Tuesdays with Thomas 9: The Fifth Way

In this video we will take a look at Aquinas's Fifth Way to demonstrate the existence of God, the argument from design. However, as you will see, Aquinas's version of this argument is much different from contemporary "intelligent design" arguments.

The Billion Dollar Man

For some time I have been trying to find the right frame of reference to understand the appeal of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate. It isn’t hard to grasp why so many voters find an “outsider” appealing – lots of working class Democrats and Republicans feel like their party establishments have taken them for granted. With regard to some of the issues that Trump features in his campaign - illegal immigration, harmful trade deals, reckless intervention in the Middle East – there is no real difference between the Democratic and Republican establishments, despite the feelings of many (most?) rank and file voters.

So there is no lack of reasons for voters to be angry and to look for someone who is not perceived as in insider. Many voters on the left and right feel unrepresented and exploited by the moneyed interests that control both parties. This explains the incredible popularity of Bernie Sanders, Ben Carson, Donald Trump, and to a lesser extent, Ted Cruz. 2016 is a great year for an insurgency candidacy.

But out of all of these options, why has Donald Trump been able to galvanize so much support? The recurring refrain I hear is that he “tells it like it is” – “he means what he says.” And yet this is the one thing that is demonstrably FALSE about Donald Trump. He does not tell it like it is, and he does not mean what he says. And this has been pointed out over, and over, and over again. Just the other night I almost fell off of the couch when Trump said that the IRS might be auditing him because he was such a strong Christian. This despite the fact that he has claimed never to ask for forgiveness, even though he has done many things that by ANY definition of Christianity would merit the need for forgiveness (like serial adultery, for starters).

How then to explain the Donald Trump phenomenon? How can someone whose personal character is so deplorable, whose political positions are so malleable, and whose public persona is so juvenile, be winning state after state in the GOP primaries?

And then it hit me – the answer is professional wrestling.

I am a long-time fan of pro wrestling. I still have the championship belt I made as a child as part of the wrestling fun we would have in my neighborhood growing up. Every month I would go to Rupp Arena to see Jerry “the King” Lawler take on the newest bad guy (“heel” in wrestling lingo) brought in by dastardly manager Jimmy Hart. I still love to watch videos of the old school stuff.

Some of you are sneering at the very mention of “rasslin” and feel it necessary to point out that it’s “fake”. Well, duh! It is entertainment, like a play or a movie. And no one walks out of a movie saying, “It’s fake.” Pro wrestling, at its finest, gave just enough reality to allow its fans to suspend disbelief and enjoy the matches as if they were legitimate athletic contests. And the enjoyment came in the visceral “good guy vs bad guy” drama presented in the ring. Of course, back in the day there were always a few people who didn’t see through the illusion, and actually thought the show was completely legit (these fans were called “marks” by the wrestlers). But most of us knew what we were watching, permitted the suspension of disbelief, and enjoyed the show for what it was.

For many years Donald Trump has excelled at a performance art that claims to be “real” but is in fact highly choreographed -  “reality television.” And before that, The Donald was heavily involved in professional wrestling. Trump Plaza in Atlantic City hosted two Wrestlemanias, and in 2007 he appeared in WrestleMania 23 in a match against Vince McMahon dubbed the “Battle of the Billionaires.” Trump’s connections with the WWE are so strong that in 2013 he was inducted into the celebrity wing of the WWE Hall of Fame. 

And just like any good wrestler, Donald Trump has managed to perform in such a way as to get over with the fans (the electorate). Despite his painfully obvious lack of substance, some voters have even become marks for him (and I would guess it is roughly the same group of people that think rasslin is real and Obama isn’t an American).

But I don’t think most people supporting Trump are marks. They are just so fed up with the status quo in Washington that they are willing to suspend disbelief about Trump’s character failings, about his deeply un-American authoritarianism, about his demagoguery on the issues, and support him out of the visceral satisfaction that this somehow sticks it to the real bad guys.

I get that. I feel frustrated with the establishment as well. I have little respect for the parties and their unwillingness to tackle the entitlement crisis, their cowardly failure to stand up to the Israelis and Saudis in our Middle Eastern policy, and their failure to work together against the extremists on the right and the left. But Donald Trump is not the right person to carry the banner for reform and renewal. His track record offers absolutely no reason to believe that what he says today is what he will do tomorrow. He is not the voice of the anti-establishment. For decades he has been the establishment.

One of the great heels in wrestling was a character called “The Million Dollar Man” (Ted DiBiase). His gimmick was that he was incredibly wealthy, and could buy whatever he wanted – even the championship. Each week he would come out on TV and select a fan to do some sort of demeaning task for a sum of money, always with the slogan, “Everyone has a price for the Million Dollar Man.” 

Donald Trump is proud of his billions, and apparently, there are lots of people who do have a price. They have decided to sacrifice civility, thoughtfulness, and prudence to vote for the Billion Dollar Man. As angry as I am, and as frustrated as I am, this is a price I cannot pay. 

Tuesdays with Thomas 8: The Fourth Way

This week's video is about the Fourth Way, Aquinas's argument for God as the Supreme Being. I am indebted especially to Edward Feser's discussion in his introductory book on Aquinas for help on this video. 

Tuesdays with Thomas 7: The Third Way

Here is my latest video on the thought of Thomas Aquinas. In this video I discuss the Third Way, probably the most misunderstood of the Five Ways.

Tuesdays with Thomas 6: The Second Way

Here is this week's edition of Tuesdays with Thomas. In this video we will look at the Second Way, the argument for God's existence as the First Cause (or Uncaused Cause).

The Dehumanizing Evil That Is NARAL

During Sunday's Super Bowl, the snack company Doritos ran an ad showing an expectant mother receiving a sonogram while the father looks on, eating Doritos. With each bite, the baby responds, reaching for the chips. At one point the mother grabs a chip and throws it, leading the baby to suddenly emerge to get the chip.

NARAL (which is what the National Abortion Rights Action League is now called) immediately responded with this tweet:

According to NARAL, showing a baby craving salty snack chips is a "tactic," and in particular, a tactic with the audacity of "humanizing fetuses."

This tweet may be the most stupid and evil tweet in the history of pro-choice advocacy.

First, as to its stupidity, how is it possible to "humanize" something that is already self-evidently a human? No one questions that the fetus of a man and woman is a human fetus. From conception, human beings have unique genetic coding that make them human, as opposed to a plant or an animal. This is a simple scientific fact. As this wonderful video explains, "Fertilization is the epic story of a single sperm facing incredible odds to unite with an egg and form a new human life." 

So at conception something exists - that makes it a "being," and it is human - that makes it a "human being."

The debate between pro-lifers (like me) and pro-choicers is not whether the fetus is a human being, but whether the fetus is a person with Constitutionally protected rights. But no ethicist who argues for abortion rights, including writers like Peter Singer and David Boonin, denies that the fetus is a human. So this is the epic stupidity of NARAL's tweet.

But what classifies this tweet as not merely idiotic but truly evil is the implicit position NARAL is taking on the question of personhood. The Supreme Court's opinion in Roe v Wade declared that the fetus was not a person until the moment of viability, the time in fetal development when the baby could potentially live outside the mother's womb. In 1973, the Court determined that this was at the start of the third trimester. Of course, since then we have seen advances in medical technology that make viability a possibility much earlier than seven months.

But in the case of the Doritos commercial, this baby was not a newly conceived embryo, or even a two or three month old fetus. If you saw the commercial, it was obvious that the baby is nearly full term. This is made explicit by what the attending nurse says in the ad: "And there's your beautiful baby. Any day now."

Yet according to NARAL's tweet, a baby that is in the latest stages of the third trimester - that is days away from being born - is not only without the rights of personhood; that baby is NOT EVEN HUMAN.

When an ideology has so gripped the mindset of an organization that it cannot recognize the humanity of a baby days before it is born, then it is only a matter of time before such an ideology blinds it to the humanity of a baby days after it is born. And that is why this is the perhaps the most evil tweet ever by pro-choice advocates. 

Tuesdays with Thomas 5: The First Way

Here is the latest video installment of Tuesdays with Thomas, a look at the First Way to demonstrate the existence of God.