Horvath and Revelation, Part X;Obama and Muslim Money;Ayn Rand Center

A Response to Anthony "stjohnny" Horvath

On "Road-to-Damascus" type Revelations

To read the original blog by Horvast,click on Guest Author Rev. Anthony "sntjohnny" Horvath

Note: I have been mistaken in the title to use for "sntjohnny." Here is what he wrote to me recently: "For quick reference- I am not a pastor or a reverend. I did finish the pastoral ministry degree in college which in many denominations is sufficient to receive ordination but in my denomination an additional four years on top of the bachelors degree is required- and I didn't do that. (and no complaints about it, either!)"

Introduction by Tony Horvath:

"Recently an atheist [Clark] stumbled upon my site and put [there]

a post responding to a post on my own blog on

the distinction between ‘natural’ revelation and ’special’ revelation.

The reader has all the information in the links above to follow this exchange, if they like.

"In my blog entry I indicated that many atheists won’t be convinced by anything less than their own ‘Road to Damascus’ experience. Mr. Clark responds:"

Part Two, (or is it Three?)

Atheists don’t believe such revelations as "revealed" or "natural" are possible, because the cause of them does not exist. A revealed revelation, as Horvath points out, "concerns that which is known and can only be known because God himself reveals it." A "natural" revelation is one which comes through contemplation about the nature of existence.

Any "atheist" who could possibly be looking for a revelation, revealed or natural, would be a contradiction, in terms of what his beliefs were, as concerning the lack of a god who could give such revelations versus what he expected as either an epistemic or metaphysical quality of knowledge. In other words, he either believes no god exists, in which case no quality of knowledge can be called "revelation" in the religious sense; or he believes religious-type revelations are possible, in which case he is wrong about being atheist.

By definition, an atheist knows there is no god, in the sense that all the resolutions of logic one has in one’s mind is what he “knows.” This is sometimes called “justified true belief,” as opposed to “unjustified.” The justification comes from the soundness of the argument that there are only two choices: naturalism and supernaturalism; and from the soundeness of the proposition that faith is the negation of reason.

Theists, on the other hand, 'know,' by the same standard, that God exists. Atheists 'know' he does not. Each of them has found the soundness, the justification, within his own logic that to doubt it would be to doubt his own mind. To go looking for a revelation, or even to expect that perhaps such a supernatural quality of knowledge will be imparted to him, implies that he knows nothing either way, and perhaps has no beliefs one way or the other.

You say I am engaged in an unnecessary discussion on what constitutes an atheist, that there are different kinds of atheists, including what we construe in technical terms as weak and strong atheists. You say your problem as a Christian Apologist is that these issues are largely an internal matter among atheists but each atheist insists on telling you what atheism absolutely is! "Atheism," you say, "reduces, ultimately, to each individual atheist’s perception of atheism."

My contention is that just as there cannot be such a thing as a strong chair vs. a weak chair--which would be what: anything not manufactured as a chair but which works as a chair anyway?--and just as there cannot be a thing such as a strong apple versus a weak apple......The point is, "chair", "apple", "naturalist," numismatist," and "atheist" are concepts. What is a weak concept versus a strong concept?

It is true that "naturalist" and "atheist" are concepts indicating epistemic determinations. But a definition is still a definition, and the only one that can be argued is the one that takes the idea to its logical extreme. Anything less than the extreme is less than the essence of the concept. Why debate things which are not the essence of the debate?

You say you recently had one instance where you asked an atheist if he agreed that revelations were possible if one happened to him. He answered, “You’re asking me whether if god came to visit me (like some amplified Jehovah’s Witness) and explained the whole thing, then would that change my opinion? Uh, yes."

Tony, I myself will tell you the same thing: If God came to me it would be less than rational to ascribe his identity to him. But I will also tell you that since the concept of "atheist" means denial of the supernatural realm, asking your question is like asking whether one would believe in sapient army ants if one showed up. Of course I would believe in sapient army ants if one showed up. It isn't going to happen. MORE

Check out http://sntjohnny.com/front/ and discover the wonderful world of rational Christianity. Now THAT is a "breath of fresh air." CEC

Compiled from "Act! for America"

"The article below was written by Kenneth Timmerman, President and director of the Middle East Data Project. He has authored a number of books including Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown in Iran. For his work in exposing the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear weapons program, he was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Timmerman is also a member of the Board of Advisors of our sister organization, American Congress for Truth.

"Timmerman's article reveals that [because of] foreign nationals from the Muslim world [making] illegal contributions to the Barack Obama campaign, the Federal Election Commission has compiled a list of questionable foreign contributions totaling nearly $34,000,000!"

Read Timmerman's article here.

http://www.newsmax.com/timmerman/Obama_fundraising_illegal/2008/09/29/135718.html

Strong American Schools, We Hardly Knew Ye

From Cato @ Liberty; The blog of the Cato Institute.

"It was recently announced that Strong American Schools, the group founded by magnates Bill Gates and Eli Broad to put education high on the presidential-election docket, will die in March. It will, in all likelihood, expire in relative anonymity.
"The initiative’s biggest problem has been having to compete against behemoths like war and Wall Street for headlines–a struggle education couldn’t possibly win–but as I wrote back in May, the group also hasn’t offered anything new or noteworthy, a sure way to go unnoticed. Top-down, “government should do more of x” reforms just don’t fire anyone’s imagination because, well, that’s what we’ve been doing for decades and things just haven’t gotten much better.
"And so, Strong American Schools, you will be missed…but not for very long.
posted by Neal McCluskey on 10.02.08 @ 7:23 pm
Filed Under: Education and Child Policy "

The Ayn Rand Center Responds to the Financial Crisis

"Americans are now facing an historic economic crisis. What was the cause? What is the cure? How do we prevent it from happening again? While pundits and politicians blame the current housing and financialcrisis on "greedy" businessmen and lax regulators, and are frantically urging the government to expand its control over our economic lives, the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights has launched a new Web pageto defend a different view--that the actual cause of the crisisis government intervention, and the only cure, laissez-faire capitalism. http://www.aynrand.org/site/R?i=rL8idB-SoNNA8lMh3mz0Ig..

Note: I will be the featured speaker at the Center For Inquiry (CFI) meeting, October 16, 2008, in Portage, Michigan. The topic is "Atheism as a 'Religion' Protected by Courts According to the Establishment Clause." http://www.centerforinquiry.net/ CEC

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Guest Author Rev. Anthony "sntjohnny" Horvath

Guest Author Responds in His Blog to This Blog

Response to Curtis Clark on Naturalism- A Breath of Fresh Air

September 18, 2008 – 11:29 am by sntjohnny. Filed under Blog, General.

Recently an atheist stumbled upon my site and in the course of corresponding with him I have discovered that our different points of view aside, he is a gentleman that I can have a conversation with. His site is called The Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism and he recently put up a post responding to a post on my own blog on the distinction between ‘natural’ revelation and ’special’ revelation. Normally I try to direct correspondents to my discussion forum but in this case, an atheist who has actually announced that I am a rational thinker, I must make an exception!

The reader has all the information in the links above to follow this exchange, if they like.
In my blog entry I indicated that many atheists won’t be convinced by anything less than their own ‘Road to Damascus’ experience. Mr. Clark responds:

"I should say not. Atheists don’t believe such revelations are possible, because the cause of them does not exist. Any person who could possibly be looking for a 'revealed' revelation would be a fence-sitting agnostic. By definition, an atheist knows there is no god, in the sense that all the resolutions of logic one has in one’s mind is what he “knows.” This is sometimes called “justified true belief,” as opposed to “unjustified.” The justification comes from the soundness of the argument.

"Theists 'know' God exists. Atheists 'know' he does not. Each of them has found the soundness, the justification, within his own logic that to doubt it would be to doubt his own mind. To go looking for a revelation implies that one knows nothing either way, and perhaps has no beliefs one way or the other."

I think Mr. Clark is here engaged in an unnecessary discussion on what constitutes an ‘atheist.’ As he most certainly knows, there are different ‘kinds’ of atheists, including what we construe in technical terms as ‘weak’ and ’strong’ atheists. I am aware that ’strong’ atheists often think of ‘weak’ atheists as actually being agnostics. Other atheists are ‘negative’ atheists, asserting that they don’t have a belief that there isn’t a God, but rather simply a lack of belief. My problem as an apologist is that these issues are largely an internal matter among atheists but each atheist insists on telling me what atheism absolutely is! It is hard to see how this internicene conflict will end: unlike Christianity which in theory at least has a static set of documents to limit how the term can be stretched, ‘atheism’ reduces, ultimately, to each individual atheist’s perception of atheism.

Anyway, I recently had one instance that refutes the general claim. A certain atheism on my forum, when I asked if he agreed that revelation would be a useful tool for compensating for ignorance regarding a putative objective moral code, said, “You’re asking me whether if god came to visit me (like some amplified Jehovah’s Witness) and explained the whole thing, then would that change my opinion? Uh, yes.

Perhaps the hang up is my phrase ‘looking for.’ I freely admit that many atheists are not ‘looking for revelation’ which I think is actually the problem. Mr. Clark is resting his disbelief on the ’soundness of the argument’ but I maintain that a single contrary fact is enough to put an argument to bed. Quantum indeterminancy has undermined many of the deterministic arguments of the previous centuries, for example. This would require a long conversation with Mr. Clark to flesh out but let me just say that its difficult to imagine how God could possibly meet the burden of demonstration many atheists expect him to fulfill if they would immediately discount the evidence if it was actually provided.

I have now laid out a lot of assertions that would require several nights over several beers to defend but if this is already getting long.

Moving on:
"One thing I’m beginning to admire about sntjohnny is that he seems to have an understanding of naturalism that is better than that of many naturalists. But his understanding of naturalists themselves isn’t as discerning. No naturalist who is also atheist has any justified true belief in either kind of revelation. The naturalist who believes in 'natural' revelation is not an atheist. The person who believes in 'revealed' revelations is not a naturalist."

Well, obviously the naturalist wouldn’t see the natural order as revelation about God. This is not the language that I would use if my only audience were philosophical naturalists, but my audience is wider than that. The phrase ‘revelation’ can still be rehabilitated, though, because if one wants to get to the bottom of just what reality is all about, than they are going to have to rely on more than just introspection. They’ll have to open their eyes and let the universe around them ‘tell’ them about itself. You cannot deduce the law of gravity. For that you must drop an object and allow it to ‘reveal’ its speed as it rushes to the earth.

So, when we ‘open our eyes’ to let reality speak for itself, what conclusions do we draw? I maintain that we rely on the conclusions that others have drawn for most of the conclusions that we ourselves draw. In other words, most of what we think we know we only know because others have revealed it to us. Sifting through ‘revelation’ is not foreign to our experience. Now, what if the question at hand is whether or not there is more to physical reality? Here, I maintain that logical argumentation, one way or another, has limited value. Ideally, whatever is the ‘more’ would have to reveal itself to us to learn anything truly interesting.

Atheists may not be looking for evidence of revelation but my contention is that they ought to be, and that they ought to do so without prejudging the issue, because that would be circular reasoning.

It is really not a very controversial position. The most efficient way of finding out if I like coffee or not is for me to tell you (I do). It is no good presuming before the investigation that I can’t possibly like coffee, so revelation to the contrary must be summarily dismissed. Similarly, if the question is whether or not there are extraterrestial entities out there, then clearly our best chance of finding out is if they’ve made efforts to reveal their presense to us (or Sagan’s “Contact” and the SETI project are ridiculous). They understand that the only good way to find out is in fact to go looking for revelation. If they believed already, on argument alone, that extraterrestial entities didn’t exist, and then set up SETI, any data they received would be discounted because of their prior conclusion. Of course, if SETI knew that there were not extraterrestial entities one supposes they wouldn’t even bother looking.

Those examples are not that much different than the question of God. The differences would be where and how we’d look for the revelation, just as one looks for extraterrestial revelation differently than one looks for revelation about one’s drinking preferences. As long as one has a plausible reason for looking in the first place then it is perfectly reasonable to ‘look.’ The presence of a billion and a half people who believe that God actually came to earth at one time is certainly a plausible reason to examine the claim. Decide that the claim is false, if you like, but I insist that concluding it is false because you already know such things can’t happen because you already know there isn’t a God is just not reasonable.

Thank you, Rev. Anthony Horvath, "sntjohnny," for the "back-and-forth" nature of our discussion. This is what human discussion is supposed to be. You, and I, and our readers, know that there are those out there in the world who could not have a dialectic.

sntjohnny and I have agreed to keep this discussion going until we reach what each of us considers a good ending. It may happen every 10 days to two week, more or less, give or take, as we see fit. I will always be certain to link the threads together for you, as he did at the top of his piece.

Check out http://sntjohnny.com/front/ and discover the wonderful world of rational Christianity. Now THAT is a "breath of fresh air." CEC

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"sntjohnny" is a Rational Christian; Taxing for Green; Web Deceits

"sntjohnny" is a Rational Christian
With Whom I Can Have Dialogue

Anthony Horvath is the Executive Director of Athanatos Christian Ministries. Horvath, who calls himself sntjohnny though his name isn't John, calls his website St.Johnny.com, perhaps to differentiate himself: "Will the real St. John please stand up?"

"[B]y the very definition of God according to Christian theists, there is a great deal that could only be known if God told us." Horvath was describing "special revelation."

"Special" is contrasted with "natural revelation" whereby "natural revelation" means arguments for the existence of God, Horvath says. "Simply put, ‘natural’ revelation, or ‘natural theology,’ is what one can learn about God running exclusively on your own steam without any assistance from God. Aristotle’s Prime Mover arguments and Aquinas’s ‘Five Ways’ are such efforts." http://sntjohnny.com/front/natural-versus-revealed-religion-how-atheists-drop-the-ball/349.html

"One of the confusions here is the treatment of the Bible as revelation. It certainly is revelation. However, when it concerns God, it is, strictly speaking, revelation about revelation. So, the ’special revelation’ would be what happened to Paul on the road to Damascus. He then reveals what was revealed to him. In other words, the accounts of this incident are Paul’s revelation. Also, all that we know about Jesus is revealed to us through his disciples. [italics added]

"Atheists at this point are probably scratching their heads because from their perspective I will not have made the situation any better. What many of them are specifically looking for is their own ‘Road to Damascus’ experience."

I should say not. Atheists don't believe such revelations are possible, because the cause of them does not exist. Any person who could possibly be looking for a "revealed" revelation would be a fence-sitting agnostic. By definition, an atheist knows there is no god, in the sense that all the resolutions of logic one has in one's mind is what he "knows." This is sometimes called "justified true belief," as opposed to "unjustified." The justification comes from the soundness of the argument.

Theists "know" God exists. Atheists "know" he does not. Each of them has found the soundness, the justification, within his own logic that to doubt it would be to doubt his own mind. To go looking for a revelation implies that one knows nothing either way, and perhaps has no beliefs one way or the other.

Horvath begins his blog asserting "that atheists fail to distinguish between ‘natural revelation’ and ’special revelation’ but they are not entirely to blame. Arguments for the existence of God tend to be in the realm of ‘natural’ theology."

Yes, they do "tend to be considered theology," and therein lies the differences between theists and atheists. One thing I'm beginning to admire about sntjohnny is that he seems to have an understanding of naturalism that is better than that of many naturalists. But his understanding of naturalists themselves isn't as discerning. No naturalist who is also atheist has any justified true belief in either kind of revelation. The naturalist who believes in "natural" revelation is not an atheist. The person who believes in "revealed" revelations is not a naturalist.

Horvath is familiar with my very public differences with Austin Cline, the Deity of Atheism over at About.com. [See the Academy Blogger http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/2008/09/threaded-with-austin-cline-saturday.html ]

I have thus publicly disagreed with Cline about the definition of atheism. I maintain that not only do atheists justifiably believe there are no gods, but also that atheists don't have the faith required to see within the "naturally revealed" world the existence of any god. Cline says an atheist merely has no belief in god, and may consider it to be true that gods exist, and have faith in other forms of supernaturalism!

Far from being skeptical, the atheist who believes there are no gods finds no reason to be skeptical since he/she finds no reason to argue with him/herself about whether he/she is correct in his/her belief.

On the other hand, the believer is the skeptic and the more devout the belief the more skeptical he/she is. That is because in order to believe in the "revealed revelations" of the Bible, the Christian must "suspend his disbelief" http://www.mediacollege.com/glossary/s/suspension-of-disbelief.html , overcoming it with reason. It was the theologian Boethius, after all, who told Christians, "Insofar as is possible, join faith to reason."

It is not in my constitution to suspend my reason only to replace it with faith, which must then be rationalized by overcoming my disbelief with sound justifications that overcome them. The theist who cannot find the sound justification to overcome his/her disbelief is a Christian with a crisis.

sntjohnny does a credible and understandable job of overcoming disbelief--for the agnostic, or the Christian with a crisis of belief. I do not believe, and he states unequivocally that he also does not believe, anything less than a "revealed" revelation would be enough to convince an atheist.

If he is right, and I agree that he is, Cline's definition of "atheist" has been knocked out of the ballpark.

I have provided my readers with a link to Horvath,aka stjohnny, in the sidebar under the heading "Interesting Reading." Horvath is a very rational Christian who comprehends that preaching to an atheist doesn't work, even if he thinks we are all waiting for our own personal revelation from a god. What he does understand is that in reason, there can be dialogue between theists and atheists, which is the only way for the two camps to talk, aside from just leaving each other alone altogether.

Are You That Certain of Yourself
That You Can Tax the Rest of Us for Your Beliefs?
"Cool Look at the Future, by Richard Rahn. How much in additional taxes are you willing to pay now in order to ensure that the Earth would not be 3 degrees warmer 100 years from now (assuming the science is even possible) - $100 or $1,000 or $10,000 or more? Should the government prevent us from selling some of our body parts to allow others to live or have better lives? The above questions and many others were the subject of learned discussion at the 60th anniversary meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) that just concluded here in Tokyo." Cato Today http://www.cato.org/recent_opeds.php

Internet Lies and Deceits
"I was intrigued to discover recently that I am a secret services mouthpiece designed to undermine the left by publishing neo-conservative views and apologies for racism. You'll not be surprised to learn that these ludicrous allegations were made on the internet. The web has become a clearing house for all sorts of nonsense ideas.

"Many of the most enthusiastic pioneers of the internet have now become seriously worried about its capacity to promulgate lies and distortions. Larry Sanger, one of the co-founders of Wikipedia, became so disillusioned that he started Citizendium as an attempt to bring more quality control to online, collaborative encyclopaedias. Just last week, the creator of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee, also said that we need to find ways to control the spread of falsehoods on the web."I share their concerns, but I wonder if blaming the web is just shooting the messenger for radically upping his productivity."

Julian Baggini http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.2446993.0.Can_we_untangle_this_web_of_deceit.php

Mr. Baggini also has a link provided by the Academy Blogger under the heading "Interesting Reading."

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