Parsing Original Sin P. 1

Ayn Rand rocked the literary world with her anti-altruist writings.  In particular, her epic novel Atlas Shrugged gave full berth to her philosophy, Objectivism.  In said novel, the ultimate protagonist, John Galt--a figure who is intitially so enigmatic his name becomes a byword--questions, indicts, and redefines the very nature of humanity.  Galt's soliloquy toward the end of the book drives a proverbial knife into the heart of modern Western values; he attacks their religious root, specifically located in the doctrine of original sin.

As quoted from Galt's speech, original sin is an impossible reality that "begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice."  Original sin, as set out by the first Christians, however, suggests that human beings are deprived of their natural connection to God because Adam and Eve, humanity's representative couple, disobeyed God thereby setting all people forever at a distance from their Creator.  Thus Adam and Eve, and everyone after them, suffer the burden  of godlessness--the void between God and man--which is hopelessly incurable except by the movement of God across that void.  And, as Christians claim, God spanned that void in the person of Jesus Christ.

Everyone born into the world then, according to classic Christian formulations, inherits the burden of being simultaneously in God's image and likeness (Gen. 1:26-27) and also separated from God by original sin.  Rand's vicarious observation that the Christian "code" damns man for his godlessness and then demands man be good--which is to say that man is to be godly--points at a fatal flaw in Christian conceptions of the nature of man.  Namely, if by original sin man is unable to be godly because of his godlessness, why condemn man for living in the condition he was predisposed to?

More alarmingly, the demand of the Christian believer is that he recognise how damnable he is without proof, or even a shred of evidence to firm-up the case.  Virtue is not allotted man until he confesses not only his vice, but also his utter inability to extricate himself from a condition he cannot point to but is guilty of anyway.

That man was created 'good,' even 'very good' (Gen. 1:31) is simply a nod to a time well behind him.  The post-Edenic reality is that man is "evil" (Matt. 7:11) and exists in a subordinated position; a position that does not act on his innate inclinations of being a free, noble creature but binds itself to the self-deprecating notion of being "depraved," or "distorted," or "disordered."  Man, to be 'good,' must first lie to himself that he is, in fact 'bad,' will himself to believe his lie, and then plead the pity of the Creator who would save him from himself.

From the start, man is damned, if not by his own belief that he has to lie to himself to set up the conditions for salvation, then by the inheritance of representative man's sin (through Adam and Eve) which places him at odds with God.  In essence, man is damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't.

How could anyone get on with such of wave of contradiction and catch-22's?  How could anyone understand their place in reality, their identity as a human being, given such misfit logic?  Clearly,

"It does not matter, the good is not for him to understand, his duty is to crawl through years of penance, atoning for the guilt of his existence ato any stray collector of unintelligible debts, his only concept of a value is a zero: the good is that which is non-man."

According to such a "monstrous absurdity," original sin means man is not 'good,' he is evil (cf. Matt. 7:11).  Since a double-bind is placed on man--inherit a sinful condition and/or commit evil by lying to oneself and therefore make yourself evil--his whole moral condition, the opportunity for will, his very freedom is predetermined for him.  Man has been deemed guilty without his choice even before he exists.

There is no sense in that conclusion, obviously, but that is what the doctrine of original sin requires a person to believe for it to have any psychological hold.  A person cannot be bound to a creed that has no discernable impact on his psyche.  No-one is passionate about the banal.  No-one is driven to deliver themselves from ineffectual and meaningless propositions.  Such things are easily discarded  by the very act of choosing to.

For a concept to lay hold of a person fully, and to generate enough fervor that he is irrevocably compelled to seek salvation from the subjective realities of that concept it has to strike hard and deep at the core doubts, fears, and needs of a person; it must demean a person's sense of life and moral confidence.

Original sin does just that.

Christo-Solstice

Christmas will be happening a little late for the Saint Cynic household; I am scheduled to work the holidays. In any case, for the rest of you who have somewhat normal lives, Merry Christmas!

And for those of you who are of a different mind concerning Christmas, I hope you have a superb Solstice Season!

I Don't Believe In Hell

I don't believe in Hell.  I think the whole idea is contemptible nonsense.  If someone does believe in Hell, they must agree to some version of the following paradigm:

1. God created everything, including people;
2. People did stuff they shouldn't have and that made God upset;
3. God set-up a place for people who make him miffed, and it is called 'Hell' (there's all sorts of unimaginably horrific torture that goes on without end in Hell);
4. God wants to forgive everyone for not only doing irksome things themselves, but also for inheriting the irksomeness of the first people to ruffle God's feathers, as it were;

Conclusion: If you exist, you've been created sick, commanded to be well by asking forgiveness for sins you didn't commit but inherited, and if you don't ask forgiveness for those sins, then you'll suffer unmitigated torture forever and ever.  Amen.

Nope.  Sorry.  I don't buy it.  If the Christian message holds true, then Christ shouldered the burden of everyone else's sins.  That leaves everyone else standing on their own two feet, not taking on myriad generations of others misgivings.  That also means that if God created everyone sick, and demands that they be well, then there's no point in condemning them for the state he created them in.  Why bother creating anyone in the first place just to condemn them if they don't recognise their malady?

That is the message of a capricious and malevolent deity.

I think God's a little better than that.  If I can think of a more moral outcome to being a little spiritually daft, then I'm sure God must be slightly ahead of regular human morality, no?

Things That Make You Go, "Hmm."

I'm not saying I agree, but it is certainly a thoughtful presentation. It has me thinking, that's for sure.

By way of The Thinking Atheist.

Christendom: A House Divided

In Christian theology there are three main theories of the atonement:

1. Jesus's crucifixion was to appease the wrath of God. God cannot countenance sin, and in his holiness must obliterate sin. Therefore Jesus, as a representative of the human race, was nailed to the cross as a sacrifice for all of humanity's sins -- past, present, and future. That is, Christ voluntarily assumed the sins of humanity on himself and died in place of the rest of humanity. This theory, crudely summarised as it is, is known as the penal substitutionary atonement.
2. Christ came to conquer death by dying on the cross. Effectively, Christ acted as 'bait' to draw the devil away from humanity, and in so doing removed the devil's hold on humanity. It's a compliment to the words Christ uttered early in his ministry, "I have called you to be fishers of men." This theory is known as the "Ransom theory", or more recently the Christus Victor atonement.
3. Jesus acted as the ultimate exemplar, and when we take heed of his sacrificial love our moral intentions are influenced christward. In short, Christ's life and sacrifice inclines our morals godward, thereby sanctifying us to be in his presence. This is known as the moral influence theory of atonement.

In the past few years, there has been a re-visitation of these theories. Theologians from different loyalties have bandied about their prefered vision of Christ's soteriological efforts. One book in particular has risen to the top of the academic list, Stricken by God? Nonviolent Identification and the Victory of Christ (2007). The book explores the various reasons for the necessity of certain theories, why the authors believe the theories they do, and how those theories are applied to everyday life.

It's editor and contributing author, Brad Jersak, admits his preference for the penal substitution theory. Nevertheless, in this article, professor and author Hans Boersma cautions against placing all one's philosophical capital in a single theory of the atonement. "The problem, said Boersma, is to take any one of these approaches and insist it is right and the others are wrong." This is sensible because prizing one theory exclusively excludes the beneficial points of the other theories.

The same holds true in other Christian academic applications. The novice theologian will place great import on a certain 'proof' of the existence of God. I had a fondness for the Ontological Argument back in my college days, but turned a snooty nose up at Kalam's version of the Cosmological Argument, for example. It wasn't until a good friend of mine, the late Hugh Hill (1958 - 2007) turned my head to the notion of a cumulative case for God's existence that I recognised it wasn't necessary to remain beholden to this-or-that particular 'proof' for the existence of God.

It's in that respect that I think it inane to cite a particular view of the atonement as the exclusively right view of Christ's death: it is the place of a novice or dilettante to throw one's lot in with a singular theory of the atonement.

To press this point a little further, it is instructive to note Boersma's final contribution to the article noted above:

Therefore, it is important to "bring humility to the table" and try to understand each other. We can "never say we have explained it all," said Boersma, since human language is "always inadequate to fully define the divine mystery."

True: human language cannot adequately define either the 'divine' or 'mystery'. Which is why I think Boersma would've done well to admit more by saying less. If Boersma had said in regards to the atonement that we can "never say we have explained it" and that human language is "always inadequate" we may have had a better rendering of the case. We would also have cause to graduate beyond the useless amateur quibblings of exclusivist atonement theory loyalties.

On a much grander scale, this is the same issue I have with Christian communities as a whole, if I can say that and make any sense. Let me explain. No-one is surprised when presented with the fact that Christianity is divided into many houses: Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Anabaptists, Congregationalists, Pentecostals, Anglicans, the Emergent Church, the Eastern Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox, ad-seemingly-infinitum.

Each grouping considers itself the model of unvarnished and inviolate orthodoxy alive today. I like to call this peculiarity of Christendom "local orthodoxy by attrition". That is, if it's said long enough and loud enough, eventually everyone will concede that "that's what so-and-so thinks about itself, so just let them have their illusions; we know that we're really the true orthodoxy." The same psychology, quite interestingly, holds true for liars, too: if they repeat their falsehoods long enough, they eventually believe them to be true.

Such self-exculpating tactics only reinforce what they're trying to avoid. That is, by denying the notion of orthodoxy to other Christian communities while remaining loyal to another one, a person can only be left with patronising concessions to faith-traditions not their own. This means that one believes their own particular faith-community to be the purest expression of biblical community above and beyond all others. This is a mark of superficiality, specious reasoning, and religious snobbery adopted by most Christians very quickly after conversion. Catholics and Lutherans, especially with their notion that they are the "one true church", are quite masterful at perpetuating such insidious sophistries.

It is much more sensible to regard the Christian communities of the world as part of a cumulative culture for Christ than a "house divided against itself", to borrow Christ's portentous words. But as long as Christians bark and bellow over which atonement theory is better and more right, which 'proof' is more accurate, which faith-tradition is purer, more orthodox, and therefore more fully in the faith -- as long as the house of Christianity remains divided against itself, we can reasonably speculate on Christ's conclusion that that house "will surely fall".

What if...

...Christianity isn't true? What would change? I mean, what practical, visible, hands-on realities would change?

People would feel a loss. A tremendous loss, no doubt. I imagine it might be like an unbearable funeral where everyone is gathered at the six-foot plot weeping and gnashing their teeth, but with nothing to bury. The anxiety, the angst and confusion fixing everyone to their spots would seem at once tragic and amusing. Like watching a mime.

Would anyone feel relief after they buried their mistaken beliefs? I know I've never felt relieved when I've found out I've been horribly mistaken. I've felt awkward, socially spent, emotionally void, confused; I've wanted to hang on to my denial.

So, what if Christianity isn't true? Then what?

The List

Please forgive my lack of posting lately. I haven't been at the computer much at all in the past month.

In any case, one reader, J., was curious about what I was reading. Before I get to that, I have to confess that my last article "Where I'm At #2" was, on reflection, a muddle of guck. I proposed that truth is non-relational all the while relating that point as if it were possibly true -- which would make it false. In short, my conclusion was a contradiction. And if any of you took anything from the article -- whether a sense of irritation at my jejune philosophizing, or an impetus to question the nature of truth further -- something was related to you from my writing. If that's the case, then I am batting a good average in the stupidity game.

Forgive me, please.

As for what I'm reading lately, I've got a few titles I'm charging through. Here they are in no particular priority.

A.N. Wilson is a tremendous biographer, to my estimation. I've read a couple of his earlier works and enjoyed them very much. This latest read fits into my continuing research into doubt, skepticism, agnosticism, and atheism. It's quite a fascinating piece, and well worth the purchase, if you don't mind a challenge.


More from the Documentary Hypothesis front. Crisp, lucid prose, but not meant for anyone looking for an introduction to the origins of Judeo-Christian scripture. Certainly not a hit with Catholics because it challenges their self-assurance that they've got it all sussed out anyway. But coming from a former nun, I'm not too concerned that Karen Armstrong really wants to kowtow to the usual theological prattle concerning the genesis of holy writ. And to that end, I am happy to be educated.

I don't think I'm going to read the whole way through this handy (un)little volume. To be honest, I'm just not that interested in what some of the essays have to say. However, there is a gold-mine of intelligent, witty, and engaging prose in this companion, and anyone interested in the thought-life of Freethinkers would sate their curiosity with this book. Which brings up the next book...

Although I'm not American, I couldn't resist Ms. Jacoby's well-written essay. I'm only a few pages in, but I know I've encountered a keen, incisive mind.

So, J., those are the things I'm reading these days. Since my mind is set to 'Whirlwind Mode' of late, I can't offer you any substantial thoughts on what I've been reading. Hopefully I will be able to soon, however.

Take care.

Where I'm At.

I've lost a member of my 'following'. That doesn't sound creepy at all, does it? :S

In any case, I can only guess that it's because I haven't been posting as much these past couple of months. One of my readers quipped to me at lunch the other day that she comes by the site a couple of times a week, but "meh. There's nothing new." That's true: I haven't posted anything new.

Sadly (for me, that is), not having electricity at home renders self-publishing on the internet a trifle difficult. Hopefully November will turn up some more practical living arrangements, however. Not that living in the bush with no running water, and no electricity isn't practical -- it's the original practical, when you think about it -- it's just not cosmopolitan enough to warrant something so fancy as electricity.

On another note, a friend of mine asked me how my agnosticism is coming. I'd like to take a moment to shout out to Aaron. I miss your tongue-in-cheek humour, bud! Nevertheless, it would be unfair of me to leave this blog dangling, as it were, on the hooks of my last two articles. They were, admittedly, somewhat maudlin and full of serious doubts. Aaron picked up on the natural conclusion to some of my meanderings: that I seemed to be turning agnostic.

I'll admit, things have been taking a radical turn-around for me. The history of the church, of my Christian beliefs has been put under intense scrutiny this past while. I've had questions about inspiration, inerrancy (I plan to buy that book, Ed!), the legitimacy of dogmatics, ecclesiology, the efficacy of prayer, the nature of truth, epistemology and revelation, illumination, the list goes on. In a nutshell, I've been re-visiting the truth-claims of my faith.

Some of them I've found wanting. For example, the purported necessity for a hierarchical church structure. I used to be Lutheran. I used to believe that a very definite, rigid structure needs to be in place; one ruled, as it were, from the bishop down through the clergy. While I agree with the biblical precedent for the necessity of elders, bishops, and deacons (the office I was ordained into in 2004), I disagree that the laity is under the rule of said 'servants' of the Church. In short, bishops, elders, and deacons are to serve the Church (i.e., the people of God) without reservation or prejudice toward certain faith traditions, and without jockeying for lordship amongst themselves (e.g., the Roman church's apotheosis of the bishop of Rome to a jurisdictional authority over all other bishops). The needs of the people should always outweigh bureaucracy. In the same way, the true servant of God always considers the needs of the people as irrefutably more important than the polity of his ecclesial (church) community.

Recognizing that, I could never be a sold-out, hardcore Lutheran. Nor could I ever be a friend to Roman Catholicism -- except to be the kind of friend who is willing to take scorn for attempting to correct a wrong.

Given that example of changes in my beliefs (not to mention many others), where am I as regards the Christian testimony? Well, rest-assured Aaron, I'm not agnostic. Nor am I an atheist. One wit I read about called himself a 'recovering Christian'. While I can appreciate the humour of his sentiments, I think that kind of terminology can be misleading: I'm not casting off an addiction; I never had one to begin with. I'm compelling myself toward the true, amorphous nature of oecumenism -- that is, wholistic Christianity. I'm not hemming myself in by divorcing principalistic authoritarianism (e.g., Roman Catholicism) from real flesh-and-blood people. I'm pro-actively moving away from the apartheid mentality of Christendom; that is, Roman Catholicism cannot commune with Lutherans, Lutherans cannot enjoy the free-spirited nature of the Anabaptists, the Anabaptists cannot espouse the rich cultural and intellectual heritage of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Enough. Grow up! The Western world got past the subjugation of peoples according to race -- thanks, in part, to the Church. However, the Western church cannot seem to get past its wanton need to subjugate its own people to this-or-that other faith-tradition. I refuse to take part in it any longer. And to a large degree, that will bring into question, if not stark contrast, my views about God, Jesus, and the Christian community. I'm prepared to answer those questions.

So, if any of you are interested, this is the place to ask those questions. I'm open to dialogue. And thank you, Aaron, for prompting me to write an answer to your question. I'm grateful for your concern, and humour.

What If I'm Wrong?

Today, I dumped some reflections on a Facebook site that note some of my recent personal faith challenges. Most notably, I'm concerned about the character of God (Yahweh) in the Old Testament. Here is what I wrote:

"God afflicted Moses' sister with leprosy because she was jealous of said Cushite. God also turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt because she got a little too curious about the fireworks happening behind her. Sure, she was 'disobedient' but the comparative morality of the situation in a larger context seems entirely disproportionate.

God also seemed to entertain Jephtha's foolish declaration to sacrifice as a burnt offering the first living thing to walk through his front door after his defeat of the Ammonites. How heartbroken was Jephtha when, upon his victorious return, his daughter greeted him at the front door (Judges 11)! Nevertheless, the great general cooked her, and apparently that's okay by God.

It would seem to me that God's moral character needs some vindication if the Old Testament stories are literally true: how wide is God's mercy if He's fine with accepting indecent sacrifices by blowhard, battle-ready, genocidal generals? And if it's all just allegorical, what moral decency can we gain from such a story?

Today I am heartbroken at the seeming depotism of the Old Testament stories. I'm also crushed to learn that archeological proofs show Yahweh as a local god of a small tribe of Israel, and that El was considered the god above Yahweh (who was simply a mountain god) [see Karen Armstrong, "The Great Transformation"]. If this is true, how much of what we believe is simply a tapestry of tangled tales, and primitive sophistications obfuscated by time, translative change-overs and blatant forgeries?"

I'll be honest and say that daring to ask the question, "what if I'm wrong?" leads to a frightening conclusion: you might just be. In my case, I'm beginning to wonder if I am. The New Atheists are a good deal of stentorian emotionalism, and strident protestation written with the rhetorical flavour of witty academia. In the end, they are just as fundamentalist in their objections as the religious are in their assertions. They can balk all they like at that observation, but their books bear out the viability of my conclusion.

When we draw on historical research, however, we find a different landscape. Certainly religious historians like Armstrong are not without their biases, but a tad more creedence can be placed on their findings. And its these findings I find most disturbing. For example, the Old Testament god, Yahweh, seems to be an amalgamation of a localized mountain god, Yahweh, and the competing Jewish conception of god as El (crudely put, the Sky-god), who was, logically above the mountains, and therefore above Yahweh. Apparently Yahweh was portable, too. So, when they couldn't agree, Yahweh was moved around Israel in company of the Axial peoples before eventually being combined with El. Thus a polytheistic notion of god became monotheistic, and Yahweh's name won the day.

And given that Yahweh was portable -- no longer just a mountain god, that is -- it seems a little more understandable that Jesus would quip that "if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain 'get up and move', and it will" (para. of Matt. 17:20). It also makes more sense now to echo with the Psalmist "I lift my eyes up to the mountains, where does my help come from?" (Psalm 121).

Given all of this, however, I am faced with the question, "are my beliefs in the literal, historical Judeo-Christian faith wrong?"

My answer: I don't know. I'm declaring a temporary epistemological agnosticism on this issue. I need to research, learn, and reassess. For now, I'm wondering if Tom Harpur is right when he declares that Christ is a spiritual consciousness all humans have by virtue of the indwelling of God in all of us (see The Pagan Christ). This conclusion, while poking at the fringes of so-called gnosticism, rings consonant with the notion of imago dei. But is a purely spiritualized version of religion right? Admittedly, if I took on that perspective, I'd still have to visit the question, "what if I'm wrong?"

I don't know if I'm ready for what that might imply.

A Reflection On Morality #1

Anyone following my blog will already know of the large swath of atheist literature in the intellectual marketplace these days. I personally find that quite exciting because I don't think the Christian life can be lived out without thoughtfully considering philosophies that oppose it. A person who never encounters philosophical objections to their Christian faith does not have a blind faith so much as a blind knowledge and crippled ability to relate to those of different worldviews.

Undertaking to read as much of the New Atheist's literature as I can during the 2009 year has resulted, quite logically, in many difficult challenges to what I believe. In some cases, what I believe has been altered dramatically. For example, I used to believe that a person could not be truly moral in any ontological sense if they lacked belief in God. I don't believe that any longer for the simple reason that it is empirically demonstrable that our social inclinations as a species demands a pre-existing moral framework, belief or not. Hence there are a good many atheists who are morally upstanding individuals, and many Christians with the moral leanings of sociopaths.

If such is the case, Christians do not have an ethical high-ground whereby their religious views trump the moral efforts, reflections, inquiries, and formulations of non-believers and secularists. We're on level ground if we admit that morality is innate to the human species, whether a person believes or not. What a Christian does have is a presupposed grounds for the origins of morality: the Holy Trinity. Whereas the atheist, secularist, or anti-theist may presuppose morality in light of social Darwinism and the organising practices that necessarily come about to maintain a community, or nation; in effect, morality is an accretion of social contracts meant to ensure the survival of the species.

Despite the claims of the New Atheists that faith is a "mind-virus" (a term coined by Richard Dawkins), if we're on level ground to examine moral action, at what point is there any reason why atheists and Christians cannot work together to effect a more harmonious existence with each other? What logical reason is there then for someone like, say, Sam Harris to call for the eradication of religion, to attack it vehemently in an effort to help religion "slide into obsolescence" (The End of Faith, p. 14)? How does the eradication of one spectrum of human existence justify the continuance of another spectrum of human continuance? In other words, how does the destruction of religious worldviews justify the on-going disbelief in atheistic philosophy? What moral harmony is accomplished, what help to the surival of our species is acheived through obliterating faith, and religious hope?

*Thanks to Parenting Beyond Belief for the picture.

Feeling A Little Like Mother Theresa

Do you ever feel like this?

"I call, I cling, I want ... and there is no One to answer ... no One on Whom I can cling ... no, No One. Alone ... Where is my Faith ... even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness ... My God ... how painful is this unknown pain ... I have no Faith ... I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart ... & make me suffer untold agony.

"So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them ... because of the blasphemy ... If there be God ... please forgive me ... When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me ... and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul." (Mother Theresa of Calcutta)

I do. And there's no shortage of anxiety that comes with feeling that way.

Source.

Bad Christian

Overall, I'd say I'm a bad Christian.

Here's the laundry list:

1. I consistently forget to pray.
2. I seldom read Scripture. Though I really enjoy it when I do.
3. I swear.
4. I am a moody, moody man.
5. I can't pay attention to things that don't interest me.
6. I will take long hiatuses from church and not be bothered by it (last one was 2 years).
7. I commune my kids.
8. Much to the anabaptist's chagrin, I baptise my kids.
9. I can't stand evangelical Jesus-is-my-boyfriend lingo, sentiments, or worship.
10. I refuse to buy in to the latest programmatic/formulaic Christian rubrics for successful conversion of unbelievers.
11. I'm not a pacifist.
12. I read anti-Christian literature, and I don't think Harry Potter will damn me.
13. I watch movies that sometimes have violence or nudity in them.
14. I can't stand most “Christian” music (though I do love Handel and Bach).
15. Politically, I'm libertarian.
16. Philosophically, I'm a Christian anarchist (à la Jacques Ellul).
17. I'm an epistemological agnostic – which is to say that I believe all knowing has a limit as to its origin and scope. After that, I hold fast to “the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things unseen” (Heb. 11:1) in combination with seeing through a glass, darkly (1 Cor. 13:12). So, I hang fast to St. Augustine's dictum, “Crede, ut intelligas” (believe in order that you may understand).
18. I refuse to spank my kids despite all traditional misinterpretations of Proverbs 13:24. Here's why.
19. I don't believe that having a talent, or gift automatically, or ipso facto indentures me to using those talents or gifts in front of the assembly every Sunday morning.
20. I think Sunday School, by-and-large, is a fantastic excuse for absolving yourself of the responsibility of guiding your children into a common, family experience with the holy (there are, admittedly, some rare exceptions).
21. I don't smile because Jesus loves me. I love Jesus and sometimes I smile.
22. I spend a lot of money on organic food. Apparently that makes me unconventional, and financially irresponsible. But if you don't have your health...
23. Sometimes when I pray, I get really sarcastic with God, even angry.
24. I don't think two people necessarily have to have the blessings of the church, and the licence of the government to be married. Though it is a well-reasoned assurance, I think it is mostly an insurance policy. Real marriage, I think, takes place between two people who honestly love each other wholeheartedly, and strive to follow through on life-long commitments to each other. Sex consumates that wholehearted commitment, and thusly signifies two as one.
25. I am a semi-convinced theistic evolutionist.
26. I think homeschooling is the only logical choice for people who really want to develop the depths and riches of what a family really is.
27. I avoid Swiss Chalet on Sunday afternoons because that's where all the Pentecostals are. I eat at Pizza Hut instead because that's where real community happens.
28. I'm not totally into tea 'cause I'm not a teetotaler.
29. Fruit juice during the eucharist doesn't assure me that I'm not going to be an alcoholic, or that I am an alcoholic, or that other people have the same assurance.
30. I like dancing. Sometimes it leads to sex, and I'm okay with that. 'Cause I'm married to the woman I like to dance with.

There must be more to that list, but I really can't think of anything else at the moment. That should be enough to have people mercilessly impugn me, however.

Karl W. Giberson Comments On Jerry Coyne's "Seeing And Believing"

I have posted two articles (with more to come) that offer critical reflections on Jerry Coyne's article Seeing And Believing. In that article, Coyne deals most specifically with two "Darwinian churchgoers": Karl W. Giberson, and Kenneth R. Miller. The following two articles will be critical reflections from both Giberson and Miller themselves in response to Coyne.

I hope you enjoy!

"I enter this conversation feeling vaguely like a wishbone being stretched. On the one hand, I believe that the world is the creation of transcendent God that I perceive dimly behind the almost opaque curtain of my experience; but I also believe in the extraordinary power of science to unfold the nature of that world with astonishing clarity and conviction. I have one foot in each of Gould's non-overlapping magisteria and the space between them seems, at least in this conversation, uncomfortably large.
Discussions like this that juxtapose "empirical science" with "revealed religion" rarely seem like appropriately balanced encounters to me. When Ken Ham and his merry band of biblical literalists talk disparagingly about science, I can barely recognize it. But I had the same problem with Dawkins's send-up of believers in The God Delusion.

Coyne, who affirms Dawkins's approach, speaks of "theologians with a deistic bent" who inappropriately presume to "speak for all the faithful." The implication is that the "faithful" are the more authentically religious and the theologians are an aberration. This seems unfair to me. The great unwashed masses of these "faithful" should be juxtaposed with the great masses of people who "believe" in science but are not professionals. Most Americans -- and the rest of the world, for that matter -- are attached to both iPods and a belief that medical science is their best hope when they are sick. They "believe" in science. What do you suppose "science" would look like, were it defined by these "believers"? The physics would be Aristotelian; astrology and aliens would accepted as real; General Relativity would be unknown; quantum mechanics would be perceived as a way to influence the world with your mind. And yet all of these people would have had far more education in science than the typical religious believer has in theology. Science as "lived and practiced by real people" is quite different than the science promoted by the intellectuals in this conversation.

Empirical science does indeed trump revealed truth about the world as Galileo and Darwin showed only too clearly. But empirical science also trumps other empirical science. Einstein's dethronement of Newton was not the wholesale undermining of the scientific enterprise, even though it showed that science was clearly in error. It was, rather, a glorious and appropriately celebrated advance for science, albeit one not understood by most people. Why is this different than modern theology's near universal rejection of the tyrannical anthropomorphic deity of the Old Testament, so eloquently skewered by Dawkins? How is it that "science" is allowed to toss its historical baggage overboard when its best informed leaders decide to do so, even though the ideas continue to circulate on main street, but religion must forever be defined by the ancient baggage carried by its least informed?

The world disclosed by science is rich and marvelous, but most people think there is more to it. Our religious traditions embody our fitful and imperfect reflections on this mysterious and transcendent intuition -- an intuition that, as articulated by some of our most profound thinkers, seeks an understanding of the world that is goes beyond the empirical.

Coyne is correct that books like those he reviewed—Ken Miller's Only a Theory and my Saving Darwin—have not been particularly successful in securing a peaceful overlap for the magisteria, at least not for most people. Coyne would say there is no such peaceful overlap. But there are many well-informed believers who have come to peace with science, and who live happily on the rich, but thinly populated, turf where the magisteria overlap.

I think we can all agree though that, wherever we stand, there is a great need for a discussion of how America's conversation on origins should proceed. We need to wake up to the reality that current strategies have been an abysmal failure and ask some tough questions about why that is. There is a widespread fear on America's main streets that evolution is destroying a cherished belief in God. As a consequence, anti-evolution has assumed the proportions of a military-industrial complex but the battle is a proxy war, aimed not at evolution, but at materialism. I wonder what would happen if, in the name of pluralism and diplomacy, we could all agree that it was OK for people to believe that evolution was a part of God's plan. I suspect that cultural changes would be inaugurated that would eventually make both Eugenie Scott and Ken Ham irrelevant."

By way of richarddawkins.net

How Hitchens Poisons Logic

Christopher Hitchens's international bestseller god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is a poignant but embittered look at the effects and influence of religion in history, and the modern world.  I commented briefly about the book a while ago in an article called "The Muppets and Christopher Hitchens".  Still, I think Eric Reitan gives voice to one of the major flaws of Hitchens's work in the following quote:

But to say these things requires an account of what I mean by "religion." Instead of offering his own account, Hitchens' strategy seems to be this: if it is good, noble, or tends to inspire compassion, then it isn't "religion." It is "humanism" or something of the sort. With no clear definition to guide him, Hitchens is free to locate only what is cruel, callous, insipid, or banal in the camp of religion, while excluding anything that could reliably motivate the heroic moral action exemplified by Bonhoeffer and King. When "religion" is never defined, but in practice is treated so that only what is poisonous qualifies, it becomes trivially easy to conclude that "religion poisons everything."

IS GOD A DELUSION? A REPLY TO RELIGION'S CULTURED DESPISERS (WILEY-BLACKWELL: DEC. 3, 2008), P. 19.

Essentially, if you set out to state a thing is bad, and then remove all the good from it, you're left with the bad.  Hitchens's logic on this count is rancorous and amounts to nothing more than affirming the consequent; that is, if religion poisons everything then religion is bad; religion poisons everything, therefore religion is bad.  Hitchens does nothing to either define religion, or allow for any of the good that religion provides (that fellow atheists like Dennett and Dawkins freely admit) to be part of his definition of 'religion'.  He simply removes everything that stands in the way of his assumed conclusion that 'religion is poisonous' and works from there.  A very disingenuous move to say the least.

Thanks to Afterall.net for this one.

Purgatory?

Protestants reject out-of-hand the notion of 'purgatory'.  Purgatory is said to be a Roman Catholic conjuring having nothing to do with the economy of God. With the advent of Luther's Reformation (AD 1517 --->), a theological tradition that considers the refining fires believers go through before entrance into heaven was summarily trashed.  In its place was drafted what I call a 'punctuated sanctification'.  That is, the notion that salvation through Christ instantaneously absolves one of all one's sins, that they are 'new creatures' (II Cor. 5:17-18) already fit for eternity in heaven with God.

To be clear, salvation does instantaneously absolve a person of his/her sins.  However, the fact that we continue to experience character challenges, persecutions, tests of faith, temptations, habitual sins, and the need to regularly ask Christ to quicken His forgiveness in our lives speaks against a completed, or 'punctuated' sanctification upon salvation.  Our characters are not fully reformed when we receive Christ's salvation.  We still have to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12); we still have to "purify ourselves" from everything in us that expresses itself against God (2 Cor. 7:1).  

And given that we presently live imperfect lives, what makes us think that at the close of our lives, when we see dusk settling over our life-force and the darkness draws near, that we will have somehow suddenly perfected ourselves and worked out our salvation (i.e., completed our sanctification)?  Could it be that classical Roman Catholic theology has been right about purgatory?  That is, perhaps Protestants reacted too quickly to reject the doctrine of purgatory since it was too close to the blasphemy of selling indulgences (a papal device that essentially states you can buy time out of purgatory).  The association was too much like rubbing sandpaper over a fresh wound.  On reflection, almost 600 years later, however, purgatory does seem to make some sense.

Gregory A. Boyd makes a few interesting observations about this issue here, on his blog.

What are your thoughts?

Authority and the Church P. III

It's been a while, but I thought I'd revisit the issue of authority and the church. The first two installments of this debate I entertained are here, and here. My comments will be in black, and TJG's will be in red.

Having said that, I have to ask a few questions in return: what makes you think that doing Church as a House Church will avoid any of the partitioning, and pandering that accompanies conventional churches? And just to keep in focus with your question a little more, why do you think a house church model will avoid the pitfalls and downswings of churches as they've been through the centuries?

"Meeting in our homes doesn’t ensure anything will be what it is suppose to be. Meeting in the home is not a guard against a Diotrephes but it his the wisdom of God to gather as a family in ones home"

Absolutely it is the 'wisdom of God' to gather in one's home. I have no quarrel with you there. My concern is that you've written off a large portion of history, and thousands of years (2000, that is) of people meeting in larger houses affectionately known as the 'house of God' all for a change in location. If I can venture a bit of sarcasm without it being taken as hostility, you've exchanged mitigation for mortgages. In other words, you've exchanged a bigger building for a smaller building. But practically speaking, meeting in the home is valid, for sure. But not meeting in the home, and opting for a larger place to gather in not invalidated by other Christians meeting in their homes.

But more to the point, the necessity of meeting in homes was a fact of Roman persecution. The apostles and the early Christians met in homes because the influence of the Hellenic Jewish community around them was oppressive, and the Romans were obliged to apply the law to Christians since they were viewed as upstarts, rebels, and a disturbance to the peace. It didn't take 50 years after Christ's death before Jerusalem was burnt to the ground and the Christians were blamed (AD 70)! If they didn't all want to get nailed shut into their public buildings and burnt alive, or worse, they had to meet in secret. Thus the origin of the icthus (the symbol of the fish, or the first letter of the Greek alphabet, alpha): it was a symbol used in secret to identify without speaking who was a Christian. One person would etch the first arch of the symbol into the ground with a walking stick, or their foot, and the one passing by would intersect the arch with the completing arch. Then the two passers-by knew each other as Christians.

Oppression and persecution drove people into their homes, caves, catacombs, and tombs until roughly AD 313; why don't we meet in caves, or tombs then, if we want to be biblically and historically pure, Tim? The fact that the apostles started meeting with people in their homes was not only a Jewish custom at the time, it was also a matter of being a seed community. That is, a fledgling group of believers with no financial clout, and no ability or influence to gain a public building of their choice. Given all that, I'm concerned that 'house church' is simply a different format for doing church and is no more right, or wrong than church as it presently is. God isn't stopped, or slowed by methodology, or location. Geography isn't a barrier to our Lord.

"it is how the apostles brought the body to relate and function together with out any kind of dedicated edifice for that function."

Because it was their only option. I mean, aside from the caves, catacombs, and tombs I mentioned earlier.

"Leadership is to be understood as a servant not a lord.(1Pet.5:3 Luke 22:26) Leaders lead the church but are not lords’ of the church."

Yes, you're right. I think that is an established, almost universal understanding, if not a doctrine (i.e., established teaching) amongst conventional churches. The fact that some people take advantage of a leadership position is not an argument for the illegitimacy of present-day church leadership. It is an argument for the immorality of some people, but it does nothing to debunk the presence, or even necessity of leadership in present-day churches.

A Critical Response to Jerry Coyne, P. II: Having Our Cake and Eating It, Too

It is the nature of fundamentalists to bottom-line their thinking as far as they are able. There is emotional security in holding to what one perceives as an inviolable interpretation of reality. So when an equal opposing claim to reality makes itself known, it is inevitable that philosophical claims to reality will clash. It is just this phenomenon that Coyne has identified when he notes the bipolar culture of evangelicals and the 'new atheists'. Says Chris Hedges in When Atheism Becomes Religion,

"Fundamentalism is a mind-set. The iconography and language it employs can be either religious or secular or both, but because it dismisses all alternative viewpoints as inferior and unworthy of consideration it is anti-thought. This is part of its attraction. It fills a human desire for self-importance, for hope and the dream of finally attaining paradise. It creates a binary world of absolutes, of good and evil. It provides a comforting emotional certitude."1

With two opposing streams of fundamentalism equally certain that their views of reality are the only reliable views, the atmosphere for dialogue is squelched, and reconciliation is necessarily impossible. The same idea is borne out in common conversation: if two people are unwilling to lay aside their differences in order to establish effective, meaningful communication – communication that both parties can benefit from – then reconciliation is not possible.

However, Coyne goes on to make the point that there are liberal theologians and religious scientists hoping to effect a harmony between the two perspectives. That is, some theologians and scientists are setting their differences aside to bring about mutually beneficial communication. We can reasonably assume then, that those scientists are seeing enough convergence to make a possible reconciliation. For Coyne, though, this is too easy. In fact, he states that “there are religious scientists and Darwinian churchgoers. But this does not mean that faith and science are compatible, except in the trivial sense that both attitudes can be simultaneously embraced by a single human mind.”

Noting that people are working on reconciliation implies the possibility of that end. Those who hold to a congenial view of both science and religion – that is, those who hold to “both attitudes... simultaneously” – manage a cognitive dissonance not uncommon to daily living; for example, being enslaved to the workforce in order to gain a future freedom that one values now. Whether or not anyone agrees with my stated example, the contrasts between what people believe and what they have to 'work with,' or value can often run into conflict despite the fact that both 'attitudes' must be conjoined in a persons mind. So while it is that religious folk insist on a divinely curated reality, and the scientific community insists on a chance naturalistic reality, the fact remains that dissonance between the two fields does not logically imply a total divorce.

Embracing competing claims is in no way a “trivial” occupation, as Coyne states. It is, as I've already noted, a reality we all face. In fact, it is one of the foundational layers of being a human being, of recognizing that for all our linear equations, reality is often relentlessly bisected to the point where traveling along a straight line becomes impossible. Too much of who we are as human beings, as participants in this nebulous cosmos, is presently beyond our reach or comprehension. Given that fact, we can all benefit from the sciences that quantify perceptible reality, and we can all benefit from the philosophical, or metaphysical quandries that religions attempt to address. And we can have both of those things simultaneously. We can have our cake and eat it, too. Not because doing so is 'trivial' and therefore easy, but because not doing so is dishonest and therefore makes living that much harder. Hopefully, Coyne can see the cognitive dissonance in that, and embrace it without seeing himself as “trivial”.

Still, Coyne raises important questions we would be remiss to pass by:

...some of the tensions disappear when the literal reading of the Bible is renounced, as it is by all but the most primitive of JudeoChristian sensibilities. But the tension remains. The real question is whether there is a philosophical incompatibility between religion and science. Does the empirical nature of science contradict the revelatory nature of faith? Are the gaps between them so great that the two institutions must be considered essentially antagonistic? The incessant stream of books dealing with this question suggests that the answer is not straightforward.

Coyne is quite right to note that some tensions between science and religion disappear when Christians give up a face-value rendering of Scripture. Believers would be foolish, for example, not to question the intention behind injunctions that encourage us to pluck out our eye, or cut off our hands for sinning (Mt. 5:29-30). And given the current findings of science, a face-value interpretation of the creation story seems implausible. That is, believing that everything that ever existed, and presently exists simply popped into existence 6000 – 10000 years ago, and has experienced no variation in form or function is, quite literally, naive.

The crux of the issue, Coyne notes, is a philosophical question. It is a question of epistemology. That is, if there is a disagreement between science and religion (and there is), that disagreement is the tension produced between empiricism and revelatory faith. The two systems of 'knowing' differ in many ways. By way of example, empiricism relies on what is actively observable and measureable. Faith relies on passive reception and hermeneutical reflection. Empiricism stakes claims on testable, repeatable experiments. Faith hammers down claims via profession, and systematic indoctrination. Even so, behind both of these epistemologies, and despite their competing tensions, enough of a similarity remains that not taking it into account would render the whole conversation between science and religion meaningless. That similarity is the fact that all knowledge has a fiduciary basis. In other words, what we say we know, what we claim to know, what we have measured and consider known all hinges on the fact that we believe that knowledge is accurate, binding, and correspondant to reality.

This is not a plug for the overstated case of postmodernity. Conversation on the 'relativity of truth' is often a comedy of errors wherein the actors have mistaken what they take to be true with what they hold to be valuable. No, behind all of these crossed monologues on the compatibility of science and religion, both institutions value what they think they know, and ergo believe it to be true. In science it is of paramount value to test observable data, and once the results are in the conclusions are taken to be 'true'. In religion, it is of chief importance (value) to ensure that faith claims correspond with what is agreed was divinely revealed. In either case, both parties are taking the same leap: what they conclude, based on what they interpret from their observations, is concluded in faith. The philosopher David Hume spoke to this epistemological perspective when he asserted that limitless finite observations cannot be used to draft an unrestricted general conclusion and still be logically defensible.2 Thus what science can value as a 'law' is moreso a testable faith-claim, but not necessarily an inviolable truth. As Dinesh D'Souza points out in What's So Great About Christianity:

"If I say all swans are white and posit that as a scientific hypothesis, how would I go about verifying it? By checking out swans. A million swans. Or ten million. Based on this I can say confidently that all swans are white. Hume's point is that I really don't know this. Tomorrow I might see a black swan, and there goes my scientific law."3

Or, to put it another way, there is no way to prove a connection between cause and effect, that B was caused by A. It is a correlation that is assumed but not universally fixed, as Hume was keen to note. Thus empirical science and religion both hinge on faith-based assumptions. Accordingly, if both factions are willing to admit that particular bridge between their respective gaps, reconciliation is not only possible, but already exists and awaits our recognition.

__________________________
1 Hedges, Chris When Atheism Becomes Religion New York, NY, Freepress, 2008, p. 69
2 D'Souza, Dinesh What's So Great About Christianity United States of America: Tyndale House Publishers, 2007, p. 188.
3 Ibid.

A Critical Response to Jerry Coyne, P. I

Jerry Coyne is a professor at the University of Chicago in the Department of Ecology and Evolution. He is the author of the recent book Why Evolution Is True. On February 9, 2009, Coyne published a paper through The New Republic called Seeing and Believing. In this paper, Coyne defends the thesis that science and religion will never reconcile despite on-going efforts toward that end. In particular, he relies on the work of two prominent scientists – who also happen to be Christians – Karl W. Giberson (Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution) and Kenneth R. Miller (Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul), who have made concerted efforts at establishing harmony between science and religion.

Coyne takes a fair stab at the conflict science and faith have entrenched themselves in since the early 1900's. However, his personal summary of his paper makes it clear that he sees no present or future amelioration between the two realities. In fact, he goes so far as to state that the attempt to reconcile science and religion “is doomed to fail.” But in hastening to such a conclusion, Coyne has overlooked the fact that modern Western science was birthed in Christian and Islamic cultures. And if the maxim “those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it” holds any water, there is hope for a reconciliation despite Coyne's prognostications. Having not looked back on the history of the field he practices, Coyne's thesis inversely admits a tacit probability for history to repeat itself: that is, experience re-birth in the arms of religious perspectives.

Be that as it may, Coyne notes that the religious population in America repels the notion of Darwinian natural selection because it implies that “far from having a divinely scripted role in the drama of life, our species is the accidental and contingent result of a purely natural process.” As a bit of an armchair philosopher, I have to ask the question, how does one move from the suggestion that our species evolved to the notion that that evolution was 'accidental'? Even the best of scientists admit to not knowing what is aback of evolution that would set the whole process in motion, so how can anyone determine that it was 'accidental'? Here Coyne has put himself at sixes and sevens: he has confused the observed effects with what he assumes the cause might be, and that that cause is purely 'accidental'.

Such reasoning, while it may be sincere, shuts-up the steps between evangelical America's repulsion toward Darwin's theory and what evolutionary theory actually professes: namely, that we are here, and that we know some of the mechanisms of how that is so, but we remain utterly clueless as to the actual causal factors that conceived us. So saying, any declamation of God's creative demi-urge, or any decrying of the evolutionary model both end in the same place: the necessary admission that we don't know how the first cause actually motivated anything into being.

Coyne's use of the word 'accidental' betrays just as much of a faith-based understanding of reality as any one of the evangelicals Coyne disagrees with. He has no way of knowing that evolutionary processes were 'accidental', so to profess that to be so is simply a profession of faith, and not a scientific given. Coyne has, despite the fatalistic pronouncement of his original thesis, unwittingly started a reconciliation between scientific endeavour and religious/faith-based reasoning.

Coyne notes,

The cultural polarization of America has been aggravated by attacks on religion from the “new atheists,” writers such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, who are die-hard Darwinists. Outraged religious leaders, associating evolutionary biology with atheism, counterattacked. This schism has distressed liberal theologians and religious scientists, who have renewed their efforts to reconcile religion and science.

What is wonderfully interesting about Coyne's admission that the 'new atheists' have vexed America's evangelical community is that he has identified not only a cultural polarization in America between those who hold religious beliefs and those who espouse naturalistic theory, but that he has identified opposite and extreme ends of current political, and philosophical views. It is not enough to suggest that there is a cultural 'polarization' because science and religion can disagree. Coyne's use of the term 'new atheists' helps us identify more closely the extreme ends of the divide that are not being reconciled. The evangelical community of America (often outspoken, extreme right-wingers) is divided from the opposite and opposing 'new atheist' advocates (often outspoken, extreme left-wingers). Effectively, Coyne has spotted out two groups of fundamentalists. It should come as no surprise to anyone, if we take Coyne's point seriously, that unless either ends of the philosophical spectrum are drawn closer to the centre, the distance between the fundamentalist extremes will always be obvious and unreconciled.

Dear Toshido:

Since you've been able to stir up some conversation here at St. Cynic and provoke some thoughtful responses from us, something has come to my attention: you seem to think you understand how Christians ought to be, while not being one yourself. It seems you have taken up a highly presumptuous position wherein you feel free to swing down your gavel in judgement, and "fix" our perspectives with your own.

For example, you consider the notion that understanding the word יוֹם (yowm) as a 'span of time' is a deviation from the English definition 'day'; id est (abbr.: i.e. --> that is), a literal 24 hours. Hence a real Christian can only view God's creative act as happening in 6 successive 24 hour periods. And you think that anyone holding to a different view has deviated from Scripture, and is not listening to the actual words of God.

Meanwhile, almost 2000 years of scholarship from ingenius Christian and Jewish academics have noted the metaphorical nature of Genesis. Their work, based on the ancient Hebrew texts and, in particular, in the past 150-or-so years, has focused largely on the use of the word יוֹם as an indication of the consonance between the historical aspect of the creation story, and scientific data that boldly proclaims a very long creative process via evolution. So, given the fact that textual examinations of Scripture can work in focused purpose with scientific research, are you purposefully putting yourself at cross-purposes with reliable scholarship?

On another note, you seem to have taken it on yourself to adjudicate between what I have come to understand about the context of my Christian life under God, and what you would estimate must be what a real Christian is, or would look like to you. You accuse me (and Sarah) of 'cherry-picking' the Scriptures and importing our own meanings for this-or-that word, or principle. Yet, you fail to realise that part of biblical literalism is mapping out historical contexts, metaphors, and symbolism. I am not cherry-picking if I realise that I don't have to stone my wife if she disobeys me because the Bible, at that point, is quite literally, a historical document. That is (i.e.), Israel, under the expectations of the old covenant, and without a consummate propitiation, had to literally act under such expiatory responses to law-breaking*.

However, since expiatory measures were superceded via Christ's consumate propitiation in the New Testament era (or, 'days', as it were), those particular ordinances were fulfilled. They are no longer necessary under the new covenant. So, am I cherry-picking if I follow the content of Scriptural narrative through its context to its literal conclusion? The only logical answer is 'no'.

However, by speaking out of ignorance and expecting us to cater to your expectations of what it must mean for a Christian to be 'literal', you have actually cherry-picked Scripture yourself -- because you have not taken the time to understand what it says, and therefore have come up with a wrong conclusion due to your faulty premise. And then, on top of that, you have used particular pericopes to back your lack of understanding. That, my friend, is cherry-picking.

So, without taking up too much space on my blog for this, I'd like to invite you to take this one-time opportunity to correct Christianity to your way of thinking. Be prepared to meet some resistance along the way, but if you really think certain Christians are wrong for taking up a view alternate to your interpretation of what you think their view ought to be, then it should be worth it to you to prove yourself against them, yes?

* Theological terms like propitiation and expiatory (expiation) are included for your own personal benefit and learning.

Addendum: Before you address the topic of biblical literalism (if you actually choose to), please be aware that one of the nuances of biblical literalism -- at least since the neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth -- is that the Bible is not God but contains the word of God. Hence a person doesn't follow the Bible but the Christ to whom the Bible testifies.

Dawkins, Memes, and Bus-Ads

Here at St. Cynic, I have posted several articles relating to the on-going atheist bus-ad campaign happening in the Atlantic Isles, and America.

I find the whole enterprise entertaining -- which is, admittedly, an evolution in my viewpoint, since I was, at first, a little irritated about the whole affair. Nevertheless, continued articles about the subject has brought about some decent conversation, and I have softened. Since the campaign appears to be more of an exercise in political rights, rather than serious philosophical engagements, I support atheist groups in utilizing their civilian rights. And even if atheist groups were attempting this bus-ad campaign purely for philosophical reasons, there are no reasons I can think of that should trump their democratic rights to engage their surrounding culture in on-going dialogue.

Nevertheless, I do have to wonder what a series of well-written assertions will do to mark serious reflections in people's minds. Take for example, Richard Dawkins notion that the old testament God is "arguably one of the most unpleasant characters in all fiction." What can this statement do to generate any serious conversation? From the years of experience I've had dealing with people in many demographies, I'm willing to bet that a conversation brought on by the Dawkins's quote would devolve very quickly into rapid-fire assertions about God being real, and God not-existing; followed by headstrong assertions that the old testament isn't a fiction, that the old testament is just a fiction, etc.

That kind of dialogue doesn't get anyone anywhere -- except inflamed, of course. That is not to say that there is no possible chance that open-minded conversation will happen. However, how likely is it that an open-minded conversation can come of a close-minded assertion to begin with? And isn't that one of the largest complaints of the non-religious: that the religious are not open-minded and just say things with haughty finality? That's been my experience. And that makes me wonder about advertizing Dawkins's statement as an attempt at a brute-given: why shut-off dialogue with such a close-minded statement? Given that Dawkins is an atheist, and that he, like many of the nouveau atheists, prize reason above all things, wouldn't it be more reasonable to represent him with a more flexible, open-minded comment?

Still, I think I can understand why the people funding these kinds of advertisements (Freedom From Religion Foundation) would want to cut-off conversation: it isn't politically expedient. That is, if you want to free people from the misguided concepts of religion, then you want to cut the chains that bind them, as it were, and flee to the safety of rationality. Opening the grounds to talking about the validity of assertions such as Dawkins and McQueen have made might run the risk of people disagreeing. And when you're a fundamentalist batch of atheists, any possibility that you may be wrong is just as upsetting to them as it is to fundamentalist Christians being told they're wrong. It's just not possible!

So this begs the question: is the 'Freedom From Religion Foundation' fundamentalist? Do they preach a dogmatic version of atheism? It would seem from their inelegant bus signs that they consider themselves fully in command of what is right, of what is true. Namely, that faith is beneath human dignity, that we should evolve beyond belief, and that God is simply a fiction. Questioning the possibility that they may be wrong could lead to heady conversation, even mutually beneficial conversation. But from the calibre of the bus signs on their site (and advertised in this article), conversation is not the order for the day; accepting their point of view is.

And this leads me to another thought on the bus-ad campaign. Citing catchy quips, such as Mark Twain's quote above, is an effective marketing strategy. Being able to plant a thought in someone's mind such that it poses an on-going inner-dialogue, or possibly an emotional tension is a very popular way of selling a product. In this case, the product is doubt. There is nothing wrong with a healthy sense of doubt, but attempting to market doubt via memetic phrases poses an interesting connection in this bus-ad campaign.

The connection, in short, is this: Richard Dawkins is credited as introducing the term "meme" in his landmark book The Selfish Gene (1976). Memes, essentially, are bits of information, and ideas that self-replicate, and evolve via selective cultural pressures. The atheist bus-ad campaign is the brainchild of the British Humanist Association, and backed by -- who else? -- Richard Dawkins.

So, given that Dawkins introduced the notion of memes, and is the backer of the bus-ad campaigns, I have to wonder if professor Dawkins hasn't utilized his theory of memes in a brilliant attempt to invigorate a crafty bit of social engineering. If by having compact, memorable phrases puckered up in our brains, phrases that question, even outright deny the existence of God, and the validity of faith, enough people come to reject any form of religion, then the atheist bus-ad campaign would prove to be an insanely intelligent undermining of the hopes of millions.

I cannot be certain of the connection I think I see, but I do find it very interesting, to say the least, and will continue to look on as the ad campaign grows more popular. As for now, even though I find the campaign somewhat entertaining, and support atheists in their use of civil liberties, I will also feel free to doubt the benign intentions of their crusade. This is not an unreasonable position, I think, since I would be suspicious of anyone attempting to convince me to buy into something I don't actually want.

And to echo a phrase that pressured itself into my mind, I respond to atheists and free-thinkers in the words of G.K. Chesterton, "With all due respect to free-thinkers, I am still free to think." The close-minded atheist crusade, dolled-up as a campaign, may pose some reasonable doubts, but I seriously doubt it is a reasonable crusade.