Douthat’s still flogging his book; tells us what he really believe in as a pious Catholic

Papa’s got a brand new book, with Papa being NYT columnist Ross Douthat and his new book being Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.  Douthat makes the familiar argument that it’s more rational to be religious than atheistic or agnostic, and pushes his own Catholicism as the “right” religion.  It’s bad enough that a NYT columnist is deluded in this way, but it’s worse when he proselytizes his faith all over the Internet, trying desperately to make people embrace Catholicism.

Excerpts of this book are everywhere, a form of self-plagiarism and self-aggrandizement that is especially prominent in the deeply pious. I’ve criticized Douthat and his book excerpts several times, but of course folks sufficiently desperate to find “the meaning of life” in religion—to fill their God-shaped hole—will make the book a best seller.  The excerpt for today was published in the Catholic journal The Lamp, (characterized by the newspaper The Catholic Spirit “the Catholic version of The New Yorker”), and you can read it for free by clicking on the headline. Here Douthat reveals the extent of his delusion: the things he thinks about Catholic dogma that are actually true.

An excerpt (it’s longer but I can’t bear to reproduce more than this). Bolding is mine:

But isn’t all this talking around an essential question, which is whether I think the tradition I’ve ended up practicing is actually true? Not just true enough, not just pointing toward God, not just generally accurate in its description of the nature of God or the cosmos, but also true in its most important claims about reality? After all, Catholics don’t just stand up on Sundays and proclaim their belief in monotheism, a diversity of supernatural beings, sacramental grace, and the goodness of creation. We profess belief in “one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages,” who came to earth and “by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,” who died on the cross in Roman Palestine and “rose again on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,” who will eventually “come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” And that is just the creedal condensation of a long list of specific claims about the way to salvation, the requirements of the moral law, the authority of the bishops and the pope—enough to fill a thick bound catechism, at the very least.

When I say the Nicene Creed, I mean it. I am open to hidden complexities and unexpected syntheses, but in the end I think that God has acted in history through Jesus of Nazareth in a way that differs from every other tradition and experience and revelation, and the Gospels should therefore exert a kind of general interpretative control over how we read all the other religious data. I think the New Testament is just clearly different from other religious texts in a way that stands out and demands attention, that the figure of Jesus likewise stands out among religious founders, that together the sources and the story and the Nazarene Himself all seem God-touched to a degree unmatched by any of their rivals. So where there is uncertainty, tension, a wager to be made, I make my bet on Jesus.

I’d put up $500 against the truths of the Nicene Creed, but of course Douthat has never written a single sentence I’ve seen telling us what would make him reject Catholicm. (In contrast, I laid out in Faith Versus Fact the kind of things that would make me provisionally accept the truths of Christianity.)

Okay, it’s time to look at the Nicene Creed, also discussed in my book.  Douthat’s claim that when he says it, he really means it is shared by many Catholics. That puts paid to the arguments of Sophisticated Theologians® that the Creed is either metaphorical or some soothing words to effect a bonding experience. Nope, that’s not why it was written. It was written so Christians could verbally profess the things they actually believe.

There are several versions of the Creed.  This one I took from the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, titled “What We Believe”. I was going to put in bold all the empirical things that Douthat accepts, but I would have had to put the whole thing in bold:

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

As you see, Douthat has dined on the whole hog from snout to tail: Jesus was the son of God (and himself God), was born of a virgin, was crucified as a way to save humanity, but then came back to life again and shortly thereafter ascended to Heaven.  He will return some day, although we’ve been waiting 2,000 years. That apparently doesn’t bother Douthat despite Jesus’s disproven claim that he would return while some of his contemporaries were still alive. And on that blessed day of Rapture, Jesus will judge everyone, sending them either up, down, or in the waiting room of Purgatory.

Douthat also accepts the Holy Spirit, whatever that is, and, of course, the forgiveness of sin and eternal afterlife.

This is what Douthat thinks is really true, and what he wants you to believe (see his book).  If he were the only person who professed this stuff, he’d be taken as a lunatic (see C. S. Lewis), but because the delusion is so widespread, it’s considered respectable.  But how can such a man not only be allowed to write for the NYT, but to actually publish this palaver in the newspaper?

Coming: the Good News about Xenu.

h/t: Barry