external linksHoly Scripture Searchable Online Bibles And Other Resources Biblios Bible Gateway Blue Letter Bible Christian Ministry Text and Audio Messages of the Prophet / Evangelist William Marrion Branham ChurchAges.com Living Word Broadcast Literary Resources Texts broadly relevant to the Christian heritage and worldview Christian Etherial Classics Library |
Tuesday, May 29. 2012The God Debate – Part 3 : The Argument For Theism Distilled
In Part 2 I cited some seven arguments which weigh in favour of the existence of God. Here, for the sake of simplicity, I will present a distillation of these arguments into one simple proposition. It is simply this – that the world of human experience, a world characterised by mind, consciousness, value and meaning, a world in which we value truth, beauty and moral virtue, is better explained by intelligent creative agency than undirected natural causes. Insofar as complex specified information is more plausibly the product of mind than of a random process of chance and necessity, the inference from inherent mind is by far the more direct.
Ultimately it is as simple as that, namely so far as argument is concerned. This brings us to a broad generic God – a creator and sustainer of the universe, who also is the origin of value and meaning. As to the God of biblical revelation, such is necessarily beyond the reach of rational argument, being essentially existential in nature. Like the appreciation of beauty, or the experience of being in love, although reasons may be adduced, it is the experience itself which is primary. Revelation, accordingly, denotes a more immediate form of knowing than logical inference, wherefore also rational belief in a theist universe is a necessary but not sufficient condition for religious faith. Indeed many ostensible atheist philosophers and scientists will admit to defacto metaphysical conceptions, being careful the while to avoid that vexed and vexatious concept – God – as the effigy of an unsound mind. Typical is a radical misconstrual of the religious worldview and psychology, maintained by a prejudiced antipathy which precludes proper examination of its object. What should further be born in mind is the infinite regress inherent in the rational analytical method, whereby ultimate synthesis, by its very nature, recedes from its grasp. Conclusions concerning ultimate meaning are necessarily beyond reach of that method, which is by nature contextual and relativistic. This is consistent with the biblical notion that faith – revelation or direct intuitive insight – is the proper basis for orientation in a universe of irreducible mystery. As previously stated, this does not negate the reason; it places it in context. Faith – apriori belief – as I further showed, is foundational to any rational worldview, whether religious or secular. It is the primary means of engagement with the mystery. Reason is mere elaboration of the fractal edge of the episteme. It is faith which delivers the substance, the archetype, the worldview, the reality. It is a question then of how one is informed on this more fundamental level – whether by constructs of mind and meaning or those of chaos and non-meaning. Here again is mystery in that the choice of the soul may constitute a metaphysical creative act, the universe of observation and reason merely supporting and confirming – within certain limits perhaps – whatever projections are placed upon it. Indeed this further accords with scripture – namely the idea that mind or consciousness is primary; the universe being a mind-created construct – a construct of language. Faith, it is stated, is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It is the positive biblical faith of which it is here spoken – the faith of things hoped for – although, as a metaphysical principle it would necessarily apply to any faith. And so it is faith – not reason – which provides us with the ultimate basis for a language of meaning. Tuesday, May 29. 2012The God Debate – Part 2 : The Arguments for Theism, Problems and Observations
Having discussed the arguments on the atheist side, we now turn to the arguments for theism. Before exploring my own position in this regard, I wish to review the arguments which have become standards of the theist defence. Cited here are seven principal lines of argument, and only the briefest outline is provided. For a full exposition the reader may consult the work of prominent Christian apologist William Lane Craig.
1. The Contingency Argument: All that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in its own nature or an external cause. As the only reality which is self-existent, non-contingent, existing necessarily, God is the explanation why everything else exists. 2. The Cosmological Argument: All that began to exist has a cause of its existence. The universe began to exist. Therefore the universe has a cause. This cause, as the transcendent origin of all space and time, is the universal creator of classical theism. 3. The Argument from Design and Cosmic Fine Tuning: The observed fine tuning of the cosmos (as allowing for the emergence of life) is either due to necessity, chance or design. It is not due to necessity or chance. Therefore it is due to design, with the necessary inference to a cosmic designer. 4. The Argument from Objective Moral Values: If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. But objective moral values do exist. Therefore God exists. 5. The Ontological Argument: Extant in several versions, this defines God as the greatest possible being imaginable, who for this reason necessarily exists. 6. The Argument from the Historicity of the Christian Faith: Historically the life of Christ – i.e. Jesus of Nazareth – is well attested, including the facts concerning his burial, the empty tomb, his resurrection appearances and his disciple’s sudden faith in him as the risen Lord. The best explanation of these facts is that God raised Jesus from the dead. This entails that God exists and Jesus was who he claimed to be. 7. The Argument from Revelation: Insofar as God may be known directly, evidence of his existence is thereby provided altogether apart from argument. A cumulative case is thus made for a universal creator and designer, for God as the source of value and meaning, leading ultimately to the personal God of Christian revelation. Between divine creation and a fluke, it is argued, as the inference to the best explanation the evidence strongly suggests a spiritual rather than merely material universe. And thus on purely rational grounds one might concur with Salvador Dali – the existence of God is a scientific and mathematical certainty. Nevertheless I suspect that, were I an atheist, I would not find any of this convincing. The problem is that the God being argued in (1) through (5) is conceptual – not a sensate entity – and thus to a large extent definitional. Unless one accepts the language of theism one necessarily remains a philosophical agnostic or atheist. Insofar as language defines conceptual reality, rational argument is futile where it cannot be grounded in a common language. Yet even more fundamentally, it does not appear that these essential questions of worldview are decided on rational grounds at all. Underlying the arguments on either side seems to be a prior commitment, which is intuitive in nature, and thus the basis, rather than the result, of rational argument. How we come by our basic worldview is an interesting question in itself. The mechanism involved would seem to be social and cultural – we tend to adopt the worldview of those we like and respect; we assimilate it intuitively and more or less whole-cloth, perhaps with a bit of rationalising after the event to convince ourselves we are being rational. This seems to me a matter of simple observation, and I am astonished by protagonists – individuals for whom rationality is a crusade – who seem oblivious to this elementary fact of human psychology. But there seems to be a mystery even more profound in the fact of human individuality, which we may call the mystery of the soul. Why do I exist, one is bound to ask, reflecting that beyond culture and biology, beyond genes and memes, there portends an individual essence – primary and irreducible – which makes for human free will and destiny. The arguments then are secondary. Belief in God, as philosopher Alvin Plantinga states, is properly basic to human consciousness and sensibility. This would seem to accord with the biblical view. As states St Paul, in him [God] we live, and move, and have our being. God, by this view, is identified with actuality itself, and thus exists by definition. This brings us back to the ontological argument, whereby God is effectively defined into existence. In any meaningful world, it may be argued, there is that which is foundational, which is primary, ultimate or absolute, and this we rightly define as God. In other words, something or someone is necessarily God, so that the real question concerns the nature of God, the nature of the reality we thus designate. It is here that the atheist stance is typically confused. Consider the following statement by the emeritus professor of physics and prominent atheist, Victor Stenger: An objective reality, with no special role for consciousness, human or cosmic, is consistent with all observations. Asserted with a straight face, presumably, this pronouncement nevertheless undermines itself in a stupendous self-contradiction. For what is observation – all observation – but a fact in consciousness? We see in effect that the empirical focus is too narrow. If we consider Stenger’s statement as an equation, we have on the one side objective reality, whatever that may be. On the other we have observation, mind, consciousness, reason, and the whole apparatus of science. But all these quasi subjective elements are curiously taken for granted. They don’t seem to figure as significant to the philosophy of pragmatic methodological naturalism, foundational though they are to the entire enterprise. The image I like to invoke is of a wizard, gazing through a hollow tube, insisting that what he thus beholds at the far end of his device is the only reality. One can only wonder at the lack of situational awareness, of any reflection concerning the gestalt wherein the enterprise is embedded. It is such observations which convince me that atheism is not so much a reasoned philosophical position, but rather a confused psychological state, essentially emotional in nature and predicated on an altogether justified distaste for religion in its regressive manifestations. It is God, misconceived as a crude and primitive construct, which seems to be the stumbling block. The impression is conveyed of individuals who never got over their dysfunctional Sunday school classes. It is at least curious that serious scientists should devote book-length treatises to disproving the existence of an entity which they would class with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Thus at issue, it would seem, is the religious sensibility with its perceived baggage of traditional piety. To entertain the God hypothesis, atheists insist, is to abandon experience and reason. Rational discourse thus necessarily ceases for them in the approach of this mystery. As St Paul ably observed, to the Greeks – the intellectuals and sophists – it is foolishness. Yet, and this is further revealing, in banishing the God-concept, something is necessarily put in its place – be it the quantum vacuum or the multiverse – to explain reality in its ultimate sense. So it is not the God hypothesis as such which is at issue, but what it is believed to entail. Indeed the God concept, in some form, is intrinsic to any meaningful construction of human experience. Any rational worldview necessarily positions itself with respect to an absolute. Consequently it is meaning which is the ultimate issue. The God of classical theism is consistent with a world in which mind and meaning are primary. Atheism, by contrast, if it is consistent, begins and ends in metaphysical nihilism. For mind and meaning, on this view, are mere epiphenomena of material process, incidental and transient ripples in an abyss of unmeaning. Yet insofar as atheists insist on the validity of their own conclusions their position undermines itself. There is something inherently contradictory to the notion of a meaningless process which gives rise to meaningful insight. It is, at the very least, more consistent to propose that value and meaning are intrinsic. If conventional science baulks at this, it does so owing to its method of preferring simpler explanations over more complex ones. This facilitates scientific inquiry, but what if the universe is otherwise disposed? What if pleroma or plenum is the nature of reality? (Pleroma, in Greek mythology, denotes the full complement of Olympus – the sum of all possible meaning.) It is moreover questionable whether the idol of materialism – the quantum vacuum or whatever the conceived ‘simple’ basis of existence – is really that simple, considering the complexity to which it gives rise. Theories of evolution and self-organisation notwithstanding, does it even make sense to assert that the complex world experience is not implicit in the nature of universal process? It is the need to bring all things within rational surmise which necessitates a reductive view to the exclusion of mystery. Yet the idea of a rational universe is, on examination, appalling. For only a transcendent mystery provides the necessary ground for science and reason. A rational universe, by contrast, is inherently entropic – tending to ultimate non-meaning – which brings us to a startling parallel between the mind of rationalism and the universe of its surmise. The choice of worldview, it would seem, is primary, each providing its own confirmatory validation in the realm of reason and experience. We have seen moreover that the rational empirical mindset represents a deliberate narrowing upon the phenomenal, and so an intentional splitting off from the larger universe of experience and humane discourse. Historically we observe this narrowing and splitting in the Enlightenment at the rise of modernism. Indeed it may have been necessary for the development of modern science as we know it. Yet as an overarching philosophy it is evidently flawed, and unless the empirical contingent rejoin the party – as of the grand philosophic tradition – the debate must necessarily remain at an impasse. Reference: Victor Stenger, Quantum Quackery, Skeptical Inquirer, January / February 1997 William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 1994 Tuesday, March 20. 2012Christianity In The Cultural Balance
Critics of theism contend that Christianity has been a culturally regressive phenomenon. But the case, as argued elsewhere, is one-sided and overstated. Jürgen Habermas, the German atheist philosopher, redresses the balance in that he wrote:
Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than a mere precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in the light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk. History would seem to bear this out. Nations which passed into modernity with the humane institutions we nowadays value – democracy, due process of law, healthcare, education, and so on – are those which in which Protestant Christianity found a welcome home. We must needs emphasise Protestant Christianity in that by Christianity proper we mean a biblically authentic derivation. This is not to imply that the reformed traditions are perfect in this respect – far from it – but historically they are the nearest we possess. Catholicism, by contrast, usually charged with subverting human progress for a dark one thousand years, represents the total repudiation of the biblical doctrine. The same holds for religious imperialism and cultural genocide. Irrespective of the Christian institutions involved – and here the Protestant denominations share a burden of responsibility – the imperial, expansionist, colonial attitude is entirely without justification in the scriptural canon. As to the ongoing destruction of archaic, tribal or magical cultures this would seem to be a historically distinct phenomenon, pursued for a variety of ideological reasons. So far as Christianity has been complicit, we may state paradoxically that Christianity is not Christianity. That is to say, the visible historic manifestations of Christendom are not coextensive with the Christian faith. Indeed in large measure the institutional church has persecuted its own, that is, the true exponents of that faith. Thus we see that the subject is historically complex, making it difficult, if not impossible, to render an accurate delineation of relevant circumstances. A case can be made on definitional grounds, that authentic Christianity – which is the Spirit of Christ in manifestation – cannot be destructive of the cultural good. Yet, all this conceded, it may be that a more essential, more fundamental, point is still overlooked. The suggestion is that the appearing of Christ in first-century Palestine produced a fundamental change in the quality of human consciousness – that indeed it gave rise to the reflective self-awareness intrinsic to modern human consciousness. This is a notion, subtle as it is profound, difficult to define as it is to prove. But the evidence, circumstantial though it be, is intriguing. In The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind the Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes makes a case for the novel theory that human consciousness in the ancient world was radically other than is commonly experienced by moderns. Indeed the ancients were not conscious in the modern sense of possessing a self-reflective ‘I’ – so the theory – but they perceived thought and impression as the objectified oracle of the gods, which is to say, as voices in the head. Without examining the idea in depth, there is arguably a measure of corroboration in the evident cultural discontinuity, say, between the modern rational mind and the so-called dreamtime consciousness of magical or tribal shamanism. Again, a vast shift in human sensibility appears to have occurred over the roughly one thousand years centred on the Gregorian year 1, and so, on the advent of the Mind of Christ. This is principally apparent in that the modern rational construction of intellect is commonly traced back to the thinkers of classical Greece – Archimedes, Euclid, Pythagoras et al. No such reference, however, is widely made with respect to ancient Egypt, from which Grecian science and culture derives. The nigh explanation and point is this – that the Greeks are familiar and recognisable to us in their mode of thought. The Egyptians, by contrast, appear to us utterly alien. Indeed so incomprehensible is the Egyptian opus to the modern sensibility that archaeologist tend to play down its genius, to deny its palpable scientific eminence, even while the celebrated classical cultures represent but a pale shadow of the ancient grandeur. Here we may also cite the magical empires of the Americas – the Olmec, Toltec, Maya and Inca, to name but a few – and we confront the theory, as elaborated by Graeme Hancock et al, of a primordial or prehistoric high civilisation of global extent. It is a further question whether the ancient paradigm change which ushered in the classical age is causally dependent upon, or merely coincident with, the advent of the Saviour. While the cultural transition, as from a magical to a rational paradigm, extended over some one thousand years – circa 500 BC to 500 AD – the advent of the Christ consciousness, likewise, need not be understood as confined to the earthly incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth. The man, Jesus, rather represented the culmination of a prophetic lineage, thereafter giving rise to an apostolic lineage which lasted until around 325 AD and the Nicene Ecclesiastical Council which marks a pivotal point in the historic subversion of Christianity. Arguably, and this strikes me as the best hypothesis, a grand synchrony in the mind of God unites these seemingly disparate developments, linking cultural and spiritual cycles with cosmic phenomena such as precession and the passage of astrological ages. We are left then with the intriguing suggestion that the historic ingress of the Mind of Christ is essential and intrinsic to the evolution, the construction or formation, of modern human consciousness. Related questions here arise – equally intriguing – concerning the philosophical problem of ‘other minds’. It is generally assumed – by a tacit largess, it would seem – that the quality of human consciousness is, by and large, a universal constant. The experience of being human, so the surmise, is common throughout humanity in terms of its essential constituents – i.e. not in the content of consciousness, but in the fact of human consciousness itself. But can even this notion be sustained in view of the demonstrable variation in human sensibility and genius? Could we entertain the heretical notion that some individual ‘others’ are not at all conscious in the way we understand the term? By corollary, could it be that, compared to others yet again who are even more aware, it is we who are unconscious? From our own subjective experience we must necessarily concede that consciousness – in its day-to-day manifestation – is a highly variable phenomenon. And when I hear of scholars, as of the materialist persuasion, who would minimise the significance of consciousness – well, then I really have to wonder. Monday, March 19. 2012Point of View is Everything
It is a widespread notion within academia that Christianity and the religious paradigm in general is essentially discredited, with science being typically cited as having delivered the death knell to any form of theological realism. With the advance of science, so it is claimed, the religious worldview is necessarily in retreat.
At no point in the history of science, however, has the primary religious thesis – God exists – suffered on account of advancing knowledge. Instead, and without demonstration of any kind, the claimed refutation has simply been regarded as fait accompli, an accomplished fact – by such perhaps as were not looking too closely or have a philosophical axe to grind. Perhaps the said conception is fostered in that the language of magic and mysticism has been replaced by that of quantitative analysis. In the metaphor of Roger Penrose, the emperor has put on a new mind. It is not that the qualitative realm of spiritual potencies has been disproved. It has simply been set aside in the perhaps over-eager rush to bring all knowledge within rational, analytical bounds. The great Renaissance paradigm shift, as from the magical Ptolemaic universe to the Copernican model, in this sense does not represent an advance toward truth, or even toward mere completeness. It simply constitutes a shift in perspective, bringing certain phenomena into clearer focus, while perhaps obscuring others. A case in point is the question of a cosmic centre. Spiritual tradition places man at the centre, which on pragmatic and intuitive grounds would seem entirely justified. It is not merely that outward from the centre of the observing self the universe is arrayed – that the universe, necessarily and only, declares itself in the view from that centre – but it is here on planet earth that the universal grand opus is unfolding, that the universe is becoming conscious of itself. To argue, by contrast, for man’s insignificance on the grounds of an infinitesimal planet on the edge of an undistinguished galaxy – and so on, and so on – well, it is like arguing, say, that Washington and New York are unimportant because they don’t lie at the geographic centre of the Union. We see in effect that the atheist / materialist conclusion of a meaningless universe is sustained by referents that are highly contrived. It is sustained by a view that is partial and selective, which is a pains to deny the significance what is most immediate and apparent to the human experience, namely the human experience itself, that magic theatre of human consciousness wherein he whole show unfolds. As the philosopher Alvin Plantinga remarked, the materialist thesis is in this sense self-defeating. More broadly, it may be observed, the materialist universe, as distinct from the spiritual, is not a matter of scientific demonstration, but of apriori referents, arbitrarily accepted on the basis of philosophical bias. The enlisting of science in the defence of atheism, as David Berlinski brilliantly demonstrated, thus amounts to so much posturing. This is not to say that the transcendent has been banished from scientific discourse. It is retained necessarily, albeit in a manner typically garbled and deformed – as a nothing that is something or an undetectable hyper-universe spawning an infinitude of disparate universes – namely when physicists are pressed to explain why anything exits, or how the universe appeared ex nihilo. It thus becomes apparent that any meaningful language must necessarily position itself within a matrix of meta-discourse, that is, with reference to postulated absolutes tacitly accepted as articles of faith. Such meta-discourse is provided by the Judaeo-Christian scriptures in which it is spoken of a transcendent mystery. Mystery indeed is philosophically inescapable insofar as any rational phenomenon offered in explanation invokes the question of its explanation – from the most rarefied particle to a postulated hyper-mega-multiverse. Mystery – irreducible mystery – is thus an inevitable consequence of the analytical stance as such. It is epistemically intrinsic in that the analytical method cannot escape its natural abode of infinite regress. This is not to disparage science; it is to place it in proper context. It is to show that science, in a manner more profound than the merely cultural, is grounded in, and dependent upon, the religious attitude. Physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, and more recently Lawrence Krauss, who, dismissing all metaphysics, postulate an irreconcilable gulf between science and religion, are therefore in error concerning both. These distinct conceptual windows are not incompatible, nor do they constitute, in the words of Stephen Jay Gould, non-overlapping magisteria. Both, from their respective points of view, issue truth claims regarding the world of human experience, and their essential claims may be seen as essentially complementary. Reference: The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, 2010 A Universe From Nothing, Lawrence Krauss, 2012 God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design Is It Anyway?, John Lennox, 2011 Monday, March 19. 2012The God Debate – Part 1 : Why the atheist position is lamentably weak
The controversy over worldview – theism versus atheism / naturalism / materialism – has intensified in recent years due to a number of popular bestsellers with titles like The God Delusion and God Is Not Great – Why Religion Poisons Everything (see below for bibliography). Writers on the other side of the debate, for their part, have countered with titles such as The Dawkins Delusion and The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism And It’s Scientific Pretensions. Protagonists, in addition, have debated the issue in a series of high-profile public debates, and one might wonder – or perhaps not – at the high level of interest in our supposedly post-theological, post-metaphysical age.
The wealth of material thus generated allows for certain broad observations, which are the substance of this entry. My focus is the pervasive weakness, as I perceive it, of the atheist position as generally stated. As to the strength of theist arguments – this might be a subject for another posting. I shall compound the arguments as presented by the so-called new atheists, given that the worldview presented allows for a general synthesis. Before launching into my critique, however, I wish to observe concerning the dialogue as it played out in recent years, that much, perhaps most of it, has tended toward argument at cross purposes. The image is one of ships passing in the night with nary a meaningful signal passing between them. Whereas the essential controversy concerns the existence of God, there is lack of a shared, broadly congruent, conception of what we take this term to signify. A conceptual chasm thus separates the relevant worldviews, a lack of common language, and the apparent inability or unwillingness of atheist contenders to take an informed / intelligent view of the matter. What I mean is this: Whereas theists speak of a transcendent metaphysical reality, atheists have been at pains to reduce the concept to something on par with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. The point is taken, but whether this caricature has furthered the debate is questionable. What is astonishing is the insistence with which atheists tend to pursue this rhetorical ruse. Theirs is what literary critic Terry Eagleton calls the yeti theory of God. They apparently imagine that belief in God is something akin to belief in bigfoot. For some ‘believers’ this may be so, but an inability to conceive of the matter in any other way begs the central question. To take a meaningful critical stance concerning religious faith and the existence of God one ought to have some idea what the relevant worldview entails. A measure of ‘sympathy’ for the subject may indeed be required for anything approaching meaningful insight. In this essential respect the vociferous atheists of late renown appear disqualified by their very attitude. Two questions here mentioned, related but nevertheless distinct, have been widely conflated in the course of the debate – that concerning the existence of God, and that regarding the viability of (any) religious faith. And it is in the latter regard that an important concession accrues to the atheists. Insofar as much of their argument centres on a critique of religion – the often dysfunctional, regressive, and frankly atrocious nature of religious belief and practice – theirs is a valid point of significance. I see no point in contending the essential assertion, one-sided and overstated though it may be. But a weakness is apparent in that the socio-historic critique is milked for too much. The religious sensibility can go awry, so the implied inference, therefore all religion is inimical. Even worse – and it is here that domains are conflated – from mere human folly a metaphysical inference is drawn: The pope is a cross-dresser, say, therefore God does not exist. It is a non sequitur – it simply does not follow. Considering then (first) the arguments for the contended nonexistence of God, these usually take one of three forms, respectively arguing that – 1. The God concept of classical theism is meaningless (self-contradictory, paradoxical, incommensurate with reason). 2. The existence of God has not / cannot been demonstrated. 3. The existence of God is inconsistent with the observed natural order. While a full response is beyond my present scope, I will briefly indicate what I consider the essential flaw or weakness in each. Concerning (1), that the God concept defies rational containment, I would observe that a God which can be thus contained is not the God of classical theism. This is not to imply that belief in such a God is irrational; it is to concede that irreducible mystery necessarily remains when we consider existence or being as a whole. It is an admission regarding the limitations of the reason as such, and for perspective we may cite the seemingly irrational, paradoxical observations obtaining in cosmology and particle physics – the realm of very large and the very small. The reason, it would seem, is adapted to the relative domain of contingent being. It breaks down when we approach any kind of world boundary – any kind of absolute. While atheists commonly express belief that the whole show is reducible, at least in principle, to a rational synthesis – a view which often coincides with naturalism or materialism – their faith would seem unjustified, namely given the ever-receding horizons of knowledge, and the essentially intractable nature of the so-called hard problems in science and philosophy. It seems to me rather that those who would deify the reason are least constituted to take an intelligent view of the question at hand. A case in point is the oft made assertion that Christians, say, are necessarily a-theist with respect to all other gods – as of the greater pagan pantheon – whereas atheists proper are intellectually consistent in rejecting all gods. But this is a confusion of categories insofar as God (capital G) is by definition the sole supreme being, the eternal and uncreated creator of all contingent beings. And this irrespective of his assigned name. The pagan Gods are not in this class. Am I, as a Christian, therefore necessarily an atheist concerning the pagan gods? Not at all. I acknowledge the pagan deities as falling three broad categories – philosophical abstractions, legendary personages, and personified forces of nature. One can moreover be appreciative of the relevant cultural traditions without compromising one’s Christian faith. It is the atheist rather who is typically inconsistent, failing to understand that God is the generic absolute in the realm of human experience, and that every philosophical orientation, their own included, makes necessary reference to an absolute. The primary question in the Bible, therefore – and rightly – is not whether (a) God exists, but which is the true God. On to the assertion then that the existence of God – the God – has not been demonstrated. The question that immediately arises is, to whom? Clearly, the atheist contention here is self-referential. It readily dismisses the greater testimony of humankind regarding experiential verities beyond their own, and it typically does so from a position of profound ignorance concerning the relevant traditions. This may suffice when preaching to the choir, but it is surely unimpressive to the ontologically secure theist whom presumably they wish to reach. While I commend the atheist for refusing to be convinced by mere hearsay, it would seem, as the matter stands in this regard, that the agnostic attitude is the more appropriate. A related question concerns the so-called burden of proof. It is theists, the argument goes, who are making a positive claim – i.e. God exists – and theirs accordingly is the burden of demonstration, in the absence of which the sceptic may rightly be dismissive. The atheist, it is argued, makes no such claim – he merely disallows the claims of theism. But this is patently absurd. Both sides of the argument exemplify a worldview, each espousing both positive and negative claims. Both sides, therefore, have a burden of proof, and to the extent that the matter is inconclusive, again, agnosticism is the more appropriate attitude. Third then is the atheist claim that the existence of God is inconsistent with the observed natural order. In its typically formulation this usually goes something like – if there is a God, how come ... ? How come I’m not handsome and rich ... or why is there suffering in the world ... or why paedophile priests? Why, in other words, the awesome, convoluted, deeply mysterious, infinitely improbable, perplexing and confounding natural order? But as compared to what? Why, as compared to ‘my’ noble conceptions of course! In other words, regardless of how the argument is framed, the assumption is that, if there were a God, he would conform to ‘my’ expectations. Or, putting it another way, the fact that the universal creator did not consult Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris proves that he does not exist. The fatuity of the argument, thus pared down to its essentials, should be obvious, even as we admit to the philosophical problems inherent in the theistic worldview. One further relevant point, often omitted from the debate, is that, at least from the Judaeo-Christian perspective, we live in a temporal and fallen world – a world that does not accord with the divine creative intent. A less than perfect present world – a world of much suffering and gratuitous evil – is not at odds with that perspective. It is in concordance therewith. We turn then to the arguments against religious faith as a viable human response – again with specific reference to the Christian faith. Here I see four principal lines of argument: 1. The Bible is unreliable and primitive in conception. 2. The God of the Bible is an execrable entity. 3. Religious institutions have a poor socio-historic record. 4. The religious persuasion is psychologically and culturally detrimental. Let me first acknowledge my considerable sympathy with the attitude thus summarised, namely insofar the history of the church is concerned. At least (3) and (4) are partially correct as already conceded, and it is here that the atheist position is at its most meritorious. It is flawed merely in overreaching, as already demonstrated. But let us consider (1) – the Bible is unreliable and primitive in conception. The assumption here is that its critics making the claim are able to read and understand it. Of this, however, they provide no evidence. I shall therefore content myself with the counterclaim, namely as a student of scripture, that the Bible is fully reliable, sophisticated and in conception exceedingly subtle. What then of (2) – that the God of the Bible is a morally objectionable entity? Again, in making this determination, it is assumed that the reader both understands what he or she is reading and qualified to draw a valid inference. But, as stated, of this the critics provide no evidence. Ignorance and misapprehension concerning the relevant traditions rather is the basis of their argument. To present a case in point – who is the monster, supposedly commanding rape, and genocide, and the sacrifice of virgins? Ostensibly it is Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. But for those who can take it, Yahweh of the Old Testament is the Jesus of the New. The question, rather, which ought to be asked is: Why are there two Testaments? Did the omniscient eternal God change his mind one day? Thus apparent again, concerning the atheist synthesis, is the problem of approach. If one begins with the assumption of a primitive and barbaric text – if one is intent on drawing a negative conclusion – then surely any other outcome is highly unlikely. A further error of conflation here enters the atheist position – that of historic Christendom and the prophetic legacy on which that edifice is ostensibly founded. These two are very much at odds in that the visionaries who wrote the Bible were mostly misunderstood. It is moreover fundamental to biblical prophecy that the authentic revelation would be usurped and supplanted by a vast apostasy which would present itself to the world as the original and true apostolic church. This raises the question regarding a proposed authentic Christianity – what is it ? – and where resides its authority? Who may legitimately speak for God? And it does not strengthen the atheist critique that it selectively targets the most questionable exponents of the faith – from the Bishop of Rome to assorted cranks and crackpots. It is further indication that atheists are typically out of their depth in the realm of truly spiritual questions – and indeed necessarily so, in that, considering the whole realm to be nonsense, they are unlikely to approach it with any degree of rigour. They make a valid socio-cultural point which is trivially true – we all know that burning witches at the stake is wrong – without however coming within earshot of seriously addressing the pertinent metaphysical questions. Indeed there is little indication in the recent atheist literature that these questions – which incidentally pertain to the human condition as such – are even understood. This lack of understanding is exemplified in a further misconception – that concerning the psychology of religious faith – of the philosophical attitude involved. This is primarily apparent in the characterisation of faith as incompatible with reason. The choice, as typically presented in this vein, is that between God and science. Where a scientific explanation can be adduced, it is argued, the God concept is shown to be redundant. But this is to confuse different orders of discourse. It is like asking, what best explains the Mona Lisa ? – Leonardo DaVinci or the chemistry of canvass and oils. What we are offered in effect is a false dilemma. The controversy is not between religion and science – it is between religion and the philosophy of materialism. And it is materialism, as I have shown elsewhere, which does not resonate well with science. There is yet further misrepresentation in that faith is portrayed as a specifically religious attitude. This is simply false. Faith, intuition, implicit belief – these provide the essential metaphysical foundation with respect to any worldview. Any rational stance, when examined, is predicated on a substrate of belief which is necessarily primary and apriori – that of scientific materialism no less than philosophical idealism. Indeed the rational / analytical attitude requires the fulcrum of belief in order to function at all – belief in the rational method, in the efficacy of the senses, in the consistency of the natural world and so on. Without at least a provisional set of apriori assumptions there remains but the abyss of total agnosticism. The idea that the atheist / materialist synthesis is rational throughout, that science is coextensive with reason, or indeed that any worldview can be fully rational, is simply a myth, whose adherents show a remarkable lack of insight – concerning their own position, as concerning their object of critique. Indeed it is precisely their insistence on a closed rational synthesis, essentially misconstruing the nature of the episteme, which catapults them into the badlands of philosophical absurdity. Thus, concerning the nature of the biblical God, as concerning the nature of religious faith, in the most literal sense they have no idea – these brash new horsemen of the atheist apocalypse – what they are talking about. Spiritually and in depth-psychological terms what then is this phenomenon dubbed the new atheism? I suggest that it is a form of attempted exorcism, directed at that sodden bogey – the God of atheist critique – which the spiritual mind would identify as the generic idol. Yes, there is a negative meme – a distorted, misconstrued, misplaced projection which haunts the religious and cultural imagination. And it is arguably those most haunted thereby, who collectively have devoted thousands of pages to its expulsion from the temple of humanity. In this endeavour indeed I wish them well. As regarding a serious critique of theism or religious idealism, however, the recent atheist offerings in question fail in so basic a task as properly identifying their subject. Emphatically there is nothing in their collective case which undermines the Christian worldview or calls into question the existence of God. Reference: The End of Faith, Sam Harris, 2004 The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, 2006 Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Daniel Dennett, 2006 God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens, 2007 God: The Failed Hypothesis, Victor Stenger, 2007 The Dawkins Delusion, Alister McGrath, 2007 The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions, David Berlinski, 2008 Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, Terry Eagleton, 2009 God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?, John Lennox, 2009 |
QuicksearchArchivesCategoriesCalendar
Syndicate This BlogArkangelArkangel is the weblog of writer Harald Kleemann, specifically regarding his work on biblical Christianity. Readers’ comments are naturally their own and their appearing on this site should not be taken to signify approbation by Arkangel, which is to say, its author. The same applies to linked material offsite, which should be taken on its own merits.
Readers may note that comments and trackbacks are not presently enabled. |