Regarding the first question, consider the world (this is what Christians call general revelation). The second law of thermodynamics is entropy, the fact that everything descends into chaos unless there is intelligence behind it to create and maintain order. The way the world works, from the ecosystem down to our own physical bodies, is utterly amazing and more finely complex than any machine or computer ever created. Is this all an accident? I think you have to have more faith to believe in this universe being a huge accident than that there was intelligent design behind it.Lord, you’ll pardon the expression, knows, we are all guilty of bowdlerizing science in some of our arguments, and those of us with the misfortune to have attended college and to remember any of it can usually recall that fraught moment in Intro to Soc when some mook in Birks and a beanie started yakking about ant colonies. The world is complex, the perceived explanatory power of science is alluring, and the temptation to misapply the latter to the former is hard to resist.
-Allen Yeh, Baby Genius
But the ideas that “the ecosystem” and our “physical bodies” violate the second law of thermodynamics, that the second law of thermodynamics is entropy, and that entropy is “the fact that everything descends into chaos unless there is intelligence behind it to create and maintain order” are a nested set of cosmic, comical misapprehensions. Someone build this man a perpetual motion machine already. What’s really sad here is that the fellow seems to be arguing in, you’ll pardon the expression, good faith. That is: he isn’t engaged in casuistry; he’s just a dummy. Of course there are no truly closed systems, but taking our divinely maintained, intelligently designed bodies as a rough approximation, and seeing as we are not subject to those crude physical laws that govern mere dumb matter, I encourage Mr. Yeh to take up fasting. Forever. He should be fine.
Later in the same article he constructs an almost--but not quite--equally hilarious argument regarding why, once one concedes the existence of divinity and discards the possibility of polytheism, Christianity is the clear way to go:
Finally, the third question: if monotheism, then why Christianity (rather than Islam or Judaism)? One answer is that it’s the most egalitarian religion in the world. It is the only religion which says that your salvation is not predicated on what you do, but only by faith. If works is the basis for your salvation, then of course some people have greater knowledge or ability or tenacity or strength, and access to God ends up being inherently unequal. But anybody can have faith! This levels the playing field. In addition, Christianity is the most widespread religion in the world; it is not localized in one place, unlike all the other religions (Islam in the Middle East and North Africa, Hinduism in India, Buddhism in SE and East Asia, Judaism in Israel). If there is truly a God up there, and he truly loves the world, I think he would give everyone the best chance to know him, namely a worldwide geographical spread combined with the “easiest” access to him. (Of course this is a very crude way in which to put Christianity, but we’re working with their starting assumptions for the moment; you can’t get more refined until they have accepted certain other premises first). Christianity is the most egalitarian religion in the world, it is the most widespread religion in the world, and it is the most accessible religion in the world. As people mature and go further in discipleship, they will find that the road is not easy, but the initial entry into the community of faith is more open than any other religion on earth.This is all fairly hilarious. The most populous Muslim country in the world is Indonesia, which is a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Middle East. There are almost as many Muslims in Hindu India as there are in all of North Africa. The Muslim population of Bangladesh is six or seven times the population of Saudi Arabia. There are as many Muslims in China as there are in Morocco. There are as many Jews in the United States as in Israel. It is still fair to say that Christianity is the most geographically widespread religion, and it is surely the world's most-adhered-to, nominally speaking anyway, but regardless, I think we can dismiss a man who thinks that "SE and East Asia" constitutes a geography of sufficiently small dimensions as to merit the adjective, localized.
As for the argument from popularity, an odd conceit of a man plainly much-steeped in democracy, that Truth proceeds from the number of voters pulling the Yes lever, it would certainly dismay the early Christians scratching their little fishies in the sand. It did remind me of a good story the rabbi at my parents' synagogue told when I recently joined them at services for my brother's Yahrtzeit. Two orthodox rebbeim are debating the coming of the Moshiach. The first says, "I believe we must study Torah and observe the laws and traditions of our ancestors and not think too much of worldly things, for after all, when the Moshiach comes, many worldly things will pass away."
The second rebbe says, "I agree, we must read Torah and observe the laws and traditions, but should we not also work and pray for a better world for ourselves and our children and grandchildren? For after all, we do not know when the Moshiach will come. We do not even know if the Moshiach will come!"
"My friend!" cries the first rebbe. "How can you say such a thing? Does not Hashem promise that our Moshiach will come? Do you doubt the word of the Lord?"
"Hmmm," muses the first Rebbe. "Perhaps, perhaps."
"Aha!" the first rebbe calls out. "Then you do not believe in God!"
"Oh," the second replies. "Nonsense. I am a Jew. I believe in God. I just don't trust him."
21 comments:
Is "hilarious" modifiable?
It'd be awful if I prattled on without saying that that's a rather good one, IOZ.
Also, I'd like to see an editorial by a Roman claiming that his religion was preferable to Christianity because, after all, piety had placed Rome at the apex of power.
Well-meaning Christian apologists ought to beware: when you use the ends to justify belief, you end up with very funny results. To claim the popularity of Christianity that, like the world-straddling popularity of any major religion, stems from murder and intimidation is to justify belief on the ground that its past disciples were not only willing, but able, to extinguish other forms of beliefs and, often enough, believers. And it reveals, in my opinion, what it is that the supposedly pious truly covet: power.
It's all part of your sick Cynthia thing.
Why does he repeat himself so much in that second bit of text? Is he trying to hypnotize us?
If he's going to argue that the most popular religious conviction is the right one, he's much better off going with a de-guilted and even de-Godded version of Reformed Protestantism like Unitarian Universalism. He's more than a bit deluded if he went to Yale and honestly believes that actual Christianity has any pull in either the power corridors or population centers of the world.
"Is he trying to hypnotize us?"
No, imk. He's trying to hypnotize himself, like most intellectuals without the willingness or capacity to question the notions they've inherited.
"That is: he isn’t engaged in casuistry; he’s just a dummy."
Oh, YHWH, not the old "Second Law of Thermodynamics" chestnut again. Fundamentalist Baptists have been flinging that one around for years because they think it makes them sound smart, or something. Psst, guys, Boltzmann committed suicide. That means he's in Hell now, and his godless science is not to be trusted. (Since no one escapes Hell, it must be a closed system. Yet it never cools off. How's that possible, Yeh?)
I wonder how Mr. Yeh's theological flowchart would be disrupted if the Western atheist agreed that, yes, there is such a "thing" as the divine, but that no, such a "thing" should be construed neither as One nor Many persons, nor even as an arcane Trinitarian mixelplix, but simply as an experience people commonly have. Hence, the "a"theism. Some folks just don't realize how long ago they missed the only exit off of Superstition Highway, and seem to think the rest of us are still merrily along for the ride, waiting to be convinced by their witness-by-numbers.
Here comes the sun, da-do-dee-dee-do. Here comes the sun, and I say....it's all right...
du-bit-tee-du-bitty, do wah.
But anybody can have faith!
Join our club! We don't require shit of our members!
His laudation seems to have been written for an 4th grade essay assignment --
"Today class, pick a religion. And tell us why it's the best religion."
The fact that history doesn't enter into arguments like this really fascinates me.
A millennium after Christ existed, Christianity was neither widespread nor egalitarian, yet I have to assume that if it's the correct religion now, it was back then, too.
His argument against polytheism is also worth reading, amounting as it does to "I don't know anything about Hinduism, but the Greek gods sure seem like jerks in the Illiad".
Also fascinating to me is that Yeh is apparently not seventeen years old, which makes this kind of nonsense a lot less excusable.
Malcolm X, if I recall correctly, saw Islam as the most egalitarian religion ever, based on his experience of the many different hues of pilgrims to Mecca, all equal in the sight of God.
My Hindu grandfather made the case that Hinduism was the most egalitarian religion ever because it admitted multiple paths to Nirvana (including, in his view, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc., but he was a bit of an iconoclast)
I see my brand of atheism as more egalitarian because I think ALL you motherfuckers are a bunch of idiots, and what's more egalitarian than that?
I'm with Peter Ward on this one.
"Just look at the parking lot."
I read your post with Machine Gun blasting in the background.
My religion is the best religion because horses are pretty.
How'd that classic Monsieur line go?
"A god that is not GOD! isn't God"
That'd be a punk God if his existence / power would depend on his believers.
God's everywhere. He's omnivorous.
That's silly.
Everyone knows Moshiach came. It's been 200 years.
Capt'n Obvious
He's not even wrong about the Second Law of Thermodynamics. He's just stupid.
Rojo---
Setting aside women and infidels, I think Malcolm X was correct.
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