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? Read More

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.

On the topic of Faith

Have you ever heard some­one say, “If there were proof of God, then there would be no room for faith”? It’s a shal­low bit of think­ing, in part because it rep­re­sents an incom­plete view of faith. Trag­i­cally, I think many Chris­tians espe­cially have uncrit­i­cally adopted a view of faith which is more in line with what’s tra­di­tion­ally been known as blind faith. it is a faith that is with­out proof or evi­dence, a faith which is fun­da­men­tally irra­tional. What an incon­sis­tent and mis­guided under­stand­ing of faith, espe­cially for those Chris­tians who have ever taken the time to sit down and read the Bible!

Bib­li­cal Faith con­tra Mod­ern Faith

When a mod­ern per­son talks about faith, it quickly becomes appar­ent that they don’t mean the same thing by ‘faith’ that Scrip­ture means. This is most evi­dent in Hebrews 11¹, rec­og­nized for list­ing the heroes of the ‘faith’. Con­sider the first words we first hap­pen upon in chap­ter 11, “Now faith is the assur­ance of things hoped for, the con­vic­tion of things not seen“². The mod­ern reads this and stops, exclaim­ing, “There you have it! Faith is blind. There is no proof for it, no argu­ments for it; it is belief in absence!” This might be alright if the entire Bible were just these first two verses of Hebrews 11, but it isn’t.

The most defin­i­tive refu­ta­tion of this under­stand­ing of faith is the remain­der of Hebrews 11… And, frankly, the rest of the Bible.

Let’s first look to v. 8, “By Faith Abra­ham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inher­i­tance; and he set out not know­ing where he was going”. That Abra­ham acted through faith is impor­tant, but what is equally impor­tant is the phrase “when he was called to set out for a place”. How did Abra­ham know he was called? Now turn to v. 17, “By faith Abra­ham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac”. Who instructed Abra­ham? Think now of Moses, and skip to v. 27, “By faith he left Egypt, unafraid of the king’s anger; for her per­se­vered as though he saw him who is invis­i­ble”. Con­sider Moses’ expe­ri­ence lead­ing up to the Exodus.

What these verses high­light is an evi­denced faith. God had proven Him­self to these men, and they fol­lowed in faith. Their faith had a ratio­nal and expe­ri­en­tial foun­da­tion. Through­out the books of Gen­e­sis and Exo­dus, and the entirety of Scrip­ture, we read of those — such as Abra­ham and Moses — fol­low­ing after God in faith after encoun­ters which would sat­isfy even the most hard­ened mod­ern skep­tic. Here are a few more examples:

• Adam and Eve in the gar­den of Eden (Gen. 1 –3), who walked with God yet lacked faith.
• Noah, whom God spoke to (Gen. 6).
• The prophets of the Old Tes­ta­ment: Isa­iah, Jere­miah, Ezekiel, Samuel, etc.
• The apos­tles, who walked with Christ.
• Paul, who encoun­tered Christ.
• Mary and the women who dis­cov­ered the empty tomb.
• Every believer… (Proof does not remove doubt, nor faith. This should be quite obvious).

Now that we’ve done away with the errant mod­ern con­cep­tion of faith, how do we rec­on­cile Hebrews 11 with the real­ity that many in Scrip­ture (and every believer today) encoun­ters God in a irrefutable way.

Con­fu­sion Quickly Clarified

Above I attempted to show that the bib­li­cal con­cept of faith is based upon a know­able and trust­wor­thy God. As things would have it, Hebrews 11 agrees.

The Harper-Collins Study Bible con­tains the fol­low­ing note con­cern­ing v.1,“The word trans­lated by assur­ance (Greek hyposta­sis)… is not sim­ply a sub­jec­tive atti­tude; unseen real­i­ties are tested and ‘proved’ by expe­ri­ence”. The ESV study bible agrees, adding that, “bib­li­cal faith is not a vague hop grounded in imag­i­nary, wish­ful think­ing… Bib­li­cal faith is not blind trust in the face of con­trary evi­dence, not an unknow­able ‘leap in the dark’”. Faith is trust­ing in the promises of God, as much as, if not more, than it is hold­ing a gen­eral belief that God exists.

The issue with the mod­ern con­cept of faith is that it ends at the propo­si­tion ‘God exists’. If any­one could prove that God exists, then faith isn’t nec­es­sary. But faith isn’t only about know­ing that God exists (cf. James 2:19), it is also about trust­ing in the promises of God, a trust built upon expe­ri­ence. In this way our know­ing whether or not God exists becomes sec­ondary, as does any proof we might prof­fer for God’s exis­tence. An impor­tant aspect of bib­li­cal faith is that it is rela­tional.

Com­ing back to things…

The Chris­t­ian can­not accept the mod­ernist con­cep­tion of faith — it directly opposes what Scrip­ture teaches us about the nature of faith. We ought to keep in mind that faith is more more than believ­ing propo­si­tions, it is trust­ing in a rela­tion­ship. With this in mind, we ought to be able to prop­erly approach any dis­cus­sion con­cern­ing faith, and cor­rect those who would under­mine faith as under­stood bib­li­cally, remov­ing any pos­si­bil­ity of certainty.

Just Arrived: Is God a Moral Monster, by Paul Copan

Last year I linked to an arti­cle writ­ten by philoso­pher Paul Copan, titled “Is YHWH a Moral Mon­ster”? Less than a year later we now have a book, Is God a Moral Mon­ster? Mak­ing sense of the Old Tes­ta­ment. My think­ing is that one can­not read too many books on this subject.

So any­way, this effort is an attempt to explain (near as I can tell) why the God of the Old Tes­ta­ment is the way he is. It’s no secret that the God of the Old Tes­ta­ment appears so dif­fer­ent from the Jesus of the New Tes­ta­ment — unlov­ing, unkind, wrath­ful, venge­ful, etc. -  that some have gone so far as to rid them­selves of the Old Tes­ta­ment entirely (begin­ning with Mar­cion and the heresy of Marcionism).

In his highly praised and crit­i­cized book The God Delu­sion, ethol­o­gist and evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins had the fol­low­ing to say about the God of the Old Tes­ta­ment, and I dare say many share his thoughts:

The God of the Old Tes­ta­ment is arguably the most unpleas­ant char­ac­ter in all of fic­tion: jeal­ous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unfor­giv­ing control-freak; a vin­dic­tive, blood­thirsty eth­nic cleanser; a misog­y­nis­tic, homo­pho­bic, racist, infan­ti­ci­dal, geno­ci­dal, fil­i­ci­dal, pesti­len­tial, mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal, sado­masochis­tic, capri­ciously malev­o­lent bully.¹

That about says it, doesn’t it? In any case, the back-cover states that Copan will address some of the most com­mon con­cerns regard­ing the God of the Old Tes­ta­ment, such as his seem­ing arro­gance and jeal­ousy, his endorse­ment of slav­ery and harsh treat­ment of peo­ple, his oppres­sion of women and con­sent towards geno­cide and violence.

It will be inter­est­ing to see how Copans devel­ops this book. In the mean time, there have been some exchanges between Paul Copan, Hec­tor Avalaos, Matthew Flan­na­gan, and Thom Stark con­cern­ing Copan’s answers, so if you can’t wait for my review, you might see for your­self (be pre­pared to do some read­ing — Thom Stark’s response is book length).

Gossip

To most peo­ple I’m not an easy per­son to get to know, because I expect an invest­ment or com­mit­ment of some sort from the per­son try­ing to get to know me (e.g. to demon­strate why they want to know what they want to know). This puts enough peo­ple off that they will set­tle for what they think of me, and once they have decided what they think of me, they will promptly tell my wife while avoid­ing me altogether.

There is the art of con­ver­sa­tion, and then there is get­ting to truly know some­one. Don’t con­fuse the two; the first uses peo­ple for the sake of con­ver­sa­tion, the lat­ter uses con­ver­sa­tion for the sake of people.

A Pastor’s Education

John Wes­ley once said the following:

Ought not a Min­is­ter to have, First, a good under­stand­ing, a clear appre­hen­sion, a sound judg­ment, and a capac­ity of rea­son­ing with some close­ness?¹

Have you ever encoun­tered a ‘self­ish’ church? A church which tries to keep ‘their’ pas­tor to them­selves? I have. I’ve encoun­tered churches that cringed at the thought of let­ting their pas­tor go to some con­fer­ence, because it meant their pas­tor couldn’t preach that par­tic­u­lar Sun­day. I’ve encoun­tered churches that cringed at the idea of allow­ing oth­ers to preach, or give a mes­sage, in addi­tion to the pas­tor. I’ve encoun­tered churches whose mem­bers first thought, when their pas­tor makes a request, is “But that will mess up my…” Pastor’s aren’t owned by churches, or at least they shouldn’t be. Any church which goes to such a degree as described above, is a church that needs a good shake. Any con­gre­ga­tion or church board who thinks of them­selves before their pas­tor, when their pas­tor makes a request, needs to learn their place.

A ques­tion: who would you hire or trust more (all things being equal), the col­lege grad­u­ate or the col­lege grad­u­ate with expe­ri­ence? The teacher out of teach­ers col­lege, or the teacher with expe­ri­ence? The doc­tor straight out of med school, or the doc­tor with expe­ri­ence? Expe­ri­ence is just as impor­tant as edu­ca­tion — in many ways it is edu­ca­tion. So why would a church cringe at the idea of their pas­tor leav­ing for a con­fer­ence, or train­ing sem­i­nar, or hands on what­ever? It doesn’t make sense to me, does it make sense to you? Wouldn’t you want the leader of your church to be as edu­cated and as capa­ble as they could be? I cer­tainly would.

The thing about it is this: when we learn, we grow — this seems so basic it shouldn’t need point­ing out. To refuse to allow a pas­tor the oppor­tu­nity to grow is incred­i­bly self­ish. Refus­ing to allow another the oppor­tu­nity to edu­cate them­selves fur­ther (esp. in their trained field) is near about absurd as one can get. Regard­less of the obscene tuition I’m pay­ing that may say oth­er­wise, you can’t put a price on edu­ca­tion, so if you’re a mem­ber of a church or church board, be con­sid­er­ate of your pastor.

C.S. Lewis on the cost of love, and avoiding God.

First, Lewis on the cost of love:

“To love at all is to be vul­ner­a­ble. Love any­thing, and your heart will cer­tainly be wrung and pos­si­bly bro­ken. If you want to make sure of keep­ing it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an ani­mal. Wrap it care­fully round with hob­bies and lit­tle lux­u­ries; avoid all entan­gle­ments; lock it up safe in the cas­ket or cof­fin of your self­ish­ness. But in that cas­ket– safe, dark, motion­less, airless–it will change. It will not be bro­ken; it will become unbreak­able, impen­e­tra­ble, irre­deemable… The only place out­side of Heaven where you can be per­fectly safe from all the dan­gers of per­tur­ba­tions of love is Hell.”¹

Nod to William Val­li­cella of Mav­er­ick Philoso­pher for this quote from C.S. Lewis, on how to avoid God:

Avoid silence, avoid soli­tude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Con­cen­trate on money, sex, sta­tus, health and (above all) on your own griev­ances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of seda­tion. If you must read books, select them very care­fully. But you’d be safer to stick to the papers. You’ll find the adver­tise­ments help­ful; espe­cially those with a sexy or a snob­bish appeal. ²

Wierd Al, CNR

Ear­lier today I watched Charles Nel­son Reilly’s The Life of Reilly. If you’re a Reilly fan, it’s worth the watch. In the mean time, Weird Al’s take on the leg­end of CNR — Charles Nel­son Reilly.

Facebook Christianity

Some times I get in a mood where all I want to do is write. The prob­lem is I don’t think I have any­thing to write about…
…So I’m going to say a few things about ‘Face­book Chris­tian­ity’, and maybe find myself in trouble.

What do I mean about Face­book Chris­tian­ity? A few things, actu­ally. I mean the con­tra­dic­tion that may exist between a per­sons reli­gious views and the con­tent of their wall, pho­tos, notes, etc. I mean the con­tra­dic­tion between a per­sons non-online actions and their inces­sant sta­tus updates about what God has done, is doing, or will do. I mean the false sense of com­mu­nity Face­book imbibes into its users.

Why then do Chris­tians on Face­book adver­tize their faith in ways they oth­er­wise wouldn’t?

Do you remem­ber when peo­ple would incor­rectly attribute “preach the gospel and if nec­es­sary use words” to St. Fran­cis of Assisi, and then go about fol­low­ing the quote? There prob­a­bly isn’t any need to remem­ber this, I have acquain­tances who recently quoted this very say­ing. There are, to be sure, prob­lems with the above (least of all being false-attribution). But for the mean time lets take it as an over­re­ac­tion against a gospel being preached but not lived by the preacher. I real­ize I’m being a bit lib­eral, but don’t worry, because the quote doesn’t really mat­ter. What mat­ters is this: I have never known any of my Chris­t­ian friends to con­stantly let the world know what God is doing, or what they are pray­ing for, or what­ever. Face­book allows any­one to be a Chris­t­ian with­out hav­ing to do any­thing; in other words, it pro­motes nom­i­nal­ism. It’s not just the crazy-street-preacher who has a soap-box, every­one does now, it’s called Face­book.

That’s not to say my friends are bad Chris­tians. Rather, it is to say that if peo­ple said in real life what they write on Face­book, they would be con­sid­ered annoy­ing. Yes, I said it, annoy­ing. When I go onto Face­book only to see an emo­tional roller-coaster ride of a news feed, filled with talk about God this and God that… It’s annoy­ing. And it’s annoy­ing me because it’s fake. Let me rephrase that, it’s fake in a lot of cases. It’s not always fake, but when it is, it’s annoy­ing. When it’s not fake, it doesn’t bother me. Why? Authen­tic­ity. I don’t care if you can say a mil­lion good things about God — if you don’t live it, what you say doesn’t mat­ter (com­pare this with the quote above).

How do I know these peo­ple are being fake? I know because along­side their stated reli­gious view and inces­sant updates, they’ve got mul­ti­ple horo­scope appli­ca­tions and favourite-quotes by the most anti-Christian authors imag­in­able. And yet there they are sup­port­ing these things as if their faith actu­ally allows for it. Guess what? It doesn’t. The con­tra­dic­tion bugs me, but I’m almost cer­tain it turns off all those non-Christian friends they’re try­ing to reach. Do they get it? Do they see the con­tra­dic­tion between “Can’t wait to learn what God has in store for me today!” and “So-and-so has read such-and-such horo­scope, read yours to find out what’s in store for you today!” Really? God is so great that they have to read a horo­scope? God gave these peo­ple a brain (I’m almost pos­i­tive), they need to start using it.

And lis­ten, start­ing Face­book groups is not a sub­sti­tute for church, or church activ­i­ties. Here’s what it is: it’s like wear­ing a t-shirt that says “I’m a Chris­t­ian,” to a mall. Big deal. Facebook-Christianity is the ‘new’ Sunday-Christianity (which, inci­den­tally, is still a thriv­ing past-time).

So here is what I’m say­ing, regard­less of what I’ve said above: be authen­tic in your faith. Don’t use Face­book as your per­sonal soap box. Think before you exclaim — every five min­utes — what God is doing for you, as if you never expected God to do any­thing for you (so to those of you who won­der why I don’t become ecsta­tic when God has done some­thing, it’s because I actu­ally believe God can do things — go fig­ure). Be con­sis­tent with what you write, the pic­tures you take, the things you do, the appli­ca­tions you install. Peo­ple are watch­ing. Don’t overdo your faith, there is such a thing as smothering.