Darn Falwell

Monday means Vox Day and Pat Buchanan have columns posted over at WorldNetDaily. I'm not a huge fan of WND for the simple fact that like most news sites, every story is way too sensationalized. Journalists, and more especially bloggers, have a tendency to try to be profound. It is a tendency I certainly tend to exhibit more than I would care to admit. It seems to be that the harder one tries to be profound the more likely the piece will be banal. The desperation in the headline and the build-up really diminishes whatever point the author was trying to make. The most shocking things about a headline is the word shocking, and our anticipation for the shock is more exciting than the fact that once again, a celebrity has been caught sniffing coke. So please put your expectations aside, I don't like the pressure.

Anyway, I was over at WND and noticed that Jerry Falwell had an article. I don't go looking for Falwell, but he draws me in not unlike the accursed tabloid headlines. His piece is entitled "Anti-evolution Revolution" and Falwell is near ecstatic that polls have demonstrated that more and more Americans are supporting creationism over evolution. I did not finish the article because it ceased to interest me. It shouldn't matter that the same populace that once supported slavery and butchered the Indians now affirm truth in a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis. That a majority of people agree on something does not make that something true, and Mr. Falwell should remember that it was a mob that crucified Christ.

As I think I have mentioned before, the subject of evolution versus intelligent design verus creationism or what have you bores me. I am not a scientist, and I will let the scientist worry about those sort of things.

Now if I may, I will attempt an aside that I hope will connect back with the main point eventually. If not, we at least have the shocking incident of a metaphorical train wreck in the form of this brief article.

Shortly after I had re-discovered the wisdom of the Catholic Faith and called it my own once again, I decided that I would attempt a bit of a Summa, not unlike the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. Not unlike, except that his was a masterpiece and mine is a series of disconnected thoughts lying somewhere forgotten on my hard drive. A friend of mine was reading bits of it and told me it was quite difficult. Rather than attempt to read the Summa I decided to create my own, which was the most profoundly idiotic thing I could do.

If I was half smart enough to understand a fourth of Thomas's work, I would have known that I would be better served working through it, however incomplete my understanding. But I was not this smart, or at least far to proud. Although my Summa is not complete and will probably never be, I did learn something important. Until we accept some basic truths, such as the fact that what I am typing is real and that what I am hearing is in fact The Who emanating from my speakers, we'll probably be stuck forever offering conjectures and making excuses to bring truth into the manner, probably concluding with the dratted Pascal's Wager, which is not at all a proof of God's existence.

Fortunately for mankind, we have Thomas, who took for granted that when he was writing he was doing so in a book, in the world and the things his senses perceived were in fact real. Thus he could establish his five proofs of God's existence and go on from there, into far more difficult realms where only the brightest and most gifted of men can follow him.

I am now reading the Compendium of Theology, a sort of Thomism for dummies that he was composing when he died at the age of 49, not finishing the book. It is too bad that he didn't finish it, or write another Thomism for people too dumb to be dummies, because even the Compendium is rather dense. Just because I am not getting everything out of it doesn't mean that I'm not picking up a few thing hear and there, and everyone who wishes to consider himself learned and well-rounded should at least dabble in Thomism, especially Christians.

If I may at last return to topic, I think it is safe to assume that Falwell has not read Thomas. If he has, he certainly hasn't applied his thoughts to anything. It probably isn't fair to pick on so little a man as Falwell weilding so large a man as Aquinas for a weapon, but for some reason that escapes me Falwell is not regarded everywhere as a fool and I mean to point that out.

The obvious point that Thomas demonstrated and Falwell ignores is that God exists, and we can learn about him through this life of ours on this particular planet. It makes precious little difference in Christian theory whether God decided to create every animal out of nothing day by day or whether he created a pile of chaotic matter and watched it stir into fantastic life with his laws as the Creator playfully watched. It does not matter, except that the former theory does not mesh with the facts.

And that is a very big problem. No intelligent person is ever going to believe something they know to be false. By waving the banner of literal creationism, Falwell is implying that to believe in Christianity you must believe in nonsense, which is a blatant lie. The Incarnation is a tough pill to swallow, but the idea of creation in the purely literal sense is impossible, and no one is going to attempt to swallow the larger pill after spitting out the smaller one.

It is difficult enough to try to explain to skeptics why Christianity is good, and more importantly why it is true without Falwell trying to let everyone know that even though it is false, you should believe in it anyway.