ON A RECENT DEBATE BETWEEN
ATHEISTS AND WORSHIPERS

© 2007 Orchid Land Publications [20070421+1]

   This short commentary has been occasioned by the report of a critique linked to the DAILY TELEGRAPH on Great Friday concerning the then recent debate in the presence of 2000 people that pitted well-known, outspoken atheists (Prof. R. Dawkins and others) and religious believers against one another. Since I was not there, it would be inappropriate to appropriate my comments as definitive for that discussion. I will simply address questions that may have been involved in that debate. In fact, I will have in mind mainly the scientists, since scientific truth is the central issue.

    A great problem with many discussions is that people start off with a favorite assumption─really an axiomatic premise or hypothesis that, as such, is neither true nor false─ and draw conclusions about the truth or falsity of statements in conformity with the arbitrary premise.  As the eminent Oxford physicist and theologian, Prof. the Revd. John Polkinghorne, has [in Quarks, cahos, and Christianity, p.5) remarked, "You can't just stare at the world; you have to view it from a chosen point of view."¹  Choosing the point of view involves an act of

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     ¹The emphasis is mine; cf. Pi's statement that "the world isn't just the way it is.  It is how we understand it, no?"[Life of Pi by Yann Martel )Har

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intellectual daring in betting that things might be this way."  I allow myself to observe that to grasp the Apostle Paul's energetic paradigm (he used energy terms 26 terms─in the Epistles attributed to him) plus synergy terms as well as nouns equivalent to English nouns ending in -ization) somewhat reduces the daring, though accepting the validity of his rôle may require some additional daring. 

      Why do translators and others who know (from its very form) that Greek homoíōsis (fem., "assimilation") is not homoíōma (neut., the result of homoíōsis, viz. "likeness") nevertheless misrender it in Gen. 1:26 in Western Bibles?  Why do they render noûs as "mind" when they know that it is not located in the head . . . and is closer to "mindset, outlook" . . . or even (English) "paradigm"?  The answer lies in their assumptions:  The examples show that one's paradigm can overrule one's knowledge, even to the extent of making the pointless redundancy of "image and likeness" in Genesis 1:26!

    I allow myself the further licence of surmising that some of the opponents of religion may be simply thinking of the ill effects of religion that have occurred—crusades/jihads, pogroms, burnings at the stake, etc.—rather than of religion itself. Two distinctions are necessary if we are not to get bogged down in the usual quagmire that such discussion often fall into. The first is the distinction between what is Godward, worship in the sense of returning to the Creator the best part of creation to acknowledge the Creator’s Ownership of all that is and what is humanward, salvation, moral behavior, and prayers for human needs. The second, overlapping distinction treats core beliefs as ontic, having to do with reality (cf. the conceptualization of worship above), or deontic,² having to do with will and juridical concerns.
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     ²Deontic comes from modal logic. From a Greek term for "obligatory," it has to do with what is righ-teous or moral. This contrasts with ontic holiness.  It is worth adding that, in the part of the world where I live─where every new road or building gets "blessed"─blessing is ontic, to be sure; but it means "exorcism."
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     ³Quotations can be adduced from authoritative writings to show that, while the deontic Crucifixion is in Itself soterial, the Resurrection is something else (cf. J. Pohle, Soteriology [Herder, 1916; p.102]). For that matter, one can also cite authoritative statements that in effect reject the evolution of belief in favor of what is characterized as a virtual tradition (cf. The Catechism of the Catholic Church [Doubleday 1997; pp. 27f).

partaking of the divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4)—which, as will be shown, consists of the divine Energies and is distinct from the imparticipable divine Essence . . . and therefore can only be metaphorical in Western Christianity; it is indeed legal-covenantal for Protestants. For the West, salvation is based wholly on a deontic Crucifixion that satisfies divine Justice or some other requirement. The East treats the Crucifixion as a supreme act of worship that paves the way to resurrection and Divinization,⁴ often called Glorification.

√ Science has demonstrated a potential for explaining everything IN the universe;
    there are no miracles.

While I do not know what the proposition being debated in Great Britain was, I contend that an objective, neutral point of departure for discussing religion that one not slant it one way or another would take the foregoing pair of premises as its points of departure. Since the second premise is not inherently incompatible with "explaining everything IN the universe," a person who stressed IN can accept both premises without being irrational.  The logic of what is outside of the cosmos does not have to be our logic.  Consider that when I my Dalmatian observes me push a button and the lights go on or off, he has no notion of how the one thing causes the other.  There is no reason to automatically exclude the same possibility of the way we view the Creator's operations.
     The ideological element of a discussion of religion and atheism is reduced on a level playing field in which both assumptions are presented as equally immune to being falsified, whereas conclusions fenced in by them are true or false according to their accord or discord with which premise is posited. "If this axiom is accepted, it follows that such-and-such conclusion is true (or, as the case may be, false)." A further element that is necessary when seeking truth about religion itself is the aim of a discussion about religion, viz. separating religion itself when the discussion has to do with religion properly conceived in terms of its latreutic parameter. In its narrow sense, religion, properly conceptualized, needs to be distinguished, as it often is not, from any morality it is married with and of course from any ill effects resulting from its perversion.
     Historical or any other kind of factuality is not an issue in either of the foregoing axiomatic assumptions. But it is a given that the kind of evidence offered by, or acceptable to, either side will differ with regard to the beliefs or practices governed by this or that premise. It generates more heat than light to spend time contending that evidence for a miracle is not equally acceptable to both sides . . . That is obvious. If the discussion should be solely about a Creator God, then morality has little relevance; the human activity that is relevant is ontic worship. Before elaborating on this, it may be useful to make the place of a definition concrete by citing a prominent self-avowed atheist author’s provisional definition of "religion," viz. in terms of participants who "believe" in and "seek the approval of a supernatural Agent." I’m not sure why seeking the Agent’s approval is necessary; perhaps to make the Agent relevant in the first place.
     The omission of worship in the definition (and in the index of the book, though the word does occur a few times, once in connection with the attitude of Elvis’s fans toward him) is tell-

ing, I would judge. It shows that you can be an expert on something and miss what for its adherents is of the essence Of course, Eastern "worshipers" are "believers" in Western Christianity; but this is not generally true of religions. While the definition omits misleading sidetracks like "supernatural" and the like, one wonders how aware its formulator is with regard to the way a definition excludes whatever does not fit it and so be exceptionless and hence misleadingly "adequate."
     The way I have characterized the most widespread form of worship above goes by the name sacrifice. The Eastern Christian latreutic view of what Jesus achieved on the "Life-giving" Cross is at odds with the deontic⁵ objectives upheld in Western teachings . . .
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     ⁵Deontic comes from modal logic. Derived from a Greek word for "obligatory," it refers to volitional-juridical reality, in contrast with the reference to ontic reality in non-modal logic.

This characterizes a gnostic-deontic paradigm, whether the axiomatic matter and form are respectively designated. The other Reformers were humanists, i.e. basically Renaissance Plato- nists. This contrasts with the Aristotelian basis of Latin Thomism. Calvin himself was a law student. Where the early Calvinists placed the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament at the beginning of a service (more didactic than latreutic), the Typics that precede the Orthodox divine Liturgy including the singing of the Beatitudes.
     It is not out of order for an opponent of religion to raise the issue of whether─irrespective of one's view of religion─it always leads to corrupt forms . . . and corruptio optimi pessima "the corruption of the best [is (i.e. results in)] the worst."  There are various thinkable ways of dealing with this that I will leave to reader's thoughts, as I do not wish to depart from the main train of thought.
     For the study of religion or of Christianity to be adequate for investigations of them, they must (I contend) accept what has just been said about the worship of God human-addressed mysteries (sacraments); and they must, I think, at least subcategorize ontic and purely deontic forms of religion or of a particular religion like Christianity. A conceptualization that leaves out worship is missing the boat. Ancient and modern religions, whether primitive or blessed (or cursed) with tomes of learned commentaries, all involve worship, however attenuated the concept may be when conceptualized as human-addressed activity (instruction, moral behavior).

If it is granted that every defence of or every attack on religion requires accepting premises that are by definition not true or false, provable or disprovable, then an objective approach would begin with the premises laid out earlier and ascertain what follows from each. Invulnerability to truth or falsity makes investigating the premises vital for the defenders as well as the opponents of a religion. Beginning with the specifics muddies the waters to no profit. Analysis of a paradigm requires making the distinctions—distinguo as a scholastic would say. One can criticize deontic Christianity without criticizing ontic-energetic Christianity; or conversely. But it should not be on the table to criticize what one does not understand . . . or all forms of Christianity or another religion because this or that variety is vulnerable to one’s criticisms.
     If one limits one’s critique to the effects of religion, religion itself is not even under investigation. One is dealing with a figment or a fiction. I will skip past Indo-Iranian religions (including the ancient Iranian Gnosticism of Zarathustra as well as Hinduism and Buddhism) and deal with the Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, Islam. The two Semitic religions are undeniably deontic—juridical. God is a Will. His Essence and Nature are the same—a believer-obeyer partakes of them by cognition (the Thomists’ unity of a believer’s ideas with God’s ideas) or through a legal covenant. One does not ontically partake of the uncreated Energies that—for Eastern but not Western Christianity—constitute God’s Nature, since essence and nature are not distinct. Indeed, saving Grace is not ontic—: For the Latins, it is neither uncreated nor energetic (activa); for Protestants, it is the divine good will that pretends a sinner is virtually righteous. (Holiness is not a well understood concept among Protestants, though it is not limited to what is taboo.)
     Whether a scientific disproof of the efficacy of a sacrament, belief, or the worth or validity of something non-ontic but willed is thinkable is a question that some will find relevant. But it is the efficacy of willed ontic MIRACLES that usually stands at the fore-front of apologetic attacks and therefore defences. I’d rather point out the ontic emphasis of Eastern Christianity on Incarnation, on the Sacrifice of the Cross, and not least on Resurrection, and Divinization. If the Incarnation is soterial and not just incidental to the Cross, so is Christ’s Mother, the God-bearing Maria; if not, not. While the Life-giving Cross abounds in Orthodoxy temples and making the threefold sign of the Cross is a constant part of prayer, one should notice:

It should not escape notice or go without mention that the Orthodox speak of something else—the resurrection of a worshiper’s soul—when Christ’s Body and Blood are offered to the Creator and then partaken of. One becomes an ontic member of Christ’s Body through sharing His uncreated Life (zōē, not simply "life" bíos).
     Whether one finds this credible or not, it is coherent. There is no vengeful Deity demanding His Son’s Blood as punishment for Adam’s sin. This brings us to two crucial verses in the Bible which, in addition to 2 Peter 1:4 already referred to, both of which are misunderstood by Western Christians because of their failure to grasp Pauline energy. The first is Genesis 1:26 in the Greek Old Testament translated by 72 rabbis and accepted as the canonical Bible by the Apostles; the second is Philippians 2:13. The crucial difference that should be of interest to investigators of religion, atheistic or not, involves the Hellenistic idea of energy as conceptualized by Aristotle in his Physics and especially in his treatise on Metaphysics—what makes a dynamis real, actual, and functional. But before dealing with these two critical verses, it is necessary—because of a confusion between what is rational and rationality, the exclusion of everything but pure reason—to speak of the Creator who is believed to made a world in which religion is whatever it is. I refer to his being Called God’s REASON⁶ (in John 1:13) and
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     ⁶LÓGOS. This word has three families of meaning—"discussion; calculation; reason." including more than a dozen variants on the first and third. The only instance in which it can mean "word" is when used in the sense of a "message" or "signal," as in English "Give them the word." Incidentally, pnéûma is often mistranslated as "mind." That translation is adequate only in phrases like "the mind of Jesus," where it refers to an outlook (paradigm) and has to do with the transcendent apperception of reality. A. Einstein is quoted by Walter Isaacson in a recent issue of Time Magazine to the effect that "for Einstein, it was the absence of miracles that reflected divine Providence," namely, law-governed and hence scientifically predictable, despite certain qualifications. While miracles are not predictable the way scientific reality is predictable, that does not in itself make miracles unverifiable. Eastern Patristic Christianity teaches that LOGOS or uncreated "Reason" and SOPHIA or "Wisdom" made it logikós ("rational") and therefore amenable to scientific study, one will not have rational grounds for rejecting it without reasons over and above its teachings about the role of materiality (mysteries, Western sacraments) and temporality (evolution) in religion.

(in 1 Corinthians 1:24) WISDOM (SOPHÍA, practical Reason; cf. the name of the Patriarchial cathedral in Constantinople).
     Genesis 1:26 can now be dealt with. Referring to human essence—what all humans have, something that cannot be lost and can be inherited—the verse says in Greek that the first human "was made according to God’s icon ["image, likeness"]; referring to the energetic human nature of Adam, it adds something that is forfeitable, something energetic, personal, and not inheritable: the Assimilation⁷ to God. the loss of which left humanity in an inheritable state or
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     ⁷It is inexcusable for anyone cognizant of the word-formation principles of Greek to ignore that the -sis of homoíōsis forms a feminine noun (derived from a causative or energetic verb) that is equivalent to English -ization (or -ification); . . . or that the result of a given energization (also derived from an energy-causative verb) is formed by adding -ma to create a neuter noun derived from the same verb. Thus homoíōma is a "likeness"; there are four other words in use for variants on the same idea.

     ⁸See 2 Kings [Greek 4 Kings] 14:6, 2 Chronicles 25:4, as well as Deuteronomy 24:16 [Greek v. 18]); Cf. Galatians 6:5 in the New Testament. Since, unlike purely deontic ethics, ontic ethics is based on what promotes (or conflicts with) a nature, readers should be aware that natural does not mean "normal" (a statistic) or "artificial." Even the great moralist J. S. Mill got that wrong in his treatise On Nature, seeing that what is been statistically normal since the Fall has often been counternatural.

     ⁹The reader should recall the earlier statement that saving Grace is not energy in Western Christianity.

It should be clear that the absence of an energetic understanding of Paul’s words will miss the soterial synergy in which a worshiper’s can allow itself to be activated by the All-holy Spirit to act righteously is not a contradictory notion the way Grace and works are in a non-energetic format . . . where the conflict between Grace and works is ultimately not capable of being resolved. It should be clear that discussions between people committed to paradigms formed by contrary axioms can only lead to confusion if the difference import imposed on the terms of discussion is not palpable to all participants.
     Since a major sticking point in science-vs.-religion debates is the teaching of science in tax-supported schools and specifically the teaching of the evolution of the cosmos, it may be relevant that the Orthodox accept a God-guided evolution (from simpler to more complex realities, as the Fathers relate) that is logical and discernible by reason . . . although whether a eternal (not everlasting; eternity is outside of time) Creator has set it in motion requires revelation.
     If the Creator relates to creation through His Nature—His Energies—is follows that religion and salvation are energetic. If he is Reason, the world is rational and amenable to scientific study. If, however, the Creator is a WORD, as Western Christians say, Luther’s earlier cited words, which present his view of the creative or transformative power of a word or words, then religion is wordy; the Bible is the divine WORD.

     When atheists reject or attack religion, they might seem more convincing if they found a way to discuss the subject in terms of the basic axioms stated near the beginning of this writing. It is these, not the specific beliefs that whose import is dependent on them, that give cognitive form to different teachings, to what the words of "the Bible" mean. It is clearly a false generalization to say that all religions accept or reject this or that idea, whether evolution or going to war with those whose beliefs are different. In particular, Eastern Christianity should not be condemned on grounds applicable to other religious expressions but alien to it; e.g. an anti-evolutionary outlook, a replacing of energy terms in the Greek Bible with deontic ideas or metaphorical terms. This cannot be said without adding the caution that Eastern theology is no more rationalist than irrationalist; it goes down the middle by accepting a rôle for reason that is not exclusive of essential information that transcends reason. That a scholar can be a sincere Orthodox worshiper and a competent scientist indicates that any attack on religion by scientists should be less broadly focused than is often if not usually the case. Again, viewing religion in terms of the effects of distortions of religion that would have evil effects on its own or other people should distinguish whether the ills in question authentically represent whatever religions are under scrutiny or a distortions of them. Demonstrating ill effects of a form of religion at some point in history, or even more generally, should not be considered, without further argument, to discrediting religion itself . . . any more than punishing children for the sins (or virtues) of their parents.
     In addition to the foregoing, I make the additional observation that arguments against a religion should not ignore vital differences that, despite the forms of religion’s having stemmed from a single source, are important enough to constitute quite different religions invoking similar (but not identical) Scriptures which are, however, interpreted in terms of different premises. They should not be lumped together in the same basket. The different forms of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity as well as the differences of Indo-Iranian Hinduism, Buddhism, and Zarathustrianism are significant enough to represent contrary views of basic matters.
     It is evident that although Aristotle’s energy is not the energy of a physicist, and although Eastern Christianity steps beyond the empirical reality of "pure reason," its outlook is not necessarily or essentially anti-scientific. As for political tolerance, no major form of Christianity other than Quakerism and the Amish that this writer is cognizant of has been free of depriving others of religious and other freedoms, whether burning those of different beliefs at the stake or imprisonment under deplorable conditions. That Orthodoxy scores a bit better on some of these points has been due less to virtue than to its subjection to the Khan, to Western jihads (especially the Fourth), some fomented or participated in by some of the most notable saintly heroes of the West, to Islamic suppression at one time or another, and to twentieth-century Communism.  Demonstrating ill effects of a form of religion at some point in history, or even more generally, should not, without further argument, be considered to be sufficient to discredit religion itself . . . any more than punishing children for the sins of their parents should be considered an acceptable teaching. The once favorable treatment of Jews in Spain came with the Islamic hegemony that supplemented that part of the Byzantine Empire; it was reflected in other parts of the Muslim world at one time or another. Just as there have been times when any form of almost any religion has deprived others of their religious or civil freedom, there are instances in which science has been viewed with disdain by Orthodox or heterodox Christians. For all of that, there is nothing I can think in Orthodox, Biblical theology that necessitates such perversions of reason or will and freedom.
     If the numbers of Catholics, Eastern and Western, in the world outweigh those of other kinds of Christians and most other religions, an atheist—scientist or otherwise—would hardly be a truth-seeker if one’s judgment of Christianity were based solely on the manifestations of less numerous forms of Christianity. None of this is intended to claim that any harm perpetrated in the name of any religion, especially when countenances by the authorities of a religion, should be immune to objurgations of one sort or another. Fate, word magic, and voodoo practices, should not be (and usually are not) regarded as falling into the same class as religions proper, where whatever happens is not purely mechanical but is understood to be dependent in many respects on (correct) belief, i.e. orthodoxy. If a scientist who is an atheist cites adverse effects of a given religion on learning or behavior—the immoral notion of inheriting another’s guilt, the evil results of crusades and jihads (fomented even by a saint like Bernard, not to speak of being participated in by the gentler Francis), and so on—a proper condemnation should not be improperly generalized to embrace the conclusion that the essence of a given religion or to religion in general is in itself ignorant or bad. Only the perversion of this or that religion, . . . and the best may leave the worst result, as the saying goes. But to move from judgments of historical behavior to the level of truth and logic, it seems clear that what cannot avoid lapsing into incoherence is a discussion of the terms of specific teachings or beliefs without attention to whatever axiomatic paradigm gives import (cognitive meaning or pragmatic force) to those teachings or beliefs. Failing that, it all simply becomes a matter of "I say holiness, you say righteousness . . . let’s call the whole thing off."
     Any failure to see that an axiom is—despite its determining what is true or false—neither true nor false results in a failure like that of any enterprise that begins at the wrong end. It is regrettable that today’s education fails to begin at the right end. Unlike ancient Greek education—which began, proceeded, and ended with dialectic, the study and practice of how to avoid logically invalid arguments—today's education largely neglects this approach.  This may well not apply to the debate reported in The Telegraph that energized these comments but whose verba ipsissima I have not had access to. My words should be not be taken to endorse or condemn what I have no precise account of. c