

Abbott: Oh, he's center field. PAUSE

Costello: Look, You gotta pitcher on this team?

Abbott: Sure.

Costello: The pitcher's name?

Abbott: Tomorrow.

Costello: You don't want to tell me today?

Abbott: I'm telling you now.

Costello: Then go ahead.

Abbott: Tomorrow!

Costello: What time?

Abbott: What time what?

Costello: What time tomorrow are you gonna tell me who's pitching?

Abbott: Now listen. Who is not pitching.

Costello: I'll break you're arm if you say who's on first!!! I want to know what's the pitcher's name?

Abbott: What's on second.

Costello: I don't know. Together: Third base! PAUSE

Costello: Gotta a catcher?

Abbott: Certainly.

Costello: The catcher's name?

Abbott: Today.

Costello: Today, and tomorrow's pitching.

Abbott: Now you've got it.

Costello: All we got is a couple of days on the team. PAUSE

Costello: You know I'm a catcher too.

Abbott: So they tell me.

Costello: I get behind the plate to do some fancy catching, Tomorrow's pitching on my team and a heavy hitter gets up. Now the heavy hitter bunts the ball. When he bunts the ball, me, being a good catcher, I'm gonna throw the guy out at first. So I pick up the ball and throw it to who?

Abbott: Now that's the first thing you've said right.

Costello: I don't even know what I'm talking about! PAUSE

Abbott: That's all you have to do.

Costello: Is to throw the ball to first base.

Abbott: Yes!

Costello: Now who's got it?

Abbott: Naturally. PAUSE

Costello: Look, if I throw the ball to first base, somebody's gotta get it. Now who has it?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: Who?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: Naturally?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: So I pick up the ball and I throw it to Naturally.

Abbott: No you don't you throw the ball to Who.

Costello: Naturally.

Abbott: That's different.

Costello: That's what I said.

Abbott: you're not saying it...

Costello: I throw the ball to Naturally.

Abbott: You throw it to Who.

Costello: Naturally.

Abbott: That's it.

Costello: That's what I said!

Abbott: You ask me.

Costello: I throw the ball to who?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: Now you ask me.

Abbott: You throw the ball to Who?

Costello: Naturally.

Abbott: That's it.

Costello: Same as you! Same as YOU!!! I throw the ball to who. Whoever it is drops the ball and the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What. What throws it to I Don't Know. I Don't Know throws it back to Tomorrow, Triple play. Another guy gets up and hits a long fly ball to Because. Why? I don't know! He's on third and I don't give a darn!

Abbott: What?

Costello: I said I don't give a darn!

Abbott: Oh, that's our shortstop.

Costello: (makes screaming sound)

Totally confused? Here is the answer?

First Base: Who
Second Base: What
Third base: I Don't Know
Left field: Why
Center Field: Because
Pitcher: Tomorrow
Catcher: Today
Shortstop: I Don't Give A Darn (usually)

An mp3 of the routine is HERE.

Chapter 22 QUESTION-BEGGING DEFINITIONS

2008-07-24T20:46:00.000-07:00

When I came into Catholicism, a number of non-Christians and Protestant Christians asked me: “How could a good Christian like you ever become a Catholic?” It was a classic case of the fallacy we’re going to examine in this chapter. The fallacy is called Question-Begging Definition, and it occurs when the person challenging you with a question purposely or inadvertently subtly redefines a key term to make the question sound half reasonable, when in fact the question is fallacious.

This article is a series about right reasoning and the way logical and linguistic fallacies confuse communication and often lead us to embrace things that are false. The series is inspired by Pope John Paul II’s letter to the church about Faith and Reason (Fides Et Ratio) and why both are necessary to arrive at truth. John Paul II writes in the very first words of the letter: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” Using one without the other is like flying with one wing, circling relentlessly before we get dizzy and crash.

There are all sorts of presumptive baggage in a question like, “How could a good Christian like you ever become a Catholic?” — or, I should say, how the question presumes to redefine the term “Catholic,” which to such folk is not “Christian” but rather some pagan cult. My non-Christian acquaintances, who asked me that question, perceived Christians as forgiving, gracious people, but saw Catholicism as strident, judgmental, and willing to burn pagans (like them) at the stake. (I guess they felt guilty — judgment’s a’ comin’, gang.)

My Protestant acquaintances perhaps defined Catholics as “saint idolaters.” I’ve heard them say:

Catholics are always kneeing before statues. (Yeah they are…we seen ‘em in the movies.) Sure, I’ve been in Catholic churches, (once) and there’s these statues of saints all over the place; they even got a dead Jesus on a cross. So they’re surrounded by these idols, and I’m sure they never even read the Bible because you never see Catholics take a Bible to church. That’s because their priests won’t let ‘em know what being a Christian is really about.

By redefining “Catholic” in terms of what is occasionally observed, and incessantly rumored, rather than investigating What Catholics Really Believe, non-Catholics can easily and unknowingly redefine terms and come to erroneous conclusions. Thus, the Question-Begging Definition fallacy leads to confusing conversations. The best way to answer such questions is not to answer them at all, but fling a question back at your accuser, perhaps a question like: “What defines a Christian?” Getting a straight answer, and one that can be found in the Bible, may take a while, but at least you’ll be discussing an important concept and helping to defuse the fallacious assumptions built into such questions.

What is a Christian?

In 2001, Evangelical pollster George Barna claimed that from 1992 to 2001 “the percentage of Catholic adults who have accepted Jesus as their savior [i.e. were Christian] has grown from 16 percent to 24 percent.” It marked a revival among Catholics he claimed. Now, it may come as a shock to Catholic leadership that in 2001 only one-fourth of Catholics are “Christian” and that in 1992 the numbers were much lower.

I did a little digging and found the questionnaire that Barna had been using to ask people about their religious beliefs and how he decided if a person was a Christian or not. There were three questions that were critical to understanding what he was asking. In one he asked if the person had a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ. In another, he asked if they were to die today, they “had the security” they would go to heaven; and in a third he asked if they were “born again.” If you were a well-bred Evangelical Christian you would have answered “yes” to each of those questions. But if you were a Catholic your understanding of those questions could be quite different. Not that you were less of a Christian, but you defined those key terms differently that your Evangelical counterparts. What Mr. Barna had discovered, from 1992 to 2001, was how the jargon of Evangelicals had begun to be understood by Catholics. That is, in 1992 Catholics defined those key terms in the questions much differently than they did in 2001.

Unfortunately, these statistics were widely reported in the Evangelical community, reinforcing the misunderstanding that very few Catholics were Christians. Dave Armstrong notes that defining Christians the way Barna does would exclude most Lutherans and traditional Anglicans. And no sane person would argue that a Lutheran is not a Christian. My big problem with Barna is that he uses his 8th grade Catholic religious education (he was born and baptized Catholic) to propogate now, as a adult pollster, a false theology, quickly absorbed by poorly educated Evangelicals and Protestants. Thank you, George Barna for that fallacious bit of question begging-definition and the resulting propagating of false conclusions, thus further dividing Christianity.

Saved by a Protestant

Recently, another person challenged me, because I am a Catholic, with this question:

When are you going to get saved?”

With this question my inquisitor is defining “saved” in Protestant terms, which limits God’s saving grace to a spiritual act without the broader Catholic definition that includes the physical person as well. The person is also assuming that any grace that flows through physical means, such as the sacraments, is contrary to Christian principles. By redefining salvation as something that can only happen through spiritual means, because the physical world is evil, they embrace one aspect of the first century heresy of Gnosticism.

As I was pondering how to write this particular chapter, I was “saved” by my anti-Catholic email pen-pal D.N. He is becoming a regular to this column and soon I’ll have to give him “by-line” credit. Last night he wrote:

Hi Stan, I heard Mother Angelica on EWTN the other day talking about how The Archangel Micheal (sic) is ‘the Prince of Heaven’. Im (sic) having trouble locating that in the Bible; is it in your Catholic Bible?

Let’s see how good you are at spotting the fallacy in the question (pun intended). This is not real obvious, but give it a go. Can you see D.N.s’ question-begging definition?

Here’s the answer. While, in fact, the Archangel Michael is in the Bible as one of the great angelic princes of heaven (Daniel 10:13, 21; 12:1), D.N. is making reference to Michael being the prince of heaven, possibly as the Jehovah’s Witnesses interpret these references to Michael as indicating he is Jesus. While I didn’t hear the specific words he says Mother Angelica used, I am certain that Mother recognizes that our Lord Jesus and the Archangel Michael are not the same person. The context of D.N.s other missives to me indicate that he is redefining the word “Bible”. Where Catholics see the “Bible” as “an” infallible source of knowledge, D.N. sees the Bible as the “only” infallible source of knowledge.

I wrote back:

Dear D.N.: There are a lot of things you believe…that are not in the Bible. You’re not in the Bible, for instance; Sola Scriptura is not in the Bible; the Apostles Creed is not in the Bible; and the list goes on.

Reading between the lines, I was challenging D.N.’s assumption that since he was not mentioned in the Bible he must not exist. But putting facetiousness aside, I hoped at least that he might try to find where Sola Scriptura was in his Bible — even his Protestant Bible.

But, all of that must have flown over his head. He wrote back asking: “Are the following in the Bible?” and then he tacked on a numerical list of 60 ideas that he claimed are not in the Bible, things like:

1. Is Mary sinless in the Bible?

3. Salvation through a Church?

7. Baptism necessary to erase original sin?

24. Doing works of penance…?

53. Baptizing of infants?

Most of the 60 things D.N. mentioned are in the Bible, provided he were to define key terms in the same way the Church has defined them throughout history. But D.N. redefines “sin,” “Church,” “salvation,” “baptism,” “penance,” in perverse false ways, and thus attacks a strawman fallacy — thus committing another fallacy. A strawman fallacy is an argument that both sides would agree is false. In this way D.N. skewers the truth. Dave Armstrong adds:

Protestants like D.N. are usually unaware of the biblical arguments that exist for all these things. They often dimly comprehend at best, deductive arguments, analogies, and anything beyond what to them is a bald, obvious, unassailable “proof text.” They also misuse and miscomprehend different literary forms and idioms in Scripture. Thus, there is more in play here than just fallacies.

The Way of a Maid in the Arms of a Man

Solomon marvels at the mysteries of how a man can be manipulated by a woman. But I have it figured out. It happens nearly everyday to me. Pam, my endearing wife, is always asking me questions, questions that often include terms with definitions different than those with which I’m familiar.

For instance, she’ll ask me, “When are you going to wash the dishes?” The explicit question sounds perfectly legit, and you might think the question should elicit an immediate response from me like: “In five minutes, honey, as soon as I finish shaving the cat.” (Don’t laugh!) But, in fact, from my perspective, the explicit question buried within it is an implicit, unstated question, with an assumed response: “You are going to wash the dishes, aren’t you?” Actually, I wasn’t. It’s summer and for 3 months that’s your job, remember? The key word here that is being redefined is “YOU”.

Or, the most famous question-begging definition around our house is when Pam asks me, “When we take the grandkids [there are 8 of ‘em, each under the age of 5] to the zoo, which car do you want to take?” The term that is being redefined in that one is the plural pronoun “we.” She has a different definition than I do.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love taking the grandkids to the zoo. It’s just that when we’re ready to leave I have a hard time distinguishing them from the leopards and other wild animals.

Chapter 21 AMBIGUITY, THE EUCHARIST, AND CANNIBALISM

2008-07-10T05:20:00.000-07:00

On November 20, 1839, John Williams, my ancestor and one of the early pioneering missionaries to Polynesia, crawled down the side of the London Missionary Society’s sailing ship Camden, and with two colleagues rowed a skiff toward the beach at Dillon’s Bay on the New Hebrides (modern Vanuatu) island of Erromanga. Williams’ mission board back in England had warned him away from these islands.
Williams’ impulsive missionary zeal, however, was not to be denied. Inquisitive natives greeted their landing even as children played at the edge of the nearby forest. After some efforts at communication and giving gifts to the natives, the missionaries noticed that there were no women present — it was an unambiguous sign that mischief was afoot.

Pioneering missionary efforts, such as the one led by John Williams, are difficult. Communication with groups with unknown languages are problematic to say the least. Avoiding ambiguity is nearly impossible and often the results are tragic.

Ambiguity, Tropes and the Gospel

This installment, about the fallacy of ambiguity, is part of a series on the role of reason in the discovery of truth. Ambiguity occurs when a word or phrase is used that can be understood in more than one way and the speaker (either on purpose or unavoidably) does not make clear what specifically is intended.
Even in a culture where there is a common language, ambiguity is difficult to avoid. It is particularly difficult for evangelists and religious educators who communicate about the things of God — things that cannot be seen. Efforts to circumvent such communication problems often involve “figures of speech” or tropes where uncommon, invisible things are explained with words that refer to common, visible things. For example the idea that Christ is our spiritual food (something invisible) is related to bread that is physical food (something visible).

Unfortunately, the effort by linguists to clarify the meaning of tropes is almost as ambiguous as the concepts they try to explain. You may be familiar with common tropes such as simile and metaphor, but the natural confusion that such language creates has spawned a cottage industry of “clarifying” terms — terms like synecdoche, metonymy, paronomasia, malapropism, euphemism, and idiom. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that the effort to avoid ambiguity has only created more of it.
Let’s face it. We’re ambiguous. Perhaps it’s because we’re unsure. You’ve heard the adage, “When in doubt, mumble.” Mumbling is similar to ambiguity, and both are extensively used in our age of sound bytes and political correctness. I contend however, that while “ambiguity” may have the ring of “generosity” or “humility” it is not a virtue, as John Williams and his colleagues were soon to find out.

After dividing up a bolt of cloth among the natives who had come to greet them, the natives suddenly disappeared. So, the missionaries wandered down the beach and around a bend in the foliage, out of sight of the ship’s captain and crew. Williams must have been wondering if he had properly communicated this party’s benevolent intentions, or if their gestures, unintelligible words, and the gift of cloth, had been too ambiguous and thus misunderstood. The natives on Errogmanda, he had been warned, were possibly cannibals, and an old language lesson may have come to Williams’ mind about the little girl who comes into the kitchen where her mother is cooking dinner and asks, “What’s for dinner, Mom?” The mother knows what her daughter means, but lurking by the stove is the girl’s cannibalistic uncle who may take the question differently.

Innocent Ambiguity

Back in the states, Dr. T. Edward Damer writes about leaving an evening banquet with an acquaintance. It was late and it was raining. Damer asks his friend, “How about a ride home?” His friend said, “Sure.” After walking to the parking lot, they both realized that neither of them had driven a car to the function. The friend thought Damer was offering a ride, although Damer was asking for a ride. Ambiguity is heartless.

When I was an Evangelical we were always being told to “Invite Jesus into your heart.” In our materialistic world such a figure of speech or spiritual jargon is strange. Do we mean to submit to open-heart surgery and stick a miniature statue of Jesus into our heart? That sounds absurd, but not any more ambiguous than what ran through Nicodemus’ mind when Jesus told him no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is “born again.” Nicodemus asks, “How can a man be born when he is old…. Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born?” (John 3).

The little girl who is asking her mom about dinner is not going to be ambiguous because Uncle Lecter is in jail — the context makes the question clear. On the other hand, Damer and his friend simply needed to use more words to make their request and acceptance less ambiguous and save themselves a walk through the rain on a dark night. But to make clear what Christianity is really all about, i.e. to make the faith less ambiguous and less reliant on jargon, requires a bit more effort. This is especially true when Catholics are talking about the sacraments, which are like tropes that help to make visual that which is unseen. But unfortunately, without clear instruction, even the physicality of the sacraments can be ambiguous and misunderstood.

Ambiguity and Catechesis

In John 6:60-66 we have the record of one of Jesus’ missionary outings among the local natives, which perhaps spawned the first occurrence of Protestantism. The miscommunication occurs, we might surmise, due to a combination of hard-heartedness and ambiguity. A group of Jesus’ disciples became upset with Christ’s Eucharistic teaching that in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven they had to eat His flesh and drink His blood. To some today, Jesus appears to have been ambiguous to these disciples who had been watching way too many Hannibal Lecter movies and thought that Jesus was promoting cannibalism, a practice strictly forbidden in Jewish law (Footnote 1).

The importance of the Eucharist cannot be overstated. But just as there is an ambiguous problem with not taking Christ’s words about His physical Presence literally, so ambiguity also plays a role in taking the teachings of His Real Presence so literally that we miss their full meaning.

For example at Mass, when children take their first communion, Catholics may be reminded by their priests of the importance of the Eucharist with words like these spoken to the children:

Heather and Michael, from now on, every Sunday, when you come to church, you’ll be sure to always come forward and take the body of our Lord, won’t you? Because, that is what makes us Christians. When you take Jesus inside of you, you’ll be like Him and become good Catholics.

What the priest says is true, but that is not the full teaching of the Church. The deeper purpose of the Eucharist is to transform our substantive nature much like the grain and grapes are transformed into bread and wine, and then the bread and wine are transformed sacramentally into Christ’s true body and blood. When we receive the Eucharist properly, with the right disposition of mind and heart, we are transformed spiritually. But that does not happen without clear instruction about how we should approach the Eucharist with a humble faith and determined obedience.

John Williams and his colleagues faced this problem on the Erromanga beach. Like many Catholic homilists, they had but 10 minutes to explain some life-sustaining concepts — not about the Eucharist or anything so complicated, but simply who they were and why they had come. Like the natives that left Williams and his companions on the beach after a short encounter, they have questions, like: “Is that all there is? Is that all these strange people have to offer?”

As a former Protestant (and now as a Catholic) I criticize many “Catholics” for their surface understanding and practice of Christianity. It was not surprising to me then, nor is it now, that many Catholics who are seeking a deeper relationship with Christ leave Catholicism because they do not understand the faith they have left behind. And how can they when there is little in-depth catechesis or time given to avoiding the ambiguity?

Ambiguity vs. Hard Work

Instead of staying an extra hour after Mass for Sunday School or Bible study every Sunday throughout the year, or coming an hour before Mass for classes, most Catholic leaders are content to get parishioners to simply show up for Mass and receive the Eucharist. I’ve been told “But that’s all people will do. You can’t tell them to do more.” Such comments are excuses for embracing the ease of ambiguous “knowledge”, and avoiding the hard work required to develop and maintain an on-going religious educational program that lasts a lifetime, like Evangelicals do so well. Consequently, Catholic leaders should not complain when the inevitable occurs. What, inevitability, you ask?

Deep in many parishioners’ hearts is the thought that there has to be more than simply showing up and going through the motions, which is inadvertently but explicitly taught in many Catechism and RCIA classes, and pronounced in homilies. I’ve witnessed it more than once, and dozens have lamented the problem to me in phone calls and written comments responding to my writing. This past week I watched a video of a well-meaning priest discussing the Miraculous Medal:

The miracle of the Medal is that it brings the power of God in our life at that moment. And there is nothing more powerful, more miraculous than the power of the divine life of God present in our life. When we touch that Medal we bring all of salvation, all of the divine life that God offers and gives us, to that present moment. That’s the miracle (Footnote 2, emphasis mine).

I would hope that faith in God and obedience to Him, and not the literal trust in a medal, plays a role in what this priest is trying to convey. But as it stands, this statement is ambiguous at best, and superstitious at worst. Yet, it demonstrates how much of Catholic religious education teaches us that “just showing up” is the bedrock of our salvation, and why many Catholics and Protestants rebel.
Here is how Dr. Peter Kreeft, former Protestant and now Catholic philosopher and apologist, explains the problem of poor catechesis in his talk (available on-line) on Ecumenism and his explanation of why a few years ago in South America, in part, Protestant, Evangelical, and Fundamentalist sects were expanding, and Catholic numbers were declining:

Why is this happening? I think the ultimate reason is because God is love. Because God wills to draw all men to Himself. Because of that spiritual gravity, because nature abhors a vacuum, spiritually as well as physically, and because the Catholic Church has been so remiss in giving God’s children the fullness of the spiritual food that God has given the Church to give out, therefore the children have been going elsewhere to eat it. And God has allowed this because God is a good father. And a good father would rather see his children go away from home and live, than stay home and die. Of course, things are not that simple. Of course motives for leaving the Church and joining the sects are many and mixed and some are simply bad. But still I think the main force driving these events in the realm of the Spirit is the Spirit. When these sheep find little or no Christ in the Catholic Church, whosever fault that is, and find Christ more “really” in a sect, more “really” objectively and not subjectively, certainly not just emotionally, then they are moving closer to and not farther from the fullness of the Catholic faith.

They may have left the Eucharist, the real presence of Christ in the Catholic Church, and that is the fullest presence of Christ in this world, but they did not know the person Who is present there, and Whose body they ate with their bodies and not with their souls. When these starving sheep leave home to find Christ in the [Protestant] sects, they are learning lesson one that they should have learned as Catholics but didn’t. And that lesson one is the only possible lesson for lesson two, and three, and four, and that is the fullness of the faith the Catholic Church has…
As Catholics these people may have gotten Christ in the real presence of the Eucharist, but they didn’t get the real presence of Christ in their hearts and in their lives. They got the upper stories of the Catholic skyscraper, but not the foundation. Not the faith and the hope and the love relationship with Christ as Lord and Savior. Therefore, in order to become good Catholics they must first become good Protestants. God pulled them out of the Catholic Church and put them into a Protestant sect because God is spiritual gravity and God pulls us towards Himself, like a massive sun. If His rays are blocked in one place, we must go elsewhere to find them. For find them we must. They draw us, they give us life. They are a matter of life or death, not a religious shopping mart (Footnote 3).

So that I am not ambiguous, I am suggesting that repeated ambiguous statements by those who teach us the faith in place of in-depth, weekly, continuous catechesis (e.g. the model used in Evangelical Adult Sunday School), leads to poor understanding, misunderstanding, and a weak Church (Footnote 4).

Piecemeal Salvation

Recently a Protestant wrote us at Nineveh’s Crossing complaining about what Dr. Ray Guarendi teaches on the Eucharist in our television series “What Catholics Really Believe“. D.N. wrote:

What the RCC [Roman Catholic Church] does by expecting Jesus to jump into a wafer and (wine) millions of times per day around the world is a travesty. You don’t get Jesus into you by ingesting him; he is received spiritually by Faith alone in the finished work of Christ’s one time atonement. To assert the Eucharist is necessary as a piecemealed salvation handout according to the CCC [Catechism of the Catholic Church], is a heresy and serves only to hold people in bondage to returning time and time again thinking they are getting closer and closer to salvation (Footnote 5).

In spite of D.N.’s gross misunderstanding of Catholic teaching, there is substance in his complaint — he does not see Christ in the sacraments. Yes, that is, in part, due to his closed-mindedness. But it could also be due to the ambiguity of the Church’s instruction or lack of it among typical Catholics. D.N.’s misunderstanding, I believe, is the result of not seeing Christ’s presence in the Catholics around him. It is a real problem, and one I witnessed as an Evangelical growing up in a Catholic neighborhood.

As Peter Kreeft says in the same presentation quoted above:

Protestants will not and should not stop protesting against the Catholic Church until they see the totally Christocentric character of Her and of all Her teachings.

I contend that Protestants will continue to protest until Catholic leadership is determined to eradicate the ambiguity of the faith that only one short homily a week creates among the “faithful.” Let me say it another way: the biggest obstacle to uniting the Church is the poor understanding by Catholics of their faith, significantly as the result of a lack of good teaching.

Attacking the Fallacy

Here are three suggestions for avoiding ambiguous communication:

1. In everyday communication, attacking the fallacy of ambiguity requires that both sides work hard to clarify the meaning of terms and evidence. If someone says something to you that doesn’t sound quite right, be bold enough to ask for a clarification, even if they look at you strangely. And be careful not to claim someone is being ambiguous when there really is enough information to understand, if you apply common sense.

2. With respect to religious education, especially regarding our participation in the sacraments, we need to demand of ourselves, our educators, our priests, and our bishops that time and effort be given (in an Evangelical way) to what it really means to be a Christian — and just showing up for Mass is not the answer, as important as that may be.

3. If the person or author is not present to ask such a clarifying question, examine the context of what he or she has written for hints and clarification.

Back on the Beach
My missionary ancestor, John Williams, was a bit slow examining the ambiguous context of his encounter with the Erromanga natives. In his log of the tragic events of that day, Camden Captain Morgan writes:

The next minute I turned round to see Mr. Williams and Mr. Cunningham running — Mr. Cunningham for the boat and Mr. Williams straight for the sea, with one native close behind. Mr. Williams fell backwards, the beach being stony, and at that point the native struck him with a club. A second native also struck him and another put arrows into the body. We were unable to retrieve the body as the natives were firing arrows at the boat. The body stayed on the beach for quite a time before the natives dragged it off the shore (Footnote 6).

James Harris had been martyred further up the stream bed, which the three missionaries had followed out of sight of the Camden. A report by the captain of a British man of war that came to collect the missionaries’ remains and investigate the incident established that the natives believed the three missionaries and their sailing ship were more of the same foreigners who had previously come to their island to cut sandalwood and, in the process, had murdered hundreds of Erromangoans. For John Williams and his companion James Harris, a missionary in training, ambiguity was deadly.
Over the years since, seven British ships that served Polynesia were named in honor of John Williams. Today there are chapels throughout Polynesia dedicated to his memory. In Leone, American Samoa, there stands before the large beautiful Siona Chapel a monument dedicated to John Williams, Apostle of the Pacific; and a few miles to the West on the Samoan island of Upolu, in the Congregational Church you’ll find the clean-picked bones of my beloved ancestor. Indeed, the Erromangoans were cannibals.

__________________________________________________

Footnote 1: Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character made famous by actor Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of the cannibalistic villain in a series of movies, the best known of which is The Silence of the Lambs for which Hopkins won an Academy Award in 1991. In 2001, Hannibal Lecter (as portrayed by Hopkins) was voted by The American Film Institute to be the most memorable villain in film history. The movies are based on a series of novels by author Thomas Harris, the first of which is titled Red Dragon. And as much as some would like to, this time we can’t blame the Jews’ rejection of Christ’s words on Hollywood. Dang!

Footnote 2: Rev. Carl L. Pieber, C.M. in video clip at http://www.thefaithfultraveler.com/video/MMSpotweb.mov. I recommend, however, the videos of U.S. Shrines at this website. They are informative, interesting, and well-produced.

Footnote 3: Dr. Peter Kreeft’s talk on Ecumenism.

Footnote 4: Dave Armstrong suggests here that I distinguish between liberal-type ambiguity (which I am not referring to) and confusion resulting from ambiguous speech (which I am referring to) vs. plain lack of any teaching or nominalism or lack of spiritual interest on the part parishioners (which I am willing to include because I think ambiguity has a way of putting people to sleep).

Footnote 5: Personal Correspondence.

Footnote 6: Modern Missionaries: Their Trials and Triumphs by Robert Young.

The paintings in this article are by British artist George Baxter, 1804-1867.

Chapter 20 - Question Begging and Leading Questions

2008-06-12T08:12:00.000-07:00

“But Dad! You’re not listening,” my teenage daughter wailed. A crying woman has never been something I can understand or deal with easily. If I tell her to stop crying and think rationally about the question, I’m being “insensitive.” If I feel sorry for hurting her feelings, letting her emotions sway my thinking, I’m an irrational “push over.” My daughter’s crying is not unlike my wife asking, “Do you think my hair looks better this way than it did last week?” I’m a dead man — if I say yes, I’m accused of not liking her hair (”her”) last week. If I say “no,” she’ll accuse me of not liking it (”her”) now. I capitulate to my daughter: “Alright, I’ll listen. Why do you want to go on that stupid retreat with your dumb friends?”

Ah, the joys of family communication. Or, should I say the joys of question begging and leading questions. They’re very popular and widely used forms of communication — albeit fallacious.

Question Begging and Leading Questions

This series of articles is about the role of reason in the discovery of truth. We arrive at truth through the application of two disciplines — faith and reason, which are like “two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” (John Paul II, Fides et Ratio). As we discussed earlier in this series, truth does not come to us by faith alone, neither does it come by reason alone. To rely on one to the exclusion of the other is to fly with one wing, mostly in circles, as we misapply the ordered rules of one or the other and introduce fallacies into our thinking.

This chapter briefly examines two of those fallacies that fall under the broad fallacy category Unacceptable Appeals and a sub-category called Begging the Question. They are Question Begging Language and Leading Questions. These fallacies occur when the question assumes a foregone conclusion, before the question can be investigated. In Chapter 16 we defined and gave several examples of this broader classification and so I will assume you understand the fundamental principle that is being violated. Therefore, in this chapter, I’ll drill down into some additional examples.

In a moment I’ll deal with my daughter crying, and my wife’s “dead-man” questions. But first, let me deal with the more obvious example from that first paragraph — my agreement to listen to the reasons my daughter wanted to go on a stupid retreat with her dumb friends. What was going on before I rudely opened the door to our conversation was a “discussion” that purported to ascertain if the retreat and her commingling with her “friends” was good or bad for her character. My explosive “agreement” was not an agreement at all, but a rejection of her premise by my prejudiced use of the words stupid and dumb in my question. By speaking that way, I rejected any presentation of evidence (by her) that might contradict my “infallible” opinion.

Clearly, the messages we want to communicate cannot be sent with just words. They use many non-verbal cues. Some linguists claim that 80% of our messages are communicated non-verbally. So, my daughter’s crying, facial contortions, and body language were part of the message; and in so doing, her crying begged the issue. Translating her emotional response into words here’s what she was saying: “Since you don’t want me to be sad and ruin your weekend by pouting, you’ll let me go on the retreat, right?”

Hmmm? Many times arguments take on form of multiple fallacies and semi-conscious manipulations. My daughter’s question also took the form of two fallacious emotional appeals we covered earlier called “appeal to pity” and “exploitation of strong feelings.” Regardless of what else was involved, the question is laced with the foregone conclusion that makes it more difficult for the responder to answer directly and honestly, without encountering other communication problems.

Do You Like Me Now?

Similarly when my wife asks about her new hair-do, or new dress, the unsaid is often more important that what we hear. Men of my age and martial status have learned (somewhat) that the real question, the unspoken begged question, is “Do you like me… still?” If we’re not stupid or dumb, we’ll always answer such begged questions with the utmost diplomacy: “Honey, you looked great, last week and this. I love you more all the time.” Yes, I know, it sure does not seem to answer the question, but believe me, it DOES. [Ed: But, Stan, in that case, it is a necessary nicety. Stan: It is? Uh…okay, it is.]

Begging Mary?

We should all beg Mary, but when non-Catholics do it with question such as, “Why do you Catholics worship Mary?” the question begging or leading question issue is seen even more clearly. If you have been asked that question before, you may already understand it’s a question that cannot be answered directly, because it assumes something false — that Catholics worship Mary. Dave Armstrong points out that we need to be aware of false presuppositions of our opponents, which helps us to get at the root of the miscommunication.
A conversation between Patty and Kathy might go something like this:

Patty: Why do you Catholics worship Mary, Kathy?
Kathy: We don’t worship Mary, Patty. What gives you that idea?
Patty: Well, you’re always praying to her.
Kathy: Naturally.
Patty: Well, what’s the difference?
Kathy: Difference between what?
Patty: That’s what I want to know.
Kathy: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Patty: Between worship and prayer. Don’t you worship God when you pray to him?
Kathy: Naturally.
Patty: There, don’t you see?
Kathy: See what?
Patty: You’re an idolater.
Kathy: Because I pray to God?
Patty: No, because you pray to Mary.
Kathy: But, we don’t worship Mary.
Patty: But you pray to her.
Kathy: Naturally.
(pause)
Patty: Is this where I say, “Who’s on first.”
Kathy: What?
Patty: No, What’s on second.
Kathy: I don’t know.
Patty: He’s on third.
Kathy: Naturally.
(RIM SHOT)

You think I made that up, don’t you? Sorry, but that conversation happens several times a day between Protestants and Catholics.

The begged question, of course, is: “Why do Catholics worship Mary?”

It’s a kind of begged question that is also a good example of layered fallacies, which makes such questions all the more difficult to answer. Not only does the question assume something false, but it involves two other fallacies, one stacked on the false assumptions of the other. The two secondary fallacies I refer to here are equivocation, and distinction without a difference or what I term “difvocation.” These are important fallacies that we will define and explain from time to time.

Equivocation and Difvocation

Difvocation involves the use of two terms that sound different. The problem occurs when one of the parties defines the two terms the same, and the other party defines the two terms differently. In this case the two terms are “prayer” and “worship”. Something is difvocal (they sound different, or they have DIFferent VOCALizations) if the same meaning is applied to the different sounding terms. Patty defines “prayer” and “worship” as if they are the same. But Kathy defines them differently — “worship” is “adoration” reserved for the Trinity alone. But “prayer” is not worship per se, but a description of a method available to us in order to communicate to those in the supernatural realm.

Thus, we can ask (e.g. pray to or intercede with) a saint in heaven to ask (e.g. pray to or intercede with) God for something through the one mediator, Jesus Christ.
Overlaying that confusion is an equivocation, which involves the use of two terms that are equivocal (they sound the same, or they have EQUal VOCALizations) but have different meanings. That is, difvocation occurs when two terms have the same meaning, and equivocation occurs when two terms have different meanings. In this case the two terms are spelled the same, e.g. “prayer”. We say there are two terms (even through they are spelled the same) because Patty defines “prayer” as “worship” or “adoration” directly to God, but Kathy defines “prayer” as “a response to God’s goodness” which can be through an intercessor.

Once both Patty and Kathy understand these difficulties, they can more accurately unwrap the begged question by first defining the term “prayer” (and “worship”). To the Catholic prayer and worship are not the same, and so, Catholics do not worship Mary when they ask her to intercede before Christ for us.

Dave Armstrong suggests that here we might explain the three factors that Catholic Kathy missed as opportunities to better explain her faith. She might have said:

“Praying to Mary” means basically, “asking Mary to intercede.”
Doing this presupposes that we are going through Mary to God, Who alone answers prayers. Mary is not the source of the answer as “praying to Mary” implies to an Evangelical or Protestant mind.
Evangelical and Protestants assume that such prayer is worship because their culture teaches them there are only two categories of beings that we can communicate with: Humans here on earth, and God in heaven. Thus they collapse all non-human communication into the “worship” catagory. But there are other creatures (including the angels) in heaven with whom we can communicate.

Abortion Begging Language

If you are engaged in an argument about whether or not abortion is murder, one aspect of the argument may be whether or not the fetus is a human being. In such a situation, we may state: “Abortion is murder because the fetus is human” without providing significant evidence that would justify the claim of why the fetus is human. When we do that we beg the issue, and we fail to advance our position.

This takes us back and reminds us, when faced with an opponent, first clarify the exact issue. In this case, the issue is not abortion, but what constitutes humanity for a fetus. In so doing we can appeal to science and philosophy using commonly accepted premises, rather than the Bible, which the non-Christian will not accept. The scientific argument from the nature of genetics is compelling. The philosophical argument involves ethical discussions about the nature of rights and who has them.

Attacking Begging Fallacies

The first step in attacking a begging fallacy is to try to get your opponent to realize they are begging. In the case of my crying daughter, she might simply say to me: “Dad, the issue isn’t the retreat is it? It’s whether or not my friends that are going on the retreat are a good or bad influence on me? Is that it?”

If I answer “yes” to that question it’s entirely possible we might come to a resolution about whether the retreat is a worthy use of her time. If, however, the issue is so emotionally laden, like the abortion issue often is, and neither you nor your opponent can be objective about the issue, you may have to just walk away. Christ tells us in each of the Gospels that if someone will not listen to the truth, to leave the home or town, and shake off the dust from your feet (Mt. 10:14). The upside of this tactic is that you might be able to persuade someone else, with whom you will have more credibility than you do with your current, unmovable, opponent.

Recently, an anti-Catholic EWTN viewer of Dr. Ray Guarendi’s DVD and television series What Catholics Really Believe wrote us and let off some steam about his “understanding” of Catholicism, including this:

The reason [the Eucharist] IS only a Memorial is because Christ was sacrificed ONCE for all of mankind’s sin and the real Atoning Sacrifice was TOTALLY SUFFICIENT. Please refrain from ‘re-presenting’ Christ on RCC altars, as it is a total mockery of the ONLY ONE TIME sacrifice for all of mankind’s sins, just as the book of Hebrews explicitly says.

Obviously, there are several fallacies at work here, including equivocation, difvocation, and begging the issue. I responded with a suggestion that the writer refer to the Catechism of the Catholic Church rather than the book he had cited written by an anti-Catholic. In a second email, after he responded with the same false claims, I carefully and objectively laid out the fallacies that were at work in his statements, pointing to the CCC as a truer representation of Catholic belief.

Usually my attempts at this sort of apologetics bear little fruit, and I have to just walk away, or hang up after 20 minutes of run-on sentences by an angry caller. But in this instance, the writer showed some openness to re-examining the actual teachings of the Church. We’ll see what the future holds.

In any event, as with all fallacious communication, it is important that you first recognize the fallacy for what it is, and then attempt to enlighten your opponent as to why you think a fallacy exists. Unless, of course, it’s a crying daughter or your wife has just bought a new hat to cover the hair she doesn’t think you like. In such cases, all bets are off, and it’s you who needs to do the begging.
God bless.

Chapter 19 SCIENCE AND FAITH: PARTNERS IN TRUTH

2008-01-18T13:31:00.000-08:00

THE TRUTH SEEKING PRINCIPLE - PT 2

No “Truth-Seeking” Intelligence

Ben Stein’s documentary, EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed, questions the truth-seeking motivation of some in the scientific community who attempt to debunk the overwhelming evidence of intelligent design in the observable universe. Everywhere you look, from sub-atomic particles, to the far reaches of space, to the flowers in your garden, to the functionality of your thumb, there is a complexity and sophistication that defies the explanation that the universe came about by chance without intelligent input.

EXPELLED also explores how secular scientists have applied a “strawman fallacy” in their attempt to debunk Christian faith by assuming that such faith is nothing more than an irrational, mental assent to some proposition, without any way to collect evidence one way or the other. A strawman fallacy consists of an opponent misrepresenting your position so that it is easier to attack. In this case, secular scientists claim that intelligent design theory is only the result of a religious faith that they define as irrational mental assent. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. For example, Christian faith is based on eons of physical evidence of a benevolent, Supreme Being who has interacted with the physical universe and left us myriad of physical, measurerable evidences upon which we put our trust. Christian faith is not a blind faith, but a eyes-wide-open, truth-seeking, evidence-based faith.

Empirical Challenge

It was a fine Spring morning as I jaunted across the campus of Greenville College, in Southern Illinois. I was a senior majoring in Physics on my way to give a lecture in an Introduction to Philosophy class taught by Dr. Royal Mulholland. I had been asked to play the role of an empiricist and challenge the faith of Christianity. An empiricist is a scientist that relies heavily on quantitative evidence (i.e. numerical measures) and, of course, the scientific method as the preferred method of discovering truth. (There are also social scientists that rely on qualitative evidence (i.e. psychological measures) to do their science.

Yes, I was a Christian, as were Professor Mulholland (see Chapter 18), and most of the students in the class, including the wonderful young lady that I was dating and would later marry. The uniqueness of the situation undoubtedly had something to do with my outspoken advocacy the explicit harmony between science and the Christian faith, as opposed to the often-ballyhooed conflict between science and religion. In my junior Physics Seminar I had been asked to write an essay that defended Christianity in the face of supposed contradictory discoveries in science. I didn’t see the contradictions. I saw incomplete theories on the part of scientists, and I saw arrogance on the part of theologians.

Later, in my understanding of how to explain truth, I would come to understand the relationship between nature and the Bible, and between science and theology. Cosmologist and Christian apologist Hugh Ross (evangelical) writes about how the conflict is not between physical nature and God’s Word, but between the disciplines that interpret those two sources of knowledge—science and theology. The proper Christian assumption is that physical nature and God’s Word both come from The Almighty, so they must agree, even if we cannot understand how. Rather than call apparent disagreements between science and religion “contradictions,” it would be more accurate to label them “paradoxes”—i.e. “apparent contradictions” about which we simply don’t know enough to explain.

Thus, science is the interpretation of nature (i.e. natural revelation), and theology is the interpretation of God’s Word (i.e. supernatural revelation). Where the interpretive tool in both disciplines involve humans (sometimes without the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit), we can expect there to be misinterpretation and error. [Hugh Ross’ The Fingerprint of God and The Creator and the Cosmos]

The Truth Seeking Principle

Now let me jump back a moment and remind us that this series of articles seeks to explain how reason must be used responsibly in the discovery of truth. Faith and reason are like "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." (John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio). Truth does not come to us by faith alone, nor does it come by scientific experimentation alone. To rely on one to the exclusion of the other, is to fly blind with only one wing, mostly in circles, before you crash and burn in a pile of irrational assumptions—as Ben Stein sees “big science” doing today.

This particular chapter (19), along with the previous (18), is about T. Edward Damer's The Truth Seeking Principle, the 2nd principle from his "Code of Conduct for Effective Rational Discussion" [“T. Edward Damer. Attacking Faulty Reasoning. Wadsworth.”]

This principle encourages all the participants in a discussion to earnestly seek out the truth at all costs, regardless of discipline, presuppositions, perceived values, emotions, time, hurt feelings, - - did I leave anything out?… oh, yeah - - politics and religion. The Truth Seeking Principle demands that we listen humbly to opposing viewpoints with respect and diligence. Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 11:7-8 suggests: “Before investigating, find no fault; examine first, then criticize…Interrupt no one in the middle of his speech.”

Christianity is Scientific

For several years following college with my major in physics, I was a test engineer in NASA’s space program. My job was to take particular theories of the engineer-scientists I worked for, and test them out in the labs. I was involved in the heart of practical science and the scientific method. What I was doing in NASA’s labs was pretty much what I was doing in Bible studies and my spiritual walk with Christ. I was testing out the theories proposed by Christian theology. The more my testing showed them to be true, the more I trusted them.

As a Protestant I studied the Bible fanatically (I didn’t have the security of the Church’s 2,000 years of magisterial engineering), and was taught week after week that it was by spiritual faith alone that we were saved and not by our physical actions. But the way we were taught to define faith as opposed to science and work became a disconnect or paradox. While the doctrinal explanations emphasized mental assent of faith alone, the emphasis on sermons focused on the mechanical, casual nature of Christian obedience. That is, when we studied the Bible or applied it to your lives we discovered how our thoughts and their resulting actions affected and effected our spiritual standing with God. There was a cause and effect, the heart of science. It was one thing to think something (as in the mental assent of faith), but it was an entirely different thing to do it (as in the physical action of works).

The Scientific Method

The new pagans and anti-Christian segments of our society would have the world believe that Christianity is not interested in truth, but only in blind embrace of an irrational faith. Just the opposite is true, and it can be easily shown that it is the pagans and atheists who are embracing irrationality. It is Christianity that relentlessly seeks truth, even if you consider the interaction between Copernicus, Galileo and a few Catholic prelates—a discussion I’ll save for another time. For it is out of the Catholic Church that the scientific method was devised.

The Scientific Method can be generally described as a sophisticated and somewhat controlled discovery of the relationship between certain causes the their effects. Specifically the scientific method can be described by these seven (7) steps: (1) Curiosity & Presuppositions, (2) Observation, (3) Hypothesis, (4) Experiment, (5) Theory, (6) Test, (7) Law. In spite of what many may think (even theologians, I dare say), that is exactly what the Christian Church has done from the time of Christ; and it is how Catholicism approaches the seeking of truth even today. (Yes, I admit, I’m a Christian empiricist.) Is that heresy? Hardly, because it fully embraces faith and supernatural revelation, in the same way that John Paul II tells us that reason reinforces faith, and, in turn, faith advances reason.

How can all this be true? Very simply, and in thousands of ways.

[Ed Question: “thousands”?

SW: Well, yeah…thousands. My hidden assumption here is that there is quantitative evidence for every human life that has ever graced the planet and how that life has, does, and will interact with nature and with God. Think of the many parameters, ways, and elements that a human being interacts with the physical world. It’s myriad, just in a single life. And so, okay -- I guess I have erred. In keeping with what I’m about to explain, I should not have said there are thousands of ways my premise can be proved, but billions upon billions upon billions. Stick with me and do a little interpolation on your own. This is cool stuff. So -- let me start again.]

How can all this be true? Very simply, and in xillions upon xillions of ways. Take the seven steps I listed above and lay them next to the history of man and the development of Christian doctrine. While there is definitely mystery, there is no magic, no sleight of hand, nor hocus pocus. What follows is the process of seeking truth you will find in both science and theology. (Notice that I have not included politics in that short list.)

SIDEBAR
There is an interesting correlation between theological doctrine and the telling of stories. If you’ve read my book The Moral Premise [Link: http://www.moralpremise.com] you may understand that all moral learning (and Christian doctrine) comes out of storytelling; and that storytelling is a form of the scientific method, listed above. In fact, take any popular story, and you’ll be able to overlay the seven steps of the Scientific Method and see the story’s structure in that light. That is, the protagonist (the main character) follows the seven steps in his discovery of truth and the pursuit of a goal.

Now, to briefly explore the relationship between Christianity and the Scientific Method here is an overview of each of the above steps with an explanation of how they apply to the development of Christian theology.

(1) Curiosity & Presuppositions.

Supernatural faith plays a role in each of these steps, but it is in this step that the correlation is most obvious. It is also in this step that even pagan scientists (unknowingly) access Christian faith to do their work of science. In fact, we could probably replace the words “curiosity and presuppositions” with “faith” and “supernatural revelation.” It is our curiosity that reaches out beyond ourselves and looks for answers and a structure or order to the universe. It is curiosity that asks “Why?” and “How?” Faith presupposes there is a God that can answer the prayer, “Why did that happen?” and “How can I better understand it?”

For example, if we ask, “Why does water run downhill?” we will discover that science helps to answer a theological question. Water runs downhill because of gravity, which pulls water into the ground and thus waters plants, that allows food to grow, which sustains life. Gravity also pulls water down through many layers of sentiment, which remove impurities, and then allows the cleaned water to collect in underground basins and in wells for people to drink, thus sustaining life. In fact, every scientific discovery throughout time points to something called the Anthrophic Principle— a theological significance concept that everything the universe (from far away galaxies to subatomic particles) was finely tuned to do one thing—sustain human life.

Science has also discovered that if a closed system is left alone without the intelligent input of energy, it will degrade and cease to function. This is called the Second Law of Thermodynamics or entropy. A car left outside without care will not just cease to run, but will eventually end up as a pile of rust. A garden left untended will be overrun with weeds. A baby left alone without care will die. But when continual, intelligent care (in the form of an intelligently controlled energy) is put into the system, sustained life and beauty result. “The heavens declare the glory of God…. (Ps 19:1-6)”

It is only because of an ordered universe, cared for continually by a benevolent God, that the world does not do as the car did. Even secular environmentalists are confounded when a major oil spill, or a volcanic eruption threatens to destroy a corner of the earth, and after a few years, the area recovers and brings forth new life. What we see in all this is physical evidence, scientific evidence of what supernatural revelation of our faith proclaims. There is an intelligent order, and sustenance at work to give life and maintain it. Science assumes this; that is, it is an act of faith in an ordered (not random) universe that supercedes knowledge. Science, by it’s “nature”, requires faith in a principle that itself cannot be proven by science. My editor, Dave Armstrong says: “Belief that the universe is orderly and uniformitarian is a non-scientific premise that is required to do science. Science reduces in the end to philosophy, which in turn requires axioms, and in many ways is not unlike theology.”

Now, space is limited, so we must move on. Notice how faith in what is not seen or understood is ubiquitous to each of the remaining steps. The secular scientist will not call it “faith” but rather a “wonder” or “awe” of what is there. I contend that the secular scientist’s wonder is a near equivalent to a Christian’s faith, if not the preliminary and necessary steps to it.

So, with that basis, let’s move quickly through the remaining steps of the scientific method.

(2) Observations. The Israelites and early Christians observe God’s behavior through physical signs, physical miracles and the physical words and actions of Jesus and the prophets. Note that these observations and experiences are a mixture of reason (observations in nature) and faith (prophetic proclamations).

(3) Hypothesis. The observers form hypotheses about what can be learned from the observations and what they have been told, e.g. “Obey God and you will live. Disobey and you will die.” Or, “have faith in God and you will be healed, and your sins be forgiven.”

(4) Experiment. Experiments are run to test the hypotheses. These are not always controlled experiments, although science loves such things. But science cannot always run controlled experiments. When an earthquake occurs there is nothing that we can control. Yet we learn from such events. In Joshua 7, Achan buries forbidden loot in the floor of his tent when he was told to destroy it. In Numbers 20, Moses angrily strikes the rock twice to produce water for the Israelites, rather than speaking to it in faith. In Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira lie about giving all their money to the Apostles. For all of these causes, there is an effect; and Christianity learns from such things. (As we should.)

(5) Theory. When Achan’s loot is miraculous discovered and his family stoned (with real rocks not street drugs), when Moses is prevented from entering the Promised Land because of his disobedience, and when Ananias and Sapphira drop dead – the hypothesis suddenly becomes trustworthy and we claim a theory exists. Scientists and theologians both look for patterns by which to predict future events. In both disciplines the theory is “developing.” Thus, there is both the development of scientific theory and the development of doctrine.

(6) Testing. But after centuries of testing, with the same results…

(7) Rules and Laws take the form of scientific predictability and theological doctrine and even dogma.

Yes, it is true that not all dogma can be tested. But what can be tested gives mighty good evidence that the extrapolations of prophetic utterances of Christ are fully trustworthy. Not everything is tested in science, but the extrapolation of rules and laws, allows us to send men to the moon and back, having never done it before.

Mulholland’s Introduction to Philosophy

In Mulholland’s Introduction to Philosophy class I began my lecture, presenting myself as an empirical scientist and argued that if God truly existed, and if Christianity was actually true, then the scientific method could be used to prove it. To my evangelical classmates, faith was not something that science could comment on—I must have sounded like a heretic (and perhaps I was). My future wife, who sat in the class, was unconvinced, and although everyone knew I was just play-acting, Pam says I was convincing enough to put our relationship on the rocks for a while.

I have a tendency to emphasize reason in these sort of arguments, and at times I probably still sound like a heretic. I apologize. It’s an overreaction to the faith-as-mental-assent emphasis of my Evangelical upbringing, and in reaction today to the same (strawman) claim by atheists as secular scientists. The reason and evidence of an intelligent designer is everywhere, it’s the pink elephant in the room you’re pretending to ignore. Like King David, I take solace in Psalm 8:4-5: “When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you set in place—what are humans that you are mindful of them, mere mortals that you care for them?”

As one of my graduate professors reminded me, “Stan, you cannot prove anything. All you can do is bring evidence to bear on the argument, and make sure it’s good evidence.” Theologians and mystics will claim that God has written the truth of his existence on the hearts of all men. I believe that the physical universe provides such a strong testimony of his Supreme Intelligent Design that we cannot discern the difference between what is innate on our hearts, and what our physical senses declare to be obvious. It is not an either/or argument, it is an and/both proposition. What is written on our hearts is one and the same with what we experience.

Someone once said, “I only know two things: First, there is a God. And second, I’m not him.” (And along comes God and says, simply: “I am”!) May that be our motivation to know God in our hearts, and in our minds, as we marvel at the evidence in creation of God’s Supreme Intelligent Design, and do our utmost, at all times, in all places, to seek the truth at all costs.

Chapter 18 THE TRUTH SEEKING PRINCIPLE Pt 1

2008-01-18T13:18:00.000-08:00

During a recent televised presidential debate the journalist moderating the event asked candidate Fred Thompson to explain his solution for a particular vexing problem in the country, and reminded Mr. Thompson that he had but two minutes to answer. Thompson flatly refused to answer the question, and derided the moderator for suggesting that the problem, which had a long history, could somehow be solved, let alone explained, in two minutes. [“Bravo!” (Ed.)] Thompson, in so many words, declared that the bigger problem with society was illustrated by the stupidity of the question and the expectation that truth could be discovered so easily.

I might add that another big part of the problem is the refusal of journalism schools to require their students to successfully pass courses in a wide range of liberal arts courses like logic, statistics, basic science, literature, history, psychological and philosophy. It seems that sometimes the only courses some of these “journalists” took are “How To Pass Off Opinion As Objective Reporting,” “How To Remove Your Makeup Without Removing Your Arrogance”, and “Hiding Zits In A High Def Era.”

Thompson illustrated one of the great principles of seeking truth that our society has tragically lost—that truth must be sought after at all costs, even if that means talking through a commercial break, and that could cost the network thousands – and the candidate the election.

The Truth Seeking Principle

This series of articles is desperately seeking to explain how reason must be used responsibly in the discovery of truth. All humanity arrives at truth through the application of faith and reason, even if they claim to be atheists, rationalists, or agnostics. Faith and reason are like "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." (John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio). Truth does not come to us by faith alone, nor does it come by reason alone. To rely on one to the exclusion of the other, is to fly blind with only one wing, mostly in circles, before you crash and burn in a pile of irrational assumptions.

This chapter is about T. Edward Damer's The Truth Seeking Principle, the 2nd principle from his "Code of Conduct for Effective Rational Discussion"

This principle encourages each participant in a discussion to earnestly seek out the truth at all costs, regardless of prejudice, presuppositions, perceived values, emotions, time, hurt feelings, political parties, - - did I leave anything out… oh, yeah - - religion. The Truth Seeking Principle demands that we listen humbly to opposing viewpoints and to demand good evidence with respect and diligence.

How hard can that be? Plenty! Just turn on your TV (…or don’t).

The O’Reilly Factor

Sound bytes, demanded by the mainstream media, are a condemnation of our society and its ability to discover what is true and what will bring us happiness. If the Fred Thompson example wasn’t enough, every night on TV the problem is reinforced by a top rated commentary program—The Bill O’Reilly Show.

Here is a man who claims to be a conservative, a Catholic, and has even named his show The No Spin Zone, which in the political vernacular of our day suggests that Bill O’Reilly is trying to apply The Truth Seeking Principle. But O’Reilly, regardless of his position on the issues, is a demagogue when it comes to seeking the truth, unless it’s his truth. O’Reilly also demands that his guests pander to his show’s fast paced format, explaining complicated positions or sophisticated concepts in seconds. Recently, O’Reilly’s guest was a Catholic priest whom O’Reilly seemed to enjoy intimidating by demanding that the priest explain the historical basis of a particularly involved Church teaching — in 30 seconds. It was an impossible task that no one could have achieved. Meekly, the priest began, only to be interrupted by O’ Riley 15 seconds later because the priest wasn’t going fast enough or in the right direction to fit O’Reilly’s pre-conceived opinion. The pope couldn’t have answered the question any faster, except to quickly tell Bill where he (O’Reilly) was heading unless he put The Truth Seeking Principle ahead of The Nielson Rating Principle. I’m imagining O’Reilly at the pearly gates. St. Peter says, “Okay, Bill, you’ve got 30 seconds to explain to me why I outta let you in. After 30 seconds of Bill’s hemmin’ and pawnin’ St. Peter stops him: “Sorry Bill, but times up, and this is the real “No Spin Zone.”

Religion and Talk Shows

Sean Hannity, another well-known talk show host who happens to be “Catholic”, is not so “Catholic” when it comes to certain topics like his embrace of artificial birth control under the fallacy of something called “false alternatives” where he assumes that women have one of two options: artificial birth control or abortion. He totally ignores the option of self-discipline and obedience to the whole moral law. He is a moral relativist on this position. March 9, 2008, Sean’s producer’s invited Fr. Thomas Euteneuer (Human Life International President) onto Hannity and Colmes show. Fr. Euteneuer challenged Hannity on-air for using the public platform for taking a position that was contrary to Catholic doctrine. In answer to a question about Hannity by Colmes, the Fr. Euteneuer said:

FR. EUTENEUER: One is not obligated to use their public platform for preaching the tenets of Catholicism, but one is simply obliged not to be a heretic in public. That's the point. If he [Hannithy] doesn't agree with his Church on that matter he should not be pronouncing on the matter as if he was the authority on that matter.

Colmes barely got in another word. Hannity, like an arrogant adolescent, railed at Fr. Euteneuer, interrupting him multiple times:

HANNITY: Reverend….You call me a hypocrite. You question the depth of my faith. Do you know anything about me and my religious beliefs? And my background religion? Do you know anything about me?... Judge not lest you be judged, Reverend. Maybe you ought to spend a little more time that our Church covered up one of the worst sex scandals and I wasn't involved in it…. You want to ostracize me? You want to excommunicate me? Do you know that I went to a seminary? Do you know that I studied Latin? Do you know that I studied theology? Do you know anything about my background? Anything at all, sir?... So I'm not a good enough Catholic for you? I'm not a good enough Christian for you?

For all the good that talk-commentary shows do in the pursuit of truth, this was a tragic moment. In this case Sean Hannity clearly had no interest in truth, but only in the defense of a misguided, heretical position. Any one of the questions he rhetorically flung at the priest, could have taken at least an hour to resolve in the Confessional, and perhaps long if Sean can be persuaded to get to Confession. Sean’s wife should be prepare to bring him meals for a few days, except a fast (for Sean) would be more important.

[To see the video and read Fr. Euteneuer's blogs on this incident go HERE.]

Come to think of it, wouldn’t it be great to see O’Reilly or Hannity come on some night, with a humble look on their face and in a quiet voice declare, “Ladies and gentlemen, I went to confession the other day, it was a long time—not just that I hadn’t been confession in a long time, but how long it took. And my penance is, well, - - I’m not sure how to say this, but – my penance is that I have to take my whole show tonight, and apologize for all the mean, hateful things I’ve said about people publicly over the last year, and say something nice about each of them, without qualification. If I don’t do this, as Fr. Larry Richards has said (publicly): “You’re going to hell.” So, here goes. If you don’t mind I’m going to read this so I don’t forget anything or anybody. - - To Mrs. Clinton….”

Lord, have mercy! As much as I don’t particularly care for Mrs. Clinton, I’d pay $1,000 to see O’Reilly do that, and at least $500 for Hannity. What about you?

Truth is about Deliberate Diligence

Seeking the truth requires diligence, slow deliberate discussion, and the sacrifice of sacred cows, the side-stepping of prejudices, and the demolishing of bully pulpits and soap boxes. Twenty years out of college, I telephoned one of my favorite professors, philosopher Dr. Royal Mulholland, and asked his advice about pursuing a Ph.D. in philosophy. Mulholland was an Evangelical Christian, and taught within the framework of Protestant denominationalism. I was not expecting the advice that he offered; it was contrary to everything we had been taught as Protestants. Among other things, he said, “Wherever you apply, Stan, my strong suggestion is that you go to a Catholic university. That is the only place you are going to get a solid foundation in philosophy. Because of Catholicism’s long history in critical thinking, and the great philosophers in that tradition like Augustine and Aquinas, they have much more figured out than anyone else.”

That was astounding advice, from a respected Evangelical philosopher. But it clearly revealed his willingness to seek the truth, regardless of institutional suppositions and denominational prejudice.

Pam, my beloved wife, points continually to Mulholland’s inadvertent shove of our minds toward Catholicism in his quest for truth. During his introductory philosophy course, which all students at Greenville College had to take, Mulholland posed a question to us about what constituted truth and, in the process, asked us to identify the essential ingredients of Christianity. He created a scenario that put us on a distant planet as space explorers, and there we observed what appeared to be intelligent life forms. Based on what we observed we were to answer two questions: How can we know if the life forms we observed had souls? And, how might we know if they were Christians?

Imaginary Friends and Martians

Over the weeks that followed, in our search for truth, we hid behind imaginary hills, rocks, trees, and bushes and watched our imaginary friends. What differentiated them from other animals, vegetables and minerals? Did they use tools? Did they plan ahead, and if so, how far ahead? Did they show signs of a moral conscience? Did they seem to possess sophisticated rules of living? Did they bury their dead? Did they practice what appeared to be ritual, and if so what would that tell you? Was there forbearance and forgiveness that you could observe? Did they demonstrate the ability to sacrifice for the good of others? What was their source of their truth, if you could know that? And most importantly, how could we know that the conclusions of our observations were true? That is, two observers could see the same thing but come to different conclusions; so, where was the check and balance of right interpretation?

The purpose of the exercise, that took the form of outside reading and classroom discussion, had really nothing to do with extraterrestrial life, but everything to do with terrestrial life, us, here on Earth, now. The real questions were: What is the truth of whether or not mankind is different from animals, vegetables, and minerals? And if we have souls, what distinguishes the Christian? Or, what is the meaning of human life?

Being raised Evangelicals, and graduating from a very good and rigorous Evangelical liberal arts college, Pam and I were indoctrinated to believe that we did have a soul, and that what made us Christians was faith in Jesus Christ, a mental assent in our minds and hearts that we were obligated to also proclaim with our lips. Our souls were the spiritual part of our being, which was fed by our faith (which was spiritual), and what mattered, for eternity, were these spiritual beliefs, ascents, and understandings.

Recounting this exercise now, reminds me of what Catholics may appear like to non-Catholics who are trying to figure us out. We talk and act like Martians who can’t decide if we want to sit, stand, kneel, bow, genuflect or lay prostrate. We kiss statues, crosses, rings, waving our arms in front of us, splashing water on each other fully clothed, are talk in some high-pitched gobbledygook language (that’s what Martians speak I’m told - - we call it Latin) and we expect them to think we’re human AND Christian. Are we naïve or what?

Where the Spiritual Meets the Physical

Mulholland, however, was after us to seek the truth on a deeper level, in a place where our spiritual faith rubbed up against the broken concrete and tectonic plates of the physical world here on Earth. He led us to a conclusion that what we observed in others, and thus what others observed in us, in the physical realm, had everything to do with our soulfullnes and our Christian faith. In other words, you cannot separate the spiritual and the physical realms. They are one, as the universe and all creation is one – as Christ’s divine and human nature could not be separated.

Without ever quoting Scripture, Mulholland reinforced Christ’s teachings from the Sermon on the Mount, which never once mentions the importance of faith, but reminds us time and time again, that the truth of our salvation lies in what we do in the physical realm: Our works. We may not come to justification through works, but without works — the behavioral proof of our internal conversion — we have no salvation.

Mulholland was encouraging us to seek truth, as opposed to blindly embracing ideology. What he showed us was that the physical realm mattered, because that is where the proof existed (that is what we could experience with our senses) about what was going on inside our hearts. Looking back, we believe that Mulholland was trying to change a heretical Gnostic perception in Evangelical Christianity that quietly held to a belief that physical matter (such as our bodies) was evil, and the spiritual soul was all that was good.

When Pam and I became Catholic, we looked back at our time with Dr. Mulholland and wondered why he wasn’t Catholic. To us, a critical difference between Catholicism and Evangelicalism, was Catholicism’s embrace of the physical realm as good, through the sacraments and the unrelenting emphasis on the Incarnation (God, a spirit, became Man, a physical being, through Mary’s cooperation). Evangelical’s embrace of the spiritual often excluded the physical.

In the end, the difference in Mulholland’s pursuit of truth was very similar to Catholicism’s pursuit. Whereas in Evangelicalism I was always trying to cram Bible verses into a set of ideological beliefs; it was somewhat like reverse engineering the Bible. Rather than starting from Scripture and forming religious belief, Protestantism started from a series of objections (about Catholicism) and in an effort to replace the Pope’s authority, settled on the Bible Alone (and a not of misguided interpretation) to reinforce their political suppositions.

What we discovered in Mulholland’s teaching, was that while we cannot avoid starting with presuppositions – there are no truly clean slates – we need to start with basic presuppositions rather than “front-loaded,” circular ones. Protestants – esp. Calvinists -- often include their theology in their premises without proof, leading to circular reasoning. But Catholicism works very hard at being open to all truth, working relentless to listen to objections and engaging participants in honest rational, slow, deliberate dialogue. In fact, the Catholic sense of reason fully embraces the scientific method, which it helped to establish through scientists such as Roger Bacon, Nicolas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes, and Blaise Pascal.

“What, what!” you say? “That can’t be! Faith and science are polar opposites. Faith is faith and it’s all about what you can’t see or observe. And science is only what can be observed. They can’t be the same, and there is no way that the scientific method and Christianity go together.”

Hmmm? Sounds like a good place to stop and pick up next time, when we examine in Part 2 of The Truth Seeking Principle, how science and Christianity are very much cut from the same mold.

Chapter 17 USE OF FLATTERY

2008-01-17T12:54:00.000-08:00

Thomas Edison was perhaps the greatest inventor of modern times. He was the man singularly responsible for ushering civilization into the technological age by producing devices that allowed civilization the widespread use of electricity, incandescent lighting, sound recordings, motion pictures, and to whom the U.S. government awarded over 1,000 patents.

It is said that Edison could be sitting with family or friends in the middle of a meal, a conversation, or a family celebration when suddenly he would rise, excuse himself, and go to work in his laboratory, not to be seen for days. I am sure this did not endear him to his wife or friends as he sustained criticism for his anti-social habits. When I try an E.D.T. (an Edison Disappearing Trick) my good wife, Pam, finds me working on some project in the shed or hiding under the stairs with my laptop. Promptly, she orders me back to the living room to sustain the flush of chit-chat and flattery with relatives about the past, their new car, or the pulchritude of our latest grandchild’s smile - - for at least another three hours.

After considering Edison’s accomplishments and his famous line about success is 1% genius and 99% perspiration (or perseverance), I concluded that what he accomplished for civilization was the result of a life that abhorred flattery and empty praise that built up his ego, and demanded real physical evidence that built up society. For Edison, accepting praise that did not result in success would have been flattery. Yes, he would accept accolades, but only for good reason. His life was at the service of humanity. Flattery had no room in his laboratory.

Appeal to Flattery

This series of articles is about the role of reason in the discovery of truth, particularly as it relates to faith. We arrive at truth through the application of reason and faith, which Pope John Paul II wrote are like "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth, and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves." (John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio). Truth does not come to us by faith alone, nor does it come by reason alone. Reason reinforces faith, and, in turn, faith advances reason. To rely on one to the exclusion of the other, is to fly with one wing, mostly in circles, as we misapply the ordered rules of one or the other and introduce fallacies into our thinking. How that happens is the focus of this series.

This chapter briefly examines a fallacy called Use of Flattery, which falls under a broad category called Irrelevant Emotional Appeals. Use of Flattery occurs when compliments are paid out instead of objective evidence in order to persuade a group or a person to adopt a position or take an action. Undergirding the use of flattery are elements of selfishness, greed, egotism and a general lack of concern for what is true. For it is through flattery that people are manipulated for the benefit of the other.

Flattery is not chivalry, which is a combination of masculine virtues that includes courage, honor, loyalty, and consideration for others, especially of women. Flattery is selfish. Chivalry is selfless. Flattery is when you receive compliments without a rational basis. It is flattery when you are kind to someone else in order to help YOU feel good about yourself. Flattery is very close to doing the right thing for the wrong reason — when you are not serving out of selflessness, but are manipulating another for your own selfishness.

This is not an issue of being like more like Martha (the doer) than Mary (the adorer). Martha may have misunderstood Mary’s action, of sitting at Jesus’ feet, as flattery. But, Mary’s preoccupation with Christ was not rooted in a selfish desire to manipulate Christ for her benefit, but rather in a selfless awe of Christ as she prepare to serve Christ and those in her community. In that understanding we see the difference between building relationships that are true and right, and the use of flattery that is fallacious and wrong.

Insincerity

The giving and accepting of flattery is, at its core, a selfish act of insincerity and greed. In its most subtle form a person will use flattery to gain a social acceptance and hide insecurity. It happens when a person is critical of another’s life decisions behind their back, but to their face overflows with gracious compliments about insignificant accomplishments. One person in my life is convinced that in my conversion to Catholicism I’ve forsaken my Christian faith and am now worshiping idols. Yet, to my face she will give me gracious compliments about how she enjoys my articles—that defend Catholicism. At one moment she will tell me how smart she thinks I am, but behind my back she tells others that I brainwashed my wife into becoming Catholic. The paint in a room may be peeling off the wall with age, but a person given to superficial flattery will gush about how wonderful the new room color brightens your home.

Sexuality

I embarrassingly remember when as a young man I was smitten by the beauty (and, ah,… personality) of a young lady who was totally out of my class. By chance I found myself in conversation with her, and the only thing I could say to her, as I starred dumb-struck into her eyes, was: “You are so beautiful” over and over and over. I had no clue what else to say. I had no car, no money, and no idea why we should even be talking to each other, especially to me, a pimpled-face, naïve kid. She was in college, I was a freshman in high school, and well, the only tool in my adolescent arsenal was flattery. Today I shiver at the memory… and I can’t even remember what she looked like.

Unfortunately, some men never grow out of their dependence on flattery, even as women never lose their thirst for it. Taken to its tragic extreme a pornographer will use flattery to entice insecure women into the sex trade, and in turn it is flattery that the prostitute uses to seduce her lonely johns.

Beware of Charlatans Bearing Gifts

You’ve heard the adage, “Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts.” Whether the story is legend or true is debatable, but when the Greeks could not conquer the city of Troy (now in Turkey), they built a large wooden horse and filled it with soldiers. The Trojans being convinced it was a gift, rolled the horse into Troy, where, at night the Greeks let themselves out and slaughtered the city’s inhabitants. When someone gives you a gift and you can’t figure out the motivation, especially if the week before they were trying to take over your city, there’s probably a catch.

A couple of years ago my wife and I were at our favorite restaurant celebrating our wedding anniversary. We were in the process of complimenting each other on our successful marriage thus far (some 38 years at the time). Near the end of our dinner, into the room walked a nationally known Christian businessman and minister that I had a slight acquaintance with years earlier. With him was an attractive and much younger lady. This man had done me a big professional favor years earlier and I was indebted to him. I also had been thinking of asking his assistance again, and so I felt some form of “thank you” and “flattery” was in order. I greeted him by his table, told him how much a appreciated his work and ministry (which I knew very little about), and then, secretly, I paid for his dinner with the young lady that I thought was his executive assistant. I figured the cost of his dinner would grease the skids for my upcoming request. When, a few weeks later he ignored my attempts to get in touch with him I was curious, and wondered if I had offended him at my overt attempts to be nice. Was I too nice? Did I step over the bounds of propriety and had he seen through my flattery? Perhaps. But then I found out he was involved in a little overt flattery of his own. The minister was married, and the young lady was his mistress. Ooops!

Not too long ago, and it may still be going on, Venezuelan president Hugo Rafael Chávez, through his state-controlled oil industry, was heavily discounting heating oil to the residents of New York City’s Harlem and a few other economically depressed communities. Some evaluated Chávez’s actions are a form of flattery that attempted to manipulate U.S. public opinion against our Federal government’s political position and attempts to marginalize the dictator’s regime, and his control over a portion of oil reserves in this hemisphere.

If true, Chávez’s decision is similar to the ploy to the gangster’s “insurance” scam, where shop owners pay the mob for protection against the mob ransacking their shop. It begins with the collector’s flattery of the shop owner about how important his business is for the community and how they (the mob), wants to protect their good work. Right!

When Flattery Is Not

Sometimes it’s hard to detect when compliments and related actions are inappropriate and fallacious or logical and acceptable. At the heart of the matter is the difference between actions that are selfish or selfless; and whether or not the activity builds up a selfless relationship or is focused on building the ego of an individual. The key word in that last sentence is relationship. Our goal should be to engender good relationships out of substance (selfless kindness) and to avoid relationships out of connivery (selfless lust or greed).

Healthy and righteous relationships build up both parties out of an attitude of service and giving, not taking. Flattery subverts relationships by focusing on what it can get out of a relationship for the selfish needs of one of the parties. While the overt actions can often be seen for what they are—irrational, selfish flattery— the more important key to understanding the fallacy is hidden and unfortunately cloaked in sheep’s clothing and that wolves are behind it (Matthew 7:15). When Valentine’s Day rolls around and I buy my wife clothes (that I like to see her wear), get her flowers (that I dislike), a card (which I never do), and treat her like a queen… she may think it’s a wonderful thing, but the more important question is, “Why am I doing it?” Is it to build her up and our relationship through selfless service and admiration (on my part), or is it to break her down and fall into my arms for my own selfish interest, even if it is only once a year.

Okay, so I’m being a little sarcastic. Two decades ago I began writing a book titled Masculine Holiness: Why Can’t a Man Be More Like a Woman? I still have a file drawer dedicated to the research and incomplete drafts. I began writing it for therapy to improve my marriage after realizing that I did not understand something important about life that my wife understood all too well: That the natural law of peaceful co-existence, happiness and joy was based on the selfless establishment of relationships - - something women inherently understood and men did not. I was asking my reader (and there was only one—me) Why a man cannot give selflessly to his mate and forget about what he’s going to get in return. I’m sorry if the men reading this are not like that, but I am. And so, that book was trying to get me to understand that charming my wife had to be out of selfless service, and NOT other selfish “gain.” If what I did and said was for her betterment, I was being a gentleman. But, if what I said and did was for me, it was flattery.

Attacking the Fallacy

In the context of this discussion, if charm out of a deep appreciation for an individual is the opposite of shallow flattery, then how can we change our attitudes to be charming and to abandon flattery? For us men, one of the great things we can do is to study John Paul II’s encyclical Mulieris Dignitatem on The Dignity and Vocation of Women. The Great John Paul reminds us that man’s most intimate connection with God came through a woman, Mary, and her singular ability to put her relationship with others (mankind) and with God (her spouse the Holy Spirit) above herself. At the end of the document, John Paul writes:

The Church gives thanks for all the manifestations of the feminine "genius" which have appeared in the course of history, in the midst of all peoples and nations; she gives thanks for all the charisms which the Holy Spirit distributes to women in the history of the People of God, for all the victories which she owes to their faith, hope and charity: she gives thanks for all the fruits of feminine holiness.

This is not flattery. And neither is it flattery that I bought T-Shirts for my wife and business manager, the two women in my life, that on the front say “Feminine GENIUS” – which these two women are. (The T-Shirts are available from my friend Sam’s T-Shirt company at Total Catholic.) Men, this explains how our words toward a woman should be -- thick with appreciative charm for who they are and their lineage via Mary, the mother of Christ.

No, I don’t totally understand women, but neither do I understand everything about the holiness of God, Christ, or His Church. But it is in that “feminine holiness” that us men should be wanting to learn from women and in terms of their genius and holiness be more like them. That is not flattery, but it is what God, Christ’s Church, and our popes have called us to. All of that should be our mindset when we bestow compliments on a woman.

Now for women (and for men) here is another tip to guard against being taken in by flattery, and thus manipulated either by a greedy business associate or by a potential object of lust.

Ask yourself, “Is the compliment just, short and sweet?” If so, then accept it, humbly and say no more. But, if you did not earn the compliment, reward, gift, or if what you receive is over the top, be very suspicious and hold the person and their subsequent requests of you at arms length or even further. There is no need to insult the person, but be not hesitant to correct the person that flatters, for it is dishonest for you to accept a compliment that is unwarranted. Damer gives this advice: “Even if you are convinced that the praise was designed to manipulate a particular response, you could still thank the arguer for his or her remarks and then proceed to ask the questions appropriate to a careful evaluation of the merit of the view.” (Attacking Faulty Reasoning, T. Edward Damer, 4th edition, p. 76.)

Finally, a short story, that you should remember: Once a young preacher, just out of seminary, was greeting parishioners as they exited the church on a Sunday morning. An older man shook the young man’s hand and said with a sincere smile, “Reverend, that was an excellent sermon.” The young pastor, not taken to what he falsely considered flattery, was quick to correct: “Oh, sir, it wasn’t me, it was the Holy Spirit.” The older man’s smile quickly faded, and sternly he looked into the young man’s eyes and said, “Son, it wasn’t that good.”

Accept compliments with a humble and grateful heart, and do not praise yourself. But with flattery, be quick and gentle to correct.

Chapter 16 ARGUING IN CIRCLES

2008-01-16T12:44:00.000-08:00

I had just become Catholic and was intent to produce the grand television documentary that would reveal once and for all the great misunderstandings that had separated Protestants and Catholics for centuries.

To be fair, I figured we'd let both sides tell their story, and so I set out to interview, on camera, some of the leading Protestant theologians in the area. One was Rev. P.Z., a theologian and apologist for the Reformed Presbyterian Church. If "Reformed Presbyterian" sounds redundant, it wasn't to them. Indeed, this denomination didn't believe contemporary Presbyterianism was sufficiently Protestant, which they claimed had drifted from the "ideal" of John Calvin’s teachings. So they "resurrected" a theology that Reformed the Presbyterians. I had no idea what I was in for.

In my interview, I wanted to allow my guest sufficient time and latitude to explain what I could never figure out — how the authority of the Bible could provide answers about life's vexing questions, when so many Christian leaders seemed to disagree about what the Bible said. In short, this is how the interview went:

Me: In your denomination, when members have a theological disagreement between them, how do you resolve the difference?

PZ: We go to the Bible. It's the final authority in everything, about everything, for all time.

Me: So, what do you do when these members are both looking at the same verse in the Bible, and they're disagreeing about its interpretation?

PZ: Well, like I said they look to the Bible for the answer. The Bible interprets itself.

Me: But, that's what these two guys just did. They're looking at verses in the Bible about baptism, and to one guy one passage says you have to do this and the other guy clings to a another passage that says you have to do that. Who decides what is right?

PZ: In that case the church elders get together and decide.

Me: Sorry, I forgot to tell you that these guys, that are disagreeing, are the elders.

PZ: Ah. Well, again, we'd look to the Bible, our final authority.

Me: But that's where we started.

PZ: Actually, our pastor would be over the elders, and he would decide.

Me: So, what if the elders disagree with the pastor and want to start their own church?

PZ: They wouldn’t likely do that.

Me: Yet, there are over 20,000 different denominations that have. Is that what the leaders of all of those have done, all gone to the Bible?

PZ: Well, ah… yes.

Me: ?

Do you see the problem?

After several such interviews I put the project on hold. To put such dialogue on television would have been uncharitable, even through they revealed the problem of circular reasoning in that segment of Protestantism.

Begging the Question Fallacies

This series of articles is about the role of reason in the discovery of truth. We arrive at truth through the application of faith and reason, which are like "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." (John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio). Truth does not come to us by faith alone, nor does it come by reason alone. To rely on one to the exclusion of the other, is to fly with one wing, mostly in circles, as we misapply the ordered rules of one or the other and introduce fallacies into our thinking.

This chapter briefly examines one of those fallacies called Arguing in Circles, which falls under a broad category called Unacceptable Appeals, and more specifically under a group of fallacies label Begging the Question. Begging the Question fallacies occur when the conclusion of the argument is baked into the assumptions of the question. Put another way, these fallacies assume that some aspect of the matter, about which a question is being raised, have already been settled. A question is begged when a crime investigator interrogates a suspect with, "How did you kill him?" -- when there's no assurance or evidence that the suspect killed anyone. It's also begging the question when, Pam, my wife, asks me, "What did you get me for our anniversary, honey?" and she knows full well, as I sit engrossed in the Super Bowl, that I had totally forgotten that is was our anniversary. Begging the question language is slanted or prejudicial in nature. It is a form of unintended falsehood at best, or lying at worse. Begging the conversation, begs for a response contrary to what the facts may otherwise establish.

In politics, we see begging the question problems all the time. The reporter-with-an-agenda asks the governor, "The administration's mistake in approving the education plan has caused a budget shortfall in school districts across the state. How are you planning on reimbursing those districts for their extra costs?" If the governor answered the second question she would be agreeing to the presumption in the first statement, that signing the bill was a mistake -- and of course she doesn’t think it was.

Arguing in Circles is a type of Begging the Question fallacy, because imbedded in the question is the conclusion. Oftentimes arguments are long, and may be presented in book or chapter form, thus separating the assumptive premise, by some time and space, from the conclusion. A careful analysis of the argument may be necessary to discover the fallacy, if it exists. Simply put, Arguing in a Circle says: “A is true, because A is true.” Thus, the question asked of the Reformed Presbyterian about how they resolved theological disputes when parties interpret the Bible – cannot be referenced back to the Bible, without arguing in a circle. Interestingly, the Reformed Presbyterian theologian touched on the solution, which is to look to the authority of individuals in the Church to resolve such difficulties. But when pushed further about when those authorities disagree, his escape was to return to the issue under question as the answer to the issue. It makes me dizzy.

For the Catholic, the answer is indeed in the Bible. But interestingly the Bible points to a hierarchy of authority outside of itself, and in fact the same hierarchy of authority that established the Bible as an authority in the first place—The Holy Spirit inspiration of The Pope and Church as a whole. The Bible passages that do this remarkable thing are clearly stated in every Protestant Bible I’ve ever looked at, and in fact here are the verses from perhaps the most popular American Protestant Bible translation: Zondervan’s New International Version:

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:16-19; Matthew 18:18)

Catholicism holds that: (a) the Scriptures are inspired by the Holy Spirit and we thus trust them; (b) that fallible men wrote the infallible Scriptures under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and that (c) fallible men also SELECTED the Scriptures infallibly, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The hierarchy was (1) the Holy Spirit working through, (2) fallible men, who then (3) wrote and selected the Scriptures. Then the Scriptures establish the fourth level, again, through the Holy Spirit, (4) the power to INTERPRET Scriptures and moral law infallibly. Here is the verse. Notice the Holy Spirit’s inspired involvement:

And with that he [Jesus] breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” (John 20:22-23).

So, the Bible can be used to end the circular argument, but you have to be articulate about where the buck stops — not with the Bible, but with the Holy Spirit inspired leadership to infallibly interpret.

Related to this, a number of non-Catholics have taken me to task, and have argued against papal authority by saying: “I just don’t believe that.” When pressed they end up saying something like: “I just don’t believe that because, well, that’s not what I believe.” Unfortunately it is times like that when I destroy all opportunities to be reconciled with my brothers and sisters. Why? Because I yell at the top of my lungs: “ARE YOU NUTS!”

I’m sorry, but I have no other argument.

Reversing the Argument

As much as Catholics may pound Protestants for inconsistent thinking, Catholics are guilty too of this fallacy. Have you heard this critique? “Protestants are not good theologians because they interpret the Bible incorrectly.” That is a classic example of circular reasoning. There is no real evidence presented here. The only thing the statement establishes is the same opinion stated two different ways. The phrase “not good theologians” is the near equivalent of “interpret the Bible incorrectly.”

The problem with the current poor and fallacious condition of social communication is the lack of time to mount and establish good arguments. Broadcast news wants soundbytes. They especially like provocative headlines soaked in opinion and a lack of evidence. Here’s the main headline from CNN.com today: Haagen-Dazs: Vanishing bees could sting business. The article describes how Haagen-Dazs ice cream relies on bees to pollinate fruit to flavor 40% of its brands. The begging the question here is that the headline assumes bees are vanishing. While I’m not an expert on bees, I did spend some time a few months ago talking at length to the owner of a bee-keeping farm about the problem. He said, “There is no problem; the headlines are the fabrication of ignorant reporters who do not understand the natural fluctuation in bee population they read about in trade journals, and are anxious to create ‘news’ to sell papers.” Thus, a natural variability becomes a fallacious headline in the hands of an uneducated corps of reporters.

I recently read a very entertaining novel, about nuns and the mafia, that I had been requested to carry among our other Catholic products at Nineveh’s Crossing. [link: http://www.NinevehsCrossing.com] A Catholic nun who has a problem with the male hierarchy of the Catholic Church wrote it. Without going into the detail, the argument she posed in the otherwise good and entertaining story, was an argument that went something like this:

Premise A: The Church is composed, like the mafia, of cold-hearted patriarchal hierarchies.

Premise B: People more easily pour out their hearts to compassionate mother figures than father figures.

Conclusion: Women would make better priests because they are not male.

Apologist, Dave Armstrong points out that Premise “B” is likely a true premise for most people, which helps the fallacy succeed, because there is some truth in the argument. “The fallacy lies more so in making compassion the sole component for the priesthood.”

Regardless, the essence of the circular argument is summarized in the above conclusion. Elsewhere, the circular reasoning is cloaked under the anecdotal, and unrelated evidence, that the mafia is a male hierarchy over which we have no control, and women are generally more compassionate. That is, the nun argues, the male patriarchal groups are evil, and women would make better confessors. Never mind that Jesus was male, that the apostles were all male, and that it is Jesus (a MAN) and God the FATHER that Catholicism teaches are more merciful, compassionate, and gracious than imagination can conjure. And while God’s merciful character does not mean that, as a whole, men are as or more compassionate than women, it suggests that perhaps, in God’s eyes, too much compassion isn’t good for the confessional. I have seen more than one mother, for instance, sympathize with a disobedient child, and not correct their behavior, allowing the child to sink further into sin and “Gimme! Gimme!” .

Nineveh’s Crossing will not be carrying that book.

Lastly, I had a discussion with a friend who was a supporter or a current political candidate. The friend was a Christian, and the candidate advocated abortion on demand. Our discussion went like this (here summarized because it went on over several e-mails.)

Me: Why do you believe (your candidate) has the characteristics to be the president?

Her: Because (my candidate) is credible.

Me: Why is (your candidate) credible?

Her: Because the current president lied.

Me: How does the current president’s actions relate (your candidate’s) character?

Her: Because I trust (my candidate) totally, implicitly.

This last example is perhaps more indicative of the kind of discussion you’re likely to get into. In the actual case, the back and forth was perhaps five times lengthier and the circular reasoning was harder to spot. In the end, the EVIDENCE for the candidate was the same as CONCLUSION, just sated in different words—“My candidate is credible and would make a good president because I trust him totally.”

The Blockade

The underlying problem was my friend’s inability to address the candidate’s stand on abortion. She knew I was right about the abortion issue, and she had no other “evidence” other than her dislike of the current president -- and another unmentionable reason, that had she mentioned it, would have unraveled her credibility. She was not willing to bring up the unmentionable trait, and I wasn’t going to bait her, so she was forced to embrace the only thing left, circular reasoning.

I had contacted a well-known Evangelical historian about my documentary project mentioned earlier. After a little dialogue he wrote me, “The reasons I am not Catholic are entirely personal.” Let these examples be a warning to you. Often, you will find yourself in situations like these where your opponent will not be forthcoming about the real, underlying reasons for their position. No amount of logical persuasion will convince them. They are blockaded by a combination of fear of the unknown, family tradition, deep-set prejudices, and pride – all of which conspire to hold them just out of reach of real truth.

All you can do is smile, be gracious, and say a silent prayer for them. You can’t convince them. That will have to be done by the Holy Spirit, and perhaps not until they come within sight of the pearly gates.

Guarding Against Circular Reasoning

Here are some tips about how to avoid being swept up in such circular reasoning:

1. Be sensitive to the “evidence” presented in all arguments, and be sure it’s just not the conclusion stated another way. It is easy to hide such circular evidence in arguments that are long and connected by a convoluted series of “logical” connections.

2. When you recognize the circular thinking, try politely to point out to your opponent how their “evidence” is in fact also their “conclusion.” Try not to yell. Don’t be like me. Remind them that it’s not a good idea to use in the definition the very word they’re trying to define.

3. If your opponent seems to be open, but can’t seem to grasp the concept of circular reasoning, offer to work with your opponent and write down on a piece of paper their “evidence” in an agreeable short hand; and then do the same with their “conclusion.” Line up the evidence phrase with the conclusion phrase, one above the other, and try to point out how they are the same, and thus no evidence has been presented.

4. Remind your opponent that a person’s opinion, without outside objective evidence, is hardly convincing evidence that something is true or false. Try to encourage them to find the real evidence for their position, give them time, and see what happens.

5. Finally, be enlightening, try not to force a change in conviction. Your job is not to convince (leave that to the Holy Spirit) but to simply provide good evidence. The change in their mind must come internally, and will take time for their mind to sift through and assimilate what is true and false. When people come to conclusions on their own the resulting conviction is much stronger.

Yes, we may persuade some people. Indeed, we sometimes do.

Chapter 15 THE FORGIVENESS PRINCIPLE

2008-01-15T12:38:00.000-08:00

God forgets, they say. I hope so. It was about 30 years ago, so I guess I can be excused for forgetting. But the temporal effects stick around. I do remember the physical consequences of my behavior — a broken kitchen window. Pam and I were arguing. Or should I say I was arguing and Pam was cooking -- in two ways, on the stove and in her mind. Back then I was intense, passionate, and I knew everything -- about all places -- about all people -- about all time. I was omniscient. Today I'm less intense, less passionate, and omniscient only occasionally.

There we stood in the small kitchen of our house, me by the window and Pam by the stove. (She was cooking, remember?) The argument ensued, and I remember picking up something -- maybe it was a fry pan that Pam was threatening to bong me with -- and I flung whatever it was through one of the small double hung windows over the kitchen sink. Did I mention this was an old house? I'm looking for excuses here.

What a mess! Oh, sure, there were glass and wood splinters everywhere, and a bent up pan on the driveway. Luckily it missed the car's windshield. Not sure if my car was covered for collisions with UFOs, (Used Frying Objects).

The real mess, however, was not of a physical nature, but of a psychological one. I might as well have flung that fry pan through the fragile glass of our marriage.

The Fallibility Principle Antidote

This series of articles is about the role of reason in the discovery of truth. We arrive at truth through the application of faith and reason, which are like "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." (John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio). Truth does not come to us by faith alone, nor does it come by reason alone. To rely on one to the exclusion of the other, is to fly with one wing, mostly in circles, as we misapply the ordered principles of good argumentation, or we introduce fallacies into our thinking, and throw things through windows.

The last chapter introduced us to T. Edward Damer's 1st Principle of the "Code of Conduct for Effective Rational Discussion" — The Fallibility Principle. That principle encourages us to begin all arguments (assuming we're entering such arguments calm enough to think of the principles) with the awareness that we could be wrong. (It's amazing to think that we could be wrong, isn't it?) Nonetheless, The Fallibility Principle means our position could be wrong. Even if the conclusion of our argument is correct, the evidence we present to support our position may be invalid or fallacious in some way.

The second half of The Fallibility Principle (not mentioned by Damer) is what I call The Forgiveness Principle, a process that involves three elements: (1) Willingness to Forgive, (2) Remorse and Restitution, and (3) Restoration.

Willingness to Forgive is something the victim offers up to the aggressor, whether or not it is asked for by the aggressor. Remorse and Restitution is something the aggressor offers up to repair the psychological and physical damage. Restoration is what happens in the process, when both parties recognize in the other a sorrow and meekness that reflects the dignity of God's image.

Although restoration of the relationship (and I suppose the discussion) is the goal, it may not be easily achieved because either the victim refuses to reject bitterness and forgive, or the aggressor fails to show remorse and make restitution. What is encouraging about this natural process is that either party can take their respective step toward restoration without the other party's participation. That is, the bitterness that the victim experiences because of the aggressors' actions can be rejected and replaced with a spirit of mercy without the aggressor asking for forgiveness or even being sorry. And the aggressor can make right the sin by seeking forgiveness, doing penance, and repairing any damage that was inflicted, without the victim asking for it.

Yes, it does help the victim to forgive if the aggressor demonstrates remorse, but it's not necessary. Christ demonstrated this spirit of forgiveness (not actual sacramental forgiveness) on the cross when he said, "Forgive them Father, for they do not know what they do."

Notice that the soldiers and the Pharisee priests did not ask for forgiveness. In fact, they were in the midst of murdering Jesus and gambling for his cloak. Nowhere in the Bible are we commanded to show mercy toward someone only when they show remorse for their aggression toward us. In fact, the prayer Jesus taught his disciples commands us to "forgive others as we want God to forgive us." There is no qualification on our merciful attitude that requires someone to first say, "I'm sorry."

Nails Leave Holes

The Forgiveness Principle however does not necessarily remove the temporal effects of the initial transgression. Forgiveness, Restitution and Restoration, even when done with great sincerity of heart does not easily remove all the effects of what happened.

The son of a farmer had developed the habit of lying to his father. The lying became so bad that the father drove a large nail part way into the barn door each time he caught his son in a lie. Soon the barn door was covered with nails protruding. When visitors to the farm would ask the farmer about the now very obvious collection of nails, the father explained that every time his son lied, another nail was added to the door. After a while the son became so embarrassed that he changed his ways, and having proved himself over time asked his father to remove the nails from the door. His father gladly removed the nails and gave them to his son. But the boy, looking up at the door, was disheartened. The door was covered with nail holes, never to be erased. Such is the character of our temporal life on earth. Heaven offers a solution, but here on Earth there are consequences to all our actions.

The nail story should remind us that even after The Forgiveness Principle is followed, we should not expect the restoration to be made perfectly whole. Many people, after living with bitterness for years toward an aggressor, expecting the restoration to be made whole without stain or scar, discover that their bitterness has become a ball, chain, and padlock to which only they possess the key.

Catholic lay evangelist Bill Wegner tells the story of a close Christian friend who made a pass at his wife, and how Bill carried with him for a long time a deep bitterness and hatred toward the man, which destroyed Bill's work habits and was significantly eroding other relationships. Finally, Bill (the original victim) confronted the man (the original aggressor), and asked the man to forgive him for the hatred, bitterness, and slander that Bill had committed against the man out of a feeling of revenge. The man's response at that confrontation is not important for the moment. What is important, and what Bill learned, was the immediate and immense peace that flooded his own body, mind, and soul. Bill gave the man “forgiveness” without the man ever showing an ounce of remorse, resulting in Bill's work and personal life being restored. Bill's spirit of forgiveness toward the man did not alone restore the relationship with the man, but it did restore Bill and his ability to work and carry on a normal and peaceful life.

The Logic of Forgiveness

Why is forgiveness part of a discussion on logical reasoning and discussion? The reason is simple. The Forgiveness Principle allows the discussion to continue -- hopefully in a rational way, and speed both parties on to the discovery of truth. That is, if the discussion is terminated because one or more of the parties throws a frying pan through the discussion, shattering the relationship all over the landscape, then the situation has to be restored before discussion can continue.

The Forgiveness Principle comes in handy when one of the parties involved in the discussion forgets to practice The Fallibility Principle. In other words, some aspect of the Forgiveness Principle will probably be needed soon after we take on the mantle of omniscience and tell our friend, our boss, or (more dangerously) our spouse: "I know ALL about this, and you don't have a clue." And our opponent starts thinking, "What kind of "god" pill did he take? (A thought that Pam has had on more than one occasion -- well, maybe it was only once.)

This is true even if you're alone and debating with yourself, it is very easy to think you know it all. I do it all the time. When I'm driving around town I often find myself -- yes, I'm frequently lost -- rehearsing hypothetical conversations with a phantom adversary. If you were hiding in the back seat and heard me, it would be obvious that I was the intelligent, omniscient party and my opponent the ignorant, know-nothing party. (Please stay out of my backseat.)

Hopefully you've noticed that this series has a great deal to do with "fallacies" and "principles." The "principles" are the things that help us to avoid "fallacies." Fallacies are rational mistakes; they represent the "sins" of reason. If you sin, you need forgiveness, and possibly you also need to make restitution, before the discussion and the pursuit of truth can be restored. The whole point of reason is buried in the title of this series -- the discovery of truth. If we're going to discover truth, then reason, in partnership with faith, needs to move forward. When fallacies are committed the process stops; or it gets shoved down a path that isn't going to lead to truth. The Forgiveness Principle gets us back on track.

An Historical & Current Example

I've mentioned this in an earlier chapter, but perhaps the more significant historical example of the need to apply both The Fallacy Principle and the Forgiveness Principle occurred during the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. (Yes, there were two of them – well, sort of.) We might date the first false “reformation” with Martin Luther's Halloween trick (yes, this all started on the day before All Saints Day), tacked to the Wittenberg Church doors, in 1521. What he started then did not reform the Church but created a revolt from it. The second, and true Reformation, came a quarter of a century later, in 1545, when Pope Paul III convened the Council of Trent that eventually curbed the abuses within the Church that had significantly triggered the revolt.

But in that time, both sides committed more than a few fallacies of understanding. The writers of the documents found in the Book of Concord (the Lutheran Confessions) attack straw-dogs, or misunderstandings of Catholic teaching. They condemn concepts that were never true.

The writer’s of the Catholic Trent documents were careful not to mention any particular group, and held up a list of heresies about justification and faith alone (sola fide), that today the Church proclaims as accurate, and with which many Protestants groups agree. The most famous of these were Trent's anathemas against what the Trent writer’s presumed were Protestant beliefs regarding the doctrine of justification. These were the 36 Justification Canons that came out of Trent’s Sixth Session (January 13, 1547). As an example, the first canon states:

CANON I.-If any one says, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ; let him be anathema.

That articulates what Catholics understood to be the crux of the Reformation. But Protestants don’t all believe the same. While the Catholic Trent Council played it safe by not mentioning names, and accurately condemn some Protestant positions, it is likely that Trent misunderstood the subtleties of exactly what the Lutheran position was attempting to articulate. Thus, after 451 years, in 1998, the Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican admitted that the anathemas (that both groups had pronounced toward the other) no longer applied, and that the crux of the Reformation was null and void.

Huh!?

Well, they’re right. It's just hard to believe that it took "intelligent" men 451 years to figure it out. The 1998 document that did this “remarkable” thing is called “JOINT DECLARATION ON THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION” and you can find it on the Vatican and some Lutheran websites.

Section 41 of the joint declaration states:

Thus the doctrinal condemnations of the 16th century, in so far as they relate to the doctrine of justification, appear in a new light: The teaching of the Lutheran churches presented in this Declaration does not fall under the condemnations from the Council of Trent. The condemnations in the Lutheran Confessions do not apply to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church presented in this Declaration.

What happened here is that both sides asked for forgiveness and opened the door to further discussions (hopefully rational) as Christians work toward unity of mind and heart. Today, we understand that we are actually closer to each other than both sides have believed these past centuries.

Restoring the Window

Recall the UFO through the window? How can I forget. Actually, the story has a good ending. Yes, I asked Pam to forgive me -- and she did. But before there was true restoration, I had to make true restitution.

We lived in an old house, and the single pane, double hung windows positioned over the kitchen sink were ugly and drafty in the winter, with wide casements that hid the view of trees out the window. We did not have air conditioning, so we had to crack the windows for ventilation, and opening the windows was difficult because they were old, often stuck in their jams, and we had to lean awkwardly over the sink for leverage.

I decided that instead of repairing the windows I would replace them with a custom design that went beyond a simple repair. I ripped out both windows, cleaned out the resulting opening, and installed oak sill, jambs, and head. I then found a large piece of thermopane glass (a small picture window) that fit the opening and yet allowed me to create beneath it, a six-inch high vent that when flipped open created an extra wide shelf for small plants. I even custom formed a Styrofoam insert that filled the vent during the winter against the cold. I stained and varnished the wood, and for many years after that, we looked through the beautifully, restored window of our restored marriage and the effects of The Forgiveness Principle.

Chapter 14 THE FALLIBILITY PRINCIPLE Part 1

2008-01-14T12:21:00.000-08:00

Precocious and Stubborn

Annaliese is our precocious and self-made two-year old granddaughter. I call her "Ellen MacArthur" after the petite but determined British Dame who in her teens and 20s raced 70-foot sail boats single-handedly across the stormy North Atlantic beating brawny men three times her age and experience. When Annaliese was one-year old we took her and her family (e.g. her parents and older sibling brothers) sailing for a week in the open waters of the Great Lakes and Canada's North Channel. In the process we braved gale force winds and storms.

Family Ties, our Islander Freeport 41' ketch, is a sturdy and safe ocean going vessel, but such weather always brings a heightened level of anxiety and tension to the captain (me) and crew (my wife, Pam) -- especially with three young grandchildren aboard. Yet, during such weather, with the large boat seemingly at the mercy of high winds and waves and occasionally plowing the bow into an on-coming wave, was the only time "Ellen" was happy. I'm told she never learned to walk. In one week she went from sitting-up to a full gallop.

Annaliese considers herself already grownup and in full command of the universe. Although she's spent her entire life in the United States, she has that distinct British spirit—stiff upper lip, adamantly independent, and stubborn omniscience. (Omniscience is an attribute of God that means “all knowing.”) Recently Annaliese has potty trained herself. As soon as she poops in her diaper, she trots to the bathroom, pulls off the self-made mess, and casts the whole kit-and-kabula into the toilet, running stark naked, with a smelly and dirty fanny but a big toothy grin to the living room where mom is serving tea to her ladies Bible study. She takes after her grandfather.

Last week we were "watching" "Ellen" for the evening. You can let her brothers read and play by themselves for hours without worry. "Ellen" however, requires two adults, a tow-line, and a backup GPS locator. My wife, Pam, clever woman that she is, got "Ellen" involved cutting out cookies with cookie-dough. "Ellen" felt so grown up — playing with messy stuff and sharp objects in exotic shapes (the tin cookie cutters).

"Ellen" was happy -- until I came along, scooped up some of the scraps from her cutting enterprise, flung them into my mouth and started to happily chew and savor the sugary cookie dough. "Ellen's" face turned sour and became deeply concerned; and when I apparently swallowed the mass, her eyes bulged out at me like I was something indeed strange. She had no interest in the cookie dough as food; and when the cookies came out of the oven and we offered her one of the warm, succulent treats, she ran away and hid behind her mom and dad, who had just arrived to take her and her brothers back home. What was her problem, we wondered?

As it turned out, "Ellen" was suffering from rejection of the first principle of a good argument: "The Fallibility Principle."

The Fallibility Principle

This series of articles is about the role of reason in the discovery of truth. We arrive at truth through the application of faith and reason, which are like "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." (John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio). Truth does not come to us by faith alone, nor does it come by reason alone. To rely on one to the exclusion of the other, is to fly with one wing, mostly in circles, as we misapply the ordered principles of good argumentation, or we introduce fallacies into our thinking.

This chapter is about T. Edward Damer's 1st Principle of the "Code of Conduct for Effective Rational Discussion" — The Fallibility Principle. This principle encourages us to begin all arguments with an awareness that we could be wrong. The Fallibility Principle means our position could be fallible. Or, even if the conclusion of our argument is correct, the evidence we present to support our side of the discussion may be invalid or fallacious in some way. The Fallibility Principle reminds us that we are not omniscience (all knowing). We should, therefore, approach all discussions with an air of humility and not a self-made arrogance. Indeed, in terms of Christian virtues, The Fallibility Principle is closely related to humility. That is, a humble attitude opens the ears of our opponents and reduces obstructions in the hearts of our opponents to the evidence we present.

Sounds good doesn’t it? Now, if I could just do it.

When I miss the mark, however, it doesn’t take long before I'm cheered up by meeting a devout and vocal atheist. Yes, they cheer me up. Here's why.

The "New" Atheism and The Fallibility Principle

I've recently had several discussions with proponents of what some are calling the "new" atheism, a psychological phenomenon deeply rooted in a rejection of The Fallibility Principle. There is nothing really new about these folks, except that the old atheists are dead. The new atheists still claim several things impossible to know.

First, their intellectual knowledge of the material world gives them the assurance that there is no God. This confidence comes off not unlike Annaliese’s omniscience about the cookie dough. They claim that all that is knowable exists in the naturalistic material world, or that what they do know is enough to support their claim. (It’s amazing, isn’t it, that their knowledge about the material world would impart so much knowledge about the metaphysical (non-material) world?)

Yet there is no proof that atheists or anyone that subscribes to materialism or naturalism knows or can know all there is to know. Ask them for material proof of their omniscient assertion. I hope you enjoy silence. Materialism or naturalism also does not tell us the purpose of matter or why there is something rather than nothing. The most meticulous examination of human tissue or a person's bodily functions does not explain the love or hate that can exist as part of their existence. Reason and science, per se, fails the all-knowing atheist on these points. They have failed the fallibility principle for they claim to know what they can't possibly explain.

Secondly, the "new" atheist claims omniscient knowledge about what makes religious faith, such as Christianity, tick. They claim that faith in God is a blind faith, or a faith that is without supporting physical evidence. Such a "blind faith" however is outside the experience of Christianity, and even Christians should ridicule such "faith" as superstitious and unworthy of adherence. True Christian faith is substantially based on evidence from the natural world; e.g. (a) historical evidence of people, places and events and the historically reliable records of the same; (b) the physical evidence of miracles both past and present; (c) the physical evidence of changed lives when moral principles (revealed by supernatural revelation) are applied, and (d) the benevolent and extraordinary structure, design and order of the universe. The atheists' claim, therefore, about Christian faith fails The Fallibility Principle.

Expanding that last point brings us to the third "omniscient" problem with the "new" atheism, and that is the reasonableness of it's omniscient claim that the "order" of the universe, which is the theist's primary evidence of intelligence behind creation, is actually not ordered, organized, structured, and cooperative, but rather random, the product of chance, and mindlessness.

The very claim that the universe is the product of mindlessness is mindless. Stringing a group of words and concepts together to form a sentence requires the use of a structured language and sophisticated intelligence above barks, purrs, and growls. Imagine if natural law adjusted the nature of our physical existence to correspond to our belief system—anyone whose thinking approached such a disordered conclusion would them selves correspondingly change into what they believed. Thus, if you believed the universe was not ordered, but randomly put together, would you morph into a quickly dissipating vapor? Could be interesting. But even such a law would have order to it.

Joking around like that actually substantiates the preponderance of evidence of an ordered universe. Trying to envision a disordered universe requires an ordered thought pattern -- and a law to govern the disorder. Naturally occurring turbulence is a great example. We see turbulence in whirlpools, tornadoes, wave action, and jet streams. Although the movement of particles in a turbulent flow is so complex that man does not have the computer power to predict the precise outcome, we can coarsely compute its effect. There is, an order to turbulence, it's just beyond our ability to reduce to a predictive formula. Science has given this observable order that is beyond our precisely predictive capability a quaint and ironic name—Chaos Theory or Fractal Structures. But don't be fooled. Chaos and fractals are anything but random chance. In fact, the name properly and elegantly bows its head to the grandness of God's elaborate design and embraces The Fallibility Principle.

Atheism fails to provide any physical evidence that the universe is NOT the product of an intelligent, ordered, benevolent power. When an atheist asks you for evidence of God, hold up your very functional thumb and wax eloquent on how the atheist's thumb nail profoundly demonstrates the physical evidence of a loving God. (That's a good essay, by the way, for your home schoolers…at any grade level. I call it the "Thumbnail Proof of God.") After you've lectured for an hour or so, ask them to provide evidence that the universe is without order, structure, and the product of chance. Is their evidence the complex and highly designed structure of their DNA? Boy, that should keep them busy for several lifetimes. Suggest they instead consider The Fallibility Principle and embrace some humility.

Perhaps the "holy grail" of science during the past 70 years has been the search of a single mathematical expression that shows the relationship between the four known forces that hold the universe together. Those four forces in order of strength are (1) strong nuclear, (2) electromagnetic, (3) weak nuclear, and (4) gravity. That very quest makes a grand assumption about which "new" atheists seem blind. In their grasping to explain the universe without a God, they embrace the very nature of God to explain it. That there is an order, and it can be known, but that in our finiteness, our smallness, our fallibility, we do not know, nor do we come close to understanding.

You might suggest to your atheist friends, that if they really want the omniscience they claim to have, they ought to become devout Christians. For as Christians, when we get to heaven, we will no longer see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now that's exciting for any scientist, even Stephen Hawking who has spent most of his agnostic lifetime looking for the single formula that explains the relationship between the four forces.

Common Applications of The Fallibility Principle

There are many common applications of The Fallibility Principle. A child learns that their knowledge is naturally fallible when they discover the correspondence between a parent's verbal warning not to run, and the child’s stubbornness to run anyway, with the subsequent trip, fall, pain, bruise and small cut. The lack of knowledge about the universe around us takes on greater consequence when we are warned not to dive into an unknown body of water (metaphor intended), or to avoid hanging around with peers that are habitually involved in immoral talk and deeds.

By extrapolation it shouldn't take much to understand how the rejection of The Fallibility Principle leads to arguments, divorce, many preventable diseases, suicide, bigotry, the use of drugs, murder, terrorism and war. A good exercise for students is to observe relationships around them and then write an essay about how an observed conflict often begins by rejection of this first principle of a rational, effective discussion.

It is written that Satan is the father of all lies. In the Garden of Eden, Satan's task was to convince Eve, if only momentarily, to disregard The Fallibility Principle — "You will be like gods who know...." Throughout history that is the great lie — reject the idea that you don’t know, and pretend you do.

Antidote and Preventions

In the physical realm, when we ignore The Fallibility Principle and jump off cliffs because we think we can fly, or run red lights because we think we're invincible, or eat too much sugar, or exercise too little -- there are doctors, medics, nutritionist and nurses that assist us back to physical health.

Likewise, in the spiritual realm, when we ignore The Fallibility Principle and participate in mental gymnastics and sin through our wrongful intentions, we can go to friends, counselors, shrinks and most importantly to Jesus and His priests to seek forgiveness and make penance and restitution.

Acceptance of The Fallibility Principle is one reason we go to school and get an education. We live more comfortably when we understand reality and live within its confines. The more we understand about nature and the supernatural we are better able to navigate past obstacles and get to where we have been called. When we disregard the importance of education, or learning about things we know little about, we embrace ignorance and the natural consequences of rejecting The Fallibility Principle.

The best education, of course, is experience. A baby often learns that things are safe or dangerous often by coming in touch with them. We wondered what Annalease had experienced to convince her that cookie dough and the baked results were an anathema. The answer was Playdough™ — earlier in her life she discovered that the salty substance was not that savory, and that grandpa had to be nuts to be enjoying it. What she didn't know was that the substance of real cookie dough was considerably different than the stuff used for play.

Annaliese's stubbornness reminds me about the interpretation of truth. Her interpretation of truth was not true. She was sincere and passionate, but sincerity and passion have never been good criteria for evaluating truth. She was convinced that the yummy sugar cookie dough was Playdough. That is similar to the confusion I experienced as a Protestant about certain aspects of Catholicism. To me Catholicism tasted like Playdough, and whoever enjoyed it, or swallowed it's "lies" was strange indeed. As a Protestant I had rejected The Fallibility Principle. I might acknowledge its value, but in practice, with regard to my religious faith, I was omniscient. I knew that the substance of Catholic communion was really just bread and wine. Never mind that if I had lived during Jesus' time and met him, all of my sensory experiences with Jesus would NOT have revealed his divinity. While Jesus' physical body was human, his substance was divine. Of course, examining Jesus' physical presence would never have revealed his purpose for being here. Only supernatural revelation and faith would have done that. Just as only supernatural faith reveals the true substance of The Eucharist.

Does Not Apply

There is, however, one place where The Fallibility Principle does not apply: when Jesus told Peter that upon him he would establish his Church, and "the gates of hell will not prevail against it…whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matt 16:18-19) ...and the Holy Spirit would lead them into ALL (not some) truth. (John 16:12).

That means, in terms of faith and morals, that The Fallibility Principle, if we are to believe Jesus, does not apply to the Church. Not because the Church, per se, is so omniscient, but because the Holy Spirit, who inspired fallible human authors to pen the infallible Scriptures, likewise was promised by Christ to inspire the Church to infallibly interpret the Scriptures.

Good Cookies

Annaliese came to lean that the substance of cookie dough was very different from what she had first supposed. A week later, when the cookies came out of the oven, there was no holding her back from gobbling them up. May we all embrace The Fallibility Principle, humble ourselves, learn from our teachers, and gobble up truth.

Chapter 13 EQUIVOCATION Part 1

2008-01-13T12:09:00.000-08:00

The feedback and comments that I get on my logic series (“Trying to Fly with One Wing”) are beneficial. They tell how well or how badly my attempts at getting people to think critically are working. Sometimes I’m encouraged, and other times I’m saddened at my inability to communicate. When I’m corrected, it hits hard at first; but then the correction, if heeded, will only accelerate my humility -- of which I am quite proud -- I think.

The Beauty of Humiliation

To explain how correction is a beautiful thing, I’m reminded of a story about the late Fr. John Hardon, S.J.. During the last years of his life I was in a lay order, and one of our members was Marie Coules, Fr. Hardon’s secretary. Marie has a bunch of kids, as you’d expect if the Rev. John Hardon was going to let you be his secretary. One of Marie’s little boys wanted to be Fr. Hardon’s altar server at daily Mass they attended, but he was too young. So, mom told the tike that he should wait until he’s older -- because if he made a mistake Fr. Hardon would humiliate him in the middle of Mass by correcting the boy.

Finally the day arrived when the boy was old enough to be Fr. Hardon’s altar server – barely. He was filled with excitement – so much so that mom felt she had to calm him down. He was acting as if it was Christmas morning and he just knew that a new bike was waiting for him under the tree. “Calm down son, why are you so excited?”

The boy looked at his mom astonished. “I’m going to serve Mass with Fr. Hardon.”

The boy was not old enough to know how revered Fr. Hardon was, so his mom pressed, “It is an honor to serve at any Mass.” The boy interrupted, “But this is Fr. Hardon!”

“So what?” mom asked.

“So what! Mother, it was you who told me.”

“What?”

“That he would humiliate me.”

Marie raised up, speechless and looked strangely at her son as if he was the craziest person she had ever met. The boy saw the bewilderment on his mom’s face.

“Mom. Get a grip. Don’t you remember what you also told me?”

Mom slowly shook her head.

“That the fastest way to be holy is to be humbled. I figure Fr. Hardon is going to make me real holy, real fast.”

Commenting on the Comments

I am disappointed when reader comments on the series explore the ins and outs of the anecdotes and not the central issue of logic the article raises. I suppose that is to be expected. At times the comments commit so many other fallacies (leading to a host of wrong conclusions) that I become disillusioned and want to give up. Then I rally and feel obligated to comment on the comments, but wonder how my readers could stand it. I don’t mind sounding defensive because it is truth I’m defending here, and not some fanciful bully pulpit. Such is now the case.

Revisiting Campus Crusade for Christ

In Chapter 11 I wrote about a fallacy called Appeal to Personal Circumstances, and out of my personal experiences told some stories about the Evangelical organization Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC – not to be confused with the Catechism of the Catholic Church). What follows are a series of comments from a READER to that article, and MY RESPONSE. I trust this will be instructive. (The underlined emphases are mine.)

A Reader’s Personal Experiences with Campus Crusade

THE READER: My own experience with CCC led me OUT of the Catholic Church, as it had…many other Catholics I knew in our CCC chapter. …Unfortunately, many too many of my CCC friends who had been cradle Catholics not properly catechized, as I had not been, have not returned to the Catholic Church. … I have very mixed feelings about its most usually anti-Catholic work, and pray and hope that my kids NEVER join it on any campus. My husband and I are working very hard to insure that our kids will know their faith so well that they will never be fooled by CCC and its methods of enticing kids away from the Catholic Church on thousands of campuses worldwide.

MY RESPONSE: Although the Reader cites her personal circumstance in this post, the fallacy she uses is equivocation, where the equivocal term is “Catholic Church”. Equivocation occurs when the same word (or term) is used two different ways, or the parties involved in the discussion are defining the term differently, thinking they are using the same definition for the word.

In this case, what the Reader understood when she was younger about the Church, is considerably different from how she understands it today. The Church has not changed, but her definition of it has. She claims that as a younger person she left the Catholic Church because she was “not properly catechized.” That is, what she understood about the Church when she left it was probably neither accurate nor proper. Now, she understands Catholicism accurately and properly. She is comparing two different definitions of the Catholic Church. Consequently, we can’t say that she left the true faith, but rather she left a wrong understanding of it. That is a form of a fallacy called equivocation.

This leads me to an explanation of what likely happened to the Reader as she grew up (and has happened to many others.)

1. As a young person she had a rudimentary, and poor understanding of Christianity. As a Catholic she was badly catechized, and she took only slight interest in her instruction. This resulted in a “lukewarm” Christianity, not a solid or true faith in Christ. Christ said of such persons that He would spit them out of His mouth – perhaps so they could progress to step two.

2. Later, the Reader meets up with some on-fire Evangelicals (or Catholic Charismatics – all the better because they’re not Protestant) who have a better understanding of Christianity than the Reader had before, although the Protestants are deficient in certain areas. And as many of the more rigorous efforts at ecumenical dialogue have revealed, the deficiency is not at the heart level, but the result of linguistic confusion. As Bill Bright came to understand, his definition of terms like “faith” with only subtle modification allowed him to let the future pope edit Crusade’s materials for use among Catholic Polish youth.

3. Now, the Reader, having been better catechized in the Christian faith through her Evangelical brothers and sisters, is on-fire for Christ -- and much more open to the movement of the Holy Spirit…

4. …Who then leads her to discover the fullness of truth in Catholicism; and she returns to the Church.

This reveals how Protestant-Evangelicalism can (not that is necessarily always does) prepare badly catechized Catholics to later accept the fullness of Catholicism.

In fact, many of my Catholic apologist friends have followed this path, as I did. We’re good at what we do for the Church, not in spite of Evangelicalism, but because of the training we received there. We didn’t come out of a pagan cult or a heretical sect such as Arianism that denies the divinity of Christ, but rather a form of Christianity that --though it has some theological problems -- formed in us an enthusiastic and saving faith in Christ – and, by the way, a decent knowledge of the Bible—something the American Catholic Church of the last 50 years had difficulty inculcating in its members. In short, if the mission of the Catholic Church is to save souls and get them into heaven, then the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ has helped the Church fulfill that mission.

At the same time it is important to point out that many Catholics who enter Protestantism may not return to Catholicism. While this is lamentable, there are things to consider that make their rejection of Catholicism understandable and even acceptable.

The acceptable rejection of “Catholicism”

WHAT!? You scream at me. How can it be acceptable to reject Catholicism? It’s simple. What they are rejecting is not real Catholicism, but either a misunderstanding of it, or the way in which Catholics around the person misrepresent it. Remember the earlier problem that the reader confronted with equivocation. We’re not talking about someone who recognizes the truth of Catholicism and then rejects it. We’re talking about people who truly believe that when we pray to Mary we are worshiping her. Of course, that is not what we are doing. Prayer to a saint by a Catholic is not worship, but simply a request of another member of the Church to intercede to Christ on our behalf.

(Apologist, Dave Armstrong always avoids the phraseology “praying to a saint” – at least in Protestant company -- because it is almost universally misunderstood by Protestants to mean “the saint is replacing God and grants the prayer request himself / herself”. Protestants equate the word “prayer” with communication with God only (and oftentimes, worship itself). Thus, “asking a saint to pray / intercede defeats that misunderstanding because it shows that the prayer ultimately goes to God to answer. Of course, the use of the word “pray” here is another form of equivocation—same word, different meaning.)

You can blame non-Catholics for not listening to your explanation, but you cannot fault their belief that it is idolatry to worship Mary. It is! They’re right. I contend that the issue here is not to blame Protestants for believing wrong about Catholicism, but to blame Catholics for not explaining the faith properly, defending it provocatively, and living it morally.

The Equivocation of Being Anti-Catholic

If we are to claim that Campus Crusade for Christ is inherently “anti-Catholic” because many individuals in Crusade explicitly use anti-Catholic rhetoric, then we have to extend the “anti-Catholic” label to the many “Catholics” who embrace abortion, homosexual “marriages” -- and a host of other non-Catholic things. At one level there’s equivocation of rhetoric (what Evangelicals tend to do), but at the other there’s equivocation of lifestyle or political policy (what too many “Catholics” tend to do). While the definitions may be different, the danger of Catholics leading equivocal lifestyles (defining Catholic moral values by personal preferences) is far more damaging that Evangelicals misunderstanding Catholicism.

That leads us to…

Doctrinal Differences

In the former article I wrote how the Polish Catholic hierarchy, including Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) had edited and approved Campus Crusade for Christ’s Christian discipleship materials for use among Polish youth in the Oasis program.

THE READER: I wonder how the [religious educational] materials were modified for the Poles, so that they won the Bishop's approval. In my experience the heresies of “sola scriptura,” "salvation security," and “salvation by faith alone” were pretty basic to Crusade's teachings, even at the most beginning levels… There are so many great Catholic materials being produced, I can't imagine a reason why Crusade's materials would need to be used for youth ministry.

MY RESPONSE: Evidently, Bishop Karol Wojtyla and Fr. Franciszek Blachnicki, didn’t think such materials existed in Poland during the communist occupation. The reader is confusing 2007 America with 1976 Communist Poland. Huge difference. This is a case of equivocation that defines a past era and setting as having the same definition as the current era and setting. A similar mistake is often made when comparing God’s judgment upon the Israelites while traveling through the wilderness in an era of “the law,” and the God’s judgment upon us today in an era of “grace.” There is justice in both situations, but the time and place are significantly different.

Linguistic Confusion

Getting back so sola scriptura, eternal security, and faith alone -- many of these doctrinal differences are resolved by clarifying definitions. These “heresies” are not the result of Evangelical heretical thinking in the same way that the Church experienced heresy in the early centuries, e.g. from Arius (c. AD 250-336), or Nestorius (c. 386–c. 451). Then the parties understood clearly what the definition of terms that were discussed. Today, with most of our Evangelical brothers and sisters, the disagreements are largely, but not completely, the result of linguistic confusion and equivocation. When the linguistic confusions were properly explained to Bill Bright (the founder of Campus Crusade), he came to an understanding of the subtle differences in salvation by faith vs. faith alone (and other issues) and he agreed to let the Polish bishops change his materials to agree with the Church’s magisterial teaching.

In terms of “faith alone” equivocation is again at work. In the broadest sense, faith (from the Catholic perspective) includes faith in ALL the means of salvation that Christ left us and that Catholicism embraces. Some Evangelicals will explain “faith” to be simply a mental assent that Jesus is Lord. But, interestingly enough, that is NOT what they practice – and in their hearts they believe very much what Catholic doctrine teaches, if examined closely and the equivocation clarified. In contradiction to what you often hear Protestants “say” they believe, Evangelicals DO embrace the teachings of Trent that anathematized the Church’s first understandings of what Luther’s “faith alone” meant. That is, they DO regard the saving work of Christ on the cross as necessary, along with the work of the Holy Spirit, and the importance of good works that grow out of a charitable love for others.

Lutheran-Catholic Justification Agreement

The absence of belief in these things was condemned by the Council of Trent. Clearing this all up is one reason The Vatican and the Federation of Lutheran Churches in 1998 signed the Justification Agreement, which claims that the crux of the Protestant Reformation (faith alone) no longer exists. Yet, here is the interesting thing that occurred doctrinally in coming to that agreement: NOTHING!!! NEITHER CHURCH CHANGED THEIR DOCTRINE. So, what happened? It was linguistic confusion, fallacious communication such as equivocation and a few others. It’s hard to believe, but that’s what happened. So, Dave Armstrong points out, “we must not represent mainstream “Reformation” Protestantism and Evangelicalism today as teaching a bald “mental assent” either, lest we make the same mistake in over-generalizing or false attribution that Catholics are often victims of.”

Similar clarifications (that avoid fallacies of linguistic confusion) are used to bring Catholics and Evangelicals together on the issues of “eternal security” and “sola Scriptura”. For instance, I can demonstrate how all Catholic doctrines are found in Scripture, either explicitly, implicitly, or directly deducible from other biblical doctrines.

We Will be Saved by Beauty

Dostoyevsky wrote: "The Beautiful will save us." How many people, Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) wonders, understand that Dostoyevsky refers here to the redeeming Beauty of Christ? For me, that redeeming beauty simultaneously points to the beauty of truth evident in natural revelation (reason), and well as special revelation (faith). There is a perfect beauty in how the universe of mind, matter and spirit work together to remove all contradiction and explain all paradox such as we’ve examined in this article about equivocation. The result is that reason and faith together will lead us to life in Jesus Christ our Lord. O my soul. Think clearly, that we might bring peace to Earth, and Salvation to the World.

Chapter 12 GUILT BY ASSOCIATION

2008-01-12T12:04:00.000-08:00

David was a Christian studying for his Ph.D. in communications at a secular university. Under his arm, along with his books, was a copy of a popular Evangelical magazine. As he entered Dr. Brock’s office for a consultation, the professor saw the magazine and asked David what "that" was. David said, "The latest issue of Christianity Today; it's sort of a Christian intellectual journal." Professor Brock, well known for his religious skepticism, laughed out loud as he proffered, “Isn't that sort of an oxymoron—‘Christian intellectual?’ “

David was offended, and for a communication major, unusually speechless. Later, he relayed the conversation to me, such as it was. He was depressed at not having a witty (and intellectual) rejoinder to trump our professor’s atheism. I said, "But, David, Brock is right. Remember when we discovered that we were both working on our doctorates at a secular University hoping to change society’s opinion that Christians can’t think critically?” Now it was David’s time to chuckle. He remembered our common calling.

This series of articles is about the role of reason in the discovery of truth. We arrive at truth through the application of faith and reason, which are like "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." (John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio). Truth does not come to us by faith alone, nor does it come by reason alone. To rely on one to the exclusion of the other, is to fly with one wing, mostly in circles, as we misapply the ordered rules of one or the other and introduce fallacies into our thinking.

Guilt by Association Fallacy

This chapter is about one particular fallacy, something called Guilt by Association, which falls under the category of irrelevant objective appeals. Appealing to Guilt by Association occurs when, instead of using objective evidence for or against the issue at hand, I tell my opponent that someone he doesn’t like holds the position he’s arguing for. I’m “thinking” that my opponent will side with me and against the person he doesn’t like. I have attempted to assign guilt to a position, not because of the truth of the evidence or argument, but because of its association with someone of ill repute. We are all vulnerable to Guilt by Association because we like to belong to, or be accepted by, certain groups -- and often we are willing to change our stance to accommodate that belonging.

In the situation with David, Professor Brock was using the Guilt by Association fallacy, (as well as several others), to imply that David, as a Ph.D. candidate, should not be associating himself with non-intelligent, or non-rationale groups, e.g. Christians.

Guilt by Association is also used by anti-Catholics when they attempt to associate all Catholic priests with the few priests exposed during the recent scandal. Neither Brock's attempt on David, nor the anti-Catholic barrage against the priesthood, works very effectively because the facts are much different than the challenge implies. Brock ignores the many intellectual giants of human history that just happened to have been Catholic—scientists like Copernicus, writers like Shakespeare, musicians like Mozart, theologians like Augustine, philosophers like John Paul II, and perhaps most significantly Brock ignores the contribution of Catholic monasticism to the preservation of Western intellectual civilization.

Associations that are Not Fallacious

So far, we’ve discussed the fallacy whereby an argument is waged by creating a prejudice against a position due to an association, rather than the true merits of a position. We might fall into using this fallacy because we are confused about associations in general. There are three forms of association that are not fallacious and worthy of examination in our attempt to become more critical thinkers. There is a True Guilt by Association, a False Guilt by Association, and there is Virtue by Association. Let’s look briefly at each.

True Guilt by Association

True Guilt by Association occurs when we sin because we associate with the wrong kind of friends. That is, we truly become guilty by the association.

St. Frances De Sales warns: “Friendship is the most dangerous love of all because…” true friendship involves taking part in the qualities of our friend, and… “a friendship that is founded on… sensual pleasures is utterly gross and unworthy” (Introduction to a Devout Life, 3.17). One of St. Francis de Sales’ best lines was written as a warning against association with those that value frivolous accomplishments such a being able to dance gracefully, play well at games, dress fashionable, sing delightfully, speak eloquently and generally have a fine appearance. In today’s lingo we might warn against association with those that are “socially hip but spiritually bankrupt.” Associating with people who value such things causes St. Francis to deliver this gem of a line worth repeating to your kids from time to time: “It is thus that charlatans regard the greatest buffoons as the most virtuous.” Pretty well sums up a significant part of American culture, doesn’t it? Thus is the challenge of living in America. Just how do we avoid friendships with charlatans and buffoons, and continue to be salt and light? Ah, Hamlet, that is the question.

MYSPACE.COM

True Guilt by Association can occur among our youth (or us) and it does not need to be a live individual. It can be an association with a machine or system programmed and controlled by individuals. I recently assisted a single Catholic mom with an Internet phobia, remove her underage and belligerent daughter’s MySpace page. In the context of this discussion this tween described her mood, in the MySpace field provided for such descriptions, as “guilty” -- and she was.

First, she was only 12 and had violated MySpace’s rule that a user be at least 14. The attractive young girl, who looks older than she is, had registered herself as being 17-years old, which encouraged advances from strangers she had no business knowing. Second, MySpace and the Internet made it easy to for this tween to associate with individuals that encouraged her rebellious belligerent acting-out. Her “friends” at school encouraged what she added to her page. Next to her picture was a colorful graphic of marijuana, below which she had entered the words “smoke some.” The song she had linked to (which plays automatically upon accessing her page) was by a well-known rap group with explicit lyrics that glamorized sex and drugs. MySpace makes it easy for kids to post such links and play such songs on their page. The tween had also been able to write out a lengthy description of herself, which included explicit vulgarity. She was able to do all of this without restriction on MySpace, and because her single mom knows little about computers or the Internet, the tween was able to keep her mom from accessing the page. Third, on every MySpace profile, by virtue of entering your supposed birthday your astrological sign is automatically displayed for the world to see. Further the astrological sign is a highlighted link, inviting investigation. When you click on the link, you’re taken to Tarot.com, a site that panders to the occult and explicit anti-Christian values. I signed up for a MySpace page to help this mother, and to investigate the MySpace phenomenon (www.myspace.com/drstanwilliams). As I entered my profile the banner ad flashing at the top of the page read "Goth Test: Are You Goth Enough?"

I thought, “Oh, boy! I We don’t need this.” I clicked on the link, imaging the 12-year old girl doing the same. She and her sister had shown some goth tendencies. My Internet browser took me to Tarot.com and the quiz. The screen read:

Take this goth quiz if you dare! Find out if you truly embrace the darkness, if you are one with the night creatures, or...if you're a poseur and really belong at the mall with the other brainwashed minions of consumerism. How goth are you?

[Here is question 4]

Do you wear a Catholic cross? (pick one of the following)

--Hell no. I'm a Goth, not a Catholic. I worship Satan

--An ornate one, for the aesthetic

--As an ironic statement, and/or among other jewelry

--No, I don't own one.

--Yes, and it's covered in bling (jewelry)

(I think a group of parents should file a class action law suite against MySpace for contributing to the delinquency of minors – although I might add there are hundreds of Christians who do a lot of evangelization on MySpace. I have two videos posted there, one on Confession. But, I digress – back to guilt…) There is a lot of guilt to spread around with a teen’s association with MySpace. By the way, this kind of guilt is good, it can drive us to the confessional.

Now in fairness to the tween, the emotional problems she is dealing with through a couple of terrible family situations, were in place long before she had access to MySpace and the Internet. In this case the Internet didn’t cause her problems, but they surely exacerbated them, and gave her acting out approval and credence. Such is politically correct but morally wrong free speech.

False Guilt By Associations

False Guilt By Association occurs when we are tempted to feel guilty about an association but should not. In fact, the association may be good for us -- and the Church. Here are two examples.

False Guilt By Association can be brought on by prejudice or by ignorance. When folk songwriter and “singer” Bob Dylan was considering Christianity some years back, he came out with an album titled “SLOW TRAIN COMING.” (Am I showing my age here – it was 1979.) It was popular among Christian youth and young adults. But some adult Christians were not sure they wanted to be associated with Bob Dylan. After all, if Dylan was going to be Christian, that meant that Christians would have to accept him and his his sinful, rebellious past would gain credibility. A similar fate is faced by some Christians today with the return to Catholicism (or reconversion) of Anne Rice, the author who made vampires famous. Today she’s writing a series of novels on the childhood of Jesus with a major motion picture in development by company headed by a Catholic. So, should Christians associate with the likes of a converted Bob Dylan or Anne Rice? Of course, another option is to leave Christianity.

False Guilt By Association can also occur when we are just ignorant of who a person is, either by their dress, or their association with others. The classic example is when Jesus takes lunch with Zaccheus, the hated tax collector (speaking of charlatans). The Pharisees (speaking of buffoons) label Jesus “guilty” by association. But of course, this was just another case where the buffoons were wrong.

A more personal example of the ignorance case occurred when I was a freshman at the evangelical institution known as Greenville College. All freshmen were required to take “Basic Christianity”: a course taught by an amazing and intelligent apologist by the name of Dr. Stan Walters. One of Dr. Walters’ required texts was C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. I brought the book home to read during Thanksgiving break and one night laid it on my mother’s living room coffee table. Now, you have to understand that my mother (and father) were paying thousands of dollars for me to attend their alma matter. They were insistent (or at least hopeful) that I would get a good “Christian” education. You also have to understand that my mother’s remembrance of C.S. Lewis was that of the acerbic, well-known Oxford agnostic. She did not know that after several rounds with Catholic J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis became a great Christian apologist. It is unfortunate that his most remembered contribution to Christian apologetics begins with the word “mere.” Which is exactly what set my Mother off. How dare I bring this evil, apostate literature into her home. “Who gave you that?” she yelled. It took some explaining that my association with Dr. Lewis was part of my “Christian education.” Mom had assigned Lewis’ guilt because of his earlier association with skepticism. Who could blame her. They’re both in heaven now, have probably met – don’t you wish you could eavesdrop on such meetings?

One last example, I can’t resist. When my good friend Alex Jones, as a young man, was ordained a Pentecostal-Evangelical pastor in the Church of God in Christ, he wanted to go to seminary to get more training. But the elders of his “church” refused to let him. They liked their worship services with vibrant and emotional singing, and a style of preaching that prevented anyone from falling asleep. You had a better chance of being shoved off the end of pew when Alex would characteristically yell out to his congregation: “Reach out and touch somebody.” So, Alex wanted to go to seminary. And his elders said to Alex: “Absolutely not! If you go to seminary, our church will become a cemetery.” Now, there’s a fallacy for you. Needs a new category: “If two words rhyme they must mean the same.” (Lord, save us from the Appeal to Rhyme.) Ironically, Jones undertook a night-time, clandestine, self-education by sneaking into the theology library at Detroit’s Sacred Heart Major Seminary -- the same seminary he would attend 30 years later in preparation for his second ordination—as a deacon in the Catholic Church. Deacon Jones’ former elders had a fear of association with intellectual pursuits. Fortunately for us, Deacon Jones had no such fear and from his Catholic pulpit you will still hear him yell out to his congregation to be associated with the right folk: “I say, reach out and touch somebody!” Just make sure you’re not sitting on the end of the pew when he says that.

Which brings me to the greatest of associations.

Virtue by Association

Virtue by Association occurs when we become more virtuous because of our association with persons of virtue. What a concept!

St. Francis de Sales encourages us to be associated with those friends that will generate the opposite of guilt. Those are true friendships. “Love everyone, Philothea, with a strenuous love of charity, but have no friendships except for those who communicate with you the things of virtue… (e.g.) moral virtues: in prudence, discretion, fortitude and justice.” (Introduction to a Devout Life, 3.19)

No Better Association

Much could be said about virtuous associations, but there is no better association, guaranteed to push aside all guilt, than the association we seek with the saints and especially with God himself through Our Lord Jesus Christ. In practical terms, we have two practices that excel at getting us close to the saints and to Christ, thus developing in us guilt free associations. The first is praying the Rosary with Mary. What an opportunity, to seek the association of the mother of Jesus, and together seek the virtues that God reveals to us as we contemplate the mysteries and life of Christ.

But I’ve saved the best for last, so you’ll remember it first. As I type this I am in the presence of the greatest association of virtue known throughout the physical universe. I am literally in the presence of Christ. Christ has challenged us to be perfect in virtue as his heavenly Father is perfect. When we get to heaven, after bumping shoulders and knees with each other in purgatory, we will be in that perfect association of virtue. But now, here on Earth, we can have a close association with Christ through prayer, obedience, charitable service to those in need, by spending time in Eucharistic adoration, and the best association of all -- by being one in body with him. May the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ bring us to everlasting life. Amen.

Chapter 11 APPEAL TO PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES

2008-01-11T10:26:00.000-08:00

I stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon and marveled at the abyss before me. At this location the canyon was a mile deep and several miles wide. Years later, in an attempt by my wife and I to join the staff of the evangelical ministry Campus Crusade for Christ, I was asked to memorize an evangelizing pitch written by Crusade's founder Bill Bright. One of the lines was this: "Man can no more save himself than he can jump across the Grand Canyon flat footed." I had always wondered about the use of the term "flat footed." Would it make a difference if man had a running start? Hyperbole always seemed like a waste of time.

Personal Circumstances

This series of articles is about the role of reason in the discovery of truth. We arrive at truth through the application of faith and reason, which are like "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." (John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio). Truth does not come to us by faith alone, nor does it come by reason alone. To rely on one to the exclusion of the other, is to fly with one wing, mostly in circles, as we misapply the ordered rules of one or the other and introduce fallacies into our thinking.

This chapter briefly examines one of those fallacies called Appeal to Personal Circumstances, which falls under the category of irrelevant objective appeals. Using the Appeal to Personal Circumstances occurs when the evidence presented comes from the experience, or pertains to the self-interest, of a particular individual -- but the argument's outcome affects a larger group, such as the whole of society.

When my wife asks me to change the oil in the family van, but I refuse because "I" don't intend to use the van for the next few weeks, I'm using an appeal to personal circumstances. I'm ignoring the more significant evidence that "she and the grandkids" need to use the van tomorrow to travel to my sister's home across the state.

When a pro-life congressional representative is encouraged to vote for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill on grounds that the bill contains an amendment that will fund a construction project in his home district, an appeal to personal circumstances is being used. While the construction project may be beneficial to his district and to him personally in terms of votes, the larger issue, for this congressman, is that the SCHIP bill, in its current form, will negatively affect the lives of children across the nation—the bill had been revised to fund abortions. A sinister and demonic contradiction—SCHIP is supposed to care for the health of children, but the bill offers to murder them first, so later health care bills will never be submitted.

It is entirely appropriate to make decisions based on personal circumstances, or what is best for us or our family, as long as our self-interest does not infringe on the well-being and safety of others. The appeal to personal circumstances only dons its fallacious hat when our self-interest becomes more important to us than the interests of the greater good.

In my Protestant experience, I came to realize the danger of how personal circumstances affected individualistic versions of theology and practice. The Bible was definitely the inspired, inerrant Word of God. But personal interpretation wasn't so protected, even by Biblical standards (c.f. 2 Peter 1:20). I have read that Martin Luther, because of a personal history with overscrupulosity, never felt forgiven, even in the moments after leaving confession. This personal experience led him to develop a theology that focused on salvation by virtue of a person's faith alone, something you won't find in any Bible—even Luther's.

Many Christian denominations in Protestantism came about because of the appeal to the personal circumstances of the denomination's founder. I was raised in an Evangelical community known as Free Methodism that branched off the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1860 under its founder Benjamin Titus Roberts and his followers. The personal circumstances of these men desired a community of believers that allowed and encouraged the free work of the Holy Spirit in its worship (the Methodist Episcopal folk tended to be formal and staid, while Free Methodism was part of the 19th century Holiness Movement), free pews for its families (the Methodist Episcopal Church charged a pew tax, Free Methodists took a "free will" offering), the freedom of slaves, and the rejection of paid church musicians (i.e. free music).

Contemplating my jump across the Grand Canyon -- or rather the insistence by Campus Crusade that I do it "flat-footed" instead of taking a "running start" -- pointed to an unknown peculiarity in Bill Bright's life, a personal circumstance that by rote was being passed on to thousands of Campus Crusade evangelists around the world. Perhaps Mr. Bright couldn't run very well; I'm not sure. I'm fairly confident, however, that he's running today, to and fro before the throne of God's grace in heaven. For all the particular personality quirks and fame that surrounded Bright and Campus Crusade, Bright avoided personal scandal and well protected the integrity of his worldwide ministry that flourishes yet today, years after his death. In many ways Bright's techniques are an excellent model of how to evangelize society, and the Catholic Church has cooperated several times with this organization in such efforts. (More about this later.)

There's another interesting anecdote in the history of Bill Bright's Campus Crusade that points to the problem of relying on personal experiences to develop an argument, or in this case an aspect of theological practice. In the summer of 1973, when my wife, Pam, and I attended Crusade's staff training at Purdue University (a preliminary step to becoming part of Crusade's staff full time), we were informed that Crusade's personal experiences were such that Crusade staff members were not allowed to fellowship or have close friends who were charismatic Christians. Bill Bright and other Crusade leaders had evidently had run-ins with pushy charismatics and Pentecostals who were divisive on the issue of whether or not certain gifts of the Holy Spirit were active in today's society.

That became a problem for Pam and me. Although we did not consider ourselves charismatic, we had a good many friends who were. It is true that some Pentecostal charismatics did demand the demonstration of charismatic visible gifts such as speaking in tongues to confirm a person's salvation. (See Part 1 of this series, where I describe how I was refused confirmation in the faith for my "inability" to speak in tongues). But just as the hard-lined Pentecostals demanded a "personal experience" with tongues, so Bill Bright and company demanded the opposite personal experience to confirm the same thing. It was a contradiction that St. Paul clearly denounced in 1 Corinthians 14:39: "do not forbid speaking in tongues, but everything must be done properly and in order."

I began to see that different personalities, life experiences, social classes, and ethnic cultures, could seriously distort what had to be, at the core, an absolute and disciplined truth.

Needless to say we refused to give up our charismatic Christian friends, and consequently we were "uninvited" from joining Crusade's fulltime staff. (I might add that they also wanted me to give up my Jerusalem Bible, which contained the Deuterocanonical books. "There's some pretty weird stuff in those books," I was told. To which I suggested that the Gospels contained the more outlandish stories). But, granted, I was somewhat stubborn and there was another reason we didn't join Crusade staff. In my attempt to memorize Bill Bright's sermonette, I wanted to change the words to suit my personal circumstances.

A short time later Crusade's refusal to fellowship with charismatics took a humorous twist, which further demonstrated why truth cannot be based on personal circumstances. As the story goes, Bill Bright's son applied for and was accepted at the Melodyland Theological Seminary in Los Angeles. If you don't know, Melodyland is a Pentecostal-Charismatic seminary. Bill Bright was suddenly faced with the prospect of not being allowed to fellowship with his own son. Needless to say, shortly thereafter, the rule about not fellowshipping with charismatics was dropped from the Crusade rule book.

The Good Side of Personal Circumstances

Just as using personal circumstances to justify our own needs or wants in the face of a greater good is wrong and fallacious, so using personal circumstances as motivation for the greater good is right and virtuous. Let me end on a few short stories about how Bill Bright's Campus Crusade for Christ modeled the very best use of Personal Circumstances and have ended up working with the Polish Catholic Church to this day.

Crusade's ministry emphasis has been on assisting people to take seriously their personal spiritual circumstances and to make a "personal commitment to Jesus Christ". That's Evangelical jargon for "Christian Salvation," and the concept is perfectly in accord with Catholic teaching. When we are concerned about our state of grace with God, we are not likely to be committing a fallacy. As Catholics we care for our personal circumstances by receiving Christ's grace and forgiveness in baptism, and confessing our sins privately to God and to our priest during confession. Such decisions about our personal circumstances benefits not just us, but everyone around us. As we get right with God, our lives become works of service and sacrificial love toward others. In that way, the concern for ourselves makes the world a better place.

With that emphasis, Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ got it right, and to that end have worked with the Catholic Church on several efforts. As Bishop Karol Wojtyla (the future Pope John Paul II) and the Polish Catholic Church worked relentlessly (and secretly) to strengthen Christians spiritually and politically, they were being assisted by Campus Crusade who was working among the grassroots. Crusade, never explicitly anti-Catholic, focused on getting people to make "personal commitments to Christ" and provided intellectual capital to get the job done. For decades before the collapse, my friend, Crusade forerunner, John Crone, traveled frequently behind the Iron Curtain to legally publish tens of thousands of copies of several evangelistic books written by Crusade's popular evangelist Josh McDowell. McDowell's most popular book, More Than a Carpenter was published in dozens of Western and Eastern European languages. This infusion of truth about Christianity and the importance of knowing Christ personally in the circumstances that were of Communism, was slowly, surely, and widely disseminated throughout Eastern block countries. Pam and I helped to financially support John during those years, and when the Iron Curtain came down in 1989, John sent us a chuck of painted concrete in thanks for our part. It was a great moment for the world, and John used his personal circumstances to good effect.

In the years before (1970ff), Bishop Karol Wojtyla and Fr. Franciszekk Blachnicki (a Nazi war prisoner), established a spiritual renewal movement, Oasis ("Light and Life"), among Polish youth as a defense against Communism. Oasis featured outdoor youth retreats in the Polish mountains structured around the mysteries of the Rosary. In 1975, one Oasis attendee was American foreign exchange student Joe Losiak, who approached Fr. Blachnicki and told him there was a similar movement in the United States being led by Campus Crusade for Christ, through which Joe had made a personal commitment to Christ. When Joe returned to the States he likewise told Crusade about Oasis. The next year, in 1976, Fr. Blachnicki arranged for a delegation of 10 Campus Crusade Americans to attend an Oasis retreat. In the evenings the Americans put on skits for the Poles, and gave their personal testimonies about their faith in Christ. They left behind copies of Crusade's systematic discipleship materials, authored in part by Bill Bright, titled Ten Basic Steps Toward Christian Maturity, materials that Pam and I used for years in our youth work here in Michigan.

So impressed was the Oasis staff with the Crusade curriculum, that Blachnicki invited a Crusade team back to Poland to help revise the materials for use in the Catholic Oasis program. Wojtyla reviewed the materials and approved them. Then, the Polish Catholic hierarchy printed 25,000 copies—"a mix of Polish Catholicism—Marian devotions included—and American evangelical revivalism." Today, I am producing a Polish vocation recruiting film that features four Polish seminarians who benefited from these materials—a cooperation of Campus Crusade, the Catholic Church in Poland, and Pope John Paul II. You can read the entire story by David Scott in Christianity Today article "The Pope We Never Knew." Christianity Today, May 2005. (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/may/13.34.html). Thus, the personal circumstances of Wojtyla, Bright, Blachnicki, and Losiak helped change the world.

During this same period, in 1970, Bright organized an effort to make a movie about Jesus. The result was The Jesus Film, released in 1979 by Warner Brothers and co-directed by veteran filmmakers John Krish and Peter Sykes. An Evangelical missionary to Rome, Rev. Martin Lombardo (Jesus Cares Ministry), who every day kneels in front of St. Peter's and prays for the pope and the Catholic Church, handed a video copy of The Jesus Film to a Vatican prelate he had befriended. Within a year the Vatican had ordered thousands of copies for worldwide distribution and helped translate the film into hundreds of languages. Thanks to the Catholic Church, Bill Bright's Jesus film is the most watched film of all time, and has been reportedly translated into over 1,000 languages. Today, this Campus Crusade produced film that came out of Bill Bright's personal vision over 50 years ago, is distributed by the Vatican, and strongly supported by the American Catholic bishops (my bishop, Adam Cardinal Maida, Archbishop of Detroit is the Ecclesiastical Advisor).

Finally, in December 2006, at the invitation of the Polish Catholic Church, Campus Crusade's evangelist Josh McDowell went to Katowice, Poland and spoke to 2,500 parents at one event, 6,500 youth at an evangelistic outreach, and in other settings spoke to over 200 Catholic priests and nuns. The response has been so good that four parishes plan to have Josh back in the Spring of 2009.

Conclusion

Personal Circumstances can lead us to fallacies that, when focused on ourselves and not others, can greatly hinder the work of God. But when our personal commitment to Christ leads us to work in cooperation with others, truly wonderful things can happen for the good of the Kingdom.

Chapter 10 USING THE WRONG REASONS

2008-01-10T10:02:00.000-08:00

Is it better to be a lukewarm Catholic or an on-fire Protestant? Is it better to casually saunter up and take the Eucharist while mentally pre-occupied with the point-spread of the afternoon football game, or to once every three months take Protestant communion by sipping diluted grape juice from a tiny plastic cup while in tears over Christ's shed blood for your sins?

That was the question Jack and I mused as we chewed our Egg McMuffins after an early morning Mass. We each attend different parishes, but neither has an early morning mass, so we find ourselves at a third parish—Our Lady of Good Counsel (OLGC) in Plymouth, Michigan. Jack is the father of three teens who want their dad to let them attend the large and popular Evangelical fellowship. The youth group at their Catholic parish is small and mostly inactive. On the other hand, the Evangelical fellowship has multiple Bible studies, prayer groups, and socials for the youth. Could there be a good reason to let his baptized Catholic kids attend such a non-Catholic fellowship? What would be the right reason for saying "no"? And is there a wrong reason for saying "no"?

Using the Wrong Reasons

This series of articles is about the role of reason in the discovery of truth in Roman Catholicism. We arrive at truth through the application of faith and reason, which are like "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." (John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio). Truth does not come to us solely through faith, nor does it come by reason alone. To rely on one to the exclusion of the other, is to fly with one wing, mostly in circles, as we misapply the ordered rules of one or the other and introduce fallacies into our thinking.

This chapter briefly examines one of those fallacies called Using the Wrong Reasons, which falls under the category of irrelevant objective appeals. Using the Wrong Reason occurs when evidence is presented that may sound right but does not support the claim.

When my wife asks me euphemistically, "Stan, why is the grass so long?" my favorite response is usually, "Because it rained a lot last week." I know she's asking why I haven't cut the grass yet, but being a smart-alec, my reason has nothing to do with why the grass was not cut. I am "using the wrong reason."

The idea that a person has to experience something to be a good teacher of it is a frequent example of Using the Wrong Reason. Talented actors, opera stars, and artists all have teachers who themselves cannot act, sing or draw at a professional level. Bela Karolyi, the Romanian born Olympic gymnastic coach of the Russian and later the U.S. teams comes to mind. Although his teaching methods met with some controversy, to claim that the large, heavy set Romanian cannot instruct because he never performed the delicate, quick moves that this petite, razor thin teenage girls executed to win dozens of Olympic metals, is using the wrong reason. In reviewing this article, Dave Armstrong wrote: "If experience was necessary for expertise, I'd like to meet the expert in ancient history!"

In terms of Catholicism, a Protestant friend once challenged me that priests should be married so they would make good marriage counselors. While Protestant pastors often act as marriage counselors, I explained that a priest is trained in theology to bring the Sacraments and true teaching of God's Word to the people. There are professionally trained clinical psychologists and marriage counselors that priests and pastors should be referring married couples to instead. My friend was using the wrong reason to object to priestly celibacy. To drive the point home, I asked him if he thought Jesus would be a good marriage counselor?

"Of course, he would be," my friend chuckled.

I reminded him that Jesus was never married.

He thought about that for a moment and offered this rebuttal, "Yeah, but Jesus could read minds."

"Are you saying that to be a good marriage counselor you have to read minds?" I asked.

"It would help," he laughed.

I pushed. "So, a man, to be a good marriage counselor has to read a woman's mind—and being married would allow him to do that?"

My friend grimaced. He had been married twice, and he still had no clue how his wife's mind worked. If marriage is a requirement in order to be a good marriage counselor, then using the wrong reason is to blame.

Closer to Jack's problem, another friend, Judy, through a series of very unfortunate events, suddenly found herself without a husband. She's been in deep need of ongoing spiritual support and encouragement. At her Catholic parish there is but one women's small group—"a faith sharing group." But its leaders make it clear (in writing) that the group "is not a personal support group." I talked with the group's leader and she made it clear that people like Judy were not welcome. I was uninvited as well because the group also claims (in writing) that its meeting are "not a time to discuss intellectual or theological insights." (Well, okay, there was another reason -- I'm not a woman.)

Yet, at a different yet large and active Evangelical church near Judy, a group of women in one of 20 different small Bible study and prayer groups, (that's 20 as in T.W.E.N.T.Y) reached out to her and asked her to come be with them on Tuesday mornings. They had heard of her situation and wanted to pray with her, and give her encouragement because of her personal problems. Should Judy, a Catholic, join the group, or reject their offer of support, prayer, and Bible study? Is the fact that they're not Catholic the right reason or the wrong reason for rejecting their offer?

The Church's Mission

To help Jack, Judy, and myself make the right decisions using the right reasons, it might be helpful to look into the heart and mind of the Church. In the Catechism we are reminded that the Church's mission is:

To preach the Gospel to all men: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." (CCC 849) Indeed, God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (CCC 851).

That is to say, we are called to live holy lives here on earth -- to begin to be saints here and now. That happens in a special way when we partake of the sacraments with the right disposition of heart. Without faith, or in a state of grave sinfulness, however, participating in the sacraments bring us condemnation. (1 Cor. 11:27-32; CCC 1385)

The Catechism also reminds us that while all salvation comes from "Christ the Head through the [Catholic] Church which is his Body" (CCC 846) -- and while all Christian division is the result of sin -- still there are people outside the Catholic Church...

...who have been justified by faith in Baptism [and] are incorporated into Christ; they have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers in the Lord by the children of the Catholic church. (CCC 817-818)

In other words, the Catholic Church's mission can be partly fulfilled through Protestant and Evangelical fellowships, especially if they are faithful to the call of Christ to spread the Gospel and serve others through acts of charity and sacrifice.

Big Concern

Now, look at a big concern of our Bishops in discussing the present condition of catechesis in the United States. This is from their statement Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us (1999, 35):

Many Catholics seem "lukewarm" in faith (cf. Rev 3:14ff.) or have a limited understanding of what the Church believes, teaches, and lives Others may know about the gospel message but have not personally experienced the risen Christ. Still others are indifferent to the Church's guidance or see the Church's teaching in a negative light.

The descriptors here are telling: "lukewarm," "limited," "not personally experienced...Christ," indifferent," "negative." But the condemnation comes cloaked in the Bible reference the bishops include. Not always comfortable with the confrontation that hard truth creates, the Bishops hope you'll discover what Christ says in the following ("ff") verses. Here's what it says:

I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." (Revelations 3:15-16)

Now just exactly what does that mean? At the very least it means that if Christians (including baptized Catholics) are lukewarm and indifferent about their faith they're in for some serious rebuke from the Lord. This is not a blessing.

If the Jacks and the Judys of Catholicism are looking for reasons to avoid particularly vibrant Evangelical Protestant fellowships...the wrong reason is that "Evangelical is not Catholic." At the same time, avoiding Mass because it is boring is also using the wrong reason; just as is going to Mass simply because you always have.

Using the Right Reason

The parish you attend should vibrantly proclaim the Gospel; shepherd your family to passionately love God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and body; and model for you how to lovingly care for your neighbors as yourself. (Mt 22:36-40) When a Catholic parish, a priest, or a bishop seems to forget how to lead the flock to this end, or if they are unable to imbue in their flock an evangelical passion for the faith -- then it is time to find another parish. If you can't find another Catholic parish that spiritually edifies and strengthens your family, then by all means plug into a Christian fellowship that will -- even if it is not Catholic. (Although, even as I write that I whisper a pray—"God forbid!") The right reason for anything is because it will draw us closer to Christ, and in that way serve the mission of the Catholic Church. At the same time, never give up the Eucharist, regular Reconciliation, Baptisms and the other Sacraments that offer you the tangible graces of salvation, thus connecting you with the fullness of the Church founded by Christ.

What Should Jack Do?

1. Never stop attending Mass or availing your family of all the Church's Sacraments, traditions, teachings, personal study, and private devotion.

2. Pray and work for the spiritual revival of your bishop, priest, and parish so that the members of your parish are "on fire" for the things of God. Daily adoration is a great help toward this end.

3. If it's just not happening at your parish, find another Catholic parish where it is, or where you can supplement your family's edification. As an Evangelical, I drove my family 30 minutes one way to attend a Christian "church" that challenged us. Today, I know one Catholic family that drives more than an hour to keep their 10 children involved in one of the oldest and most orthodox Catholic parishes in Detroit.

4. To supplement your spiritual life, if a vibrant Catholic Bible study and/or small group are not available, attend an Evangelical Bible Study or prayer group where there is a palatable passion for the faith and the Bible.

5. As you fellowship with Protestants prepare yourself to humbly and accurately defend the teachings of the Catholic Church. Take on the mantle of the Church's mission and "Go into all the world and preach the Gospel" -- even in your Evangelical Bible Study and prayer group. But do so only when asked, or when clearly anti-Catholic issues are raised. Don't turn the small group into a Catholic apologetics class, unless the class voluntarily takes you there.

If you need some help, share with your Evangelical brothers and sisters the DVD Common Ground: What Protestants and Catholics Can Learn From Each Other and it's study guide. I know that comes off as a shameless plug for one of our products (and it is), but this DVD produced by a "Protestant-Evangelical" "church" is changing hearts for the right reason.

It is far better to be around Christians who are excited about their faith and studying the Bible, than to hang with ambivalent Catholics who lack enthusiasm for the things of God.

By the way, Jack, I hear that Sunday's 5:30 PM life-teen Mass at OLGC "rocks."

Postscript

After this article was written, Jack and I found our selves again at McDonalds near OLGC. A young man who had recently graduated from high school, sat down near us. Jack recognized Ted as a member of his home parish, but had not seen him lately. When Jack asked where he was going to church, Ted mentioned the name of the large active Evangelical church down the street that Jack's teens would like to attend. When I asked Ted why he was not going to the Catholic parish, he said:

The youth group at [the evangelical church] is really large and it helps me connect better with other people and with God. The youth group at [the Catholic parish] was really small and not very active or exciting. Besides, my parents have just stopped going to Mass altogether.

We want to be careful never to ever encourage any Catholic to ever leave the sacraments. But at this point in his life, Ted may be using the right reason to get closer to God. Perhaps someday he will return to the Catholic Church full of the excitement for God he found in Evangelicalism and infect those in Catholicism that are lukewarm. Please work and pray for the Church, that in our desire to be Catholic we will not fall prey to using the wrong reasons, but instead use the right reasons to keep our eyes, hearts, and passions centered on Jesus Christ, Our Lord!

Chapter 9 BOSTON LEGAL & HENRY VIII

2008-01-09T07:31:00.000-08:00

The victim of the "crime" was an innocent looking enough, 15 year-old blonde Caucasian girl. Sitting next to her in court were her attorneys. She was suing her high-school, represented by a distinguished looking African American gentleman, for what her attorney declared, in his closing summation before the judge, should have been a criminal trial for attempted murder. The school's crime? It teaches sexual abstinence over sexual education. The girl had broken her school sponsored pledge of abstinence and wound up HIV positive. She claimed that had the school taught her about condoms, she would have avoided her fate of probably dying prematurely and painfully from AIDS.

Pity & Genetic

This series of articles is about the role of reason in the discovery of truth and Roman Catholicism. In the process it also attempts to chronicle my intellectual journey into the Church. As human beings, we arrive at truth through the application of faith and reason, which are like "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." (John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio). Truth does not come to us solely through faith, nor does it come by reason alone. To rely on one to the exclusion of the other, is to fly with one wing, mostly in circles, as we misapply the ordered rules of one or the other and introduce fallacies into our thinking.

This chapter briefly examines two of those fallacies that rightly fall under the category of irrelevant appeals. The Genetic Fallacy is an irrelevant objective appeal; and the Appeal to Pity fallacy is an irrelevant emotional appeal.

Boston Legal

The anecdote that begins this chapter comes from the television series Boston Legal, which is about a group of emotionally challenged litigators starring Emmy Award winning actors James Spader (who plays Alan Shore) and William Shatner (who plays Denny Crane). The particular storyline comes from the October 9, 2007 episode titled: "The Chicken and the Leg."

In the episode, Alan Shore is approached by a 15-year-old girl, named Abby, who wants to sue her high school for not teaching her about condoms and birth control since she now has contracted HIV.

In the school's closing argument, the defense attorney argues that abstinence is 100% effective in stopping sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), that condoms are not perfect in combating the disease, and how it is the parent's prerogative to teach sex education to their children, not the school's.

But, in his extended and livid closing rebuttal, Alan informs the court (and us) that the school has ignored the facts of human history, that it cannot stop kids from having sex, and that the condom is probably the most important invention of western civilization; and because the disease will, in all likelihood, take Abby on a long, painful, and deliberating journey as AIDS destroys her life and finally kills her, the case should actually be tried as a criminal case, against the school, for murder.

Alan's logic was filled with over generalizations and hyperbole; and understanding his obsession with the opposite sex and his ignorance of history, we can "almost" understand why he considered the condom more important than the printing press. But there are two other fallacies in his presentation that deserve examination.

The Genetic Fallacy

The Genetic Fallacy claims that something is the way it is or is bound to happen because it is the pattern of the past, while ignoring what might be different about the situation at hand. In common terms we say: "He's just like his father," "Everybody is doing it," "She won't change," "The condom is as old as civilization," or "What do you expect, it was the 60s!"

What's irrational about the genetic fallacy is that specific situations are always, in multiple ways, different from the former situations that supposedly spawned them. The genetic fallacy believes that people cannot change, things won't change, and nothing reasonable can intervene. In short, the genetic fallacy assumes that fate is stronger than free will or God's will.

In Abby's case the writers (don't totally blame James Spader) argue that genetics totally determine human behavior and the school should know that. The writers argue (through Spader's masterful acting) that human history, and Abby's behavior are fateful and predictable. Therefore the school's lack of teaching about condoms is criminal.

What the closing arguments did not cover, however, is that Abby has free will, that the parents are perhaps more culpable that the school (why didn't she sue her parents?), and that the possible consequences of breaking her vow of abstinence were explained to her (can Abby sue herself?).

The Appeal to Pity Fallacy

The Appeal to Pity attempts to persuade others of a position by appealing to their sympathy. For example, a fallacious appeal for pity occurs when a friend tells us they are sad, and that they deserve to be happy, without ever examining the reason for the sadness. Looking to others for pity, when there is no moral culpability, is fallacious and selfish. But appealing to pity when there is clear moral culpability is sinister and gravely evil.

In Abby's case, there is clear moral culpability: first off, there is Abby's active decision, and secondly, her parents passive omission. To a much smaller degree, perhaps the school could be held to account for Abby's condition if it misled the teen about the dangers of sex outside of marriage. Fiction is convenient for writers who can conveniently leave out or include dramatic elements to support a political agenda, and in the process commit all sorts of fallacies. But, clearly, the closing arguments played heavily on having pity for Abby, as if she was the target of a malicious plot to infect her with HIV against her will and thus ruin her life.

Henry VIII and Clement VII

Variations of the Appeal to Pity and the Genetic Fallacy have been used throughout history to justify all sorts of activities, laws, and the rule of monarchs. The Boston Legal episode above reminded me of Henry VIII's moral culpability in the petition to Clement VII for an annulment of his marriage to his wife Catherine of Aragon so he could legitimize the yet to be born child growing in his mistress, Anne Boleyn's, womb.

Indeed, epic events were involved: Who would be Henry's heir? That's no small matter for an era struggling to cast off the feudal wars of the previous centuries. The history and personalities of Europe during the 1500s was raucous and inbred as any modern television soap opera; and the political and social dynamics of the Renaissance that helped to spawn the Protestant Reformation can never be explained in the simple terms of Henry's lust and Anne Boleyn's thirst for power. But I'll do it anyway, since these articles are short, and my good editor, Mary Kochan has rejected my appeal to pity for a 50,000-word footnote.

It is possible to argue that Henry's repeated petition from 1527 on, to Pope Clement VII for an annulment, or to live in bigamy until the annulment was granted, was an Appeal to Pity. There was no male heir to Henry's throne, and without such, he believed the kingdom would be thrown into chaos upon his death. Not that such a problem justified bigamy or the annulment of a valid marriage, for which Henry and Catherine had received a dispensation from the former Pope, Julius II. Fresh in Henry's mind were the stories of the War of the Roses (1455–1487) that pitted potential heirs to the throne against each other and created great social and political strife. There was also some question about the legitimacy of his marriage to Catherine (his brother's widow). If the marriage was invalid (even with Pope Julius II's dispensation) then any royal lineage from Catherine would be thrown to the wind -- at least until Parliament could be bribed to change the law. With Henry's father (Henry VII) came a hopeful end to the political and social chaos of the previous centuries and now, on the cusp of the Renaissance, Henry needed a clear heir to keep the country together.

In spite of stillbirths, miscarriages, and infant deaths, Catherine had given to Henry an heir, his daughter, Mary. Henry was well aware that a woman could easily fill the robes and authority of a monarch—Catherine's mother was none other than Isabella I, who at the time, with her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon, commanded a strong sea power, sent Columbus off to discover the New World, and laid the foundation for the unification of the feudal states that later would be known as Spain.

If Henry had looked a bit more critically, too, he would have discovered that the object of his lust, Anne Boleyn, was perhaps even more adept than he at manipulating men of power. Not only did she manipulate Henry to give her a crown, but made good on a promise years earlier to depose Cardinal Wolsey for undoing one of her earlier romances. Wolsey, while distressed over his own future due to Boleyn's influence with the King, saw a greater threat, and told the Pope as much if the annulment was not approved: "He [Henry] will of two evils choose the least, and the disregard of the Papacy must grow daily, especially in these dangerous times." The dangerous times included, at that very moment, the sack of Rome and the Vatican by the mutinous army of Charles V, Catherine's nephew and Isabella's grandson. Wolsey, found getting to Clement VII who was in hiding, difficult. But when he did present himself, his argument for the annulment was cloaked in pity for Henry and England if there was no clear heir after Henry's death.

The Genetic Fallacy also held Henry captive, for he blamed Catherine for a genetic defect which prevented her from giving birth to a healthy son; and in such a case, he believed that the past would be repeated, having no reasonable regard that men and kings can learn a few things as time marches on.

But nothing is ever so simple; and it should never be said that the Protestant Reformation in England was brought about by these two simple fallacies; but rather by a series of overlapping and interrelated misunderstandings, confusions, fear, and sin — including Henry VIII's lust, Anne Boleyn's thirst for power and revenge, the Papacy's corruption, and the spirit of independence that pitted all men against the authorities over them.

There was a remedy, at least for the Genetic Fallacy. When Cardinal Wolsey could not convince Clement VII to grant an annulment and thus became useless to Henry, there was Wolsey's undersecretary, Thomas Cromwell, who had been reading an early manuscript of a book yet to be published (in 1532) by Niccolo Machiavelli entitled The Prince. Cromwell got the idea that what had always been, did not need to be anymore. Machiavelli, an Italian political intellectual, suggested that for the sake of political stability traditional moral principles could be put aside and made to benefit the prince and the kingdom. Machiavelli made totalitarianism acceptable. Cromwell suggests to Henry something revolutionary: "If the Pope won't annul your marriage, start your own church, put yourself in charge, name an Archbishop who will do your bidding, and save the kingdom."

It took years to "persuade" Parliament, but little by little it became treason (punishable by death) to be Catholic in England -- and Henry the Eighth was made the new pope of the new Church of England, thanks to the Machiavellian Cromwell, and a new Archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, who was a prodigy of the soon to be new, but short lived, queen Anne Boleyn. Indeed, for Machiavelli and now Henry, the Genetic Fallacy was to be ignored.

Defender of What Faith?

Watching Alan Shore argue before the judge in the Boston Legal episode, gave me an historical deja vu. It was as if Shore was defending, not Abby's rights to sexual freedom and a condom, but Henry VIII's right to bigamy and an annulment. Both Abbey and Henry sought the hearing of a judge to nullify their God-given vocational call to chastity. In Henry's case the pope said no. In Abby's case the judge bought into Shores' Appeal to Pity and the Genetic Fallacy, awarding Abby $750,000 in damages.

We may groan at the television writer's moral presumption and relativism. But we have Machiavelli, Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, and Henry VIII to thank. To this day the label for such moral relativism is inscribed on all British coins. Years before the Anne Boleyn affair, Henry had written a defense of the Church's sacraments and attacked Luther's heresy against them. For his effort, the pope bestowed on Henry the title Defender of the Faith. To this day every British and Canadian coin is inscribed with FID DEF or F D. Never mind that the faith the inscription now represents is no longer the Catholic Faith from which the title came, but faith in the right of a monarch to make up the rules of morality as he or she goes along. To a great extent, the individuals of Western Civilization have followed Henry's example. Such is the handiwork of fallacy.

Chapter 8 RAISING A RED FLAG

2008-01-08T07:14:00.000-08:00

The evangelist's lean face was red with emotion and wet from perspiration. After mopping his brow and neck with his white handkerchief, he'd wave it at his audience — trying both to air it dry in the humid August heat of the sawdust revival tent, and reinforce the point of his sermon — our surrender to Communism if we elected John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a Catholic, to the presidency.

It was the summer of 1960. I was 13, in the midst of adolescence. That summer we spent several weeks at our small cabin at the Free Methodist Church campgrounds just East of Jackson, Michigan. Each day was filled with Bible studies, youth meetings, prayer meetings, and meals in the large WWII styled Quonset hut dining hall. The days concluded with a two-hour singing and preaching service in the barn-like tabernacle that sat 1,000. On one particular night, however, there was competition. A few miles outside camp on Ann Arbor Road, near the Dome Ice Cream parlor, a traveling evangelist had dumped a pile of sawdust on a vacant lot, erected a modest tent over it, and was preaching — not about God or Christ — but against Catholicism.

Historically (I'm old enough to feel the need to explain my childhood in such terms), General Dwight D. Eisenhower was completing his second term as President, and the cold war was hot. Senator Joseph McCarthy had died several years before. "McCarthyism", the "Red" fear he had fostered, was very much alive, thanks to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev's rhetorical threat to take over the United States. Khrushchev was reported to have said, "We will bury you." To which my very Christian, evangelical, Bible teaching, daughter-of-missionaries, given-to-passion mother would proclaim during family supper, "I'd rather be dead than red." She'd say this, and then ask if I didn't agree with her. I never did know how to answer since she was the one that first taught me about Jeremiah's prophecies to the Judean king, Zedekiah: that it would be better to be alive and a slave in Nineveh, than dead and a snack for vultures in Judah. (Yeah, yeah, yeah...I knew a lot about the Bible back then. But you have to remember, I was Evangelical, not Catholic...and Evangelicals go to Sunday School, every Sunday their whole lives. Hint!)

The Kennedy-Nixon campaign of 1960 occurred during the pontificate of John XXIII, and, here in America, Catholics were busy having large families. We lived near the Divine Child parish in Dearborn, Michigan, and it seemed that every other house in the neighborhood was Catholic with 6-12 kids. Some Protestants (like my mother) were afraid that Catholicism would take over America — not by killing people (like the Communists had threatened) but by having babies who would eventually allow Catholics to dominate the democratic process. Dave Armstrong has reminded me that the contraceptive pill was introduced, also in 1960, not so much to give women a choice, but as a racist ploy to limit the number of African American babies. Demographics is destiny.

Back in the sawdust revival tent, the perspiring evangelist was waving his white handkerchief — and preparing yet another, but larger prop. I'll never forget the image — or the "logic." He had been railing and raging for some time against Catholicism and Communism. The parallels were unmistakable (to him): (a) both institutions started with the letter "C" and ended in "ism" — suffixes that, by the standards of the English language, identified evil ideologies; (b) both Moscow and the Vatican were determined to take over the world, one by death, the other by over-population; and (c) both were in league with the devil — Communism outlawed God (neat trick), and Catholicism was the sinister front for the anti-Christ. Americans should fear both, he told us. The facts spoke for themselves...and my Mom, bless her rather-dead-than-red-heart...joined the ever-louder "Amen!" chorus.

Then, it came time for the big climax, the coup-de-grace, the clincher. The evangelist selected two, good-looking children about my age from the audience, and led them onto the small wooden platform from which he was preaching. The kids looked like "plants" — they were dressed, brushed, and combed for the part. Yes, in addition to knowing something about the Bible I was a cynic. I recall the girl was wearing a pretty white dress, with a bow in her curled blonde hair, like she had just posed for a shampoo ad. I really don't remember the boy. Adolescence was in the process of permanently altering my interests.

The evangelist had the kids stand next to each other facing the audience, hands at their sides, idealistic smiles distorting their faces (they had done this before). Then with great pathos he intoned: "Men and women of America. I am warning you with God as my witness. If you elect John Fitzgerald Kennedy to the Presidency this is what will happen." And suddenly out of nowhere (okay, so I was distracted) he produces a HUGE red communist flag, and drapes it over the kids' shoulders like a warm blanket on a cold night. Then he took the corners of the red flag and pulled it tight around the front of the kids, leaving only their faces staring sadly (as if on cue) at the audience like a mad Andy Warhol painting.

The image was complete. The memory indelible.

Irrelevant Appeals

A number of fallacies were at work during the dear evangelist's presentation, but let's focus on two particular irrelevant appeals. On the emotional side we have Exploitation of Strong Feelings, and on the objective side Appeal to Common Opinion.

The evangelist exploited the strong feelings of his Protestant American audience by transferring the real danger of Russian Communism onto the false danger of Catholicism. That the Russians posed a real threat to the United States was palatable. It was during this post WWII period that the nuclear arms race began — the devastation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima still fresh in the public's mind. Just a few years before, in 1957, the Russians launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, which invisibly transversed the United States twice a day and twice at night. The terror of atomic bombs falling from the immediacy of space, just 600 miles away, suddenly became reasonable, and some Americans built underground, self-contained bomb shelters with a month's supply of food and water. The fears were confirmed when three years later President Kennedy blockaded Cuba until the Russians dismantled their nuclear missile sites there.

Recall, however, that JFK was not communist, or Russian. In fact he had a strong anti-Communist platform. He was also an American war hero and a Pulitzer Prize winning author. But, he was Roman Catholic. While I'm not willing to judge just how good or bad a Catholic JFK was, it was clear that the Kennedy clan's faith was not hiding in a closet. JFK's Catholicism was an issue throughout the campaign, and he worked hard in the primaries to prove he could get the Protestant vote. That Catholicism was part of the Kennedys' lives was driven home to me by the famous, but tragic photograph of Bobby Kennedy lying on the ground, having just been shot by Sirhan-Sirhan's bullet. Moments from death, Kennedy's right hand fingers a rosary. You can almost hear his thoughts: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me now...at the hour of my death."

Of course, the image of Bobby fingering the rosary reminds me of a common American opinion the evangelist was counting on Protestant Americans remembering, that Catholics were idolaters. The evangelist was also convinced that Pope John XXIII was the anti-Christ, and was, from the Vatican, directing the entire JFK campaign with idolatrous and sinister intent. Because of the wide spread, misinformed opinion Protestants held about Catholicism, reinforced by the Catholic Church's silence on the issue and its lack of any effective public relations effort about what Catholics really believed, the argument was convincing. "Amen!" my mom shouted.

It may be hard to imagine the residual strength of the British and Irish Penal Laws (sometimes referred to as the "Popery Code") to outlaw and marginalize Catholicism here in America. The effects are still very evident in states like Georgia where the early prohibition against Catholics owning land, running for office, or practicing law is evident by the scarcity of Catholic churches there. Recently, the vocational director for Glenmary Home Missioners, Fr. Steve Pawelk, showed me a current county map of Georgia where each county that did not have a Catholic parish, was colored red. Surprisingly, the Northern part of Georgia was a sea of red.

It is easy to get caught up in beliefs and opinions that the majority of those around us hold. It seems that going along with the crowd, or agreeing with the strong feelings of others is more peaceful and less contentious. But where such fallacious common opinion and strong feelings are uncontested, danger lurks close at hand. Even the apparent use of such fallacies should raise a red flag.

Chapter 7 SUSPENSION OF JUDGEMENT

2008-01-07T07:11:00.000-08:00

I know the headline says, Part 7. But, don't believe it. This is really Part 54 or something like that. I actually wrote another article for release as Part 7, but it fell on "bad" times. It included an intriguing story of why, 12-13 years ago, two Evangelical ministers and myself, left an independent Baptist congregation.

Without revealing the "bad times" of the debunked article, I can tell you this. The story was how our Baptist youth pastor led a bunch of teens from the Detroit area to Los Angeles on an inner-city mission project hosted by a faith community with Pentecostal tendencies. While in L.A., one of the Baptist teens, who had a history of psychological problems, fell into convulsions during a prayer meeting. The charismatic, gift-wielding, Pentecostals in attendance took charge and subsequently exorcised from the boy a demon. The next day something similar happened, with the same boy, but only with the Baptist youth minister and Baptist teens in attendance.

When the boy's father, a member of our Baptist fellowship and part time psycho-therapist, found out, he became angry with our senior pastor for not flying to Los Angeles and "rescuing" his son from the influence of the "crazy" Charismatics and an out of control youth pastor. When the youth group came home they were all "fired up" for Jesus. But when the senior pastor and the board of deacons tried to temper the group's enthusiasm (which was laced with an emphasis on the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit), the blame game began. Our particular Baptist tradition, you see, forbade teaching that the more visible charismatic gifts of the Spirit were authentic. Our body of believers subscribed to the theory, among some Evangelicals, that certain gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased with the death of the Apostles.

Suddenly, the issue was not on what happened in Los Angeles, nor was it on the charismatic gifts, but whether or not the youth pastor had properly fulfilled his fiduciary responsibilities in caring for the youth while in Los Angeles -- I mean we all know L.A. is a strange place. The concern then became whether or not the youth pastor, with his newfound discoveries of the Holy Spirit, was willing to come fully under the teaching authority of the senior pastor and the board of deacons. He wasn't, and he decided to resign, leaving many of the youth angry at the senior pastor and deacons.

From my perspective, I saw a fallacy called rationalization taking place, where a more acceptable but fake reason was used to justify the youth pastor's dismissal (the youth minister's refusal to submit to authority), in place of the deeper, less acceptable, but true reason (the leadership's rejection of the charismatic gifts as authentic).

Yet, when I shared the draft of the article and story with the real-life senior pastor (who a year later was removed from the ministry for not submitting to the authority of the board of deacons), he remembered the events differently and was not pleased with my conclusions. He wrote: "I believe both your statement of facts and conclusions are inaccurate and incorrect." After several e-mails and two phone calls to correct what I had written, I was disappointed, so I decided to not submit the former story in deference to his concerns. Perhaps, when he and I agree on the facts I'll re-write the story for this space, and hopefully draw some useful lessons from the events at this particular church.

RRRRRRRING!

Excuse me, that's my Vatican Hot Line ringing.

Hello?! -- ah, yes -- uh-huh -- okay. So if I use that word anymore...uh-huh... in that context...then it's 16 more years in Purgatory B. Okay. Got it. Ah, yes -- I promise. From now on, I'll stick with "community of believers" and not "church." Promise.]

THE SUSPENSION OF JUDGMENT PRINCIPLE

Writing the article, and having the pastor reject its findings had a positive outcome. What happened seems to be a good example of T. Edward Damer's 11th Principle of the "Code of Conduct for Effective Rational Discussion"—The Suspension of Judgment.

Like the other principles (there are 12 altogether), this one respects the dignity of the various parties involved in a disagreement. Simplified, The Suspension of Judgment should be invoked when both positions of the disagreement are presented with equal strength and no ready agreement toward a conclusion or course of action can be found. Holding off on a decision until both parties can agree, not only results in a more accurate assessment, but, more importantly, preserves the friendship and collegiality of the persons involved and allows dialogue and evangelization to continue.

For instance, I became angry when our second daughter told us that she, a baptized Catholic, was getting married in an empty apartment with a justice of the peace, and that we were invited. I refused to go. Especially, since it was a 10-hour drive to Iowa. The man she was marrying was a Christian, but neither of them were into authority or structure at the time. I could not image why I should go to what was obviously not a sacramental wedding. But, Pam, my wife, was adamant that I attend. I called a priest that I respected and asked, "What can I do, as a Catholic?" and "What should I do as a Christian?"

The priest told me to go to the "wedding," but not to participate. Participating as the father of the bride, would acknowledge my acceptance that what was going on was a marriage ceremony, when, from my Catholic perspective, it was not. But go I should, in order to keep lines of communication open with my daughter and future son-in-law. For I could not evangelize them if there was no communication, and by not showing up, I would certainly close down channels of communication and thus evangelization. The Suspension of Judgment is like that. It favors some communication with disagreement, as opposed to no communication at all. I suppose, too, this is all a little like Woody Allen's famous line: "Eighty percent of success, is showing up."

(Am I allowed to quote Woody Allen in a Catholic article? I suppose that's another 16 years in Purgatory -- well, maybe they'll let me sit next to Fr. Benedict Groeschel, who says we'll find him there listening to his own tapes.)

The Suspension of Judgment, however, is not the same thing as the popular, but barrier building "let's agree to disagree" adage. Far from it. The Suspension of Judgment does not mean the topic is off-limits, but rather that more evidence and clearer thinking toward a resolution should be pursued. In other words, both parties should work toward a resolution that seeks truth for the future, and reconciliation of the past. In the meantime, the relationship should be nurtured on grounds where progress is possible—like taking turns severely beating each other at fantasy baseball or ping-pong.

The genius behind Damer's Code of Conduct for Discussion is that it keeps constructive dialogue open and active. This is very important in all aspects of Christian evangelization and inter-faith dialogue. As Fr. John Riccardo says to Protestant Pastor Steve Andrews in the DVD project "Common Ground" -- "There is plenty that we can disagree about, and we may go at it from time-to-time. But we'll do it as Brothers in Christ."

For me, in the situation I've just described, I'm glad to say that my former pastor is still a good friend, and by the time you read this he will have received a gift from me—a copy of my Catholic distribution company's best selling DVD, Common Ground: What Protestants and Catholics Can Learn From Each Other. Because I was willing to miss this deadline and show deference to his concerns, he and I have taken a step toward Christian unity without sacrificing truth.

Next time, I hope to take a look at the importance of trying to discern truth with two wings, and not just one. That is, reason AND faith.

END NOTE

I often write first or second drafts of my material in front of the Blessed Sacrament. (If you're not Catholic this means that I am writing in the literal, sacramental presence of Christ.) To me it's like paining an icon—as I work I need to be immersed in continuous prayer and worship. I did that with the article you're not reading. Usually, when I draft material before the Blessed Sacrament, my writing effort finds ready acceptance. I figure that hanging out with Jesus has it rewards, especially when trying to discover the "fountain of truth" (since discovering the "fountain of youth" has long eluded me and my receding hairline -- Okay, so there's no hairline at all.) The majority of this revised article, however, was written in the customer waiting room of Uncle Fred's Oil Change. But, Jesus was on my mind.

Chapter 6 WHY CATHOLICS CHANGED THE BIBLE

2008-01-06T18:34:00.000-08:00

My collegiate daughter, April, had to answer a mid-term research question: "Why and when did the Catholic Church add seven books to the Old Testament?" It was an interesting question that as Protestants piqued both her curiosity and mine. She had several questions she could have answered, but she picked this one. We had no idea that answering it would signal a change in our perspective about the Bible and that "cult" we called Catholicism.

Indeed, why and when did the Catholics add books to the Bible? Certainly the answer would be another proof that Catholics were not Christian. As Evangelicals we knew you couldn't mess with the Bible. We revered it, refusing to place another book upon it, or turn over a corner of its pages. Sacred stuff. So, how could Catholics so easily sacrilege God's Holy Word? It seemed unfathomable, so arrogant, so wrong. Adding books to the Bible was certainly proof that Catholicism was a permutation of Christianity that could not be trusted.

April's research question came to her before the Internet, so we through my somewhat extensive library of Bible reference books for a little pale orange pocketbook that I had never read. In fact, it always seemed heretical to even own it—The Apocrypha: An American Translation by Edgar J. Goodspeed (Vintage Books, NY 1959). The Apocrypha was, of course, the collection of books that Catholics had added to the Bible.

Cracking the cover we read together the opening sentence of Goodspeed's Preface. It was one of those moments when a few simple words would change forever my vision of the Holy Bible, as a monolith of writings that Jesus must have pulled from his knapsack and handed over to the Apostles moments before his ascension: "Here! Read this. It'll help." (What was I thinking?) With 26 simple words, Goodspeed let his lead foot drop on the accelerator as he laid rubber across my sanctimonious vision.

"THE APROCRYPHA FORMED AN INTEGRAL part of the King James Version of 1611, as they had of all the preceding English versions from their beginning in 1382.

Whoa, there, Goodspeed! Slow down. This is not what I was expecting. He sped ahead:

They [the Aprocrypha] were part of the Bible of the early church, for it used the Greek version of the Jewish Bible, which we call the Septuagint, and these books were all in that version.

Tell me this couldn't be! How is this possible? For God's sake, what Bible did Jesus use? Then:

They passed from it [the Septuagint] into Latin and the great Latin Bible edited by St. Jerome about A.D. 400, the Vulgate, which became the Authorized Bible of Western Europe and England and remained so for a thousand years.

Pages later, I read how the Bibles had remained essentially unchanged until 1827, when the British and American Bible Societies politically forced Bible publishers to stop including the Aprocrypha in their printings of the Bible.

Good Grief! How could this be? Is Goodspeed pulling a fast one on us, staying true to his name? April and I hurried off to the local library, checked some other references and discovered that Goodspeed's account was true.

This totally unnerved me for two reasons. First, the Bible that I had revered my whole life suddenly wasn't the Bible that I had thought it was. In the college Bible classes I took at Greenville College (a Christian Evangelical school), I learned how one could trust the accuracy of a translation in all its delicacies. But, there was nothing delicate about totally deleting seven entire books from the Old Testament, which also included parts of my favorite Old Testament book of Daniel! My trust in what Protestant scholars had led me to believe for 40 years evaporated as quickly as a jet-fueled quarter-mile drag race.

Second, I was unnerved because April needed a good grade on this paper to keep her G.P.A. up so she could stay in school. Certainly. if she told the truth about what she had found, she'd get a failing grade on the paper. The Bible teacher at the Evangelical College she was attending would never settle for what we discovered—that Catholics didn't ADD seven books to the Old Testament, the Protestants took them OUT. Who could I trust, now, about the Bible?

WHAT CENTURY?

Years later, after Pam and I had become Catholic, I was working on a television documentary about the Protestant Reformation. Pam and I took a break from our work, and took a romantic train ride from Detroit to Chicago for Valentines Day weekend. While in Chicago, we took a walking tour of The Loop and thought we'd drop in on art galleries and old bookstores. We found the art galleries, but the closest thing to an old bookstore was the Newberry Library (http://www.newberry.org). When we entered we were surprised to be greeted by a burly security guard behind a large round counter and a staircase; but no books. We probably looked a little dumbfounded. The guard looked us over and asked "Are you here to do research?" A sign caught my eye that explained that this was a privately funded research library open to the public but only accessible by registration. Having just earned a Ph.D. I straightened a bit and pontificated in my best academic demeanor: "Ah, yes, we are."

"What century?" the guard asked.

I had no clue. In fact, I distinctly remember how I could never remember if we were in the 20th or the 21st century...or was it the 19th? Recovering, I declared, "Uh,..the 1500s." I did a quick examination of conscience—I had not lied. Indeed, I was writing a documentary on the early 1500s.

The Guard pushed a registration card toward me and asked for my picture ID. I glanced at Pam. She was intrigued. We had no idea what awaited us, but we were game. On the 6 x 8 inch card it asked what books we wanted to examine. You don't check books out of this library, but are given access to them for a short time in a supervised reading room. I had no clue at first, but I wrote down some choices.

Thirty minutes later, in a reading room, a librarian placed on the table before us an original parchment from Guttenberg's first edition of the Bible (1455), a complete original edition of Miles Coverdale's (English) Bible from 1535, an original Martin Luther (German) Bible (1535), and a first edition of the King James (English) Bible from 1611 -- all 30 pounds of it. The KJV was perhaps 10 inches thick, with elaborate color paintings that included Mary and the saints and gold leaf decorations on many of the pages. Holding this book in my hands was like being transported back in time; I wondered who, that I had read about in history, had held this very book as I was holding it now. Perhaps King James?

And guess what? Of the three Bibles we flipped through, the Apocryphal books (or Deutercanonical books as I now know them), were fully integrated within the Old Testament canon. Had they not been accepted as inspired, why were they in these Reformation Bibles? The Deutercanonical books were not missing or even separated as some reports described. Protestants, indeed, had taken books out of the Bible. Catholics, true to their word, had defended the faith and kept it pure and true. It was a day Pam and I will never forget. We now had "first hand" experience -- albeit with special gloves they provided for "researchers".

IRRELEVANT APPEALS

Again, we have a story that helps illustrate two irrelevant fallacies, one from the emotional appeal category and the second from the objective appeal category.

The irrelevant emotional fallacy is called Appeal to Tradition. In its vernacular form, you'll hear people say, "But, we've always done it this way." The story above prompts us to look at tradition two different ways. What April and I understood as Evangelicals was based on a tradition that went back less than 200 years. We had never questioned it, and why would we, especially when it might call into question the authority of God's Word? But, here was historical fact, that in the early 1800s the Deutercanonical books (or the second canon, as Catholics term them), were removed. The flip side of this is that, in our research we discovered another tradition, perhaps one better spelled with a capital "T", that reached back 2,000 years to the Greek Septuagint, the Bible that Jesus and the Early Church used. We discovered that it matters a great deal what you put your trust in; is it a tradition that comes from man, or a Tradition that comes from God?

The second fallacy that this story illustrates comes from the irrelevant objective category; it is called Drawing the Wrong Conclusion. This is very simple, but also unfortunate, because it is so easy to do. As Evangelicals, we came to the wrong conclusion about what constituted the Bible. We never had reason to question it. There is, among devout Christians, an unfortunate tendency to trust those in authority without question, without critical thought. It is a charge that is leveled against Catholics by anti-Catholic sects all the time. What we need to remember, all the time, is to always ask "why" -- with Christian love and a zeal for discovering what is true. Sometimes what is explicitly true and taught by the Church must be taken on faith. But in every instance, the teachings of our faith will be consistent with reason, and the knowable facts of history.

And did I tell you? April got an "A" on her paper. The Evangelical professor had purposely put a trick question on the test to see if students really understood the difference between personal opinion, and historical evidence. (Or, as some have since suggested, the professor didn't know until April called his attention to the truth.)

Chapter 5 THE HOLEY BIBLE

2008-01-05T18:21:00.000-08:00

FOR SALE: SLIGHTLY USED BIBLE

I remember it as if it was yesterday. That lightning didn't fall from the sky and obliterate my good friend Dennis and the Christian bookstore he managed, is still remarkable. But then, God must have known the good that was in Dennis's heart.

To understand the impact of this story, you have to understand how I, and many of my Evangelical friends, were raised. To us, there was only one thing we could do that would send us straight to hell — sacrilege a copy of the Bible. There were many ways of doing such a thing—dropping it, letting it get wet, putting another book on top of it, laying it (even reverently) on the floor, or dropping Pizza Sauce in the binding.

Again, I was browsing at a Christian Bookstore in the suburbs of Detroit. Hiding behind the greeting card kiosk, I peeked around the cassette tape rack toward the checkout counter where Dennis was holding court with an argumentative customer.

Dennis liked to argue, too, but always in a jovial way. His sport was bookstore banter and debate. His opponent on this particular night was a hardboiled Calvinist. As I recall, their "conversation" dealt with predestination and whether or not a Christian could lose his o r her salvation. Dennis's technique was unique and memorable, albeit fallacious.

"So, you're telling me a Christian cannot lose his salvation?" Dennis asked.

Ready, Hardboiled turned up the heat and boiled over with Bible quotations one right after the other, careful to throw in the citation for authoritative emphasis: " 'And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.' John 10:28. 'For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, ...who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?' Romans 8:29 and 33. 'I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.' Hebrews chapter 13 verses 5 and --"

"Whoa there!" Denny jovially pulled in the reigns. "Those verses don't guarantee to protect you against yourself. You're still a creature of free will and can walk away from Christ."

"That's not what my church believes," Hardboiled cracked. "You just can't say that."

"Sure, I can, and you can, too," Dennis said.

"But, God is always faithful. You can't!" retorted Hardboiled.

"But man isn't always faithful. Let me show ya somethin' --" at which Dennis reached under the counter and pulled out a well-worn Bible, flipped it open, laid it on the counter facing his opponent and read: "'Not every one who says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven...' Matthew 7:21. What do you do about that?"

Hardboiled paused to read where Dennis's finger was pointing. "Well, I don't believe..."

"You don't believe the Bible?" Dennis's eyebrows jumped.

"No! I don't believe what you're insinuating…ah.. -- you see...what I mean is.... Dang it, what translation is that? I just don't believe that," Hardboiled confessed.

Dennis suddenly brightened. "You don't? Then, I got the perfect solution for ya."

With that, Dennis leaned forward across the open Bible that laid on the counter between them, grabbed the far corner of the tissue thin page of Scripture, and with a flourish, RIPPED out the 7th chapter of Matthew -- scrunched it up, and flippantly tossed it into the wastebasket.

"There, you don't have to worry about that verse a n y m o r e." Dennis closed the Bible and offered it the customer. "Wanna buy a slightly used Bible? You're sure to like it more, now that it's been conformed to your personal beliefs."

I can still see the startled look on Hardboiled's face. He didn't know whether to yell or run away. Surely lightning would fall any moment. He left the store abruptly in disbelief (in more ways than one).

A true story, and one that gives a new meaning to the concept of the "holey" Bible. We want to put our trust in the whole Holy Bible, not in a Bible that has been made holey to suit our personal tastes or predispositions. But it's a story, too, that wonderfully illustrates the use of two fallacies of irrelevance.

EVIDENCE MUST BE RELEVANT

From an earlier chapter you may remember that good evidence must fulfill four criteria. The evidence must be (1) relevant to the issue; (2) acceptable as true; (3) sufficient in number, kind and weight; and it must (4) rebut a significant counter argument. When evidence is presented that fails one of these criteria of a good argument, then a fallacy is committed and the validity of the argument falls into question.

The story above reveals two fallacies of irrelevance. Now, fallacies of irrelevance fall into two categories: (a) Irrelevant Objective Appeals and (b) Irrelevant Emotional Appeals. There are several fallacies in each of these sub-categories, but we'll deal with only two—one committed by Hardboiled and the other by my friend.

Hardboiled was guilty of an irrelevant objective appeal called Appeal to Questionable Authority, when he explained that the authority of his particular belief was his faith community's teachings that you could not lose your salvation. What made that objectively irrelevant to Dennis is that Dennis was a member of a different faith community that believed doctrinally the opposite—that you could lose your salvation. Dennis wasn't going to accept the same authority, so a fallacy was committed by Hardboiled.

We Catholics make the same mistake when we argue a doctrinal point with a non-Catholic and only back it up by saying, like Hardboiled, "It's our Church's teaching." The magisterium of the Catholic Church is an authority to us, but unless it is also an acceptable authority to our opposition, or we take the time to explain why the church teaches what it does, the evidence becomes logically fallacious to our opponent, although not false in an absolute sense to us. For effective and valid arguments, the evidence and the source of the evidence needs to be accepted by both parties.

That is why the Bible (even a Protestant edition of the Bible which is smaller, and biased in its translation and editorial content) can work to convince non-Catholics of the truth of the Church's teachings, because the Bible is an acceptable authority to both parties.

On the other side of the story, my friend Dennis was guilty of an irrelevant emotional appeal called Appeal to Force or Threat. The ripping out of a page from the Bible demonstrated a force that threatened the destruction of the most sacred icon in Evangelical-Protestant Christianity. Most devout Evangelicals, if given a choice, would rather be beaten to a pulp than to allow the Bible even a minor sacrilege. Tearing a page out of the Bible was inviting instantaneous destruction that scrambled Hardboiled and chased him away. Yet, in no way did the threat of violence change the logical truth of Dennis' position. To Dennis' credit he was attempting to use a sometimes effective technique called reductio ad absurdum (Latin: "reduction to the absurd") hoping to convince Hardboiled that isolating verses in the Bible is a poor way to develop doctrine. But reductio ad absurdum works best when presented in a more deliberate manner and without the theatrics.

The result of both men's fallacious use of evidence was the complete cessation of dialogue and neither party, advanced toward any agreement of what is true.

But to the guy hiding behind the cassette rack, truth was advanced -- although it was slow to sink in. The event reminded me that one person's expert authority might be another person's fool. I began to recognize that if there was a common, universal truth to be grasped, there also had to be a common, universal authority that we could both point to and explain that truth.

I also began to understand that regardless of how clever or dramatic retorts are, they are not the same as clever, effective rebuttals. A clever retort will generate drama and laughs that will make you think you are smarter than your opponent, but will only serve to widen the gulf between you. And acts that divide Christians are sinful, especially those that are motivated by pride and arrogance. What we as Christians need to learn, and your writer is one of them, is that an inadvertent doctrinal error is not nearly as serious a sin as the one that causes separation, hatred, and bigotry between Christians.

With that in mind, we are challenged to find a way that engages both reason and love in the pursuit of truth. How might we, or in this case Dennis and Hardboiled, do that?

Rather than appealing to his church's teachings, with whom he knew that Dennis disagreed, Hardboiled would have been better off sticking to the Bible, which Dennis also held in high esteem. Dennis, likewise, would have been wiser to have sidestepped the dramatics, and reasoned with Hardboiled over what the Scriptures were trying to say when taken as a whole. In so doing both men, while believing the Bible was without error, would also have to guard against believing that their particular interpretation was infallible.

What this story began to reveal to me, therefore, was the need for an infallible judge, an unquestionable authority for how to interpret Scripture rightly and apply it in daily life. It was an infallible authority for which I would search for the next 20 years.

Next time, we'll look at two more fallacies of irrelevance, and how my daughter answered her Christian college essay question: "Why and when did Roman Catholics add seven books to the Bible?"

Chapter 4 FOUR CRITERIA OF A GOOD ARGUMENT

2008-01-04T18:17:00.000-08:00

WALL TO WALL BIBLES

I poured over dozens of different versions of the Bible. There was a whole wall full of them with names like Amplified, J.B. Phillips, Thompson's Chain Reference, Nave's Topical, Revised Standard, New Revised Standard, American Standard, New American Standard, Holcomb, Living, and the ever-present King James Version (KJV).

The large Inter-City Baptist Bookstore adjoined the church by the same name in the suburbs of a large metropolis. It was 1973, and having just accepted a job as a Youth Minister at the local Free Methodist Church, I was determined to have the best Bible available to assist in my new position. I was also aware that I needed to set an example for the youth by carrying the biggest and most sacred looking Bible that I could carry into church short of using a fork-lift. It would be the measure of my spirituality.

I was surprised at the large variety of Bibles for sale that came in every conceivable size, color and edition—pocket-sized, paper-back, soft-back, hard-back, simulated leather, Moroccan leather, imitation cow hide, authentic vinyl, blue denim, heirloom, and psychedelic -- don't ask.

Equal in variety were the interpretive aids—red letters (for the words of Christ), concordances, maps, footnotes, endnotes, paintings, photographs, diagrams, charts, time-lines, cross-references, glossaries and sticky-tabs. The Thompson Chain Reference Bible was particularly impressive with its encyclopedic appendixes that rivaled the biblical text in length.

For a while I just stood there -- soaking up the sacred vibes. This must be what heaven is going to be like -- a wall full of Bibles. (Indulge me -- that was sarcasm.)

This heavenly shopping moment, however, had a downside. The sole clerk, a distinguished, elderly lady, gray hair in a bun, spectacles drawn down her nose suspiciously, was glaring at me as if I was about to commit a crime. Little did I know, that in her eyes I was about to do just that. I figured that I had better stop medicating on the smell of the Moroccan leather -- and buy something, fast.

I made my way to the checkout with a beautiful New American Standard Study Bible that must have weighed-in just under six pounds. I lowered it proudly onto the counter next to the cash register being careful not to pinch my fingers under its weight.

My bespectacled clerk was aghast. "Why do you want to buy THAT?" she asked backing away, pointing at the Bible as if I had just found the snake from the Garden of Eden.

"What? Well, I need a Bible for my -- Bible studies," I said.

"Well, buy a real Bible, then," she charged.

"Huh? This IS a real Bible -- isn't it?" She had me wondering.

"No it's not. The only authorized Bible we sell is the King James Version. It says so right in the front."

"I'm sorry, madam, but you're mistaken," I said carefully. "The King James translation was completed in 1611 and was based on a variety of other translations that came before it."

I trotted back to the Bible wall, grabbed a new copy of the Thompson Chain Reference KJV Bible, opened to the help section in the back and found the chart (No. 4220) that showed how the KJV was based on a number of earlier translations including the Bishops, Geneva, Tyndale, Wycliffe, and Vulgate versions.

"You can't fool me," she said. "That chart isn't 'in' the Bible It's in the back. It's not part of the authorized Bible. You can't believe any of it."

"Okay," I admitted. "But this Bible was authorized by King James -- not Jesus Christ."

She laughed, conjuring up her experience with the 1st century Church. "Oh, that's where you're wrong. The King James Bible is the only authorized version because it is the Bible that Jesus used."

Now, I was aghast: "WHO TOLD YOU THAT?"

Unrattled, she narrowed her eyes and stepped into my space. "Our pastor!" ...and she pointed across the street to the large independent Baptist Church.

Dear reader, that is a true story -- nearly word for word.

Today, some years later, I am still unsure how to argue with such a sincere yet misguided person. I meet them occasionally -- like the woman I know professionally who explained to me last week why she wasn't Catholic: "I know all about the Catholic Church. In college I did a term paper and I discovered that the Vatican owned two birth control companies as profit centers. They're just a bunch of hypocrites."

In the face of such ridiculous opinion it seems that all reason is washed away by the tsunami of irrationality. I am clueless how to deal with such people. Perhaps there will be a poster in Purgatory that will explain it all to me. I can only hope.

Both the clerk and I wanted to present evidence that supported our positions. But in the heat of the moment it was difficult to think coolly and logically about just how to do that. Nevertheless, some things about informal logical arguments are always true. And the more we contemplate them in the calm moments, the more readily they'll come to mind in the clamorous ones. So, here's how we might dissect what was going on in the store, and use it in our daily lives as we communicate about important things.

FOUR CRITERIA

Good arguments use evidence that satisfy four criteria or principles. The evidence must be (1) relevant to the issue; (2) acceptable as true, although not provable; (3) sufficient in number, kind and weight; and (4) capable of rebutting the strongest counter argument.

In general, the evidence presented by the clerk fell far short of these four criteria. That the KJV was authorized by King James was certainly relevant to those that lived under his rule, but it is not so relevant today; that is especially true in light of more recent translations that reference earlier Bible manuscripts. Likewise, the pastor of an independent church can only speak for his congregation (or actually, just for himself), and not for all of Christianity.

That Jesus used the KJV is clearly a claim (i.e. "evidence") that any historian will not accept as true. And while some people argue that a fact must be in the Bible for it to be true, I wonder how they'd react if a bank clerk refused to cash their payroll checks because there's no record of them or their employment in the Bible. Clearly we all accept things as true because of our own personal experience or family tradition; and the Bible has never claimed to be an exhaustive compendium of Christian doctrine, scientific fact or psychology. The Bible is a "sufficient" but not "comprehensive" record of supernatural revelation. As John says in his Gospel, "the whole world could not contain all the books" that could be written about all that Jesus did and said. (John 21:25)

The clerk's evidence, then, is hardly sufficient since none of the evidence can stand as valid; and it is not likely that a rebuttal argument could be mounted. So, I doubt that we'll see an endorsement on the back cover of any KJV any time soon signed by Jesus Christ.

ANOTHER CONCLUSION

This Bible store experience did, however, present several pieces of evidence in credible support of another argument -- that the Bible needs a single infallible interpreter to be of much practical use. At the time, I had no idea Catholicism was even in the running for such a claim; and unfortunately, the Catholic Church in America isn't known for its marketing or public relations, preferring instead to sneak into heaven and hope no one notices. So, it took years for me to figure out some of this.

Under the Relevancy Principle, I discovered that individual pastors are hardly infallible interpreters of the Bible or how the Bible came about. Under the Acceptability Principle I began to see that all the talk about Protestants agreeing on the essentials is not true—the Bible is an essential, I think. And if the various Protestant churches could not agree on essentials, how could the truth be known infallibly?

I also realized that for the Sufficiency Principle to be applied on issues involving the origins of the Bible, a great deal of relevant and acceptable evidence, in place of irrational opinions, would be needed about history. That is, it's hard to bring historical evidence into the argument, when your opponent is ignorant of history.

Finally, I discovered that the Rebuttal Principle, like the other three principles, required an opponent that was more interested in truth than maintaining the status quo of their opinion. In such a case, quickly throwing down the cash in order to consummate the sale and then getting out of their sight may be the best tactic.

Finally, the clerk stubbornly sold me the NAS Bible. I used it for decades until the binding fell apart. But the incident has long reminded me of the strange ideology in some sectors of Christianity — that before his ascension Jesus supervised the writing of the KJV (in Elizabethan prose), oversaw its printing on imported India paper, and approved the first edition leather bindings, before letting the Apostles organize a book signing. From that day on, I wondered where the Bible came from.

The experience also forced me to ask the question, "What version of the Bible DID Jesus use?" From my Evangelical training I knew the answer was the Greek Septuagint of the Old Testament. Later, I was to discover that the Septuagint included 73 books. And, surprisingly, my prized, six-pound, New American Standard Bible had only 66.

Yes, some fallacious thinking was at work. Next time we'll look deeper at the principle of relevancy, and how fallacies of relevance hinder our thinking.

Chapter 3 ARGUMENT vs. OPINION

2008-01-03T15:36:00.000-08:00

You know the difference between an opinion and an argument don't you? An opinion is what happens when your wife opens up her mouth; and an argument is what happens when you open yours.

It reminds me of an opinion my wife had a couple of weeks ago: "Stan!" she opined. "You should cut down the dead ash tree in the side yard." On that subject I had an opinion of my own: "Naw, I don't think so." Notice how well we reason such things out.

Such exchanges, which occur frequently between people, often result in an argument—defined, in this instance, as an ever escalating exchange of ever increasing rancor. Let's call that type of argument an argument of rancor.

There is another kind of argument, however, that we call an argument of reason. And while the two can often be intertwined, it is our purpose, for now, to separate them and favor the argument of reason.

We'll get back to the dead ash tree in my side yard, but right now let's go even further back to the arcadia wood in Moses' backyard.

You may recall that in the last chapter we suggested that Moses was not the Biblical character who took a horde of animals (and shovels) into the ark for an unscheduled float trip to Mt. Ararat. But then we took one of those shovels, dug ourselves a hole, and offered up the opinion that Moses indeed had not one ark, but two. Do you have an opinion on that? Do you want to offer up an argument?

As arguments of rancor usually go we might end up with an "intelligent" discussion with a Protestant brother like this:

HIM: Stan, you're all mixed up, boy. It was Noah that had the ark and all those animals. Moses had all those people and a tent. Now I know the tent, if you turn it upside down, like you Catholics do ta things, might look like an ark, sort-a, but the two are not the same, dang-it. You need to study your Bible som'ores.

ME: I stud'yit more than ya'll think. And Moses did too, had two arks.

HIM: Yer crazy! Ya got those darn extra books in yer Old Testament and yer all confused.

ME: I'm not confused, yer, missing half the Old Testament, and what you got you ain't read yet. Moses did too, have two arks.

Now, the rancor and the barrier the two of us just raised could have been avoided had I just been more willing to explain. But I love to get in those rancorous digs. Confessionals should have a sign outside that read: "Leave your shovels here, pick up a ladder on the way out." You see, I could have avoided the rancor and the confessional if I had just responded in the first place with reason and evidence:

ME: I don't mean that Moses had a gopherwood ark for animals like Noah. But, in Exodus 2, Moses writes that when he was three-months old his mom put him in a basket, appropriately lined with bitumen and pitch, and floated him among the reeds of the river to hide him from history's first recorded infanticide. The basket was an ark that saved not only Moses' life, but, by extension of Moses' life, all of Israel.

Much later, in Exodus 37, we read about how God instructed Moses through Bezalel to build the Ark of the Covenant from acacia wood into which he placed Aaron's budding rod, the 10 Commandment tablets, and a ciborium of manna. This ark was a preserve for the objects that had saved Israel's life in the wilderness. Just as Noah's ark saved Noah's family and the animals from the flood, so Moses' two arks saved the Israelites and their animals from slavery, sin, and hunger.

Here's how to tell the difference between an argument and an opinion. An opinion is a statement without supporting evidence. An argument of reason, is a statement with supporting evidence. In this latter example, rather than just stating my opinion, I backed it up with evidence, in this case the two Old Testament references and a summary of what they contain. I also explained that while I was using the same word "ark," in Moses' case, the word had different meanings in the different contexts.

Now, back to the dead ash in my side yard. On the particular day that Pam suggested I cut it down I had rolled out of the dumb side of the bed...and I found it easier to just say "No" ... repeatedly, I should add.

That first day we rode along the fringe of rancor even as the tree's bark began to molt, perhaps, I hoped, into a beautiful spruce or oak. During the next month we tossed back and forth reasons for and against the "how" of the tree's demise.

ME: It's too expensive. The other ash, the one that was in the front yard, cost us $2,500 to take down, and the tree-guy left behind an ugly stump that cost another $45 to grind up. Then there were days of grading and seeding and weeding. No.

HER: Cut it down yourself.

ME: I threw out the chainsaw 5 years ago. No.

HER: Buy a new one.

ME: You know how bad I am with motors. I'd rather the limbs just fall off.

HER: It looks ugly.

ME: Yeah, but don't you think its leafless branches remind our neighbors of life's eventual death and their need to repent.

HER: Oh, please!

At least we were into evidence and not rancor. It became somewhat of a game. But the game got serious when I heard of a major summer storm that was approaching and I realized that if one of the large, dead limbs were to crack off in the wind, it would hit the electrical and telephone lines to the house, and probably knock them out of service for days. To me, at the time, that was "evidence" against which I could not provide a rebuttal. I hurried down to the store, bought a new chainsaw, and that night started in on the tree.

Pam came out to help, but shortly into the process the engine kept stalling, and my “manly” efforts to pull the starter chord 34 times in a row to get it going, resulted in jammed chord and fused pull-plate. The new chainsaw was as dead as the tree. Pam, who got up on the smart side of the bed that day, suggested some evidence, totally side-stepping the argument: "It wouldn't be because the gasoline you were using was 6 years old, could it?" I had to admit that I had again ignored the instruction manual’s argument of reason that provided the following evidence: “Use of fuel older than 90 days (stale fuel), may cause hard starting...and void the product warranty.” I had my “opinion” and I ignored the “evidence. “

The storm came and went and the tree was still standing.

A week later, with a new, improved, and more expensive chainsaw, we made some real progress on the tree. But as I write this, Pam and I are both experiencing the best evidence for not cutting down the tree ourselves -- evidence that neither one of us had thought of — evidence that provided a whole new light on cutting down large dead trees: The tree was covered in ivy -- the wrong kind of ivy! Now Pam and I are covered with -- well, it's not exactly green and leafy. (Itch! Itch! Itch!)

Two weeks and several trips to the doctor later for steroids, as I write this, we realize that even with a pile of evidence, the conclusion of our argument of reason may have been incorrect, incomplete, or inconclusive. We learned (again) that just any evidence may not be the right evidence, good evidence, or enough evidence. In fact, in a good argument, the evidence presented must have certain characteristics, before you can trust the conclusion. That is, a good argument of reason, is one in which you can trust the conclusion, in part, because you trust the evidence.

So, in the next chapter we'll begin to look at the four criteria of a good argument, and how you can be relatively certain to come to a good conclusion (with a LOT less itching!).

Now, about that tree:

ME: "Hey, Pam, I got an idea?"

HER: "Oh, yeah? Well, first tell me which side of the bed you got up on today."

Chapter 2 FAITH & REASON

2008-01-02T18:31:00.000-08:00

A father was reading Bible stories to his young son. He read, "The man named Lot was warned to take his wife and flee out of the city, but his wife looked back and was turned to salt."

After a moment his son asked -- "What happened to the flea?"

Ah, the faith and reason of a young child. The child took it on faith that Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt, but it was reason that caused him to wonder about the flea. Indeed faith and reason are everywhere in our lives and thinking, even as young children.

In Christianity, Faith and Reason refer to the two channels of revelation from which we derive all knowledge.

Reason is what we typically apply to Common Revelation, or what is revealed by the natural universe to all mankind. Reason allows us to understand what we perceive with our senses, and it helps us formulate the laws and rules about how things work in the physical realm.

Faith is what we typically apply to Supernatural Revelation, or what the Prophets and Jesus revealed about the supernatural universe to the select. Faith allows us to know what we cannot perceive directly, such as the laws and rules about how things work in the supernatural realm. God revealed such things to the Prophets and we in turn have the opportunity to believe them and behave accordingly. Well, some of us believe. Atheists have difficulty accepting information based on faith because, as comedian Steven Wright points out, atheists are members of non-prophet organizations.

Faith is not exclusive to the supernatural realm, and reason is not exclusive to the natural universe. The two work hand-in-hand. Faith is reinforced by reason, and reason is advanced by faith. Let's consider the former: Faith is reinforced by Reason. When God communicates to us through the Prophets about how morality works, we can often test such declarations with Reason.

For example, we have been told that Christ's suffering and death is an example of how we too must die to self for the greater good of others. Reason allows us to test that concept, so we look around for verification. We see examples in the suffering of a mother to give birth, in the transparency and availability of individuals dedicated to pubic service, and in the physical sacrifice of rescuers when tragedy strikes. It's not logical that death can bring life, even though we see it in the death of a seed that gives life to a plant. But once it is revealed to us through faith, we can indeed discover than loving sacrifice rewards us with new life. And so, through reason, our faith is expanded and strengthened.

Speaking of Moses, (was I?), the prophets (I was!) here's a test question for you: How many animals of each sex did Moses take with him onto the ark? Don't get complicated on me with the two and seven stuff. -- Give up? -- The answer is zero. Moses didn't have an ark. He had the children of Israel and even two tablets didn't get rid of that headache. Okay, get off the ark, there's more work to do.

Now, let's consider the latter: Reason is advanced by Faith. Proverbs 3:5-10 sets the stage:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, on your own intelligence rely not; In all your ways be mindful of him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes, fear the LORD and turn away from evil; This will mean health for your flesh and vigor for your bones. Honor the LORD with your wealth, with first fruits of all your produce; Then will your barns be filled with grain, with new wine your vats will overflow. (NAB, USCCB)

Here are propositional statements of faith: Trust in God...not in yourself...fear the Lord...and, do not think of yourself as wise. Logic, at first, doesn't tell us such things. But, these prophetic words do suggest that our reason will be advanced if we will first apply some faith. How? The passage says that if we trust in God (i.e. faith), "our paths will be straight...we will be healthier...and we will have plenty to eat." Indeed the Children of Israel obeyed the rules of kosher out of faith. They did not have the scientific or biological understanding that today reason (and a few medical studies) tell us that you can avoid trichinosis by avoiding pork. By stepping forward in faith with what is revealed by supernatural revelation we are given insight into what reason alone would not provide.

There is one way that faith and reason however, are quite different. Reason is a human faculty and therefore is limited by mortality and sin. Reason is therefore limited and finite. Faith, however, is a divine faculty, given to us by God's grace, and connects us to the infinite. That's pretty cool when you think about it. It's the reason Proverbs also says that a wise student is smarter than his teacher. (It's just not smart to let your teacher know that's what you're thinking. I know -- I tried it, and what goes around comes around.)

Faith does not allow us to know the infinities of God, but through faith we are given access to God's infallibility. It is through faith that the Church is graced with the infallibility of the Holy Spirit's inspiration. Jesus told the Apostles that the Holy Spirit would lead them "into All truth." (John 16:13) If we rely only on reason we will eventually run off the knowledge highway and into a ditch. Or as Jesus explained, the storms of life will easily undercut any house built on the sandy shoulder of life's road (Matthew 7:24-27). When our reason is guided by faith, however, we are likely to stay on life's pavement and navigate through the cross winds safely. Although if you're driving a van through the West Virginian mountains during a winter storm, good luck. (As I did last June!)

All of the above was necessary as we begin our discussion of the role of reason in the discovery of truth. I do not want to give the impression that this study of reason will somehow lead one to infallible understanding or some special knowledge known without the guidelines of faith. Such a path would only lead to Gnosticism; and even if you don't know what that is, believe me, the Church does, has dealt with it, and left it in that pile of sand back in Matthew 7. On the other-hand, we will see that true faith and true reason will never contradict, for they both come from God. They are both part of the same search for truth, which will lead us to peace on Earth, eternity in heaven, and the throne of Christ. Can't wait!

These first two chapters have acted as introductions to the topic we will be exploring in the coming months. In future installments I will explain how reason is very much the same as logic, which is a word that is derived from the Greek word "logos," which is the term St. John uses at the beginning of his gospel to describe Jesus.

And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14, NAB, USCCB)

We will also explore how John firmly establishes the direct connection between Jesus, good logic and truth, and why Catholicism is the net result of all that. Then as the chapters unfurl I will discuss the critical components of reason and logic, specifically the four criteria of a "good" argument, the four groups of fallacies (of which there are dozens that have confused Christian dialogue since the Protestant Reformation), and concluded with the 12 principles of a rational discussion.[1] <#_ftn1>

In Chapter 3 we will begin -- by answering this question: "What's the difference between an opinion and an argument? Now, don't get ahead of me. If you think an opinion is what your wife has when she opens her mouth, and an argument is what happens when you subsequently open yours, well, your, ah...only partly right.
In the meantime time try not to worry too much about what happened to Lot's flea.

Come to think of it, Moses did have an ark -- in fact, one more than Noah. Do you know what they were?

Chapter 1 UNCONFIRMED

2008-01-01T12:02:00.000-08:00

Moments earlier, I had been lifted out of the water. I had been baptized for the second time in my life -- the third if you count my Evangelical "dedication" sprinkling as an infant. It seemed that every church we attended required something slightly different in order to secure my salvation. Getting saved was important to me. Getting wet a few more times was a small price to pay.

This series of articles is about the role of reason in the discovery of truth. We arrive at truth through the application of reason and faith, which are like "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth, and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves." (John Paul II, Fides Et Ratio). Truth does not come to us by faith alone, nor does it come by reason alone. Reason reinforces faith, and, in turn, faith advances reason. To rely on one to the exclusion of the other, is to fly with one wing, mostly in circles, as we misapply the ordered rules of one or the other and introduce fallacies into our thinking. How that happens is the focus of this series.

My previous baptism in the Free Methodist Church (Evangelical) was not recognized by the church we were now attending, Bethesda Missionary Temple (an independent Pentecostal church currently known as Bethesda Christian Church). The principle difference between the two churches was that Free Methodists believed that praying in tongues was not something Christians did, and Bethesda didn’t think you were a Christian unless you did speak in tongues -- at least once -- hopefully right after you were baptized.

So, as soon as I dried off and changed into my regular clothes, I was hustled into a second floor prayer room, where the other 200 or so that were baptized that day were already praying. I was told to sit in a chair, and soon two elders approached, laid their hands on my head, and I was instructed to pray for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. According to Bethesda's theology and practice, I could not be confirmed in the faith unless there was evidence that I had experienced the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. And the conclusive evidence was that I "yield and speak in tongues," the unintelligible words of angels. In short, while justification was something separate, speaking in tongues became a requirement in order for Bethesda to confirm you in the faith.

As we prayed, the hands on my head became heavier. One of the elders was praying in tongues, and the other in plain English: "O, Lord God, come down mightily on this young man and fill him with your Holy Spirit." Now up until this point in my life, I was 30 at the time, I considered myself to be a pretty good Christian. I cannot remember a time when I was not seeking God or trying better to understand His truth about my life and the world around me. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't a saint. I had my problems, and I was frequently seeking God's forgiveness for my sins. But I had an active and real prayer life and had just left a part-time stint at the Taylor Free Methodist Church as their Youth Minister. Why did I leave? Partly, because they had rejected the gifts of the Holy Spirit that I had concluded were still active in the present day church. Not that I necessarily wanted a gift I didn't already have, but it bothered me that a church, which proclaimed to take the Bible so literally, so readily excised certain chapters from their lexicon of faith—in this case 1 Corinthians 14. And that's why my wife Pam and I went through the eight-month catechism course at Bethesda, where we were both re-baptized, and where I was now sitting in an upper room waiting for the Holy Spirit, a few yards from where Pam was doing the same thing.

As I sat there with my hands firmly clasped in prayer, my mind considered an earlier conclusion — that the Holy Spirit was in my life, and had been since I had first accepted Christ. As much as I disagreed with the Free Methodists because of what Paul wrote in First Corinthians 12-14 about the Gifts of the Holy Spirit ("Do not forbid speaking in tongues..." — 1 Corinthians 14:39), neither did I fully agree with Bethesda's conclusion that tongues were required as evidence of the Holy Spirit. To my way of interpreting the Bible, Paul was clear, as he rhetorically rejected that all members of the church should have the same spiritual gifts -- or experiences. ("Are all apostles? ... Are all teachers? ... Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues?" — 1 Corinthians 12:29-30).

Still, I sat, respectfully, and let these dear men pray over me. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps I would speak in tongues. I was trying to be obedient to those under whose authority I had placed myself. But nothing was happening, and the prayers become more urgent and insistent. In their eyes, I am sure, I was like a pagan bump on the log, a hollowed out knot hole into which only slimy toads would dare to dawdle. I wasn't jumping up and down. I wasn't crying. I wasn't even sobbing. A wretch was I. A hard case, indeed! At last, a third prayer warrior came and put her hands on my back and shoulders. They would have pushed me over onto my face except that I was sitting in a steel chair, bent forward, with my elbows firmly rooted in the hollow of my knees.

Several times during the eight-month catechism instruction, after Patricia Beall Gruits' lecture to the class of 300+, we broke into small groups, each led by a married couple who engaged us in discussion and answered our questions. Except rarely could they answer mine. One thing that had attracted us to Bethesda was their attempt at thoroughly explaining the Christian faith. Unfortunately, the thoroughness was lacking a level of consistency. Often I had difficulty understanding how the Scripture passages that were cited in Understanding God 1 backed-up the answers that Gruits had written. More than once I was asked to meet with a group of elders in a room set apart. It was like being sent to the vice principal's office, something for which I have so much experience I should list it on my resume: "Willingly bucks authority...over 274 hours of 'special' instruction. Can touch toes without bending knees."

It was in these meetings (with the elders, not the vice principal) that I began to see a problem between faith and reason. Bethesda's leadership had applied a lot of reason to bear on the Christian faith by logically laying out the Gospel in their two catechism volumes. The vast majority of those two volumes still make sense to me. After all, they're filled with explanations of basic Christianity that are rational and consistent. They even hint at a Catholic upbringing in the distant Bealle past. But there were these holes. Deep pungent holes, that caused me to conclude that Bethesda's theology was based on personal experience, and from that Scripture was assigned to justify the experience. I argued that the exegesis should be the other way around, since we should have more faith in the Bible's teachings and less in our explanations of the events in our lives.

When I asked my small group leaders or the elders for explanations of Scriptures and didn't seem to match their answers, I was told that I had to take their answers on faith. I explained that I had no trouble taking on faith my understanding of what the Bible was saying, but that their understanding of the Bible left me bewildered at times. That didn't sit well with them. After all, they were the elders and I was the student -- and an unconfirmed one at that. My frustration had its root in the limits they gave to reason, limits which reason has for sure, especially in the shadow of supernatural revelation. But what I faced in this particular Protestant experience was that where reason and faith seemed to be at odds, reason had to be disregarded entirely, and blind faith took over. That made me uncomfortable. I reasoned (oops, maybe I can't do that here) that faith and reason had to have come from the same place, and if handled correctly they would have to agree.

Back in the upper room, the elders, probably having given up on my Baptism in the Holy Spirit, had now retrograded and were praying instead for my salvation. There was a real need, I'm sure they concluded, for the Holy Spirit to send faith searing through my soul. The problem was that each of us was defining "faith" differently. It was much later when I understood that the linguistic fallacy facing us was something called "equivocation" — a term that means "equal vocalization". It's when a word, term or concept sounds the same, but the underlying definitions are different. Here, Bethesda was defining faith as trust in Ms. Gruits' understanding of the Bible, and I was holding out for MY understanding of the Bible, although we both thought we were having faith in the Holy Spirit. But at the time I didn't recognize that simple fact. I did not understand that we were not disagreeing with what the Bible taught, but rather with our interpretations of what the Bible taught. And what good was that? It was almost comic in nature, like melancholy clowns in baggy pants chasing each other around a three-ring circus honking horns and squirting seltzer at each other, trying to scare the other into submission.

All of this was twirling around in my mind as the hands and the prayers pressed upon me. Finally, the humor of the situation got to me, and I started to chuckle if not giggle a little. What a mistake that was. Quickly I realized that equivocation was at work again. My laughter was being interpreted two different ways. I was humored, but they were convinced that I was going to burst forth any moment in wild angelic utterances. I tried to control myself and quiet down. But it was no use. The more I laughed the more serious they became. Finally, I just had to raise up, catch their eyes, smile, and tell them I was laughing at the situation and that it was not the Holy Spirit descending with holy laughter.

They were not amused. That did it. No salvation for me that night.

And so it was that the elders of Bethesda Missionary Temple became convinced that I was not a Christian and they refused to confirm me in the faith. Pam, however, experienced things a little differently. She's always had a more adaptive nature. I doubt she ever saw the inside of the vice principal's office except to collect for Girl Scout cookies. Evidently she gave forth a convincing utterance in the upper room. Later she was confirmed in the faith, and furthermore was asked to publicly give her testimony at the graduation banquet.

By faith I had embraced Christ years earlier as my Savior, and I had labored well since then to secure my place in the Kingdom, although I frequently fell short. Finding forgiveness, rallying again to obedience, continually working, studying, and getting excellent counsel from pastors and friends, I slowly matured in the faith, thanks in a large degree to the Evangelical-Fundamentalist Christian Community.

But such wildly dividing experiences and interpretations of the Bible gave me great pause and confounded my pursuit of truth. Much later my understanding of logical and linguistic fallacies, along with what constituted a "good" argument was to play a significant role in my discovery of what was true and what was false. At the center of that journey was the relationship between faith and reason, the topic of our next chapter.

The Gravity of Loving the Law

2007-12-03T18:26:00.000-08:00

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This post is now here:
http://crossingnineveh.blogspot.com/2006/10/loving-law.html

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The Story of the Common Ground DVD

2007-12-02T16:58:00.000-08:00

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This posting and podcast can now be found here:
http://crossingnineveh.blogspot.com/2006/12/common-ground.html

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MASS DIMENSIONS: An Extra-Dimensional Glimpse of God and the Mass

2007-12-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

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This post is available here:
http://crossingnineveh.blogspot.com/2008/05/mass-dimensions-extra-dimensional.html

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