Skip to content

Tag: apologetics

2

Published on 2 Comments on Which god don’t you believe in?

Here's a couple of older Dawkins' articles reposted...

 

dawkins_southpark

I think, actually, [Richard Dawkins is] a pre-Christian atheist, because he never understood what Christianity is about in the first place! That would be rather like Madonna calling herself post-Marxist. You’d have to read him first to be post-him. As I’ve said before, I think that Dawkins in particular makes such crass mistakes about the kind of claims that Christianity is making. A lot of the time, he’s either banging at an open door or he’s shooting at a straw target.

Terry Eagleton (via Halden)

.

But before we feel smug.  Let's allow him (and others) to critique a knee-jerk theism that too often passes for Christian apologetics:

[Conservative Evangelicals] despise Richard Dawkins while actually believing in the kind of God he rightly rejects, as if the existence of God were, in principle, demonstrable, as if the proposition “God exists” were a hypothesis to be affirmed or denied, as if God were simply the hugest of individuals.

Kim Fabricius (I object to his other points, but this one has a lot of truth to it).

.

One God furtherDawkins himself says that all he does is stretch his disbelief one God further than the Christians.

Which is absolutely right.  Both Dawkins and the Christian reject Thor and Vishnu and the Flying Spaghetti Monster and any other super-being you care to imagine.  The task of the Christian apologist is not to establish a deity but to proclaim the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As Mike Reeves recommends - the question for the atheist is 'Which God don't you believe in?'

And once they've described it, the response to have ready is 'I don't believe in that either, let me tell you about the cross.'

.

And in this article Dawkins was asked, "Where does evolution leave God?"  He answered:

“Before 1859 it would have seemed natural to agree with the Reverend William Paley, in “Natural Theology,” that the creation of life was God’s greatest work. Especially (vanity might add) human life. Today we’d amend the statement: Evolution is the universe’s greatest work. Evolution is the creator of life, and life is arguably the most surprising and most beautiful production that the laws of physics have ever generated. Evolution, to quote a T-shirt sent me by an anonymous well-wisher, is the greatest show on earth, the only game in town.

[...]

“Where does that leave God? The kindest thing to say is that it leaves him with nothing to do, and no achievements that might attract our praise, our worship or our fear. Evolution is God’s redundancy notice, his pink slip. But we have to go further. A complex creative intelligence with nothing to do is not just redundant. A divine designer is all but ruled out by the consideration that he must at least as complex as the entities he was wheeled out to explain. God is not dead. He was never alive in the first place.”

Again ask the question - who or what has Dawkins taken aim at?  He's railing against a divine designer entirely dependent on its own creation.

Rail away Richard.  Christian theology does a far better job, but if it makes you feel better - go for your life.

And if you want to lay the smackdown on some god-of-the-gaps who is posited simply to explain the inexplicable, then please don't let us stop you.

And if you're invigorated by venting splenetic rage on a god 'ruled out' by the logic of its own creation well Richard, who isn't?  I'm regularly energized by such disdain.  And we certainly have no wish to spoil your fun.

While you heap adolescent contempt on those gods, we'll be over here - stoning modern-day Paleys for providing you with such irrelevant and idolatrous targets.

.

By the way - if you read the Dawkins quote and thought to yourself 'Aha, but who created the laws of physics!?' - you are Paley.  And I'm coming to get you.

.

Published on Leave a comment on Empty Chair Leaves a Hollow Feeling

Daniel Blanche has some excellent thoughts on the empty chair at the Sheldonian Theatre tonight.

Any temptations to gloat (and I have plenty) surely come from a deep insecurity over the self-evident Lordship of Christ.  An insecurity which philosophical arguments will not assuage but foster.

Go and read Daniel's blog.

Published on Leave a comment on Evidence for God – William Lane Craig Lecture this afternoon

This lunchtime (1245 in the UK) William Lane Craig will give a lecture entitled "The Evidence for God."  You can watch it live here.  His other engagements in the UK are listed here.

UPDATE: Apparently the video will be here in the next few days.  In the end I didn't get to hear more than 5 minutes of it since I was called away.  Another time!

I will be very interested to watch and I know I will learn plenty.

Just for the record I still hold these six convictions regarding what has already happened between God and man.  In my opinion we must not argue as though these things have not happened - because their happening is the Gospel which we claim to stand on:

  1. Through Christ, the Triune God has already revealed Himself unmistakably in every aspect of creation so that humanity is without excuse.  (Everything is evidence!)
  2. Against Christ, humanity has taken knowledge into its own hands and so barred the door against all claims from above.
  3. In view of Christ, God has handed humanity over to its chosen futility, locking the door from His side too.
  4. In Christ, God has entered this prison and manifested His eternal glory in time and space, even in human flesh.  (So focus your seeking there - where He is given).
  5. As Christ, humanity now has a perfect mind with which to comprehend God (and everything else) – one that is not only human but also in God.
  6. Out of Christ, His Spirit has been poured to incorporate us into the Man who knows.

These convictions have implications for how we do apologetics.  Read more here.

Published on Leave a comment on Engaging Atheists

Dave Bish has some good advice here.

And here's a recent foray I made into the atheosphere.  That's not an invitation for you to join that particular discussion.  The thread is dead and I'd ask you not to reawaken it.  Join another more recent discussion if you feel like you've got a day or two handy! :)

One thing that re-occurred to me is that "law-gospel" is very handy to keep in mind.  In the context where they demand "evidence" for Jesus (and insist on the kind of evidence they're prepared to accept):

LAW: Jesus is the Truth.  To take Him seriously you either begin again with Him or you reject Him.  What you don’t do is treat Him as a possible player in amongst a cast of other, more certain, truths.  If you did so, you would not be treating Him as He is.  Therefore you would not be seeking Him.  

Put it another way: He is not in the dock, the “evidence” does not stand over Him, and you are not the prosecutor.

That's the law.  It flattens us and gives us no grounds for hope in ourselves.  But here comes the gospel...

GOSPEL: There is good news!  The Truth has sought us.  He has come into the world explaining Himself.  He became flesh, was witnessed, was handled, was even dissected on full view of the world.  The word written, the Bible, will show you Him at full strength.  This is far more than a scrap of evidence.  This is far more than Him showing up in a laboratory.  He hasn't just submitted Himself to experimental conditions, the Truth has given His very Self to us.

The cross stands between law and gospel.  It insists that: Here is the living God!  This is where to look and nowhere else.  Jews look for signs, Greeks look for wisdom, we lay a stumbling block in their way - the cross.  That is law.  But if, by faith, the stumbling block becomes the Rock on which they build, suddenly the cross is complete gospel.  There is good news: the Truth is given to us utterly - far more than we ever demanded as naturalists.

What kind of responses does this get?

Well one person on the thread quoted from me and then responded:

[I had said]  If you start with Jesus (and there’s no way to take Him seriously unless you do) then *He* is the Truth.  

[He responded] That’s probably your problem then. No-one here takes him seriously.

If you ask me, our role is presenting Christ such that people see they are accepting or rejecting Jesus and not just a world-view.  We must never give the impression that the evidence is only "very good" or that Jesus is merely "the most logical option".  If we believe that a person's fundamental issue is their personal orientation towards Christ Himself then that's got to be the pivot on which the conversation turns.  We confront people with Christ, it's His rejection or acceptance that is at stake.  And that ought to be front and centre.

Lots more to say.  But those are just a few thoughts...

 

Published on Leave a comment on Outer Spirits

Pagan superstitions are always threatening to crowd in.  Either Christ reigns or malign spirits will.

It was the gospel that supplanted pagan superstition in Europe.  Through the spread of Christ's word freedom was offered from a bondage to enslaving beliefs.  The world was awash with gods, demigods, and other spiritual forces.  Fatalism ruled and the best you could hope for was some kind of propitiation of these spiritual slave-masters.

But as the gospel comes into this context, people are confronted with a good Lord who has shown Himself to be utterly for us.  He has provided the propitiation.  He has ransomed us from the devil's power.  And He has brought us to the Most High God who reigns over (not within) this world with Fatherly power.

It was the gospel that enabled the West to be secular.  The gospel drove out the spirits from this world and freed a people to become more prosperous than any who have lived before.  It freed us to love the world and explore it.  To experience some of that dominion which the Bible speaks of.

Yet, having rejected this gospel, the gods are flooding back in.  The new priests are telling new myths, but these ones are like the pagan ones: bleak and bloody and utterly tragic.  Impersonal, immoral and fatalistic to the bitter end.

Of course we scoff at superstitions regarding earth.  We feel as though science has dispelled the mysteries of this planet.  Yet our latent paganism shows itself in our views of outer space.   Go onto Youtube and search for any of the hundreds of videos offering a journey through the universe.  Here's one, almost at random:

Notice the soundtrack.  All the soundtracks are virtually identical:  blasts of slow, austere, rhythm-less synth-brass.  If you subtract the synthesizers it's precisely the kind of music that, in bygone days, made lowly subjects bow in fear to their king.  But our new masters are the giants and supergiants.  And this video literally does command us to bow to our lords.

It is a naked power-play.  The heavenly bodies are presented purely in terms of their strength, blinding brilliance and sheer immensity.  And as we listen to the music, how are we meant to feel about these monstrous powers?  Small, insignificant, uneasy, fearful.  They are the impersonal, uncaring forces and many of them are malign (black holes for instance).  Ultimately, so the story goes, the powerful will win the day.  Our fate is to be swallowed up by the strong and, in the meantime, all we can do is cower in their presence.  The best we can hope for is to get on in our own corner of the universe with our insignificant little lives and await the inevitable.

It's the old paganism, this time with CGI.

In the Bible, "the morning stars sing together and the sons of God shout for joy" (Job 38:7).  When the LORD asks us to consider the heavens He doesn't play Mahler's 5th.  It's more like the Hallelujah Chorus.  Joyous, personal, harmonious, rapturous.

Or consider how David viewed the sun: "Like a Bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a Champion rejoicing to run his course." (Psalm 19:5)  The sun speaks of the Light of the world who makes the journey from east (God's absence) to west (God's presence).  And He does so not as a display of His own power, but as our rejoicing Champion and our loving Bridegroom.  His power is for us.  You see, when David looked up He saw love.  He saw a Bridegroom who runs the race as our Champion, and joyfully so.  What soundtrack is appropriate for that?  Jean-Michel Jarre on morphine?  I think not.

But I wonder how much this latent paganism affects Christians.  I wonder whether documentaries like the one above shape our reading of Psalm 19 and not the other way around.  In fact on Youtube I've found Christian videos of Psalm 19 that use the same barren soundtracks.  It's as though we think the "glory of God" is like the old pagan deities but with the trumpets turned up to eleven.

Surely not.

Published on Leave a comment on Two conversion stories [repost]

Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation tells of his past in evangelical Christianity

I was a "doer of the word and not a hearer only." I went to a Christian college, majored in Religion/Philosophy, became ordained and served in a pastoral capacity in three California churches. I personally led many people to Jesus Christ, and encouraged many young people to consider full-time Christian service.  (Here)

And here's his conversion to atheism as told to a journalist here

[Barker] lay on a burlap cot in a church in a Mexican border town where he'd come to give a guest sermon. As he peered out at a splash of stars, Barker had a sudden profound sensation that had nothing to do with intellect, the kind of deeply felt moment more commonly associated with finding God than losing Him. He was, Barker understood, utterly alone here.

"For my whole life there had been this giant eyeball looking at me, this god, this holy spirit, this church history, and this Bible. And not only everything I did but everything I thought was being judged: Was God pleased? I realized that that wasn't there anymore. It occurred to me, 'I own these thoughts. Nobody knows what I'm thinking right now. There's no fear of hell, no fear of judgment, I don't have to be right or wrong, I can just be me.'" It felt as if charges had been dropped for a crime for which he had been falsely accused. It was exhilarating and frightening all at once. "When you're ready to jump out of an airplane to skydive, you can be terrified but excited at the same time," he says. "There's a point where you go, all right, let's do this."

It strongly reminded me of John Bunyan's conversion:

"As I was passing in the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience . . . suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, Thy righteousness is in heaven; and, methought withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at God's right hand, there, I say, is my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was a-doing, God could not say of me, He wants [lacks] my righteousness, for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, the same yesterday and today for ever (Heb. 13:8)."

"Now did my chains fall from my legs indeed, I was loosed from my affliction and irons, my temptations also fled away, so that from that time, those dreadful scriptures of God left off to trouble me; now also went I home rejoicing for the grace and love of God."

In both conversions naturally enough it was their view of God that changed and that changed them.  Both were weighed down under the scrutiny of Heaven.  Both found a joyful liberation in the death of God.  (Of course Barker's empty heaven does not remove his spiritual masters but multiplies them).

Nonetheless, I think the similarities are very instructive.

Because what did/does Barker need?  More theistic proofs?  These would only have strengthened his notion of a 'giant eyeball' in the sky.  And who could blame him if he wants to be free of that?

Yet there are apologetic strategies that drive the Barkers of this world firmly into atheism, not away.

What should we do instead?

Let's seek to give them what Bunyan got - true freedom through Christ crucified.  It's the death of all the old gods and the life of the new man, free from the eye-ball in the sky.

.

5

Published on 5 Comments on Comedy and Christianity [repost]

god-seriously-self-lightly-21

.

Here's the audio of my talk on the subject

All this began here.

Then I had some initial thoughts on the usefulness of comedy here

There's an excellent CS Lewis quote here

Here is a very expanded early version of the talk: part one, part two, part three, part four.

Then some follow up thoughts on blasphemy here and here.

.

Published on Leave a comment on The Protestant Grace Ethic

I’ve been listening to some thought-provoking lectures by Vishal Mangalwadi on how the bible has shaped the West.  This one entitled, “Why Are Some Rich While Others Are So Poor” speaks of how traditional cultures have handled wealth.  Those without the influence of the bible have only known two responses.  Either you horde it or you display it.  You either stock-pile it for a rainy day or you show-case it for prestige.  In neither case will your economy grow.

But, in the west, Christians did this new thing – they re-invested it.  Mangalwadi points to things like “the parable of the talents” or the injunction to “love thy neighbour” as giving Christians this new idea – to put wealth to work.  He also points to the impact of the priesthood of all believers, releasing believers to work at all things “as unto the Lord.”  This gives rise to the protestant work ethic and incredible wealth-creation.

I’m sure all those ideas should go into the mix.  But I wonder whether the Protestant Grace Ethic needs to have a hearing here.  The bible is always linking grace and money (see these examples in Ephesians for instance).  It is the peculiar “idea” of the gospel that heavenly wealth comes down upon us not so that we may boast, nor that we might keep it to ourselves.  (And not even that we should repay the Benefactor (some kind of spiritual feudalism?)).  We are given an overabundance of undeserved grace in order that we might overflow.  Isn't this the most fundamentally liberating "idea" to grace the West?

 

Published on Leave a comment on The Power of Vulnerability – TED Talk

[ted id=1042]

What Brene Brown says:

Connection is why we're here

But shame = fear of disconnection

Everyone has shame. The only people without shame have no capacity for empathy

No one wants to talk about shame but the less you talk about it, the more you have it

For connection to happen you have to be allowed to be seen

.

Those who are connected have a sense of worthiness, a strong sense of love and belonging

They exhibit these factors

Courage (wholeheartedness) to be imperfect

Compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others

Connection as a result of authenticity.  They let go of who they *should* be to be who they are.

Fully embraced vulnerability - what made them vulnerable made them beautiful

.

We numb vulnerability

We are the most in debt, obese, addicted and medicated cohort in US history

So we numb it

Trouble is, you cannot selectively numb emotion

We make the uncertain certain

This is what religion and politics have become

We perfect

We pretend - that what we do doesn't have an effect on people

.

What we need is to...

Let ourselves be seen

Love with our whole hearts

Practice gratitude, lean into joy

Believe I am enough

 

.

Inspiring stuff.  Some apt observations.  But let's think for a second.  Isn't this an empirical researcher urging us to have metaphysical convictions.  We need to believe certain things.  And we need to believe them because they seem to work.

Isn't this basically "the power of positive thinking" dressed up a bit?

We want connection, we feel shame, but we need to open up nonetheless because that's what the wholehearted do, and we do so on the basis of the belief that we're worthy of love and belonging.

That last bit seems key for this whole thing to work.  But where does it come from?

If I had 5 minutes to talk about vulnerability I think I'd want to take three looks at the cross:

Look 1: Here is the LORD of Glory crucified.  Is vulnerability a fundamental value?  You bet.  Our God was dissected on full view of the world.  His vulnerability is glorious.  Our vulnerability is God-like.

Look 2: Here is where our sin takes us.  And yes I said sin not just shame.  We aren't just held back by 'fear of connection' but by dark hearts full of lust and murder.  We do not deserve connection but cutting off.  Without looking at things through this lens we dress the wound lightly.  "Embracing mess and authenticity" sounds like a meaningful Saturday afternoon with college friends around Lattes.  Not the diagnosis that can handle, for instance, the addictions Brown mentions.

Look 3: Here is the Lord's love for the dark-hearted.  Unconditional, counter-conditional grace for the disconnected. Brown hopes we'll value ourselves first and then others.  But deserved love is not the sort of love we're inclined to pass on.  "I'm worth it" terminates on me.  It's only grace that really spreads.

.

Twitter widget by Rimon Habib - BuddyPress Expert Developer