Make a couple of minor observations

set off giant discussions!

I never know what’s going to trigger explosions. Sometimes, I confess, there are days when I’m feeling a bit mischievous and I will deliberately post something that I know will make (some) people get all het up. Usually I will do so in way which I, at any rate, think is pretty obviously tongue-in-cheek. But there are always irony-impaired readers who will take me seriously and freak out. It’s a cheap form of amusement for the economically downtrodden.

Other times I will say something which I’m quite serious about, which I know will be unpopular, but which I think needs said anyway. Readers weary of my missives on torture are familiar with the tendency.

Still other times, I will make a couple of (to me) innocuous–and often highly tentative–observations about this or that…. only to be surprised at a vociferous and large outpouring of passionate mail on some subject that I don’t really have strong views on. Very often, the first thing that will happen will be that somebody will read into what I wrote all sort of things I don’t think. Also, I will often be assumed to share the same level of passion about it all as my reader. Or I will be grilled with all sort of intense and well-thought-out questions from people who know and care much more about the subject than I do. And just as often, this will come from multiple directions and often from people with passionately different views.

It can be quite disorienting, but also very salutary. It sort of reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ first encounter with his beloved teacher, The Great Knock:

When he was sixteen, Lewis was sent to be tutored by W.T. Kirkpatrick. “Kirk” or the “Great Knock” as he was sometimes called, was a brilliant teacher who taught Lewis to analyze, think, write, and speak clearly and logically. At their first meeting at the train station, young Jack (as he chose to call himself) made a comment to Kirk about not expecting the “wildness” of the scenery of Surrey. “Stop,” said Kirk. “What do you mean by wildness and what grounds do you have for not expecting it?” As he attempted an answer, it became increasingly clear that he had no distinct idea about the word “wildness” and that “insofar as I had any idea at all, ‘wildness’ was a singularly inept word.” “Do you not see, concluded the Great Knock, that your remark was meaningless?” Thinking that the subject had been dropped, Jack proceeded to sulk. Never was he more mistaken. Kirk proceeded to inquire about the basis of Jack’s expectations about the flora and geology of Surrey. It had never occurred to Jack that his thoughts needed to be based on anything. Kirk concluded, “Do you not see, then, that you had no right to have any opinion whatever on the subject?” This kind of interrogation was the tone of his whole stay with Kirk, and it was of great benefit to Lewis. In fact, much of the clarity of his writing, his careful choice of words, his considered arguments for the faith, and his later tutorial style were shaped during this period. Lewis says: “My debt to him is very great, my reverence to this day undiminished.” Some have said that many of his later works were written with a sense that Kirk (although by that time dead) was looking over his shoulder.

I mention this because it happen to me the other day. I wrote a couple of passing remarks about the events in Iran and yikes! three different people wrote three different lengthy replies, investing a heck of a lot more energy than I did in what were intended to be sort of, “I’ve noticed a couple of things” remarks in which I invested roughly the same amount of passion as one would if you turned on the TV, saw a guy who looked like your older brother, and said, “Hm. That guy looks like my brother” before turning the channel. In short, it was not a treatise for the ages.

One of my readers responded with multiple passionate denunciations of the very *idea* that I could link the marchers in Iran calling on God to vindicate them against an unjust and oppressive regime with Christian thinkers or American Founders who, you know, thought you could appeal to God against injustice and oppression. Somehow, that conversation turned into a peculiar farrago in which I was arraigned for saying all sorts of crap I don’t think or believe, concluding with a nonsensical attempt to claim that human rights are somehow how a function of Darwinian mechanisms which aim to maximize herd survival or somesuch twaddle. It was basically some materialist feeling offended because I think materialist attempts to derive “ought” from “is” are all doomed and that the best explanation for “where rights come from” is “They come from the fact that people are made in the image and likeness of God”. Somehow, he managed to glean from my remarks that non-theists or non-Abrahamic theists” should not have human rights or full human rights… or something. It was kinda crazy and mostly involved him telling me what I thought and then rebutting it, even though I didn’t think it. So that was a wash.

Then there was some guy named Richard Spencer, who decided I was being narcissistic in saying “Iranians sound like they have a lot more in common with the common sense of the theistic tradition, which says rights come from God, not from Caesar. I find that much moe sensible than our ruling elites, who have embraced the New Atheism and must therefore perforce believe (and live) as though rights are a subjective mask on the face of power in a Darwinian universe of Might Makes Right.”

Now I may well be a narcissist (though I can’t see it, despite all the hours I spend searching for traces of narcissism in my beautiful, beautiful face). But I can’t help thinking that Spencer is also hearing a whale of a lot more than I’m saying. I’m not trying to say that Augustine, Thomas, MLK, Jefferson, Kennedy and Obama are all drinking buddies. I’m merely noting something C.S. Lewis noted in Mere Christianity:

I have been asked to tell you what Christians believe, and I am going to begin by telling you one thing that Christians do not need to believe. If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through. If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view. But, of course, being a Christian does mean thinking that where Christianity differs from other religions, Christianity is right and they are wrong. As in arithmetic-there is only one right answer to a sum, and all other answers are wrong: but some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others.

The first big division of humanity is into the majority, who believe in some kind of God or gods, and the minority who do not. On this point, Christianity lines up with the majority-lines up with ancient Greeks and Romans, modern savages, Stoics, Platonists, Hindus, Mohammedans, etc., against the modern Western European materialist.

My point is that Christians who go to the mat saying that they are brothers and co-belligerents along with Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Peter Singer for something called “The West” while declaring that we have absolutely nothing in common with all those Muslims need to do a bit of a re-think about the heirarchy of truth. I can’t tell you who many times I’ve been told (by Catholics who ought to know better) that the Church is in error when it affirms any commonality whatsoever between the God we worship and the God of Islam. Meanwhile, you have bellicose Christians in the thrall of the End to Evil mania that gripped the Right after 9/11 treating Christopher Hitchens as a treasure. Such contradictions used to be noticed at Mr. Spencer’s site. I’m basically saying “Affirm in common what can be affirmed rather than look for a fight where it is unnecessary.” In a world where the suggestion by many wingnuts has been “On to Tehran!” and “Nuke the Mullahs!” I don’t think it’s particularly narcissistic to say, “Hey! That guy looks like my brother.”

Finally, I got a really good reply from the very thoughtful Michael Denton, who is perfectly right in his analysis of the Full Thomistic Meal Deal on things like What To Do About Tyrants. I basically agree with everything he says. My only word of defense would be “I was not trying to imply the opposite of what he writes”. I was simply making a broad (and incomplete) point to the effect that Thomas, like everybody else in the Western Theistic tradition would line up with those who say “If it’s really a question of God vs. Caesar, then God wins” vs. the New Atheists who say, “There is no God, therefore at the end of the day “rights” are just a mask on the face of Darwinian power struggle.”