Author Archives: Gutter Ball Master

Explàrrogance and the Modified Toddler Theory

The next thing on my to-do list is to read four books in this order: (1) Your God is Too Small by J.B. Phillips, (2) The God Delusion by R. Dawkins, (3) What’s So Great About Christianity by D. D’Souza, and (4) God is Not Great by C. Hitchens. I have already listened to the debate between D’Souza and C. Hitchens and would like to see more of the nitty gritty details of the sides in order to get a better picture of the current state of popular religious affairs.

However, I have read much on the Internet about the Atheist books, and, of course, I already have an opinion on the overall subject. I just wonder if my opinion will change after I read the books. I hope you will join me along the way. Let me know if I make sense or not.

The first opinions I have are about Militant Atheist Richard Dawkins et al (hereinafter Dawkins). I have made up two terms to help me in my understanding of his and his minion’s position. The terms are explàrrogance and the Modified Toddler Theory.

First, it seems that in explaining why something exists or came to exist at a superficial, or materialistic level, he puts on arrogance that is inexplicable. That is, in his explanations of scientific causalities, he is very haughty in the confidence upon which he puts his scientific conclusions as if they were sufficient in explaining the causes. He has much explàrrogance.

Second, for one to gain the most understanding of the world, one must continue to ask how. This is the Modified Toddler Theory. Since Dawkins does not continue to ask how, but instead stops his search at superficial materialistic explanations, he doesn’t have complete explanations of anything.

To say something exists because of its evolutionary journey does not ultimately explain how it exists. Just as a toddler asks, “why, why, why” to get the best answer, a scientist must ask, “how, how, how”. Eventually, we won’t know how something came to be; we just say it is. This leads us to God who just is. However, science may not venture to the end of the how’s since this inquiry is out of the empirical domain.

Dawkins tries to say that the only required and sufficient explanations come via science. However, not even science has all the answers. It would need to rely on data outside the empirical domain of inquiry, which is not in its nature (see above post). Only in Dawkins’ explàrrogance and inaction within the Modified Toddler Theory (he doesn’t continue to ask how) can he confidently say that science killed God with his shallow explanations.

Science Does Have Limits

In the process of learning science throughout my life and teaching physics formally for a short time, I have come to appreciate scientists’ ability to help society explore the natural world. However, I am dismayed that many in society are using science in ways that it was never meant to be used. Continue reading

Biblical Cleanliness Laws

I’ve been thinking about the laws of the Torah. Cleanliness is the motive for many of the laws. Is the focus on cleanliness something Moses learned about in Egypt with Pharaoh? Think about it. The Egyptians were around ruling a large empire for a long time. Could they have not done it with out cleanliness and the resulting lack of disease? Moses might have learned from them and modified his knowledge for the people that God would lead out of bondage (picture Carleton Heston, “Out of bondage”).

Another alternative is that, even before the modern understanding of germs and the necessity for cleanliness to diminish their numbers was made known, God used these previously unknown facts to keep the Israelites living in the desert when they were in close quarters. God was with them on their journey to the “promised land”.

Circumcision helped the people multiply to keep their population strong. Not eating pigs kept down disease. Making sure dairy and meat were eaten separately ensured that the cooks knew were the germs (or evil things) were. Stoning let people be killed without touching them and contacting whatever disease they had. Staying away from foreigners kept their diseases from infecting them (unlike the Native Americans interacting with the European colonists which almost wiped the former out due to new disease transmission with the latter).

Again, all this is just speculation, and since we’ll never be in the past empirical domain, we’ll never really know the answer with 100% certainty.

There is a caveat of the above thought pattern. Perhaps, in Jesus’ perfect fulfillment of the law, He is able to excuse us from following some of the Mosaic laws, including the cleanliness laws (just as Jesus said that Moses made up the divorce law “due to the harness of your hearts”, but God didn’t make it so). Perhaps Jesus knew that Moses inserted some of the cleanliness laws into the laws given by God found in the Torah. I don’t know, maybe I’m just way off base.

What do you think?

Hello, I’m a Cafeteria Republican

Why is it that for many people, they think that certain political ideas should go together by default? If one is pro-life, they must be for the Iraq war. If one is against the death penalty, they must be for (so-called) homosexual marriage. If one is pro-environment, they must be pro-choice. If someone is conservative politically, they are grouped with the conservative platform, and vice-versa. Shouldn’t we all know that this is not true?

Along the same lines recently, as far as I have noticed, Republicans (at least) have been toting the “united we stand” position. In other words, a Republican must be pro Iraq war, against any spending on health insurance, pro death penalty, pro-life, against environmental initiatives, for big business (especially the pharmaceuticals, big media, and auto manufactures), and against (so-called) homosexual marriage.

This is what is wrong with the American political party situation: one has to concede his or her personal position in order to meld into their respective party. I am not a cafeteria Catholic, but politics is too complex to blindly be led by all the fallible parties.