John C. Wright's Journal

The skeptic about reason, he himself, admits that logic is necessary. Epictetus does not provide any proof beyond this: You admit it, O skeptic. Why ask me to prove something to you that you already have proved to yourself?

The difficulty the postmodernist have with the discussions of the role of reason, is that they accept the categorical fallacy that no categories exists aside from science (which is objective) and faith or opinion (which is arbitrary).

They reason in this fashion: Science, either empirical or rational, assumes a verification principle. Whatever is not open to verification is not science; and whatever is not science is arbitrary. Ergo whatever is not open to verification is arbitrary. Again, the laws of logic (such as modes ponens) are not open to verification; ergo, by modes ponens, they are arbitrary.

When Epictetus points out that this argument itself employs the very rule it attempts to critique, the postmodernists just simper, suck their thumbs, and look coy, like Carmen Sternwood making eyes at Philip Marlowe.

The problem is that another category of thought does exist: wisdom. A thing can be wise without being scientific. There is reasoning that exists larger than and including scientific reasoning: this is called natural reason or common sense. Scientific reasoning includes empiricism and axiomatic logic. Empiricism has won such high regard that modern intellectuals dismiss axiomatic logic as unscientific (in other words, they take the axiom that axiomatic logic is not empirical; they take whatever is nonempirical to be mere opinion; and they conclude by Barbara that ergo axiomatic logic is mere opinion. The irony that they themselves use axiomatic logic to reach this conclusion, is, of course, lost on them).

With logic gone, natural reason is dismissed from academic discussion, and, with it, serious ethical reasoning. Common sense is banished from the discussion, and, with it, common sense. Wisdom is banished from the discussion, and, when it flies, all that is left is nonsense, either angry (Nietzsche) or despairing (Sartre).

I confess I have heard, offered in perfect seriousness, the faith that empiricism will one day explain all human mental and spirituals facts and aspirations, define the rules of morality, and explain all other non-material non-phenomenal realities—and I have further heard this article of faith defended as if it were a conclusion of a scientific experiment.

A schoolboy could see the paradox involved. One cannot prove empiricism by means of empirical test. The idea that empirical ideas have truth-value is itself a metaphysical idea, not an empirical idea. Truth-value cannot be measured in veritons, little particles of truth that have mass, vector, duration and extension. Empirical ideas, like any other ideas, exist as ideas, imbued with meaning to the mind that contemplates them; otherwise nuomenal, having no physical properties.

To weasel out of this obvious paradox, I have heard the proposition that the coherence of the whole body of learning, empiricism and its axioms and conclusions, is proof of its pragmatic utility, which is, in turn, a warrant for its truth. This merely substitutes big words and gassy ideas for short words and simple ideas. We are now calling “coherence” the yardstick of truth-value. A coherent system is true and an incoherent on is not.

But so what?  The idea that coherent empirical bodies of ideas have truth-value is itself a metaphysical idea, not an empirical idea. Coherence is not more open to scientific measurement than veracity. We cannot measure the spin-values of the gluons that cohere ideas one to the other. We cannot say ’empiricism is true because it works, not because of an metaphysical theory’ unless we say ‘truth is what works’ which is itself a metaphysical proposition, namely: “the truth-value of an idea is positively correlated with the realities of the universe around us when and only when actions based on that idea result in expected outcomes according to the laws of cause and effect”. That is a theory of epistemology and ontology.

I have once heard the partisans of the ‘coherence’ theory of empiricism bring up “Bayesian probability” as an alternate type of reasoning to salvage this mess. This is merely a more elevated form of the same basic mistake. The Reverend Thomas Bayes correctly defined that the assessment of the probability of an event is and should be affected by the record of successful predictions: if you see someone flip a coin fifty times, and it comes up heads each time, the longer he goes on flipping heads only, the less weight you give to the assumption that the chance of it coming up tails is fifty-fifty.  After a certain point, you should believe the coin is weighted.

Unfortunately, once again, this is merely a method of analysis which applies to empirical observations that can be reduced to a measurement, i.e. scientific empiricism. No Bayesian analysis will tell us what the chances are that Bayesian analysis itself is true, probable, or false, since the categories “true”, “probably true” and “false” are categories of epistemology, not of empiricism.

To sum up: empiricism has categories for statements of “disproved” and “not disproved” and also for “parsimonious” and “not parsimonious.” By means of a faculty other than empirical thought, a scientist invents an account, myth, or model to predict the behavior of matter. If his model contains no more entities than needed, it is “parsimonious.”  If the model does not accurately predict the attempted behavior, it is “disproved”. If not, it is “not disproved.” Karl Popper adds the refinement that if there is no possible predicted behavior exists which can register a “disproved” statement, then the model is not science at all. This is empiricism.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Science holds as an axiom, neither to be proved nor disproven in science, the following statement of the empirical axiom: “a parsimonious non-disproved model is true, provisionally.” This is a metaphysical statement, not open to disproof by any empirical means. This is epistemology.

Unrelated to all this is secularism, a political posture. Secularism promotes indifference to religion, or, at least, that neutrality toward religion is the proper stance for civic and political affairs. It runs in harness with Materialism, which states that nothing outside or above the material world exists, or, if it does exist, no statements about it are open to proof or disproof, or, if they are open to proof, the proofs are of no particular objective value or subjective interest. The first is a political opinion, the second a philosophical statement of ontology: neither one can either be proved or disproved by empirical investigation. They are unrelated to science, even though they pretend to bask in the reputation science radiates.

Because the claims of what constitutes science are often conflated with secularism, which is a philosophical stance about a metaphysical postulate outside the realm of science, let us take a moment to define the bounds of science:

Eratosthenes proved scientifically that the Earth was round, and had a circumference of 250 000 stadia. He compared the shadows cast by two upright yardsticks in Syrene and Alexandria, at the hour when the southern stick cast no shadow. The distance between the two cities, and the degree of inclination of the northern yardstick (as measured by its shadow) had the same ratio to each other that 360 degrees has to the circumference of the Earth. To dispute his findings, you need to question the accuracy of his instruments, his assumptions (he treats incoming solar rays as parallel; he treats the earth as a perfect sphere), or the distances measured.

This is an empirical conclusion: If you doubt him, you can do the experiment yourself, and open your eyes and see for yourself. No evidence since the days of Eratosthenes has done other than refine his conclusion with greater accuracy.

Likewise Euclid proves that vertical angles are equal. Assume the line AB crosses line CD at point E. By definition, the straight line composed of angles AEC and CEB equal two right angles. Likewise for angles CEB and BED. Subtract the common angle BEC. By common notion, two things equal to a third thing are equal to each other, the remaining vertical angles are equal. To dispute this proof, one needs either reject the definition or dispute the common notion.

This is a rational conclusion: If you doubt him, close your eyes and think it through for yourself. You can come to no other answer.

Science consists of empirical and rational conclusions: physics and mathematics.

Moses and Confucius and Christ, and every other sage and thinker in antiquity have voiced the moral axiom of the Golden Rule: Do as you would be Done by.

This is a wise conclusion. If you doubt it, try living your life with a moral and mental rule that the laws that apply to others apply to others only and not to you. Live in a land where everyone adopts the rule that they live with rules that apply only to others, never to themselves. Puzzle over the logic of how a dispute would be solved between two moral actors who both agree the rules only applies to the other: or how any dispute could be solved at all, in the absence of a universal rule equally applied. You will soon become confused and foolish.

The inability to see wisdom as a valid category of thought—for it is neither arbitrary, nor unreasonable, but neither is it empiricism nor rationalism—has led modern philosophy into blatant folly and paradox.

Consider this: if the only two categories of reason are empirical reasoning and rational reasoning, how do we answer a solipsist? The solipsist says that, on an empirical ground, he is not and can never be aware of the souls, minds, personalities, or moral nature of other human beings. They look like thinking beings, but they might be robots, or manikins, or the solipsist might be asleep or trapped in the Matrix without a Red Pill. On rationalistic ground there is no logical reason to prefer the one theory over the other: no self-contradiction is involved in the solipsist believing he is the sole creature known to possess a mind. The belief that other people have minds is merely opinion. On empirical grounds, the proof is both parsimonious and predicative. Indeed, by the principle of parsimony the solipsist correctly refuses to postulate the existence of unneeded entities, i.e. other souls.

But what the solipsist says is so obviously foolish that no man of common sense would give it one second further thought. If the solipsist is surrounded by nothing but robots or manikins, who taught him the concept “solipsism”? To whom does he preach his doctrine and why? For it is foolish to go around telling a manikin it is a manikin. If it is a manikin, the knowledge can never reach him. There is no him to reach. And what point is there in telling a real human being with a soul like yours that logic demands he treat you as if you are a manikin?

The problem is that wisdom, unlike logic, cannot be analyzed to simple principles. For example, it might be wise for a man, or a polity, to believe that Man is made in the image of God, and that therefore human life is sacred. If nothing else, spreading this belief might serve a man’s self-interest, as it might decrease the chances that his life will be held to be of no particular worth when balanced against other exigencies.

It might difficult for me to convince his neighbors that my natural rights are sacred, if I cannot convince them my life is sacred. If my neighbor is religious, and believes me to be the image of God, my argument is fairly simple. If my neighbor is secular, the argument is more complex, and must eventually be grounded in some principle my neighbor treats as inalienable. In other words, my secular neighbor must have something which is the secular equivalent of sacred, i.e. something too awe-inspiring to be touched. Once I convince him human life is sacred, the ability to defend from arbitrary death my own life, the life of my unborn child, the life of my autistic child, the life of my helpless elderly mother, the life of my comatose wife, are all markedly increased. Neither axiomatic logic nor empirical observation has any bearing on these issues: it is a question for common sense and wisdom.

In closing, let me introduce a thought by Pope Benedict XVI. “If modern reason cannot concern itself with the question of God, then it cannot argue that a God who commands jihad is better or worse than a God who commands us not to use violence to impose our religious views on others. To the modern atheist, both Gods are equally figments of the imagination, in which case it would be ludicrous to discuss their relative merits. The proponent of modern reason, therefore, could not possibly think of participating in a dialogue on whether Christianity or Islam is the more reasonable religion, since, for him, the very notion of a “reasonable religion” is a contradiction in terms.”

If the secularist says he might rather live with Christian neighbors as Islamic ones, just on the grounds that his self-interest is served by a religion that condemns conversion by the sword over one that commands it, then he is again making a statement not of axiomatic logic or empiricism but of common sense and natural wisdom.

In his juveniles Heinlein did not spare his audience or speak down to them: there were many futures depicted where overpopulation was a reality (FARMER IN THE SKY, or TUNNEL IN THE SKY) or where thermonuclear war had ended our current era. The future might hold a police-state (BETWEEN PLANETS) an Imperial guild-run bureaucracy (STARMAN JONES) slavery (CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY) or war (STARSHIP TROOPERS). This unsparing sobriety might seem normal to those of us these days, who routinely see “Young Adult” novels revolving around pederasty or some other horrific grown-up theme, but it was not the sort of thing I can recall from the DANNY DUNN AND THE SMALLIFYING MACHINE or TOM SWIFT AND HIS TRIPHIBIAN ATOMICAR.

The same worries, overpopulation and atomic war are mentioned here. To be sure, most of the book concerns, as one might expect, with quotidian things: the traveler griping about his accommodations, or praising the natural beauties and spectacular sights, or recalling with gratitude the generosities of hosts. But since it is Heinlein, he makes also make observations on larger themes: about human nature, politics and economy, what goes wrong and what goes right, all the while carefully disqualifying himself—he knows he is only expressing his first impressions, his non-expert opinion.

As much time separates us from the author’s postwar world as his world was from 1900, when horsepower was still the main source of power, the Wild West was still wild, the heavier than air flying machine was as unheard-of as women voting. In that respect, the book is also interesting as an historical document.

For example, the McCarthy hearings were going on during that year, and it was a topic of much conversation with the American tourists. Heinlein proves that not all Americans allegedly suffering under the alleged repression of “McCarthyism” where all that impressed one way or the other: certainly he would be surprised that the propaganda surrounding the issues would be so successful that fifty years later, people would still be using the word “McCarthyism” to refer to an hysterical witch hunt. When, in fact, even at the time, it was noted that no one died, no one was imprisoned, no one was fined. The worst that was inflicted was a certain loss of reputation among some people, and then only when they refused to denounce America’s avowed enemies. Heinlein correctly points out that had Senator McCarthy held power in any of the countries he passed through, including the British Commonwealth dominions, the accused would have been treated much more harshly. Behind the Iron Curtain, they simply would have died, not gone on to lifelong fame as media darlings.

Heinlein also notices something present then with uncanny pertinence today. No outsider actually gave a Tinker’s Damn about McCarthy or any other purely internal matter of the USA: it was merely an excuse to beat up on the Fat Kid. All the help, all the money poured into a recovering Europe and a developing Third World, the military power used to save these places, first from Naziism, and next from Communism, had earned us all a great big fat goose egg for our troubles. Even a people like the Australians, who remember (to this day!) the role America played in quelling the threat of the Imperial Japanese, cannot help but be delighted when discussing our various scandals and dust-ups. The boy on the block who is both rich and handsome and powerful is always hated.

He also mentions that the Aussies of 1953 were not the most gallant to their womenfolk, and so when American G.I.’s were stationed there, whose habit was to bring nylons or flowers or candy to a woman they were romancing, or to hold the doors or help her out of cars—things any well-bred corn-fed boy from Smallville would do—to the locals, it looked like the same kind of sinister smoothness that the city slicker with the oiled moustache uses in the movies. The boy on the block who is both rich and handsome and powerful is always hated, even if, or especially because, he has manners.

Some of Heinlein’s kvetching about the paperwork needed to travel seems amusing in retrospect. What would they have made of modern airline security, where fluids cannot be brought aboard? But keep in mind, that the days where still in living memory, 1900, when a man could travel without any leave or passport at all, and no one carried identification papers.

Equally strange and quaint, strange to me at least, are his overpopulation worries. His heart is wounded to see the people stacked like cordwood in Indochina, when we here have golf courses and land lying fallow. He thinks population is a simple, deadly Malthusian equation between the number of babies born and the amount of acreage of fertile soil. And yet he is human enough, not like an intellectual, to state he would fight to the death to preserve his country against the hordes of hungry Orientals.

No Heinlein book would be complete without an author’ digression. Here is mine for his review:

I have always thought the overpopulation scare was unjustified. Like every other predicted eco-disaster, it is based on a category error of mis-stating the problem, a static analysis, and gross exaggeration. The category error involved is this: if you have five people and one pie, each person can have no more than a fifth without someone getting less; add five more people, and the maximum equal pie slices are now one tenth. But if you have five acres and five farmers, they don’t simply turn out ten bushels of corn to be split five ways. If they grow different crops using different means of production, one man on one acre using modern methods can turn out ten or fifty bushels; if another man finds oil under his acre, this worthless soil-poison might become a resource when some clever engineer invents uses for it, worth more than its wieght in corn; if another man has sand, which can be made to use silicon computer chips, the overall productivity of the five men is simply not measured by the number of acres. To characterize overpopulation as a ratio between people numbers and acres, you have misstated the problem.

Static analysis assumes a ‘game theory’ where each player makes the same move and follows the same strategy even when conditions change. It assumes a woman with no children and a woman with ten children are equally eager and able to have another child, no matter what her neighbors are doing.

The problem is the race between two interdependent variables. If progress of industry outstrips growth in population, and if the productivity of the population does not drop, there is no overpopulation in any real sense. Even resources alleged to be on the verge of exhaustion, in reality, are more abundant and cheaper than previously, because new methods of exploiting them, new methods of organization, lower the cost. Where they are more expensive, this is due, not to any absolute natural exhaustion, but due to political and organizational factors. (To use oil as an example: my State Trooper friend gets his gasoline for his police cruiser at cost, without state or federal taxes. His price is one half, I say again, one half of what you pay at the pump).

The problem is political organization. If every new baby born is a new mouth to feed, that is, the added body does not increase the productivity of the economy, you have overpopulation: too many people for your resources. If every new baby born is a new pair of hands to work, the added body increases the productivity, and you do not have overpopulation. If anything, you have underpopulation. When crowds of foreigners are pressing to enter your country, confident of finding work at wages above their native markets, as far as an economist is concerned, you are suffering underpopulation—artificially high wages due to too few people in the market.

Even a relatively minor change in technology, such as, let us say, the development of a ceramic sturdier than steel, an economic form of ethanol, a way to extract oil from shale, would turn resources that are new scarce and in demand, into a resource like Whale Oil. We used to use it for everything, didn’t we? Back in 1900, there was not a lamp that did not burn Whale Oil. If someone invents cheap solar power tomorrow, or a safe and efficient hydrogen fuel cell, all the efforts made to conserve Petrol will have been wasted, a effort that raised the price of a resource above its natural scarcity, and the Mullahs and Imams will be sitting on a huge pile, not of petrodollars, but of a waste product.

End of digression.

Reading this book, one recognizes a number of things. Mrs. Heinlein, when asked if there is anything to declare, answers “Three pounds of heroin!”—a scene you might recognize from PODKAYNE OF MARS.

We also recognize Heinlein’s one invariable motto, the banner that carried him to fame and notice during the heady days of the sexual revolution: “the laws of my tribe are not the laws of nature.” In small doses, this allows him to feel a warmth and human sympathy with neighbors whose ways are strange, and so it is not all bad as a motto. It also allows him to visit striptease clubs, and sniff his nose at anyone who might have an objection to the degrading nature of the entertainment. In other words, it is basically a dishonest motto, used only to escape from moral censure, not to make any judgments about conflicts of real duties.

I think these guys could kick some serious ass.  Can’t we get our layabout government to do some lend-lease schtick and equip them with Vulan auto-cannons and LAW rockets?

1. The Donatist schism was caused when persecution of Diocletian caused certain of the faithful to become “Traditors” who surrendered their holy books to be burnt rather than face martyrdom. When Constantine ended the persecutions of the Christians, those who did not forgive the Traditors insisted that they were no longer Christians, no longer able to give or receive sacraments, appoint bishops, give baptism. The Roman Church took the view that the sacraments are valid even in administered by an immoral or imperfect cleric. The Roman Church wanted the Traditors forgiven and their sacraments and appointments ratified. The Carthaginians still resented the Roman conquerors, and saw the schism as an excellent excuse to follow up on the antinomian & puritanical stream in Christian thinking to do some creative rioting; the Romans saw it as an excuse to follow up on the authoritarian stream of Christian thinking, and do some disciplining. The schism was never really healed: the area was conquered by the Musselman, and remains in enemy hands to this day. They were not Gnostics, who were an earlier, Second Century heresy.  You are correct that if she were a strict Donatist, Thelxiepeia would not be quoting them. More on this below.

  2. I was not satirizing the Da Vinci Code, since I wrote my book years before his came out. I was inventing my own ‘secret history’ of the world, where your schoolteachers turn out to be Greek Gods and human civilization a fragile fraud created by these super-beings. I was not seriously proposing that the Donatists were Gnostics: it was merely that I wanted to have this character believe in a “Real Bible” that had been suppressed by the authorities, and the Gnostic Apocrypha provided me with convenient names.     

3. That’s a good question, and I am not sure if my memory is perfect enough to answer. The book was finished in 2001, and I do not recall being particularly favorable to Christians at that time, but I was disenchanted with neopagans. My loss of disrespect for Christians came from reading G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, particularly Chesterton, who, as big a monkey as he is whenever he talks about economics, is abundantly supplied with common sense on all other issues. It was from him that I first met the horrible suspicion that not all Christians were simple-minded chumps.

There are three elements I note as particularly Christian in ORPHANS OF CHAOS: first,  Quentin buries two corpses with a prayer from the Common Book; second, Thelxiepeia is a Christian (albeit a schismatic); third, Thelxiepeia senses something or someone react when Amelia prays a rather nondenominational prayer to the God of Abraham, hoping for deliverance from her personal Egypt.  

My characterization of Quentin was based in part with my growing disdain for the dogmas of the neopagans. Much as I love them as individuals, their belief system is a nonsystematic mess, historically dishonest. I compared what they said to what the real pagans I read in school wrote: Socrates and Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Plotinus. What they said lacked roots. The neopagans I know personally were not particularly patriotic (I never heard one willing to die for the ashes of his fathers or the temples of his gods) or particularly chaste.

A caveat on that last comment—I have seen on the Internet at least one pagan with something of the ancient dignity: a guy who points out that Vikings died with weapon in hand, and whoever died ‘the straw death’ died as a slave, and therefore Odin was in favor of the Second Amendment. http://www.runestone.org/gunctrl.html Unlike my neopagan friends, who ring hollow, anyone who talks this way sounds solid to me, a heart of oak.

The big appeal of neopaganism, as far as I can see, was that it was nonjudgmental and phantasmagorical. The grim stoicism of the Norse, the purity of Plotinus, the ceremoniousness of Shinto, was absent. They were not members of a living tradition: they were more like SCA guys pretending to be knights. Sincere pagans are patriotic: who can fail to love the woods and hills of one’s hearth and home, if the woods are haunted by goddesses, the hills by ancestral voices? Who can leave his home, if the hearthstone is sacred?

When my neopagan friends refuse to celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas, holidays as American as apple pie, they are taking an abstract stand on religious principle, which is a Christian thing to do, but unheard-of in the pagan world, and alien to the community spirit of paganism. If anyone should respect their ancestors, it should be pagans. If your ancestors happen to be Puritans, I guess it is hard to pray to their lares, but that’s what a real pagan would do.

Quentin was supposed to be my idea of a sincere pagan–a guy who would not sleep around or break an oath, because the All-Father punishes oath breakers, and His Queen curses the unchaste. A guy who does not forget that he is British merely because he is also a warlock, and so he knows and respects the traditions and history of the British Islands, which includes the Book of Common Prayer. (He also pours a libation to the ghosts, of course, and pays for the Ferryman).

I also needed to have a little bit of a morality play, of what goes around comes around, and so I had to have a burial, and have the satisfied ghosts show up later to reward this act of piety and kindness. Quentin’s burial prayers had to be something the other kids knew and shared, otherwise he would get all the credit, not them, for the burial, whereas I needed Amelia to be saved twice: once by the ghost of Latinus, once by Telegonus.

Thelxiepeia’s story about the saint was added after my conversion, but, I hope, not because of the conversion. Previously I had had an awkward passage there, where she told Amelia that while there was a real Jesus Christ, the Historical Christ was an Olympian named Baphomet, and that he had been attempting to steal worshippers from Jehovah, who was Lord Terminus (Jupiter) under another name.  Aside from any theological issues, the whole paragraph was confusing, and added nothing to the story. The copyeditor asked whether the pronoun for Jesus should be capitalized (if He was a deity) or not (if he was a fraud). Since I did not want to explain how a Christian pagan goddess could believe in a Christ she knew to be a fraud, I preferred to drop the whole issue. I also thought that if I brought up a mystery surrounding Jesus’ identity, it would have to be answered or resolved later, and this book was not about that.

I decided instead to retell an old Irish folktale with Thelxiepeia as the mermaid, in order to give her some personality and background. I suppose that sticks in some craws as being too Christian, well, take that up with the Irish, not with me. Go into any pub after the boys have had a few and start telling the Irish how their religion is a blather of Papist claptrap, and let me stand at the door and take pictures. Affairs have some to a sad state when a man cannot tell an old folktale about the sea fairies and Friar Tuck without being accused of being a Fundie. Do these people think history only begins each day at dawn? 

The rest of her comments I left as-is. I had by that time also done additional research on the Donatists, but decided for artistic reasons to leave her as a semi-Gnostic, merely because that world view was more foreign to the Catholic consensus we know, and more critical of the Christian claims of truth.

I am not sure how I could have been more antichristian without pulling a Pullman: according to Thelxiepeia, the orthodox Christian claims are false and truth was suppressed, violently suppressed, by the Catholic Church! The only openly Christian characters are the bumbling Dr. Foster and Thelxiepeia the man-eating siren. She’s a villainess. A bad guy, working for the bad guys! The only thing I did not do is make her an unsympathetic, a two-dimensional cardboard parody of a Southern Baptist or something.

The Prelapsarians I added just because I liked the name. They are not beings that pre-date the fall of man, but who pre-date the fall of Uranus.

My attempt was to show at least as much dignity to my hated enemies the Christians as I was showing the pagans. (As an atheist, keep in mind, I was then hostile to paganism, rather than regarding it, as I do now, as a beautiful but incomplete attempt to find spiritual reality.) Because I had established a magical world, I decided prayers did something: You see, as an honest atheist I thought of Christianity as myth, as fairytale, and I treated it as such. In fairytales, when you kiss the sleeping beauty, she wakes up. In Christian fairytales, when you pray, angels answer. The big men with eagle wings did not seem any more or less fantastic than the little men with butterfly wings.

You cannot imagine how disoriented I was to learn that some atheists who read my book regarded this as pro-Christian propaganda. I swear to you I laughed aloud. The reaction convinced me of the insincerity and intellectual poverty of the dishonest atheists. It was like a scientific test: take a book written by an atheist and tell everyone it was written by a theist, and see if they see it as atheist or theist in tone. They saw what they wanted to see.

If you tell a story where a crucifix drives back a vampire, doesn’t that hint the author might not take crucifixes any more seriously than he does vampires? Instead, atheists were driven back, like so many vampires pretending the Cross had no power to repulse them, but backing up anyway. 

In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις – controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: “There is no compulsion in religion”. According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur’an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels”, he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness which leaves us astounded, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”. The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God”, he says, “is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats… To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…”.

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?”