Klavan on the Culture

This is always good for a horrifying laugh.

Unbelievable the tripe some people are paid (and paid a lot) to spew. Obama’s pant leg? Space aliens? You can’t make this stuff up.

Shafts of Light

Sometimes things are said at mass that are exactly what I needed to hear – oddly specific as well. I think that it’s not so much that sometimes it’s more relevant to our lives than others – it’s always relevant, but sometimes we are more open to it or we have gained a little bit of understanding that we didn’t have before, little shafts of light into the darkness. This stood out especially for me today:

Whenever I speak, I cry out
proclaiming violence and destruction.
So the word of the LORD has brought me
insult and reproach all day long.
But if I say, “I will not mention his word
or speak anymore in his name,”
his word is in my heart like a fire,
a fire shut up in my bones.
I am weary of holding it in;
indeed, I cannot. (Jeremiah 20:8-9, NIV)

In the homily Fr spoke of the Christian’s calling to decry the age and it made me think about what I do here, how sometimes I wonder if I’m just terribly gloomy or depressing, but I calls it as I sees it and if what I see is that we are causing our own death and destruction, then by God I’ll point it out as best I can. It’s not to be self-righteous or to appear pious or any sort of ambition like that, I just can’t seem to stop myself. Lord knows I struggle all day with my weaknesses, blindnesses and all. When I try to keep it in, it is “a fire shut up in my bones” and I just can’t do that any more.

So, this was something I needed to hear today and it has helped to bolster me while simultaneously filling me with the dread of the test. But I can’t even chicken out of the tests any more. Also in this passage is the feeling of wishing He had chosen someone else. Now obviously our situation is not so dramatic as we are not prophets as Jeremiah, but it is human to wish for an easier path through life than we often get, and even the greatest among us struggle at times. It may or may not seem a comfort I suppose, but it is what it is.

And to think, I had to force myself out the door to go to church today. The extent of my own struggle is that even though I never regret going to mass but do regret not going, it’s still a temptation to overcome inertia and avoidance.

The Reason Delusion

If God is a delusion because He cannot be seen, then so is reason:

For most of these atheistic heralds’ foundational and crucial belief is that the only real dimension to the universe is the tangible one, the world of the senses, the physical world. This is why their manipulation of science is critical to their case for atheism. For them, if things aren’t physically observable with our senses or with the aid of technological advances or through mathematical extrapolation, then those things do not exist. And, on a superficial level and with certain reservations, that is true. Up to a point. A very near, a very narrow and a very limited point.

For science deals effectively with many aspects of the physical universe. But, it also relies heavily and conceptually on reason. And reason is not physical. It is mental. It is not a tangible thing. It is an intangible thing. But, brain activity is physical and observable. You can see it with the right instruments. So, when it comes to thinking, to reason it is important to keep in mind a crucial distinction. Brain activity is tangible. Reason is not.

Yet, reason is a crucial aspect of science. For science weds the tangible and the intangible, the physical and the mental, the observable and the logical. If it didn’t, we would not have the science and technology we have.

Yet for these atheists, the supposed champions of science, brain activity is all there is. Nothing more. Reason for them is an illusion. For them, reason is intangible; it can’t be seen regardless of the instrument employed. And, if it can’t be seen, then it does not really exist.

Read more: The Blind, Irrational Faith of Atheism