What chilled and almost cowed [Ransom] most was the union of malice with something nearly childish. For temptation, for blasphemy, for a whole battery of horrors, he was in some sort prepared; but hardly for this petty, indefatigable nagging as of a nasty little boy at a preparatory school. Indeed no imagined horror could have surpassed the sense which grew within him as the slow hours passed, that this creature was, by all human standards, inside out - its heart on the surface and its shallowness at the heart. On the surface, great designs and an antagonism to Heaven which involved the fate of worlds: but deep within, when every veil had been pierced, was there, after all, nothing but a black puerility, an aimless empty spitefulness content to sate itself with the tiniest cruelties, as love does not disdain the smallest kindness.
David, I am a consequentialist. I do not believe anything is intrinsically good.
I consider the evidential case against a good God from naturally caused suffering to be the most significant problem for believers.
“We found fossilized examples from every major invertebrate animal phylum living today including: arthropods (insects, crustaceans etc.), shellfish, echinoderms (starfish, crinoids, brittle stars, etc.), corals, sponges, and segmented worms (earthworms, marine worms).
“The vertebrates—animals with backbones such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals—show this same pattern.”
“Cartilaginous fish (sharks and rays), boney fish (such as sturgeon, paddlefish, salmon, herring, flounder and bowfin) and jawless fish (hagfish and lamprey) have been found in the dinosaur layers and they look the same as modern forms.
“Modern-looking frogs and salamanders have been found in dinosaur dig sites.
“All of today’s reptile groups have been found in the dinosaur layers and they look the same or similar to modern forms: Snakes (boa constrictor), lizards (ground lizards and gliding lizards), turtles (box turtles, soft-shelled turtles), and crocodilians (alligators, crocodiles and gavials).”
“Contrary to popular belief, modern types of birds have been found, including: parrots, owls, penguins, ducks, loons, albatross, cormorants, sandpipers, avocets, etc. When scientists who support evolution disclosed this information during our TV interviews it appears that they could hardly believe what they were saying on camera.”Continue reading the online article here.
Here's my problem with prayer. From the human perspective, it either appears to work, or it doesn't. And there are religious explanations for both. And those religious explanations are subject to interpretation. So really, no matter what does or does not happen, there is a nice religious explanation for it, so you really need to have no expectation either way, because the religious system works well enough in its explanation that it can make prayer seem to work sufficiently well enough either way, in hindsight. Prayer just seems more like something religious people do, rather than something from which they actually expect results.
... thought history was bunk but compensated for this deficiency by focusing almost entirely on the present, and the wide open future. He was not a scientist, but he found science a way of "affirming" and demythologising a world made (he thought) sick by religion.
He made enemies far more easily than he made friends.
...was as tireless in the promotion of his brand of secularism as America was unready for its promulgation. He was reticent, often inarticulate, artless, rude, charismatic - but above all a self-promoter.
...Many of the titles were by unknown writers; the press could not count on sales generated by a stable of names.
One of Ralph Waldo Emerson's friends, William Furness, once complained that while Emerson wrote on a variety of subjects, he could write "only one book - the one I write over and over". The same can be said of...
He was prolific in the way only a man with a single message can be, authoring humanist "manifestos" - and always much addicted to various sorts of "declarations" and "statements" whose closest literary cousins are Papal bulls. His...books are largely accessible to a popular audience, and while not lacking in depth are not prolific in insight. His appeal was always to the village atheists, the town sceptics, the debunkers and grumps of small-town America. His local heroes were men like Robert Ingersoll and Joseph McCabe, common sense unbelievers.
The ideologically confused opposition to religious fundamentalism that had driven secular humanism through much of his career was finding fewer targets. Not only was Christianity not going away, it was proving remarkably able to adapt - better even than social theorists like Peter Berger had prophesied...Secular humanism by the millennium had become a movement that needed to create enemies to stay in business.
He had become isolated...quaint, curious and ineffective - a small ship tossed in a sea of change. The boy stood on the burning deck.
Alas, many humanists still live under the spell that once they move beyond religion, they have become moral. This biography suggests otherwise. But it is not a finding of Shakespearean depth: more like the Wizard, caught out when Toto reveals him for what he is, saying "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." Ordinary people are made no bigger through magnification.
Actually, antinatalism is anything but nihilistic. You effectively admit this in your comment, Ironically, antinatalism is so nihilistic because it’s so idealistic. When idealism comes into contact with a fallen world, the result is bitter disillusionment. To be idealistic, one has to believe in some sort of standards by which to judge a thing – again as you effectively admit in your comment about antinatalists having “bitter disillusionment”. To be “bitterly disillusioned” at having this world fall short of our standards presupposes we do believe this world should be something other than the way it is.
Antinatalism seeks to prevent more suffering in this world – including the suffering of a soul in Hell. It also seeks to minimize suffering of others through generously giving a helping hand to others, comfort others, and so forth – in short, values any civilized and human person would strongly agree with.
All this actually supports the idea that we DO have standards of morals by which to judge the worthiness of the world – so antinatalism is not nihilistic at all. QED. In fact, antinatalism – even its atheist varieties - actually has more in common with Christianity than Nihilism.
Aren’t we Christians ourselves disillusioned (or at least disappointed) with the human condition? Or find there is something terribly wrong with this world? As a Christian myself, I know this is true, and I think you are too.
The only difference is that I came to see that the only way to guarantee non-condemnation for any of my would-have-been descendants is not to have children in the first place.
Still, even the “secular” reasons that don’t explicitly contradict Jesus’ teachings were enough to convince me that I had no right to force people into this world who could not consent to it.
Moving to your previous statement Antinatalism represents the reductio ad absurdum of the argument from evil. It takes the argument from evil to its logical extreme, and–in so doing–exposes something fundamentally twisted about the argument from evil–by exposing the nihilistic presuppositions of the argument. I don’t find this any more “twisted” than saying The All-Powerful God’s judgment against the wicked. Christian antinatalists like me seek to prevent souls from going to Hell, as said by not having kids in the first place (among other things).
If we believe Hell is a place of eternal torment, and if we believe that Christians are quite literally the “chosen FEW”, then it’s hardly a reducto ad absurdum to say it’s better for them to have never been born.
The secular version of antinatalism simply substitutes “this earth” for “hell”, thereby concluding that nobody deserves to be born onto “this earth” (which even I find imminently sensible – for if a person is not born, then he or she has no spiritual needs or no soul that can be punished.
Me? I simply weighed the potential rewards and potential benefits and decided that it’s more important to save my otherwise-Hell-bound descendants from eternal torment than it is for my otherwise-heavenboudn descendants to experience God’s glory; for as I said, the nonexistent have no souls that can be harmed.
The answers for why prayer is “answered” or “unanswered” cover every conceivable possibility without actually requiring any unambiguous or visible activity on the part of the deity. Isn't that a trifle bit convenient?
On Saturday Jack Conrad will show that New York is filled with dinosaurs: they roam the streets, hover over your roof, swoop down from trees, nibble on your garbage. “You can go in Central Park and feed the dinosaurs,” Dr. Conrad said. “That is, if you want to.”Exhibit A:
Dr. Conrad is neither a crackpot nor a star in a new release in the “Jurassic Park” franchise. A research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, he will present a program there that demonstrates what he and his fellow paleontologists have learned over the last 15 years: Birds are dinosaurs.
It appears from your post that your beef is with Kline and Kline as understood by Irons. I don't see what I have do in this discussion at all. My theology is that confessed by the Reformed churches in the Three Forms of Unity and the Westminster Standards. Have you read the two books I've published on covenant theology? Have you read any of the several articles I've published on covenant theology? Why do you assume that I agree with MGK or Irons on every point? Isn't that a gratuitous assumption?
Horns of what dilemma? In a post-theocratic world (after the expiration of the Mosaic theocracy) no state is authorized by the Creator to enforce religious orthodoxy. Israel was unique in world history. No other state has ever been authorized to enforce religious orthodoxy. The primary function of the state, in the nature of things, is to keep citizens, as much as possible, from killing one another and to punish those who violate that law. That's the plain teaching of Rom. There's not a hint of theocracy in the NT. Never did the apostles ask the magistrate to do anything but enforce the sort of justice I sketched above. National israel was a supernaturally state. All other states before and since are not supernaturally constituted. This isn't a OT v NT but it is a recognition of the intentionally temporary nature of the Mosaic theocracy, something that is taught explicitly in WCF 19. It was the divines, not Clark, who gave us the word "expired." How is this arbitrary or inconsistent?
Since he [Clark] has appealed to natural law as the foundational principle of his theory of civil government, he is caught on the horns of a dilemma. Either he maintains his foundational principle (namely, that the civil magistrate has a moral obligation to enforce the moral law) and applies it consistently to the civil enforcement of the entire moral law, both the so-called first and the second table. Or he backs down and makes a much less dramatic claim: the civil magistrate may enforce parts of the moral law to the extent that it promotes good order and well-being in society. But then Clark would no longer be able to claim that the civil magistrate is morally required to enforce the creational boundaries concerning marriage. The civil magistrate could still enforce the creational boundaries concerning marriage, but now only on the softer ground that various sociological studies have shown that it is better for society, for children, etc., not because natural law requires it.
This is why all the American Reformed/Presbyterian churches have revised their confessions. The Dutch churches no longer confess and have positively rejected the old version of BC 36.
