John C. Wright's Blog, page 123

A calculation tool no SF writer should be without.

(Hat tip to Mark Shea) If you wish to calculate your age on other planets, go here:

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/age/

Please note that the author of this website correctly stated the number of planets in this, the sane version of the solar system, is nine. I would not have linked to it had it said otherwise.

The insane version of the solar system rumored to have been created by some evil scientists, in which there are only eight planets, is one that all fans of Clyde Tombaugh must oppose until the day when the dread scourge of Plutophobia is abolished from polite society.

This website unwisely links, however, to the misnamed “Nine Planets” website, which says there are only eight planets in the solar system, and does NOT include Pluto.  I can only hope that the servants of the Mi Go who lurk in secret among us do not report this egregious (and unintentionally hilarious)  lapse of judgment to their grim masters, the Outer Powers of Yuggoth.

 

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.

Feminine Names for Strong Women’s Novels

I read an article, to which I will not bother to link, which criticized HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins on the grounds that the title of the work was not named after the main character, as it would have been (or so the writer implied) had the work starred a manly masculine man dripping with machismo.

Such works (or so the writer implied) are always and inevitably named after the hero, for example, the ODYSSEY is named after Odysseus, or  Oedipus Rex is named after a dog named Rex.

The reason why I will not bother linking to the essay is (1) it’s stupid and (2) I’m rude and (3) it’s just wrong.

That it is stupid we will take for granted, or you can look through the internet at random to find someone somewhere talking about HUNGER GAMES. If you find a stupid essay, that is the one I no doubt meant. If you find a good essay that I am criticizing unfairly, that is not the one. That I am rude we can take on the evidence of the paragraph given above, which could have been worded more courteously.

That it is wrong we can establish with a brief and biased and unscientific survey of titles I chose merely to make my point. It is simply not the case that “guy” books are named after the heroes and “girl” books are not. How many guy flicks are named after “what happens” to characters? Lord of the Rings? (refers to the Big Bag, not to Frodo) Star Trek? (refers to the ongoing mission) Star Wars? (refers to the time of war) Total Recall? (Don’t remember what this refers to) Terminator? (bad guy) Predator? (bad guy) Alien? (bad guy).

This is fun! So let us compile a list:

Hunger Games (Setting, or event)
Dr. No (Bad Guy)
Casino Royale (Setting)
The Masks of Fu Manchu (Bad Guy)
Tarzan of the Apes (Good Guy)
Harry Potter and the Temple of Doom (good guy)
Indiana Jones and the Philosopher’s Stone (good guy plus McGuffin)
A Princess of Mars (refers to the heroine, or McGuffin, depending)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (McGuffin, or maybe the bad and good guy taken as a group)
Atlantis (Setting)
Twilight (Lighting)
Dune (Setting)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Refers to the Protagonist)
The Golden Age (Setting, time)
Phoenix Exultant (McGuffin, prop)
The Golden Transcendence (Setting, event)
The Last Guardian of Everness (Refers to protagonist)
Mists of Everness (Setting or prop)
Orphans of Chaos (Good guys)
Fugitives of Chaos (Same good guys called by another name)
Titans of Chaos (Same good guys called by yet another name)
Null-A Continuum (Setting or McGuffin, depending)
Count to a Trillion (an Imperative command)
The Hermetic Millennia (Setting, time)
Judge of Ages (Good guy)
The Concubine Vector (That bad buy from DESPICABLE ME)

But let us pretend there was no stupid essay, and pretend that a merely hypothetical person that criticized the book title as part of a general criticism that HUNGER GAMES is insufficiently ideologically pure according to feminist ideology, on the grounds that the main character, bow-hunter girl whose name I forget, is not “strong” enough.

One criticism was that she never kills anyone, because, of course, strong women strongly portrayed as strong strongarmed strengthy strongwomen would be more authentic and strengthifying if you make your protagonist guilty of cold-blooded multiple homicide. Ri-ii-ight.

The unspoken idea behind this essay is that portrayals of women as being able in fiction to face in physical combat men and overcome then easily yet without unsightly wounds or bruises will bolster the self-esteem of young girls watching these shows, uplift their drooping spirits, and allow them the boldness needed to give up their dreams of being wives and mothers in a happy marriage, and instead pursue careers hunting arctic whales, seeking holy grails, and breaking out of jails, all jobs to which nature and their own natural inclinations incline them, and in which they will excel.

Or they can get boring jobs like guys do, and have bosses yell at them, and die sterile, childless, and alone.

Katniss. That's the name. Knew I'd Remember it.

Now you can criticize this theory on the grounds that, if young girls are getting their ideas of what women should act like from television and films, well, they need to get outside more. Maybe get a hobby. Like bowhunting.

The important point in such essays is that the strength, especially physical strength, is the one characteristic that all truly female women crave, in much the same way that all truly masculine men crave childrearing and childbearing.

To bear out this point, film makers and television executives inevitably select actresses who are slight and short and svelt and nubile and buxom and adorable and who look like, well, actresses and nothing like linebackers.

Sometimes the young actresses are even squeezed or painted into skintight black outfits, no doubt because this is more realistic than wearing body armor during a firefight. Whips and swords are the weapon of choice, because women generally have more upper body strength and longer arms than professional soldierboys, pirates, thugs, hitmen and so on.

Young Battle Maiden

Now it is true that not every movie and not every book has a young and fertile battle maiden squeezed or spraypainted into a skingtight black leather outfit. Only the ones I buy or watch do.

Squeezing the actress into the skintight battlesuit or crimesuit has a long and honorable history in the realm of visual storytelling.

Which allows me to intrude an utterly gratuitous picture of the catwoman. You knew it was coming.

Young and Evil Battle Maiden

As so the films routinely portray men built like linebackers punching the sweet and svelt young actresses in the face over and over again, or trying to, and, because the audience does not want pretty people to look ugly, no unsightly wounds nor bruises nor even muchly mussed hair distorts the look of our nonbattlescarred young lovely.

You see, much as we hate to admit it, film-goers like to look at attractive people. A guy can get in to a fight and get mussed and still look attractive to women because women tend to judge men by their personalities. Girls look attractive when they do not fight and get mussed and torn and scarred and bloody. This is because men tend to judge women based on how well they can fill out the curves or the skintight black battlesuit.

Young Evil Battle Maiden who Turns Good

This is presented as a more realistic portrayal of women than the way they were portrayed in the old days.

Now that you mention it, how DID women get portrayed in the old days? Here is an utterly unscientific and nonrandom sample:

Note Cowering and Helpless Maiden!

We all know that the knuckle dragging unenlightened purveyors of trashy pulp magazines were part of a vast patriarchal conspiracy to degrade women! As you can see, the cowering and helpless maiden in this picture, a damsel in distress, is young and nubile, yet being menaced by….

Oh, wait. That is the wrong picture. Please stand by.

Note Cowaring and Helpless Maiden!

As you can see, the cowering and helpless maiden in this picture, a damsel in distress, is young and nubile ….

Hold it. I think I put the wrong files in the wrong place, or…. Here we go! Behold this image from the dim and dark days before Women’s Liberation, when women were merely the helpless and unarmed, uh…

Note Cowaring and Helpless, uh....

As you can see, the cowering and helpless maiden in this picture, a damsel in distress, is….

… Is blowing the bloody innards out of someone. Wow. That is a lot of guns.

 Trying again.

Note Cowering and Helpless Motorcycle Babe shooting hot lead

As you can see, the cowering and helpless maiden in this picture …. Jeez Louisa! This dame can drive a motorcycle one-handed while not looking and drilling the pursuit with her blazing smoke wagons. Well, she looks nervous.

Note Helpless and ... Aw COME ON!

As you can see, the cowering and helpless  … wait. Is she hoisting that guy on her shoulder while blasting away one-handed? Now this is getting ridiculous.

Note Leggy Brunette. Wait. What was I looking for?

At least she is cowering.

I must be able to find SOME picture of a girl on one of these pulp covers being menaced or tied up or something. Ah! Here is one:

Damsel in Distress. Armed with a Gat.

As you can see, the cowering and helpless maiden in this picture, a damsel in distress, is  being menaced by …. urp! … someone she just shot in the face.

As you can see, the cowering and helpless … uh … royal queen of a totalitarian space empire has got the drop on the guy. Boy, women were sure gun happy in those days. Where is there a stereotypical damsel in distress?

Can we find at least ONE pic where the dame is not holding a pistol?

Note Cowering and Helpless Ski Babe with Laser Shotgun

Don’t be funny! I mean not holding a pistol or a laser shotgun!

As you can see, the cowering and helpless … Wait! She’s got a knife! And a crown! And broody witch-queenish magic powers! Can’t we find a pulp cover where the dame does not have a pistol or a space-shotgun or a knife or magic powers?

Note Really, Really hawt Redhead in skintight Battlesuit

Okay, I give. A lot of them there dames in the old days had lots of weapons, and they were all good looking. Especially that redhead. Yowsa.

I am sure I can find some book cover or magazine cover from the old days portraying a helpless female protagonist! They are commonplace! Ah! Here is one! I pity the unrepentant unreconstructed purveyor of anti-feminine stereotypes who wrote this potboiler!

Some Pulp Space Opera from the Old Days

You see, if a professional like me had written this book, I would have made the protagonist a strong and powerful figure of power and strength, and made her an immortal and ancient goddess with fourth-dimensional superpowers or something like that! But I can tell at a glance at this cover that this book probably has her using her sex appeal as a weapon, or taking bubble baths in front of the bad guys, or wearing a sexy schoolgirl uniform and getting spanked, and getting bound and gagged at least twice! And the pulp trash probably has a fight scene stretching across twelve chapters and two earths and five dimensions! And she probably STILL does not commit any cold blooded murders like a female should do in order to be a properly feminist role model!

Wow. I am sure glad those days are long gone!

Actually, all kidding aside, if anything the modern portrayal of battle maidens is even less realistic than the days of yore. Yes, there were plenty of women menaced by menaces back in the day. It still sells. Things like that don’t change.

If any thing, it looks like the dames from the 1930′s were tougher, screamed less, and complained less.

The only thing that has changed, is that men are no longer portrayed as manly, willing and able to protect a princess who needs protecting. This is what the feminists try to take away from the ladies:

Romance. The romance is what they want to take from you, ladies. Feminists don’t want menfolk to treat you like the princess you are.

You see, if feminists were actually feminine, they would not feel weak nor desire strength. Women desire a good man the way a cavalryman desires a good horse. For an allegedly cavalry officer to forever trying to outdistance equines in a footrace, and then saying a “true” cavalry mean needs a horse like a fish needs a bicycle, I think would show the true foolishness of the conceit.

As mothers and sweethearts and wives, the female sex already rules the male sex much more entirely, from the inside, than any masculine drill sergeantor king or emperor, from the outside, can hope to rule.

or on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Eugenics and Other Evils

A review of EUGENICS AND OTHER EVILS An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State by G.K. Chesterton. You can read it (and it will well reward your time) here.

G.K. Chesterston displays sparkling wit and trenchant insight into human nature in this as in his other writings: the man is charming.

He is a trenchant observer of the inevitable evil resulting from attempting to reorder human society by the arid theories of intellectuals, and a Jeremiah of the brutality and nastiness which results from a culture that allows for such monstrosities as eugenics produces; and I do not mean by breeding, I mean by the process that selects who shall organize the state, and have absolute power.

He is also an ignoramus of staggering proportion when it comes to basic matters concerning political economy. His criticism of the free market consists of a belief that the poor are wretchedly poor because the rich derive wealth from the poverty of the poor. Poverty exists because the rich, merely by wishing the poverty into existence, create it. Once the poor are wretchedly poor, only then will they be cowed enough to work in factories. Chesterton, with a straight face, announces that the poor who are moderately poor do not seek wages, and rich people do not seek to hire them.

He also thinks the rich could wish poverty out of being using the same magic power that they used to wish it into being, but that they selfishly refuse to use this power, because, if the poor were not wretched, the factories would find no employees, and the rich would be less rich. I am frankly baffled, in this analysis, what Chesterton thinks the factory owners do with manufactured goods once they are produced: if the rich had the power to wish wealth into being, would they not wish for wealthy customers to buy their goods? If no one buys the goods, what good are they?

Chesterton concludes his (ahem) ‘analysis’ by saying that the rich have unwisely ‘allowed’ the poor to multiply in great numbers, so that the overpopulation would increase the labor supply and drive down the height of wages: but they miscalculated in their villainy, and now they fear the numbers of the poor they way the Pharaoh feared the swelling ranks of the Hebrews. The Eugenics movement of the 1910′s was a plot by the wealthy to control the numbers of the poor, who, apparently, can magically raise population rates when it suits them, but not lower them again.

He also pauses to call the rich all the usual nasty names that writers blissfully ignorant of economics call them: parasites, robbers, flint-hearted sinners, etc. Apparently wealth merely exists as a given, appearing naturally for no cause and at no cost, like manna from heaven, but the rich (somehow) with their hoodoo magic have usurped all the wealth, so the manna meant for us falls only on them. This is the economic theory of a cargo-cultist.

Chesterton’s economic theory does not realize that the consumers, not the whim of the factory owner, sets the price of goods and the price of every factor of production, including the wages of labor.

His theory does not notice that the poor factory worker was mass-producing cheap goods for the poor, at prices they could afford, leading to the general rise of wealth and luxury of the nation. It is the capitalist, who invests, builds the factory, and creates the jobs. It is the capitalist who allows the poor shoeless man and the poor shoe-factory worker to make a mutually advantageous exchange.

If the rich man who built the factory were a thief, and hanged as other thieves are hanged, the victims that he robs would be the richer when he leaves off robbing them.

In reality, if the rich man does not invest, the factory is not built, and the poor man who wanted to buy shoes will go unshod and the poor man working in a shoe factory will go begging.

Read this book for its lucid prose and droll paradoxes in which Chesterton finds delight: but for an understanding of how the market system works and why it works, read HUMAN ACTION by Ludwig von Mises. (Which you can read here. If even one tenth part of the lessons of von Mises were heard and understood, nine tenths of the mischief of the modern world, including the evils of the so called scientifically planned state, would never arise.)

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Chesterton and Hitchens

Famed journalist and apologist for a vehemently anti-intellectual strain of atheism Christopher Hitchens, in an article posthumously published after he passed to his reward decided, not to his credit, to sharpen his pen in a last barb against the Great White Whale of journalism, the legendary and irrepressible G.K. Chesterton, a famed journalist and apologist for a vehemently intellectual strain of theism, Catholic Christianity.

The full tone-deaf absurdity and infantilism of Mr Hitchens’ final, or post-final, effort with ink is saved from loud public acclamation mostly because the loud public knows not who G.K. Chesterton is. This forms one of many reasons why the faithful should pray for the loud public: forgive them, Lord, they know not what they should be reading.

The crowning absurdity is Mr Hitchens’ accusation that Mr Chesterton’s frivolity and love of paradoxes, quips, and well rounded periods of sentence prevented him (Chesterton, not Hitchens) from being a sober moral voice condemning Hitlerism.

The absurdity issues from three fountains: first, the paradox, or, to use a more accurate and less kindly word, the hypocrisy, of a socialist of Mr Hitchens’ denomination criticizing a socialist of Mr Hitler’s denomination, both men being otherwise in the same communion; second, the historical illiteracy of criticizing Chesterton for not criticizing Hitler, a man who achieved the office of chancellor two years before Chesterton’s death and whose enormities were as yet unknown to the world; third, the stark ignorance of criticizing Chesterton without having read enough Chesterton to be aware of his writings before, during and after World War One taking Germany to task for Prussianism — or the stark dishonesty of having read those writings and pretending they are not the most sober challenge to the type of scientifically managed modern socialist centralized state that Prussia represents, a state dead to God and to notions of decency, expelled from Christendom and from civilization.

Instead of reprinting a list of such works (APPETITE OF TYRANNY comes to mind, not to mention THE CRIMES OF ENGLAND. A number of essays on the topic can be found in THE END OF ARMISTICE) which show both the sobriety and penetration of Mr Chesterton’s crusade against what he called Prussianism and we call Nazism, I will merely direct the curious reader to a rather more complete and charitable answer to and debunking of Mr Hitchens’ final essay than my own, which unfortunately consists of little more than the journalistic equivalent of holding Mr Hitchens’ efforts to my nose, clearing my nasal passage of mucus with a rude noise of indelicate enthusiasm, and flinging the crumpled yet sticky wad away to be trampled in the mire under the tread of honest men.

This is from the pen of Zac Alstin over at Mercator.net:

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/duel_of_the_deceased

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Breakthrough in Neuroscience

For those of you who have asked for a change of topic, here is an interesting article about an advance in neuroscience: a British physician apparently can communicate with a patient diagnosed as being brain-dead (persistent vegetative state) through an MRI system. (hat tip to Mark Shea.)

Adrian Owen still gets animated when he talks about patient 23. The patient was only 24 years old when his life was devastated by a car accident. Alive but unresponsive, he had been languishing in what neurologists refer to as a vegetative state for five years, when Owen, a neuro-scientist then at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues at the University of Liège in Belgium, put him into a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine and started asking him questions.

Incredibly, he provided answers.

A change in blood flow to certain parts of the man’s injured brain convinced Owen that patient 23 was conscious and able to communicate. It was the first time that anyone had exchanged information with someone in a vegetative state.

Patients in these states have emerged from a coma and seem awake. Some parts of their brains function, and they may be able to grind their teeth, grimace or make random eye movements. They also have sleep–wake cycles. But they show no awareness of their surroundings, and doctors have assumed that the parts of the brain needed for cognition, perception, memory and intention are fundamentally damaged. They are usually written off as lost.

Owen’s discovery, reported in 2010, caused a media furore. …

… Many researchers disagree with Owen’s contention that these individuals are conscious….

My comment:

As a science fiction writer, the implications have been explored many times in fiction, because we are discussing a possible system of mechanical telepathy. This could affect everything from jurisprudence (what if the system can form a reliable lie detector?) to cybernetics (what if the system could allow a patient to bypass damaged neural tissue and regain control of limbs and life?) The possibilities here are dizzying.

As a philosopher, I assume these are the researchers of the same caliber who earlier proved that men lack free will, because neurological studies show brain activity accompanies the reported awareness of a decision to move a finger.  The logical conclusion to draw is that ambiguous neuroscience makes for bad philosophy and worse theology.  My warning to experts is not to venture out of the field of your expertise without a warning to your audience, lest they give your words undue weight.

As a loyal son of the Catholic Church, my reaction to the article in general is less than moderate: In your face, culture of death! The science you worship instead of use now has some evidence that you are killing living souls in your grotesque love of euthanasia: and you call us backward and superstitious? We were here before you! You generation of vipers, you selfish bastards, how shall you escape the wrath to come?

When Terri Schiavo was killed in her bed by the state of Florida, and the press and the governor of the state stood by sitting on their hands, ignoring the weeping parents, and the culture of death celebrated in unseemly if not satanic glee, declaring that Schiavo had earned the privilege of starving to death, dying slowly by inches by dehydration.

The generation of vipers was too kind hearted to take a gun to her temple and shoot, as one would do to kill a mad dog or broken-legged horse, or kill her with lethal injection or electrocution as one would do with a condemned criminal, or slit her wrists. Instead, due to the legal nicety which somehow declared feeding and watering a sick person to be “extraordinary life support” we starved her to death.

Now comes this johnny-come-lately scientific evidence to support what the Church has always known: they you cannot write off a living human being “as good as dead” and play God, and grant death, without running an inhuman risk.

To the living patient unable to move or speak and convince her killers that she is still alive, this is a scene out of some Poe terror tale of premature burial. That the killers would decide to kill you slowly by inches, when you cannot even beg for death, merely adds horror to the terror, a grotesque irony, for which the perpetrators will have to pay and double again in purgatory or in hell, when the books of their deeds are opened and read aloud.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Theology as Science or as Law

I said I would stop talking on this topic, as I wish not to give scandal to the heathen overhearing our friendly (or unfriendly) debate between denominations, but a response to a follow up question to the Parable of the Arbiters I hope will be allowed by way of epilog.

It is not surprising that the opinion of Protestantism arose in the Sixteenth Century, which was the century when science grew to unprecedented heights of prestige in the intellectual circles of the day. Luther and Calvin invented a theology that was almost a parody of science, insisting, as (for example) no jurist studying law would insist, that the individual conscience and conviction was paramount over what had been established by the authority and precedent qualified to do so.

If I may extend the metaphor: Lutherans can see Luther as a foreshadow of Einstein, willing to set the entire field of his study on its ear, but instead of appealing to the authority of nature in experimentation (as Einstein famously did during the solar eclipse of 1912)Luther appealed to the authority of the Bible, which he took to be an authority objective and neutral enough to judge between him and the world of Christendom, and yet was an authority recognized by both parties.

Orthodoxy perhaps sees Luther more in the mold of some crazed activist judge, perhaps Judge Frank Johnson in United States v. Montgomery County Board of Education (1969). His Honor is not doing science, he is merely setting aside the precedents and constitutional authority meant to deal with the case before him, and making up something out of his own feverish imagination because of the indignation of his conscience.

(Whether one agrees with the moral argument that busing is just and practical and necessary, no sound legal argument can be made that federal judges establishing population quotas in municipal schools based on race ratios is one of the limited and enumerated powers of the Constitution granted to the federal judiciary.)

Luther, in effect, held that one man, armed with right reason, a copy of the Bible and the Holy Spirit, can legally overrule the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils of the last fifteen centuries before him.

If you see the difference between science and law, it is right and proper for a scientist to appeal to nature (or a philosopher to appeal to reason) and defy anyone who disagrees, even if the whole world disagrees; but it is wrong for a judge to rewrite the statues, the common law and the Constitution to suit himself, or to decide what the law is when the lawfully seated legislature, the precedent of all previous cases, and the Founding Fathers disagree. They are not just anyone.

If theology is a scientific discipline operating by similar rules to science, then Luther is like a revolutionary scientist, and his bravery applauded.

If theology is a jurisprudential discipline operating by similar rules to law, then Luther is an revolutionary anarchist or successionist. He is a juror who thinks the determinations of competent authorities properly vested with authority can be overturned by anyone whose conscience cannot consent to the ruling. In such a case, his bravery is mere defiance.

Why, then, can a theologian overrule the determinations of Ecumenical Councils? The concept, from a legal point of view, is absurd. The Ecumenical Councils determine the theological issues and make a final decision. After that the issue is closed.

For if there is no way to close an issue, then no one in the Church need agree with anyone on any point, not even the fundamentals, and we would all in effect be universal Unitarians.

Since the one thing that makes Christianity different from paganism and even Jewry is the concept of a shared and authoritative body of doctrine, I don’t think any mainstream Christian can hold to the opinion that all baptized believers can rewrite and reinterpret the Nicene Creed, the canon of scripture, and all dogmas of the faith each man as shall seem right in his own eyes.

For better or worse (and I think it far, far to the better) Christianity is the one institution which invented or at least perfected the idea of orthodoxy. Nothing else has the conception of a shared and authoritative body of dogmas dogmatically taught and believed. Christian Scientists are true Christians because they expel and anathematize dissenters and heretics. Unitarians are not true Christians because they do not and cannot: they have no body of doctrine from which to dissent. (Leftists, oddly, by this definition are true Christians, because they do have dogmas and doctrines and mechanisms of anathema to suppress dissent, albeit one of their dogmas is that they have no dogmas, merely a truth obvious to all mentally awake and morally straight observers. Mohammedans likewise. The Jewish race occupies a unique position in this as in all things, but a Jew born a Jew cannot be excommunicated from the faith, because the communion of faith is not the only tie that binds them into one people.)

And yet just this week a vehement amateur theologian was arguing with me as if *I* could overturn the decision of Seventh Council of Second Nicaea AD 787 (the decision that iconoclasm was anathema) or as if I had the right to withdraw my fealty from the Church if a sufficiently convincing argument were made that the Council decided wrongly.

Good grief! I think the Montgomery case was wrongly decided. I think Dred Scott was wrongly decided. I think Alcoa was wrongly decided,and I thought Roe v Wage was the very worst piece of pretzelheaded legal reasoning I had ever seen, and that was way before I was an antiabortionist. Need I go on? Yet it is unlawful for me to withdraw my fealty from the United States government for any cause other than the foundational cause: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.” Which means that a short train of abuses and usurpations only erratically pursuing the object of a limited despotism shall arise, then it is not our right to overthrow the government. If this is the rule for merely a secular state erected for the worldly convenience of smugglers and dissenters, why, should not my fealty to divine institutions erected the will and command of Providence be afforded greater latitude before I take up arms and fly the Jolly Roger?

If you laugh or shake your head in weary scorn, dear reader, I suspect this is because you do not see the question as a legal one, but as a scientific or philosophical one. If you ask me, “what is truth?” you pose a deep philosophical question, and if I answer with a question, “who teaches the truth with authority?” no doubt you think I have changed the subject. No, I merely unearth the hidden assumption where we differ.

You see, the amateur theologian was arguing like a scientist: he was urging me (as he saw it) to look through Galileo’s telescope and discover for myself to my own satisfaction that Second Nicaea was wrong, whereupon I could make up my own mind on the issue, bound only by my conscience and my loyalty to the Holy Spirit.

I was urging him (as I saw it) to set aside the telescope and read the lawbook, where, in black and white, it is all written out what means we shall use to settle these disputes, and who has authority to settle them, and our loyalty to that authority is likewise bound by my conscience and my loyalty to the Holy Spirit.

I seemed wrongheaded to him, because, unlike the dispute about Global Warming and Darwinism, you do not settle scientific issues by the votes of politicians; he seemed wrongheaded to me, because, unlike disputes about Socialism and Eugenics, you do not settle legal issues by observation, experimentation, or by reference to the authority of science.

(As it turned out, I was not patient enough with him to drill down to this more fundamental layer of dispute, for which I take the blame, because the question is one that merits sober and careful debate. The poor man was trying to ask me my epistemology on the issue, and I kept huffing at him that I had answered his question, which, in fact, I had not. He was asking me about this very point.)

This is but analogy, and I hope no misleading one, since theology is neither a scientific nor a jurisprudential discipline, and has elements of both and more besides, since it is the mother of both and more besides.

 

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

The Parable of the Arbiters

A reader with the sagacious yet doughty name of Scholar at Arms, in reference to a prior post called the Parable of the Peddlers, writes this:

An interesting parable, Mr. Wright. I would observe that statements such as “to me, and I assume to the average faithful Catholic, there is not a group of equal and competing claims in the marketplace of ideas” seem to be unlikely to persuade those whom C.S. Lewis referred to as “Mere Christians.” It is a statement which suggests (though does not say outright) that those who are sifting through the doctrinal claims of competing denominations will not find the communion they are looking for among you and your fellow average faithful Catholics. For this and other related reasons, I hope that your posting of today will be the last we read of this schism here for a good long while.

Well, I think it merits at least one last post, the explain or explain away at least one misconception about what my parable was about. If I may indulge on your kind patience.

Let me take the comments seriatim.

<blockquote>I would observe that statements such as “to me, and I assume to the average faithful Catholic, there is not a group of equal and competing claims in the marketplace of ideas” seem to be unlikely to persuade those whom C.S. Lewis referred to as “Mere Christians.”</blockquote>

I completely agree. That is why I prefaced the parable with a comment with the comment that I was not trying to persuade anyone, but merely giving a report of my opinion and judgment.

<blockquote>”It is a statement which suggests (though does not say outright) that those who are sifting through the doctrinal claims of competing denominations will not find the communion they are looking for among you and your fellow average faithful Catholics.”</blockquote>

I am not sure what you mean.

Do you mean that I am implying that the communion of sympathy between all believers and brothers in Christ must be defective and ergo Protestants and Catholic must hate each other? I don’t believe that and did not imply it.

Or do you mean that I am implying Catholics believe the Protestant sacrament of Communion is invalid due to the lack of a consecrated priest to transubstantiate the Host, and therefore I believe the Protestant have no communion with Christ? I don’t believe that and did not imply it. The Protestants don’t even hold to the doctrine of the Real Presence.

Or do you mean that Catholics reject the process of sifting through doctrinal claims, and therefore Catholics are unfit to commune with? Or that Catholics think others are unfit to commune with them? I don’t believe that and did not imply it.

I reject these interpretations utterly. Honestly, I did not even remotely imply any of these things.

If you meant yet something else again, my wit is too loosely woven to net it as it flew by.

What I said was that many Protestants see the diversity of churches as a marketplace of ideas, and think that is a good thing.

At least one non-Catholic I know believes this diversity is crucial to the success of Christianity and is God’s divine Will. She says that each man must be drawn to God severally by his own way and bridge, for all winding roads lead up the mountain to the peak. While I would like to believe that, mainstream Christianity teaches that the way is straight and narrow, and that there is but one bridge.

 

What I said was that I assume the average Catholic does not regard the Church as merely one denomination among many, all of whom are competing in a marketplace.

It does not look like a marketplace to us.

It looks like a schoolroom with a school marm. Some of the students claim, truly or falsely, to have caught the teacher cheating, or deranged, and now they want to use her lecture notes and nothing else, note she wrote in happier days before her derangement, and use them to teach the class.

Unlike a market, the students do not get a vote on what they learn. Hence the dispute is not over whose ideas are correct (which the sophomores are in no position to judge)  the dispute is over who has the right to teach and be heard.

It was the difference between the marketplace approach and the broader approach I was pointing at. I was not trying to persuade anyone to be Christian, or to be Catholic.

I certainly was not asking anyone NOT to sift through the various claims, since I did it myself.

All I was doing was urging men to sift through the claims without being deceiving into thinking the claims were of the same type.

But I will say this, and I do intend this to persuade you of at least this one small point:

The various denominations are not making the same claims.

All the heirs claim to be the true heir. But each group of heirs appeals to a different judge and asks for a different standard of judgment. That was my point.

I will make the point again, this time without recourse to parable, since I fear being grossly misunderstood.

Both the Catholics and the Orthodox claim to be the same institution founded by Christ and His apostles from the First to the Tenth Century. In the Eleventh there was a break beyond repair. The dispute there is constitutional and historical.

The Nestorians and Copts and Malabars in Africa and Asia broke communion with the Church for separate reasons and much earlier, in the Fifth Century, in doctrinal disputes over early Church councils.

In the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century arose the Reformers claim is that the Church, because of various doctrinal corruption or evil acts, abdicated her mandate, and needed to be restored to that original and pure institution. After the Counsel of Trent, the Reformers broke communion with the Church and formed their own, at the time national churches, like the Church of England.

Additional Reformers claimed these churches were inadequate or apostate and again formed additional and dissenting denominations. We can call them Dissenters.

The main claim to authenticity and authority of all these Reformation denominations, Reforming or Dissenting, is doctrinal purity, particularly scriptural purity. The dispute is doctrinal.

In the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century arose the claim that certain prophets or healers (Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy or Sun Myung Moon can serve as examples) enjoyed an independent writ of authority to found a new church, based on the discovery or a vision or a visitation.

For example, Mary Baker Eddy claims to be restoring Christianity to its original form with its lost element of healing; Sun Myung Moon is attempting to unify all world religions into a somewhat Taoist and Aristotelian form of Christianity.

Other new denominations, Restorationists, arose at the same time making a less ambitious claim, but part of the general movement to restore Christianity to a primitive and apostolic and ecumenical form. These Restoration churches claim lineage from the original and primitive church. Whether you classify them with the denominations I use as examples is a matter of definitions. If their claim was doctrinal rather than charismatic, I would classify them as Dissenters, who, in effect, are Protestants protesting the Protestants.

Whatever you think of the claims, the point is that the claim being made is ecumenical, a return to a lost form.

This dispute here is charismatic. The claim is that the original Church lost (or never had) the charism or mark or mandate of Heaven, and that signs and wonders, healing, visions and miracles show that this new teacher preaching a new Christ, like a younger son receiving an unexpected birthrite despised by the elder, has arisen to lead the Christian world.

A handy dandy picture might sum this up more easily:

Now, this overview of history by itself need not persuade anyone of anything, but that point being made is that the notion that we are dealing with a “marketplace of ideas” is false, or, rather, only one of the

In the Marketplace, the only arbiter of your purchases and customer loyalty is your appetites. In the Marketplace of Ideas, a loftier setting, the only arbiter is your intellect. My point is that the point of whether the sifting of denominational claims is like a marketplace is itself one of the points is dispute. Who is to be the arbiter?

Let me make this clear by referring to the various movements mentioned:

The claim of the Charismatic type is based on the authority of the charism (to use the word in its original sense) of a charismatic leader. Joseph Smith saw a golden plate and spoke with an angel; Mary Baker Eddy healed the sick and raised the dead; Mohammad in the Seventh Century spoke with the archangel Jibrael, and Montanus in the Second spoke with or spoke for the Paraclete.

The judge they would take us to rests on the reliability of the charismatic claim. If you are sick and go to a Christian Scientist and get miraculously healed (as I have been) that is strong evidence as to the truth of their claim. That is the arbiter to which they appeal. Mary Baker Eddy and her followers voted to establish a church.

To the Christian Scientists, dispute seems simple. If the early Apostles and their disciples had the gift of healing, and now the First Church of Christ, Scientist, wields that same gift and your church does not, why not go where the gifts are? Can such gifts can come from other than God?

If you believe (and, with all due respect for Christian Scientists, as I do myself believe) that prophets do not have the authority to vote a church in being, that arbiter is not the arbiter to whom your belief appeals.

Again, the arbiter to which Joseph Smith appeals rests on the reliability of his having seen and translated the golden tablets from the angel Moroni. If you believe (and, with all due respect for the Church of Latter Day Saints, as I do myself believe) that prophets do not have the authority to vote a church in being, that arbiter has no jurisdiction.

The claim of the Protestant type would take us to the arbitration of the intellect. Oddly enough, Reformers are sometimes criticized (at least in Catholic circles) for their emphasis (we call it overemphasis) on the spontaneous and emotional and passionate nature of their communion with God.

I reject these criticisms being a misunderstanding of the Protestant mind. All Protestants, even those who reject Puritanism, have a strong inclination toward the ideal of pure worship, a simplicity and purity of rite.

It is not emotionalism. It is intellectualism.

The Puritans (and, to a degree, the Protestants) seek to simplify the gorgeous rituals of their fathers, and to eliminate the intercession of priests and saints, and this for a variety of reasons: either because they hold it to be unworthy to pray indirectly or ask assistance; or they suspect the images are idols under another name, and prayers to saints are a forbidden act of worship; or that all these things are a temptation and distraction from the true and utterly pure act of worship which has no forms, nor embodiment, no smells or bells or paraphernalia.

To the Catholic, this seems as incomprehensible as asking a man in love not to carry a photograph of his wife in his billfold. And the Protestant claim that the husband is in danger of falling in love with his photo and leaving his wife leaves us nonplussed.

But to the Protestant, it would be like asking a husband on his honeymoon, when his bride is in the room, to stop looking at the photo and look instead upon the real thing. A bridegroom that refused to stop looking at his photo of his wife while consummating the marriage would be a grotesque monster of lovelessness, and his marriage be a mockery.

The Protestant argument is that the rites and usages of the Church are not an aid and a glorification, but are instead in conflict with the pure act of worship.

The Protestant does not want anything, not even a ceremony of worship, to stand between himself and the naked glory of God Almighty.

Each different Protestant sect (I exclude the Anglicans for a reason I mention below) justifies its dissent from the sect from which it sprang on the grounds of doctrinal impurity or errors of discipline in their fathers.

Hence, the arbiter to which they all must appeal is theology.

Simpler and purer theologies tend to serve the role as arbiter, at least in most cases familiar to me. (I am no expert on Protestantism! I do no know the doctrinal differences between various groups of Baptists and Methodists, for example. I don’t know what the argument was about.)

Most often, the Protestant will refer to the Bible, and, in English speaking countries especially, the King James Bible, as the authority on which their theology rests. The doctrine of Sola Scriptura makes any other approach problematical.

The judge to which they would take us is the Bible, and the reasoning, clear or obscure, the human intellect can bring to bear on the various tales and histories and psalms and prophecies and gospels and epistles and apocalyptic visions which comprise the many books therein.

If you believe the authority of the Bible (as I and all Christians do) and on the perceptive power of the human intellect (as I and all philosophers do) the Protestants present a strong and weighty argument for their case.

But if you believe (as I, with all due respect for the Protestants, do myself believe) that the intellectual argument taken in isolation from history, or the Bible taken in isolation from the tradition which grants it whatever authority it possesses, are insufficient justification to reform the Church or to found a new church when the old Church refuses to reform herself; and also if you believe biblical and doctrinal differences of opinion are an insufficient justification to defy the Council of Trent, or any Ecumenical Church Council, or local synod, or even to disobey your local archbishop, bishop, or priest;  then the idea of forming a whole new church based on theological and doctrinal reasoning is suspect.

If so, then the arbiter of intellectual theology is not the arbiter to whom who submit your claims to be judged.

In the same way that Joseph Smith was foreshadowed by Mohammad and Mohammad by Montanus, there are earlier examples in history of the arbitration of the intellect. (I am not drawing a parallel between Mormons and Montanists, by the way, merely commenting that they appeal to the same arbiters, the arbitration of the Holy Ghost or charism ). Likewise here, the Nestorians and Monophysites or Miaphysites broke with the Church after the general councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. Their objections were primarily theological, albeit the the dispute in this case was over Christology rather than Justification.

Finally, with the Anglicans and the Orthodox, while there were theological disputes that accompanied the schism, I truly doubt those disputes drove it or maintain it.

The question there was political and cultural, and the arbiter is history.

The argument which would persuade a neutral onlooker or “Mere Christian” to join with these churches rests on whether the historical claim of the Roman Metropolitan can claim legal priority over the Metropolitans of Byzantium, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. In the Anglican case, the question is whether a Prince, anointed by God to be the leader of his people, has the right under law to assume the prerogatives of leader of the Church within his national boundaries?

The argument here is legal and historical, asking who did what to whom and whether it was constitutionally justified. If anything, these are remarkably more delicate and difficult knots to unwind that the theological or charismatic claims, because the arbiter here is historical fact, and all the evidence is centuries old, and colored over with partisanship on every side.

If you believe (as I do) that the Church has the legal and even the divine authority to govern herself and to establish and teach authentic Christian doctrine, then the claim of the Orthodox is the strongest and weightiest of all (and, ironically, the claim of the Anglicans the weakest of all–there is no pre-Nicene Metropolitan See at Canterbury). For if the Archbishop of Rome presumed dignities and powers beyond his constitutional station, if he indeed usurped powers originally meant to be shared among the equal Metropolitans and the councils of Archibishops, then his excommunication is not merely legal, but obligatory, for his attempt was to make the Holy Church his private fief.

Unfortunately, the titaness called history walks with feet of fire over the historical records, and the worm of time and the torches of war and the obscuring pens of partisan or erroneous scribes makes this dispute one a layman dare not join.

My own reason for not joining with the Orthodox or Anglican Communion is personal, and need not concern us here. Let us merely say that I appeal to another and final arbiter for my strength of conviction.

To me, the historical argument is not negligible. Indeed, none of these arguments are negligible! But neither is any one of these arbiters I mention above, neither personal taste, nor prophetic charisma, nor intellectual and scriptural clarity, nor historical and legal constitutionality, is by itself a sufficient arbiter.

(I do regret having lost the readership of Doc Rampage, because I believe in that sentence I finally answered the question he three and four times asked of me, which is what standard one should use for deciding denominational claims.)

Let me not obscure the more general point by speaking of myself. The general point which I place before all candid readers is this:

To Scholar-at-Arms, with my compliments, I say this: If you thought I was indulging in some sort of Triumphalism, saying that I was right and justified and that my brothers in Christ were wrong and damned, I assure you humbly I neither thought that nor implied it.

What I was talking about was which approach to use to settle the completing claims.

My point was — and this point will offend no honest man — that choosing between denominations is not like choosing between different goods for sale in a market.

In a marketplace, the buyer has the choice of goods, and, assuming no fraud nor double dealing, the goods are all of an advertised quality. Only one’s personal appetite is arbiter. Each man finds his own path.

The situation of the Christian Civil Wars is more like a trial than a trade show, or more like a dispute over a will, with many candidates claiming to be the true heirs to the legacy of Christ, but nearly each one making a different argument, using different standards, to define what constitutes an heir; and therefore appealing to a different arbiter.

Nor is it not like a judge choosing between the disputes of heirs and assigns, all of whom make some claim to the patrimony of the decedent. But it is more like a courtroom than like a marketplace, because such a determination is part of the argument over which church, or any of them, are legitimately to be trusted. (But even whether Apostolic succession confers legitimacy is also a point in dispute.)

It is not even like choosing between recruiting offices whether to join the Army or the Navy under whose discipline you shall serve. But it is more like this than like choosing between the butcher and the baker’s shops.

It is much more like a maiden choosing between the suitors for her hand in marriage, particularly if she is an old fashioned maiden who expects her husband to lead the family and whom she must obey.

You are choosing whom to love.

And because of the way love works, the choice is made with the whole person, not just with the head or the heart. All the arbiters of your soul must agree.

That was my point. I tried to make the point in terms of a story, because I think love is naturally more story like than it is a matter of legal reasoning.

<blockquote>”For this and other related reasons, I hope that your posting of today will be the last we read of this schism here for a good long while.”</blockquote>

If you’ve read my words, you know that I regard the discussion of doctrinal differences between the denominations to erect a scandal and a stumblingblock to believers and nonbelievers alike.

I was once in a D&D game where the party fell into a dispute over the loot and drew swords and set to each other. The noise attracted a wondering party of orcs, who, discovering the party warring with each other, simply stood their polishing their weapons and picking their teeth, waiting for the good guys to maim and weaken each other before falling on them.

Considering how thickly the wolves of the Culture War press on us, and considering that the Catholics need the help of all other Christians and men of good will in fending off assaults, grown more bold in recent years, against the religious liberty all free men cherish dearly, to exasperate each other is not only unchristian, but impractical.

For reasons like this and reasons likes yours, I would not mind turning to other topics. But I also admit I find it nearly impossible to resist responding to a comment or question like yours.

So, unfortunately, your polite and well meant request that I drop the topic required at least this one long explanation and response.

If no one takes offense with my words or utters a rebuke or counterargument at which I take offense, it may well be the last I speak on this topic for a season.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

We have been vilified so long

I was reading FAITH OF OUR FATHERS by Archbishop Gibbons.

It is not uncommon for a dialogue like the following to take place between a Protestant Minister and a convert to the Catholic Church:

Minister: You cannot deny that the Roman Catholic Church teaches gross errors–the worship of images, for instance.

Convert: I admit no such charge, for I have been taught no such doctrines.

Minister: But the Priest who instructed you did not teach you all. He held back some points which he knew would be objectionable to you.

Convert: He withheld nothing; for I am in possession of books treating fully of all Catholic doctrines.

Minister: Deluded soul! Don’t you know that in Europe they are taught differently?

Convert: That cannot be, for, the Church teaches the same creed all over the world, and most of the doctrinal books which I read, were originally published in Europe.

Yet ministers who make these slanderous statements are surprised if we feel indignant, and accuse us of being too sensitive. We have been vilified so long, that they think we have no right to complain.

My comment: I was struck forcefully with the parallel between the uproariously false accusations leveled in this imaginary dialog to the convert, and the same accusations I as a convert have heard earlier this week: the worship of images, and falsifications of documents.

The same wounded indignation of the accuser surfaced in this space, the slanderer was peeved, nay, offended with a righteous indignation that any Catholic would dare object to a slander being called a slander, or a lie a lie.

It was astonishing to me (and I mean the jaw-dropping, eye-popping astonishment from a Tex Avery cartoon) that any man would convince himself that the target of his falsehoods should welcome them. We have been vilified so long, that they think we have no right to complain.

Particularly foolish is the Dan Brown idea of a Church so powerful as to control the content of all the documents and books and memories of all her clergy and laity, and yet strangely weak enough to be unable to prevent you (allegedly the sole brave seeker of truth who knows better than scholars what actually happened to ancient parchments or remote printing presses) from discovering that truth, or, having discovered it, to suppress you.

I cannot imagine why anyone would believe such an unlikely scenario, unless it be for the psychological reason that the image of oneself as the sole seeker of truth confronting the shadowy giant of a two-millennia-old worldwide Imperial conspiracy looming over the horizon, richly appeals to one’s need for self flattery.

Let us deflate that self flattery with a word. There was indeed an Imperial conspiracy, backed by all the powers of Rome and, later, of Constantinople, enforced by the panoply of worldly power, from secret informants to public torments. This conspiracy was directed against the Orthodox and Catholic Church, first by the pagan Caesars of Rome, and then by the Arian Caesars of Constantinople. Those who defied that power bled and died as martyrs with bravery you cannot imagine, O conspiracy theorist, much less match. For you to defy emperors many centuries dead is no testament to your bravery.

The words of Archbishop Gibbons were first published in 1876, a century and a third ago.

The devil need never invent new lies, for the Sons of Adam are so ready to believe the old ones.

What should a Christian do, hearing such things? He should hear his master’s voice: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.”

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

Question and Answers from Across the World!

This starts as a reference to an ongoing discussion, but then veers into other areas, so I place it here as its own topic.

A reader named Gonzalo writes:

well, there is another option. Let’s say there was 1 stall , by lady A.

Lady A had B,C,D,E,…,etc followers.

Then one day A dies. Her books are split between the students and they all fight over who is the true disciple.

Everyone goes and put a stall under their teacher A. Since they are not the same, people call them stall B,C,D,E.

After some time, E convince people to call her A by using A stall. Then she even changes her name to A.

b,c,d,….,etc. claim the new A is not lady A but E who changed her name and stole the books and stall of her teacher.

Problem is, almost all of them claim to be the true successor of the first A.

You say that since E did not change the content of the books too much, has the right to say she is the new A.

I don’t think the problem has an answer since we don’t know the will of former A.

there are at least 3 cases:

1) one or more of them are true disciples.

2) None of them has the right to call himself A, or even disciple of A.

They are deceiving themselves. The church died with the former A.

3) Lady A was lying all along. Even her books are a lie.

Well, even if the church is fake, some of the books might still be true.

There’s plenty of people who lie with the truth. (the words are true, but their intention is not what they show).

I liked your golden age trilogy.

I want to be a computer engineer, and kinda based my choice of career on your view of that world.

I believe internet and computer science could be the key to a better future.

Loved the concept of a temporal common mind , originated from mankind and AI’s as a way to solve hard problems (well, other authors thought it before, but i liked your version of it).

Even if it’s not completely possible, it was interesting.

are you writing a new book ? If the answer is yes, will it be about scifi ? or will your write something else ? :O

Your last posts have been all about religion and politics.

one thing I’ve missed is your view on war. To us(other countries), you guys(USA) seem to love war a little too much. One thing is defend yourself, but to go attack other countries is….

And jails with torture like Guantanamo don’t really help your case.

(the whole humanitarian and democratic country facade seems… fake.)

I see a huge conflict between a war bringer country and their christian religion. The first command was to not kill. It does not make sense to be christian and kill. Is this a lie ?

Will you write about science, ethic and other kind of topics ?

I would love to read your thoughts on genetic manipulation, and the potential creation of an AI.

do we have the right to play god ? if we tamper with our DNA, will we still be humans ?

Hope you keep writing from time to time… bye, and thanks a lot for your work. It’s nice to read a good book.

Let me answer this one point at a time.

“Problem is, almost all of them claim to be the true successor of the first A.”

Ah, but your little story leaves out something my little story left in.

Are the claims being made by all the claimants the same? Let us suppose that one claimant called A says, “I am the true heir because I can show a chain of title from (1) Peter, (2) Linus, (3) Anencletus (4) Clement, (5) Evarestus, (6) Alexander, (7) Sixtus, (8) Telesophorus …” and rattles off his genealogy like a Hobbit. The other claimant says, “At some unspecified point, the ideas in the book left by the decedent and the ideas taught by the other claimant show a discontinuity, nay, a betrayal, so that claimant is not the true heir.”

Even if we take claimant B’s claim in the best possible light, that claimant called B has not established several things: first, that the heirs have no right to develop (or corrupt) the ideas; second that attempting to develop (or corrupt) the ideas cuts the heir out of the will; third, he has not established at what point the line of title became corrupt; fourth and most importantly, he has not established why the legacy should or would fall to him.

Even if we believe that Luther was correct, and the Council of Trent was not a legal and legitimate Church Council, nay, even if we believe that the Antichrist took over the Western Church and possessed the body of Julius II — let us assume all this. The Western Church is legally and utterly dissolved, illegitimate, and gone. Even with all this, what gives Luther the right to found a new Church, and re-edit the Bible, declaring some books canonical and others apocryphal? Is he not arrogating to himself the office of the Pope, or the College of Cardinals, or even Christ Himself?

Speaking just as a lawyer now, if Luther, or claimant B, does indeed prove that claimant A forfeits his right to be the heir due to mismanagement and malfeasance and treason against his commission, et cetera — then the next heir in line for the throne is the Metropolitan Archbishop of Byzantium, or Antioch, or Jerusalem, or Alexandria. You see my point? If Luther proves the main point of dispute between the East and West in AD 1000 that the Bishop of Rome is not the Chief of the Church, then all this means, legally speaking, is that Luther now owes he obedience and fealty to the Orthodox Churches of the East. They at least can claim an apostolic succession.

If claimant B claims more dramatically that there is no succession, no heir, no pope, no leader of the Church, and indeed no church, he can claim that Christ intended to create something more like a prayer meeting and Bible study society — a group of layman who elect a pastor, but without sacraments, without hierarchy, without priests, without apostles, and so on. The main difficulty with this more radical claim is that it logically undermine itself. If there is no church, then one cannot claim to be the one true and surviving heir carrying it on.

“Well, even if the church is fake, some of the books might still be true.”

I am afraid I cannot imagine such a thing. Or rather, once the witness has been impeached, everything she says has to be greeted with skepticism. And my whole argument rests on the fact that she is the only witness to ask. The book she offers was written by her and contains what is little more than her lecture notes, her memorandum to herself of things she and she alone remembers.

I put it to you this way. Once we reject, say, Second Maccabees or the Book of Tobit as a lie told by the dishonest witness, which is the easier and better model of the world, the more elegant explanations: theory one – the liar lies about it all; theory two – the liar lied about the scene in Maccabees where God shows it is okay to pray for the dead as Catholics do, but the liar did not lie about A MAN BORN OF A VIRGIN COMING BACK FROM THE DEAD and floating into heaven. Er, after claiming to be God.

Once we grant that the lady lies about a trivial thing, easy to believe, like prayers for the dead, why to we believe that the liar is telling the truth about the thing that is so much harder to believe that only a supernatural power can make any man believe it, namely, that a man can be divine and rise from the grave and you can too?

“I liked your golden age trilogy.”

Why, thank you very much! I hope you seeing the dark side of me here on the internet will not put you off buying some other offering of mine in the future.

are you writing a new book ? If the answer is yes, will it be about scifi ? or will your write something else ?

Two books, or, rather two series. One is called CONCUBINE VECTOR, and the continuation of COUNT TO A TRILLION. The other is called SOMEWHITHER. The first is space opera, about two men who keep forcing themselves into larger and ever larger steps of intelligence augmentation, first biological and then cybernetic and then by download into world-sized brains, and then gas giant sized brains and then into large scale housings, in order to save or destroy the universe and win the girl. The second is sideways in time travel fantasy which I call my Anti-Dan Brown book, where the assassins of Opus Dei or the Knights Templar or whatever have the secret of paratime, and are trying to organize a coalition of alternate versions of the Roman Catholic Church against the one timeline where the Tower of Babel never fell, and the sons of Nimrod, and the giants not wiped out by the Deluge, cannot be stopped in anything they do. As an homage both to HIGHLANDER and A PRINCESS OF MARS your friendly author decided to make his hero just out-and-out unkillable. Fight scenes are easier to choreograph that way.

one thing I’ve missed is your view on war.

I am a hawk. After 9/11, the war is completely morally justified. Merely because the enemy fights out of uniform and hides behind civilians does not suddenly make it immoral or wrong to prosecute the war in the most prudent way possible.

To us(other countries), you guys(USA) seem to love war a little too much.

With all due respect, I believe the opposite. The main thing wrong with America is that we love war too little. We are very, very reluctant to go to war, we wait and wait until someone attacks us at Pearl Harbor or Manhattan Island, or until some small country we promised to defend is invaded, and then we fight so tentatively, with such an overwhelming regard for the lives of civilians and collateral damage that we double and triple the costs and losses of lives, theirs and ours, and embolden our foes.

One thing is defend yourself, but to go attack other countries is….

I am not sure to what this refers. There is no country which we have attacked where we struck first. A nation that harbors, aids and supplies an enemy who commits an act of war is a legitimate target. A nation that invades a neighbor we are obligated by treaty to defend, whom we defend, who sues for an armistice whose terms he then breaks is clearly the aggressor, not the victim. This is so even if the armistice is a long one. Even shooting down a single American plane is casus beli. Are you familiar with the laws of war?

And jails with torture like Guantanamo don’t really help your case.

While persons whose opinions I respect have said they have seen evidence that torture actually took place is convincing, what little evidence I have seen is the opposite. Unfortunately, even if the accusation of torture are true (and I do not as yet believe they are), the accusations have been made in precisely the way every radical propaganda machine spreads lies.

I am not saying there is no wolf. I am saying the boy who cries wolf has earned my distrust, and I have not seen the wolf myself.

That said, were it proved that the accusation is true, I would condemn it as monstrous and utterly morally evil. Torture is never justified.

So, if you were to say “spokesmen on the Right who make arguments in favor of torture hurt your cause” I would completely agree. That sounds like an admission that such torture has taken place, and that we have abandoned our civilization and our humanity.

(the whole humanitarian and democratic country facade seems… fake.)

I am not sure to what this refers. Are you claiming that America is neither a democracy nor offers more humanitarian aid than all the countries in Europe combined? Or are you claiming that the brave but vain attempt to establish a democracy in the Middle East for humanitarian reason is a mask to cover some more sinister purpose?

If so, it sounds like you listen to propaganda of the worst sort. If you believe such things, you are gullible. My advice to you, if I may be a little sharp with you, is that you learn to practice skepticism, and to question authority, particularly the lazy authority of received popular opinion. Look into the matter yourself, trusting no one source. Do not let emotion or sentimentality cloud your faculty of logical reasoning. Think.

I see a huge conflict between a war bringer country and their christian religion.

Allow me a moment of satire: To what war bringer country does this refer, my dear sir?

Was there some country of which I am unaware that threw two buildings into some innocent planes highjacked by terrorists who were happily minding their own business? Or was there a country that did not train, equip, and send out their soldiers in an act of war, harboring them afterward? Or a country that kept to the terms of her armistice and did not invade her neighbor, our ally?

More seriously, while my nation never has had and never will have an established religion, my national culture was once a Christian one, established for the express purpose of securing religious liberty, escaping the wars and civil wars and intolerance of the Old World. We have lost that since the 1960′s and are now a culture which is mildly secularist and mildly hostile to Christianity in general and Catholics in particular, and is sliding rapidly and awkwardly into the posture of an militantly and aggressively secularist and antichristian culture.

If you think America is immoral now, just wait until the last shred of Christian humility, decency and scruple and hesitation about using our wealth and power to force the world to worship the Moloch of abortion, the Ganymede of sexual abomination, and the Mammon of lucre has snapped like a broken chain and vanishes.  The beast will be unleashed. It will not be some halfway decent empire like the British or the Spanish, or even a healthy pagan empire like the Roman. It will be a nation of Nietzsches, worshipers of power, contemptuous of the weak. And we won’t govern as well as the Romans, or Spanish, or British, who at least had a healthy respect for family, religion, law and order.

On the bright side, such an Imperial America will go broke very quickly, since to manage finances requires a control of the appetites and a political self discipline. On the dark side, if America goes broke, the most likely power to assume world hegemony will be the Chinese, who, since World War Two, have been among the most cruel and ruthless gangsters on the planet. They have already prepared the ground, and have won many loyal hearts in the primitive and poor peoples of the world.

The first command was to not kill. It does not make sense to be christian and kill. Is this a lie ?

Let me ask Saint James the Great Matamoros the Moor-slayer and get back to you on that one.

Or Saint George.

Or Saint Constantine.

Or Saint Louis.

Or we can ask the patriarchs Abraham and Joshua or the Judges Gideon and Sampson or the Kings Saul and David. And Michael the Archangel. And the angel that passed over the hosts of Sennacherib.

Or (drawing a deep breath) Acacius of Byzantium, Adrian of Nicomedia, Saint Alfred the Great, Saint Crescentinus, Saint Demetrius of Thessalonica, Saint Eustace, Saint Florian, Saint Géréon of Cologne, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Longinus, Saint Joan of Arc, Saints John and Saint Paul, Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary, Saint Marcellus the Centurion, Saint Martin of Tours, Saint Maurice , Saint Mercurius, Saint Michael, Saint Menas, Saint Nuno Álvares Pereira, Saint Orestes , Saint Sebastian, Saints Sergius and Bacchus, Saint Terence of Pesaro, Saint Theodore of Amasea, Saint Theodore the General, Saint Typasius, Saint Victor, Saint William, and the Four Holy Marshals, namely Saint Quirinus of Neuss, Saint Hubertus, Saint Cornelius and Saint Anthony the Great. (whew).

If my point is too subtle, all these saints are either soldiers or patrons of soldiers.

The flip answer is that if God teaches pacifism, He has done a remarkably poor job of explaining His message to Abraham and Moses and the Patriarchs and Prophets and to Christ and His disciples and saints and apostles.

Let me answer more seriously: the first command is not to do murder. God does not forbid slaying either in self defense nor in the corporate self defense called war.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraphs 2302-2317, authoritatively teaches what constitutes a just war. By authoritatively, I mean Catholics are morally obligated to believe it. Non-Catholics can be anti-war pacifists without violating their consciences; but I am a Catholic.

“1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

3. there must be serious prospects of success;

4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition”.

I believe that Desert Storm more than has satisfied these conditions, most particularly point two. I seriously doubt a campaign of aerial bombardment by itself would satisfy the Just War requirements, for the reason mentioned in point four.

I also believe that every war since World War Two in which American has participated has been unlawful, even thought it would have been just had it been lawful, for the simple reason that the Constitution provides that Congress shall declare war, and has never done so.

Will you write about science, ethic and other kind of topics ?

I have in the past and doubtless shall do so again. I fear you will find my opinions both tedious and predictable. I am however, excited immensely by recent developments in private space flight, and in the discovery (assuming the signs are right) of the Higgs Boson.

I would love to read your thoughts on genetic manipulation, and the potential creation of an AI. Do we have the right to play god ? If we tamper with our DNA, will we still be humans?

In a way, this is what my latest book is about.

I would certainly be willing to bore you with my opinions on the topic, time permitting. The short answer is that we are made in the image and likeness of God, which I take to mean a spiritual image, that is, a creature with intelligence, free will and a moral sense. If we create a slave race of creatures without a moral sense or without free will, surely this defaces and desecrates that image. If we create a race with that image, then we are not making slaves but fathering children, and we would have the duties of parents toward them. No science fiction story I have ever read treats any artificial being, either genetic chimera or artificial intelligence, using the moral category of a parental duty toward a child. They all treat child-races like slaves or tools, or, in David Brin’s excellent Uplift series, like indentured servants.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.

The Parable of the Peddlers

In recent days a miniature controversy has raged in this space questioning the basic justification for the Catholic faith. Unfortunately, while the inquisitor started with an interesting and engaging line of questioning, he descended into a noisome parroting of “Jack Chick” style slanders against the Church, and gave flip answers, which I did not believe he honestly meant or honestly believed, when asked to justify his approach.

In all honestly, the fault is more mine than his for losing my temper, and the double fault mine for being so proud of being able to keep my temper. Let my sad example serve the gentle reader as a warning to eschew pride.

His position deserves a better advocate than he, and deserves better than my brush off. The question is good even if he is not the man to ask it.

What he is asking is the single most important question in Western history since roughly the Tenth Century. How man and nations decide this question has defined the character of every man and nation and the character of the generation and age in which they live. A reasonable and, indeed, a passionate argument can be given on both sides.

The argument is the justification for belief in, participation in, and loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church.

The question is central to history, because it involves the fundamental question of the role individualism to organized authority, the role of the Church and the State, Pontiff and Emperor, the role of the conscience. It involves questions of liberty and tyranny, of free will and predestination, of the limits of the limitless grace of God and the nature of Man and the Fall of Man, and has ramifications for all the major philosophical and political questions which have agitated Christendom for five centuries and more.

More tellingly, it has personal implications for the salvation or damnation of the soul of every readers who reads these words.

In the course of this discussion, I was asked to justify my personal decision to join in the communion with the Roman Catholic Church rather than join with one of the many and ever-growing number of other denominations, African or Orthodox or Protestant.

I generally am reluctant to discuss such things, as to have a friendly (or, in this case, very unfriendly) conversation about the differences we have with our brothers gives scandal to the world by humiliating the body of believers. We Christians are supposed to be loving and unified, and every smirking neopagan and angry atheist can point to the odium of our theological disputes as proof that we neither practice what we preach, nor have a God potent enough to quell the disquiet of schism.

In this case, I hope to decrease the odium by restricting my comments to my personal decision and personal opinion, as a matter of autobiographical interest only.

I will not here revisit the Trinitarian controversies which accompanied the rise of Nestorian and Mohammedan heresies, the Christological controversy which provoked Arianism, the Filioque controversy which accompanied and aggravated the Great Schism, or later controversies with other breakaway groups, Albigensians, Lutherans, or whatever.

Nor do I mean here to address claims which are schismatic rather than heretical. My reason for not taking communion with the Orthodox Church or the Anglicans has nothing to do with their dogmas and rites, which are, for all practical purposes, the same as ours. I am speaking only of dogmatic claims, that is, propositions that rely for their assent on the trust in the authority of the agent who teaches them, and the moral right to command assent.

There may be those who say there is no such authority. A Deist, for example, might claim that human reason alone is sufficient, and that no statement should be held to be true merely on the strength of the name of the teacher.

To them, I merely say adieu, that no comment here below is meant for their ears: they are pristine philosophers who assent to nothing dogmatically, nor do they believe eyewitnesses nor experts nor parents nor even the report of the weatherman, and therefore they cannot be Christians. For Christians are those who believe the Credo dogmatically. Even Peter took what Christ said on faith, that is, out of trust for the authority of Christ to speak and teach on matters Christ knew but Peter did not.

I was asked by what epistemology or method of distinguishing true from false I made the decision between the competing claims of the competing denominations, whether by human reason or divine inspiration, or both, or neither?

Another question to which this question led, implied but not asked, was this: no matter what the answer, whatever method was used by the Pope and the ministers of the Catholic Church to discover the will of God and define the correct teaching of the Church, or to win my assent to the authority of those teachings, could not any individual, either with himself or with others, use with equal validity the same method and come to another discovery and grant or withhold assent to it?

The implied question we need not reach: it is absurd. It is in effect saying that whatever grants the Pope papal authority and infallibility can be used by any private individual to claim the same authority, as when Henry VIII in effect declared himself the Pope of England, the head of her church and the guardian and final authority on matters of doctrine, faith and morals. Logically, if any private individual, or any king in his capacity as sovereign, can lawfully declare himself the final authority of Church doctrine, there is no role for the Church: all is merely a matter of private opinion. If any man can crown himself Pope, then there is no Pope.

Or, again, the question is the same as asking whether, if a theologian in the Sixteenth Century, or a layman in the Twenty-First, has a dispute with Saint John or Saint Peter or Saint Paul about the meaning of what Christ taught, whatever grants the Apostles or their successors the special knowledge or charisma or grant of authority to know what Christ taught, why cannot the layman in the Twentieth Century teach with the same confidence, dignity, authority and assurance of correctness as the men who knew Christ in the flesh? What make Peter so special? It is impossible to recite the question without hearing the note of petty envy it contains.

The question as asked is a more sober one: by what epistemology, by what theory of how man discerns true and false, are the various false claims about doctrine and theology and faith (for they cannot all be true) to be discerned?

Honestly, it is a good question and I cannot answer it, because it is based on a false premise. The assumption that frames the question puts the question in a false light.

What is going on here is more fundamental than a juror’s decision between competing claims. It is much more like a maiden’s decision between competing suitors.

To me, and I assume to the average faithful Catholic, there is not a group of equal and competing claims in the marketplace of ideas. I am a member of the Mother Church, which is the mystical body of Christ, who is her head and animating spirit as well as her bridegroom. So to me, all doctrine looks like orthodoxy, which it the true teaching flowing like water from the pierced side of Christ, and heterodoxy, which is the falsehood imposed upon human gullibility and infidelity by the smoggy guile of hellish deception and dimness of human self-deception, intellects darkened by sin and heated by pride.

To the average Protestant, there is no Church, there is but a marketplace of ideas. In one stall is the Catholic claim, in another stall is the Lutheran or Calvinist or Anglican, and farther away is the Mormon or Christian Scientist or Unificationist stalls, each with a peddler before the stall, hawking his wares and urging the customer to buy.

So by what epistemology, either by human reason or the guidance of the Holy Spirit or both, do I choose between the stalls, all of them being equal before the choice is made?

My answer is that not all the peddlers are making an equal claim. Not all of them are peddling goods.

The choice is between things of a different nature, and, in a way, it is not a choice at all, but a calling.

The booksellers in stall B are selling a book that they took from stall A, ripped out some of the pages, and claim that is the original book.

The waterboy in stall C says that he can clean me without using water, using the ideas he got from the Lady in stall A, who has real water.

The counselor in stall E says my sins can be heard and confessed and forgiven and also advice be given me on how to amend my life; but that no human person will do these things, and he also uses the idea about confession he got from stall A, who actually has an adviser standing by to listen and advise.

And a few years ago, everyone agreed with the marriage counselor Lady in stall A that contraception was a bad idea, except this year, for no particular reason, none of the other stalls are still using that idea, the idea that they got from stall A. Who has not changed her mind.

All the good in all the stalls are second-hand except from one.

And when I ask the peddlers selling the goods in stalls B, C, D and E to justify why I should buy their goods second hand rather than getting them from the source, new rather than used, I hear utterly terrifying claims that the Lady in stall A adulterates her goods, poisons her bread, added to and subtracted from her book, and committed all fashion of filthy and abominable things.

I ask the bookseller in stall B once again where he got his book, and he won’t even admit he got it from the Lady in stall A. I ask him by what authority he ripped out certain pages and altered others, and he says it is because he loves and trusts the book so much. The Lady is a whore and a liar and a deceiver and nothing she says or does can be trusted! I ask him who wrote the book, preserved it, bled for it, and he says it was the Lady in stall A. If she cannot be trusted, then why do you trust her book? He clears his throat and says she was actually a lot like him when she was younger.

But when I see what stall A is actually selling, independent of the other claims of how adulterated the goods are, the facts don’t support the accusation.

The accusations all have the flippant character of people who say Christmas is a pagan holiday, and that Christians are worshiping a tree god of the pine tree because of its magical powers. When you talk to someone who owns a Christmas tree, whether you yourself believe in Santa Clause or not, you find out the Christmas tree owner does not think the tree is magical.

However, I should hasten to add that only a sophist of remarkable arrogance and duplicity would continue to argue that the Christmastree owner does indeed think the tree is magical, while merely not admitting he thinks that. An even more arrogance and duplicitous sophist would make the even less believable claim that the Christmastree owner thinks the tree is magic without realizing he thinks what the sophist says he thinks, and not what he thinks he thinks! I would postulate a sophist who, even when corrected and upbraided for his duplicity by the Christmastree owner himself, assumes the weary air of a man falsely accused and continues to insist on his honesty and innocence, but, nay, I dare not pose that, lest my hypothetical grow too extreme for credulity.

Curious, I go into stall A, and find out that what I thought was a stall was a door out of a cramped closet or cellar into an airier, larger and fairer edifice, a cathedral proud with shining pillar and a decorated roof ashine with stars and suns. All these stalls in the marketplace of ideas are merely some cramped cells in the back cellar of a church, a broken church that has barred the doors and plugged the halls leading to the nave. Every idea that they have comes from stall A, except for ones they invented themselves.

So how am I to answer any epistemological question about how I or mine decide between the competing claims of the various stalls selling goods when there are no stalls selling goods: there is only the one true owner and the men stealing from her.

My answer is that this is not a marketplace of ideas. It is a den of thieves.

I do not mean the seller in stall A is telling the truth about her goods and the accusers are not; I mean that she is not even selling what they say she is selling.

Because she is not selling goods at all. The peddler throw back her hood and reveals that she is my mother. The happy ending of the fairy tale is reversed, for when I find the beauty of the Cross and bestow a kiss, it is not the Church that changes, but rather I that am wakened from my enchanted sleep, and I am changed from a beast or a loathsome frog into a prince.

But this is not a fairy tale but a true tale, for the ending is but the beginning, and the prince must arm himself with the sword and truth and the shield of faith and the whole armor of God, and fight not only the giants looming dark and blind across all the horizons of the world, but the scorpions and dragons of his own fallen nature, and temptations as subtle as clouds of drifting poison.

In a gentle age, he may expect the scorn of men and the loss of the world’s good opinion, and in a harsher and more heroic age, he might expect stripes and wounds and fetters and death, but his expectations as of any loyal prince is to follow the footsteps of his master.

The master’s feet are pierced with nails and his footfalls leave behind the drops of ruby blood whose virtue is to cure the worlds of all their grief and pain.

View or comment on this post at John C. Wright's Journal.