There is Quite a Lot to Choose From in the Catholicist Nation Buffet
Today I caught a terrific hour-long interview with a prosecutor regarding the merits of a new book by Vincent Bugliosi that proports to blow the lid off of Christianity. He claims he brings up ideas that had never before been introduced, from the perspective of a prosecutor looking for the concrete evidence to see if a thing is true or not.
The interview was broadcast on a pretty solid apologetics show, Stand to Reason, and filling in for the regular host Greg Koukl was J. Warner Wallace who himself is a police investigator, and the prosecutor he interviewed was Al Serrato. If you remember, Bugliosi is the famous prosecutor who put Charles Manson away, but he also wrote books on O.J. Simpson and recently on the assassination of John Kennedy (he supports the lone-gunman story, by the way). Bugliosi's book about which J. Warner and Al conversed is called Divinity of Doubt.
According to Bugliosi, it is the settled case that no one can know. The prosecution has got to have iron-clad evidence to say a thing is a certain way, and the Bible and all the rest of Christian stuff just haven't got it. So, the only meaningful position anyone can rationally hold is one of firm agnosticism.
Besides all the relatively easy philosophical weapons that can be launched against Bugliosi's conclusion, he really doesn't introduce anything new. This was detailed quite well in the interview, which again was truly informative as two very seasoned truth-uncoverers (investigator and prosecutor) went at it. They essentially reduced Bugliosi to a little pile of logically and rationally pulverized dust.
But the one key thing I wanted to add here is a critical factor in all of this. It is something that I really don't think Wallace and Serrato have any kind of true grasp of, and I think that's because they are still so inculcated with World System conceptions. That idea simply lies in the answer to this question:
Why is it exactly that Bugliosi feels the way that he does?
One of the interesting things the two brought up was that nothing Bugliosi says has not been addressed before, even covering the hundreds of years people have wrestled with the issues of Christian philosophy. They'd said his whole approach just smacks of someone who is very late to the game yet still boasts that he really knows what he's talking about.
Which again, leads to the question.
Why does he say all these things? From where do his ideas come? And why does he just have no clue?
The answer lies in the Catholicist Nation premise, merely that highly paid, deftly trained, extraordinarly skilled, and phenomenally powerful operatives work from deep within the World System informing society of what they are to think, feel, believe, and accept as truth. When Bugliosi lights into "Christianity," he is really just taking on what the World wants him to believe about Christianity.
The things that Wallace and Serrato cited that Bugliosi said or wrote reflect a comically inept understanding of the Bible and Christian matters. But all Wallace and Serrato could do is refute them -- very proficiently, yes. But they don't get that Bugliosi is taught to think those things, very deliberately, very purposefully, very expertly.
He absorbs those things just as readily as anyone who isn't informed by Truth and Grace would absorb those things. And Bugliosi does the work of those operatives by getting his work published, presented, talked about all over the place in promotional work, reviews, interviews, appearances, mentions anywhere and everywhere about it...
So when people hear Bugliosi and have their agnosticism confirmed, they are getting the words from the people who shared those words with Bugliosi, or even those who shared those words with those who shared those words with him.
For more on where Bugliosi and most agnostics get their world view, check out my webzine. There you will see the striking contrast between the World and the Kingdom. If you're only absorbing what the World tells you, they may look very much the same.
Who you follow makes all the difference as to which one you live within.
The interview was broadcast on a pretty solid apologetics show, Stand to Reason, and filling in for the regular host Greg Koukl was J. Warner Wallace who himself is a police investigator, and the prosecutor he interviewed was Al Serrato. If you remember, Bugliosi is the famous prosecutor who put Charles Manson away, but he also wrote books on O.J. Simpson and recently on the assassination of John Kennedy (he supports the lone-gunman story, by the way). Bugliosi's book about which J. Warner and Al conversed is called Divinity of Doubt.
According to Bugliosi, it is the settled case that no one can know. The prosecution has got to have iron-clad evidence to say a thing is a certain way, and the Bible and all the rest of Christian stuff just haven't got it. So, the only meaningful position anyone can rationally hold is one of firm agnosticism.
Besides all the relatively easy philosophical weapons that can be launched against Bugliosi's conclusion, he really doesn't introduce anything new. This was detailed quite well in the interview, which again was truly informative as two very seasoned truth-uncoverers (investigator and prosecutor) went at it. They essentially reduced Bugliosi to a little pile of logically and rationally pulverized dust.
But the one key thing I wanted to add here is a critical factor in all of this. It is something that I really don't think Wallace and Serrato have any kind of true grasp of, and I think that's because they are still so inculcated with World System conceptions. That idea simply lies in the answer to this question:
Why is it exactly that Bugliosi feels the way that he does?
One of the interesting things the two brought up was that nothing Bugliosi says has not been addressed before, even covering the hundreds of years people have wrestled with the issues of Christian philosophy. They'd said his whole approach just smacks of someone who is very late to the game yet still boasts that he really knows what he's talking about.
Which again, leads to the question.
Why does he say all these things? From where do his ideas come? And why does he just have no clue?
The answer lies in the Catholicist Nation premise, merely that highly paid, deftly trained, extraordinarly skilled, and phenomenally powerful operatives work from deep within the World System informing society of what they are to think, feel, believe, and accept as truth. When Bugliosi lights into "Christianity," he is really just taking on what the World wants him to believe about Christianity.
The things that Wallace and Serrato cited that Bugliosi said or wrote reflect a comically inept understanding of the Bible and Christian matters. But all Wallace and Serrato could do is refute them -- very proficiently, yes. But they don't get that Bugliosi is taught to think those things, very deliberately, very purposefully, very expertly.
He absorbs those things just as readily as anyone who isn't informed by Truth and Grace would absorb those things. And Bugliosi does the work of those operatives by getting his work published, presented, talked about all over the place in promotional work, reviews, interviews, appearances, mentions anywhere and everywhere about it...
So when people hear Bugliosi and have their agnosticism confirmed, they are getting the words from the people who shared those words with Bugliosi, or even those who shared those words with those who shared those words with him.
For more on where Bugliosi and most agnostics get their world view, check out my webzine. There you will see the striking contrast between the World and the Kingdom. If you're only absorbing what the World tells you, they may look very much the same.
Who you follow makes all the difference as to which one you live within.
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