Christianity: Facts-Evidences-Reasons

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We are in the final throes of proofing our up-coming book, which we have retitled, yet again to more closely match the content—CHRISTIANITY: FACTS-EVIDENCES-REASONS — 33 college level lectures by ancient language scholar Dr. Stan Walters from Yale, Princeton and Oxford. 

The more we read these lectures, the more convinced we are, and excited we become about the exemplary material it contains for Christians and Christian apologists. 

So, we're going to tease you with a few passages and quotes.

From Lecture No. 1: Goals of the Course

One of the things that gets omitted even in the best public high school programs is the development of a sophisticated understanding of religion. There are good and sufficient reasons for it. But this means that even though you may arrive at college with something like an adult understanding of many facets of life’s experiences, most of us come to college with what is basically a grade school or a junior high school or a Sunday school understanding of the Christian faith. This has a lot of disadvantages, from my point of view. For one thing, all the time that you are learning new concepts, new ideas in matters of science, history, literature, and language, you are not learning anything new in the matter of religion. Everybody knows that grade school science has to give way to a high school understanding, and, in turn, high school understandings, say, in science, have to give way to college-level understandings. 

Wouldn’t this also be true of our understanding of the Christian faith? It seems to me a kind of demoralizing thing when a person is learning new and perhaps exciting ways of looking at everything except religion—and religion he keeps on looking at in the same old Sunday school way. Now that’s nothing against Sunday school. It’s nothing against grade-school understanding. That’s fine for grade-school people. When you become a college person, you want to develop a college-level understanding of the Christian faith.  

Evidence Based 

This is one of the reasons that I try to center the class on evidences rather than on dogmatic affirmations. What you can’t explain to a child you may be able to explain to a college student. I will talk to you differently than I talk to my boy. I would like to explain some things to him and go in deeper than I do, but I know that he can’t follow those things, and he has to take my word for a lot of things.  

Well, part of developing an adult-level understanding of the Christian faith will involve us, then, in the consideration of the evidences for the plausibility of the Christian faith. And this, I hope, will help your religious thinking and, your theological thinking, keep pace with the development of your scientific and other thinking. 

Reflections on the Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica - Does God Exist?

From the Wikipedia article on the Summa—
St. Thomas and his Summa Theologica.

MOTIVATION FOR THE SUMMA

Recently, two of the three Catholic parishes my wife and I attend and are involved with, have been giving away copies of Matthew Kelly's latest book, The Biggest Lie in the History of Christianity.  I had read Kelly before, and I'm being gracious when I say Kelly is not considered a teacher of religion, a philosopher, or a great Catholic writer...unless volume of words, repetitive words, is a criteria.  He could, however, be labeled as the philosopher king of glurge—fictional, absurd tales, that distort historical fact and thus fail at their task.

One of the priests at our parish gave the book a glowing review. Nonetheless, I picked up one of free copies of "The Biggest Lie..." and read it. After I read it, I concluded that getting parishioners to read Matthew Kelly may reveal why so many are leaving the Church, or just not interested.

Kelly's book is unlike any other Catholic book aimed at arming and lifting up the faithful. For one thing, the book has no citations, footnotes or bibliographies...things that Catholic writers typically find necessary. Another thing

Matthew Kelly - Insipid, Shallow Thinking for Catholics

I am involved in Christian and Catholic apologetics. I write and read a lot. Matthew Kelly's The Biggest Lie in the History of Christianity" was given out to parishioners at the two parishes our family attends. 

The book is lauded as a great tool of evangelism. I read it. But I found it very shallow and insipid in its thinking. Catholics can do much better than read this if they want to be better prepared to engage the culture, witness for Christ, and better their lives.

Consider these few points.

(1) The Biggest Lie... unlike most Catholic texts has no citations, outside references, footnotes, nor is there a bibliography. Ex. He quotes Keats, but no citation. Only one Scripture is cited: 1 Thess. 4:3. 

(2) In rebutting the historic lies about Christianity, The Biggest Lie... provides few if any facts that can be tracked down and checked out. But Kelly offers plenty of opinion. Ex. "#1 Jesus Didn't Exist" (p 22), Kelly provides not one piece of evidence that Jesus did exist. But he provides 7 claims that Christ didn't, and offers 6 of his own unsubstantiated opinions, demeaning his detractors by calling them "disingenuous" or liars. Matthew, name calling is not evidence.

(3) If there's a practical theme to the book it's to create Holy Moments by being kind to others. By other names this is a repeat of past fads a.k.a. "random acts of kindness" and "pay it forward" which the secular culture practices to a great extent. Kelly seems to think such Holy Moments are unique to Christians and the world will sit up and take notice. He's wrong. Further, he provides no advice on how to use Holy Moments to confront cultural issues like abortion, sexualization, gender politics or the ever-present sex scandal in the Church. He ignores these issues totally. Thus, the book is very shallow. 

(4) He spends time talking about giving 100% of our lives to Christ, but the thinking here is nothing more than a bottle of bromides. Platitudes with no practical interpretation. EX: If I give my 100% to Christ how do I have anything left for my wife, job, or kids?  Now there's a clear answer to that, in that we are Christ in our interaction with our wife, job and kids...but Kelly doesn't say that. He just piles on the adages.

(5) On pages 94-95 he writes of the power that ONE individual has to change the world and gives as an example: "had another thousand or ten thousand jointed" the resistance against Hitler "they would have changed the course of history." Think about that logic. ONE person can change Hitler's attack on humanity, but maybe 1,000 or 10,000 more would be needed. At the same time, he posits this Kelly is ignorant of the tens of MILLIONS that died to stop Hitler and the Axis powers and it took years. The logic is over simplified and baffling.

(6) On pages 109-112 Kelly gives one-line bios to over 30 of the greatest achieving people to grace humanity, from Bill Gates to Grandma Moses, listing the great things they did and the age when they did them...and he points out that these special people were "called of God". Then he follows this up by reminding the reader (in big type) "you and I—are capable of incredible things." Why does he say we don't do such things? He does not remind the reader that he said that the former were called of God, or that they worked hard all their lives and prepared for their great opportunities. No, he says it's because we're busy with the "hustle and bustle of life" as if the famous folks weren't busy with such things. "Or we think we are not among the special people and we are not capable of great things."  Duh! Well, most of us are not "called of God" in a special way like Joan of Arc, nor are we as talented or as disciplined as Jack Nicklaus, or driven like Paul McCartney for fame, etc. But never mind that logic. Kelly says, "We are wrong. We are capable of great things." And then by the force of his words he reminds us that Holy Moments (Random Acts of Kindness) are equivalent to the works of Mozart and Michelangelo. One thing for sure, Matthew Kelly will never be lauded for his literature or thinking. 

(7) Many places the proofs he provides to back up his opinion is simply to state his position again in more emphatic words. On pages 59-60 he goes on a rant about the need of Christian unity to save the Church and the world. He never gives a tactical or strategic plan for such unity other than his Holy Moments motif. And then to prove his point he says, "And hear me when I say this: The future of Christianity around the world depends on this unity. It's no longer just a nice idea...." etc.  Kelly's best evidence for his opinion is the sight of his own words in print... or the sound of his voice on his videos. What more do we need? 

There are many other logical problems with this book. In short, if Catholics read this they will learn that simply repeating ideological chants ("But Matthew Kelly said...") and paying it forward with random acts of kindness will unite the church and change the culture.

In the meantime, it would be great if Kelly would steer clear of the bromides and platitudes write a practical book on confronting evil.