Cafeteria Constitutionalists
There remain in this world people who cling to eternal principles as rock-solid and worthy of adherence, while there are others who proceed from the nauseating viewpoint that all progress is good and we must therefore change with the times.
Those of us who are faithful Catholics have the misfortune of coexisting with those of our brethren who are not in communion with all the teachings of the Church. Some of these folks attend Mass each week, while most haven't seen the inside of a church in years, yet feel compelled to identify themselves as Catholics; one would suppose, for the sole purpose of being interviewed by the New York Times.
I will not rehash the grievances of these Catholics-In-Name-Only, but suffice to say that they involve the Church's failure to have evolved sufficiently enough to approve of the current proclivities toward the sins they wish to commit. They would seek to contravene the immutable truths of our Founder who said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away." They favor modern mores over timeless truths.
In much the same way, America is now experiencing this inclination of a large number of citizens to disregard the founding principles that underpin our nation in favor of their own ideas of what our government is and should do; all the while insisting that they support and defend our Constitution. It is at times like these that non-Catholics share with us our frustration when reading the opinions of our brethren who pick and choose which, if any, precepts of the Faith they might respect.
And the most perplexing aspect of all this is that these liberals who constantly trumpet diversity, have a chilling disdain for the fact that both the Church and the U.S. are truly melting pots open to all men and women on Earth — who are willing to obey the rules.
And so must we deal with those who lay claim to an America that in many ways would be unrecognizable to those who crafted the greatest founding document in the history of world governance. The scandal of their perversion of that document is surpassed only by their phony allegiance to it when convenient.
They love to extol the separation of powers when Republicans are in office, yet deem recess appointments as entirely necessary when one of their own in the Oval Office must combat the party of "no." They execute tortuous twistings of phrases like "high crimes and misdemeanors" while ignoring the simple, straightforward words of the Second Amendment. They use the commerce clause to circumvent the will of the people for any and all abominations — including the murder of unborn children — they cannot achieve at the ballot box or via their fellow travelers in the federal court system.
But perhaps there is no abuse of the Constitution more galling than when liberals of all stripes trumpet the virtues of the First Amendment to defend the rights of atheists to prohibit the free exercise of religious liberty for Christians, but as a virtual get-out-of-jail card for Muslims. When oh when will liberals get it? The real religion of peace is that which bears the name of the One who counseled against violence and revenge; the One who advised his followers to render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar; that is, to be obedient to the laws of the state if they are not in opposition to the laws of God.
And when we speak of America as founded in the Judeo-Christian tradition, this is precisely what is meant; our founders dreamed of a nation established in obedience to the laws of nature and of nature's God.
Those who do not understand how liberals can claim to love America while disdaining the simple and direct strictures of the Constitution, need only look to so-called Christian sects that support and even employ as preachers, practicing homosexuals and others living in direct contravention of specific biblical admonitions against same. In the case of the Anglican Church, this fact alone is driving many true believers into the arms of Rome; in much the same way as the deliberate flaunting of our Constitution by the Obama Administration is fattening the membership of the Tea Parties with otherwise non-political Americans.
The reason is the same: there remain in this world people who cling to eternal principles as rock-solid and worthy of adherence, while there are others who proceed from the nauseating viewpoint that all progress is good and we must therefore change with the times. Contrary to the views expressed in the 1960s, this way of life is not liberating, but is every bit as stifling as the chains of any tyrant. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger warned shortly before his election as Vicar of Rome, "We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires."
Almost immediately after he assumed the Chair of St. Peter, faithful Catholics printed bumper stickers with an image of Pope Benedict XVI with the caption, "The cafeteria is closed." Let's pray that the same message will be delivered to our liberal brethren come November: Love our Constitution or leave it alone.
By universally acknowledged definition, anything that occurred before the Big Bang is inaccessible to science. So, any statement affecting what occurs before the Bang or the assumed eventual Crunch (or Freeze, or whatever) must be made primarily based on blind faith.
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist . . . It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going."
– Stephen Hawking
I recently ruffled some feathers and took issue with certain comments from Stephen Hawking. Unfortunately, I must to do so again. Dr. Hawking is an amazing man and I give him due respect, but I never cease to be amazed how even highly intelligent specialists in their own fields can know so little of what lies outside of their well defined boundaries. I think that may well be what is at work here, because I am embarrassed to say that unless further clarification emerges in his upcoming book the statements above demonstrate a very surprising lack of philosophical grounding and introspection.
The problems exhibited by Hawking's statements are twofold. First, he simply misses the point in terms of intelligent design arguments for God's existence. Second, he appears to want to replace what he considers blind faith in one God with an equally blind faith in something else.
Once again, I must issue my warning to members of the Cult of Scientism, which I here define as the belief that since science is very useful and can answer many questions, it therefore allows its adherents to speak with absolute authority about all questions, even those for which science can provide no evidence. If this describes you, there is likely nothing I can say to you, and you would be wasting your time to read further or to reply. I assume that you have as little use as I do for temper tantrums or name calling. On the other hand, if you are open to a civilized discussion of the issues, please read on.
In the first case, Hawking is building up a straw man against intelligent design by implication in that he is apparently pretending that the larger questions of the omniverse do not exist. No one denies that there are natural laws, like gravity, that govern the universe and that once set in motion those laws function spontaneously. The bigger issues — ones even a beginning philosophy student should know to address — are these: Where do the laws of physics come from? From whence did gravity originate? How did the massive universal system, complex beyond all human imagining, come into existence at all, let alone come to be set up to explode into such precision that it can at once act both spontaneously and in such perfect order? Where did the pre-existent forms that exploded into reality as we know it in the Big Bang have their origin? Hawking's statements simply bypass all this, and even if we grant their accuracy, we only back the argument up one more step, leaving God just as pertinent to the discussion as before.
Of course, as of the time of this writing, his book hasn't come out yet and in his defense he may try to deal with these problems there, but if so, there is no hint of it in the article above. I hope he and his coauthor at least make the attempt, though based on what I have seen recently, I'm not sanguine about their effectiveness if they do.
In answer to my objections above, Hawking and his defenders may simply argue as others have: we cannot know what happened before the moment of the Big Bang because at that point the laws of physics that we use to measure and understand reality either didn't exist or existed in an unrecognizable form, and that the universe must by definition be eternal, possibly in an everlasting cycle of expansion and contraction. I am perfectly willing to grant that we will most likely not be able to address such questions from a scientific perspective, since science is based on the reasonable observation using the laws of nature. Of course, therein lies the rub and my second point: In effect, Hawking is asking his readers to simply accept truly blind faith in a process as opposed to more traditional (I would argue reasonable) faith in a personality.
For its many proponents, the Cult of Scientism's main "advantage" is its supposed reliance on provable appeals to reality through experimentation. Of course, if we are talking about reasonable, responsible science that understands its usefulness and limitations that would be true. Here, though, we clearly are not talking about that at all. By universally acknowledged definition, anything that occurred before the Big Bang is inaccessible to science. So, any statement affecting what occurs before the Bang or the assumed eventual Crunch (or Freeze, or whatever) must be made primarily based on blind faith — an assertion made in complete absence of viable, direct evidence. How then, is this any more "reasonable" by definition than the experience of billions of believers scattered across thousands of years?
The argument could be made that what Scientism is doing is making reasonable observations about what evidence it has, and is therefore projecting equally reasonable observations into areas it cannot access. Then again, that is precisely what Christians in particular and Intelligent Designers in general have been arguing for decades, only to be labeled "pseudo" or "crank" science. It would be interesting (and a typical debating tactic) if Scientism suddenly allows for itself the very evidence it has thus far been denying to its opponents.
In the end, I have no doubt that Hawking's statements will settle little, if any, of the debate. True believers in Scientism will accept anything he says that removes God from the picture with little to no critical evaluation because they believe such statements to be inherently axiomatic, and those who disagree (myself included) won't be satisfied until the bigger questions that Hawking is apparently avoiding are at least put on the table for honest debate.
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