Anne Rice & Secular Myths about Christianity: Life

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America, Anne Rice, prayer

I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

The above quote was posted by Anne Rice, author of the Vampire Chronicles, on her Facebook account. Continuing my series of posts in reaction to this quote, today I will write about Rice’s last complaint — that Christianity is anti-life.

This is complaint is a bit of a head scratcher. With the Church being one of the last vanguards defending the sanctity of life and crying out that all human life, regardless of race, creed, language, sex, age, sexual orientation or any other artificial division you want to come up with (especially when it comes to the unborn and those on death row), it is difficult to see how Christianity is anti-life.

If, however, by “life” Anne Rice is referring to those things one might be contemplating if stating, “I need a life,” then it is quite possible to understand Christianity as “anti-life.” Long has Christianity insisted on a high moral standard that in the eyes of most Americans today might seem restrictive, draconian and even life destroying. Ironically, the Church might very well say the same things about the way many Americans go about trying to live their lives.

According to the Fathers of the Church, we are constantly assaulted by what they call the passions. These are like thoughts or ideas that lead us to sin. Life in Christ and His Church helps us combat these thoughts and ideas — it empowers us to say no and to find freedom in Christ. In contrast, the Fathers see succumbing to the passions akin to slavery.

Realizing that our former self was crucified with Him, so that the self which belonged to sin should be destroyed and we should be freed from the slavery of sin. — Romans 6:6

An extreme example of this path is drug or alcohol addiction. It starts out as “living” — having fun, partying with friends, etc. The passions then lead us down a road that says we can’t have fun without drugs or alcohol. Then it becomes we can’t live without drugs or alcohol. Finally, it becomes do anything in order to get our next fix. This is not freedom, it is slavery.

Those things in the life of the Church that seem to interfere with “life” — prayer, asceticism, etc. — are actually means by which we control the passions. They are the means by which we shake off the shackles of slavery and find true life and freedom in Christ.

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It’s Not Christianity vs Science, It’s Christianity vs Scientism

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Abortion, America, Anne Rice, Atheists, Environmentalism, Science, Scientism, Worship

When I was doing research in order to write yesterday’s post about Anne Rice’s claim that Christianity is anti-science, I also came across this bit of wisdom from Catholic Apologist Fr. Barron:

He makes a very important distinction between science and what he calls Scientism. The former is the practice of doing science — hypothesis, observation, analysis and application. Due to its limitation of dealing with the empirical and observable, science is not suited for answering the kinds of questions philosophy and religion play around with. Scientism is the belief that science can answer these questions. In order to do that however, one must reduce the world, human experience and knowledge to the empirical and observable. This path is fraught with danger.

In the Orthodox Vespers service, we pray the following:

Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your commandments.
Blessed are you, Master, grant me understanding of your commandments.
Blessed are you, Holy One, enlighten me with your commandments.

In other words, in God there are three ways of knowing: doing, understanding and transformation. Science concerns itself almost exclusively with the second — understanding. Scientism thus radically reduces knowledge and what knowledge is and can be. When we do this, we necessarily limit what is a human person. When we limit what it means to be human, we necessarily tolerate discrimination and eventually violence against those persons who fall outside our artificial definition. There is a reason we de-humanize our opponents in war and call them derogatory names like Yankee, Bourgeoisie, Jap, Gook, etc. It allows us to remove them from our artificial definition of “human person” and thus making them more easy to kill, imprison, torture, etc. Need I remind anyone yet again that the unborn in the U.S. fall outside Scientism’s definition of “human person?” They cannot reason nor understand, therefore it is perfectly legal to kill them.

Scientism also poses a threat to science itself. Since Scientism exaggerates what kinds of questions and problems science can answer, it has a tendency to lose sight of what the purpose and methodology of science is. A good example of this is the recent Climate Gate scandal. A good number of those advocating man-made global warming are not scientists, but rather adherents  to Scientism. Having made the assumption that science can answer questions like, “what is the purpose of human kind?” these advocates of man-made global warming not only ignored empirical data, they manipulated it in order to reflect a pre-determined outcome. The purpose of science was no longer to observe and analyze, but to determine human behavior. When the data didn’t cooperate, they changed the data. This has the potential of damaging real scientific work for years to come.

Thus, the mythic dichotomy of Christianity vs Science really doesn’t exist (nor can it, as I explored yesterday); however, there is a dichotomy between Christianity and Scientism.

Anne Rice & Secular Myths about Christianity: Science

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Anne Rice, Science

I quit being a Christian. I’m out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

The above quote was posted by Anne Rice, author of the Vampire Chronicles, on her Facebook account. Continuing my series of posts in reaction to this quote, today I will write about Rice’s seventh complaint — that Christianity is anti-science.

This is actually one of the more difficult complaints to deal with, because it is so far ranging and there are so many myths to deal with: Genesis, Galileo, science vs. religion, etc. Let me begin by deferring to Catholic Apologist Fr. Baron:

In other words, science and religion are not competitors, because they ask and answer different questions: science seeks out the empirical and observable to understand a variety of objects and phenomena whereas religion concerns itself the spiritual. God and the ultimate cause of the universe are outside the scope of science, which cannot observe in an empirical way God and His works.

I would like to go even further than Fr. Barron to say that science as we know it today could not have come about sans Christianity. Science cannot be practiced unless one accepts a world view in which the world is rational and predictable. The whole scientific method is predicated on the assumption that if an experiment is repeated, it should produce similar results — that it is actually possible to control several variables in order to test how one variable behaves under certain givens. In addition, science assumes that we are rational and creative beings capable and free to explore, observe and understand the world around us. These assumptions are fruit of the Christian understanding of creation: God, the supra-rational, created the cosmos and declared it very good (Gen. 1:31), created humanity in His image and likeness (Gen 1:26) and to be co-creators with Him ( 2:19).

Hinduism and Buddhism understand creation as illusory, thus cannot support or spawn the assumptions of science. Islam means submission. It does not recognize human freedom nor does it encourage the questioning of creation — to do so would be to question Allah. Yes, Muslims have excelled in practical science (such as astrology) but science as we know it today could not have arisen out of Islam. There is a reason why modern science was born in the Christian West — because it was Christian.

Thus, Christianity cannot be anti-science. It does not ask or answer the same questions as science and is the soil in which the flower of modern science was able to take root and bloom.