A Dishonest Atheist? Heaven Forbid.

Paul Vitz author of Faith of the Fatherless, a Psychology of Atheism, tells a very interesting story in his book.

 Some years ago, at a conference in Dallas, Ellis and I spoke one after the other. Ellis spoke as an atheist psychologist and I as a theistic psychologist. Each talk lasted about forty minutes, and since we both sat on the dais, we heard each others papers. Ellis heard a short form of the thesis of this book. After the session was over, he told me as we walked out together that the thesis did not apply to him since he had a good relationship with his father. I replied that a psychological hypothesis is fortunate to be valid in even 50 to 60% of the cases.

Back in New York City, I sent a copy of my talk to a friend who is a book editor, Dr. George Zimmar, who was at the time working for the Praeger Publishing Company. A few weeks later, he phoned to tell me that he had read the paper and, incidentally, thought it was helpful for understanding Albert Ellis. I was quite taken aback and told Zimmar that Ellis had personally denied the relevance of my thesis to his life. “Well,” my friend replied, “We are publishing his biography, and I was reading the page proofs last night; I think he fits your hypothesis.” Later, when the biography appeared, I read about Ellis’ childhood. The author, Daniel Weiner, describes Ellis as suffering from “Parental neglect and serious illness throughout his childhood.” 

This is taken from page 74 of Faith of the Fatherless. The whole book is well worth a read.

The bbc's "Father Brown" Etc.

Father Brown À La BBC

I dusted off my copy of “The Complete Father Brown”, which of course is incomplete, to re-read “The Hammer of God” before it appeared on the BBC on Monday. It is a fascinating story of a murder in a small English Village. There is a Catholic Priest - Fr Brown, an Anglican Curate, a Presbyterian blacksmith with Catholic wife, an atheist cobbler, a number of policemen and poor Joe the village idiot. It is a story rich with Catholic theology, common sense, adultery, plenty of mystery, and lots of fun. Then we have the BBC version, which claims to be based on a “character” (Father Brown) by GK Chesterton, which has some of the above minus most of the religious element, half a dozen extra characters, allowing the programme to be longer than the 25 minutes it really needed, but this will no doubt increase the BBC’s revenue when selling the series abroad. They have added homosexuality/bisexuality to the programme, along with some blackmail, all of which detracted from the original story as opposed to enhancing it.

Chesterton’s Fr Brown is the sort of person who may awkwardly carry and drop a number of brown paper parcels as in “The Blue Cross”, I can even imagine him having trouble tying his laces, but I cannot imagine him having any difficulty dealing with an atheist or a C of E Curate. I felt that the BBC’s depiction of Fr Brown himself was a tad confused, for he bumbled in areas where he wouldn’t and made comments which I think it would have been unlikely for him to have made. For example at one point he enters a police officer’s office to take a sneaky look at the suspect’s file regarding evidence which was totally unnecessary for the BBC’s Fr Brown as he already knew whether the said evidence existed or not. Had this bit even been in the book, Chesterton’s Fr Brown would not have needed to ask, for he would have known. And later, in conversation with the homosexual character Fr Brown kindly says “If you ever need to talk...” but then added that he would not try to convert him. Chesterton’s Fr Brown always showed massive compassion for those that the Church would say are sinners, but the idea that he would not try to call him to repentance and conversion is preposterous.

On a positive note, the inclusion of one superfluous character in the programme allowed us to have a scene with an old steam locomotive in it and that probably makes their invention tolerable.

Had the programme not been called “Father Brown” and had I not read the original story and if I was interested in detective stories, then I would have found this programme rather pleasant (minus the BBC’s obsession with homosexuality). There was a mystery, a number of suspects, some heroism, a glimpse of Merry England and the steam train!

One good results of this series is that a larger number of people in England and Wales will hear the name of Chesterton again and as the BBC have republished “The Complete Father Brown”, we can hope that a large number of people who enjoy the series will now read the original stories and be suitably impressed.

You can watch the programme here on BBC’s iplayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01q0q1p/Father_Brown_The_Hammer_of_God/

You can read many of Chesterton's books for free here; http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/index.html inclueding Fr Brown.

And don't forget to see; http://www.catholicgkchestertonsociety.co.uk/ to see if he is a Saint.

The American Chesterton Society sell Father Brown Readers for children. http://www.chesterton.org/

Happy Atheist Fools Day

FLORIDA COURT SETS ATHEIST HOLY DAY
In Florida, an atheist created a case against the upcoming Easter and Passover Holy days. He hired an attorney to bring a discrimination case against Christians and Jews and observances of their holy days... The argument was that it was unfair that atheists had no such recognized days.
The case was brought before a judge. After listening to the passionate presentation by the lawyer, the judge banged his gavel declaring, "Case dismissed!"

The lawyer immediately stood objecting to the ruling saying, "Your honor, How can you possibly dismiss this case? The Christians have Christmas, Easter and others. The Jews have Passover, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah, yet my client and all other atheists have no such holidays..".

The judge leaned forward in his chair saying, "But you do. Your client, counsel, is woefully ignorant."

The lawyer said, "Your Honor, we are unaware of any special observance or holiday for atheists."

The judge said, "The calendar says April 1st is April Fools Day. Psalm 14:1 states, 'The fool says in his heart, there is no God.' Thus, it is the opinion of this court, that, if your client says there is no God, then he is a fool. Therefore, April 1st is his day. Court is adjourned."
You gotta love a Judge that knows his scripture!