Strictly Procedural: A Link Of Confession

Since the "Birther" thing is hot right now, and because I have dismissed the conspiracy as belated and frivolous, I nonetheless feel a need to be utterly transparent. I posited, in October 2008, that the much-touted "October Surprise" would be built on charges that Barack Obama was NOT a natural-born US citizen. I posted two times on this matter, and then I posted THIS ARTICLE after reading Philip J. Berg v. Barack Obama. You will find therein the links to my first two articles; you will also find therein these words of mine:

What disturbs me considerably is something I've spotted in myself, namely a cynicism so deep I have come to distrust nearly everyone running for political office. And there is no doubt I am of the psychological constitution where I find myself distrusting left-leaning peers more often than those who lean right. Since Barack Obama is undeniably left-leaning, I was too quick to suspect him of profound wrongdoing, of defrauding the American public by essentially gaining the presidency without meeting all constitutional prerequisites and by taking advantage of what is ostensibly the vague and seemingly unenforcable rules of Article II. Again, I am not saying I believed the lawsuit had legitimacy or that Mr. Obama was not born on American soil. I am saying that I am duly cynical enough to believe those things possible and plausible.

Moreover, I divined that my cynicism did not go deeply enough. I did not bring to the Pennsylvania lawsuit the next level of inquiry. I did not ask whether Mr. Berg himself was trustworthy; enamored of his former status as deputy attorney general of the state of Pennsylvania, I did not ponder that he might be something of a rogue litigant. After all, I learned in my simple research that Mr. Berg had earlier submitted a motion to the same court for protections in a bankruptcy procedure, and that the case was dismissed for the exact same reasons as Berg v. Obama. Add to that the item I picked up that reported Mr. Berg, shortly after 9/11, created a website asserting that the Bush administration either was involved in or knew beforehand the atrocities of that infamous day, and I am left holding something inherently suspect (it is no secret I have zero tolerance for 9/11 "truther" schemes).

And, of course, the zenith of my cynicism, if you will, manifested itself in my wondering aloud whether we would see a spate of similar lawsuits over the next few days and weeks.

I just thought you should know that I do not pretend to have gone through the fire of doubt without having been burned.

Peace.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Your Comments, Dinesh D'Souza, Atheism And Faith

There have been some great comments here of late, and I want to thank you all for that. Your input makes things far more interesting -- at least for me.

Recently I recommended a book to you all, and now that I have finished that book (last Saturday), I would like to recommend it again.

What's So Great About Christianity, written by Dinesh D'Souza, is superb. But I will guess that -- at least to some Christians -- the book's major flaw, if there is one, might be its title. For this is not so much a celebration of Christianity as most Christians might celebrate it. It is more a look at theism's contribution to Western culture. Yes, the emphasis is on Christian theism, but the case for theism in general is more aptly made. In other words, while Mr. D'Souza's work might edify lots of Christians by his excellent defense of the role Christianity has played in the world, his book might not convert people to follow Christ. Of course, I admit this is probably not Mr. D'Souza's intent. And I know that some skeptics will indeed find in this book answers to many or even all of their questions. This book is an excellent polemic; it is a great contribution to Christian apologetics. But this book is not a companion to, let's say, the Gospels; this is not a piece like Romano Guardini's amazing and MUST READ classic, The Lord. Nor is it really that much like C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. For both of these great works feel far more "churchy" or Christian than what Mr. D'Souza has given us. So, the book might very much edify and interest, but I don't see it as an integral part of a discipleship program. That, too, was not Mr. D'Souza's intent.

None of this, for me, detracts from Mr. D'Souza's book. What I particularly liked about What's So Great... is that Mr. D'Souza explores epistemology, with Immanuel Kant as his centerpiece. This, as I've said before, is an excellent thing: Kant is a great starting point. Mr. D'Souza makes very clear what Kant himself could only manage to write about in an abstruse manner. Kant (if I have this right) made a compelling case that we cannot know "things-in-themselves," we can only know our perceptions of things. For Kant, our senses even corrupt what we experience: I say a lemon tastes tart when in fact "tartness" is not a quality of the lemon, it is a quality of my experience of the lemon. My taste buds create tartness; from them, I infer a cause of that experience, namely the lemon. But I cannot know the lemon as it is; in fact, my senses prevent me from doing so. In sensing an object, all we can know is that we have sensation. We experience phenomena. But the cause of the phenomena -- the thing-in-itself -- we can't know.

But that is just part of the argument, and I must give Mr. D'Souza high marks for how he presents it, especially as it opens the mind to the idea that faith is foundational to all knowledge.

Pertinent to this is the quite interesting fact that no atheist seems to have refuted this argument -- ever. I have asked dozens, perhaps hundreds of atheists to reply to my "Letter to Christopher Hitchens." Not one has done so. My letter, too, as noted above, incorporates ideas gleaned from Immanuel Kant. To date, no atheist has expended any effort here to even debate it in any analytical way (except perhaps this comment by JW Haws). Granted, this does not mean it -- or Mr. D'Souza's argument -- is irrefutable. My piece may be so much fluff and bluster; I know that I have lots of blind spots in my psyche. But one would think that someone would rise up and dismiss what should be quite easy to debunk if, in fact, I have written fluff and bluster.† (I further note that no one has rebuffed the ideas presented in "Speaking In Parables," a short-story I penned in mid-September. I think some skeptic out there would have a counter-argument.)

Now, back to your comments for a moment. A recent comment in this D'Souza thread left by reader Luke Buckham has made me unsure of something I drafted. I wrote:

"most of D’Souza’s detractors will not read any or all of the book. Many, in fact, will not expend the requisite intellectual strength necessary to read the entire thing."

Luke Buckham responded thusly:

"I agree, totally. This is a big problem in our culture: most of ANYONE'S detractors don't bother to read the whole book. I vow to be an exception."

Now, I am flattered Luke agrees with me. But, for whatever reason, I heard something ironic in his words. I confess that I may have added the irony; Luke probably did not intend it.

What I am saying is that I am not sure I agree with myself. Admittedly I averred what I did about Mr. D'Souza's detractors' laziness merely to be provocative -- appealing even to readers' vanity and conceit ("Well, I have what it takes to read the whole thing!"). But that only can be defended so far. Why? Because I think a reader can critique parts of some collection as long as the critic does not assume the parts make up the whole. I can critique argument A if I've not read B -- but only as long as I am sure my interlocutor has conveyed that B has nothing to do with A, or vice versa. Critics do this frequently. Egads, I do this frequently. And, yes, sometimes I get it right. But sadly I also sometimes get it quite wrong: I commit the fallacy many critics commit. In fact, this fallacy is one of the most popular and pervasive fallacies. It is the fallacy that argues that one false part nullifies not only whole sets of arguments, one false part nullifies the totality of the person making the arguments. If Mr. Smith is wrong about X, well, he must not only be wrong about Y and Z, he's really wrong about everything!

Besides, not being critical in Part A while waiting for Part B can lead to absurdities. If I can't denounce Mr. D'Souza before I get to the end of his current book, then it should follow that I can't denounce him until he gets to his LAST book. After all, he might emend things later on; he might even change his mind in his next volume, and the next one after that. Surely I should wait until he is finally done?!

So, all this to say that I am not sure I really believe myself on this one point.

Have a great life!

†Other puff pieces can be found here and here.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.