Theological Irony of Emoji on iPhones

Oh the irony.

When Physics Becomes Metaphysics: Books Review for "New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy"

When Physics Becomes Metaphysics

Taking karate as a child, my instructor used to tell his students that the two most dangerous degrees of skill in the world of karate are the black belt (highest degree and most skilled) and the white belt (lowest degree and least skilled).  The student who achieves the degree of black belt is dangerous because he has the skill to harm and knows well that he can harm, yet he does not.  The student with a white belt is dangerous because he has not yet realized that he can harm and has not yet learned the restraint and self-discipline to not harm.

As an educator, I find in regards to the sciences, many of my students are white belts capable of tearing down philosophical arguments by means of science without the restraint, respect or self-discipline necessary to give an honest and thorough examination of any philosophical argument or scientific theorem.  Some of my former students who attempted the exercise of tearing down theological arguments, were more interested in trying to disprove God and validate their supposed atheism by using science with the same dangerous skill of the white belt. The result was that they not only evidence of their misunderstanding of theology, but they also misrepresented science in the process. 

While studying and teaching theology for the past seven years, some of the questions my students proposed: “What does the Church think about a bouncing universe, if it’s true does it mean there’s no God?”  “How do we know there isn’t a multiverse or a parallel dimension?”  The questions were often prompted by some recent episode of Dr. Who or a special on the Discovery Channel or History Channel.  The viewing of complex scientific theories in such miniscule portions from companies more interested in ratings than honest science left my student with malformed ideas and theories of their own.  Yet, too often I was unable to respond directly to my students’ questions about the relation between God and science beyond “God created the universe and all that is in it.  So how can science, which tells us how the world works, oppose God who made the world work the way it does?”  Though it was an answer to my students, I never felt it was a sufficient answer.

How I wish I had Father Robert Spitzer’s book New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy five years ago when I started working with smart aleck students.  For Father Spitzer lays flat with black belt precision some of the very questions my students would ask me.

The purpose of the book “is to set out the specific evidential bases for this convergent probability in which science plays an integral role” (23). Spitzer does this by using John Henry Newman’s “informal inference,” which is an argument that takes into account all the evidence in order to make a compelling, converging, and convincing argument. Both Newman’s and Spitzer’s method are quite different from many of the more well known proofs for the existence of God, which seek to provide, in a single locale, an argument aimed to kill any doubt as to whether or not God exists.  Instead, Spitzer takes the reader on a philosophical, scientific, and metaphysical journey through the cosmos, beginning with the Big Bang and ending with the eternal longings of the human heart.  He clearly shows the numerous instances, often brushed off as mere coincidences when examined individually, for the necessity of the existence of a Creator.

Father Spitzer brings together all of the current scientific and philosophical coincidences and present them to the reader with the underlying question: “When do coincidences stop being coincidences?” Certainly one can ignore an isolated incident as just a mere coincidence, but how many coincidences, all of which point to the same conclusion, are required before they pass from coincidence to truth: three, ten, twenty? Yet, when those coincidences are brought out of isolation and presented together as a coherent whole, in intellectual honesty, they cannot be ignored. To view otherwise is like the man who erroneously assumes that it is only by mere coincidence that a group of musicians happened to assemble on the same stage, all wearing similar dress, with an exact number and complementary instruments, and who all happen to be playing melodies and harmonies that fit together as if someone arranged it to be so.

Though the book’s title is New proofs for the Existence of God, several of the proofs are not entirely new, as there are several lines of arguments which echo Aquinas’ Five Ways, and Chapter Four is dedicated to a Lonergain argument for an unconditional, absolute, simple and unrestricted reality.  The newness of the proofs lie not in philosophical methodology, but in the science Spitzer applies to the classic philosophical methods in providing both empirical and metaphysical data that supports the traditional arguments.  Spitzer inserts into several of these traditional arguments findings and examples from contemporary physics and demonstrates by appealing to the laws of thermodynamics, the universal constants, the radiation and entropy paradoxes, and the miniscule likelihood of an anthropic universe that God exists.

Divided into three parts and eight chapters, the first part is primarily concerned with the idea of a supernatural design in the universe and the limitations of the physical sciences.

In chapter one, titled “Indications of Creation in Big Bang Cosmology,” Spitzer explains how the Big Bang is believed to have happened, why the universe is not a “bouncing” universe, and the metaphysical implications of a beginning. Briefly stated, a bouncing universe is a universe that expands and once expansion has reached a certain point the universe collapses on itself and starts again; that is, the universe bounces back to its original state and starts the process of expansion anew. In looking at a bouncing universe, Spitzer appeals to the second law of thermodynamics and two paradoxes to help demonstrate why a bouncing universe is not plausible and indeed would not disprove God.

The second law of thermodynamics states that over time the flow of nature is an irreversible process moving in one direction, and gives testimony to the fact that the universe seeks equilibrium.  By nature moving in one direction, it becomes impossible for the world to expand, collapse, and bounce.  We know the second law of thermodynamics to be true because it is witnessed, though not acknowledge, by people everyday: hot coffee turning to cold coffee, youth growing old, and the pressure from a soda can escaping upon being popped open. In short, when science examines the way the world works, science sees the universe “moving” in one direction but never in reverse. Without the second law of thermodynamics being true, the universe would be able to move forward as well as backwards, which would make for an interesting universe more akin to science fiction than natural science.

Father Spitzer then appeals to the radiation paradox to further demonstrate why the universe is not bouncing.  The radiation paradox states that 99% of all light is background radiation and only 1% is from other sources.  With each ‘bounce’ all the visible light and background radiation would be folded into the bounce of the next cycle and become the background radiation of the new cycle.  Yet, this cannot be the case for two reasons.  First it violates the second law of thermodynamics and makes the universe into a perpetual motion machine.  Second it cannot be the case as new light sources (stars) are still be formed where as all the visible light is 1% now, that percentage increases with each new light source.  Therefore, the universe is not in a state for perpetual bouncing and at some point in time it had a beginning.

The second of the paradoxes Father Spitzer employs is the entropy paradox.  Entropy is the measure of disorder in the universe or the lost energy that in unavailable to be converted into mechanical work.  With a bouncing universe, one would expect the entropic energy to be exceptionally high.  However what is found is that at the moment of the Big Bang the entropy of the universe was “fantastically small” (29).  So small in fact that sciences has been puzzled by the fantastically small amount of entropy for years.  It is readily observed that the disorder of the universe is only growing in degree and never grows in reverse.  Therefore, if the universe had bounced or has been bouncing, the current universe would have originated not from a fantastically small entropy that science has been puzzling over for years but from a large, disorganized, entropic universe.

The second Chapter, “Indication of Supernatural Design in Contemporary Big Bang Cosmology,” focuses on three main points: “Universal constants” and the need of those constants in order for there to be an anthropic universe (gravitation force, earth’s distance from the sun, time, space, rest mass of a proton), the extreme unlikelihood of an anthropic universe, and whether or not there is a multiverse.  Citing physicist Sir Roger Penrose, Spitzer gives the likelihood (or the unlikelihood) of an anthropic universe as 1 in 10^(10^123). Random chance alone would have miniscule window in which to make a universe capable of sustaining life.  To get an idea of how incredibly unlikely an anthropic universe is, Spitzer writes, “This number is so large that if we were to write it out in ordinary notation (with every zero being, say, ten point type), it would fill up a large portion of the universe” (59)!

Part one concludes with an introduction to string theory by Dr. Bruce L. Gordon. The conclusion seemed unnecessary for the scope of the book.  This essay will certainly be slow going for those who are not up to date with modern physics and the terms used by the physicists. Moreover, the remainder of the text can be just as easily understood by skipping Dr. Gordon’s essay.

Part Two of the book is aimed at the philosophical proofs for the existence of God.

Chapter three and four are closely linked, as the author spends all of chapter three proving the existence of a simple, absolute, unique, and unconditioned reality, which Spitzer concludes is the Creator of all. Chapter four is spent in applying what was concluded from Chapter Three to Lonergain’s argument in Chapter four. Additions are made to the data from chapter three in that now intelligibility, understanding and being are brought to the forefront of the arguments.

Specifically in chapter three Father Spitzer’s seeks the one unconditioned reality, that is simple.  This unconditioned reality, a portion of reality not dependent upon other conditions of realities, is a necessity. There must be at least one unconditioned reality, argues Spitzer. If there is no unconditioned reality then the most fundamental component of creation is actually nonexistence itself, as it allows for only conditioned realities emerging from nothing (nothing can depend on nothing for its existence) or a circular set of conditions in which everything is dependent upon everything else for its existence.  Yet, because all is dependent upon each other it does not allow for the possibility of anything as “B” would be dependent on “A” and “C” on “B” and likewise “A” dependent on “C.”  Because each is dependent on the other the outcome is either nothing or everything at once.  So Spitzer argues for the necessity of at least one unconditioned reality.

The unconditioned reality must be simple because simplicity implies fewer restrictions and fewer boundaries thereby granting the simplest of reality the ability to do more.  Spitzer calls this simplest of realities “Absolute simple reality” which is “pure power and pure simplicity, pure act, pure inclusivity, pure being and pure capacity to unify all being” ( page ?)  Though Spitzer does not refer to the absolute simple reality as God, it is clear that that there is much of God echoing in the definition.  Moreover, it might be deduced that it is only by unbounded limitless nature and power of the absolute simple reality, that which is pure power, which is capable of crossing the infinite chasm of non-existence to existence. 

Currently the simplest of structures postulated in physics is the quark, which is/are the subatomic building blocks of the atomic particles.  But the question remains to be answered, are quarks the unconditioned reality Spitzer seeks or will physics find something smaller that makes up quarks?  Furthermore what keeps the quarks together?  One can only speculate it to be the pneuma.

Chapter five covers how an infinite past is not possible and why it is a mathematical contradiction to have an infinite set contained within a finite world. This chapter is interesting if the reader has any passion in the ontological nature of time and how the views of time have changed from Aristotle -- who viewed time as the measurement of change/motion – to Einstein where time not only measures motion but also effect reality and that the physical world (matter) effects the measurement of time, which is visible in Einstein’s famous E=mc² where the relationship of time, matter, light, distance, and velocity are made clear, and how time has changed in contemporary philosophy with Whitehead and other philosophers where time became a “real aggregative structure” (179).  That is, time is the structure of the sum total of a collection of particles or particulars. 

Regardless of contemporary theorem, time sets a limit on existence -- something Spitzer implies but does not seem to draw out in the text.  If there is time of any sort, it implies that there is also space and matter.  For time is intimately connected to space and matter.  Without space or matter there would be no need for time.  Following from the informal inferences presented on the origins of the universe and the previous chapters it should be clear at this point in the text that matter has a beginning, and if there is matter there is space, and if there is matter and space there is time.  Therefore, because matter has a beginning it follows that time too has a beginning, and there is no infinite past.

 Upon reaching the end of chapter five, this reader is reminding of St. Augustine’s famous comment on time in his Confessions: "If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know."

Chapter six’s focus is on methodology and "the Impossibility of Disproving God," Spitzer gives three arguments on why God cannot be disproved. The first rests on the impossibility for a person to experience all there is to experience.  There is no absolute certainty to the claim that “God does not exist” until the person has experienced all there is to experience. The second argument falls in the realm of the intrinsic properties of God. Spitzer writes that God has no intrinsic properties; therefore, God cannot be contradicted by means of intrinsic boundaries. The third argument, piggy backing off the second, is set in the realm of non-contradiction. A contradiction assumes boundaries. God has no boundaries. God has no contradiction.

Also in chapter six is a section titled “The Tenuous Rationality of Atheism,” in which Spitzer spends less time writing about the rationality of atheism and more time explaining the problem of evil and the compatibility of love and suffering. Though, the root cause of atheism for the author lies not so much in bad science as it does in the poor defining of terms and false assumptions, on the part of the atheist, as to who God is. That is to say, the atheist misunderstands who God is.  It then becomes clear that the problem with the atheistic/Christian dialogue concerning God is based on the fundamental definition of who God is, and without the proper definition, a dialogue cannot happen. Anyone who has ever been to a Christian v. Atheist debate realizes that it is as frustrating as arguing with another over whether grapes or oranges taste more like apples.

Part Three of the book is aimed at what the author calls “the Transcendentals.”

In Chapter seven, Spitzer articulates the “five dimensions of absolute simplicity” Those dimensions are, being, truth, love, goodness, and beauty. There are many references in this chapter to previous chapters, especially chapters three and four. In chapter eight, Spitzer then connects the five transcendentals to the longings of the human heart. Specifically the heart longs for ultimate Home, ultimate Truth, ultimate Love, ultimate Goodness, and ultimate Beauty: the heart longs for God and Heaven.

In a world where the myth that faith and science do not mix and contradict each other is continually perpetuated, Father Spitzer’s book is a charitable answer dispelling that myth. Father demonstrates genially that it is completely reasonable to believe in God and still do honest science. His philosophy is accurate; his language is specific, and his theology is insightful.   Lastly, Upon completion of this book, I find myself able to have a fuller conversation with my students as well as the odd fellow I meet at the pubs and cafes who try to use science as a means to attack God. 

Not Said By Jesus Sunday: Christmas/Marian Edition

But . . . I don't have time to pray

I have not met one Christians who agrees that prayer is not important.  In fact, most Christians I have met complain about not praying enough or not having time to pray.  Time is the issue at hand.  What is time?  Like Augustine, I find that I know exactly what time is until someone asks me, "what is time"?  We all have a finite amount of time -- a non renewable resource for ourselves.  What I do know is that when we take time out of our life to pray or be with another person, it is not mere seconds or hours we give.  It is a pice of our life we give away.

We complain about not having time in our day for those activities in our life that we know are important: prayer, church, reading scripture.  Time is the problem.  "If only there were more time in the day.  Then I would pray," we might say to ourselves.  As if it is time's fault that we don't pray.  As if time is preventing us from praying.  Yet, there are over 86,000 seconds in a day.  86,000 seconds!  Still we complain about not being able to take one second our of the day to say, "Thank you God."  Catholic writer, G.K. Chesterton called "Thanks" the highest form of thought.  Briefly, this is because the expression of gratitude is a realization that for what we are thankful is truly a gift.

Likewise there are 168 hours in our week.  WE sleep about 63 of those ourse which leaves us with 126 waking hours of our week.  Yet, we complain about having to give up one hour a week to go worship God in Church.  We moan and groan over giving up less than one percent of our week.

But, we can't be bothered now to pray.  There's another stupid cat video on YouTube.

"A Child is Born: Chesterton Comes to South Louisiana

What happens when a Late nineteenth/early twentieth century Catholic writer meets a twenty-first century Cajun band from South Louisiana?  Beautiful music.  Perhaps one of the best Christmas song I have heard in recent years.  L'Angelus, French for "The Angelus", is composed of 4 siblings from the Rees family and has a signature stylemade of elements of South Louisiana Cajun, Swamp Rock, New Orleans R&B and Country music.

On their first Christmas album, O Night Divine, The family quartet plays many traditional Christmas songs, but the album has one special fresh surprise that was new to me: a poem of G.K. Chesterton's (you can read it below) set to music.  The song, titled A Child is Born, is highly original, very entertaining, beautiful in its simplicity, and lifts both the mind a soul to focus on the true meaning of Christmas.  In fact, after listening to the song the first time, I went back and listened to it three more times before proceeding through the rest of the CD.  Even while listening to the remainder of the album, my thoughts drifted back to the Chesterton song.  Take a moment today to listen to the song.  You will have to go to the L, Angelus website in order to listen to it, but it is worth the trip.

Go here to buy and/or listen to the album.
Go here to sign up for their mailing list and have your choice of a free download from the Album O Night Divine .

The Nativity

By: G.K. Chesterton

“For unto us a child is born.” — Isaiah

The thatch of the roof was as golden,
Though dusty the straw was and old,
The wind was a peal as of trumpets,
Though barren and blowing and cold:
The mother’s hair was a glory,
Though loosened and torn,
For under the eaves in the gloaming –
A child was born.

O, if a man sought a sign in the inmost
That God shaketh broadest his best,
That things fairest are oldest and simplest,
In the first days created and blest:
Far flush all the tufts of the clover,
Thick mellows the corn,
A cloud shapes, a daisy is opened –
A child is born.

With raw mists of the earth-rise about them,
Risen red from the ribs of the earth,
Wild and huddled, the man and the woman,
Bent dumb o’er the earliest birth;
Ere the first roof was hammered above them.
The first skin was worn,
Before code, before creed, before conscience –
A child was born.

What know we of aeons behind us,
Dim dynasties lost long ago,
Huge empires like dreams unremembered,
Dread epics of glory and woe?
This we know, that with blight and with blessing,
With flower and with thorn,
Love was there, and his cry was among them –
“A child is born.”

And to us, though we pore and unravel
Black dogmas that crush us and mar,
Through parched lips pessimistic dare mutter
Hoarse fates of a frost-bitten star;
Though coarse strains and heredities soil it,
Bleak reasoners scorn,
To us too, as of old, to us also –
A child is born.

Though the darkness be noisy with systems,
Dark fancies that fret and disprove;
Still the plumes stir around us, above us,
The tings of the shadow of love.
Still the fountains of life are unbroken,
Their splendour unshorn;
The secret, the symbol, the promise –
A child is born.

Have a myriad children been quickened,
Have a myriad children grown old,
Grown gross and unloved and embittered,
Grown cunning and savage and cold?
God abides in a terrible patience,
Unangered, unworn,
And again for the child that was squandered –
A child is born.

In the time of dead things it is living,
In the moonless grey night is a gleam,
Still the babe that is quickened may conquer,
The life that is new may redeem.
Ho, princes and priests, have you heard it?
Grow pale through your scorn.
Huge dawns sleep before us, stern changes –
A child is born.

More than legions that toss and that trample,

More than choirs that bend Godward and sing,
Than the blast of the lips of the prophet,
Than the sword in the hands of the King,
More strong against Evil than judges
That smite and that scorn,
The greatest, the last, and the sternest –
A child is born.

And the rafters of toil still are gilded
With the dawn of the star of the heart,
And the Wise Men draw near in the twilight,
Who are weary of learning and art,
And the face of the tyrant is darkened,
His spirit is torn,
For a new King is throned of a nation –
A child is born.

And the mother still joys for the whispered
First stir of unspeakable things;
Still feels that high moment unfurling,
Red glories of Gabriel’s wings.
Still the babe of an hour is a master
Whom angels adorn,
Emmanuel, prophet, annointed –
A child is born.

To the rusty barred doors of the hungry,
To the struggle for life and the din,
Still, with brush of bright plumes and with knocking,
The Kingdom of God enters in.
To the daughters of patience that labour
That weep and are worn,
One moment of love and of laughter –
A child is born.

To the last dizzy circles of pleasure,
Of fashion and song-swimming nights,
Comes yet hope’s obscure crucifixion,
The birth fire that quickens and bites,
To the daughters of fame that are idle,
That smile and that scorn,
One moment of darkness and travail –
A child is born.

And till man and his riddle be answered,
While earth shall remain and desire,
While the flesh of a man is as grass is,
The soul of a man as a fire,
While the daybreak shall come with its banner,
The moon with its horn,
It shall rest with us that which is written –
“A child is born.”

And for him that shall dream that the martyr
Is banished, and love but a toy,
That life lives not through pain and surrender,
Living only through self and its joy,
Shall the Lord God erase from the body
The oath he has sworn?
Bend back to thy work, saying only –
“A child is born.”

And Thou that art still in the cradle,
The sun being crown for Thy brow,
Make answer, our flesh, make an answer.
Say whence art Thou come? Who art Thou?
Art Thou come back on earth for our teaching,
To train or to warn?
Hush! How may we know, knowing only –
A child is born?

Hey! That's Not Fair!

Gearing up for finals next week, so while I was giving my students a run down of the exam, I head a couple of students enthusiastically proclaim, "That's not fair!" in response to my exam being 168 questions in length. ( All my other tests have typically been 50-60 questions.)  To which I reply, "Not fair?!  What are you talking about?  120 of those questions are from your old tests.  Do you want to know what's not fair?  Babies that have cancer.  Puppies without paws.  Abortion.  Being eaten by a Shark.  Bear attacks.  Ebola."

Quick Take 7: Marian Edition

1. Immaculate Conception refers to Mary being conceived without the effects of original sin and not to Jesus being conceived in Mary.
2. Mary’s Assumption is related to her being born without original sin, for death is the result of sin.  Therefore at the end of her earthly life, she was assumed by the power of Christ into Heaven.
3. Our Lady of Good Help is the only approved Marian Apparition in the United States.
4.  Mother of God is a poorly translated phrase from the Greek “theotokos” which more accurately means ‘God bearer.’  This phrase was coined in response to Nestorian heretics who taught that Jesus was not God from the moment of His Conception but only later became God later in His life.  So the title “Mother of God” has little to do with Mary and more to do with who Christ is: fully divine and fully human from the moment of conception.    According to historian Jarslov Pelikin, “theotokos” is a title unique to Mary the Mother of Christ.
5. An image of Mary is the Unburnt Bush.
6. The message of Mary is simple: “Do whatever [Jesus] tells you.”
7. Mary's parents, Joachim and Anna, are not mentioned in Scripture.  Their names are mentioned in the Apocryphal Gospel of James.

Not Said by Jesus Sunday

Not Said by Jesus Sunday: Black Friday Edition

Kill Your Conscience: Pelosi as Elmer Fud

From the Article: 

Pelosi says [following one's conscience] is akin to having hospitals “say to a woman, ‘I’m sorry you could die’ if you don’t get an abortion,” she told the Washington Post. [Can you provide us with an example?  Often times, the doctors are trying to address the disease and not abort the child; however, the result of treating the disease may sadly result in the loss of the child.  This is not an abortion.  This is the case with treating an ectopic pregnancy.  I think the real question is why aren't the doctor's and hospitals bold enough to try and save both?  I'd guess they'd rather play to not lose than play to win.] 

“Those who dispute that characterization “may not like the language,’’ she said, “but the truth is what I said. I’m a devout Catholic and I honor my faith and love it . . . but they [Isn't it interesting that she says she is a "devout Catholic" then goes on to call Catholics 'they' as if she is not part of the Catholic Church or as if the others who believe differently from her are not the devout Catholics?  Perhaps a "we" should have been a better pronoun to use.] have this conscience thing” that the Post said Pelosi “insists put women at physical risk, although Catholic providers strongly disagree.”  [Really?  A conscience puts women at risk?  I thought conscience helping by not putting our soul at risk.]

For some strange reason, this brings to mind the old Looney Toons Cartoon where Elmer Fud is out trying to "Kill the Wrabbit" set to the tune of Wagner's Ride of the Valkaries.  Except Pelosi might be singing "Kill your conscience."

So what is the conscience?  Here is a refresher.  

From The Catholic Encyclopedia at Newadvent.org:

It is often a good maxim not to mind for a time how a thing came to be, but to see what it actually is. To do so in regard to conscience before we take up the history of philosophy in its regard is wise policy, for it will give us some clear doctrine upon which to lay hold, while we travel through a region perplexed by much confusion of thought. The following points are cardinal:

• The natural conscience is no distinct faculty, but the one intellect of a man inasmuch as it considers right and wrong in conduct, aided meanwhile by a good will, by the use of the emotions, by the practical experience of living, and by all external helps that are to the purpose. [Definition of Conscience]
• The natural conscience of the Christian is known by him to act not alone, but under the enlightenment and the impulse derived from revelation and grace in a strictly supernatural order. [Don't leave God out of the equation.  You cannot not, from the Catholic perspective, ignore Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium.  All of which say the same thing about life.  It is sacred and precious.  There has been a consistent ethic on the teaching of abortion.  Simply, do not do it.  The Romans were aghast at the early Christians who did not kill their children, their elderly, or their disabled.]
• As to the order of nature, which does not exist but which might have existed, St. Thomas (I-II:109:3) teaches that both for the knowledge of God and for the knowledge of moral duty, men such as we are would require some assistance from God to make their knowledge sufficiently extensive, clear, constant, effective, and relatively adequate; and especially to put it within reach of those who are much engrossed with the cares of material life. It would be absurd to suppose that in the order of nature God could be debarred from any revelation of Himself, and would leave Himself to be searched for quite irresponsively.  [This is like saying, "Thanks God for life, this beautiful gift you have given me.  However, I'm not going to seek your input on matters pertaining to life."  Which in turn is like not asking your car manufacturer as to why your car is driving funny and making odd noises.]
• Being a practical thing, conscience depends in large measure for its correctness upon the good use of it and on proper care taken to heed its deliverances, cultivate its powers, and frustrate its enemies. [In other words, we have to work at forming our consciences.  An ill formed conscience results in a skewed viewing of the world.] 
• Even where due diligence is employed conscience will err sometimes, but its inculpable mistakes will be admitted by God to be not blameworthy. These are so many principles needed to steady us as we tread some of the ways of ethical history, where pitfalls are many.