Faith and Certitude | Non-believers are defective

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This is part of a series of notes in response to "Faith and Certitude" by Thomas Dubay

Main Argument: If-you-don't-believe-in-Christianity-you-are-defective

As odd as it sounds, I really think the whole case of this book can be reduced to this argument. I'll primarily be putting together quotes that illustrate that this really is the argument put forth in the book. Here goes, then…

I have found over and over again that listeners who are already predisposed by moral goodness and a love for beauty eagerly accept the gospel when they hear it. They may have initial difficulties, but they work through them. As Jesus himself put it, his sheep do hear his voice (Jn 10:27). Even though they begin outside his flock, when they hear his word of truth, it strikes a sympathetic note in their heart and they respond. Their moral integrity has already prepared them, sensitized them for the completion of what the invisible word has already wrought. (pg. 31-32)

Translation:

• if you do not eagerly accept the gospel, you are not predisposed by moral goodness and love
• if you do not believe the gospel, you have not been prepared by your moral integrity

The Second Vatican Council stated that the divine evidences to which the Church can appeal are both so many and so striking that a Catholic's faith cannot be shaken by a serious and objective doubt. Further, said the Council, a person who humbly accepts the divine light given by grace cannot fall prey to even subjective doubt which rests on false presuppositions or erroneous deductions. (pg. 33)

Translation:

• There is no challenge that will ever show that the Catholic Church's beliefs are possibly (or definitely) wrong… ever. You know this because a council said so.
• If you fall prey to subjective doubt you
  • do not have grace and/or divine light
  • have been hoodwinked by false presuppositions or bad logic

Evidences for the basic truths of religion build up slowly in the course of a person's life. The ordinary individual gradually reflects on the splendors of the universe, on the magnitude of the sea and the sun and the galaxies, on the intricacies of the human body and our inability to construct a single cell of it... His own conscience bears witness to him that there is a supreme lawgiver to whom he is accountable. He yearns for joy and love and knows it cannot be found in this life. For these and other reasons this person slowly grows in the conviction that God is. (pg 41)

Translation:

• If you do not reflect on the things mentioned here you are not ordinary
• What you intuit with your moral sense is correct if you think it forecasts a man in the sky who planted laws in your heart
• If you want love and joy and it cannot be in this life, there is obviously another life in which you really can find it

In a similar manner he becomes convinced that the Church enjoys a divine origin and protection. He first learned it in his catechism lessons, but as an adult he comes to see many reasons confirming his early instructions. The sheer superhuman beauty and coherence of her teaching slowly dawns on him. Her fidelity to moral truth in a world that bends to secular pressures speaks of a superhuman guarantee. The continual persecutions she has suffered through the centuries and still suffers today indicate something radically unworldly about her. He sees eventually that she alone can point to saints whose heroic holiness has been established by detailed and sworn testimony. It dawns upon him one day that the saints are genuine advertisements of what the Church teaches, and he realizes how she sanctifies when a person says yes to her entire message. He hears or reads about the thousands of carefully documented miracles that occur in her bosom. The imposing size and unity and catholicity of the Church, unlike anything else in the world, proclaim her divine origin. For these and other reasons he recognizes the divine handwriting upon her. (pg. 42)

Wow. That was a lot. When we strip away all of the superfluous descriptors, we're left with Dubay's formal case for Catholicism:

• Beauty and coherence of teaching
• Refusal to change moral truths regardless of what outside influences recommend or do
• Survival of persecutions
• Saints
• Miracles
• Size and unity

Just to end with one more…

A whole library of books has been written to bring out the astonishing and sheer splendor of the Figure so artlessly described in the four Gospels. So lofty, so consistent, so pure, so sufficing, so beautiful are his person and his message that they can have no source but divinity

What about the doubts that do come along? Well, in a continuation from the assertion that Vatican II stated that no doubts will ever be troublesome, we are not surprised by Dubay's instruction:

...what does one rightly do when an objection or difficulty presents itself?...What we should do in the presence of a difficulty is what any reasonable person does when a well-founded certitude is attacked or questioned: he remains calm and retains his certitude. I do not doubt the existence of Paris because a misguided tourist errs in his description of the city. Nor do I question that water freezes at 0^o centigrade simply because in an experiment I find that some waterlike substance does not freeze at that temperature. So also I do not hesitate at the clear message of the New Testament that Jesus is divine because on or another text presents a problem to my mind. This would be like doubting that George Washington was the first president of the United States because in my reading I have come upon one or two historical obscurities that seem not to suppose it. Clear data explains obscure data, not vice versa. (pg. 42-43)

Quite the response, I'd say. What I find fascinating is that throughout this book, Dubay treats belief in Jesus Christ as so clear as to compare it to the existence of a city, the temperature at which a liquid freezes, and an extremely famous individual who lived within the last 250 years in a culture quite interested in the preservation of history. Yet as Sesame Street says, "One of these things is not like the other." Let's take a global survey and examine what percent of the population subscribes to Paris' existence, water freezing at 0^o C, George Washington as the first US president… and the divinity and resurrection of Jesus. I would almost bet my life that three will be almost unanimous amongst educated individuals, while one will utterly tank in the percentage that support it. Given that it's so evidently clear… why is this?

My take is that Dubay believes that non-believers are defective, cut off from reality, ignorant of truth, and/or otherwise broken in some manner. This seems to be the only way he can explain the existence of nonbelievers. ²/₃ - ³/₄ of the world is mentally defective or broken.

On to the next post in the series: Why atheism fails >>