Tag Archives: Apologetics

Commentary

Brian Auten posts book review of “The Faith of the Fatherless”

1 Comment

The book review is here on Apologetics 315.

Excerpt:

Vitz begins by laying out his hypothesis and the underlying principle behind it. He proposes that “atheism of the strong or intense type is to a substantial degree generated by the peculiar psychological needs of its advocates.”2  He notes that the theory that God is merely a projection of one’s needs is a popular position, but “the psychological concepts used so effectively to interpret religion by those who reject God are double-edged swords that can also, indeed easily, be used to explain their unbelief.”3  He makes clear one of the underlying assumptions of his study: “First, I assume that the major barriers to belief in God are not rational but can be called, in a general sense, psychological.”4

The psychological angle that Vitz examines is the role and influence of one’s father in the formation of beliefs about God. The author notes that “Christianity is in many respects distinctive in its emphasis on God as loving Father.”5 Vitz points out that “Freud makes the simple and easily understandable claim that once a child or youth is disappointed in or loses respect for his earthly father, belief in a heavenly father becomes impossible.”6 It is with this thesis in mind – the lack of a father plays a strong role in one’s psychological disposition towards rejecting God – that Vitz engages his case study comparing the lives of famous atheists and theists: “I have selected for study those who are historically famous as atheists. These are great thinkers, typically philosophers, whose rejection of God was central to their intellectual life and public positions.”7

Brian also cites Vitz explaining his own journey into atheism:

Just as I had learned how to dress like a college student by putting on the right clothes, I learned to think like a proper psychologist by putting on the right – that is, atheistic – ideas and attitudes. I wanted as few impediments to my professional career as it was possible.14

[…]In my own case, I now see that it was because of my social need to assimilate, my professional need to be accepted as part of the world of academic psychology, and my personal need for independence and an agreeable way of life that I chose to be an atheist. Hence, the intellectual basis for my atheism, like that of countless others, appears in retrospect to be much more of a shallow rationalization than an objective rationale.

I just ordered the book last week on Brian’s recommendation. You might also be interested in a lecture that Paul Vitz delivered on the psychological causes of atheism. (That link contains the MP3 file)

Related posts

Commentary

Canadian columnist David Warren on abortion evasions and euphemisms

3 Comments

This column from Canada’s 3rd best columnist is pure candy. Yum! (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

I have before me a packet of cigarettes with a Health Canada message in capital letters that reads: “Cigarettes hurt babies.” The text underneath this begins, “Tobacco use during pregnancy reduces the growth of babies.” Since an accompanying photograph further shows a pregnant woman smoking, it was unnecessary to specify “unborn.” Similarly, when we are discussing abortion, it is unnecessary to specify that the babies in question are “unborn.”

Indeed, the refusal to use plain language, the substitution of euphemisms and rhetorical evasions, is an infallible indicator that a speaker or writer feels uncomfortable with the truth.

Consider for instance the proposition, “a woman’s right to control her own body.” Not even men believe this, and a pregnant woman, who actually believes that the baby she is carrying is part of her own body, should wait for it to kick. Perhaps she has an astoundingly primitive notion of biology; but I should think even a woman of subnormal intelligence would understand the difference between what is in that bump she is carrying, and what is in the rest of her flesh. To wit: a different person.

I have myself had the experience of sitting inside a car. And yet even in the moment I was doing so, I did not consider myself to be a car, or part of a car. Nor — had the car the mind of a pro-active feminist — would I consider it had the right to do what it wished with its own body, if that involved tossing me out on the highway.

You know, if an unborn baby really were part of the woman’s body, then she would have four eyes, four arms, four legs and two noses! And imagine if it were a male baby! What then?

It makes no sense to talk about a woman have a right to control her own body when the unborn has a completely different DNA signature than the mother. The time for controlling her own body was before she consented to have sex with a man who was not fully invested in having a child to take care of. There are lots of things for men and women to do to express love without taking unnecessary risks with other people’s lives.

Related posts

Polemics

The evidence for the historical Jesus from non-Christian sources

1 Comment

Here’s a chapter from a book about the historical evidence for Jesus from early non-Christian sources. The book (I’ve read it!) is from historian and debater Gary Habermas.

Here’s a discussion of the Roman historian Tacitus:

Tacitus. Cornelius Tacitus (ca. 55-120 A.D.) was a Roman historian who lived through the reigns of over a half dozen Roman emperors. He has been called the “greatest historian” of ancient Rome, an individual generally acknowledged among scholars for his moral “integrity and essential goodness.”

Tacitus is best known for two works — the Annals and the Histories. The former is thought to have included eighteen books and the latter to have included twelve, for a total of thirty. The Annals cover the period from Augustus’ death in 14 A.D. to that of Nero in 68 A.D., while the Histories begin after Nero’s death and proceed to that of Domitian in 96 A.D.

Tacitus recorded at least one reference to Christ and two to early Christianity, one in each of his major works. The most important one is that found in the Annals, written about 115 A.D. The following was recounted concerning the great fire in Rome during the reign of Nero:

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed.

There’s some real value in this chapter because it surveys reports from other emminent Roman and Jewish historians writing in the first and second centuries. Habermas covers the Roman historian Suetonius, the Jewish historian Josephus, the Roman governor Pliny the Younger, and the Greek satirist Lucian. Something to read about if you’ve never looked into it. You won’t be able to find the whole New Testament in these non-Christian writings, but you can get some broad confirmation of early Christian beliefs.