I submit the following for the consideration of Mr Seth McFarlane whose occasionally witty normally problematical televisual cartoon Family Guy has suggested that Christianity held back human progress.
1. I have encountered certain subjects where without qualification I seem to know what is right: the sanctity of life primarily but also considerations regarding the falseness of the medico pharmaceutical claim that human sadness is a bio chemical disorder of the brain. I would suggest that true perception in such matters is not a quality of intellect but a gift of God and an indicator that God is real.
2. There are certain observable cultural appurtenances which stem from belief in God, and whose vitality and fruitfulness in human experience imply his reality. I am suggesting that Art, Literature, and Music cannot exist without the Bible and the ancient preaching Church.
3. There are certain cultural and societal institutions, inheritances as it were, which stemmed from belief in God. I am suggesting that the university system, the international hospital system, school systems generally, and vocational Charities, cannot and would not exist without belief in God and the advocacy of this belief via members of the Catholic Church.
4. The nations of the earth in their most positive conceptions such as we can know them would not exist without the existence of God and/or belief in God. I am suggesting firstly that nationhood in its modern form is delineated along lines set out by God for the Jews in the Bible. I am further suggesting that modern nations are explicitly and inherently shaped by God through historically observable personages or supernatural interventions which themselves by their actions and results, indicate the reality of God, for instance Ireland and the Irish becoming who we are through Saint Patrick, Mexico through Saint Juan Diego and more supernaturally through the Blessed Virgin Mary in apparition, France through Joan of Arc and a host of ancient Christian witnesses (hence the title of honour held by France "eldest daughter of the Catholic Church"), Italy (Saint Peter, Saint Paul, Saint Francis of Assisi et al, particularly Al, he was great), Britain through Saint Augustine, Russia through its foundational ruler Vladimir the Great, and so on. All other nations have been shaped in their manifest forms by contact with the aforementioned ones.
5. The Catholic Church and its contributions to humanity through the democratisation of education, the monastic system, science, conscience driven social political concepts, and everything else one might observe in qualitative human experience, is an indicator of the reality of God.
6. The Bible would not exist without God.
7. The Jewish people and their role in human history and their nation would not and could not exist or be possible without God.
8. Seth McFarlane's televisual cartoons Family Guy, American Dad and the Cleveland Show, having been broadcast at one stage simultaneously by networks all over the planet, amount to a tremendous creative personal achievement and commercial success. For all their seeming popularity, it should be noted that these televisual entertainments are imbued with a louche and manipulative, debased and debasing, hyper sexualised cynicism, an almost mordant negativity which prevails their every aspect. Nonetheless I suggest that even these nihilistic paeans to hedonistic paganism somehow indicate the reality of God. Seth McFarlane's cartoons indicate the reality of God by virtue of the fact that they so desperately reject his reality. Seth McFarlane's rejection of God is not a rejection of nothing. His rebellion against God is too tasteless, too sad, too visceral for that. It is very specific.. It is a rebellion against the source of all being, all light, all truth. I say that Seth McFarlane's very rebellion indicates the reality of the thing he has chose to rebel against, to wit, God. I would counsel him (Seth McFarlane) to open peace talks. Furthermore in spite of the debauched incontinence of his cynicism his comedic enterprises are often touched by an inspired joie de vivre which would indicate in the oddest most paradoxical way that he may not be far from the kingdom of heaven.. (The parody of Vietnam war films in American Dad for one.)
Happy Easter Seth.
