Book Review: Doing Philosophy as a Christian

Pages: 352
Pub­lisher: IVP Aca­d­e­mic
Year: 2011
Author: Gar­rett J. DeWeese

After a few delays (e.g. an unex­pect­edly mas­sive course load) I am finally able to get to my review of Gar­ret J. DeWeese’s recent book, Doing Phi­los­o­phy as a Chris­t­ian. (If you haven’t already, you can read my inter­view with DeWeese here.)

First things first, this book is in the “Chris­t­ian World­view Inte­gra­tion Series”, which as far as I can tell is a series of books devoted to the ‘topic’ of how a Chris­t­ian should live as a Chris­t­ian in every aspect of their lives. I must admit that it’s nice to read some­thing with this focus, as a lot of the read­ing I do tends to be detached and, at times, need­lessly ‘heady’.

There are four parts to Doing Phi­los­o­phy as a Chris­t­ian. Part one intro­duces the ‘topic’ of wis­dom, the rela­tion­ship between faith and rea­son and the ques­tion of Jesus as philoso­pher. Part two addresses the “inescapable ques­tions”: what is real, what do I know, and what should I value? Part three fol­lows from this and asks, who and what am I, and what is nature? Part four was unique for me (in com­par­i­son other books of phi­los­o­phy I’ve read), as it dis­cussed “phi­los­o­phy and spir­i­tual for­ma­tion” — a topic usu­ally ref­er­enced but not discussed.

With that out­line in mind, who is this book for? Per­haps DeWeese can help us with this question:

First, this is not a gen­eral intro­duc­tion to phi­los­o­phy writ­ten from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive. I won’t intro­duce the major top­ics in phi­los­o­phy, but rather will con­sider how to think about them from within a Chris­t­ian world­view. Sec­ond, this isn’t a gen­eral chal­lenge to Chris­t­ian stu­dents to develop a ‘Chris­t­ian mind,’ to engage their learn­ing broadly and deeply as a way to ‘love their God with all their mind.’ Third, it isn’t a book of apolo­get­ics. I won’t make argu­ments for Chris­t­ian the­ism or offer defenses against objec­tions to the­ism of Christianity.

The class of read­ers with whom I wish to engage con­sists first of all of Chris­tians major­ing in phi­los­o­phy, or those young schol­ars who recently entered the pro­fes­sion, who have ques­tions and con­cerns about how their Chris­t­ian faith does, or should, affect the study and per­haps a career in phi­los­o­phy… Nev­er­the­less, I do not assume that every­one read­ing this book is a Chris­t­ian… I believe there are ideas here that might stim­u­late the think­ing of any bud­ding philoso­pher, what­ever her spir­i­tual commitment.

I can con­firm that this is indeed the case, but that is not to say that ‘non-philosophers’ can’t learn some­thing from DeWeese. From the very begin­ning there is an empha­sis on the prac­ti­cal aspect of wis­dom. ‘Doing phi­los­o­phy’ should have a fun­da­men­tal impact on how we live our lives, as should the knowl­edge of Christ. To say it another way; this isn’t just a book on, e.g. “which epis­te­mol­ogy should we adopt?” If we adopt ‘X’ epis­te­mol­ogy, then what does that mean for our lives? This ‘prac­ti­cal’ ele­ment is what’s miss­ing from many ‘Chris­t­ian’ treat­ments of phi­los­o­phy, and DeWeese hits the mark.

If I had to give one com­plaint, it would be that the book is as short as it is. It would have been nice to read DeWeese’s thoughts on more top­ics. But then again, want­ing more isn’t much of a com­plaint. I there­fore feel con­fi­dent rec­om­mend­ing this book to oth­ers: he had a tar­get in mind and he hit it. This is an enjoy­able read, a rel­a­tively easy-read, but also an impor­tant one for the empha­sis it puts on prac­ti­cal wisdom.

Many thanks to the peo­ple at Inter­var­sity Press for sup­ply­ing me with a copy of Doing Phi­los­o­phy as a Chris­t­ian for review purposes.

Book Review: “Christian Apologetics” by Douglas Groothuis

A few weeks ago I reviewed a book titled No Argu­ment for God. As you might have guessed if you didn’t read my review — and as my review makes plainly obvi­ous — I wasn’t a fan of this effort by John Wilkin­son — what was sup­posed to have been a return of rea­son to its proper place, ended up being a rejec­tion of apolo­get­ics. This week I’ll be review­ing a book which is the com­plete oppo­site of No Argu­ment for God — Dou­glas Groothuis’ Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics: A Com­pre­hen­sive Case for Bib­li­cal Faith. What a breathe of fresh air.

Before I con­tinue I must note that the copy of Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics sent to me by Inter­var­sity Press appears to be an uncor­rected man­u­script. Please keep that in mind while read­ing the review that fol­lows, as any short­com­ings I might note (if there are any) may be cor­rected before pub­li­ca­tion — unfor­tu­nately, I have no way of know­ing.
 

Thoughts on Part One: Apolo­getic Preliminaries

The first sec­tion of Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics is titled “Apolo­getic Pre­lim­i­nar­ies”, and explains the bib­li­cal basis for apolo­get­ics, what apolo­get­ics is, Groothuis’ method­ol­ogy, and sets the stage for the argu­ments we’ll encounter in favor of Chris­t­ian the­ism (in sec­tion 2 “The Case for Chris­t­ian theism”).

If you’re unfa­mil­iar with or new to apolo­get­ics, then this first sec­tion is required read­ing. If, how­ever, you’ve fol­lowed the likes of William Lane Craig, J.P. More­land, Paul Copan and oth­ers, then chances are that Groothuis will be cov­er­ing famil­iar ter­ri­tory. For exam­ple, chap­ter three, “Eval­u­at­ing World­views”, is rem­i­nis­cent of Fran­cis Scha­ef­fer or Nancy Pearcy. Chap­ter four, “The Chris­t­ian World­view”, explains what the Chris­t­ian world­view is. Chap­ters six and seven — “Truth defined and defended” and “Why Truth Mat­ters Most” — criticize(s) some of the most com­mon fea­tures of post­mod­ernism, specif­i­cally the post­mod­ern view of truth. Impor­tant top­ics to be sure, but no ground­break­ing mate­r­ial in terms of what Groothuis has to say about them. “Apolo­getic Pre­lim­i­nar­ies” is well writ­ten, if at times repet­i­tive; it’s method­i­cal, touches upon the issues that need dis­cussing to set a proper foun­da­tion for the book, and clearly delin­eates where Groothuis is head­ing. As an intro­duc­tion to the rest of the book and apolo­get­ics, it works well.

Thoughts on Part Two: The Case for Chris­t­ian Theism

Hav­ing intro­duced and defended apolo­getic method­ol­ogy, Groothuis begins part two (start­ing at ch. 9) with a defense of nat­ural the­ol­ogy. This lays the foun­da­tion for the bulk of our authors ‘case for bib­li­cal faith’.

Groothuis begins with the onto­log­i­cal (ch. 10), cos­mo­log­i­cal (ch. 11) and tele­o­log­i­cal argu­ments (ch. 12) for God’s exis­tence. Each chap­ter fol­lows the same basic pat­tern. A brief his­tory of the (respec­tive) argu­ment is given, the argu­ment is then pre­sented in full and defended against the most pop­u­lar / sub­stan­tive objec­tions that have been pre­sented through his­tory. Groothuis then changes focus to dis­cuss the impli­ca­tions of Dar­win­ism (ch. 13) and the intel­li­gent design move­ment (ch. 14). This lat­ter chap­ter on intel­li­gent design inter­acts quite a bit with the writ­ings of Michael Behe (irre­ducible com­plex­ity) and William Dem­b­ski (spec­i­fied com­plex­ity) — you’ll know what to expect if you’ve read both these authors. In chap­ter 15 Groothuis dis­cusses the moral argu­ment for God’s exis­tence, argu­ing in part that an objec­tive moral­ity pre­sup­poses God.

Chap­ter 16 is called the ‘argu­ment from reli­gious expe­ri­ence,’ and argues for the super­nat­ural on the basis that all peo­ples and cul­tures express reli­gious incli­na­tions. Build­ing on this foun­da­tion, Groothuis argues that the unique­ness of human­ity (ch. 17) — specif­i­cally con­scious­ness and cog­ni­tion — can only be explained by means of super­nat­ural cre­ation, as a mate­ri­al­is­tic rise of life can­not account for what we see of human peo­ples. Chap­ter 18 is an inter­est­ing expla­na­tion of Pascal’s ‘Anthro­po­log­i­cal Argu­ment’, that man yearns for great­ness is one of the most telling indi­ca­tors of his fall from grace, from a higher state. This is prob­a­bly the most unique argu­ment in the book, as I haven’t read it repeated else­where. Chap­ter 19 is writ­ten by Craig L. Bloomberg and presents a defense for the his­tor­i­cal Jesus, while chap­ters 20, 21 and 23 are devoted to the ‘claims, cre­den­tials and achieve­ments’ of Jesus, the incar­na­tion and the res­ur­rec­tion (of Jesus) respectively.

Com­ing in at just under 400 pages, this sec­ond part of Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics is the bulk of Groothuis’ ‘case’. The ques­tion is, is it effective?

Well, that depends on what Groothuis was try­ing to achieve. Whole books have been writ­ten on onto­log­i­cal, cos­mo­log­i­cal and tele­o­log­i­cal argu­ments. Whole books have been writ­ten on the his­toric­ity of Jesus, the incar­na­tion and the res­ur­rec­tion. To write on all these top­ics in just under 400 pages results in an argu­ment which reads much like an intro­duc­tion (sur­vey?) to these sub­jects rather than a ‘com­pre­hen­sive case for bib­li­cal faith’. That is sim­ply the real­ity of hav­ing so lit­tle space to work with con­sid­er­ing the sub­ject matter.

I think it’s safe to say, then, that Groothuis has quite clearly shown the need for (and bib­li­cal basis of) apolo­get­ics, but what fol­lows reads more like an aca­d­e­mic ‘course-text’ than an argu­ment. As a ‘case’ it’s an alright enough place to begin, but I think more could have been said.

Thoughts on Part Three: Objec­tions to Chris­t­ian Theism

The last four chap­ters of Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics (com­pris­ing sec­tion three) fol­low the same for­mat as part two. In chap­ter 23, Reli­gious Plu­ral­ism, Groothuis addresses the chal­lenge of reli­gious plu­ral­ism, peren­nial phi­los­o­phy, etc. Chap­ter 24, Apolo­get­ics and the Chal­lenge of Islam, briefly exam­ines the Islamic sys­tem of belief, com­par­ing it against the Chris­t­ian scrip­tures to deter­mine the truth of its (Islams) sys­tem. Finally, Groothuis ends with a dis­cus­sion of the var­i­ous answers to the prob­lem of evil (ch. 25) and what this book means prac­ti­cally (ch. 26).

Addi­tion­ally, there is an appen­dix con­tain­ing two more chap­ters, one on the apolo­getic prob­lem of Hell and the other, con­tributed by Richard Hess, focuses on the apolo­getic and inter­pre­tive prob­lems of the Old Tes­ta­ment (i.e. the ques­tion­able ‘moral’ worth of some aspects of the Old Testament).

Con­clud­ing Thoughts

In clos­ing, there are two ‘con­cerns’ I have with Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics, and it’s more a prob­lem with me than with the book. The first is that as I was read­ing, I kept think­ing to myself, “I’ve read this before…” and the feel­ing never really went away. I don’t think this is a book for peo­ple already read-up on apolo­get­ics — it is more for those tak­ing an apolo­get­ics course, or who self-study or are oth­er­wise unaware of apologetics.

My sec­ond con­cern is that it seems like more could have been said. I real­ize the book is already quite large, and I won­der if more should have been said about less (topics).

In any case, much like I rec­om­mend William Lane Craig’s On Guard or Rea­son­able Faith to those look­ing to enter into apolo­get­ics, I like­wise rec­om­mend Groothuis’ book. A word of warn­ing to those already ini­ti­ated, aside from Pas­cal, you might not find many new things said.

A thank you to the peo­ple at Inter­var­sity Press for pro­vid­ing me with a copy of Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics for review purposes.

If you read Contemplations Along the Way

For the time being I will only be post­ing book-reviews here, on nascent thinker. Any other posts will be posted on StudyThoughts. If you’ve been fol­low­ing me here, you’ll want to fol­low me over there. There are a num­ber of rea­sons for the change, regard­less, it is what it is. Even­tu­ally I would like to com­pletely change from one to the other.

The Gospel for Uganda: Seeking Help

My wife, Rebecca, is leav­ing soon to go to Uganda to help train and teach Ugan­dan Church planters. She’s look­ing for sup­port, so if you’re inter­ested in sup­port­ing her I rec­om­mend you read her recent post, Uganda Mis­sion Trip, which also has details to get into con­tact with her. All dona­tions are tax deductible.

Book Review: Every Leader’s Everest by Jim Molloy

Pages: 143
Year: 2011
Author: Jim C. Molloy

“What makes a good leader? There are three prac­ti­cal things: prepa­ra­tion, expe­ri­ence, and pain. A leader who hasn’t suf­fered is not worth fol­low­ing. Hope only grows in the soil of pain, and lead­er­ship with­out hope is weak­ened because lead­ers live in the hope that things will change.“¹

I remem­ber hear­ing a story once; I think Bren­nan Man­ning was the one who told it. It con­cerned a would-be lover, who told the object of his love that he loved her. She responded by ask­ing, “Do you know what hurts me?” To which our would-be lover said, “Well, no, not really…” Then, replied the girl, how can you say you love me, if you don’t know what hurts me?

There is a lot that could be said about pain and suf­fer­ing; have you ever won­dered why so many focus on Jesus’ shar­ing our pain? But that is a topic for another day. Today our topic is Every Leader’s Ever­est, a book on inse­cu­rity and lead­er­ship by Pas­tor Jim Mol­loy of the PAOC (Pen­te­costal Assem­blies of Canada).

Our author begins with an excel­lent prin­ci­ple, and it’s appar­ent from the sto­ries he recounts that he’s had his fair share of pain and suf­fer­ing. So Jim is worth lis­ten­ing to, but is there value (read: wis­dom) in his words?

This isn’t a long book, which is nice (I just fin­ished read­ing a 720 page tome). It deals with  aspects of char­ac­ter in rela­tion to lead­er­ship (it should be noted that peo­ple are inse­cure, not the con­cept of lead­er­ship): inse­cu­rity, reliance, pain, gifts, arro­gance, bit­ter­ness, the roots of these things and the rem­edy — or at least the road to recov­ery. Each topic is addressed out of Jim’s expe­ri­ence: his encoun­ters, and the way he’s dealt with his own inse­cu­rity (and the inse­cu­rity of oth­ers). This is one of those books you can read in an after­noon, but are always com­ing back to because Jim’s quite clever, and has fit a lot of good mate­r­ial in a very small space. It’s like a TARDIS, almost.

So, is there wis­dom in Jim’s words? This, thank­fully, isn’t an ivory-tower self-help book (if it were, I imag­ine Jim would be pic­tured on the front — sharp suit, sleek hair, indi­ca­tions of suc­cess in the back­ground… Char­la­tan with sound-bite advice). This is a book that you can tell is rooted in Jim’s expe­ri­ence over his many years in min­istry. It’s con­cise, to the point, and says what needs to be said. I never once felt as if he said too much, or said too lit­tle. It’s a prac­ti­cal book on lead­er­ship writ­ten out of prac­ti­cal min­istry. There is no the­o­riz­ing that isn’t matched with expe­ri­ence. There is wis­dom here.

Every­one is inse­cure (I’m incred­i­bly inse­cure), and if you’re will­ing to acknowl­edge that you are, then this is a wor­thy read. It’s one of those books you can fin­ish and not feel as if you wasted your time. All in all, this is a book I feel safe in rec­om­mend­ing. Here are some links for you:

Jim’s Blog: http://leaderscripts.wordpress.com/
Buy the book: http://74.53.130.96/~jim/LeaderScripts_Store/Every_Leaders_Everest.html

Interview with Dr. Douglas Groothuis on his upcoming book, “Christian Apologetics”.

 As ‘luck’ would have it, Inter­var­sity Press sent me a review-copy of Dr. Dou­glas Groothuis’ upcom­ing book, Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics: A Com­pre­hen­sive Case for Bib­li­cal Faith. I’m in the process of writ­ing that review now — I don’t recall the last time I read a 700+ page book as fast as I did this book — but in the mean time I was able to ask Dr. Groothuis a cou­ple of ques­tions I think you might be inter­ested in. Dou­glas Groothuis is pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at Den­ver Sem­i­nary, also known for teach­ing an apolo­get­ics class-or-two (and assign­ing many, many required texts).

1. The sub­ti­tle to your book is A Com­pre­hen­sive Case for Bib­li­cal Faith. In light of the many books which cover the same or sim­i­lar mate­r­ial, for exam­ple William Lane Craig’s On Guard or Peter Kreeft and William Tacelli’s Hand­book of Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics, what do you feel Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics adds that read­ers won’t find in other books of the same type?

All good apolo­get­ics books cover some of the same top­ics. My book does over­lap with many of the apolo­get­ics books already in print, and I often refer to them. How­ever, in many years of teach­ing apolo­get­ics at Den­ver Sem­i­nary and else­where, I could never find any one or two–or even five– apolo­get­ics books to cover every­thing I deemed impor­tant. So, I was infa­mous for assign­ing six or seven books every time I taught apolo­get­ics. It was partly to rec­tify that prob­lem that I wrote this book.

My book may be unique among apolo­get­ics texts in the time it spends address­ing East­ern religions–their claim that God is imper­sonal, that karma is true, and so on. Other texts deal pri­mar­ily, if not exclu­sively, with athe­ism as the main com­peti­tor. I address athe­ism in depth, but do not ignore pan­the­ism either. Fur­ther, I have a chap­ter crit­i­ciz­ing Islam, which is rare in apolo­get­ics texts. I could go on, but few apolo­get­ics book pay as much atten­tion to Blaise Pascal’s ideas as I do either. Thus, all in all, I think I have some­thing dif­fer­ent to offer.

I am also very happy that my col­league Craig Blomberg wrote the chap­ter on the reli­a­bil­ity of the New Tes­ta­ment and my col­league Richard Hess wrote a chap­ter on apolo­getic issues in the Old Testamtnt

2. In part one you com­mit a num­ber of pages to defend­ing truth, apolo­get­ics method and a proper con­cep­tion of God and Chris­tian­ity. In your esti­ma­tion, why do so many mis­con­cep­tions about God abound, and why the aver­sion to apolo­get­ics (cf. James Wilkinson’s, “No Argu­ment for God”, which decries logic, rea­son and apologetics)?

We are a soci­ety of well-informed, hyper­ac­tive igno­ra­muses. Peo­ple col­lect fac­tiods and images, but sel­dom reflect deeply on philo­soph­i­cal mat­ters, whether they are Chris­tians or not. But I argue that we must seek truth through rea­son in order to be respon­si­ble peo­ple. Fur­ther, we should not car­i­ca­ture Chris­tian­ity and then reject a straw man. That is why I ded­i­cate a chap­ter to that issue called “Dis­tor­tions of Chris­tian­ity.” (No other apolo­get­ics text has such a chap­ter, to my knowl­edge). In my chap­ters on “The Bib­li­cal Basis for Apolo­get­ics” and “Apolo­getic Method,” I argue against fideism: the claim that faith and rea­son have lit­tle or noth­ing in com­mon. This idea is deeply unbib­li­cal and poi­so­nous for Chris­t­ian wit­ness. It is also out of sync with the best of Chris­t­ian think­ing down through the centuries.

3. I’ve heard it said that a cumu­la­tive case (for a con­clu­sion) means that no one argu­ment is con­vinc­ing by itself, and that we ought to be sus­pect of such argu­ments. How would you reply to this charge?

A cumu­la­tive case gives a col­lec­tion of good argu­ments for the exis­tence of the Chris­t­ian God. One argu­ment can­not estab­lish every­thing for Chris­t­ian the­ism. The same is true with respect to polit­i­cal the­o­ries and hypoth­e­sis in sci­ence. For exam­ple, it was a cumu­la­tive case that estab­lished big bang cos­mol­ogy, not just one argu­ment or one piece of evi­dence. In apolo­get­ics, a solid cos­mo­log­i­cal argu­ment sup­ports the claim that the uni­verse came into exis­tence a finite time ago and that the cause was a per­sonal and all-powerful being. If suc­cess­ful, this argu­ment destroys athe­ism and pan­the­ism and poly­the­ism. How­ever, it does not tell us whether or not God is tri­une or whether God incar­nated in Christ. We need other good argu­ments for those truth claims. And so on.

4. You include a chap­ter on what you call “Pascal’s Anthro­po­log­i­cal Argu­ment,” which I found quite inter­est­ing as I hadn’t heard it offered before. If you could only put forth one argu­ment for the truth of Bib­li­cal Faith, which or what argu­ment would that be?

I have stud­ied, spo­ken about, and writ­ten about Pas­cal for over thirty years. His anthro­po­log­i­cal argu­ment is pro­found because, if suc­cess­ful, it gives strong sup­port for a dis­tinc­tively Chris­t­ian view of God, humans, and sal­va­tion. But, unlike Pas­cal, I argue that this argu­ment should be sup­ported by nat­ural the­ol­ogy: argu­ing from the cre­ation to the Cre­ator by using cos­mo­log­i­cal, design, moral, onto­log­i­cal, and reli­gious expe­ri­ence arguments.

There is no one argu­ment for the Chris­t­ian faith that suits all sit­u­a­tions. We must always inter­pret the world­view and con­cerns of our audi­ence. So, dif­fer­ent audi­ences need dif­fer­ent argu­ments. I would not need to argue for the exis­tence of God when speak­ing to a Mus­lim group. Rather, I would empha­size the iden­tity of Christ and so on. How­ever, if speak­ing to an athe­ist group, I would start with ratio­nal argu­ments for God, since they are athe­ists. Nev­er­the­less, Pascal’s argu­ment is one I have given most fre­quently on col­lege cam­puses and else­where because it addresses the human con­di­tion directly. Pas­cal claims that Chris­tian­ity alone explains our great­ness (because we bear God’s image) and our mis­ery (because we are fallen) and offers the only rem­edy through Jesus Christ.

5. What is your hope for this book?

I hope that “Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics” will equip Chris­tians to know that the Chris­t­ian world­view is true, ratio­nal, and per­ti­nent for all of life; and that they will there­fore live out a com­pe­tent, con­fi­dent, coura­geous, com­pas­sion­ate and cre­ative apolo­getic before the watch­ing world. More specif­i­cally, I hope it stays in print long enough to come out in a sec­ond edi­tion, since I am already think­ing of ways to improve it.

Many thanks to Dr. Groothuis for tak­ing the time to answer these ques­tions, and many thanks to Inter­var­sity Press for sup­ply­ing me with a review-copy of his lat­est book. The review will fol­low in a cou­ple weeks, but in the mean time here are some impor­tant links:

Dr. Groothuis’ blog: http://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/

Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics: Ama­zon, Google ebook­store, CBD (Chris­t­ian Book Dis­trib­u­tors).

Inter­var­sity Press: Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics.

Brief Update

I fig­ure an update is in order.

1) I’ve fin­ished read­ing Dr. Dou­glas Groothuis Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics: A Com­pre­hen­sive Case for Bib­li­cal Faith (see my really brief blurb review here: http://books.google.com/ebooks?id=rQ_SdH1PWyMC&sitesec=reviews). I’ve also asked — and Dr. Groothuis has answered — five (5) inter­view ques­tions. So, both the inter­view and the review will be up in the next week or two, I just have to decide when, and which first — are inter­views used for hype, or should it fol­low the review?

2) I’m neck-deep in read­ing, and it’s the mid-summer(?) rush, which means I’ve had lit­tle time for writ­ing. By the end of August / first week of Sep­tem­ber I will have reviews of And He Dwelt Among Us, Is God a Moral Mon­ster, Doing Phi­los­o­phy as a Chris­t­ian, Every Leader’s Ever­est (Jim C. Mol­loy, http://leaderscripts.wordpress.com/) and The End of Chris­tian­ity pub­lished (not in that order). It took me a lit­tle less than two weeks, minus week­ends, to read through Groothuis’ sys­tem­atic text (720 pages), so I should be in good shape.

3) If any­one ever checks my ‘Inter­est­ing Read­ing’ links, they’ll see that I’ve added a new site — Study Thoughts. In fact, I’ve started “Study Thoughts” myself, and there are var­i­ous rea­sons for that. The first is that my wife — and a few other peo­ple — insist that “nascent thinker” is too hard to remem­ber, espe­cially the ‘nascent’ part. I admit it’s not a com­monly used word, and the dou­ble t’s throw peo­ple off at times. Read­er­ship is also spo­radic (prob­a­bly due to my spo­radic writ­ing), and so I never know where things stand aside from my book reviews mak­ing first page with Google results (or is that the good ole’ per­son­al­ized search bub­ble?). In any case, I’ve got to decide what I’m going to do with “Nascent Thinker | Con­tem­pla­tions Along the Way” and “Study Thoughts”. My first thought is to keep post­ing book reviews here, while post­ing every­thing else on Study Thoughts (until views / read­er­ship on Study Thoughts improve), but I’m not sure (here is your chance for input!). In fact, there is a post or two over there that isn’t over here…

4) I’m involved with a new forum, ‘Our Chris­t­ian Forum’, http://www.ourchristianforum.org/index.php. I’ll leave you to guess my user­name, and no telling for those who know. I’ve also vol­un­teered myself to mod­er­ate on the Organic Themes sup­port forums. They have great Word­Press themes and awe­some sup­port (hey ), I highly rec­om­mend them.

5) My home­world of Gal­lifrey has been timelocked.

6) That’s that. I may be mak­ing a very grad­ual tran­si­tion from here to ‘Study Thoughts’, but we’ll see how things go before I make a final deci­sion. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some read­ing to do…

Wilson vs. Hitchens: Is Christianity Good for the World?

A tran­script of the debate (.pdf) can be found here.

Faith as True Vis-à-vis Its Irrationality

Intro­duc­tion

The fol­low­ing pas­sage can be found on pages 41 and 42 of John Wilkinson’s No Argu­ment for God: Going Beyond Rea­son in Con­ver­sa­tions about Faith:

One of the cen­tral ques­tions of this book is whether faith is actu­ally more real because of its inabil­ity to fit into the things that we know. Think about this for a moment. What if the truest things in the world are those that are most elu­sive? In some sort of strange, para­dox­i­cal way per­haps the most log­i­cal thing about faith is its appar­ent irra­tional­ity.¹

Wilkin­son is sug­gest­ing we can judge how true a reli­gious claim is by how much sense it makes — if it sounds as if it orig­i­nated from within or out­side human imag­i­na­tion. If a claim appears as if it came from a human mind, then it is not as likely to be true as the claim that appears as if it orig­i­nated out­side the human mind (cf. chap­ter 13). Wilkin­son demon­strates this point by high­light dif­fer­ences between karma and grace; the lat­ter so utterly against sense and rea­son that it is most likely the truth out of the two.

A sim­i­lar ‘argu­ment’ can be gleaned from dis­cus­sions where Chris­tian­ity is deemed the prod­uct of Freudian wish-fulfillment, or some such thing. Chris­tians would be quick to point out the doc­trines of hell, sin, grace and the need of a Sav­ior as col­lid­ing with the idea of Chris­tian­ity qua wish-fulfillment. One can then con­ceive of Wilkin­son extend­ing this argu­ment into the realm of reli­gious claims. But how does our author’s sug­ges­tion fair under examination?

What Makes Sense?

The first prob­lem I fore­see for Wilkinson’s ‘argu­ment from ratio­nal­ity’ is the ‘anthro­po­log­i­cal prob­lem,’ oth­er­wise the ‘prob­lem from human expe­ri­ence’. Put sim­ply, human expe­ri­ence varies greatly depend­ing on cul­ture, geog­ra­phy, his­tor­i­cal period, etc. What makes sense (is ‘ratio­nal’ is Wilkinson’s usage) to one cul­ture might not make sense to another, and vice-versa. Con­sider an exam­ple; in the year 2011 I have a good under­stand­ing of how weather sys­tems work, and that sac­ri­fic­ing such-and-such to this-or-that god will not result in rain­fall, good crop yield, etc. In the year 800 B.c.e., how­ever, one might rea­son­ably believe (that is, it makes sense) that sac­ri­fic­ing a goat or child to this-or-that god will result in rain­fall, good crop yield, etc. Given such dis­par­ity in human expe­ri­ence, how can one rea­son­ably make an appeal like the one sug­gested by our author? …Con­tinue Reading

Challenging Faith

It is appar­ently a mys­tery (to some) why I still have faith.

You see, those that hap­pen upon my col­lec­tion of books some­times express amaze­ment that I still have my faith, with the sort of read­ing I do (their words). When they look into my ‘office’ (i.e. my half of the liv­ing room), the top of one of my book­shelves greets them with the fol­low­ing titles:

• The God Delu­sion by Richard Dawkins
• god is not Great: How Reli­gion Poi­sons Every­thing by Christo­pher Hitchens
• The End of Faith by Sam Harris
• Let­ter of a Chris­t­ian Nation by Sam Harris
• Break­ing the Spell: Reli­gion as a Nat­ural Phe­nom­e­non by Daniel Dennett
• Why I am not a Chris­t­ian by Bertrand Russell
• God’s Prob­lem by Bart Ehrman
• Mis­quot­ing Jesus by Bart Ehrman
• Jesus for the non-Religious by John Shelby Spong
• The Sins of Scrip­ture by John Shelby Spong
• The Demon Haunted World: Sci­ence as a Can­dle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
• The Chris­t­ian Delu­sion by John W. Lof­tus et al.
• Every­thing Niet­zsche wrote…
• The Reli­gious Case against Belief by James P. Carse

I have had acquain­tances ask me what these books say, how they are to read, if I’d rec­om­mend them, and yet they will refuse to read them them­selves (one even refused to touch The God Delu­sion, let alone read it).

Should it be a sur­prise, given my small library of ‘anti-Christian’ books, that those mean­der­ing through my liv­ing room might express sur­prise at my ongo­ing and seem­ingly unper­turbed faith? I don’t think it should. What should be sur­pris­ing is that some feel that the inves­ti­ga­tion and chal­leng­ing of their faith will even­tu­ally lead to the aban­don­ment of that faith. My con­cern is for truth, and I think everyone’s con­cern should be truth.

I would like to think that if some­thing is true, then it is true regard­less of how we might chal­lenge it, or what case against it we might come up with. If the Chris­t­ian faith is true, it is secure regard­less of the chal­lenges it faces. It is the same for any truth, and I think that only makes sense. So when I read a book like any of the above, I do a cou­ple things: (1) I try to be as open as pos­si­ble to what’s being said, (2) I try to be as objec­tive as pos­si­ble to the argu­ments pro­vided, and (3) I try to give a fair hear­ing to the con­clu­sions drawn, regard­less of any prior com­mit­ments I hold. In other words, I read these books in the hope that they will actu­ally chal­lenge my faith. I want to know whether my faith is true or false, and I’m prob­a­bly not going to find that out if I stick to books writ­ten by those shar­ing my exist­ing beliefs.

Here’s a lit­tle known fact about myself: I went and sub­se­quently left ‘Bible Col­lege’ (I’m now study­ing for a degree in Reli­gious Stud­ies) because there was too much agree­ing and not enough chal­leng­ing. It just wasn’t chal­leng­ing enough, both aca­d­e­m­i­cally and towards my beliefs.

So, that’s why I still have faith. As for those books above, I didn’t find them con­vinc­ing. They were chal­leng­ing and raised a slew of good ques­tions / objec­tions, to be sure… But they weren’t con­vinc­ing. I still have my faith because I’m not afraid to chal­lenge it and grap­ple with doubt. For those who don’t chal­lenge their faith, well frankly, I don’t under­stand how they’ve man­aged to hold onto it for so long.