Does Christianity make people better?

Does Christianity make people better? That is the question a commenter asked about one of my recent posts. A writer on the De-Conversion blog argued that the existence of bad Christians is evidence against Christianity. I pointed out:

1. The fact that Christians sin is not only not inconsistent with Christianity, but follows from it.
2. You can't condemn Christians as bad without employing Christian principles to do it.

But "Slapdash" asks:

[I]f the gospel of Christ is really so transformational, wouldn't we at least see some kind of positive difference in the behaviors of Christians, as compared to the behaviors of those who do not know Christ? I wouldn't expect sinlessness in Christians, but I would expect to see, for example, statistically significant differences in the divorce rate of Christians as compared to non-Christians. Which I don't think exists at this point in time.

On an evangelical note, it seems to me a tough argument to say Christ can transform your life, help you battle sin, if all the Christians you see are pretty much just as sinful as anybody else. Where's the evidence of transformation?

Good question.

Let's assume that we were capable of actually measuring the "goodness" quotient of groups of people, and we found that, as some particular point in time, Christians as a group were no better, ethically speaking, than non-Christians as a group. Suppose we found that the goodness quotient of Christians was no higher than that of non-Christians. By the way, I don't think we can do this, but let's assume that we could.

Is this evidence that Christianity does not transform lives? Does it mean that Christianity does not make people better? On the face of it it would seem to, but, in fact, it does not.

The only way you could say it does is if you knew what those same Christians were like before they became Christians. If you are trying to determine whether people become better after becoming Christians, you can't do it by comparing them to non-Christians. You have to compare them with themselves. You can't determine whether one group of people is better after a change than before by comparing them to another group of people. You have to compare people before the change to the same people afterwards. Only then can you say with any definitiveness whether Christianity makes people different.

To simply cite statistics about how Christians compare to non-Christians is irrelevant. What were the people who are now Christians like before and are they better or worse now? I don't think there is or ever will be a study that can answer this question. It can only be answered by common sense.

G. K. Chesterton was once asked why he had become a Catholic. His response was simply, "to have my sins forgiven." If there is an institution that offers those who join the forgiveness of their sins, you wouldn't expect it to be terribly attractive to sinless people. Quite the opposite. It would be attractive to sinful people. They're the ones who need forgiveness. "I came not to call the righteous," said Jesus, "but sinners to repentance."

So it would not be terribly surprising to learn that Christians were even worse is some ways than non-Christians. But that wouldn't be inconsistent with the idea that the same people were better after than before they became Christians.

In fact, if you look at the post I was responding to, what you find is a person who discovered the evil that many Christians do through counseling with them. And how did this happen? It happened, presumably, because the people he was seeing knew that what they were doing was wrong and were seeking some way to deal with it. This is what he described as the "Christian underbelly."

First of all, the fact that they were seeking help says something about their state of mind. If they were not Christians, would they have been as enthusiastic about seeking help? If their sense of right and wrong had not be changed by their Christian beliefs, would they even have thought they needed it? The writers says these were people who did some very bad things. But at least they were people who knew they were bad things and were trying to do something about it; otherwise, they wouldn't have been there in the first place.

And, second, did the author of the original post have an equal amount of experience with the "non-Christian underbelly?" It is not likely. First, he himself says he was a "pastoral counselor," who was seeing people from "within the Christian community." What would he have found if his counseling experience was outside the church? It could very well have been much worse--or maybe not. People outside the church would seemingly be much less likely to realize that they had a problem, and therefore much less likely to seek out counseling.

So, does Christianity change people? I think it does because I have seen it change people. And if someone is going to claim that it does not, they've have to find a better way to argue their case than the ones they're coming up with over at the De-Conversion blog.

Keep circumcision safe and legal

A prominent gay blogger is calling for circumcision to be universally banned.

D. Stephen Heersink, who runs "The Gay Species" blog, argues that circumcision is against the Geneva Convention, which calls it "barbaric" and "inhumane". Hmmm. Circumcision is against the Geneva Convention, but abortion isn't? Boy, that certainly tells us something, doesn't it?

Heersink also argues that it "desensitizes" men. And we know how bad the problem of desensitized men is today, don't we?

Here in Kentucky we have people wanting to mandate a vaccine that prevents HPV for all middle-school girls because it would save lives. But recent studies show that circumcision dramatically reduces HIV transmission, so, by the same logic, we should mandate circumcision middle school boys, an idea I have advocated, tongue firmly implanted in cheek.

What I wouldn't give to see Heersink and Rep. Kathy Stein together discussing their views on circumcision.

Keep circumcision safe and legal.

Arguing against Christianity by assuming it

There are sites on the Internet devoted to almost everything, which accounts for a site called "De-Conversion," which provides resources for "skeptical, de-converting, or former Christians." I'm not sure I completely understand the psychology of those who get religion about losing theirs, but, hey, it's the Internet.

In a recent post, someone identifying himself as "a Thinking Man" discusses some of the reasons he has now grown skeptical about the whole God thing, having experienced a conversion earlier in life. He discusses two issues in the post which he apparently sees as part of the same narrative, but which in fact are strangely inconsistent--something you would think a "Thinking Man" would have thought about.

He says, first, that he began having doubts about Christianity through his counseling experience, which resulted, he says, in his coming into contact with the "Christian underbelly": Christians who do bad things:

From within the Christian community I have personally come across ’senior’ Christians involved in multiple affairs, anal rape, child sex abuse, cottaging in the local toilets, visiting male and female prostitutes, physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual abuse, wife beating, and bullying.

In other words, our "Thinking Man" apparently hit upon a great discovery: Christians sin--some pretty brazenly. One wonders: is this something that he did not know before? Or, more to the point, does he really think this is inconsistent with Christianity? Does Christianity proclaim that Christians do not sin, so that when we find they do we can press charges when we find out they do?

In fact, not only is the fact that Christians sin not inconsistent with Christianity, it is, in fact, a confirmation of it. The thought that "Thinking Man" had not apparently had before is one that is familiar to every Christian pastor with the least amount of counseling experience: Christians sin too. Had "Thinking Man" been paying attention on Sunday morning, he would have noticed that this is one of the reasons they get together every Sunday morning to confess and ask forgiveness.

To try to blame Christianity because some Christians do bad things is sort of like blaming the law for the fact that people violate it. We don't hold it against the laws on homicide that some people engage in murder; we don't blame the rules of accounting when some people engage in fraudulent business practices; and we don't fuss at the police officer who pulls us over for running a red light that the real problem is that there are laws against red lights. So why are we blaming Christianity for the fact that some Christians sin?

In fact, without Christianity, there is no such thing as sin at all. In his book, The Everlasting Man, G. K. Chesterton points out that the next best thing to being completely inside Christianity is being completely outside of it. The problem that critics of Christianity have is that they are neither completely inside or completely outside of it. They criticize it from a philosophical position somewhere in between. They stay just close enough to it to trade upon the qualities they need to oppose it.

In trying to destroy something without being far enough away, you end up destroying yourself along with it. If you decided to blow up the Empire State Building, you better not be hanging around just outside the lobby when you do; otherwise, you're in for it. But this is exactly the position of someone like our "Thinking Man". If he were really outside Christianity, he would criticize it not because its adherents did bad things, but because there were no bad things for its adherents to do. He would criticize it not because it was wrong, but because there was no such thing as right or wrong.

But as it is, in criticizing Christianity, he is forced to borrow Christian ideas in order to accomplish his purpose, and as soon as he does that, he has undermined his own criticism. When he says that there is something wrong with Christianity because of sin, he is assuming the very notion of sin--something quite nonsensical outside the Christian view of the world.

And if his first point doesn't defeat itself, his second point will do the job quite nicely:

As part of my counsellor training I did a 3 year course that forced me to confront a very difficult issue that I had been wanting to avoid. Up until this point I had taken an evangelical view of homosexuality. Homosexuality was wrong because the Bible said so. I was to be compassionate towards gays, but not condone their practice. That was easy as I didn’t personally know any gays. On my course, two of the three tutors were gay. During the three years I got to know them, deeply respect them, and grew increasingly confused and ashamed as I listened to their stories of their inner struggles. I also started to read up-to-date research on homosexuality (Wilson, G. and Rahman, Q. (2005) Born Gay: The Psychobiology of Sex Orientation. London: Peter Owen) and concluded that I could no longer toe the party line. And if my party line was wrong on this, it could no longer be trusted and was probably wrong on lots of other things as well.

His first argument is that Christianity is bad because some Christians do bad things. His second argument is that Christianity is bad because it calls some of the things Christians do bad. In other words, his two arguments against Christianity are exactly opposite each other. He says on the one hand that Christianity allows too much, and on the other that it condemns too much: that it is wrong because some of its actions are evil and, at the same time, that it is wrong because some of the actions it calls evil are not wrong. It is at once too tolerant and too intolerant--sometimes about the same things.

When someone criticizes something because it does one thing, and also because it does the exact opposite, it is usually a sign, not that there is something wrong with the thing, but that there is something wrong with the critic.

His treatment of homosexuality is especially interesting. Somehow, despite the same experience with several different kinds of sin, his view of homosexuality changes, but his view of other sexual behavior does not. He comes to an acceptance of homosexuality when he gets to know homosexuals better, and finds out about their "inner struggles". Did he not get to know his heterosexual patients, and find out about their "inner struggles"? And if so, why does he come to accept homosexuality, but continue to reject heterosexual deviance?

I have gotten to know homosexuals as well. They've all been nice people. I've also met nice adulterers. I've probably even met nice child abusers and wife beaters for all I know. I'm sure many of them have inner struggles of which I am not aware. But what exactly does that have to do with whether the behavior is these nice people engage in is right or wrong?

The same experience with one behavior results in acceptance, and with another continued rejection. Why?

I don't begrudge our Thinking Man for rejecting Christianity. But if he's going to reject it, then he ought to reject it on some kind of consistent basis--and for reasons that don't assume the very position he is arguing against.

Voting for myself

My son (who I made the mistake of teaching logic) argues that I should vote for Ron Paul for president. My response to him has been that I don't think Paul can win. My son responds that it shouldn't matter, and he points to the maledictions I have cast against those who engage in what I call "tactical voting"--the practice of limiting your options in an election only to those who are most electable.

I respond that, yes, I am against tactical voting, but at the same time some dark horse candidates are so dark that you can't even see them, and that I am thinking of going with Fred (Thomson, that is). Thompson may not be as conservative as Paul, but he is very conservative and very electable. My son's response is that I should vote for the person who is closest to my own views, no matter how electable he may be.

But my son, who is a philosophy major at UK and no mean debater, fails to see the logical consequence of his argument. If I am to vote for the person who most closely shares my views, no matter what his electability, then who should I vote for?

Me.

That's right. The person who shares my views most closely is myself. Now, admittedly, I am completely unelectable, but, according to my son's argument, that doesn't matter.

Therefore, I am the one I should vote for.

But this argument has a further consequence: if each person should vote for the person who most closely shares his views, then each person should vote for himself. So not only should I vote for myself, but everyone should vote for himself. Furthermore, my son should vote for himself as well. And, therefore, he should not vote for Ron Paul.

Those who live by logic must die by it.

Billy the Greek

Popular Courier-Journal sports columnist Billy Reed has started a new state political blog, and it turns out that he is--Ta Daaaah!--a liberal Democrat.

And heaven knows we need more of those in the state political media.

But he's more than a Democrat: he's a Casinocrat. Reed is casting his lot with the casinos in the now high profile debate over expanded gambling being generated by the gubernatorial campaign. His blog is titled "Straight n' Flush", and the masthead has an image of a black jack table sharing space with the Declaration of Independence. And the connection is?

In fact, it appears that the casino issue is the chief motivating factor behind Reed's new blog, the welcome message of which says:

Welcome to the place where Hall-of-Fame journalist Billy Reed gives it to you straight on casino gambling and other issues so you can flush away the misinformation...

He promises to "bring the casino gambling debate to a new level!" He doesn't mention whether that level is higher or lower.

One wonders what he's going to do with the misinformation spouted by casino interests. Is he going to flush that too? Or do the rest of us still have to do it? Chances are Reed will only add to the misinformation that Kentuckians will have to endure from a predatory industry that preys on the very people for whom Democrats claim to stand.

The United States: Where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average

If you can't beat 'em, stop comparing yourselves to 'em. This is a favorite motto among Bill Bennett used to call the "Blob"--that established body of educrats that runs our government schools.

The latest example of this is the now not so quiet act by the United States to drop out of an international study that compares the math and science skills of students in different countries. Called TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study) Advanced 2008, the study has increasingly shown the sorry state of math and science education in this country, according to Newsweek magazine.

The interesting thing is that this strategy will probably work--if, by "working", we mean that it will make us look better. Kentucky did this in the 1990's when, under the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 (KERA), it stopped using standardized tests to measure student achievement and began using its own test, called the KIRIS test (now titled "CATS")--a test that measured Kentucky students, not against students in other states, but only against themselves. This resulted in the appearance of progress among Kentucky students when the data gathered from tests many students still took told a different story.

Now the U. S. will not have to answer questions about those embarrassing results showing us scoring lower than every country except for Cyprus and South Africa.

And they wonder why home schooling is becoming so popular.

Bergman

The only two consistent views of the world are Christianity or existentialism. Everything else is playing pretend.

Ingmar Bergman, a partisan of the latter view, died this last week. One of the Swedish filmaker's predominant themes was the consequences of the non-existence of God. You can see it on full display in what is perhaps his greatest film, The Seventh Seal. It is a stark and frightening movie.

Unlike the new atheists Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, Bergman, along with existentialist writers like Nietzsche and Sartre, faced their atheism honestly and squarely. The new atheists try to hang on to some sort of absolute morality or meaning in the world despite the fact that the only rational grounding these beliefs can possibly have is God.

Bergman and his fellow existentialists knew that there are two alternatives available to men: a world in which God exists and there is meaning, or one in which he does not exist and everything is absurd. Take your pick.

I don't agree with the existentialists, but at least they are intellectually consistent, which is more than can be said of the new atheists.

The seven reasons people do things

In light of Wednesdays report by the New York Times that researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have discovered 237 reasons why people have sex (apparently in addition to the obvious one), I thought it might be useful to point out that there are only seven reasons that anyone does anything. And lest I be accused of a cooking up a misguided and dangerous psychological novelty, let me point out that this comes from Aristotle's book, Rhetorica.

We join wisdom in progress, from Chapter 10 of Book I, as Aristotle explains:

Now every action of every person either is or is not due to that person himself. Of those not due to himself some are due to chance, the others to necessity; of these latter, again, some are due to compulsion, the others to nature. Consequently all actions that are not due to a man himself are due either to chance or to nature or to compulsion. All actions that are due to a man himself and caused by himself are due either to habit or to rational or irrational craving. Rational craving is a craving for good, i.e. a wish--nobody wishes for anything unless he thinks it is good. Irrational craving is twofold, viz. anger and appetite.

In other words, the seven reasons people do things are:

1. Chance
2. Nature
3. Compulsion
4. Habit
5. Rational craving
6. Anger
7. Appetite

Now I don't want to belabor the obvious, ... but, come to think of it, that is what I spend 95 percent of my time doing anyway. In fact, according the blog subtitle, that is my chief purpose. In any case, in regard to the intrepid researchers at the University of Texas at Austin who are trying to figure out why people have sex, they could have made their job a lot easier by observing this ancient and honorable canon. If they had done so, they would have discerned that there are only a small number of possible reasons for people having sex.

I'm tempted here to offer a pop quiz as to which they are, but this is supposed to be a G-rated blog, and I think I want to move on to another topic now.

I rest my case

Okay, folks, this is almost scary.

Only three days ago, I made the observation that our regnant scientism is causing us to feel a need to seek confirmation of our most basic intuitive beliefs in research evidence. We are getting into the habit of thinking that the only way to be certain of the things that stare us in the face is to look back on them through the many-lensed mechanism of modern science and see if they show up. We seem to think that the things that are most certain must be established on the basis of things less certain than the things themselves--that, in short, we are trying to confirm obvious things by appealing to things that are less obvious. It is as if I were to go and water my garden, umbrella in hand, in the middle of a rain storm--and thought it was a perfectly normal thing to do.

Well, the rhetorical gods have smiled on me. Today the New York Times reports that researchers at the University of Texas wanted to find out why people have sex. Pause a moment if you will, and ponder this fact. On the other hand, maybe you'd better not.

Here are some of the reasons, according to these enterprising researches, people gave for having sex:

• "I was frustrated and needed relief"
• "I was bored"
• "It seemed like good exercise"
• "The person smelled nice"
• "The opportunity presented itself"
• "I wanted to get a job"
• "I wanted to end the relationship" (???)
• "It was a favor to someone"
• "I wanted to get rid of a headache"
• "I thought it would help me fall asleep"

And then there is my personal favorite: "I wanted to see what all the fuss was about."

I am not sure what is more frightening: that there are researchers at the University of Texas who don't know why people have sex, or that there are people who would seriously give these answers to a researcher.

I am tempted, in the wake of the release of this study, to call on everyone to head to the nearest fallout shelter and take refuge until this cultural crisis is over. The only thing preventing me from taking this extreme measure is my fear that I might have to share space with one of the study's respondents--that and the fact that I am not sure they even have fallout shelters anymore.

Next up on the University of Texas research agenda: A study on why people breathe.

Did Sartre get religion?

Maverick Philosopher posts a link to sartre.org about the atheist existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre "getting religion" near the end of his life. I have heard references to this story, but assumed it was one the many evangelical urban myths that seem to abound. Turns out, according to the site, that Sartre did take a religious turn near the end of his life--toward Judaism.

The story, according to the report, is based on an interview with Sartre conducted by Benny Levy, his personal secretary, which ran in the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur a month before Sartre's death in 1980, leaving Sartre's many atheist fans in a difficult intellectual position. Levy, who himself returned to Judaism later in life, died in 2003.

Again this is from a website, and this IS the Internet, after all, but it doesn't seem implausible.

Sartre is a sort of atheist icon for many people, and the story that he may have abandoned his own position near the end of his life would, if true, obviously be a difficult one for some people to have to stomach.

It could just go to show that no one can really face a meaningless existence--or one, apropos of Sartre, in which the only meaning comes from ourselves--in an amoral world.

Smoking up in smoke at Disney

Just in case we needed any more object lessons in how morality is being turned upside down, D. Andrew Kern over at Besidethequeue reports that Disney has banned all smoking from its movies. We assume that sex and violence are still acceptable to the folks who are busy about squandering Walt's legacy.

This is also, by the way, further proof of my theory that health is the new religion for people who have abandoned their old one.

New hate crime: putting a Koran in a toilet

We're filing this in the "Decline of Western culture" file:

Michelle Malkin asks the question, Which of these is a hate crime in America?

A) Submerging a crucifix in a jar of urine.

B) Burning the American flag.

C) Putting a Koran in a toilet.

According to a news report, a 23 year-old student at Pace University in New York was charged for the hate crime of C), putting a Koran in a toilet.

Go figure.