It appears that Richard Dawkins, the high priest of all the people who are smarter than all of you, seems to be quite unnerved by the the coming documentary Expelled.  On his site he has written a diatribe of sorts about all the stupid people who made the documentary Expelled.  It is interesting to observe Dawkins' tone.  He describes all involved with the project as untalented ignoramuses, who should be embarrassed to be breathing.  It is quite remarkable the arrogance that oozes from his writing.

Perhaps he simply does not realize that telling everyone: 1) I'm starter than you 2) You are an idiot 3) You have zero talent, just might not be the most effective method of persuasion.  Of course, this is not his play in life as he and the new atheist crowd do not desire dialog, only ridicule. Quite frankly, it appears that he thinks all believers in God should be lobotomized.  The choir of the high priest certainly loves to sing when Dawkins preaches.

The post's commentary on the film Expelled is also quite revealing and shows that Dawkins is obviously threatened by the documentary.  He goes to great length to interpret his role in the film so to ameliorate his role in a certain segment of the film.  Apparently, he wanted to give his own spin on the scene where he declares that life could have been intelligently designed by ET. 

One final note of comment to engage one of the philosophical points he attempts to levy against the film.  In the documentary, the filmakers apparently examine the application of Darwinian survival of the fittest to social theories and practices of the early 20th century.  Apparently the Nazi philosophy is focused on heavily in Expelled whereby the Nazi's wanted to eliminate the weak so that the fittest could survive and create a superior, more evolved humanity.

Dawkins then goes on to explain this is a commitment of the is-ought fallacy. Simply because nature IS a certain way - survival of the fittest, red with tooth and claw, does not mean that it OUGHT to be that way.  In other words, Dawkins explains to us that all that nature is, all reality is for that matter, is a complex evolution of matter/energy.  There is simply nothing else.  Yet then he goes on to say that we OUGHT to create a society that is the exact opposite of Darwinian reality.  Let me say that I agree with him - I want no Darwinian society; I agree with him that we ought care for the poor and live for the good of all not simply the strongest, most fit among us.  However, my question for Dawkins is precisely from where does he derive his OUGHT.  If nature all there is, there is nothing else here.  No moral universe, no higher truths, no reason beyond practicality to dictate what anyone OUGHT to do.  So I think he is massively missing the point. I thank God he, unlike the Nazis, is living a contradiction.  He is living inconsistently with his own view of the world. 

Dawkins simply has no reason for not wanting his Darwinian world to be society's reality. Believers in a purposed creation, a moral universe where we OUGHT to live in accord with what is good, right and true.  He is smuggling beliefs which do not flow from his deepest convictions.  He is stealing his OUGHT from other places because it is simply not found is his IS.  We have a reason for desiring a world contrary to the doldrums of Dawkins' Darwinian reality...for we know that his world is an impostor.  For this universe does indeed have purpose, meaning, a moral law and its correlative lawgiver.  It is to him that we all must give an account...

 

 

OK, that title could easily have been a technology entry here at POC...but instead of speaking about the weakness of text messaging on the iPhone, I wanted to put you on to a debate about the textual manuscripts of the New Testament.

There is an excellent summary online at Parchment and Pen of the recent debate between New Testament scholars Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace.  You may interact with Ehrman's ideas if you ever talk to thoughtful non Christians as his book MisQuoting Jesus has sold quite well over the last few years.

I interacted a bit with a bit of Ehrman's argumentation a few years back when reading his book Lost Christianities. You can read that here - Kind of Ironic.

I just jumped off the plane from Newark, NJ for a medium sized three hour layover in the Chicago airport.  On the flight into the windy city I read through an article on a persona I have followed a bit over the years.  The article was in WIRED magazine and was simply titled Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity. Well, maybe that title is not so simple nor the ideas being discussed therein.  Let me try to summarize, in a few words, the work of Ray Kurzweil.

In my opinion, Ray Kurzweil is one of the intellectual geniuses of our times. He has been a bit of a legend in the computer science and artificial intelligence worlds.  I know, that is probably something like .00001 percent of the world's population but he has contributed greatly in inventing technology that has changed the world.  His work has been mainly in pattern recognition and machine text/speech recognition.  He has invented software that can read books out loud to the blind and answer you phone calls for large companies.  Well, maybe the latter one has been a bit of a frustrating experience to some.  Kurzweil's more controversial work however has been as one of the leading proponents of what is known as Strong AI. 

Strong AI holds that human intelligence (even consciousness for that matter) can be reduced (read my previous post on reductionism) to processes similar to a very complex computer.  In other words, if you can mimic human thought, decision making...even emotions, you then have consciousness and self awareness. So in his theory, there will be a day when computers are powerful enough for Skynet to "wake up" make its own decisions and take over the world. Many of you have been exposed to the Strong AI view in pop culture through cinematic exploration.  The aforementioned Skynet of the Terminator lore, HAL2000 of 2001 a Space Odyssey, the weird boy robot flick AI, the bizarre world of Minority Report, Will Smith's rambunctious robot romp in iRobot and the new theistic, philosophical cylons of the new Battlestar Gallictica.

Kurzweil believes that as computational power increases the ability to write a brain simulating, consciousness simulating algorithm draws nearer in time.  In other words, given enough processing power, computers will some day be as human as you.  Hence, his earlier works evolved from The Age of Intelligent Machines to the book I read some years ago entitled The Age of Spiritual Machines.  Now, Kurzweill did not suddenly become a dualist in changing his language to "Spiritual Machines."  His point is simply that future computers will appear to be every bit as conscious as ourselves - they might even worship and read books by the compuDalilama (my term, not his).  His latest update of the book and its ideas deals with what he calls the singularity, and according to Kurzweil, it is near.

In the work, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking Penguin), he speaks of a soon coming day where a radical shift in life as we know it will take place. At this singularity, we will all be uploaded as software into the network, with non perishing "bodies" (if you want) and live forever.  Immortality, the fountain of youth and becoming as gods all in one push of a brain upload button.  Now, if you believe this narrative (and many do not - read the sidebar in WIRED, Never Mind the Singularity, Here's the Science, featuring research of those that think the whole scheme of things is flawed) you will want to stay alive long enough to reach this glorious land.  If you die before we arrive, so to speak, you will not get to gather at the other side with the other comphumans. Interestingly enough a Physicist Frank Tipler in The Physics of Christianity is writing about similar ideas though from a theistic perspective; though I found it very bizarre. If all this sounds a bit nuts, you are not alone. 

One of the philosophical problems with computing=consciousness is that of self-knowledge.  Computers, by nature of their design, perform by processing tasks according to algorithms.  Even the learning and evolving systems, do so according to predetermined rules of logic placed upon them from minds - in this case programming.  In other words, computers process data and symbols , they do not "know" anything.  I actually thought of this over the weekend observing the functioning of a GPS navigation system in a car.

Our realtor during our house hunting in NJ would punch in an address and then a kind woman's voice (perhaps using Kurzweil inspired technology patents) would tell us precisely where to turn to arrive at our destination.  In our case it was usually a small, dumpy, overpriced house...but I digress.  Let me do a bit of a thought experiment with you at this point.  Imagine for a moment that you were in a vehicle where you could not see where you were going yet you could cause a car to turn right or left based upon the cues from a GPS system processing your location.  You would receive data, act upon it, then arrive perfectly at your desired destination.  I felt like I actually did this many, many times sitting in the back seat of a car zipping around New Jersey this weekend.  Now, in our experiment, you would seem to have a great knowledge of the area and a great sense of directions.  Yet there is one glaring problem - you actually have no idea where you are.  You have zero knowledge of New Jersey or any conscious sense of direction.  You simply processed input and data.  Computers process symbols and data, they do not know anything.  They can do many things, appear intelligent, etc but they do not know.  For a more sophisticated argument John Searle's now famous Chinese Room Problem is similar and much more cogent.

I also find massive ethical problems with this view because it will mean the rich and technological persons will keep themselves alive while others will languish in the pre-singularity world of death and decay.  A new elitism will be even more severe in the imagined world of Kurzweil's future.  It seems like a world that will have more selfish people, concerned only about the perpetuation of their own lives.  God forbid the poor masses ever decide to pull the plug (literally) on the machines - we all know that will mean war.  I've seen the Matrix you know.  Or perhaps we will be self-deluded once again that we will make the world perfect this time around.  Perhaps we have forgotten what happens in reality, as well as literature and film, when human beings think they can make the perfect world in their own image.

So what is Kurzweil doing besides promoting his vision of the coming singularity? He is taking hundreds of supplements a day and trying to experiment with any life lengthening idea just to keep his biological existence intact so he can make it.  He is quite wealthy and is spending massive amounts of resources on keeping his ticker going as the clock ticks forward.  Unfortunately none of this can keep one from getting hit by a bus, shot by a crazy person, or succumbing to disease. Yet it does seems that hope for immortality, even eternal life, lives even among materialists.  Many today hope in aliens, hope in getting off this mound called earth by a coming Starship Enterprise and many hope to create our descendants and be transferred into machines by fiber optic transfer (or whatever high bandwidth technology is available at the singularity).  Sadly, some may choose suicide. 

What does all of this reveal about the human soul? I think we see that we long to live, not die.  We long for a better future where the harsh realities of life outside of Eden are brought to an end.  Some choose to trust in the promises of God and resurection for the hope of eternal life.  Others seek to become godlike themselves.  Where does this leave a human being?  In Kurzweil's own description - it has left him lonely.

Note

For all one of you interested in wrestling with these ideas further I recommend the work
Are We Spiritual Machines?: Ray Kurzweil vs. the Critics of Strong A.I. edited by Jay Wesley Richards.

In preparation for some Thoughts in Time (I am renaming a series called Tuesdays in Time, Thoughts in Time because sometimes I am just too busy on Tuesdays) I wanted to post overall on one of the current worldviews prevalent among Western intellectuals.  In this essay I want to do just a few things.  First, I want to lay out a worldview which I am calling naturalistic reductionism - what Richard Dawkins has described as "dancing to our DNA."  Second, I want to give an example from a recent wired magazine article, of how this leads to some rather absurd thinking.  The short article, Why Things Suck: Science, demonstrates well that while attempting to explain everything - this worldview  explains no-thing at all.  Third, I want to describe why the scientific enterprise, when engaged as a believer, in no wise sucks.  So let us begin our dance...maybe with more than just our DNA.

Over the course of time ideas develop and evolve.  Thinkers influence one another and create problems for systems of thoughts.  When problems emerge, other thinkers seek to solve those problems and rescue the system.  At times the system becomes so beaten and questioned that it is jettisoned altogether for other views.  Such is the history of ideas.  In our current situation we stand at an interesting point in Western ideas.  Many have rejected concepts such as supernatural entities, God, angels, human souls - in favor of a a world made up only of energy.  We are just bits of organized information, matter/space/time/energy rearranged ordered according to the laws of Physics.  Here is where it gets interesting.  The universe, so we are told, is a random occurrence of space/time/matter combined with chance.  There is no order to the order any longer in many people's thinkers we are in a random process which in no way had us in mind.  This view of life; that we are all but the result of nature and her laws can be called naturalism and it has ancient roots.

Interestingly enough, the study of nature and her laws had led to astounding blessings and profound burdens for human kind.  Science has brought us both vaccines and atomic bombs, modern sanitation and weapons of mass destruction.  Yet because of the success of the scientific enterprise it has been extended to literally explain everything; as if everything can be reduced by the word "JUST"

• A human being is JUST a bundle of matter organized by law and DNA
• Love is JUST an exchange of chemical signals by specialized apes
• Ethics is JUST something our species created in order to pass on its genes and survive
• God is JUST localized activity in a sector of your brain

Let me be clear.  Scientific investigation is a great gift to humanity.  The very fact that our thinking and the ways our universe functions correspond is a great clue to the design of God in us.  Yet when we take a good thing such as science and extend it to all every of knowledge we go much too far.   As the late British journalist Malcom Muggeridge once remarked we run great risk of simply educating ourselves into imbecility. 

In C.S. Lewis' book The Pilgrim's Regress, a man name John is in prison - captive as it were, to the spirit of the age.  In his pit he is brought things to eat at which the jailer would explain what they were eating.  He tells John that when eating meat they are just eating corpses, when partaking of milk they were just downing the secretions of a cow, and eggs were just the menstruum of a verminous fowl.  John finally rebels against this, calling out the madness of his jailer.  The reductionism of his jailer was far too much for his experience of eggs.  John's objection was that some things in life seem like gifts, others do not.  There is a difference he says between a cow's dung and a cow's milk.  One seems like Nature's gift, the other does not.  We know what an egg is scientifically, yet they are also pleasant food, gifts in creation...  The materialist of course will say at this point - nope, just an unfertilized ovum. The problem with reductionism is not that it says so much - but rather that it says too little.  There is more to life than just the fluctuations of quantum foam.  For human experience, human consciousness, human relations, human spirituality cannot be reduced to the simple, elegant laws of Physics. Yes, they are very much a part of who and what we are - but it is only a partial story...one that impoverishes the human experience and hinders flourishing.  My purpose here is not an argument against metaphysical naturalism, rigorous argument can be found elsewhere, my point is an existential one...that we are left with an impoverished reality when we say we are JUST a bucket of lucky DNA.

Now to our example.  Wired Magazine recently ran an article with a pithy little title - Why Things Suck - 33 Things that make us Crazy.  Interestingly enough, one of the things that sucked was Science - as one who studied in the hard sciences during my undergraduate work at UNC, this was of some interest to me.  Personally, I like science and think it sucketh not.  Upon reading the little segment by Thomas Hayden, I realized why it sucks for him.  Let me copy his entire piece in for you so you can read it in context - really, it is actually quite brief.

Continue reading "Why Science in a Theistic Universe Does Not Suck" »

At risk of jumping for joy, the two things I like to write about most, technology and theology have strangely converged at Google.  Now I don't want to risk being labeled a Tim Keller groupie or fanboy by over posting Keller videos here at the POCBlog...so I'll let someone else do that work for me.  Everyone knows that Steve McCoy is a Keller fanboy so he has linked to Dr. Keller's recent lecture at Google. Here is his link at the Reformissionary.

Google has some cool intellectual culture where they bring in authors, host discussions for employees etc. (as a parenthetical, if you have not watch Merlin Mann's inbox zero e-mail presentation you need to for your e-mail sanity).  On March 5th they hosted Keller for a discussion of the ideas in his new book The Reason for God.  Very good - similar to the Berkeley deal, but in my opinion much better - but at Google as well - which in my mind, is much cooler. 

OK, I'll go ahead a risk fanboyism and embed it here too.

Tim Keller's new book is going to be at #7 on the NYT Best Sellers list this week. Expect a review around here some time soon (in POCBlog time that means - I hope to do that soon and have no idea when that will be).

Also he recently lectured at UC Berkeley with the Veritas Forum on issues related into "belief and skepticism" - you can watch it below from YouTube. Keller is a rock star who isn't one.

I am going to start running a somewhat regular feature here on the POCBlog which has arisen out of my recent return to the gym. Recently I have been riding the exercise bike and reading Time Magazine.  It has been good to ride hard and read what the good editors of one of America's news weeklies has to say about life and their interpretation of the news.  Interestingly enough I find the worldview expressed in Time to be highly naturalistic and reductionist even with their hat tip stories and a few interviews on religious matters. 

So, due to my bike time thinking about Time I am going to start ot interact with some of their features on Tuesdays.  Tuesdays in Time I will call it...I hope it will be a good exercise in thinking about subjects of interest being treated in the marketplace ideas.  So far I know there will be something coming on the chemistry of love, scientists "creating" life and curing addicts through giving them drugs.  Other than that, time will tell what I meet upon the exercise bike in the coming days.  Should be a fun time.

I may engage a monthly in the Monthly as I enjoy reading in the Atlantic Monthly - but for some reason this month's cover is about Brittany Spears...which is makes it feel like a tabloid for some reason.  I am guessing it will have some good social commentary about the rise and troubles of everyone's favorite Mousekateer, Mom and dance club Maverick.

There is a very interesting article by Roger Sandall regarding the secular intellectual discussions of "religion and violence" and the utter lengths that will be traveled not to say anything honest about the history of the religion of peace. 

If you have never studied the history of the Crusades this article is a must read for you.  Then pick up The New Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas Madden.

This article is worth the time to read. Here is an excerpt:

In the sort of books produced by Hitchens and Dawkins the Crusades are the usual point of departure for one-sided historical accounts coupling Christianity and “violence”. Indeed, Dawkins takes this so much for granted that he can’t even be bothered discussing the matter (“In this book, I have deliberately refrained from detailing the horrors of the Crusades”). Hitchens however regards the opportunity as too good to pass up, and on page 35 drags the Iraq War into the argument. The gist being that there’s nothing to choose between Christians and jihadis, and that the modern atrocities of the latter could be seen as a delayed but appropriate response to “the bloodstained spectre of the Crusaders”.

This attitude is widespread. Moreover, as Paul Stenhouse points out in a valuable recent study, “The Crusades in Context”, Hitchens’ “bloodstained spectre” is absurdly seen as the result of unprovoked Christian aggression. It is claimed that “five centuries of peaceful co-existence” between Muslims and Christians were brought to an end by deranged sword-waving Soldiers of the Cross, terrorising, killing, burning and sacking decent, respectable, peace-loving Muslim communities.

More than this, the Crusaders are being presented in schools as the original terrorists. As a Year 8 textbook in the Australian state of Victoria has it: “Those who destroyed the World Trade Centre are regarded as terrorists … Might it be fair to say that the Crusaders who attacked the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem were also terrorists?”

Why the Crusades took place

No it wouldn’t be fair. Nor would it be true. In the story Paul Stenhouse tells, the 463 years between the death of Muhammed in 632 AD, and the First Crusade in 1095, were extremely dangerous for Christian Europe. Instead of peace there were unrelenting Islamic wars and incursions; Muslim invasions of Spain, Italy, Sicily and Sardinia; raids, seizures, looting of treasure, military occupations that lasted until Saracen forces were forcibly dislodged, sackings of Christian cities including Rome, and desecrations of Christian shrines. And be it noted: all this went on for 463 years before any Christian Crusade in response to these murderous provocations took place.

Sixteen years after the death of Muhammed, in 648 AD, Cyprus was overrun. Rhodes fell in 653, and by 698 AD the whole of North Africa was lost. In 711 Muslims from Tangier crossed into Spain, set their sights on France, and by 720 AD Narbonne had fallen. Bordeaux was stormed and its churches burnt in 732. As Gibbon emphasised, only the resistance at Poitiers of Charles Martel in 732 saved Europe from occupation, and arrested the Muslim tide.

(HT - Ben Schellack)

There are two books that I am greatly anticipating this spring, one of which just shipped from Amazon.com and will soon arrive in one of the sheik little brown boxes to my door step.  The two books are the kinds that you hope to be able to give to others who have questions about Jesus or the historic Christian faith...but will not be too simplistic or boring to actually give to someone.  The books are written for different audiences, but I think the reader of the POCBlog will love both.

For the Sophisticated Skeptic and the Thoughtful Believer
(Updated - There is now a dedicated web site for the book) 

Keller is a well known Presbyterian minister at Redeemer Prebyterian Church in New York City.  He was recently interviewed in Newsweek magazine (see The Smart Shepherd) and is well known and loved in the missional/theologically driven church planting movement.  The book is a work of Christian Apologetics which is sectioned into two main parts.  Part I, entitled, “The Leap of Doubt” an exercise in defensive apologetics seeks to answer some objections to Christian faith:

1. There can’t be just one true religion
2. A good God could not allow suffering
3. Christianity is a straitjacket
4. The church is responsible for so much injustice
5. A loving God would not send people to hell
6. Science has disproved Christianity
7. You can’t take the Bible literally

The second half, entitled “The Reasons for Faith,” the move is to more positive apologetics and shaping a case for the gospel.

1. The clues of God
2. The knowledge of God
3. The problem of sin
4. Religion and the gospel
5. The (true) story of the cross
6. The reality of the resurrection
7. The Dance of God

This book will surely interupt my current reading and jump to the front of the line.  I may however tell Keller to wait as I really want to get to After the Baby Boomers - How Twenty and Thirty Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion by Robert Wuthnow .

To purchase Keller's new book Westminster Books has it for 15.47. If you have some car time allotted in life, there is also an audio book version (read by Keller) which Westminster books has for 18.87

For the Indie, Emo and Younger Crowds - And Just About Everyone

If there is anything that the Christian faith is centered upon it is the person and work of Jesus.  Far too often he is the subject of much revisionist theology, much cultural invention and just plain misunderstanding.  In this work you have pastor Mark Driscoll and theologian Gerry Breshears doing a marvel team up to put out some biblically faithful yet relevantly communicated Jesusology.  From reading Mark's other books and having interacted with Dr. Breshears on a few different occasions I really look forward to this book.  Driscoll's wit, erudite mind and humor will certainly come through as will Breshears theological care and acumen.  You want good theology and the laugh out loud - this is the book.  I think this is one you could give to any non Christian person under 35 without any concern.  Jesus will be honored, the Bible's actual teaching about him on display and by God's grace  the reader just might meet Jesus in the process. 

Amazon has it for cheap here. The sermon series upon which Driscoll based the book is also online for free (audio/video) at Mars Hill Church's web site.  Audio book coming in March.

JI Packer - who is really getting up there in years - wrote this endorsement:

“This book reveals Mark Driscoll as a highly powerful, colorful, down-to-earth catechist, targeting teens and twenty-somethings with the old, old story told in modern street-cred style. And Professor Breshears ballasts a sometimes lurid but consistently vivid presentation of basic truth about the Lord Jesus Christ.”

J. I. Packer, Board of Governors’ Professor of Theology, Regent College

Wrestler and Ultimate Fighter Matt Lindland wrote this one: 

“This book presents an honest view of Jesus without giving in to the pressure to soften him up. I had to grapple with the real vintage Jesus. This is a Savior worth fighting for.
Matt Lindland, 2000 Olympic silver medalist in wrestling; top-ranked middleweight mixed martial arts fighter

Great quote today from Kairos Journal on the moribund nature of materialistic understandings of the world.  The quote is from David Hart, an Eastern Orthodox Theologian...great stuff:

Now that the initial, delirious raptures of eighteenth and nineteenth-century atheism have long since subsided, and a sober survey of the landscape left behind by God’s departure has become possible, only the most ardently self-deluding secularist could possibly fail to see how much of the moral, imaginative, creative, and speculative glory of humanity seems to have vanished from the earth. Far from draining the world of any intrinsic meaning, as many of the critics of religion are wont to claim, faith in the divine source and end of all reality had charged every moment of time with an eternal significance, with possibilities of transcendence, with a reason for moral striving and artistry and dreams of future generations. Materialism, by contrast, when its boring mechanistic reductionism takes hold of a culture, can make even the immeasurable wonders of matter seem tedious, and life seem largely pointless.

David B. Hart , “Beyond Disbelief,” review of The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World, by Alister McGrath, The New Criterion (June 2005), 80.

Tim Dees, my good friend and a partner in crime with Jacob's Well recently wrote an interesting commentary on the recent republican debate and the question asked about the candidates beliefs about the Bible.  Tim's essay was entitled THERE IS NO 2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION and for some reason has yet to make it up to his The FotD web site (Tim, please remedy).  In the post he made an interesting statement that I want to unpack a bit further - here it is:

I cannot argue, without religious presuppositions, that every word of the Bible is literally true; I can only argue that no part of it is false, but that would require going through every possible objection and offering rebuttals. In that sense, the question is logical quicksand.

First of all, I would like to say that I agree with Tim's statement, though that may be shocking for some of you to read.  Second, I would like to say that such manner of argumentation would be a fiction so the point is somewhat moot.  Reid, what do you mean?

Well, if one is forced to argue without religious presuppositions (beliefs) one would be doing an impossible task.  Human beings are simply unable to argue from such neutral ground.  Now, I do think we can successfully perform thought experiments...such as the following.

I just want to use my reason, along with taking on purely secular presuppositions and then try to prove that no part of the Bible is false...this indeed would be a task of herding cats.  You would need to demonstrate that every falsifiable statement in the good book is in fact not falsified when all the facts are known.  

Yet, this sort of process is a fiction and assumes way to much.  First, it assumes that secular presuppostions give one good reason to trust our reasoning.  Second, it assumes secular presuppositions are "religiously neutral" which they are not.  Someone who wants to act or play as if there is no God is operating in a profoundly religious world.  She has answered some ultimate questions and is now going about her business in light of these answers.  These answers are in no way rational inferences, but rather faith commitments about ultimate reality. She is acting on beliefs.

So, if I want to talk about the Bible being the word of God, or being always true and never false, one would not want to place religious presuppositions aside, but rather keep them central.  The Bible being always true is connected to what we believe it to be...the Word of God.  Yet this is connected to there being a God...and not simply any God, but one who speaks and gives revelation through prophets and apostles - writers inspired to write his words.  Now, I am not saying that one should not give arguments to why the Bible gives credence to the claim that it is the Word of God which never falsifies.  We should appeal to fulfilled prophecy, we should build inductive cases from archeology (Did you realize we may have just dug up Nehemiah's wall?) and science which reinforce biblical truth claims etc. We can and should provide arguments for the text of Scripture being the Word of God.  But these arguments do not stand alone away from Christian presuppositions, they live within them. 

So how should we proceed with friends who have questions about the nature of the Bible?  I offer the following:

• Do not eliminate the claims the Bible makes for itself - that it is God's Word - 2 Tim 3:16
• Do help resolve tensions for your friends of different beliefs (secular non religious faith adherents included) through good arguments for Scripture's authority.
• Do ask them to do thought experiments with you to take on Christian presuppositions and then ask their questions of the Bible.  For instance consider the following:
  

You: Joe, you think there isn't a god, but for a moment let me ask you a question.  If there were a God, do you think he would want to communicate with us?
Joe: Sure, why not
You: What ways would you choose to talk to us mortal ants?
Joe: Maybe he would have us google "God" and get some clear answers! Laughing...I suppose he could talk to us
You: Good. What if we misunderstood him?
Joe: He could put it in writing!
You: Good point...even more so, he could become one of us...then we can share that God spoke through apostles and prophets and in these last days he has spoke to us through Jesus - then allow him to consider Jesus and the gospel.

Anyway, I agree with Tim - but I challenge the whole project and think there is another way than appeals to lonely, autonomous, human reason  in such discussions.  And if you have not done so, you need to subscribe to Tim's Fact of the Day.

It is an amazing thing which happened in the region of Caesarea Philippi when Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God almost two millennia ago (See Mark 8:27-30 and Matthew 16:13-20).  Caesarea Philippi was a city dedicated to the worship of the emperor at the time of Jesus and in previous generations was a place dedicated to the pagan god Pan and to the idolatrous worship of Baal.¹  It was in this place where Jesus' identity is openly confessed.  In our world today we often speak of pluralism, the idea that there are many gods and many ways to worship.  We think this is a new situation in the world brought on somehow by the diversification of viewpoints in contemporary America.  Yet this reality is nothing new at all for people have been building alters from the dawn of humanity.  People have always created and worshipped gods, yet the radical confession of Peter is that there was one God and that they were walking with him on the earth.

The claim of Monotheism was the teaching of the ancient Jewish people² among nations who believed in many, many deities.  The ancient philosophers were coming to monotheistic conclusions³ as they wrestled with metaphysical questions of ultimate reality and truth.  Yet monotheism has an undeniable edge to it.  If there is one and only one creator God, then all other pretenders to the throne are no gods at all.⁴  Those who stand for religious pluralism today and throughout history see this very clearly as a problem.  Mary Lefkowitz, professor emerita at Wellesley College recently wrote the following in an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times. 

Prominent secular and atheist commentators have argued lately that religion "poisons" human life and causes endless violence and suffering. But the poison isn't religion; it's monotheism.⁵

Of course she is following the drivel of the so called "new atheists" who place all the problems of the world on religion. The thesis is that monotheism, belief in one God, necessitates killing those who disagree.  This of course is hardly what you find in the life of Jesus.  Yes, some Christians in history have murdered and conquered others in the name of Jesus, but in doing so they acted in contradiction to his very life and teaching.  Yet we must not dodge the reality found in the incarnation, in the biblical teaching that the one creator God, became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  The implications are that this person is the most important figure on the horizons of history and the coming contours of the future.  He is not one teacher among many, nor one way to many gods.  

The teaching of God incarnate in Jesus the Messiah is radical, humbling and life changing for in the gospel we do not see God coming to oppress humanity.  In stark contrast to the totalitarian visions of human utopias, offered by king, caliph, or communist, God came to earth to die for and redeem a people for himself from every nation on the earth.  There will be a kingdom on the earth some day which will be one of righteousness, love and peace.  It will not come by force of man or technological heroism.  It will come with the same Jesus at his return to the earth. 

All people from every ideology, religion, ethnicity and background are welcome at the foot of the cross of Christ.  It is a great heresy to teach that all from every nation are saved, but a beautiful biblical truth that some from every nation will be saved by grace.  In every age, from the time of Jesus until the end of the world, Christians will proclaim the wonderful news of God incarnate in Jesus Christ dying for sinners.  It was and will be an unpopular message to declare Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.  Yet this will be the song of all people at the close of history.  We now have the great joy and privilege of knowing him and sharing him with all.  In following Jesus in this world, living his mission and declaring his message, there will always be those who shout "crucify him!" and we must take up this cross.  Yet there will be those, to whom the Father reveals Jesus, who will look at him as did doubting Thomas and exclaim-my Lord and my God...

Notes 

1. Ben Witherington III, Mark: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001) 240.
2. See Deuteronomy 6:4,5.
3. The looming historical figures of Plato and Aristotle, though in very different ways, were coming to this conclusion.
4.For a good look at Jesus among world religions see Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods (Nashville, Word, 2000)
5. Mary Lefkowitz, Bring back the Greek gods—Mere mortals had a better life when more than one ruler presided from on high, LA Times, October 23, 2007. 

Today we have another guest essay from Timothy Dees one of the founding members of Jacob's Well who has already relocated his operations to New Jersey.  If his Fact of the Day (FotD) is not on your radar it should be.  Here is the link to his site.

Today's installment touches a subject familiar to the readers of the POCblog - The New Atheism.  Dees essay should be read along with the excellent essay What the New Atheists Don’t See - To regret religion is to regret Western civilization by Theodore Dalrymple in the City Journal.  Dalrymple is not a believer but sees through much of the vitriol of the new atheists to some of the beautiful gems of Western Christian culture.  Highly recommend you reading Dalrymple and then Tim's essay below.  Hat tip to Ben Vastine for pointing out Dalrymple's essay to me last week.  Enjoy.

-----------------------------------------------
The New Atheists
by Timothy Dees 

Today we have a book review / essay on the New Atheists.  It mentions the following books:

• God Is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens
• Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett
• The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins
• The End of Faith, Sam Harris
  

It's a simple enough question: either there is a God or there isn't.  But there are some special properties to that question that make it exceedingly difficult, especially because the game is rigged against the atheists.  I say that as a theist, but I also say that in agreement with prominent atheists such as Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins.  The existence of God, as a philosophical proposition, is non-falsifiable; in other words, you cannot prove that God doesn't exist.

Russell, the patron saint of atheism, unpacked this idea when he said:

"As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods."

What this means is that atheists cannot prove that God does not exist, so they are forced to consign themselves either to rebutting arguments for God's existence, or attempting to demonstrate that if God existed, he would be a nasty fellow.  It's not that they don't have their reasons, but as a philosophical statement it is impossible to prove there is no God. 

Fighting a non-falsifiable idea is a Sisyphean task, and throughout history atheists have generally accepted modest expectations for what they can and cannot do.  Thus Bertrand Russell's legendary atheist tract is not entitled Why I Am an Atheist, but Why I Am Not a Christian.  In it, he goes through many of the classical arguments for God's existence and offers a rebuttal of each.  On these grounds he rejects Christianity and the Christian conception of God, but as a philosopher he cannot honestly say that he has proved that God doesn't exist.

Lately, however, a new flavor has emerged in the debate over God's existence.  The New Atheists, as they have been called, are a group of atheists who, in the wake of September 11th, have decided that belief in God isn't just wrong, it's evil.  It's a varied group, consisting of a legendary scientist (Richard Dawkins), a journalist (Christopher Hitchens), a graduate student (Sam Harris), a philosopher (Daniel Dennett), and a number of other people of different stripes.  The one thing they all have in common is that they write books on atheism, and those books sell at a fever clip.

Their tone is different from the atheists of the past: at times their books can be funny, rude, scientific, arrogant, self-assured, condescending, or caustic; I can assure you that they're never boring (with the possible exception of Daniel Dennett).  Sometimes their rhetoric descends into the despicable, as in this passage in Sam Harris's The End of Faith:

"The link between belief and behavior raises the stakes considerably.  Some propositions are so dangerous that it may be ethical to kill people for believing them.  This may seem an extraordinary claim, but it merely enunciates an ordinary fact about the world in which we live."

This is a truly striking claim, but generally the New Atheists are more measured than Harris.  What they have in common is a belief that religion has been coddled too long, and a belief that religion only leads to evil.  They believe this second point quite scrupulously, as for instance, neither Christopher Hitchens nor Richard Dawkins mentions one good thing a theist has ever done, acting as though religion prompted the Crusades and the Inquisition, but not Mother Theresa and the Sistine Chapel.  Just as it isn't fair to judge atheism by Stalin, it isn't fair to judge theism by Osama bin Laden.  At its worst, this sort of argumentation turns into a spew of ad hominem attacks.

Not to say that these indictments against believers aren't worth noting.  If there's something inherent in religion that makes people mistreat others then that's obviously a bad thing, but most of the world's billions of religious people don't kill anyone and generally treat others with a certain fundamental decency. 

But all this is neither here nor there.  One can defend and attack believers and non-believers from dawn till dusk, but very little would be accomplished.  The central question is "Does God exist?" and on this question the New Atheists seem to misunderstand the philosophical challenge of the question.

They dispatch God in different ways, but all of them have holes.  In Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett (the most even-handed of the New Atheists) argues that religious faith is an evolutionary adaptation and thus has no correspondence to reality.  But this argument crumbles quickly: sight is also an evolutionary adaptation, and I would imagine that most atheists would believe that what they see represents reality.  Dennett's book takes an interesting thesis and tries to contort it into more than it is.

Richard Dawkins's book The God Delusion propounds an innovative argument against God's existence - but it's an argument that ultimately doesn't hold water.  Essentially, Dawkins's argument is: God, if he (or she) exists, would have to be very complex because the things that God created are very complex.  Complex things are less likely, so a very complex God is very unlikely.  Since God is improbable, and (Dawkins argues) since the world could have been created without God through unguided Darwinian evolution, God does not exist.  Like I said, it's innovative, but it has huge holes.  One: there's no reason to suspect that complex equals improbable, and two: there's no reason to suspect that improbability implies non-existence.  Alvin Plantinga's response to Dawkins's argument is worth reprinting:

"You might say that some of his forays into philosophy are at best sophomoric, but that would be unfair to sophomores; the fact is (grade inflation aside), many of his arguments would receive a failing grade in a sophomore philosophy class."

Christopher Hitchens's argument is more straightforward.  For Hitchens, God is a jerk.  This is more of sticky wicket for believers than Dawkins's "improbability" argument or Dennett's evolutionary argument, but Hitchens brings no new ideas to the table, besides implicating God's followers with God.  Hitchens basically says "God's bad, and if you don't believe me, look at believers."  The problem is that Hitchens can't see any difference between Osama bin Laden and Ned Flanders.  A believer is a believer for Hitchens, and they're all vile people, corrupted by the scourge of religion.  Hitchens seems unable to see shades of grey.

After reading through the assembled corpus of the New Atheists, I was exasperated.  The New Atheists have a few novel ideas, but most of the time they're merely spouting invective about how bad believers are.  Orwell discussed this argumentation style in Homage to Catalonia: "It is as though in the middle of a chess tournament one competitor should begin screaming that the other is guilty of arson or bigamy.  The point that is really at issue remains untouched."  That's the real innovation of the New Atheists: they don't care for the central question of theism vs. atheism; instead they prefer to shout.  It's enough to make even the most committed believer nostalgic for Bertrand Russell.  Yes, give me that old time atheism. 

I need to confess something that many of you already realize.  I began a substantial series of posts a little while back...well, maybe a long while...on the new atheism which has been spewed of late by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and punk rocker and PhD Greg Gaffin.

You can see the beginnings of that here.  I just have not had the time to focus on this with all that has been happening in life.  Leading Inversion, having three little kids, wanting to date my wife, seminary studies/writing, writing for our people at Inversion, planting a church, raising money, doing some speaking etc.  Blogging on atheism has been slow coming and to be honest I don't loose any sleep about it these days. 

What I did want to revisit is the focus of contemporary apologetics.  Now I think there are several areas of the discipline which need focus, research, publication etc.  The following are just a few and the reasons why I feel they are important:

• The existence of God - there are academic skeptics and anti theists which are publishing today with some very weak argumentation, but broad popular appeal - this is a wall we must stay on.
• The historical Jesus and the related New Testament witness to Jesus - with the new emphasis in Gnostic gospels and the early church, the identity of the New Testament Jesus is very important.  The gospels as reliable though theologically motivated (even biased) texts is very important
• The Problem of evil - we live outside of the garden, in the midst of sin, death, disease and pain.  This has always been the case for humanity from very early on, but we seem to expect something different.  The relationship of God to suffering is an issue of both theological and apologetic significance
• Miracles - particularly the resurrection of Jesus
• Philosophical naturalism and attendant secularism.  This permeates much of western culture and our history from the 17th century onward...
  

These are all classic topics for the apologist must handle and great work has been done in all these areas.  This past week I was in Blacksburg, VA and heard two wonderful apologists speak to the issues of the heart and mind commending Jesus and contrasting him with other worldviews.  I felt the presentations were excellent focusing appropriately on naturalism as they were speaking to a university community.  

Overall however, I am a bit concerned that more focus must be given to engaging a culture which is much more spiritual and eclectic...building spiritual answers in the vacuum left by secularism. Today some of the issues we need to be engaging with need to be treated along with the topics above:

• The relationship between Jesus and other religions
• Why building your own spirituality is not wise 
• Why coherence even matters - if you can have contentment with an incoherent and false worldview...many simply choose to be happy
• We must locate truth in the biblical narrative of creation, fall, redemption, restoration.  We cannot simply call people to "truth" we must call people to the one who is the Truth.
• How does Christian faith and changing scientific paradigms relate - biotech, computer technology, AI, etc.
  
• Christian faith is associated with oppression in many people's minds.  How do we engage those who thing colonialism, imperialism, etc are the fruits of "Christianity"
  

Simply fighting the atheist boogie man may just distract us from mission - presenting Jesus and the good news to those who view spirituality as good, but religion (and the Christian flavor of it) as bad.  If we are perceived as just fighting philosophical battles with others we may loose track of the real war.  Apologetics must treat the issues and objections of people in culture, not simply the philosophical skirmishes which the apologist may enjoys. 

This week I have been in Blacksburg, VA - our old stomping grounds for a week with friends and ministry.  Ravi Zacharias spoke here on Tues/Wed evenings and his associate Joe Boot (I liked Joe Boot) lectured at a faculty/staff/grad student luncheon on campus as well as a gathering of campus and local ministry leaders on Thursday morning.

A few of the highlights from the week:

• Good attendance: 2500 students (pretty packed), staff and faculty attended Tuesday night at Burruss; about 5000 on Wednesday at Cassell; full venues for Joe Boot both on Wednesday and Thursday. Over 1000 response cards received.
• One of the pastors reported that he prayed Tuesday night with a student who had been attending a campus fellowship for a couple of years but had not committed himself to Christ. He did so Tuesday night after Ravi’s message.
• A muslim-background student from the mideast attended the forum because just prior to his coming to America a friend in his country had given him a copy of one of Ravi’s books.
  
• Julie, a student, invited a classmate to attend Ravi’s Tuesday night address. They went together and the friend was so impacted by what Ravi said she asked Julie if they could go again on Wednesday. The friend heard what Ravi shared the second night, then they attended the last part of the CRU meeting together. Afterward, Julie clearly shared the gospel and asked her friend if she wanted to trust Christ and begin the relationship of purpose and love that Ravi had been speaking about. Her friend was eager to do so. They prayed together and the friend trusted Christ Wednesday evening.

I also enjoyed spending about an hour with two chemistry grad students discussing Jesus and the New Testament.  Guys, if you read this, a paper on the Gospel Literature and some of the things we disucssed can be found here.  Drop me a comment if you do.

It has been a great week with friends and we have some dinners with some folks tonight and tomorrow and then preaching at Blacksburg Christian Fellowship on Sunday.   

JP Moreland lists his top five apologetics books over at Christianity Today.  Here is his line up:

• Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics
  William Lane Craig
• New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics
  W. C. Campbell-Jack, Gavin J McGrath, C. Stephen Evans, eds.
• Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong
  Jonathan Wells
• Philosophical Foundations For A Christian Worldview
  J. P. Moreland, William Lane Craig
• The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus
  Lee Strobel

I own all of these books and concur with their selection. 

• Craig's work is thorough and very helpful in the areas of his strength - scholarly and philosophical his segments on the existence of God, knowing vs. showing God's existence are very compelling.  Blomberg's essay on the NT in this book is very good as well. 
  
• The dictionary is a new reference which is a must for anyone who cares about Apologetics. 
  
• Along with Behe, Johnson and Dempski, Jonathan Wells is one of the important authors in the ID/Darwinism discussion.  The DVD with the same title is also well done.
  
• Philosophical Foundations is an excellent Christian philosophy text book and rigorous in each major area of philosophical investigation. The only weakness I found is that Craig/Morelands view of  libertarian/contra causal freedom comes across too strong and compatibilism not treated as fairly.  A great book nonetheless.  This combines the best of Craig and Morelands work over the years
• Case for Christ is a great popular level book which hits many of the best scholars in their fields. 
  

A few other books I recommend for specific purposes. 

• Moreland's Scaling the Secular City is still an excellent general but scholarly Apologetic work. 
  
• For skeptics I recommend the classic Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton as well as the recent book The Question of God by Armand Nicholi. 
  
• For those interested in historical views on Apologetics and Apologetic Systems check out Faith Has its Reason by Boa and Bowman.  The Roman Catholic Avery Dulles' A History of Apologetics is also a good historical tour de force.
• For those studying theology at mainline and liberal divinity schools and seminaries - Dempski and Richards Unapologetic Apologetics is a must read.
  
• John Frame's Apologetics to the Glory of God is a good view of reformed Apologetics offering a unique and valuable methodology.
• James Sire's The Universe Next Door is a great book on basic worldview categories
  

Remember, many books have apologetic value even if not complete in their theological outlook and presentation.  Apologetics is a defense of Christian doctrine, but also has a role in engaging the thought world of every era.  The importance of Apologetics is to make a reasonable case for our faith and to be able to intersect and engage other worldviews.  Not just for intellectual games, but to set forth Christ plainly without barriers to considering him for who he really is.  A great task - a little reading never hurts.

Peter Singer, the famed (or infamous) "ethicist" from Princeton University has another wonderful meditation out on life and death.  Singer is somewhat of a hero to some and a demon to others for his views on the termination of babies who have severe problems at birth and perhaps up to two years of age...only if the parents "want to" of course.  Singer is a utilitarian at heart and in his thinking. By that I mean he is a consequentialist in terms of his ethical reasoning.  He makes decision about right and wrong based on his understanding of whether suffering will be limited and happiness extended.  Now you may ask "how does one know the future and what a decision will or will not bring?"  Welcome to the wonderful world of consequentialism.  Let me give you some examples in a dialogue:

Lifescape 1

Doctor No: Your baby's chromosomes are abnormal, you will have a child with down's syndrome.  What would you like to do?

Parent Happy Me: [thoughts] this means lots of trouble for us, lots of money we will have to spend to care and raise this child - that will quell our happiness and quality of life.

Doctor No: Most children with downs life very painful lives and die very young.  What would you like to do?

Parent Happy Me: [thoughts] Well, that child will suffer, will not be very happy...after he will not be "normal" and bullies will pick on him.  He will not have high self-esteem because people are mean.  I think we want a do-over.

Lifescape 2

Doctor No: You baby is severely deformed and mentally retarded.  He will probably only life a few years and will need constant medical attention from the highest of professionals.  We are not sure if he will be in pain or not, but his quality of life will not be anything like a normal human being.  What would you like us to do?

Parent Happy Me: [thoughts] This is very hard, what will our lives be like with this child.  But what is the right thing to do?  We need some expert advice

Captain Singer Ethical Crusader: Well, it may be ethical to "end the suffering" of severely challenged human like creatures if it will alleviate suffering and promote the welfare of the parents, and not burden society's resources.

Parent Unhappy Now: Do you mean kill the baby?

Doctor No: Well, kill is a very loaded term, we like to say alleviate suffering for the common good.  To help society with unwanted burdens and make everyone's life better.  In reality, this is a very good thing you are doing for all involved.

Parent Sick to Their Stomach: We just don't know what to do...

Now Dr. Singer is weighing in on another potential problem we are seeing due to the advance of neonatal care and intensive units.  The survival of babies severely premature.  It is coming more common that children are surviving birth into the lower twenty week range (the range where abortions often take place).  Dr. Singer has written an op/ed piece over at the Council for Secular Humanism about one such astounding case (which people this is good by the way) of a girl named Amillia:

In February, newspapers hailed “miracle baby”Amillia, claiming that she is the earliest-born surviving premature baby ever recorded. Born in October at a gestational age of just twenty-one weeks and six days, she weighed only 280 grams, or ten ounces, at birth. Doctors did not expect Amillia to live, as previously no baby born at less than twenty-three weeks had been known to survive. But, after nearly four months in a Miami hospital’s neonatal intensive-care unit, and having grown to a weight of 1,800 grams, or four pounds, doctors judged her ready to go home.

These cases are problematic for Singer and like minded utilitarians.  You see, the care just to attempt and save one of these little ones is: 1) very expensive to society 2) will be very hard on parents and their happiness 3) should many not even be attempted in Singer's opinion.  So Singer's solution to this "problem" we face is to highlight research from out of the land of Australia which proposes a "gray zone" where doctors (see Doctor No above) should consult the parents on their "options" whether to treat the baby or not.  Now, we in no way can save every child - of course some will die with or without this care.  But what is troubling is Singer's disdain for the sentiment in America, that we ought to try and save everyone, despite the cost.  Some revealing portions of his essay.

 

In the United States, although the American Academy of Pediatrics states that babies born at less than twenty-three weeks and weighing less than 400 grams (14.2 ounces) are not considered viable, it can be difficult to challenge the prevailing rhetoric that every possible effort must be made to save every human life.

Emphasis added

So trying to save even the most hopeless cases is based only on rhetoric (empty, vacuous thinking, that has no basis in Singer world).  The essence of his reasoning is found in this paragraph.  I will highlight much of the sloppy thinking and crystal ball future predicting nonsense of some utilitarian reasoning:

In these circumstances, what should doctors—and society—do? Should they treat all children as best they can? Should they draw a line, say at twenty-four weeks, and say that no child born prior to that cut-off should be treated? A policy of not treating babies born earlier than twenty-four weeks would save the considerable expense of medical treatment that is likely to prove futile, as well as the need to support severely disabled children who do survive. But it would also be harsh on couples who have had difficulty in conceiving and whose premature infant represents perhaps their last chance at having a child. Amillia’s parents may have been in that category. If the parents understand the situation, and are ready to welcome a severely disabled child into their family and give that child all the love and care they can, should a comparatively wealthy, industrialized country simply say, “No, your child was born too early”? Bearing these possibilities in mind, instead of trying to set a rigid cut-off line, the workshop defined a “gray zone” within which treatment might or might not be given, depending on the wishes of the parents.

So here we are again - in the gray zone of life and death decisions which Singer says lands "on the wishes of the parents."  However, this is not very accurate.  We spent a week in the Neonatal Intensive care with our son Thomas in August, and I saw these very children. Tiny, precious, human persons.  In these scenarios the parents listen to the doctors. The parents are at one of the most vulnerable and most influenced places in their lives.  Saying it is "up to the parents" is a bit misleading as the parents will very much be influenced by the counsel from doctors and ethicists on these situations.  The question is which worldview will be brought to bear? The one who sees that all life is of equal value and dignity and worthy of our time and effort to love an nurture?  Or the one who thinks certain humans should survive based on their mathematical "good for society" calculations.  Some are amazed when they read of the eugenics movement which was common among intellectual elite less than 100 years ago in western culture.  We should not be surprised, as the seeds of that same thinking are alive and well today. It is found in the gray zone - a world created by people who desire to determine what kinds of persons shall live or die.  

(HT - thanks to Tim Dees for pointing me to the essay)

Ken Samples of the Science/Faith organization Reasons to Believe offers five philosophical reasons that God exists.  The presentation is sound and uses many standard a posteriori arguments for the existence of God.  The visuals are average, perhaps a little too many "white guy looking Jesus" pictures, but overall this is a solid and helpful 10 minute video. 

Not sure if he provided "5 ways" in honor of St. Thomas, but for those who have not read the 5 ways before, here is your homework assignment. 

This is an interesting article on the recent (though not new at all) resurgence of goddess worship in our times.  If you have heard any buzz about interest in the "sacred feminine," the goddess within, etc. this is a good read.

The Goddess Unmasked - What every woman should know about the "sacred feminine"

The "church" of Scientology is once again the subject of some investigative journalism.  The BBC has just produced a documentary on the movement that has made some sparks fly already.  See the following for the story and a link to a video where a BBC reporter goes a bit British on a Scientology spokesman.

Also YouTube has some of the video portions of the documentary directly...if you ever wondered who the men in black really are, you may just find out watching this documentary:

• Part 1 - A little under 10 minutes
• Part 2 - Right at 8 minutes
• Part 3 - A little over 10 minutes
• Part 4 - Just over a minute
  

Last summer I lectured on Scientology in Peru.  If you are interested in my brief speaking outline, drop me a comment and I'll e-mail to you directly.

Two good essays by Ravi Zacharias - a persons whose work mentored my mind deeply as a young believer in the 90s. At the time I listened to literally everything he had on tape and CD (it was ancient times before the digital audio revolution)

Anyway, I thought these were good reads today: 

• A Response to the Va Tech Shootings - Ravi's thoughts about the recent atrocity at Va Tech.
  
• The Education of Empty Minds - A meditation on the state of the universities of America.

RZIM's web site has many resources you may find of use.

Here is a recap of the recent debate between Alistair McGrath and Daniel Dennett on the future of atheism. The debate was this year's Greer-Heard Counterpoint Series at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

Also, the debate audio can be purchased here on CD or by mp3 download.  The download of all the files is $15.00 and comes in at about 117 MBs

 

Many of you heard yesterdays announcement of Jame's Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici's "documentary" entitled Jesus' Family Tomb which will air on the Discovery Channel Sunday March 4th at 9:00 EST.  There is a book, a DVD, and lots of hype.  As this is simply a bunch of selective and sensational "evidence" re-told from an archaeological find in the 1980s I think we need to look at the truth involved with this "new" discovery.  The documentary is a 4 million dollar project and from seeing the previous work of Cameron and Jacobovici it will be a fine production though based on fiction.  The problem here, unlike the fictional Da Vinci Code nonsense, this one is presented as fact.  The Toronto Star has a good summary of the story as well as the myriad of conjectures made in order to "prove" this thesis.  The last few lines of the story is quite revealing.

Several New Testament Scholars have weighed in so I wanted to link everyone to the reality about all of this goofiness.  Read these to see past all the connections and assumptions that will be made in this film.

Dr. Darryl Bock - Research Professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary weighs in with Hollywood Hype: The Oscars and Jesus’ Family Tomb, What Do They Share?

The tomb is an old story now being recycled in an effort to make far more of it than the evidence really requires. I was allowed to see a version of the story to air in March, but had to agree to a non-disclosure. I also wrote a summary report on it, some of the concepts I will now share on this blog, since I can now talk. There is no need to fear such discussions. The same evidence is there for all of us. We all want to discover the truth.

Dr. Craig Blomberg - Professor of New Testament, Denver Theological Seminary - Did They Really Find Jesus' Bones?

Recent works by Darrell Bock, Craig Evans, Ben Witherington, Tom Wright, and a host of others all rely on solid, sober scholarship of a kind Dan Brown, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel will apparently never care to publicize. Bolstering conventional belief about anything has never made much money and that’s all it’s really about in these endeavors. (Lest you think I’m being too cynical, Darrell Bock has shared stories with me of what representatives of the major networks told him face to face he’d have to raise in millions of dollars before they’d ever consider doing it.). In a postmodern world, post-Communist world truth gives way to fiction to fuel capitalism.

Dr. Paul Maier - Professor Department of History, Western Michigan University posts an e-mail to friends and readers.

Alas, this whole affair is just the latest in the long-running media attack on the historical Jesus, which – we thought – had culminated in that book of lies, The Da Vinci Code. But no: the caricatures of Christ continue. Please, lose no sleep over the Talpiot “discoveries” for the following reasons, and here are the facts:

Dr. Ben Witherington Research Professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary records his THE JESUS TOMB? ‘TITANIC’ TALPIOT TOMB THEORY SUNK FROM THE START over at his personal blog

So my response to this is clear--- James Cameron, the producer of the movie Titantic, has now jumped on board another sinking ship full of holes, presumably in order to make a lot of money before the theory sinks into an early watery grave. Man the lifeboats and get out now.For those wanting much more on the historical Jesus and James and Mary see now my WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WITH JESUS? (Harper-Collins, 2006).

Dr. Andreas Köstenberger Professor of New Testament Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary comments in his blog post The Jesus Tomb.

It is hard to know whether one should dignify this kind of warmed-up sensationalist commercial ploy with a serious rebuttal. Why would an orthodox Jew and an unbelieving Hollywood producer time the release of a television documentary denying Jesus’ resurrection just prior to Easter? Because of serious scholarship or maximum personal profit?

Finally, Dr. Al Mohler president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary was on Larry King Live discussing this with Cameron, Jacobovici, Tabor, and Bill Donahue (Catholic league) - The transcript can be found here. 

As I said, there is no doubt this will be a flashy, highly produced, dramatic documentary which will no doubt "sound convincing" - yet its claims are so specious as to be laughable.  I hope the following links are helpful to you if you have friends and family who watch the Discovery Channel production.

When a circle's diameter, its circumference is Pi (3.14nnnnnnnnnnn...n) - A statement on wikipedia has the following description: This number is real but irrational, transcendental, and cannot be constructed with compass and straightedge.

Why might Pi be a clue that the Universe is designed by an intelligent mind?

My Hint: Where art thou perfect circle whose circumference is Pi?  I have never seen thee, my friends have not either. You can be perceived by all minds, but where doth thou dwell if not in this world?

 

This web site shows some pretty standard atheistic rants about the text of Scripture.  For those new to the discipline of Apologetics I think going through these one by one and resolving the issue would be a good exercise.

If you get hung up on any of them, drop me a note and we'll work it through together. Happy reading (most of these are ridiculous, but here goes) - Scary Bible Quotes

A few helpful hints as you work on this:

• Phenomenological language
• Read things in their Context - literary, redemptive-historical...
  
• Define terms-every English word does not always mean the same thing in every context,
  
• Motives matter
• What constitutes an actual contradiction?
• Did I say context?
  

In part one of my mini series on the new atheism I thought it best to give some background to the narrative underlying atheistic thinking. For we all know that every worldview tells a story, a story which serves as the ground for understanding from within the worldview. Though its adherents may deny this, the new atheism of our day holds a large philosophical story as an interpretative framework for all its views and teaching. In other words, itt holds to a certain a meta-narrative. A meta-narrative is an overarching story by which everything else is interpreted and framed. Let me give an example for the readers of Power of Change which we would be familiar.

The Christian faith has a large over-arching story by which we build other areas of knowledge. The Christian meta-narrative is at times described with the following terms: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration. We believe that God created the world in pristine goodness. He then made human beings in the very image of God (imago dei) and as such our creation was a very good thing. We also believe that human beings sinned and rebelled against their creator resulting in this present world being under a curse. In such we see both goodness and evil in the world, both design and disruption, teleology and disteleology. In this age we hold that God has pursued creation by making covenants and entering relationships with his creatures. Then, in the fullness of time, God’s eternal plan culminated in the person and work of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, to finalize the work of God to redeem a people to be his own possession. The work of Jesus redeems us from the curse and we now await the consummation of the age with the restoration of all things. Creation will no longer groan and be in upheaval. Humans will be under the divine rule of King Jesus, the new heavens and new earth will overtake this present age reality and an eternal state of peace and blessing will commence. All things will then be fully reconciled to God and his people will rule and reign with him in his Kingdom. From within this story we interpret reality. It is how we see. From it we believe several things:

• The universe was created by a reasonable God. The created world is therefore both real and intelligible to the human mind
• Scientific study is discovering how the world is designed and created by a rational, purposeful mind…namely God. By reason, we may discover and learn true knowledge about the universe
• Human beings have immense intrinsic value as creations of God
  
• Human beings are uniquely responsible to their creator for their actions, be they good or evil
• Humans are separated from God, creation, and each other due to their sin which must be remedied. Our hearts and actions are by nature bent towards evil and we necessarily are under the wrath of a just and holy God.  The implications are that we are separated from God, alienated from one another, with our very souls living with self-deception and fracture.
  
• God has graciously dealt with sin and death through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. 
  
• Human flourishing is found in being reconciled to our Creator and then using our lives to reflect his designs, desires, and decrees on the earth

Just an example.

Likewise, the atheistic worldview also has a story to tell by which they make their truth claims. Here is an example from a recent article in the New York Times.

The Enlightenment story has its own version of Genesis, and the themes are well known: The world woke up from the slumber of the “dark ages,” finally got in touch with the truth and became good about 300 years ago in Northern and Western Europe. As people opened their eyes, religion (equated with ignorance and superstition) gave way to science (equated with fact and reason). Parochialism and tribal allegiances gave way to ecumenism, cosmopolitanism and individualism. Top-down command systems gave way to the separation of church from state, of politics from science. The story provides a blueprint for how to remake and better the world in the image and interests of the West’s secular elites.

Atheists Agonistes By RICHARD A. SHWEDER New York Times Published: November 27, 2006. (Also available here without subscription

This story is the reason we see things like the war between science and religion propagated by those from the enlightened crowd. The story is one of scientific, secular man fighting ignorance and superstition on behalf of the good of all mankind; kind of sounds like caped crusaders when you think about it. This is far from the truth. The reality is that science emerged from a people who held deep religious beliefs about the world. In fact many have made the argument that it is precisely the beliefs of Christian monotheism in Europe, which allowed scientific progress to be made. This is beyond the scope of this post so I’ll refer you to the works of Jaki, Duhem, and Pearcy/Thaxton for that discussion. Back to the atheistic metanarrative. Much of the ground for a worldview is “believed in,” it is a philosophical dictum held by all true believers. The grand story believed by the atheist is that of philosophical naturalism. If we do not understand this, we will not be able to understand our atheistic friend’s claims, arguments, and allergies to the very idea of the supernatural. So let us take a walk into naturalism as a philosophy.

Naturalism defined

Many people in our culture would see the Naturalistic worldview, that nature is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will be, as a new development. Yet the historically informed know well that human history has been populated by naturalists as well as those with their eyes set upon deities. Though the “nature is all there is crowd”, has never held sway in large number on any culture, it is nevertheless not a new idea. The naturalist lineage of ideas traces back to the Ancient Greek atomists and experienced a rebirth during the renaissance in Europe much in the rediscovery of ancient Greek Skeptics such as Sextus Empricus. The view holds that our world is a closed system of cause and effect with nothing existing "outside" of nature and therefore nothing acting upon the world. No gods, devils, angels, demons, immaterial human souls, or real universal ethical truths existing at all. This is the story from which the new atheists spin both their rhetoric and scholarship. They simply see anything outside of matter/energy/space/time as silly, ridiculous, and misinformed. You can see this exemplified by the recently and cleverly created Flying Spaghetti Monster (if you have a good sense of humor, it is a clever deal - wrong, but clever). The Spaghetti Monster is the creator behind the “intelligent design” of the universe. The claim is that saying “God designed the world” is just about the same as saying “Flying Spaghetti Monster designed the world.” For those who by default cannot accept any sort of supernatural being, the concept of “God” is just silly and indefinable. You would need revelation from God to know his being, works and character. But of course if their can be no God in your story, this is of course just ridiculous. Naturalism has a very strong appeal and has grown in influence in Western culture over the last several centuries. Let us look at a few of its strengths to see why it has so powerful appeal on some people.

Naturalism – the exaltation of empiricist epistemology

One of the reason naturalism is so compelling is that it exalts empiricist epistemology. An epistemology is a theory of knowledge, or how we come to know things in the world. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, empiricism is defined as follows:

We have no source of knowledge in S or for the concepts we use in S other than sense experience.

See Rationalism and Empiricism at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/ 

In other words, empiricism holds that knowledge