From July 2007

I have heard many discussions of atheism and agnosticism among Christians. One argument leveled against atheism’s assertion that there is no God is that atheism is one belief system among many and therefore is is one opinion over another - nothing more. This tends to follow a basic misunderstanding of Pascal’s famous wager in which it is a better bet to believe in God whether it is true or not since not believing could have a dire consequence while believing can only lead to a good end. So if it is just a matter of one religious belief over another, it is better to pick the one that leads to a good end. Apologists make two critical errors here that atheists can chew up and spit out very quickly and they have to do with misinterpretation.

First, calling atheism, or agnosticism for that matter, a belief system or religion is hard to do without a consistent creedal or mission statement. While we can point to atheistic systems of belief (Theravada Buddhism, ethical humanism, communism, etc.), there are no systems of belief for atheism in itself. That would be like saying that monotheism is a system of belief. While we can point to myriad systems of monotheistic belief, there is no “system” that we can point to representative of all monotheists. Like atheism, this term is only a descriptor of an orientation to deity.

Second, Pascal’s wager is often used to argue for the existence of God. Rather it is simply a statement of probability. But for the atheist this statement is false right off. From this view it is irrational to believe in something for which there is no reason to to believe other than the assertion that if we do not we “could ” suffer the consequence of damnation. This does nothing for the modern atheist who simply does not have reason to believe in any understanding of either damnation or any deity who controls that destiny. To the atheist this simply heaps one superstition on top of another and neither justifies the other therefore, the gamble is useless since it is based on premises that cannot be validated by any externally verifiable, predictable, or reproducible means.

But Pascal was pointing not to simply believing as if one could flip a divine switch in the mind. Pascal was pointing to forming the habit of belief. This begins with an openness to the possibility that God might be true. To wit, even though a Christian cannot provide the evidence to satisfy a material proof of God’s existence (appeals to Scripture and undocumented or invalidated miracles simply do not meet these criteria - but that is another issue) it is likewise not beyond a reasonable doubt to say that the atheist assertion that there is no evidence and thus no reason to believe in God is true.

Third, at stake is the criteria for proof. The atheist generally will require material evidence followed by proof that the evidence presented is verifiable through more or less objective means. The Christian or any theist will simply not be able to produce this. To assert that this evidence is available often leads the Christian down very treacherous paths where assertions are heaped on top of assertions that cannot be proven beyond this criteria of reasonable doubt. The evidence from the Christian relies on one’s experience of salvation and the presence of God. The claim validation of these claims are placed in the category of doubt often in terms of the state of mind of the subject of the experience. This is often asserted to be merely a delusion. However, there is no evidence to say that belief in God is a delusion in itself. While religious belief can cause delusions (believing one is Jesus, snake handling, forms of charismatic worship, healings, etc.) there is no evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that religious belief in itself can be written off as simply delusional and thus irrational.

Both sides will always require evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they are fundamentally and unconditionally correct. This has been waged for decades and perhaps will be waged for decades more. The more we learn about reality and how humans are inscribed into the structure of the universe, the more questions we raise. This is just as true as each generation of Christian has to make sense of their revelation of God to the same structure of reality, lived experience, and praxis.

Fourth and finally here, an openness of belief based on the assertion that God might just be real is the choice that one has to make. This is not “blind faith” as if it is some uncritical appropriation of something, but quite the contrary. It is the choice that one makes when one has reached the boundary of reason itself. For Kierkegaard this is precisely what the “qualitative leap of faith” is. In his view the relationship of the existence of God and the cosmos is a paradox that cannot be resolved by logical means and material proof alone. The Incarnation then turns this relation around once more resulting in a double-paradox even more impossible to resolve on the basis of reason alone. A leap of faith is when one takes a chance and decides to be open to the possibility that the paradox is true. And more than just a one time openness, one has to habituate one’s self to this possibility. This is thus the only way that the reality of God can take root in one’s soul. Hence, openness to God as a result of a qualitative leap is, as he says in The Sickness Unto Death, when one can begin the process of becoming a true self which is grounded in the transparent reality that posited it. But one has to choose this possibility and it cannot be chosen for one’s self. In this regard, Christ is the true self that is an example of a self who is completely and utterly related to God in a dynamic relationship. Christ becomes the one who represents the constitution of a complete self grounded in the transparent reality that grounded it in the perfect relationality of the Incarnation.

However, the rest of humanity must choose this first as a possibility and this requires a qualitative leap beyond the bounds of reason alone. This is the part that atheists will always have a hard time accepting since it appears to be a self-reinforcing delusion. “You mean one has to believe…in order to believe? That’s absurd!” And this is precisely the assertion Kierkegaard makes - to choose the absurdity itself! So if you are a Christian in a debate with an atheist, you have to understand that your claims are essentially absurd based on rules of logic and in the bounds of reason alone - and that is the beginning of wisdom.

Still wondering about the McCain ad that basically says that the oil prices are Obama’s fault.  Not sure how that works out.  I have liked McCain’s other ads so far and I think they have probably been quite effective.  This one, however, makes no rational sense at all.  Help me try to understand if you care or desire.

Vacation is going well.

Ate too much crap and drank way too much various and sundry alcoholic beverages during the family reunion.  Advice to self and others: Never mix your own drink when it’s your “last one of the night”.  You will never wake up in the morning saying “That was such a good idea!”

Hanging out at college friend Melissa’s yesterday and today.  Perhaps a bit tomorrow.  Went to a waterpark in Manassas today.  Alex is totally passed out.  It was a good day.

Might head up to the Mall area in D.C. tomorrow to catch a museum or two.  I really want to go to the WWII Memorial to see the fountains.  That’s new since I moved from the area many years ago.

National Aquarium towards the end of the week.

Nice not having a real schedule.

Melissa’s dog just puked and it stinks really bad.

Dinnertime.

From April 2007

I am mid-way through a nice and concise history entitled That Old time Religion in Modern America by D.G. Hart which traces the history of evangelicalism in the U.S. from about the time of the First Great Awakening to the present. As is the case with most scholars, he notes a crucial schism in evangelical Christianity right around the time of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee in the 1920’s. That schism, which is what I am calling it, divided evangelicalism between a sectarian, fundamentalist movement rooted in experiential Pietism and religion of “the heart” versus a more progressive stance that included more nuanced and sophisticated theological underpinnings. While both sides were present, the fundamentalist side gained not only the most attention, but attracted a more staunch and committed group of adherents. Indeed many of those who leaned more on the progressive side became more influenced by liberal progressivism itself - the great problem in American Christianity against which fundamentalism was largely a reaction.

So here is the paradox: the fundamentalist thread that runs straight through “the right”, the Southern Baptist Convention after the public “fundamentalist” takeover, the Christian coalition, and is a force that permeates those in our political system with evangelical religious leanings and, as the press including conservative media would have it, are largely Republican, had jettisoned and even reacted against and religion that had an intellectual or sophisticated theological understanding of the Bible in favor of a more sectarian and distinct form of Christianity rooted in straight Bible study and experience of God. So focused on creating a distinct identity from the rest of culture, this movement segregated itself in order to strengthen and maintain that identity as distinct from any liberal progressive influence which was thought to undermine Biblical Christianity much as the effect of evolution on a Biblical account of creation. But the net effect of this sectarianism was an undermining of the basic premise of evangelicalism which is to go and preach the good news to those who need it most - those who are immersed in the liberal progressive side of Christianity which was also linked to the intellectual production of the time. Naturally this makes it a complex task to change the world if the world in which you live and experience God is intentionally segregated from the world you wish to change! This means that you need a way to bridge those two worlds and that came in the form of premillenial dispensationalism.

The problem and clear contradiction of liberal progressivism is that it espouses a necessary improvement of humankind’s well being due to scientific and technical sophistication. That is to say, the more we know about the world and ourselves, the better our world will be by necessity. However, the fundamentalists were very correct in pointing out that the Great Depression, the two great wars and the nuclear threat all undermined that theory of reality. It seemed that the more we knew about the world and ourselves, the more capable we had become in simply destroying ourselves. Hence the adoption of dispensationalism with the fundamentalist eschatological view of the world - we will only get increasingly more destructive and the world will snowball its own suffering at which point Christ will return “to rapture” the elect Christians literally “in the sky” before it all falls apart. The end result is God reclaiming the planet as his own.

This raises another paradox: behind closed doors the fundamentalist view of worship and the presence of God proceeds with joy and charisma, yet the message to the world is that we are all fated to a future of misery before God returns. Thus, the good news becomes a message of fear - “get right with God or go to hell”. The bridge between the sectarian impulse and the rest of the world is that of conformity. If you do not conform to what we preach, then God will destroy you. If you do conform, then you will have eternal life. We have hope in the future, even though we will have to suffer to get there someday “soon”. Finally this position has lead to a continual question of “soon, but when?” followed by speculations on that last day that the Christian bible explicitly tells people not to do! This was certainly not a new thought in the history of Christianity, but it did take on a distinct American character rotted in the ethos of liberty and the freedom of the individual garnered from the Revolution and onward.

So here is the question that one must ask when looking at the paradox of evangelicalism. The Good News of the Gospel is that salvation and the Kingdom of God are now with us even in the midst of suffering. It is not something that we have to wait for to experience. Nor is it something that we are told in the entire New Testament to experience only in our own Christian community knowing that the world is under the auspices of the devil. Rather, it is very clear that we are to experience the Kingdom everywhere - literally. God is not bound to the church community even as the Israelites learned that God is not bound to the Temple. Thus, God’s Kingdom is always before us even while in the midst of us. So where is the hope in the evangelical message? How can Good News live with fear so comfortably when joy and fear cannot coexist in any comfort whatsoever? Note that I am not espousing that faith needs to be easy, but that it is simply impossible to be simultaneously afraid of one’s impending doom and be joyful about it.

The answer is that the joy and hope that it brings can only be conceived as limited to those who can reach the mountaintop sequestered from the whole of the world. But this is not the Gospel. If God’s Kingdom is everywhere as all that exists is God’s, then Christians ought to be called to live in that kingdom everywhere. It is not a “pick and choose” whom you want to serve message, it is a serve everyone message. The love that we are to express to neighbor and enemy alike is not a love that segregates human attributes and loves some but secretly despises others - the latter cloaked in the term “tolerance”. It is a love that loves the entire person - flaws included. Until a Christian can love what were conceived as flaws in a person to the point where they are no longer flaws, the love that a Christian is called to live daily is not realized. That is the Good News of the Gospel that evangelicalism can preach, but ultimately will fail to live.

So in closing for this thought of the day here is a question for the Christians of the world: If Osama Bin Ladin, Cho Seung-Hui (the VT shooter), Mohammed Atta, Mussolini, Hitler, Jefferey Dahmer, or any of the other people we associate with evil were beaten and stranded by the side of the road, would you help them up? If not, can you say that the mind of God is in you? When one sees a suffering enemy, how quickly the entire point of the Cross is left abandoned on the side of the road and Christ remains beaten by the very ones who would preach his message to a world that needs to hear it.

From March 2007

I read an interesting piece by Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Seminary, that addresses the high probability that sexual orientation is genetic and the possible moral and theological issues that this might raise in the future. I found it stimulating for conversation for both the bio-ethical issues it raises and for the multiple twists and turns in logic that the argument seems to demonstrate.

http://www.albertmohler.com/blog_read.php?id=891

In one part he clearly states, “The development of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis [PDG] is one of the greatest threats to human dignity in our times.” And this is in the context of genetic trait engineering and the potential that lends to abortion.

However, just below, he argues, “If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.”

Therefore trait engineering is a threat to human dignity unless that human dignity happens to have a homosexual orientation. Certainly fascinating for discussion on theological grounds for how we define human dignity and the human person in a theological-anthropological sense and human dignity versus sin. Would Mohler posit some sort of “sin” gene as a result? If we found the source of sinful behavior, would it, according to his logic, be ethical to root that gene out? If so, would we then be ignoring the forgiveness the resurrection offers us? Seems to collude or confuse sanctification with eugenics!

Forgive me if I am wrong, but I thought our primary duty as Christians was to love our neighbor and witness to the Cross of Christ. The issue that this raises goes back to some of the reasons for the Reformation and secession from the Medieval Catholic Church. A major issue there was that tradition was trumping the absolute sovereignty of God alone to forgive us through Christ. Saying that part of our duty is to alter our genetic code in order to select out what may or may not not be “sinful” genes or other biological processes stands next to anyone who believes that human works trump the action of God alone to heal our sinfulness. Any Baptist, or any Christian, should take issue with that. Even if you are in the camp that says homosexuality is a sin, this should raise a big red flag since it is the first step among possibly many others that Mohler clearly indicates into tricking ourselves into believing that genetics can take the place of God’s forgiveness. Sad to see such poor theological argument from a President of a seminary.

Just fascinating to ponder…

I am going on vacation with the fam this week starting with a family reunion at my sister’s place in Maryland.  We bought a huge tent and are camping out in her backyard.  Many crabs and much beer will be consumed and I am happy about that.

We began our vacation at DelGrosso’s Amusement Park - a small, local park just north of our house.  By the end of the day the kids were stone cold exhausted.  My boys are fearless and the 3 year old would have ridden everything if he was tall enough.  Here are a couple of shots.

So we will be driving a lot, catching the aquarium in Baltimore, maybe head into DC for a museum and some Ethiopian food.

So live-blogging silence will probably ensue for the next week.  I have a few scheduled re-posts of past material that was not read by a lot of people (I think).  They are a little on the long side, but decent arguments I think.

Enjoy!

PZ Myers is trying to make a point.  But the only point he has made is that as he continues to cling to his atheist agenda of who knows what in the name of a fabricated idea of liberalism, he presents us with an infantile fanning of the juvenile flames of everything that is stupid about culture in the West.

So he placed pages of the Qu’ran with pages of The God Delusion with a “consecrated” wafer and coffee grounds.  He also included a banana peel and a nail through the wafer for good measure.  He then follows with this unbelievably long diatribe.  He desecrated the host!  Oh no!  What to do!

It’s not even very good art.

Utter foolishness and puerility on both sides here. This stuff is evidence of the variant effects that account for the erosion of a respectable liberal culture.

Sadly juvenile from an otherwise smart scientist.

This does not absolve Donahue and his ilk who speak for a specific grouping of Catholics not representative of all. It is all stunts of self-aggrandizement and whining that only divert attention from either doing good theology or good science.

Moreover, this nonsense is an affront to the respectability of the academic community. It is embarrassing that anyone of letters would engage in such juvenile whining in order to promote their pet project which has nothing to do with reasoned behavior, responsible liberal citizenship, or biology.

These stunts galvanize stupidity and puerility which is evident by the content of the comments people offer on the post itself.

Shameful actually that our public discourse has become this.

(HT: Ken Brown)