Back for 2010

Welcome back, you few and faithful.

Let me start by conjuring up a scenario we have all run into. You do a search, or stumble upon some sort of interesting blog. It’s a blog of promise and zeal, and probably has one or two interesting entries in it. Then, as you pick around, you notice that there aren’t that many entries after all, and this is somewhat disappointing. You rationalize to yourself, thinking that it might just be a new blog, but then you check the date and its from 2003 or something, and it’s just been sitting there on the internet, collecting cyber-dust because someone got excited about writing a blog, but never kept it up.

Most blogs die like this, not with a bang nor a whisper, but by abandonment, without even the decency to board up the windows; people just forget, their interest peters out, and they move on to other things.

I had always prided myself in my commitment to updates, and though they didn’t always come regularly, there was always a post, here and there, to remind my wonderful readership that I was still alive.

And so I am; the three couple months scared me and I thought I too was giving up on my own blog, but I’m back now and I’m sorry to have kept everyone waiting for so long. To have people stop me in my day-to-day and ask about Truth is a Snare made me realize that this wasn’t something I should give up on, no matter how bad I felt.

The truth is, after maintaining this blog for over two years, I was burnt out. Intellectually, I encountered some difficulties; the last semester at the new school was extremely rough, and all manner of problems seemed to come out of the woodwork for a joint assault. But I am alive, and that’s more than I can ask for.

Two years! That’s a long time. I rarely see casual blogs get maintained with any level of dedication. I guess I should have some sort of Anniversary post, but that can be saved for next week.

This year I want to start addressing some of the huge problems and considerations that I have been in almost constant thought about for the time that I was not updating; they have been stewing inside of me for a long while, and I think I have them outlined with some sort of coherency. I have, among other things, cultural considerations, primarily about our culture as a mediocracy, issues with the modern movement in intellectual and artistic realms towards the rejection of truth, a treatise on Being (hurray!), a treatise on the Soul, a fleshed-out summary of how Magic: the Gathering works as philosophy, and a return to the inauthentic pseudo-intellectual who haunts and hounds the authentic man.

But first things are first. Next week I will FINALLY wrap up the whole Dawkins fiasco, and this week I will post up my Ethics final paper on Nietzsche, which several people asked about.

My preface for this paper is that I was braindead, and it took me a whopping NINE hours to write, during which I barely met the minimum page requirements. I don’t think I have to say that this was overwhelmingly uncharacteristic of me, but considering it was the very last thing I did finals week, I may be excused on account of the low sleep and food intake.

Please enjoy.

——————-

Zachary Porcu

Craig A Boyd

Ethics

Nietzsche’s Ethics, a Critique

It may be that we have a well-educated society, here in America, or elsewhere in the so-called western world, but the study of philosophy and the geneology of ideas as they grow and evolve from century to century is something that remains, for the large part, inaccessible to the modern citizen. We have what may be called a trickle-down understanding of philosophy, where superficial readings of great works and writings glean off only the most explicit concepts and pass them among the populace, and thence, wrenched from their context, to be confused and misquoted for generations. Nietzsche is one such thinker, and it is precisely this uncritical approach that has allowed his ethical philosophies to become so romanticized by a new generation of skeptics, and to give birth to an equally uncritical kind of normative secular ethics. Indeed, once one takes a critical look at these ideas, presented primarily in such works as Beyond Good and Evil and The Geneology of Morals, one cannot help but see the problems that arise, and all talk of a normative ethics as espoused by Nietzsche becomes meaningless in his own terms.

We must first begin with Nietzsche’s formulation of the age-old labels “good” and “evil,” the way in which he formulates his new definitions being typical of his very un-typical approach to philosophy. Most of us take the terms “good” and “evil” with a host of assumed meanings and definitions, and most of us assume that the two have pretty much always existed. Nietzsche disregards this conception of morality, including also the utilitarian idea at the time, of “good” as the most benefit for the most individuals. Nietzsche asserts that “goodness” did not arise from those to whom good was practiced towards, but rather “it was ‘the good’ themselves, that is to say, the noble, powerful, high-stationed and high-minded, who felt and established themselves and their actions as good…they first seized the right to create values and to coin names for values.”1 Hence, the “good” came about as a positive self-assurance on part of those in power. Note that the important part of the so-called “master morality” is its proactivness. The master, or the powerful, or the noble, are always acting, creating, making, doing, ruling. They reach forward themselves, of their own power and will, and create for themselves their ideas. Hence, their idea of good primarily revolves around themselves, and becomes a kind of self-definition. It is only later that they find a use for the antithesis, for “bad” things, which are those things that are in contrast to themselves. The second thing to note is that this description is not necessarily negative; Nietzsche is not about to take a Marxist turn and begin defaming the ruling classes as oppressors and tyrants. Instead, what is important to note about the “master” or “noble” is that he is free, free to relate to and define his environment, and, of huge value to Nietzsche, free to be creative, as opposed to what he calls the “slave morality,” as we shall see. For the slave, or the “low, low-minded, common and plebeian,”2 is centered around what Nietzsche calls “ressentiment” (basically, resentment). The “low” man starts first in a state of resentment towards the masters, and defines them as “evil.” The slaves “understood themselves to be ‘good’ only derivatively. Judging their masters ‘evil,’ they concluded that they were ‘good,’ in the negative sense of lacking the masters’ evil traits.”3 Again, there are two important things of which to make note. Firstly, “slave morality” is essentially reactive; unlike the masters’ morality, which begins with the positive affirmation of the self, slave morality begins with the evilness of the master, and only lately coming to call itself “good” by contrast. For Nietzsche, it becomes clear that this reactive morality is restrictive; unlike the master, who is free to express himself creatively –indeed, he possesses the very power to definite himself as “good”– the slave can only define himself in relation to the master. This makes him constrained, and in a position where he can be neither creative nor expressive. The second point of interest lies in the distinction between “bad” and “evil.” The master has his own goodness as his starting point, and sees others things as merely not-good, that is to say, “not-like-him.” That is the extent to which the term “bad” has meaning to him. The slave, however, is full of resentment against the master, which solidifies into hatred. In his hatred, he villainizes the master, painting him as not merely “bad,” but actually “evil.”4 Thus, the whole dichotomy of good and evil, according to Nietzsche, is a fabrication of the slaves, of the weak, of the “impotent” whose resentment of the strong, or masters, causes them to flip the value judgments of the masters. The weak make weakness itself the very object of value, and the strength of the masters a crime, or sin.

To further solidify his point, Nietzsche turns to etymology. Beginning in his own language, Nietzsche points out that German word schlecht (bad) is one letter different than schilcht (plain), points out the similarity of root with schlechtweg (plainly) and schlechterdings (simply).5 This supports his theory that, from the perspective of the nobles, of the masters, “bad” originally referred merely to that which they were not. In contrast to the grandness and active creative power of the masters, all that might be seen as “not them” would indeed seem simple and plain by comparison. He then turns to Latin, supposedly to trace the evolution of moral language back even further. The Latin word bonus merely means “good,” but Nietzsche attempts to trace it back to the word bellum (war).6 Here we have the masters’ definition of “good,” namely, that of conquest, of action. Having provided several other examples,7 8 9 Nietzsche makes a fairly convincing case in tracing the evolution of morals language through traditional etymology.

Nietzsche’s formulation of good and evil doesn’t quite reach its climactic fervor until he begins to deal with what he calls “priestliness,” and “priestly” societies, like those of Judaism. Nietzsche conceives of the beginnings of priestliness, and thus of the ideas (and words) “pure” and “impure” as being “from the beginning [they described] a man who washes himself, who forbids himself certain foods that produce skin ailments, who does not sleep with the dirty women of the lower strata, who as an aversion to blood – no more, hardly more!”10 However, as this develops, Nietzsche notes that values like this, in an “essentially priestly aristocracy…could in precisely this instance soon become dangerously deepened, sharpened, and internalized.”11 Eventually, the priestly ways break off from that of the aristocracy and develop in opposition to them. For the masters are strong and vigorous, they live in a state of action and acquisition; the priest, by contrast, lives a life of denying his indulgence in the world of experience, the very world itself. Therefore priests become “the most evil enemies – but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kinds of hatred.”12 Here again is the slave-type morality dangerously breaking through. If slave morality grows up in response and in opposition to the masters’ morality, the priestliness would be the most potent kind of slave morality, not only because priests have even less than the common man (by way of their own self-denial) but because they can solidify slave morality into a system in itself, bringing their vengeance not in earthly terms, but exalted into a spiritual, everlasting revenge. Their anger has the room, in such a system, to develop infinitely larger and larger. Thus the “truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters; other kinds of spirit [geist] hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.”13 He sees the ideas of the priest as “dangerous in such a conflict because of their hatred, which they can’t release into a healthy physical form, and their hatred turns into a permanent desire for vengeance.”14 Nietzsche turns at once to the “most notable example,” “the Jews, that priestly people, who in opposing their enemies and conquerors were ultimately satisfied with nothing less than a radical revaluation of their enemies’ values, that is to say, an act of the most spiritual revenge…for this alone was appropriate to a priestly people, the people embodying the most deeply repressed priestly vengefulness.”15 Slave morality, that reactive, unproductive, unfree, uncreative, unimaginative, unreal morality finds its full voice in Jews and, later, Christians. Nietzsche’s antagonism towards the Judeo-Christian system can perhaps be better understood once this perspective is taken. The implications of such a standpoint on one of the oldest and most influential moral systems in history are profound and next to baffling. Indeed, this is no mere critique, no mere nitpicking of a single religion, but the blatant overthrowing of the entire Judeo-Christian system of thinking as it is embodied in all culture as a form of “slave” morality In this formulation, Nietzsche has inverted the values of modern morality (ironically, the morality which he claims is itself an inversion): humility, piousness, meekness, respect, charity; all of which he claims are the reactionary inventions of the “slaves,” mob morality which can aspire to no greater.

There are several issues with Nietzsche’s formulation of ethics so far, the most obvious being his oddly uninformed characterization of Christianity. Nietzsche, as has been shown, sees the Judeo-Christian worldview as one based upon resentment, fostered in hatred, and seeking revenge. These claims, while seemingly supported by Nietzsche’s reasoning, become strange and discordant when compared to actual Christian teaching, both from the Bible and theologians. Throughout the Bible the external is often devalued in face of the internal. First Samuel informs us that “the LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”16 Nietzsche’s formulation of Christianity contends that it is rooted in hatred, which is internalized, and that it raises up a god to fulfill and justify this hatred. But the God of the Bible focuses on the internals, where the man would be fostering self-destructive hatred, not on the external attributes the slaves would dislike in the master, as Nietzsche contends. Furthermore, the Bible contains many warnings against hatred and resentment. Solomon writes, “Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs.”17 John warns, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him”18 “Let those who love the LORD hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked.”19 These passages describe, very briefly, Christianity’s viewpoint of hatred, which it paints in no uncertain terms as a negative thing. John goes so far as to say that even if one things about murdering, one is just as guilty of murder (and a murderer, he notes, has no eternal life.) Nietzsche contends that the Judeo-Christian conception of an afterlife and immortality is primarily a tool for the hatred Jews and Christians feel to continue and perpetuate their desires for vengeance. But John is clearly stating that it is the unhateful who can become true sons and daughters of God. In light of the warnings against hatred so thoroughly present throughout the Old Testament and New Testament, Nietzsche’s claims begin to sound dubious.

CS Lewis further weighs in on the matter and, coincidentally, uses Nietzsche’s exact language. In his book, Mere Christianity, Lewis begins discussing virtue ethics in light of the Christian belief that man will “life forever.” It is worth quoting at length:

Remember, we Christians think man lives for ever. Therefore, what really matters is those little marks or twists on the central, inside part of the soul which are going to turn it, in the long run, into a heavenly or a hellish creature. We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate and enjoy hating. We may punish if necessary, but we must not enjoy it. In other words, something inside us, the feeling of resentment, the feeling that wants to get one’s own back, must be simply killed.20

It seems unlikely that Lewis attempted to use such a close term (“resentment”) in describing that aspect of the personality which he identified as the negative attribute of humans. Lewis here brings up the fact that the very things Nietzsche identifies as the main focus of slave morality are the very things that the Judeo-Christian worldview cannot tolerate: hatred, resentment, self-centered feelings of vindictiveness. The fact that such a central point of Christianity – the movement away from hatred and vengeful feelings – would be so overlooked by Nietzsche is odd and difficult to account for, given his rather studious and religious upbringing. Nietzsche was the son of a Lutheran minister and “both of his grandfathers had been ministers just as his father had been. In his paternal line, this clerical tradition reached back several generations.”21 Furthermore, Nietzsche went to a Protestant boarding school, and studied theology at the University of Bonn. It is therefore natural to assume that Nietzsche, were he to criticize the Judeo-Christian tradition, would be substantially more informed than the likes of people like Richard Dawkins. Yet, this does not seem to be the case. Christianity, far from a reactive, is actually quite pro-active. It has a value system based on authority and reason, one which stands on its own and asserts its own truth, not a passive reaction against another value set; something Nietzsche surprisingly misses all-together.

Although, bolstering Christianity in light of Nietzsche’s attacks is not necessary to undermine the ethical system that Nietzsche has so far proposed, for his ethics are unable to, in themselves, constitute an ethics in any normal, normative sense. So far, we have surmised what Nietzschean ethics is not, namely, a traditional moral system. Indeed, if the dichotomy of good against evil and evil against good is merely an invention of the slave morality as a reaction against the strong, Nietzsche obviously feels it is not worth considering. He is far more concerned with the ethics of the strong, those who are proactive in their definitions, who act, make, and create. But if we look to the master morality to answer the primary ethical question of “how should we live?” it is not at once clear of what the normative drive consists. Nietzsche, in attempting to move beyond what he sees as the contrived morality of the slaves, asserts that the powerful class “will have to be the will to power incarnate, it will want to grow, expand, draw to itself, gain ascendancy – not out of an morality or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is will to power. … it is a consequence of the intrinsic will to power which is precisely the will of life.”22 Note first that such a formulation of morality fits perfectly alongside Nietzsche’s original description of how master morality forms its worldview in the first place: the masters act, which is their primary mode, and, full of their own manifest creative energy, define goodness as synonymous with themselves and they way they act. The masters will it, and they make it so, only later finding some things which are not like them, and so invent a word for it (“plain,” which later becomes our modern “bad”). But in attempting to define any sort of moral system therein, Nietzsche only states what he considers things to be in their natural state. Given this, there is no ethical choice necessary; the master morality is only behaving in accordance with its nature “not out of an morality or immorality” – for ultimately, there are no such terms in this formulation – “but because it lives.” In equating the “will to power” as the “will to live,” Nietzsche does not interject anything new into his equation, but only changes the terminology slightly. “But because it lives” is not really any different than saying “because.” In the end, we are left without a reason for being creative, bold, action-oriented, pro-active, or even to justify any of the positive connotations we have for these words. Though the Will, for Nietzsche, is the primary thing, it is itself unable to produce any sort of normative, any reason for doing anything.

G.K. Chesterton makes the point very nicely that what Nietzsche outlined as his alternative to conventional morality is merely redundant and meaningless. “You can discuss whether a man’s act in jumping over a cliff was directed towards happiness; you cannot discuss whether it was derived from will. Of course it was. …you cannot praise an action because it shows will; for to say that is merely to say that it is an action.”23 This philosophy of Will can be reduced to absurdity by simply asking what the reasons are for choosing any particular thing or any course of action? Chesterton notes that “the worship of the will is the negation of the will,”24 for “To preach anything is to give it away,”25 If the Will is, as Nietzsche contests, then one should not be in the position of having to choose it as a better alternative to other forms of ethics, as he oddly seems to encourage us to do. Separated both from conventional morality as well as from utilitarian pleasure calculations, the Will to power is nothing short of a declarative statement, a description of something that is, and a descriptive thing cannot bridge the is/ought gap.

Nietzsche, in his new moral conception does not, ironically, go “beyond” good and evil, but rather regresses from them, and in abandoning all call for the normative, thrusts the reader into cold world which is merely descriptive, lacking all normative direction for ethics. The ethics of Nietzsche, then, turn out to be non-ethics, a renouncing of ethics. Though he may have dismantled what he considered to be the primary problem of modern ethical thought, Nietzsche offers us no supplement, no alternative, and doesn’t even do us the courtesy of total nihilism, but leaves the reader confused and starry-eyed about some sort of vague “will to power” which is as irrelevant and removed from ethics as resentment is from the Christian life.

Footnotes

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1 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Basic Writings of Existentialism, ed. Gordon Marino (New York: Random House Inc., 2004), p.113

2 Ibid

3 Magnus, Bernd and Higgins, Kathleen M., The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 49

4 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Basic Writings of Existentialism, ed. Gordon Marino (New York: Random House Inc., 2004), p.122

5 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Basic Writings of Existentialism, ed. Gordon Marino (New York: Random House Inc., 2004), p.115

6 Ibid., 118

7 Ibid., 117

8 Ibid., 125

9 Ibid., 126

10 Ibid., 119

11 Ibid

12 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Basic Writings of Existentialism, ed. Gordon Marino (New York: Random House Inc., 2004), p.121

13 Ibid.

14 Ackermann, Robert John, Nietzsche: A Frenzied Look (University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), p. 92

15 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Basic Writings of Existentialism, ed. Gordon Marino (New York: Random House Inc., 2004), p. 121

16 1 Sam 16:7

17 Proverbs 10:12

18 1 John 3:15

19 Psalm 97:10

20 Lewis, Clive Staples, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), p. 120

21 Magnus, Bernd and Higgins, Kathleen M., The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 91

22 Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 17

23 Chesterton, G.K, Orthodoxy (Wheaton: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1994), p. 37

24 Ibid., 37

25 Ibid., 36

Bibliography

Ackermann, Robert John, Nietzsche: A Frenzied Look (University of Massachusetts Press, 1990)

Chesterton, G.K, Orthodoxy (Wheaton: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1994)

Lewis, Clive Staples, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2001

Magnus, Bernd and Higgins, Kathleen M., The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Basic Writings of Existentialism, ed. Gordon Marino (New York: Random House Inc., 2004)

Nietzsche, Friedrich, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (New York: Penguin Books, 1986)

Vacancy

Weekly updates will continue after the semester is over, in two weeks.

Thank you for your patience.

Dawkins Deconstruction, Part I: Amateur on a Soapbox

I do not believe in Richard Dawkins.

Or rather, I would not believe he was real if it were not for the plethora of evidence which exists, even just the evidence circulating amongst the sprawling content of the internet. The book reviews, blog entries, interviews, lectures, Wikipedia entries, biographies, testimonials, and endless third-party sources seem to all confirm that there is a real, living man, who says the things Dawkins says.

And yet, some days it remains difficult to believe that he is not actually a fictional character, invented as a cruel parody of actual atheism by a group of chortling pranksters. Only such an alternative could adequately explain a book like The God Delusion, a book of such intellectual laziness I struggle believing that an Oxford graduate (a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, no less) could possibly make the kinds of arguments he makes. My rational mind rejects the conclusion of his serious existence sporadically; surely, something doesn’t add up. This can’t be right, it says. This is not atheism, or rationalism (a phrase he so often uses to describe himself and his mission throughout the text), this isn’t even anything. The book can only be a parody of atheism, not worthy of note, and Dawkins himself must be a practical joke, a hired actor, with lines written for him, fabricated with the care and precision of the most sophisticated conspiracy.

But then I snap back to reality and am faced with a horrifying situation: The God Delusion is  – in a strictly objective sense – an appalling piece of writing, riddled with logical fallacies of every kind, defended and articulated by rhetoric masquerading as argument, heavy with emotional bias, and put forward with a scholarly ignorance so profound it is next to unbelievable. And yet Richard Dawkins is wildly popular.

How popular? Far from being universally rejected for amateur reasoning, The God Delusion is embraced by hundreds of thousands of readers across the world. The book has sold over 1.5 million copies, has been translated into 31 languages, and has been on the New York Times Bestseller list for longer than I care to ask. My paperback contains almost four pages of testimonials ranging from the Sunday Times to Philip Pullman, all raving about Dawkins’ groundbreaking brilliance (and bravery, no less). Dawkins himself holds honorary doctorates across a diverse range of universities, made Prospect magazine’s 2004 list of the top 100 public British intellectuals, and is a recipient of (among many awards) the Bicentennial Kelvin Medal of The Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow. “The God Delusion deserves multiple readings,” says Steven Weinberg of the Times Literary Supplement, “not just as an important work of science, but as a great work of literature.”

This is the truly frightening thing, and can only mean our culture has grown so intellectually lazy it mistakes fallacies and rhetoric for “elegant, engaging and persuasive” argument (Financial Times).

My thesis is simple: A critical, objective, informed reading of The God Delusion reveals that Richard Dawkins does not know how to argue systematically, or even to really argue in any formal way. For the majority of the text, his primary strategy seems to be to make unsupported statements, blur definitions between schools of thought, employ rhetoric in place of formal reasoning, and when an actual argument is required of him, make embarrassing mistakes and blatant fallacies. The God Delusion is disorganized almost, at times, to the point of rambling.

If you have the most recent paperback version, put out by First Mariner Books in 2008, you can follow along with my citations.

Inability to Distinguish

Of the many problems the book suffers from, one is Dawkins’ insistence to treat all religions, especially the three Abrahamic religions, as exactly the same thing. “For most of my purposes, all three Abrahamic religions can be treated as indistinguishable” (p.58). Obviously this creates problems with much of the argumentation of the text, as Christianity and Islam, for instance, are completely backwards from one another in other in their theology. I don’t mean stuffy, minute differences in how to pray and where to face while praying, I mean a completely separate, opposite worldview. That Christianity and Islam are “basically the same” is a highly prevalent falsehood. I discuss part of it here, in my post on the issue.

The effect of Dawkins’ lumping together of all the monotheistic religions is an attempt to avoid dealing with Christianity directly. Of course “Religion” can be shown to be sheer craziness and dogma if Islam is your only example. This way, Christianity can be dismissed along with Islam without any special defense.

While it is true that Dawkins brings up many examples of “extremist” Christianity, he confuses the readers by putting those examples up side-by-side with “extremist” Islam. When you see a Christian acting “extremist,” someone completely insane like Fred Phelps or (possibly more insane) Paul Hill, what you are seeing is a man going against everything for which Christianity stands. When you see an “extremist” Muslim, however, you are seeing a Muslim more less following a possible and accurate interpretation of his religion. This distinction becomes unfairly blurred when Dawkins puts both religions in a category and calls up examples of “extremism” like this. Readers walk away being shortchanged of the full truth of the matter.

Further, Dawkins also fails to distinguish between Biblically-based Christian doctrine and the fictional universe brought into being by the Catholic church, with what he (rightly) calls the Catholic “pantheon” of Saints and the nearly divine status of the Virgin Mary (p. 55).

These problems are due to his unsystematic approach, in which he fails to deal with each religion on its own. If he is really attempting to “attack God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever,” (p. 57) he is going to have to be vastly more thorough than merely lumping together all religions and attacking them as one entity.

Citations Needed

Dawkins also seems to have an inability to cite his sources. I don’t mean that he doesn’t have an extensive bibliography in the back of his book (he does), but that those pages are devoted to citing all the people and journals and books in his many off-topic tangents and anecdotes. In the times when it really matters, when he is making concrete statements about what a religion actually says or teaches, his sources are nowhere to be found.

“Christianity, just as much as Islam, teaches children that unquestioned faith is a virtue” (p. 346) This is a big claim (and another example of him being unable to differentiate between religions) and no where on the page does he cite anything.

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully” (p. 51). This is the same thing. Now, this would have been an excellent way to open a chapter and lay down what would soon follow to be a systematic deconstruction of the Old Testament, but the rest of the chapter has very little to do with the Old Testament God. If Dawkins were actually rigorous about his deconstruction of religion, again, he would have dealt with this at length. As it is, the remainder of the chapter wanders off into many other, unrelated topics and we are left with empty words lacking citations.

“To which chapter, then, of which book of the Bible should we turn — for they are far from unanimous and some of them are odious by any reasonable standards” (81). Again, Dawkins makes a statement and does not cite any sources or follow it up in any way. He proceeds into a series of rhetorical questions, concluding that he “shall return to such questions in chapter 7.” One cannot help but ask, if he was going to devote an entire chapter to the subject, why he felt the need to drop such a powerfully declarative statement in the middle of another chapter, left standing without support, to be accepted. This is another example of Dawkins’ failure to organize his text in a critical, systematic way, and what makes criticisms of rambling so easy. Throughout the entirety of the text, Dawkins wanders into anecdotes at will (Chapter 3 has many good examples) and returns to his previously unsupported statements convinced of their absoluteness.

Use of Rhetoric

Dawkins’ primary argumentative device, where he should instead be using systematic reasoning, is rhetoric.

In one example, Dawkins quotes at length a piece of writing by Theologian Richard Swineburne (P. 89), which attempts to explain something (which is nevertheless off-topic) and instead of addressing Swineburne’s argument, dismisses it by simply saying, “This grotesque piece of reasoning, so damningly typical of the theological mind, reminds me of…” and lapses into another story which is not analogous. Here he deals in what we may call a rhetorical definition, in which he defines what he calls “the theological mind” (which, by the way, is also a Strawman fallacy) though he never actually defines it. All we have is “grotesque piece of reasoning” and “damningly typical.” If one cuts out his rhetoric, we really have no argument to speak of. This is typical of Dawkins, and an exhaustive list of each instance in which he rhetorically defines something he should be logically refuting would be a massive chore, as it occurs so frequently in the text.

This happens again on page 54, when Dawkins brings up the Trinity and offers only the sarcastic, “as if that were not clear enough.” He then quotes St. Gregory on the Trinity, follows it up with how this is a “characteristically obscurantist flavour of theology which – unlike science or most other branches of human scholarship – has not moved on in eight centuries.” No argument here. No argument of how the Trinity is impossible logically, no look at how it might be contradictory with the rest of the Bible, nothing. Dawkins goes on to quote Thomas Jefferson saying that religious people use ridicule as their only weapon, and that no one has ever had a distinct idea of the Trinity. And then, bafflingly, he moves on! Again, if one cuts out the rhetorical definitions, and appeals to Jefferson (which happen much more frequently than one might imagine) there is really no argument here. All we can take from this is that Dawkins doesn’t understand the Trinity. That’s it?

Much later in the text he attempts to give a summary of Christianity: “But now, the sado-masochism. God incarnated himself as a man, Jesus, in order that he should be tortured and executed in atonement for the hereditary sin of Adam. Ever since Paul expounded this repellent doctrine, Jesus has been worshiped as the redeemer of all our sins. Not just the past sin of Adam: future sins as well, whether future people decided to commit them or not!” (286).

What he does with this paragraph, by use of carefully placed adjectives and italics, is rhetorically imply that this is craziness. At no point in here is there an argument of any kind. Perhaps the paragraph is taken out of context? Nope! The paragraphs before and after do not support the implied conclusion, and an unwary reader will walk away with a strong feeling that Dawkins is right about this, and that all this God stuff is nonsense, but he will not be armed with anything substantial. This should come as no surprise, because this is exactly what rhetoric does.

Two more examples of rhetorical definition: “Compared with the Old Testament’s psychotic delinquent, the deist God…” and goes on to describe what he calls the “deist God” (p.59). And again on 68, “The Deist God…is certainly an improvement over the monster of the Bible.” Both rhetorical definitions: no evidence is given to support the argument, but a conclusion is reflexively defined with rhetoric and carried over throughout the text.

Ad Hominem

In addition to rhetoric, Dawkins also enjoys the use of ad hominem throughout his book, though for space considerations I will only give a few examples.

“Jung also believed that particular books on his shelf spontaneously exploded with a loud bag” (74). This is almost a textbook example of ad hominem: he notes that some people hold a belief “without adequate reason” (which is a rhetorical assumption made about theists, also) and then points out this about Jung to discredit him. In reality, what Jung thinks about spontaneously exploding books is not relevant to Jung’s theology. This is a personal attack, and not real reasoning.

Later, after describing one of Swineburne’s more dubious comments, Dawkins goes on to quote the man’s credentials and say, “If it’s a theologian you want, they don’t come much more distinguished. Perhaps you don’t want a theologian.” The first sentence is an implication that, because Swineburne is a theologian, he stands for all theologians, and the second sentence is actually a sentence devoid of meaning, especially given the context of the sentence. (p. 89)

Faulty Reasoning

Finally, when required to make clear arguments, Dawkins can only muster up faulty reasoning and reveal his own ignorance of the philosophical process. He says,

“Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as a Dutchman’s Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman’s Pipe.” 146 This is all. He says nothing else. He does not quantify why it is improbable, he does not give us a step-by-step proof. He merely states, and moves on.

In chapter eight, Dawkins devotes a section to abortion (which is irrelevant, really, in the grand scheme of his argument), and attempts to set up an alternative moral system based on suffering. The problem with this is that he reflexively defines his moral system without giving a reason why such a system should be thusly based, when it could be based on something else entirely. It is times like these in which his philosophical amateurishness becomes easy to see. Any actual philosopher would spend a significant amount of time establishing a moral system from the ground up; Dawkins’ execution, in comparison, is sloppy and rushed.

One of the worst examples of his total disregard for rational modes of argumentation comes in his discussion of a similarity of passages in the Bible (p.273). Dawkins, unassisted by sources or reasoning, says, “The story of the Levite’s concubine is so similar to that of Lot, one can’t help wondering whether a fragment of manuscript became accidentally misplaced in some long-forgotten scriptorium: an illustration of the erratic provenance of sacred texts.” This is pure speculation, ungrounded in citation, evidence, or reason. Or if it is, he gives no reasons for it and does not follow it up with any argument whatsoever. And yet, like the rest of the text, the reader comes away with a feeling, a deep suspicion of everything that might be “wrong” with the things Dawkins attacks but with no concrete evidence or valid chains of reasoning to show as proof.

To Be Continued…?

Unfortunately, yes. If you have not read The God Delusion, you may be surprised at the amount of other fallacies I had to end up cutting out of my last draft to even get this article down to the right size. Strawman, Weasel Words, and Appeals to Emotion all had to be cut. Having fully intended to devote an entire section exclusively to Chapter 3’s numerous errors, I find I must save them for next week’s post.
Thanks to the people who have been patient with my busy schedule. Chapter 3 should be easy to take apart, so look forward to that last week.

Until then, may you think critically.

Promises

Wednesday. Wednesday whether I have to drag myself on four hours of sleep, battered and weary, up the vast stretch of burning pavement to my dorm, claw the door open and stumble in, wide-eyed and babbling demented visions of the treble cleff to the shadows that dance on the noonday walls in mockery, I will post part I of the God Delusion Review. I will post it.

I will post it and the madness, slowly, once mastered, will drain away, and I will return to a restless unconsciousness until once again I wake. Until then.

EDIT: Next Wednesday.

A Preface to Dawkins

When the lady behind the desk at the bookstore shrugged her shoulders, she might as well have just told me, “We order our books from the another dimension. It may take anywhere from two minutes to two years to arrive here. Sorry.” And she smiled a know-nothing smile, as innocent as a five year-old with a lollipop. The consequence of this is, three weeks into the semester when my books arrive, I find myself, mysteriously, exactly three weeks behind on homework.

I remain stupidly busy, though I’ve been squeezing in time, at the trolley stop, in line at the café, walking back to the dorm, to squirm my way through The God Delusion. An extended, clear, intelligent post (probably two) on the subject of both Dawkins’ ineffectiveness as an arguer and the banality of his points are forthcoming, as I promised. For now, a teaser:

Richard Dawkins’ contempt for religion is well known. He talks about how it “teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world,” how it is fanatical, goes against logic, and is essentially irrational.

Then I remembered John Wesley saying that “it is a fundamental principle with us that to renounce reason is to renounce religion, that religion and reason go hand in hand, that all irrational religion is false religion.”

The combination of the two prompted the following short, put together by my friend Jann:

These were, perhaps, the best three seconds of my life.

Until next week.

That Infuriating Distraction

Some call it “Life.”

Mine has been full of moving to a new school, and coming back “home” on weekends to help my family move to the other “home.” Translation: My father purchased a house, and we have been spending the last two weekends transporting our gratuitous amounts of Stuff from the one house to the other.

I hope to return with memorable thoughts at some point next week. I realize that there is much to say, not limited to Jordan’s recent guest post, the fact that the poll put up last week does not work, or my reflections on forced chapel attendance at the Christian school I find myself at. Reflections on the existential depth of the Christian life and the shallowness of our culture should make up the most interesting commentary that has graced these pages in some time (at least, in my opinion; it is a subject I have long referenced but never properly defended).

For those of you not aware, much of our energy has gone into managing the new website: it is fascinating to watch it evolve, from the types of jokes to the sophistication of its execution. For those of you interested in Magic: the Gathering, there are also some thoughts that have been churning in my mind for some time regarding the future of the game, and those will be posted up for your inspection.

Until next week, may you find time to spin all your plates.

A Poll for this Monday

So the internet is back. Or rather, the internet here in the dorms is no longer at that deceptively slow speed which tempts and promises a loading time of less than twenty minutes but which, like the foul siren it is, fails to deliver the advertised reward.

That said, forgive the skipped week, but today I believe we are going to do something a little differently. You see, come December I will have been blogging diligently here at WordPress for two years, and at no point during that time was I ever aware of who exactly my readership consisted, or what they even enjoyed reading. Thus, for For the next two weeks I will be posting polls to try and gague your readership. I urge you to vote, you countless rogues who come in the night and read without commenting. My stat page does not lie. I know you read, but now is the time to vote!
The poll is secret. I do not know who you are, so vote honestly. The results are visible only to myself, so as not to sway the voter by meta-considerations of the standings of various answers.
But enough words! For your pleasure I present to you this poll.

Guest Post: Jordan

At the request of Zac, the usual author of this blog, I (or, to those of you who are not me, Jordan Ferguson) have composed a response to his earlier entry “Homosexuality Revisited: Marriage.” My hopes are that this response will not only serve to refute some of his more salient points, but also to make an argument for why gay marriage should be seen as a right in this country.

I would begin by stating that my refutation will not try to mince biblical words, rather, I shall take up the issue of gay marriage from a secular standpoint. I shall examine the biblical arguments Zac makes where I believe they need further examination or clarification, but the point of this response at large is to make an argument for gay marriage in a secular society. To define my terms, as Zac is always requesting, when I say secular society, I do not mean a society that exists without religion, rather a society whose laws are not derived from religion, but instead from logic.

The idea that a “health standpoint” and a “societal standpoint” are “common sense, worldly reasons” for the impracticality of homosexuality is the first issue I take with Zac’s explanation. The idea that being homosexual poses a greater health risk than being heterosexual is antiquated to say the least. In fact, assuming that both homosexuals and heterosexuals are engaging in safe sex (which can at many times, be quite the assumption to make) the health risk is basically equal between the two. The disparity in diseases between the two largely arises out of the fact that many people of all sexualities do not practice safe sex, but that is an issue for another day (or perhaps one that will be returned to later in this post). As for a societal issue with homosexuality, I believe that will be addressed in the remainder of my response.
Those of you who know me will be aware that I am an atheist and a firm believer in evolution as an explanation for how we got to where we are (let’s also avoid the tangential trap of “where it all began” as that question is largely irrelevant both to the question at hand and to how we live our daily lives). So I will inherently disagree with Zac’s description of how the world began. However, I still take issue with the way that he characterizes some of the points throughout his dissection. For example, the idea that it is not good for man to be alone does not necessarily follow to the conclusion that man needs to be joined with a woman. Even when the trinity metaphor is brought in, it does not preclude the idea that a family unit can be formed with two homosexual parents through either the process of adoption or through surrogacy. While, yes, in those cases the couple did not create (or did not solely create) the child that forms their familial “trinity” this should not imply that the bond they feel with this child is any less. If the purpose of the family unit is to ensure that man should not be alone, then the real purpose behind it is to ensure that a person feels connected to other beings and loved by them. Let’s also point out that if a family consisting of homosexual parents cannot be considered a “familial trinity” then neither can a family whose parents are afflicted with reproductive difficulties be considered to have completed a trinity if they cannot produce children (nor can a couple who decides not to have children be considered “complete” in the sense that is implied).

I also find room for disagreement in Zac’s characterization of sex as a means to an end, i.e. the larger purpose of sex must be to create a child.  I do not see sex as something that necessarily forms an eternal union between those engaged in it, but this again is tangential to the point at hand and so I shall dispense with that argument for the moment.

The assertion that “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” is inherently ridiculous (and not just because God didn’t make any one), because in actuality, God made Adam, Eve, and Steve. Even in the bible, not everyone descended directly from Adam and Eve. Other people also existed in Genesis, outside of this direct nuclear family (which, by the way, was pretty dysfunctional. Cain and Abel are really the example of children wrought from solid, heterosexual nuclear parenting and we aren’t willing to give another system a try?) and there is no real reason why some of those people couldn’t have been attracted to the same sex. The idea that people exist only to procreate is rooted in a time much more simplistic than ours, as is the idea that being unable to have children makes someone useless to society. Not only can homosexuals help to raise children who would otherwise go without parents, they can also serve necessary roles in our society that have nothing to do with procreation.

While I will agree with Zac’s simplistic observation that “a man is not the same as a woman” I will take it one step further to point out that a man is not the same as another man. If men were all the same, Zac and I would not be having this disagreement currently, because we would see eye to eye on everything. Unless we live in a world in which all men serve exactly the same functions and all women serve exactly the same functions (which simply assaults reason) then claiming that “With a man-man-children or woman-woman-children dynamic, one of the roles is absent while the other is redundant” is a far too simplistic view. One man may be very patient, while another may be very hot tempered, just as one woman might be very kind while another is especially cruel. There is not a required test to be a parent (though some people would argue there should be), which proves that no certain skill set is required to properly raise a child. Additionally, all children react differently to the parenting they do get, as when a child who comes from an abusive family overcomes this trauma to live a normal life, or when a child raised by perfectly capable parents snaps and takes an assault rifle to school. But even if a certain skill set must be possessed in order to properly rear a child, there is no reason why two parents of the same sex couldn’t possess these necessary skills. I can say with a degree of certainty that no one would place testicles or ovaries on a list of  necessary attributes to properly raise a child, so in terms of proper parenting it seems that temperament, rather than sex, should be the deciding factor. Additionally, whether or not this is normative, there are legally no deciding factors in determining who should be a parent in this country. A serial killer and a gang leader could raise their children without the possibility of government interference (with the obvious exception of jail time were either caught for their crimes. Regardless, however, they could reproduce with impunity), so how can two upstanding people of the same sex be deprived this right?

Turning now to Zac’s final point, he claims, “[…] because homosexual lifestyles run contrary to the will of God, does this mean we should deny them entry to the church, treat them as unequal citizens, or judge them with persecution because of their obvious sins? Heavens, no!” By his own words then, he admits that homosexuals should be allowed entry to the church (for those who even wish to go to a place where they are reviled), give them equal rights (which would include marriage), or judge them with persecution (by writing a blog post specifically singling them out as “sinners” and explaining how the way they live their lives are destructive just by existing).
As a non-religious person, I have no authority to speak about what God commands or what the Bible specifically states, but regardless of your religion, it should be noted that we live in a country that provides for the separation of church and state. The Constitution specifically states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion […]” and the laws that this country passes must also be free from religious connotations. Simply because one religion, or even all religions believe something does not make it law in this country (for that kind of treatment, head to Iran). However, so as not to be accused of slicing passages unfairly, I shall point out the addendum to the establishment clause, which reads, “[…] or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” What does this mean? In these United States, no law shall be passed that binds the people to any religious belief or to the doctrines of any belief, yet there shall also be no laws passed that keep people from practicing their religion (within a modicum of reason). So those of you who believe homosexuality is a sin are free to continue believing that, and those churches who think that homosexuals belong in hell before the wedding chapel are allowed, by the freedoms of this country, to shut your doors to them. Yet those same freedoms also allow them a right to marry the person they love, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or sex. I have often heard the argument that marriage is inherently a religious institution, but this is a misstatement of the facts. Since the birth of this nation marriage has also been a legally binding institution. Were it not, divorce courts could not exist in this country, tax breaks for married couples would be unconstitutional, and insurance and health care rights between married couples would never have been heard of. Like it or not, marriage has become far more than a religious institution. It is a legal institution, a cultural institution, and a right that has been handed down to heterosexuals for over 200 years in this country. It’s time to let the rest of the citizenry on the bandwagon.

You Might Also Enjoy Humor

I know that, when things get overly technical or serious over here, things have the potential to become, well, a bit bland.

That said, some of the kids at our place have been chronicling our day-to-day adventures over at a Brand New Website.

These are tales of our typical adventures, either directly lifted from reality or else corresponding so closely that any embellishments are merely flavorful.

Hope you enjoy.

Homosexuality Revisted: Marriage

In what appears to have become the inescapable “issue” of gay marriage, much has been said, of sorts, in trying to put a definitive answer on whether or not such a union should occur.

While it has been understood that “religious” people would generally not be in favor of such a union, it had never occurred to me to go further than that and ask “why?” Consequently, when Jordan posed the question at a discussion earlier last week, a dissection of possible answers soon wandered off-topic and the real question, and its answer, remained wholly unattainable.

So I will pose the question again: why does the Bible forbid homosexuality? Or more accurately, why precisely is homosexuality a sin?

There are many commonsense, worldly reasons vouching for the mere impracticality of homosexuality, both from a health standpoint and a societal standpoint, but those are not the focus of today. Neither would they for that reason necessarily be grounds for sin-status; the issue lies in what may be referred to as the Nature of Things. Bear in mind that I will be borrowing heavily from episode 7 of the Truth Project, because it was during that episode that these thoughts occurred to me.

To answer our question, we will have to rehash some basics, during which I hope you will be patient, because Christianity is not a collection of rules and sayings at random, but an overlapping and complex worldview.

DISCLAIMER: Again, keep in mind that I am not attempting to answer any other question than the question presented: Why does Christianity, in particular, define homosexuality as a sin? That is the question, and this is my answer. Let us not get carried away with off-topic criticisms.

Starting at the Beginning

In the beginning, God made many things, and after each thing he created, God saw “that it was good.” He created the light, and saw that it was good. He created seas, land, vegetation, and animals. Each time he declared them “good.”

However, after he created man, the pattern is broken: In Gen 2:18 God stops and says, “it is not good for man to be alone.” So God creates woman.

Most of you know the story, and what happens next, but I want to emphasize this point: that amidst an overwhelmingly “good” creation, God paused and noted that it was not good for man to be alone.

Why would God say such a thing? Simply this: because God’s nature is reflected in all his creation. But what is God’s nature? God is a triune being, and as of such, He is never alone. And if God existed throughout all eternity, and from the beginning of time, then there was never such a thing as loneliness to begin with, because even if He were the only thing to exist, He would still never be alone.

It is little wonder then that the triune nature of God be reflected in his creation, and specifically that man should not be alone. Indeed, that man should not be a single person but, like God, in whose image he was created, be more than one person. I am of course referring to the verse, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). (Other translations use “cleave” and “join.”) This is quoted again in Ephesians when Paul is using marriage as a metaphor for the church, but his point is the same: that though there are two people, the institution of this unit is one flesh, one thing. Just as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God, so are husband and wife one flesh.

Now, you may point out that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three, and Husband and Wife are only two, and rightly so. But the unit is complete when we bring children into the equation. Children form a perfect parallel, because the Holy Spirit is said to be forever emanating out of the union between the Father and the Son, and in the same way, the children come forth from the union of the Husband and the Wife.

Thus, the institution of Marriage (and, consequently, of Family) reflects the perfect and triune nature of God.

We can see sex, then, as the binding force within the former!! union: it is what brings a husband and a wife together, and what produces children. Hence, sex has a very definitive goal: not only to unite the husband and the wife together with such an intimacy which they have with no other human being, but also to bring about the institution of the Family and from there, community. This is why adultery is such a heinous crime, because it breaks the union between husband and wife.

Sex is not, as most people would like to believe, simply a “fun” thing to do “casually.” Don’t think it isn’t a fun, casual thing to do with your wife or husband. But because sex is something which exists to unite husband to wife and wife to husband, utilizing it outside of marriage is a misplacement of its function.

If I have sex with some random girl at a party, and never see her again, I’ve used something that was supposed to create an eternal union (and with it, all the responsibility and humility of a marriage and family) as instead something to gratify my own desires and wants with no regard to the purpose and order of things. And as should be obvious, focusing on your desires at the expense of the greater good makes you selfish, which focusing on the greater good at the expense of your desires makes you selfless.

Screwtape submits another of his wonderful one-liners on the subject:

“The truth is that wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured.”

What This Has to Do With Homosexuality

Fair enough, you may say, fair enough, sex should happen inside of marriage because that’s how God made it. But, you might say, how can homosexuals do this if the church won’t allow them to get married in the first place? Isn’t this a very mean sort of catch-22?

The answers is simply No, it is not. Now, I would think that it would be sufficient enough to point back to the previous section to answer the question, or quote the oft-heard expression, “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” and leave it at that. If we’re going with “God made it so” as our argument, then I should think it would be quite sufficient to quote Genesis again, saying, “So God created man in his own image/ in the image of God he crated him;/ male and female he created them.” Simple as that.

But I will indulge the argument further, because I imagine this will not be enough for some people.

We return to the analogy between the triune Godhead and the triune family unit:

The three persons of the Godhead all have different roles and functions within the Godhead, which can be read about all over the New Testament. Likewise, there are three roles within the family, and each member of the family was created with a specific goal in mind, physically, emotionally, and mentally. A man, contrary to popular belief, is not the same as a woman. Likewise, a woman is not the same as a man. They are equal, in the same way that God and Jesus are equal, but they are different, and have different roles.

People have accused “equal but different” as a discriminatory phrase, but let’s look at this rationally.

“Equal” does not mean “identical,” in the same way that a hundred dollars of food is equal in value to a hundred dollar phone. They have different functions.

Most people, using reason and commonsense, can see that men and woman are vastly different emotionally, socially, mentally, and so forth (that is, how they think and feel and interact, respectively). But there are those who refuse to give up this point, so let’s go with the raw facts of the matter: Physically, men and woman are totally different from each other. I need not elaborate (though I do hope that you have all taken health class).

That said, the unit of Family was created by God to be made up of several different beings each, like Him, with specific roles and functions. We call a family or marriage “normal” when it follows this pattern: A man, a woman, and children.

With a man-man-children or woman-woman-children dynamic, one of the roles is absent while the other is redundant. Indeed, in “families” of this nature, one of the redundant roles will usually take on the missing role, i.e., a more feminine man to fill the spot of the wife/mother. This in itself is an obvious sign that there do in fact exist these different roles, and that a gay- or lesbian-based family will be attempting to be something it is not, or fulfill something which it has no ability to fulfill.

A Final Word

Now, because homosexual lifestyles run contrary to the will of God, does this mean we should deny them entry to the church, treat them as unequal citizens, or judge them with persecution because of their obvious sins?

Heavens, no!

Shame to the one who calls himself a follower of Christ but condemns another for sin, as if he himself has never sinned!
As Jesus said, you who are without sin, YOU cast the first stone! Do not deny a man the good news of Christ because he is a homosexual, or for any other reason! Because you also sin. Maybe you don’t do it overtly, but you lie, cheat, and steal, you puff yourself up with pride, you act unjustly, you strike out harshly, you stumble, you fail, and you fall short of the Glory of God.

But don’t we all? That’s the good news, that we can are still redeemed.
Shame on the church that “persecutes” anyone. Shame on the church that does not show God’s love.
But equal shame on the church that calls itself a Christian church but doesn’t follow basic doctrine.

As usual, there are two equal and opposite errors to make as a Christian, here. Clear thinking and actually reading the Bible avoids both of them.

(Later, hopefully, we should be tackling Westboro Baptist and their nonsense)