Monthly Archives: May 2010

A new proof for God’s existence

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Until recently the popular proofs for God’s existence have been the ontological, teleological, cosmological, and moral arguments.

Now we have the new atheists’ proof:

The best proof of God’s existence is the urge some writers feel to deny it. Since the instinct of writers is to make a noise, and denying something that isn’t makes none, they wouldn’t waste their time quarrelling with a nonexistent God.

Hitchens declares himself an anti-theist: he is against God; he hates him as the ultimate tyrant. Dawkins exhibits much the same loathing. None of the contemporary atheists have the grace or wit of their forebears like Bertrand Russell who, when asked what he would say to God if he was proved wrong said, “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence.” – a demonstration of wilful ignorance, but not hatred.

You can’t hate something that much if it isn’t really there, so it’s hard not to see the excessive protestations against an allegedly mythical Deity as anything other than the recycling of the age old rebellion: a proof, not a denial of God’s existence.

A new proof for God’s existence

Until recently the popular proofs for God’s existence have been the ontological, teleological, cosmological, and moral argument.

Now we have the new atheists’ proof:

The best proof of God’s existence is the urge some writers feel to deny it. Since the instinct of writers is to make a noise, and denying something that isn’t makes none, they wouldn’t waste their time quarrelling with a nonexistent God.

Hitchens declares himself an anti-theist: he is against God. If it turns out God is really there, he would hate him as the ultimate tyrant. Dawkins exhibits much the same loathing. None of the contemporary atheists has the grace or wit of their forebears like Bertrand Russell who when asked what he would say to God if he was proved wrong said, “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence.” – a demonstration of ignorance, but not hatred.

You can’t hate something that much if it isn’t really there, so it’s hard not to see the excessive protestations against an allegedly mythical Deity as anything other than the recycling of the age old rebellion : a proof, not a denial of his existence.

Abortion viewed from two perspectives

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Support for Cardinal Ouellet’s denunciation of abortion has come from two unexpected people: a rape victim who aborted her child:

Angelina Steenstra may seem like one of the likeliest candidates on earth to be offended by Cardinal Marc Ouellet’s much-criticized statements, made earlier this week at a pro-life conference in Quebec City, that abortion is wrong in all cases, even in the case of rape.

As a teenager Steenstra was the victim of a traumatic date rape that resulted in an unwanted pregnancy – a situation that led her to choose an abortion.

But this week Steenstra told LifeSiteNews (LSN) that, far from joining those politicians and media who have blasted the cardinal (in the case of one journalist, even going so far as to wish a “long and painful” death on the cleric), she would like to express her gratitude to him.

Steenstra, who has come a long way since those dark days in her teenage years, is now the National Coordinator of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. She told LSN that the cardinal’s remarks were a “wake-up call to women who are given the misinformation that abortion will solve their problems – even the problem of a child conceived by rape.”

“I wish I had heard his message when I was a teen and was raped and then aborted my daughter,” she said. “I am deeply grateful to the Cardinal for proclaiming the truth that abortion, even in the case of rape, rather than helping the victim of rape, actually adds a second victim – the unborn child.”

Angelina said that her abortion as a teenager led to a consuming self-loathing, and that eventual healing only took place after she faced the truth that the killing of her child through abortion was wrong.

“I was told abortion was no big deal. That it would solve my problem,” she said. “Finally I caved into my fears and made the phone call that would end the life of my child and begin a lifetime of suffering and regret.

And a woman conceived as the result of rape:

I am extremely grateful to and proud of Cardinal Ouellet for speaking up to defend the lives of those of us conceived in rape,” says Deborah Morlani, a wife, mother of five children, pro-life speaker, Catholic writer, registered nurse and grad student working on her Master of Theology degree.

These women both know – from opposite perspectives – that an unborn child is a human being, created by God in his image, a person to be loved and cherished no matter how difficult his or her conception.

If it's not the Crusades, it's the cartoons

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I don’t really need any more reasons to like George W. Bush, but here is another one anyway from Mark Steyn:

I was among a small group of columnists in the Oval Office when President Bush, after running through selected highlights from a long list of Islamic discontents, concluded with an exasperated: “If it’s not the Crusades, it’s the cartoons.” That’d make a great bumper sticker: It encapsulates both Islam’s inability to move on millennium-in millennium-out, plus the grievance-mongers’ utter lack of proportion.

Melanie Phillips interviewed about her new book

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An interesting interview with Melanie Phillips on The World Turned Upside Down. Although an agnostic, she understands something that eludes the new atheists: our civilisation is build upon Christianity and Judaism; remove them and you lose the civilisation.

You don’t have to be a religious believer to understand that if religion — more specifically, the Hebrew Bible and the Christianity that built upon it — underpins Western civilization and the codes of right and wrong — putting others above yourself, freedom and equality, and belief in reason — that form the bedrock of that civilization, then eroding or destroying that religion will erode or destroy those virtues and the civilization they distinguish…

The real problem in Britain is not Islam but the vacuum in British culture which Islam is opportunistically attempting to fill. That vacuum has been caused by the retreat and surrender of the Christian church under the tide of secularism and aggressive atheism. This has opened the door not to an age of reason but to an epidemic of paganism — environmentalism, or worship of the earth, is the most conspicuous example, but there’s lots of other absurd stuff, too, such as seances, crystals, astrology, and the like.

And I fear that, along with other mainline churches, the Anglican Church – having helped create the spiritual vacuum in the first place – has not only thrown its hand in with paganism, but is vigorously promoting it. All in its increasingly futile attempt to remain relevant.

The Anglican Church of Canada in the bosom of Mother Earth

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Well, the armpit, at least. In the “News From our Partners” section of its web site, the Anglican Church of Canada has a pointer – actually, like so much else in the ACoC, the pointer is screwed up – to a document called Cochabamba – Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth. In it you will find a Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth, including:

Article 1. Mother Earth
(1) Mother Earth is a living being.
(2) Mother Earth is a unique, indivisible, self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all beings.
(3) Each being is defined by its relationships as an integral part of Mother Earth……

Article 2. Inherent Rights of Mother Earth
(1) Mother Earth and all beings of which she is composed have the following inherent rights:
(a) the right to life and to exist;
(b) the right to be respected;
(c) the right to regenerate its bio-capacity and to continue its vital cycles and processes free from human disruptions;
(d) the right to maintain its identity and integrity as a distinct, self-regulating and interrelated being…….

Article 3. Obligations of human beings to Mother Earth
(1) Every human being is responsible for respecting and living in harmony with Mother Earth…..
(d) ensure that the pursuit of human wellbeing contributes to the wellbeing of Mother Earth, now and in the future;

The ACoC is a member church of Kairos, the organisation peddling this twaddle; I was surprised not to see “I am Fred Hiltz and I approve this message” at the end of the document.

Good news for the meteorological division of the Anglican Church of Canada

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After decades of painstaking research, the world renowned meteorologists of the Anglican Church of Canada have finally discovered something more to be shunned than unfashionably dated sins which, after all, merely imperil our immortal souls: carbon dioxide.

The science is clear: global warming is happening faster than ever and humans are responsible. Global warming is caused by releasing what are called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The most common greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. Many of the activities we do every day like turn the lights on, cook food, or heat or cool our homes rely on energy sources like coal and oil that emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. This is a major problem because global warming destabilizes the delicate balance that makes life on this planet possible. Just a few degrees in temperature can completely change the world as we know it, and threaten the lives of millions of people around the world.

They were tempted to say that we are headed for hell on earth, until the House of Bishops reminded them that the ACoC no longer believes in hell.

Fear not! It was all a mistake; Anglican clergy are being sent back to weatherman school – it’s actually getting colder:

Contrary to the commonly held scientific conclusion that the Earth is getting warmer, a scientist who has written more than 150 peer-reviewed papers has unveiled evidence for his prediction that global cooling is coming soon.

The hottest new trend in climate change may be global cooling, some researchers say.

Contrary to the commonly held scientific conclusion that the Earth is getting warmer, Dr. Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University and author of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, has unveiled evidence for his prediction that global cooling is coming soon.

“Rather than global warming at a rate of 1 F per decade, records of past natural cycles indicate there may be global cooling for the first few decades of the 21st century to about 2030,” said Easterbrook, speaking on a scientific panel discussion with other climatologists. This, he says, will likely be followed by “global warming from about 2030 to 2060,” which will then be followed by another cooling spell from 2060 to 2090.

Easterbrook spoke before a group of about 700 scientists and government officials at the fourth International Conference on Climate Change. The conference is presented annually in Chicago by the Heartland Institute, a conservative nonprofit think tank that actively questions the theory of man’s role in global warming. Last year the Institute published Climate Change Reconsidered, a comprehensive reply to the United Nations’ latest report on climate change.

“Global warming is over — at least for a few decades,” Easterbrook told conference attendees. “However, the bad news is that global cooling is even more harmful to humans than global warming, and a cause for even greater concern.”

David Bentley Hart interview

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From here; Hart adroitly dissects Dawkins and Hitchens among other things:

The violence of Christian history from CPX on Vimeo.

The new atheists and an ugly God from CPX on Vimeo.

Ethics and the good life from CPX on Vimeo.

Nostalgia for a pagan past from CPX on Vimeo.

Gnosticism and alternative gospels from CPX on Vimeo.

Suffering and the problem of evil from CPX on Vimeo.

UK: deporting terrorists not allowed

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Melanie Philips writes:

The BBC reports:

The alleged leader of an al-Qaeda plot to bomb targets in north-west England has won his appeal against deportation. A special immigration court said Abid Naseer was an al-Qaeda operative – but could not be deported because he faced torture or death back home in Pakistan.

… ‘We are satisfied that Naseer was an al-Qaeda operative who posed and still poses a serious threat to the national security of the United Kingdom,’ the judgement said. It added: ‘Subject to the issue of safety on return, it is conducive to the public good that he should be deported.’

Question: if it is not ok to send al Qaeda operatives to far-flung places where they may be judicially killed, why is it ok for British forces to be hunting them down in far-flung places in order that they may be extra-judicially killed?

We all know the explanation for this. The immediate reason is the particularly obtuse interpretation of human rights law by the English judiciary, which has extended the definition of torture to include deporting anyone to any country whose standards of human rights are lower than in Britain. Which is just about everywhere on the planet.

Not so! Canada has a pretty good human rights record too. And we take anyone; we send terrorists to live in Brantford or Montreal where they are sponsored by the Anglican Church of Canada.

So ship your al-Qaeda operatives to us where they can join their friends: we’d love to have them.