A quick bit of housekeeping before I continue. I've been saying I'd start working on this blog again tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow. And after a thousand tomorrows there has been neither sound nor fury. I'll be making an effort to try and post at least once a week, which is strange as I've been posting elsewhere and not the site I own.
Hello, Mr. Ray. I am a semi-frequent visitor to your CatholicConvert.com blog, and you recently had a post entitled "Responding to an Atheist" I know you sometimes allow for brief responses, but as someone who is more than willing to forego succinctness for clarity, I figured I'd better post the response here and send you the link.
From the first proper paragraph of your post there are certain issues. The "civil law of Israel 3,000 years ago" does have relevance to the discussion between your friend and the atheist if that civil law came directly from God. Sure enough, if we take what God says aloud starting at Exodus 20 we see just that. This is no different than when a person does or says something in their past they are responsible for it, good or bad. In fact, it's important to recognize that a person, organization, and even a deity must bear the sole brunt for that they do. Your next remark is that the person your friend was talking to must be "held accountable as an 'atheist'" for awful things done in communist countries. (As an aside, why the scare quotes around atheist? No one says you're a "catholic", right?) Two entities can share certain traits without one having to be accountable for the other. Just because Dwight Eisenhower and I both don't/didn't have a lot of hair doesn't mean I have to justify the failure of approving Operation Market Garden. And to be fair there have been a number of Catholics who have done truly heinous things, and it's not your job to defend them.
I disagree with your claim that the atheist's response to your friend was a red herring. It was a perfectly reasonable response to the claim made that lacking God can lead to things like The Final Solution. The atheist is showing that those immersed in religion, directed by God himself, can willingly and sometimes eagerly commit their own atrocities.
This leads to the next bit, the canard about how one cannot have a basis of morality without God (specifically yours). Morality is not a simple thing and not without significant struggle. It's not a set of absolute and simple rules the way a child thinks of morality. I describe it as determining the best action in comparison to other actions so that the chosen action does the most benefit and the least harm. The next question, naturally is how do we determine benefit and harm? This again is not simple, requiring us to look at our history (both our failures and successes). For example, we know that a society works best when people are not physically harming one another, but we also know that at times it is necessary to harm those who mean to harm others in one way or another. And even then the question as to when and how strongly this needed force can be applied depending on the situation. Taking it in the opposite direction, your EWTN compatriot Father Mitch Pacwa has said multiple times that lying is so wring that it's never acceptable that he wouldn't lie even in the classic scenario as to if Nazi soldiers came looking for Jewish people hiding from them. (Perhaps he's seen a few too many episodes of Hogan's Heroes.) Thankfully for us, history tells the story of many brave souls who accepted a relative morality to help the helpless, and that includes some Catholic religious. Praise to the Oskar Schindlers, Sir Nicholas Winstons, and Harriet Tubmans of the world for doing what Fr. Pacwa would not given the opportunity.
I'm not sure what to make of the section regarding the kid with the "No Rules" t-shirt. There seem to be some believers who confuse atheists with anarchists. I've never actually met an anarchist, and if anyone out there is or knows one then I have a question: Who grows the food in an anarchy? Anyway, it's a false dichotomy to say that societal structure either must be one driven by Christianity or one riddled with abject chaos. It's a sliding scale where we are in a constant debate as to what limits should be added to or removed from people.
Your post goes back to the questioning of Israel's civil law, and we see a bit of a problem: "...which he fails to realize was not unjust under the primitive circumstances of this ancient culture, and far more civilized than the nations around them ..." Again, the actions of the people in that area are allegedly directed by God via direct word. And we can't blame the culture of the surrounding nations for influencing them, as God multiple times warned his people to not follow the actions of those nations (Leviticus 20:23 is just one example). God told them what to eat, what to wear, when to leave lands barren, when to pick up sticks. He had them do things other nations didn't, and not do things other nations did. If they did something wrong God told them to do, then the onus is on God.
And that leads us to one of the items the atheist listed to your friend: slavery. Some months back you wrote in your blog a post defending the Church's position and actions on slavery, and there was quite a bit wrong with it. I understand my response was lengthy, and you are under no obligation to post any replies that you do not wish to, but I think it would have been enlightening. But God has no problems with slavery. He twice calls slaves property, and says non-Hebrew slaves can be passed down like objects. This brings us back to the initial point. Unlike an atheist who can say they find fault with communist nations, the Catholic Church is obliged to defend itself as to its varied bad actions in the past -- especially if it wants to also take credit for its good actions in the past.
One final thing is why is it necessary for a certain percentage of believers to act as though all atheists are only atheists due to trauma. You make that point very clear in the last part of your post, but it's utterly baffling. Whenever I see it seems like it's a (poor) way to undercut non-believers and spread the false narrative that atheism can't be rational. If you honestly believe you have never had a conversation with an atheist who reached their disbelief through thought instead of emotion, then allow me to introduce myself. Hi, my name is Mike. I live near the ocean but hate fish. My favorite song is "Walk Away Renee" by The Left Banke. I strongly favor the Oxford Comma. And I came to my disbelief almost 40 years ago when it just didn't add up for me. Even though I disagree with your belief, I know that you came to it sincerely as did the people in your beautiful. All we ask is that believers do the same and respect the sincerity of those who disbelieve and not bear false witness against us.
Thank you, and have a wonderful day.
