Quiet Tectonic Shift by Catholic Church on May Day

St. Joseph the Worker

Pope Francis today said in his homily on the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker: “Today we join the many men and women, believers and non-believers, who commemorate the Day of the Worker, Labor Day, for those that fight to have justice in work, for those business people who treat those in their employ with justice.” (1)
This amounts, in my view, to a tectonic shift in official Catholic attitudes and thinking. Why do I say this?

Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto in 1848 in militant defence of the rights of workers against the exploitation of those who owned the means of production - 'Capitalists'. A full forty-three years after that, in 1891, Pope Leo XIII published 'Rerum Novarum', the Church's take on the same subject matter, the rights of workers against exploitation, and declaring the dignity of human labour.

Ten years after the Second World War, with Communism, usually atheistic, gaining traction in Europe, and May Day celebrations getting bigger each year, Pope Pius XII, in 1955, established the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker to be celebrated on May 1 as a counter-celebration to the Communists’ May Day. Now today, with Pope Francis, no longer in a counter-celebration but in a con-celebration, we join the many men and women, believers and non-believers, who commemorate the Day of the Worker, Labor Day, for those that fight to have justice in work, for those business people who treat those in their employ with justice.

(1) https://zenit.org/articles/on-feast-of-st-joseph-the-worker-pope-appreciates-good-businessmen-who-protect-workers-like-children-full-text/
See also: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope-francis/mass-casa-santa-marta/2020-05/pope-francis-mass-joseph-work-dignity-just-wage.html
and: https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2020/05/on-st-joseph-feast-day-pope-prays-for-workers-employers/

Faith and Atheism

One of my FaceBook friends posted the following on his wall:

"Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated." - Christopher Hitchens
According to Wikiquotes this is taken from "Holier Than Thou", Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, 23 May 2005.

Before going any further let me clarify that none of my friends agrees with me on everything. Even my wife and I have some areas where we disagree but still remain the greatest of friends. Things only get tense when you don't like me or my friends based on some form of group prejudice (race, religion, sexual orientation.) And now, back to Hitchens...

I will concede that his first sentence above is a definition of faith even in the minds of some "believers". Clearly, this is the definition of faith in the minds of Atheists as this quote is held up as a quotable quote among Atheists. However, that definition is by no means universal among "believers."

While my definition of faith includes believing that which cannot be empirically demonstrated, it precludes the surrender of the mind and the surrender of reason. On the contrary, it is precisely the use of the mind and reason that enables humans to have faith and the other mammals not. Faith is a peculiarly human quality not to be found among any other species on the planet.

Deductive reasoning
Astronomers, astro-physicists and other scientists tell us that the universe is finite in space and time; that its size and age can be approximately calculated. They tell us that "before" the universe was born there was "nothing"; not even empty space. Nothing.

I am not a scientist but my mind reasons that something cannot create itself out of nothing before it exists. It is not a surrender of reason but an exercise thereof to conclude that some "thing" beyond the confines of the time and space of this universe was responsible for the coming into existence of this universe. That "Something" I choose to call the Creator.
I deal with this topic a bit more fully in my blog of 19 Dec 2010 "I am sceptical of skeptical atheism"
http://terryin-sites.blogspot.com/2010/12/i-am-sceptical-about-skeptical-atheism.html
...and its follow up on 24 Jan 2011.

In my opinion, in the face of the evidence of the finite nature of our universe, it requires a greater and more irrational faith to say, we cannot prove a creator's existence empirically therefore a creator does not exist.

Sent from my BlackBerry

I am sceptical about skeptical atheism - Part 2

This is a follow-up to my post on this topic on December 19.
If you did not read that post then please do so before continuing on here. It provides the foundation upon which this post builds.

Salient points from the previous post:

1. The atheist position is founded upon faith. Atheists "believe" that there is no creator outside of the empirically demonstrable natural order.
2. Deists, theists (and I) conclude by logic that there must have been some Being, before time and space began, which brought time, space and the natural order of our universe into existence.
3. Many humans as reasoning animals have come to similar conclusions about the existence of a Creator-God from their own powers of reasoning.
4. This reasoning ability must have been put into the "DNA" (analogically speaking) of the original singularity or "cell" of creation.
5. One reason that God-The-Creator did this must surely be so that we could know Him-Her-It as our Creator.

What is God-The-Creator like?

How can we talk about God-The-Creator? The only thought categories available to us are those derived from our experience of the world around us. Even atheists cannot escape this problem. What attributes do you ascibe to this "god" that you say does not exist? I do not believe in leprachauns; I do not believe in werewolves. Most readers of this blog can describe salient attributes of leprachauns and werewolves whether or not they believe they actually exist. (Well, OK, maybe I do believe in leprachauns on St Patrick's Day.)

Any thought categories derived from the created universe must fall short of a description of God-The-Creator who existed "before" space, time and the universe existed - perhaps more correctly - is being outside of any constraints of space, time and the natural universe. However, inadequate as these categories may be, they are the only ones we have at our disposal for human reasoning and communication.

Thus we speak of infinite and infinity, which simply means without end, without bounds, and apply these to God-The-Creator, concluding by reason that He-She-It (HSI) cannot be constrained by any limitation of the created order. These words limp, however, as they can only be used analogically. They imply some kind of continuum that has no beginning or end. But God-The-Creator cannot be placed on a continuum, even one that has no boundaries or end. God-The-Creator does not exist in infinite time, for time is of the created order. HSI cannot be in infinite space, for space is of the created order. Clever people such as Einstein have calculated approximately when time began and where space begins and ends. Outside of that there is simply "nothing".

We speak of God-The-Creator as if HSI were a person. I suppose we do this because "person" is the highest form of thinking existence of which we are aware. If we can reason logically, communicate, love, get distressed at injustice, all the things that "persons" can do, then we reason that God-The-Creator must be able to do at least that much plus much more, and so we refer to Him-Her-It (HHI) as a person. It's the best we can do, but we need to remember that we do so by analogy, and any analogy with the created order must limp. Our emotions change and change happens in time. In that sense God-The-Creator's emotions cannot be like the creature's emotions.

Conclusion

I believe that all the above is logically reasonable - at least no more unreasonable than believing that something can bring itself into existence before it, or anything else, exists. We do not need "sacred scriptures" or miraculous divine revelation or intervention to arrive at these conclusions; they are self evident to logical reasoning.

I conclude that God-The-Creator must have wanted His-Her-Its creatures to be able to know by reasoning that they owe their existence to HHI and to know that HSI is some kind of Infinite Person who, even though existing outside of the created order of the universe, can transcend, know and be known, love and be loved as an I and Thou.

I am sceptical about skeptical atheism.

Preliminary remarks.

Before I start, let me acknowledge that I have friends and relatives who are professed atheists. In my reading and conversations I have come across both atheists and believers-in-a-divinity who are very derisive of those who hold the opposite opinion to theirs. I wish to distance myself from these behaviours and attitudes.

Secondly, I am not going to provide footnotes and citations. You can do your own reading to backup or disprove any position of mine. I would be sincerely interested if you can point out for me where I make any errors of fact or logic.

Foundation

My position is based on the following, upon which both atheists and I seem to agree:

1. The natural universe as we know it had a beginning. Scientists have calculated its age as between 13 and 14 billion years.
2. Before this there was nothing, not even space. Even saying "before this" is a contradiction in terms because there was no time either. "Before" is a time-related concept. Both space and time began with the beginning of the universe.

My position on creation

Atheistic sceptics hold the position that we should not accept anything that cannot be demonstrated empirically or logically concluded. At least, I gather that this is their position - I am open to correction here. In contrast, my position is that we should not accept anything that contradicts logic or empirical evidence.

When I was in high school our chemistry teacher taught us about spontaneous combustion. I totally get it that when you have the perfect storm of prerequisite conditions you can get a reaction. I simply don't get it that something, even or especially a "singularity", can bring itself into existence before it, or anything else, exists. To me, that so flies in the face of reason and logic that it requires a huge act of faith far greater than any faith I have ever been called upon to profess as a Christian.

This brings me to the conclusion that the atheist position is founded upon faith. Atheists "believe" that there is no creator outside of the empirically demonstrable natural order. There is no "proof" for this position which I consider illogical, and having no logic that I have found to defend it. As I understand it, the closest thing to a proof is that there is no proof for the contrary - the so-called sceptical position.

So deists, theists and I conclude by logic that there must have been some Being, before time and space began, which brought time, space and the natural order of our universe into existence.

The role of this "Being" fills the minimum definition for "God" - the Creator.


Why did "God" do this?

Deists claim to be agnostic on this point. They say we cannot know anything about God the Creator or Architect other than what we can conclude by observing the world around us. Deists actively take a position against organised religion that relies on or accepts any form of "revelation". They see God as not intervening in any way in the natural order of the universe. God can thus be compared to some amazing watch maker who created and assembled all these parts, started it ticking and has now left it to itself to wind down in due course while He-She-It goes off and does something else.

This seems to me to be a little like the atheist position on creation: we cannot prove God's existence empirically therefore God does not exist. By contrast, I would posit that there is place for reasoning to a likely or probable conclusion. Before doing that let's make some observations which could be used as premises.

1. Some of what makes up the universe is inanimate such as metals; other elements are living, like plants, microbes and animals.
2. Some of the animals have reflective self-awareness as individual persons, can communicate complex concepts and can reason logically. Humans are one such example. Theoretically there could be others.
3. Many of these human, reasoning animals have come to similar conclusions about the existence of a Creator-God from their own powers of reasoning.
4. This ability must have been put into the "DNA" (analogically speaking) of the original singularity or "cell" of creation. The alternative is that the Creator-God did not put this into the original design and we got to this ability by accident, which I find most unlikely.

This last point leads me to conclude that the Creator-God wanted reasoning animals such as humans to be able to deduce that He-She-It exists and was responsible for their existence. Again, the alternatives are either that the Creator-God did not want us to deduce this but that we did so anyway, which I find absurd, or that He-She-It never thought about that and we got to this position by accident, which, again, I find unlikely.

So, why did God do this? At least one of the reasons must surely be... so that we could know Him-Her-It.

More in due course...