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A Bit of an Epiphany
02/09/2003

I've been engaged in some great email conversation, lately. Last week, Noah Millman and I discussed the differences in the treatment of sex from the Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant perspectives. This week, I was so impressed with the clarity and confidence of thought of somebody in a comment box at Mark Shea's that I initiated correspondence with him.

To further delve into something that he had written in the comment box, he suggested that the universe tends toward life but atheists use an "anthropic principle" to explain this away, essentially by declaring that the tendency is only by chance and only noticeable because we happen to inhabit the universe that made us possible. This is very postmodern (e.g., we can never know the full nature of our own knowledge) in that, while perhaps a valid disclaimer for any who desire it, it is dishonest within the "objective," investigative realm of science.

However, in his view, the "anthropic principle" does apply to the question of evil. Change any aspect of history one bit, and the individuals who currently exist would cease to do so. For this reason, our individual existence is contingent upon there being evil in the world. If God were to have created a world without evil, we could not inhabit it, and if accepted that God loves us, then we have a reason for his continued acceptance of evil. Would you make the world more "perfect" at the expense of your children's lives?

These thoughts and others cycled through my brain as I waded through snow with the dogs last night, and I had a bit of an epiphany concerning a way of thinking that I have loathed since college: postmodernism. Mostly, I have been so averse to it because I felt it to be silly based on its pointlessness. Although many postmodernists have taken the opportunity of everything being arbitrary to assert their own preferences as truth (again, the atheists wanting to be God), I have held that it is a point of view from which one cannot move forward. This is not true. We cannot move based on it, but we can move in reaction to it.

It isn't just that the suggestion that nothing can be proven to exist is counterintuitive and repugnant; it's that it isn't true. Put a ball before any human being, and he or she will notice it and probably interact with it. Plants grow around rocks. We just know things exists. We just know that everything is not arbitrary. One might say that we have faith that the ball exists, so perhaps faith has been poorly defined. It isn't believing beyond all reason; it's believing based on knowledge apart from reason.

Of course, the postmodernist can just move the goal post and say that our reality exists arbitrarily (back to the anthropic principle). I need to do some more thinking in this area, but I would suggest that this endpoint of postmodernism brings us literally to the "Omega Point" of God (the Father). This is the point at which He made the decision about what reality should be, and we know what choices He made because we exist in that reality. As I said, I need to think about this more, but I can say that, first, it is pointless and silly and gains no cognitive ground to speculate that the "choices" are mere chance and, second, that giving some weight to what we intuit and feel negates the possibility.

Regarding the rhetorical implications of this idea, the upshot is something that I'm pretty sure my correspondent knew already: the solution is to let the atheists/materialists explain their beliefs, and they will ultimately come to the point at which they must make a call based on something outside of reason. This introduces the intuitive/emotional face of God (the Holy Spirit). Proof of motion and action (ultimately continual creation; the Son) would yield the conclusion of a Triune God. From there, it seems but legwork (albeit important and difficult legwork) to build Catholicism, from its abstract principles to its morality.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 08:01 AM EST