Thus my “spirituality” is to learn how to live in a material world that is everywhere more than I can see or know. For such a life I need a guide. Without a guide I am left to the devices of my own imagination. My parents were not raised in such a situation. They were not teachers in this matter. It is the life of the Church, the way of knowledge that is the lives of the saints that teaches me how to live. They help me eat (or not eat) in a manner that reveals God. They teach me to read, to honor icons, to forgive enemies, to hold creation in its proper, God-given place. I am an Orthodox Christian. Who else remembers how to live in the world, holding that Christ is come in the flesh?
Fr. Stephen

As an aside, Senator Paul is incorrect about the cause of the prices in healthcare. The commentator in the video hits the nail on the head when he wonders what the difference between the Church saving him, and the Government saving him. The only real difference is that everyone pays taxes, and only some people voluntarily give to Churches. The commentator, again, rightly remarks about the steady decline in the influence of Churches over the years. Pragmatically – a social safety net like this is getting smaller. But pragmatism is not the issue here. An issue that I find relevant is that Ron Paul failed to be that supporting community when one of his staffers (who does not get health insurance by Ron Paul, his employer) died because he could not pay for the treatment. Ron Paul did not help this man financially.

The issue I find is that the Church is being co-opted into a discourse within which it has no expectation to be. I do not mean here, “the separation of church and state”. I do expect and hope that the Church will be more active than it has been (and all the churches I have been a part of remain active in helping people financially navigate their lives). But, the Church has a right to make their own decisions. To be ‘free’ as Ron Paul would say, to act of their own responsibility. Political arguments cannot assume, presume, or coerce the Church into a position she has taken of her own volition.

A government is responsible for its people. It is responsible to further the people in their collective goals, and individual goals. Certainly every individual must act responsibly. But, frankly, shit happens. Families who are barely feeding and housing themselves should not have to worry about finding a way to stay healthy. Even for myself, a resident of Massachusetts who pays every month for the public healthcare option, carries a risk. There is no responsible investment I can make that will absolve me of all health risks. If I get hit by a car and have permanent injuries (which happen to 2 million Americans every year) insurance will not cover most of it, and I will have to pay out of pocket for the rest of my life. Unlucky, yes, but at 2 million per year, how much progress and human flourishing are we losing? Is it worth losing? Those Americans who want universal health care, and especially a single-payer system, say it is not worth losing our humanity because of money.

from Banksy

• His application of scientism (that is the method of knowing which science purports as the only way of knowing) to other areas not contained within science is incredibly false. This is the error of our age – and it is the same error which “Biblical Christianity” makes. They play by the scientism where “objective” “evidence” is the rule of law. If Dowd was well connected with philosophy he would understand the incredible bait and switch that has happened in this materialistic worldview (something I write about often here). Unfortunately there is no way to be “objective”, and the categorical imperative is woefully unsupportable as a measuring rod for humans. If the only way to know anything was according to the rules of scientism we would know far less than we ought. In fact, the overwhelming majority of “what we know” does not come by the rules of scientism, however we’ve been rationalizing it to ourselves that we do know them according to those rules.
• His quote of Aquinas is woefully inadequate for his argument. It can’t be marshaled in favor of his argument because of what Aquinas is doing. Aquinas is making the classic first-mover/uncaused-causer argument in his Summa. Aquinas is not making a naturalist statement about creation – he is making a theological and philosophical statement about creation. And Aquinas is upending the first thirteen hundred years of neo-Platonic Christian theology in the process. He claims that they are the ones that have made the mistake (even though Bonaventure makes a similar, albeit importantly different, first-causer argument centuries earlier).
• When talking about a literary passage he argues it is an interpretation. Without question the entirety of Scripture is an interpretation. Just like the entirety of written history is an interpretation. Just like the entirety of every literary work (this blog entry, Dowd’s blog entry) is an interpretation. According to scientism, interpretations must be removed and sifted through to find the “facts” behind them. But in this entire enterprise we are actually not after facts. Dowd doesn’t write to find the facts. The facts are the sun is up there combusting away. We are down here milling around. The earth is spinning. People die, and people are born. The question we are all here asking is “What does all that mean?” or “How am I to interpret this?”. The question is not “What is happenening?”. We can all essentially see what is happening.
• Therefore when Dowd is talking about “Life as It Really Is” he is not talking about the facts. We can all understand the basics of the facts. When the Egyptians called on Ra the Sun God it was not because they were confused about how things worked. It was a deeply entrenched interpretation which structured their world and society. That was “Life as It Really Is” to them. For Dowd, scientism is “Life as It Really Is”. Unfortunately, science cannot and can never offer an interpretation. Analysis can never offer meaning. Dowd is talking about the “fact” of evolution and therefore interprets that to mean that, in some way or another, “If God is the creator, then God is the process of evolution.” That is an interpretation, not a fact. And one which all of Christians (ignoring the “Biblical” ones) disagree with.
• In all points Dowd is picking on the lowest forms of Biblical Christianity, a strawman. He has placed caricatures of many dogmatic points out there. This is a familiar tactic borrowed from the New Athiests. I am only reminded of the tounge-in-cheek remarks of the Bad Vicar @ 1:22-1:50
  

In my view, “Biblical Christianity” is also bankrupt. Not because it doesn’t adopt the presumptions and methods of scientism (which are wholly unwarranted within matters of faith and meaning) but because it does an incredibly poor job of understanding Scripture, representing the Christianity it has inherited, and integrating with the wider world.

Evolution to my mind is actually an incredibly strong point against the scientism “objectivity” which philosophically has degenerated into nihilism. Because evolution values life. All organisms are geared to live (current evolutionary theory is being attacked on the premise that “survival of the fittest” is not quite how it works). Evolution “knows” something much greater than all the scientific interpretive grids have allowed it to. It knows that life has intrinsic value and meaning and should continue on. No single philosophical interpretive grid has any statement affirming that, largely because it cannot. Philosophy is rigidly stuck within Kant’s method of knowing and therefore cannot affirm any humanity or meaning.

My complaint, as I am raising it here, is that translations frequently mislead. The entire concept of Church as a fellowship of believers, meaning a free association of like-minded Christians, is simply not a Scriptural notion, unless your Bible happens to be one of the many that has bowdlerized the clear Orthodox meaning of Scripture. We are saved by union with Christ, by participation in His life. We are Baptized into his death and raised in His resurrection. We eat His Body and drink His Blood. We have participation in the life of one another such that we cannot say to one another, “I have no need of you.” Such examples can be multiplied from every page of the New Testament and not one of them will support the weak image of an associational fellowship. This sad translation of a powerful word has helped support a notion of the individual believer with a relationship with Christ (what sort of a relationship is fellowship?) and his Bible. This is not the language or imagery of Scripture nor the doctrine of the Church.

Is fellowship with God possible? I’m not certain how to answer the question. I’d rather have communion.
Father Stephen

ID presumes that science can talk about design and meaning. This is why basic disagreement. Of course, without this basic point the entire argument is useless. Science cannot talk about meaning. It can only analyze. Any analysis cannot determine whether a thing is correctly put-together or in error. It cannot determine chaos from design. That determination requires a knower. Science strictly works only in the realm of objective knowledge (otherwise the scientific method is bogus and self-contradictory). A personal knower is required to give objects a design, a meaning, the label of correct, or in error.

The first thing to realize is that a knowledge of physics and chemistry would in itself not enable us to recognize a machine… At what point would you discover it is a machine (if it is one), and if so, how it operates? Never. For you cannot even put this question, let alone answer it, though you have all physics and chemistry at your finger-tips, unless you already know how machines work.
Personal Knowledge, Michael Polanyi, pg 331

Therefore, what Christians should be arguing is that we do believe humanity was designed – along with everything else. And we shouldn’t be looking for the scientific analysis to “prove” it, since it cannot. What we should be arguing is that when scientists turn around and place meaning into the incredible odds of life on this earth (what they’re really talking about is not “the chance that life started here” but rather the innumerable situations by which our kind of life would cease to function) that we are just a big accident. Science does not tell us we are a cosmic accident. People are telling us that. And that is what we should be arguing against.

Paley’s watchmaker argument applies here. Science cannot say “that is a clock”. Only a person who knows what a clock is can say “that is a clock”. Recognize that the Christian problem is, in the context of the ID argument put forth, you are asking people who do not believe we are designed to admit that we are designed. Science cannot tell them, or us, that we are designed. We believe that we are. You cannot merely ask another who does not believe this to admit it. It goes against their system of belief. In order to accomplish the task you have to alter their system of belief such that the idea of our design is not foreign.

How could one person pray the prayer of the fellowship without being steadied and upheld in prayer by the fellowship itself? At this very point, every word of criticism must be transformed into fervent intercession and brotherly help. Otherwise, how easily might a fellowship be broken asunder right here!
The free prayer in the common devotion should be the prayer of the fellowship and not that of the individual who is praying. It is his responsibility to pray for the fellowship. So he will have to share the daily life of the fellowship; he must know the cares, the needs, the joys and thanksgivings, the petitions and hopes of the others. Their work and everything they bring with them must not be unknown to him. He prays as a brother amongst brothers. It will require practice and watchfulness, if he is not to confuse his own heart with the heart of the fellowship, if he is really to be guided solely by his responsibility to pray for the fellowship.
Life Together, pg 63

Thesis 4: Christian worship does not lie in a realm outside of religion. To seek a direct correspondence between leitourgia (“the work of the people”) and divine action is to forget that worship itself is a “perpetual factory of idols” (Calvin). Furthermore, such easy correspondence risks fetishizing and instrumentalizing worship. The problem is structural and runs deep; in truth, the very discipline of “ecclesiology” is prone to idolatrous self-aggrandizement. Thus the critique of religio strikes at the very heart of Christian worship.[6] The occasion for sin occurs preeminently as leitourgia—the “work of the people” to self-justify, to strive to stand aright before God. Indeed, worship is the site marking our deepest estrangement from God. But this is not the final word! In Jesus Christ, God decisively wills to be God-for-us and so our idolatrous “work” becomes the site of our reconciliation with God. Reconciliation occurs not as exchange or production, but as a gratuitous event of grace. In this event the Spirit “takes up” our “work” to stand aright before God and transforms and transfigures our prideful attempts to “make a name for ourselves.” Our worship only becomes true praise, then, as our “work” loses track of itself under the great pressure of God’s own doxa. Such doxa happens as the event of God’s grace evokes gratitude “like the voice an echo.” Indeed, “Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightening” (Barth, CD IV/1, 41).
[HT: Inhabitatio Dei

But Protestantism has gone hand in hand with the “Enlightenment” ideal of rational objective Aristotelian proofs. And correspondingly they’ve got no natural theology. The best they can do is the best Aquinas could do – God in the uncaused causer. Neo-platonism is capable of so much more.

I don’t understand why we’ve given it up. I really don’t.

Update

Kind of elucidates my point. Reading over that seems to be far less than what my, admittedly, cursory readings of Augustine, Bonaventure, and Cusa accomplish.