The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth

Introduction

Perhaps the most enigmatic figure in all of history is that of Jesus of Nazareth.  More songs have been written about him, more literature written, more artwork commissioned and more buzz created surrounding this one figure than any other in all of history.  Each year around Easter the pundits, scholars and documentaries all rev up again to discuss the identity of Jesus and the fantastic realities which surrounded his life.  There is no more important event in history than the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and its reality continues to be debated and discussed year after year. 

Let me begin by making something very clear.  In the normal course of life, dead people do not get back up and walk around again.  It is uncontroversial that dead people stay dead, it is a truly radical thing for a dead person to rise.  The testimony of the early Christians was that a miracle occurred, that God raised Jesus of Nazareth back to life.  This miracle was the center point of their trust in God and they proclaimed this news throughout the entire known world.  In this short essay we will look at this event from several angles.  First, we will look at the historical nature of the Christian faith and some realities surrounding the resurrection event.  Second, we will look at how many attempt to explain away a real resurrection and how these explanations fall miserably short of making sense of history.  Finally, we will look at several theological implications that the resurrection holds and how these deeply impact our hope and joy in our lives today.  So let us begin by walking back into history together.

The Roots of the Christian Gospel

Christian faith is not rooted in fantastical mythology that took place in some unknown past or in some ethereal metaphysical realm. The events that birthed and shaped the Christian  gospel are very much rooted in space, time and history.  In fact, the Christian movement is founded upon the person of Jesus and the events that surrounded his life on earth.  Jesus’ early followers established the church on a simple but profound message that is found in their writings and creeds. One such early creed is found in a letter written by a leader named Paul to a community of Christians in the ancient city of Corinth. 

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

1 Corinthians 15:3-8 (ESV)

From this we see that the central focal point of the Christian message is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.  Later in the same letter, Paul goes so far as to say if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins (1 Cor 15:17) The resurrection of Jesus therefore is of utmost importance to Christianity and even resurrection skeptic Gerd Lüddeman openly  acknowledged that “the resurrection of Jesus is the central point of the Christian religion.”¹ So the question which has been asked for centuries is this: Did it really happen?  What follows is a short treatment of some facts involving the resurrection which must be accounted for by anyone seeking to understand the events from the days immediately following the death of Jesus.

Historical Realities

#1 The Death of Jesus

For there to have been a resurrection, there had to be a person living who actually died.  Though there are some folk out there who may be skeptical about the existence of Jesus, their claims have no grounding in history.  In fact, the life and death of Jesus are attested in the non biblical writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, the Roman historian Tacitus,  the Greek satirist Lucian as well as the Jewish Talmud.² The fact that Jesus lived and died is incontrovertible.

#2-The Empty Tomb

The earliest documents we have record that the tomb of Jesus was found empty by a group of his women followers.  Historically, there simply is no burial place of Jesus. Though spiritual leaders’ grave sites are places of worship for followers of various religions, there simply is no place to visit Jesus.  The story of the empty tomb is in the earliest writings of Christianity and therefore not a later legendary invention.  The early opposition of Jesus never produced a body or even a written account about showing forth a corpse which would have easily refuted their preaching.  There is simply nothing but historical silence on the issue. Furthermore, rather than refuting the empty tomb story, the earliest opponents actually produced a counter story to explain the lack of a body (they said the disciples must have stolen it-more on this in a bit). Finally, the early Christians record that a group of women followers were the eyewitnesses who found the tomb empty on the first Easter morning.  At first glance to a modern person, this seems a bit boring, but we must think with a 1st century mindset.  Both Greeks and Jewish people at the time had a miserably low view of the testimony of women; so much that it was inadmissible in any sort of judicial proceeding.  If the story by the early Christians is a fabrication it would have been seen as ridiculous to create the story of women being the first witnesses to resurrection. The only explanation to why they would have written this is that a group of women actually reported they found the tomb empty.  Finally, an empty tomb alone is just empty, but an empty tomb along with others seeing and interacting with the living Jesus is a more interesting reality.

#3-Eyewitness Experiences and Changed Lives

A third fact surrounding the resurrection event are the experiences and changed lives of the early Christians.  They claimed to have seen and had real life experiences with a living Jesus after he had died.   The early creed in 1 Corinthians 15 records that Peter and numerous other disciples experienced something which they described as the risen Christ.  In the canonical gospels we have Jesus eating with people, given final instructions and his friends embracing him physically (See Mark 15, 16; Luke 24; Matthew 28; John 20-21; Acts 1; ). These experiences of the early Christians literally transformed their lives from cowering followers of an executed leader to bold preachers of a risen God and King.  Finally, it was not merely his friends who were impacted and changed, it was also enemies and skeptics.  Saul of Tarsus was a strict adherent to Judaism and then became one of the key leaders of the Jesus movement.  His explanation was that he had met the risen Jesus (See Acts 9)  James, the brother of Jesus, goes from being a skeptic to a Christian pastor and worshiper of Jesus as God.  It is not normal to convince your brother that you are God.  Yet it seems James understood the risen Jesus to be no mere man and became a devoted worshiper so much as to give his very life for his Lord/brother.³ 

NT Wright, a leading scholar on Christian orgins rightly places these two realities together when thinking about the emergence of Christian teaching on the resurrection:

The two things which must be regarded as historically secure when we talk about the first Easter are the emptiness of the tomb and the meetings with the risen Jesus…Neither the empty tomb itself, however, or the appearances by themselves, could have generated the early Christian belief.  The empty tomb alone would be a puzzle and a tragedy.  Sightings of an apparently alive Jesus, by themselves, would have been classified as visions or hallucinations, which were well enough known in the ancient world. However, an empty tomb and appearances of the living Jesus, taken together, would have presented a powerful reason for the emergence of the belief ⁴

Along with Jesus’ death , the empty tomb, the appearances, changed lives of friends, skeptics and opponents, the birth and emergence of Christian faith is also powerful historical testimony to the resurrection event. We’ll touch on a few interesting facets of the early days of the Christian movement.

#4-The Birth of the Church and Its Worship

It is quite interesting to think about what brought about the birth of the Christian movement.  The testimony of the Christians was that resurrection and commissioning of Jesus gave it birth.  What we find in the very first decades of Christian faith are two fascinating facts.  First, we find that the first Christians, all who were devout Jews, abruptly moved their day of worship for the Sabbath (Saturday) to the first day of the week (Sunday).  Their reason for doing this was that Christ rose on Sunday morning.  Anyone who understands historic, devout Judaism knows what a massive and seismic move this would have been. The 10 commandments dictate that the Sabbath be a day of rest and this is to be on the 7th day, Saturday.  Yet we find an almost instant change in a centuries old tradition and custom.  Why?  Furthermore, we also find their Jewish monotheists begin to worship Jesus as God.  Not simply as a god, as any good polytheist would permit, but as G_D who had created the universe and covenanted with the Jewish people.  This is utterly amazing and the Christians saw the resurrection of Jesus to be a divine action of God that took place in their midst.  These seismic shifts and the beginning of the Christian movement are explained by the resurrection miracle.  Without this event we are left dumbfounded and groping for an explanation as to why there is a thing called Christianity at all.

Explanations-Attempting to Remove the Miracle

Most of these historical facts are actually agreed upon by both skeptical and believing scholars of early Christianity.  Yet all do not believe in a physical, historical resurrection. Other explanations for the historical record are offered and we will treat only briefly the  most common explanations. We have no space to do these justice here, so I will refer you to further reading in the books found in the notes.

Legends and Lies

Some skeptics will claim that the Christians invented the resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion in order to create a believable mythology and religion.  There are several problems here.  First, the Christian teaching was resurrection from day 1, it is not a later embellishment and we have textual reasons to believe some of this material is within a decade of Jesus’ death.  Second, nobody believed or found plausible a bodily resurrection theory in the ancient Roman empire; it was not a popular idea among ancient people. Many Greek and Roman ideas held that the soul needed to be freed completely from bodies rather than being resurrected into a new one. Furthermore, the Jewish sect known as the Sadducees, did not even believe in resurrection.  It would have been a ridiculous story to make up as the ideological world of that time simply would not have welcomed it.⁵  Additionally, the story of women discovering the tomb would have been a terrible choice for legend makers as it would have made the testimony highly implausible.   Finally, some attempt to say that the Christians borrowed the story of resurrected savior gods from pagan religions and were engaging in a “me too” game of god-making.  Interestingly enough, Edwin Yamauchi, professor of ancient history at Miami University, has written convincingly that none of these so called parallel stories is remotely similar and almost all of them are dated after Christianity. In some cases these religions actually adopted their mythology in response to Christian teaching.  We highly recommend Dr. Yamauchi’s excellent essay Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History.⁶

The Okie Doke of the Body Snatcher and the Lost Tomb

The earliest story involved the stealing of the body of Jesus from his tomb. This means the disciples were some sort of tricky liars that would have made the Oceans 11 crew look sheepish.  They would have created the hoax and then all died horrendous deaths for a lie they created and from which they gained nothing but trouble.  Others have held that those looking for Jesus got lost and could not find the right tomb despite the fact that prophets and religious leaders tombs were literally worshipped in the ancient world.  Additionally, the tomb belonged to a prominent man name Joseph of Arimathea so it is hardly likely that its location was unable to be found. Yet the empty tomb was not that which convinced people of the resurrection alone.  It was appearances of Jesus to them which convinced the disciples, his women followers, Paul and James.

Resuscitation not Resurrection

Another theory, at times called swoon theory or resuscitation theory, holds that Jesus was crucified and put in a tomb but really did not die all the way.  Perhaps he was only mostly dead in a Monty Python sort of way.  When Jesus was alone in the cold, dark rock tomb, he woke up, removed his grave garments and popped out to punk his disciples. There are two problems with this. Crucifixion and the preaching of the early church.  First, Roman garrisons charged with killing people, killed the people.  It was not permitted to not have them die.  Jesus was both scourged and crucified both horrendously painful and certainly lethal. Further, the biblical accounts hold that a spear was thrust through Jesus’ side in order to make sure he was dead dead not mostly dead.  Additionally, the customary burial process of the time would have had Jesus wrapped in all sorts of cloths and spices. He would have stripped them off, pushed a stone closure out of the way and then appeared to his followers triumphantly resurrected.  This is highly ridiculous and such a “risen” Jesus would not have seemed triumphant over death but in need of a modern emergency room.  Not many people put forth this idea any more.

Hallucinating Crowds

Finally, some have gone to the effort of explain the experiences of the early Christians by explaining they had visions or hallucinations based on their psychological state and wishful thinking.  This has one main problem; hallucinations are a personal event not something shared by groups of people, at various times and in diverse places (See again the creed in 1 Cor 15). Hallucinations are not shared among people and are private first person experiences.⁷ Furthermore it does not explain the empty tomb or the changes in the worship of the first Jewish Christians.

Bottom Line-Could it happen?

None of the theories which are offered about Jesus explain all the historical realities surrounding the resurrection event.  As with many things involving faith in God, human beings at times simply do not want to believe.  Some think miracles such as the resurrection cannot happen and therefore did not.  Such a priori naturalism is present in many at a worldview level so that no amount of reasoning will make a miracle acceptable.  Yet, for those with an open mind, there are powerful reasons to believe that a miracle, a historically defining miracle, did indeed occur on the first Easter morning.

The Theological Importance of Resurrection

In closing, the resurrection has extensive importance to our faith.  First, it is a vindication and confirmation of the work of God through Christ (Acts 17:31). It is also a foretaste of the Kingdom of God where life fully triumphs over death.  In this way the resurrection is the first act of God’s renewal from the curse of sin and death and we live in this renewal as his people today. Finally, the resurrection is a promise of our own resurrection coming when God culminates history. We will be raised to new life and with never ending hope where death is vanquished and Christ is fully King (1 Cor 15:50-58).  It is in this hope that we gather each year to celebrate Christ’s historical, bodily and triumphant resurrection on Easter Sunday.  With our brother Paul we now stand together before that great enemy of death and joyfully talk trash “Death, where is your victory, where is your sting!” 

This my friends is much better news than what comes from the Easter bunny.

Reid S. Monaghan

Notes

1. Quoted by William Lane Craig in Copan and Tacelli, Jesus’ Resurrection , Fact or Figment—A Debate Between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdemann (Downers Grover, Intervarsity Press, 2000) 31.
2. Gary Habermas and Mike Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004) 49, 50.
3. Habermas and Licona, 68, 69.
4. NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2003) 686.
5. See chapters  2-4 of the extensive The Resurection of the  Son of God by NT Wright  for a copious summary of beliefs about death and after life in the ancient world.   For a shorter 14 page summary of Wright’s argument about the resurrection and its relationship to the rise of the church, see Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins at www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jesus_Resurrection.htm
6. Edwin Yamauchi, Easter: Myth, Hallucination, or History? Available online at www.leaderu.com/everystudent/easter/articles/yama.html
7. For a fuller treatment of psychological/hallucination/vision theories see Habermas and Licona, 104-119.  Gary Habermas’ website has many helpful articles on all things Resurrectional as well—http://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/articles.htm

Pluralism(s), Universalism(s) and the Gospel

In Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar receives a dream and Daniel explains it to him and gives its interpretation.  Relieved to know the mystery that had troubled his psyche, Neb then begins to give props to Daniel and unexpectedly mad props to Daniel's God.  In verse 47 he makes the remarkable statement:

⁴⁷The king answered and said to Daniel, "Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings, and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery."

All religious traditions on the earth that are theistic in orientation have always believed in a most high God.¹ Whether it was Zeus of the Greeks, Odin of the Norse, RA of the Egyptians, Baal of the Philistines, the Great Spirit of Native Americans thinking that there is a "God of gods" is quite common in the earth.  The difference between these beliefs and that of Jews, Christians and Muslims is that they are all polytheistic-believing in a myriad of "gods."  However, Daniel is monotheistic and the Babylonians were aware of the Jewish religion and its belief in one, true creator God.  Nebuchadnezzar's exclamation is that Daniel's God is both  preeminent and sovereign.  He is above the other gods and rules above earthly kings.

In every age there has been a plurality of "gods" and I do not imagine this will ever really change.  One Bible teacher during the Protestant reformation declared that the human heart is like an "idol factory" always cranking out little gods for us to worship out of our own imaginations.² So plurality in religions is simply a fact of human experience.  The truth of all of these crafted and created deities is another matter all together.

Pluralism(s) and Universalism(s)

In our day we have moved beyond the belief in the simple fact of plurality in religious ideas, we have embraced a pluralism in their truth.  Each faith tradition believes in various Gods and nobody is to question their existence or reality.  If someone believes in pink bunny rabbits who rule the world, or little white mice for that matter, we should just all smile.

There are actually several flavors of pluralism today, some religious, some very much opposed to religious ideas.  The religious version of pluralism would say that all gods are equally valued expressions of the human attempt to reach the divine or ultimate reality.  This is a friendly bunch and tends to see contradictory ideas about God as a fun little game of no real consequence to our lives.  Important, yes, but not dealing with truth.  The question of God to the religious pluralist is one that is unknowable; so they see all religious talk as ways of groping towards an unknown, ineffable "real."³

A classic illustration of this is the parable of the blind men and an elephant.  The story traces back to an ancient Indian folk tale where several blind men are examining and elephant when the King asks them what they think an elephant is.  One who is holding on to its tail, confidently exclaims "An elephant is like a rope!" Another blind man pushing on the body of the elephant  proclaims with equal confidence "An elephant is like a wall!" Still another holding its trunk snottily weighs in "No, an elephant is like a wet hose!"  The moral of the story is supposed to illustrate the reality of religious pluralism.  Not the fact that different religious ideas teach different things about deities, but rather they are all just talking about the same thing in different ways.⁴ 

The religious pluralist in the west is typically a universalist in that he believes that all people, everywhere will ultimately end up in heaven.  Let's call them optimistic.   All will end up in a blessed state of heaven even if they don't believe in such places at all.  Religious pluralists love to make statements on the behalf of all religious people.  They say things like "All religions teach the same things on the big issues, they just differ on the details."  Of course no Muslim, Hindu, Christian or Buddhist who understands his philosophy would agree to this.  After all, the phenomena is quite the opposite.  We all agree on things like "be nice and good" but we disagree on God, heaven, hell, salvation, our problem as humans and what nice and good really mean.   Religious pluralists are nice people-I think they just want to give the world a coke and a smile.  I like that.  They are just profoundly mistaken and then they seek to impose their beliefs about everyone's faith on everyone else....which maybe isn't so nice and respectful after all.

There is another form of pluralism that is very similar that emerges from our secular minded friends.  While they see a plurality in religious ideas, they think they are somehow immune from such silly talk.  They see no truth in religion and feel it all a big chasing down a metaphysical rabbit hole as it were.  The bold and obnoxious ones revel in telling the big wide religious world that they all are, well... "stupid." Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and their tribe come to mind⁵.   They are universalists too, only of course they think we are all heading for a long dirt nap rather than heaven, paradise or nirvana. We will be ultimately gone from existence once our fragile bodies fade away.  Let's call them pessimistic.  Here is the catch. They are very religious, very dogmatic people when it comes to their own ideas.  They hold to fundamental truths and claim that everyone is blind and that they see the truth about "religions."  They worship their own minds and technological abilities and are not really a fun bunch.  After all, this sort of folk have this life changing message to bring to the world "There probably isn't a god...get over it..."  Cool.  They probably are wrong.

Let us revisit the story of the elephant and the blind men one more time.  There is a fatal problem with the whole story in my mind.  How do we even know we are talking about "an elephant"? Obviously, someone in this story can see very well and not everyone is blind. Behind the reality of the groping men grasping trunk and tail is a King who can see.  There is someone who knows what an elephant is and could tell all the blind men they are not touching rope, hose and wall.   What if the King, the one being spoken about, could tell us  and show us who he really is? What if blind eyes can be opened and elephants could be seen? In simpler terms, what if God chose to actually speak to us?  Furthermore, the problem of pluralism is that we are not all talking about elephants-some religions believe God is one and others think there are millions of Gods.  We need God to define himself for us and this is in fact what Jesus came to do...to reveal to us our creator. 

Jesus' Teaching-Inclusive and Particular

The person of Jesus and his followers had something more interesting to say; something that was both inclusive of all human beings and calls us particularly to the creator God.  The Christian message is clear that God made all things and placed people in time and history so that they might reconnect in relationship with God (See Genesis 1-3; Acts 17). Furthermore, God has kindly given all of us evidence that he exists and has certain attributes.  Psalm 19 of the Hebrew bible (what we call the Old Testament) teaches us that God is speaking to us through creation and that this witness is available to all peoples. Romans 1 teaches us that what can be known about God is clear to us from what has been created.  We can see from looking at the stars, the vast oceans, high mountains, and the intricacies of RNA and DNA that there is indeed a powerful intelligence behind the universe.   Acts 14 of the New Testament also teaches us that God kindly provides for creation and Jesus taught the same in declaring that he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45).  So God gives to all people a universal display of his existence and common grace.   The Christian message is inclusive in this way.

Yet at the same time people have rejected God, desire to live without him both in their attitudes and actions on the earth (Read Romans 1-3).  We want to do things our way and deny that we were created by God for God.  We worship ourselves rather than the maker of all things.  Scripture calls this sin-and it is universal.  So God in his kindness reveals to us in Jesus Christ that he is "God of gods and Lord of Kings."  All who come to him in repentance (turning from sin/self to God) and faith (trusting him fully) he will not turn away.   The gospel is particular in this way.  We must come to God as God, not make him up in our minds and then come to the alter of an imaginary deity.

God shows something to us all by placing us in creation to see that there is a God to whom we give an account.  Inclusive.  Yet humanity in sin will resist his kindness so he enters the world in order to save some who will believe. The Bible does not teach that every person from every nation will be rescued from sin, death and hell.  Nor does God favor any group of people in that all from only some nations will be saved. The Scriptures are clear that there will be some from every people, tribe and language in the Kingdom of heaven (Revelation 7:9-12).  In a unique way, Jesus' message was as open as can be imagined yet only some respond.  His open call is clear:

• All who are weary and heavy burdened...come to Jesus (Matthew 11:25-30)
• All who are thirsty...drink (Revelation 22:17)
• All who are in darkness...he is light (Matthew 4:12-17; 2 Corinthians 4:1-6)
• All who are hungry...come eat and be satisfied (John 6:35-40)

Yet his message is also a call, a summons, to those who have "ears to hear."  All that have been given to Jesus he calls.  Those who "hear him" do come to him.  This is the mystery of grace; God saves, we respond.  He calls to all, yet all do not respond.   As followers of Jesus it is not our goal to prove everyone is wrong or dispute with deities. Yet we are called to present the truth-that there is one God and one mediator between God and people-the man Christ Jesus (1 Timothy 2:5,6).  This Jesus is no normal man nor simple prophet; he is God of gods and Lord of Kings and his Kingdom will last forever.

God of gods and Lord of Kings?

The most controversial figure in the New Testament is Jesus.  Yes, sweet, nice Jesus. The fact of the matter is that he made such radical claims about himself that he has always been a fork in the road for many.  Some would peddle him off as being a nice moral teacher, but this begs the question as to why he was unjustly murdered as a criminal.  He did seem to hack people off a bit no?  Jesus was utterly compelling to some while utterly repelling to others.   Part of the reason for this is that he claimed to be God incarnate (become human).  This is not what you hear people saying about themselves at Starbucks...

Followers of Jesus have been clear for centuries about the identity of Jesus.   He was not "a god of gods" he is the God of gods and Lord of Kings.  If you look at what some of his earliest followers said about him it becomes quite clear.  This is  necessarily a small sampling and I recommend further reading in this area for those who are interested.⁶

• He claimed to forgive sin, only what God could do (Mark 2:1-12)
• He claimed to be the divine "Son of Man" (Daniel 7:13, 14; Mark 13:24-27)
• He claimed to exist before Abraham was born as the "I AM" - the unique name of God in the Old Testament (John 8:48-59)
• He claimed that he was "one" with the Father (John 10)
• He claimed that if you saw him, you saw the Father (John 14)
• He was called "King of Kings and Lord of Lords" superseding the grandeur and authority of all earthly kings and rulers (Philippians 2:9-11; 1 Timothy 6:11-16; Revelation 9:11-16)

Scripture teaches us  that God became a human being  to reveal to us his nature and his ways.  Furthermore, God then died the death that we deserved on the cross-a death for sin.  He then gives to us forgiveness, grace and peace based upon his own merit.  This person, Jesus of Nazareth, is the one who is called King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  He is the God of gods revealed to us in living flesh so that we might follow and worship him.  

We proclaim him and him alone in our world, 

Notes

¹ Huston Smith, The World's Religions : Our Great Wisdom Traditions (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991) 378.

² Hence we may infer, that the human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols. Jean Calvin and Henry Beveridge, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Translation of: Institutio Christianae Religionis.; Reprint, With New Introd. Originally Published: Edinburgh : Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846. (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), I, xi, 8.

³ John Hick A Pluralist View in Dennis Okholm and Timothy R. Phillips, More Than One Way? : Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1995) 47-51.

⁴ The Blind Men and the Elephant is a very old Indian folk tale.  John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) wrote a poem based on the story which you can read at http://www.wordinfo.info/Blind-Men-and-Elephant-crop.html

⁵ See Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion and Sam Harris Letter to a Christian Nation as exhibits A and B.

⁶ See Robert M. Bowman and J. Ed Komoszewski Putting Jesus in His Place-The Case for the Deity of Christ (Grand Rapids: Kregal, 2007) and Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears Vintage Jesus (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007) 11-31.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Question of God - Part VI

…continued from Part V

Destiny

Blaise Pascal was another hitchhiker that lived long ago.  He was a French philosopher and ground breaking mathematician who tended to ask some pesky questions along the roadways to the question of God.  The question of our ultimate destiny made his thoughts often.  I’ll quote him at length:

I know not who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I myself am. I am in terrible ignorance of everything. I know not what my body is, nor my senses, nor my soul, not even that part of me which thinks what I say, which reflects on all and on itself, and knows itself no more than the rest. I see those frightful spaces of the universe which surround me, and I find myself tied to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am put in this place rather than in another, nor why the short time which is given me to live is assigned to me at this point rather than at another of the whole eternity which was before me or which shall come after me. I see nothing but infinites on all sides, which surround me as an atom and as a shadow which endures only for an instant and returns no more. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least is this very death which I cannot escape.

“As I know not whence I come, so I know not whither I go. I know only that, in leaving this world, I fall for ever either into annihilation or into the hands of an angry God, without knowing to which of these two states I shall be forever assigned. Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty. And from all this I conclude that I ought to spend all the days of my life without caring to inquire into what must happen to me. Perhaps I might find some solution to my doubts, but I will not take the trouble, nor take a step to seek it; and after treating with scorn those who are concerned with this care, I will go without foresight and without fear to try the great event, and let myself be led carelessly to death, uncertain of the eternity of my future state.”[1]

Many wise people from the past have encouraged us to think about the destination of life as we set about living it. Soren Kierkegaard once said life should be understood backwards but it must be lived forward and many a business leader has echoed the sentiment that we must begin with the end in mind. If the journey has a destination, we are wise to live in light of this. 

However, many of us would rather just be distracted than to think about our destiny.  We are all pretty much on our way towards our own funeral; but that is a bit heavy to think about while reading your RSS feeds.  It is much easier to reach for the remote control than to contemplate dying.  Yet death seems to be a clue to me as well.  It is a constant to life but it also seems like a constant enemy.  It should be the most natural thing in the world, but when it visits life around us we are shocked, perplexed, angry and wounded.  Perhaps death is actually an alien invader to life and that we are supposed to live forever. If this is true, we need to take it seriously and give some concern to our destination.

Continued with Has God Shown Up?

---

[1] Blaise Pascal, Penses, SECTION III: OF THE NECESSITY OF THE WAGER - you can read this online at - http://www.leaderu.com/cyber/books/pensees/pensees-SECTION-3.html

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Question of God - Part V

continued from Part IV

Morality

I am sure some of you over time have seen the bumper sticker that reads “mean people suck.”  Let me just be risky and go on the record with you that I indeed agree with the philosophy that mean people indeed sucketh.

We seem to all agree that there are right and wrong ways and these seem to be objective and universal in some sense.  We do not have any time here to discuss theories of ethics be they virtue, deontological, ordered by God, or consequentialist in view.  What I will say is the moral nature to life is extremely important clue to the nature of reality.

Even a large corporate juggernaut has as an official ethic of “Don’t be evil.” Surprisingly when asked what being evil was, Google CEO Eric Schmidt candidly replied “Whatever Sergei says is evil.” [1] Now this reveals both a clue and problem with our understanding of our world.

Who says what is right in this world?  Is it really up to Sergey? Or you? Not me!  It seems to me that if there is a standard, a moral law by which we might find our way, let me suggest a higher standard than Sergei Bryn is needed. Unless Sergey = God we have a massive problem on our hands. What is right or wrong? Who says? It might be easy to say “we do” but this sort of naivety, even if espoused by learned academics, simply ignores so much of the reality of human experience.  There are always many, many individuals who step out of the herd to define and do life their way.  To hell with the rest of you they say.  We might just say “Bad Hitler” but “good and bad” is what we are wrestling with in the first place.  It seems morality is not made up by Sergey Brn; so there may be a higher source which is needed to understand the moral nature of our universe.

A related clue is our obsessive realization that they world is broken and needs to be fixed.  This is the thought of every generation not simply those of our own.  Every politician feeds off of this reality.  She will fix it all for us if we elect her!!! This seems to indicate that we all see something wrong with humanity, something not quite right and that we ought to be different, that we need to change. Or we at least everybody else needs to get their act together.  This only seems to fit in a view of the world that teaches us that life is good but has gone bad and needs to be redeemed.  The view that says “life just is how it is” really has no resources to say that it is also “jacked up” and needs to change.  But there is a view that is in concord with our intuitions; listen to the 20th century journalist GK Chesterton:

And my haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from Crusoe’s ship — even that had been the wild whisper of something originally wise, for, according to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning.[2]

The world seems to be a good place which has gone bad and needs to change.  Perhaps this is simply a deep truth about reality.  Ancient Christian writings teach us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and need to be changed and redeemeed…I find this to be true and in harmony with our acknowledged suckiness of mean people.   Just something to think about…

continued in Part VI - Destiny

---

[1] Afterall, when the chief executive googler, Eric Schmidt, was asked what was “evil” the reply was simply: Whatever Sergey says is evil.  (see 2003 Wired Mag piece Google vs. Evil)

[2] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Image Books ed. (New York: Image Books, 1959), 80.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Question of God - Part IV

…continued from Part III

Meaning

Is life meaningless?  Much of 20th century thought has tended in this direction. From Beckett’s Waiting for Godot or Jean Paul Sartre’s Nausea or No Exit to Douglas Adam’s  A Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy paint a pretty empty picture for the meaning of life.  The Hitchiker’s of the galaxy learn that the world has no real meaning and perhaps the universe is just a game being run by a couple of mice.  It is really funny if you “get” British comedy. So the universe is a funny place, but when you think about it, meaninglessness is pretty depressing.

Listen to the words of Jean Paul Sartre, one of the great prophets of meaninglessness

I was true, I had always realized it - I hadn’t any “right” to exist at all.  I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe. I could feel nothing to myself but an inconsequential buzzing. I was thinking…that here we are eating and drinking, to preserve our precious existence, and that there’s nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing.[1]

The modern world has left us simply trying to construct meaning within a universe that has no overarching, higher purpose.  The brave peddlers of meaningless life tell us that there is simply no big purpose out there and you would be wise to get over it and maybe fill your meaningless lives with local meaning.  Local meaning is sexy of course because you can create it for yourself.  You can find meaning in sex, love or video games, just do whatever works for you and try to make yourself happy.  Of course our own meaning might infringe on someone else’s meaning so we are left scratching our heads for a way forward.  We might say we should live for “the common good” but this is no good if we have no good in common.  This seems to be the history of humanity; everyone looking to do good which seems to involve blowing other people up. 

Whether we do it for religious reasons (think jihads, crusades, emperor worship) or so called secular reasons (think Stalin and Mao - wonderful benevolent atheists) our meanings in life tend not to stay local.  This does not even mention all the pain and contortion that happen in everyday lives as we sexually abuse one another, steal from one another, lie to one another or simply ignore one another into an abyss of loneliness.  It seems all of this life on earth does mean something…it does seem to have some purpose as we seem to recognize when it is not being lived out. So here we stand dangling between hope and despair. You can choose hope and risk being thought naive or you can embrace despair, get over it and try to find a life. If you want to choose hope we must look for meaning and purpose in our existence.  Here are a few simple clues in that search.

Now whether we give love a bad name or not I will leave up to the prophet Bon Jovi, but whether love is a good thing I will simply go on the line for the affirmative.  It seems we are made for relationship, we are made to love and be loved, even by our Creator.  But let me take it one step further, it seems we were made to worship.  After all, we do all worship something - fans of sports teams, fans of money, fans of certain women/men, rock stars, movie stars etc.  We all do it you know; I don’t think we can help it.  We are made to worship and this is a great clue to the meaning of our existence.   The question of whom or what we worship is perhaps one of the questions in life.  God seems much better to adore and worship than Paris Hilton.  Our longing for meaning seems to find its home in a relationship or worship; one only a real God and a real relationship can satisfy.

…continued in Part V - Moral Reality

---

[1] Timothy J. Keller, The Reason for God : Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Dutton, 2008), 127. It seems Keller has redacted several quotes from this work into this one selection.  See source material in Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea ([Norfolk, Conn.]: New Directions, 1964), 84, 112.

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Question of God - Part III

…continued from Part II

Is God Real?

We could go various directions in our hitchhiking and wanderings about the question of God but the first question we ask is rather simple. As we look towards the heavens we must ask if we are alone in the universe or whether there exists a being of a superior intellect and power. People have approached the existence of God through several big existential questions.  We ask questions of Origin; from where did we and this universe come?  We ask questions about the meaning or purpose of life?  We ask questions about justice, right and wrong and scream for various flavorings of morality.  Finally, we wonder about the end of our short lives and ask whether there is anything more?  I find these questions of origin, meaning, morality and destiny great clues as to whether God is real. 

I intend no great philosophical and scientific proofs or discussions here; you may find that many places on the net and through books over at Amazon.com. I’ll make some suggestions for you at journeys end, but here I only offer these questions as clues.

Origin

Almost everyone who asks the question of God tends to begin with the fact that we are here and were not always here.  Every view of life and the world offers some account of where we come from and the answers are a bit of a smorgasbord.  We either came from the back of a turtle, from the magical exploding of nothing, from a higher power or from a personal creator.  How you answer determines how your road unfolds.  It seems to me that life is very personal rather than non personal so I ask you, could it be that the reason we exist is that someone wanted us to? I have found in my own travels that current understandings in astrophysics, cosmology and the ancient Hebrew Scriptures seem to agree.  There was once a time when matter/space/time and conscious beings did not exist.  Then there was a time “after” [metaphysically or logically “after” as time itself was created here] in which they did.  What happened?  I think this is a great clue to the question of God.

…continued - Part IV - The Search for Meaning

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Question of God - Part II

…continued from Part I

An Invitation to Open Roads

Now some questions have answers, yet there are many which will remain unanswered.  Here I only I want to interact about one of the most important questions which has been asked in every culture, place and time. In bringing to you such a pesky idea as the Question of God, I invite you for a few moments to allow your mind to step free of your concerns.  You know getting a job, the wonderful achievements of the Dow Jones, getting a date, your fantasy football team, Facebookery or watching The Office can wait.  

As we begin I want you to think about hitchhiking for a minute.  Any hitch-hiker worth his salt has a few important characteristics. First he has a free spirit and an open mind.   I am concerned that some of you reading might just have a closed minded to the question of God. I want to ask you why?  And hope you might at least open your mind to the question.  Furthermore, a hitchhiker is always heading down a somewhat open road.  In other words, I want you to be able to ask the question “is God real” and then be courageous enough to follow what emerges from the question.  Hitchhiking is not for cowards you know.

So the guide at this point is simply to ask you two questions.  Two rather big ones…

• Is God Real?
• Has God ever shown up in our world in tangible way?

As the road is open to all travelers and sojourners let us open the hitchhiker’s guide and get to work.

…continued - Part 3 - Is God Real?

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Question of God - Part I

Last month I wrote a short message entitled “A Hitchhikers Guide to the Question of God” for some of the students at Princeton University.  I gave the message to encourage and help others along who are wrestling with the question of God.  The title of a message really has two sources that I will share with you briefly.

First, I think life is more like a journey than a thought experiment in that it is lived on a road to somewhere, rather than a road to nowhere.  Second, I am a bit of a science fiction geek, so of course there is some reference to the Radio/Book/Movie British Comedy franchise A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.  Furthermore my own spiritual journey has felt a bit like a winding eclectic road.

I grew up in Virginia Beach, VA the son of an ex-Irish Catholic Naval Officer who in his own story became a bit of an agnostic during college.  I know that should qualify me enough for some therapy.  I was a bit of a the classic high school overachiever in that I straddled both a world of academic and athletic accomplishment.  I was an All-American in wrestling winning my high school state championship and took home several freestyle state titles as well.  On the side I played a little football captaining our team and getting honorable mention all district at Quarterback.  On the other side of life I was vice president of the honor society and was one of the “starters” for our Its Academic Quiz bowl team.  You know, the thing that is sort of like Jeopardy where schools compete one another.  We actually were pretty good making the final four of our 64 high school regional tourney (mainly because we had one spooky smart guy named Mike Heffner on our team - shout out to Mike).

In my world the question of God had a very small place at the table.  I didn’t attend church and to be honest really didn’t care about God.   The closest I got to the almighty was declaring myself a deist for about a week in the 11th Grade after Reading some Voltaire.  As an aside, you know your are somebody in history if you get mentioned with one name…you know, Aristotle, Voltaire, Prince, or any of a few Brazilian Soccer Players.

So I had some suspicion from my involvement in mathematics and science that perhaps there might be some sort of higher power out there but this could not have any possible connection to my life.  My life at this time consisted of getting good grades, attempting to roll with the ladies and trying to be an all around good guy. 

I ended up taking a scholarship to wrestle at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (represent) and I moved south to study physics and continue my amateur wrestling career. As a freshman at UNC Chapel Hill I ended up competing and doing pretty well in my beginnings as a student of science.  So my worlds were a bit odd and I liked it that way.  I had Physics friends who liked stuff like Dungeons and Dragons, eastern Kung Fu techniques, computers and discussing Schrödinger’s Cat.  My wrestling friends were guys who liked to fight, chase women and break lots of commandments on Thursday nights. 

During this time I actually began to hear some things about this guy named Jesus. Now, at first glance you cannot grow up in America without hearing something about Jesus.  As a teenager I had cable TV which came with the painted crying ladies talking about Jesus and jumping up and down. In America you hear the word “Jesus”, but I really didn’t know too much about him. So my journey arrived at Jesus when a new friend on campus stopped by my dorm room to take the time to explain to me who Jesus is and what God had done for us through him.

So at this time I became a sort of spiritual hitch-hiker because I had what seemed like a million questions which kept me out on the road of learning.  I had philosophical questions, historical questions, questions about religions, questions about Jesus, questions about how we could know anything about an unseen God.  To be honest, some of my questions were simple and straightforward enough that I want to just share a few of them as a Hitch-hikers Guide to the Question of God.

to be continued…Part 2 - An Invitation to Open Roads

Book Review - There is a God by Anthony Flew and Roy Varghese

Book Review - Anthony Flew, There is No/A God - How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, (New York: HarperOne, 2007) 222 pp.

People love testimonies; we also love reading biography.  Particularly we really love stories of how someone’s life or ideas radically change from their previous orientation.  For those who have been interested in the analytic philosophy of religion over certainly had their eyebrows raised when Anthony Flew, one of the prominent anti-theistic philosophers of the last half century, announced in 2004 that he had changed his mind on a very important issue.  He had come to believe in God.

There is No/A God - How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind is the recounting of the life and intellectual journey of Anthony Flew, written in a rather autobiographical manner by the man himself.  The book has a great introduction where Flew lays out the content of the book and the journey it will entail.  Part I is comprised of three chapters chronicling his experience growing up in the house of his Father, a thoughtful Methodist minister and biblical scholar.  It traces his growing interest in critical thinking and following a method put forth in the writing of Plato; like Socrates, he would be dedicated to following the evidence in life wherever it leads.  His development as a student, his growth as a philosopher and his profound and influential contributions to the philosophy of religion are all covered in this section.  It is not an understatement to say that Flew’s work literally set the stage for the last 60 years of discussion from the point of view of those who disbelieved in God.   

Part II of the book covers several lines of evidence, mainly located in the new discoveries of modern science, which brought him to his new conclusion that God exists.  The book concludes with two useful appendices, one on existential reasons for belief in a divine mind by Roy Abraham Varghese and the second a treatment by NT Wright on the historical Christian view of God revealing himself in Jesus Christ.  In this review I will cover some strengths of the book categorizing them under the headers of Biography, History, Philosophy and Science.  I will then cover a few small weakness I found with this volume and then give some concluding thoughts on the helpfulness (or lack thereof) of a book of this sort.

One more issue needs to be addressed before launching into the review.  As one can imagine the book has been surrounded by some vitriol and controversy.  On the atheistic side you read a recounting of a senile old man being duped by eager evangelicals to see things their way (See Mark Oppenheimer’s lengthy treatment in the New York Times Magazine for a good look at this).  On the theistic side you see a heartfelt narrative of friendship and the honest intellectual journey (see Christian philosopher Gary Habermas’ thoughts in his book review here) of an intellectually honest scholar and gentlemen.  What is the truth of the matter?  One is hard pressed to know.  The book’s publisher, HarperOne, is standing fully behind the book and that Flew, although assisted in its writing, stood fully behind it content.  The bottom line is that Anthony Flew’s journey is now deeply affected by dementia - in his last years his mind is fading.  So we have two sides to this story and many have much to gain from it.  The truth of all matters may not be known but clearly Anthony Flew did indeed change his mind and it is a process that began decades ago.  I’ll let the reader sort through the realities of this controversy - but as always, there are two sides to every story and these two sides are philosophers debating God - a virtual bee hive of passion, erudition and arrogance.  The full truth about the story of Anthony Flew may only be known in the Divine Mind, yet the book is out in the world with his name fully behind it.  So on to the review.

Strengths of the Book

Biography

Some of the most pleasant portions of the book were the human contours on display of Flew’s own life and intellectual journey.  The beginning pages feature Flew as a young boarding school student using the intellectual tools given to him by his critical thinking Christian father.  He clearly said the tools which his father gave him were those which turned him away from his father’s faith.   He is very clear that by the time he left boarding school he had left belief in God behind.  He attempted to keep it on the down low for several years and seemed to succeed but by the time his parents were aware of the change he was far down an anti-theistic road.  One story that really grabbed me was his experience in pre World War II Europe and his witness of harsh Antisemitism and the rise of totalitarianism; two things which were the object of his disdain.  Rightly so.   Overall, I enjoyed reading his story as life and philosophical career unfolded.  It is quite a who’s who in 20th century philosophy and that history seemed alive to me and leads me to the second strength I enjoyed in the book.

History

For those interested in the history of 20^th century philosophy will not find a historical introduction or tour de force in this volume.  Yet those who are acquainted with the history of philosophy will love the narrative found in Part I of the book.  From his membership and participation in CS Lewis’ Socratic club (22-24) at Oxford where theist and atheist would enter into cage matches together to his publishing of his early paper Theology and Falsification which would set the tone of late 20th century debates in analytic philosophy of religion.  Wittgenstein, AJ Ayer and logical positivism, Bertrand Russell, Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga and many others are discussed in the narrative.  Those uninitiated with philosophical schools and ideas may feel a bit left out but those familiar will find much in the narrative to wax nostalgic about.  There is even Flew’s recounting of several debates over the decades with various theists even one that is positioned as a team debate showdown at the OK Corral (69, 70)

Philosophy

Now this book is written at a popular and not a technical level of philosophy. Yet the volume still affords some helpful insights which are found more fully in other works.  For instance, the discussion on the burden of proof in the question of God (who has to prove her claims, the theist or the agnostic?) is helpful.  Flew is well known for placing the burden of proof on the one who believes in God in the mid 20th century. This provoked some really excellent scholarship and discussion about who must prove what in order to be rational.  The work of Alvin Plantinga, in his discussions of Warrant and Proper Function, come to mind.  Plantinga argues that it is completely rational and basic to believe in God without proof save that the person is willing to address rational challenges to faith (defeater beliefs).  There is also a great quote summarizing the work of Anthony Kenny which puts the agnostic back in the debate to argue FOR something and not just put the burden on the theist. 

But he said this does not let agnostics off the hook; a candidate for an examination may be able to justify the claim that he or she does not know the answer to one of the questions, but this does not enable the person to pass the examination. (54, emphasis mine)

So the agnostic must also argue his case and attempt to show reasons why he knows that others do not know about the issue of God.  I have always been amazed by people who confidently think that others do not know about God, while claiming they do not personally know either.

There is also a discussion of Hume that philosophically minded people will enjoy even if you do not agree with the conclusions made.  I tend to agree with the book that Hume’s skepticism about causation, the reality of the external world and the persistent self are all unlivable intellectual games that Hume himself did not adhere.

Science

The final strength I found in the book was the basic and popular treatment of some scientific developments of the 20th century.  Schroeder’s refutation of the popular illustration that “if you give monkeys a typewriter and enough time they will eventually bang out the works of Shakespeare” to be wonderfully persuasive (see pages 74-78). Additionally, Chapter 7’s treatment of codes, DNA information transfer and mapping was very engaging.  The treatment of self directed, self replicating and encoded biological systems does seem to create massive problems if it is only the work of mindless matter. 

While I really enjoyed the book there were a few drawbacks which did seem to leer out at me as well.  I’ll cover them briefly in this order. First, the denseness of some philosophical ideas was not ameliorated for the popular level reader. Second, his distinction between physical and human causes in wrestling with determinism brought up some serious problems for me.  Third, a few chapters in the latter part of the book were just anemic and underdeveloped.  I’ll cover each in turn.

A Few Weaknesses

The Philosophical Shroud

As a book written for a popular audience I found a few times some dense stuff that philosophers enjoy left dangling before the reader in a rather obfuscated manner.  One quick beauty from Richard Swinburne will illustrate nicely why freshman in college can end up hating philosophy (or loving it - smile)

He reasoned that the fact that only O’s we have ever seen are X does not simply imply that it is not coherent to suppose that there are O’s that are not X.  He said that no one has any business arguing that, just because all so-and-so’s with which they happen themselves to have been acquainted were such-and-such, therefore such-and-suchness must be an essential characteristic of anything that is to be properly related to a so-and-so. (51)

Yeah, sometimes philosophy rolls that way…and it is a good point if you take the time to think it through…but most folks will read that and become cross-eyed and wonder what is the point.

Causality Confusion

A second area of weakness was his bifurcation of causes presented in his wrestling with the idea of free-will and determinism.  A little background.  Most all atheists are determinists.  They see the world as a closed system of cause and effect which is the result of matter operating according to natural law.  All things we see are the result of matter interacting.  This includes human actions, thoughts, decisions etc. Therefore free-will, in this view, is an illusion for it is just the bumping of matter in specialized patterns in your brain.  Of course this is very counter intuitive as we make a myriad of choices every day whereby we can “choose” action A or B.  Flew’s solution was to make a distinction between physical causes and human causes.  Physical causes are those that must happen according to natural laws and physics and human choices are a different sort of agent caused events which do not necessitate A or B but rather incline a person towards a choice (see 60,61)

Now, I have no problem in distinguishing causes this way but one who rejects a spiritual view of persons, that we are only one substance/matter, have a hard time finding where to get such “agents” from.  If there is nothing but a body/brain, then there is nothing else happening.  There is no metaphysical “YOU” who can make choices (whether free choices or those compatible with other factors).  Later in the book he indeed repudiates the type of mind/body anthropology which would make his cause distinction possible (see 150).  So I found his rejection of materialistic determinism to be weak in light of his physicalist anthropology.  Now for those who maintain a psychosomatic soul-body dualism do have a embodied person who can make choices.  For those who do not hold this view, such causal distinctions are nonsense and determinism seems to hold.

Less than Strong Chapters

Finally, I found chapter 6 of the anthropic principle to be underdeveloped and chapter 9 on how a incorporeal spirit can act in the world unsatisfying. The latter would have been greatly aided by a discussion of speech acts, how an agent actually accomplishes things by speaking and decreeing which to me seems to be how God immediately acts within space time.  Speech Act theory is of great interest as we see it in human affairs in the act of declaring a party guilty or pronouncing a couple husband and wife.  Though God’s speech acts are of a different species in that they actually do things that are “godlike” create matter, raise the dead etc. studies in speech act theory give us an understanding how God might accomplish things by his Word.

Concluding Thoughts

In conclusion I will say only a few things.  First, I really enjoyed the subject matter, history and discussions found in There is a God.  Second, my question is whether the controversy surrounding the volume make it useful as an apologetic for God with the general public.  My answer is yes and no.  Those who are from the camp of philosophical atheism, those who read Skeptic magazine and have read Flew’s previous works as gospel, will be unmoved by this book.  Yet for those who do not believe “the old senile Flew was duped by theists” story the volume is very helpful in showing that some people do change their minds and find good reasons to do so.  So with that in mind I do recommend There is a God for use with those who are wrestling with the question of God. Recommended.

Suffering - A Transcendent Clue

 

I have been pondering this question quite a bit...using Aristotelian/Thomistic categories. Is evil/suffering/pain/death etc. essential/substantial or accidental to this world and human experience?

I find the answer from a framework of naturalism must say "this is essential...fundamental to the way things are." Death, survival, reproduction...genes moving on through the cosmos perhaps hindered by our memes along the way.

Yet this seems to be strange because we seem to create a "problem of evil" - as if evil is a problem. and not a simple fact of the world.  In a theistic worldview, evil is accidental, not essential and hence a "problem" - but this only makes sense if there is a good world...somehow gone bad with an alien invasion of suffering which is constant and objectionable by the creature.

So...essential or accidental? The answer to this question seems to set one's trajectory in life. Ask yourself a question - does your own suffering seem "right and normal" or really something "wrong."

Worth your time to think about...

The Devil's Delusion - A Refreshing and Witty Polemic

David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion - Atheism and Its Scientific Pretentions (New York: Crown Forum, 2008)

Introduction

Every now and again I come across books which do two things.  They provide great food for thought and they make me laugh out loud.  It is a very rare convergence of events but nonetheless there are some authors out there which succeed at uniting the horns of thought and humor in my life. This summer I just finished reading one such book, one The Devils Delusion - Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions by David Berlinski.  For those of you who are not familiar with him Berlinski is a sort of rogue academic who is involved with the work of the Discovery Institute (shhh...they are involved with intelligent design...shhh). Slate recently did an interesting piece on him if you want some background on the man described in that article as "a critic, a contrarian, and—by his own admission—a crank"

He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Princeton has taught at numerous institutions of higher learning and has published books on Mathematics and the history of science.  He is a bit of a rogue because he is a skeptical secular Jew who most recently has been writing against the overconfident reach of the the Darwinian establishment.  He also is an American academic who lives in Paris...which seems to point to "rogue."  I don't think he is too much of a troublemaker but he is a bit punchy and mischievous in his writings.

The book is another work which addresses the arguments of militant (perhaps obnoxious?) atheists such as Sam Harris, Daniel Dennet and the now infamous Richard Dawkins (aka Dick to the Dawk). This book, however, has a particular idea in its cross hairs; the idea that only atheism can lay claim to being "scientific" as well as some of the more ridiculous things atheistic thinkers claim in the "name of science." It seems that the likes of the new atheist posse have big love for him as well.  From Slate:

The atheists, meanwhile, can't stand him: According to Daniel Dennett, Berlinski exudes a "rich comic patina of smug miseducation"; Richard Dawkins implies that he may be wicked to the core; and blogger-ringleader P.Z. Myers has called him a "pompous pimple" and a "supercilious snot." 

How nice of these fellows! In reading this book I can see why they might find Berlinski a bit maddening.  For one, he is spooky smart, erudite, irreverent towards their cause and quite pithy in his deconstruction of their cherished religion of scientism. Quite frankly, I have found Berlinski to be quite adept at the lost art of polemics.  With a society that is either too squeamish to oppose any ideas or is so ridiculously uncivil in dealing with opponents, a nice intelligent polemicist is a treat to read. 

In this review I will summarize the book's argument using many of Berlinski's own words.  I will then share some of the things I enjoyed in Berlinski's book as well as few times where I felt him just a little bit unfair - well, ok, maybe only one time.  I also have a few questions for Dr. Berlinski which I will ask here in closing.

Summary

In beginning his book, Berlinski provides a great preface that summarizes succinctly his aims in writing.  He quite frankly wants to call the scientific hegemony on its bluff - that it, and it alone can answer all of life's questions...if given enough time of course. In addition, he wants to dismantle the belief that religion is bankrupt as a system of understanding things which science seems hopelessly empty in addressing.  In his own words:

No scientific theory touches on the mysteries that the religious tradition addresses.  A man asking why his days are short is not disposed to turn to algebraic quantum field theory for the answer.  The answers that prominent scientific figures have offered are remarkable in their shallowness.  The hypothesis that we are nothing more than cosmic accidents has been widely accepted by the scientific community.  Figures as diverse as Bertrand Russell, Jacques Monod, Steven Weinberg, and Richard Dawkins have said it is so.  It is an article of their faith, one advanced with the confidence of men convinced that nature has equipped them to face realities the rest of us cannot bear to contemplate.  There is not the slightest reason to think this so.

While science has nothing of value to say on the great and aching questions of life, death, love, and meaning, what the religious traditions of mankind have said forms a coherant body of thought. The yearnings of the human soul are not in vain.  There is a system of belief adequate to the complexity of experience.  There is recompense for suffering.  A principle beyond selfishness is at work in the cosmos.  All will be well.

I do not know whether any of this is true.  I am certain that the scientific community does not know that it is false. (Berlinski, xiv)

So Berlinski's task is simple - show that science is full of itself and overstates its case against religion all the while making some pretty impressive leaps of faith of its own.  The book covers a diverse range of topics from philosophical arguments for God from Thomas Aquinas and others, to a rebuttal of Richard Dawkins' sophomoric argument against God's existence related to "complex entities", to some dense chapters on the standard model of quantum physics and the infinitely inventive purveyors of string theory.

I found Berlinski to be quite well read on the subjects he treats and seemed to skip around within them with both a feeling of delight and ironic skepticism.  Now on to a few things that I really found enjoyable in the book.

Enjoyable

I found many things enjoyable in The Devil's Delusion the first being his calling the almost infinite arrogance of certain thinkers to account. In recounting the words of chemist Peter Atkins, Berlinski exposes this posture: 

Peter Atkins is a professor of physical chemistry at Oxford, and he, too, is ardent in his atheism. In the course of an essay denouncing not only theology but poetry and philosophy as well, he observes favorably of himself that scientists "are the summit of knowledge, beacons of rationality, and intellectually honest." It goes without saying, Atkins adds, that "there is no reason to suppose that science cannot deal with every aspect of existence." Science is, after all, "the apotheosis of the intellect and the consummation of the Renaissance." (7)

So much for that old fashioned human virtue known as humility. Additionally, he exposes the way that some scientists (after all, Berlinski is quite the fan of science) present their views as the only admissible discussion in any human affairs.  What Berlinski has found in reading the literature of science is that some men have created a new religion and one that demands all people submit to its tenants of the faith.  Again and again he shows that many times science has attempted to flee from certain ideas (such as design, God, morality, human uniqueness in the universe, big bang cosmology, etc) by cooking up strange explanations to avoid the obvious.

The second enjoyable aspect of the book is that it is extremely funny.  Now, I will say that you might need a bit of a background in the sciences to understand just how funny some of his prose actually is...but nonetheless the humor is transparent enough in most places for even the uninitiated reader.  Let me just drop some of his lines in for your enjoyment as well...

On the fact that "religion is the source of all violence and carnage" Berlinski has this to say:

It is religion, Christopher Hitchens claims, that is dangerous, because it is "the cause of dangerous sexual repression." Short of gender insensitivity, what could be more dangerous than sexual repression? (18)

In the same chapter, he brings one of the more blunt uses of humor when speaking of the heinous atrocities invented by atheistic thinkers and certain creations of modern scientific understanding. This was in some commentary he made on the words of physicist Steven Weinberg:

"Religion," he affirmed, "is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.  But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion (italics added by Berlinski) In speaking thus, Weinburg was warmly applauded, not one member of his audience asking the question one might have thought pertinent: Just who has imposed on the suffering of the human race poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the forumula for Zyklon B, heavy artillary, pseudo-scientific justification for mass murder, cluster bombs, attack submarines, napalm, intercontinental ballistic missiles, military space platforms, and nuclear weapons? If memory serves, it was not the Vatican. (21)

Touche! If you are interested in a few more pithy quotes click the "continue reading" link at the end of this review. So let me move on to my final enjoyable aspect of the book; his exposing of the naive positions of the likes of one Sam Harris.

Harris has the habit of reducing things to simple rants and platitudes.  A quick reading of his "letter to a Christian nation" will suffice to show that he does not treat serious subjects with much rigor.  Perhaps he is just writing out of field and we need to show him charity.  Yet Berlinski is right to call him on much hot air.  One example is the atheistic treatment of human sin and behavior.  It is quite common for Harris and the like to present smart people as good people and that if we only could get rid of religion all people would live in perfect harmony.  Here is Berlinski calling them on this nonsense:

I am under most circumstances the last person on earth to think Richard Dawkins a Pollyanna, but in this case I defer to his description.  Why should people remain good when unobserved and unpoliced by God? Do people remain good when unpoliced by the police? If Dawkins believes that they do, he must explain the existence of the criminal law, and if he believes that they do not, then he must explain why moral enforcement is not needed at the place where law enforcement ends.

To the scientific atheists, the ancient idea that homo homini lupus--man is a wolf to man--leaves them shaking their heads in poodle-like perplexity.  Sam Harris has no anxieties whatsoever about presenting his own views on human morality with the enviable confidence of a man who feels that he has reached the epistemological bottom.  "Everything about human experienc," he writes, "suggests that love is more conductive to human happiness than hate is." It goes without saying, of course, that Harris believes that this is an objective claim about the human mind.  

If this is so, it is astonishing with what eagerness men have traditionally fled happiness. (34, emphasis in original)

Yes, human beings are more complicated than simply thinking we will all do right and good with one another once we have studied brain and biology. Some of the smugness and confidence of these men is amazing in light of the 20th century carnage brought about by atheistic regines (Stalin, Mao, Khamir Rouge).  It needs to be called out.

One finanl chapter is worthy of note. Chapter 8 - Our Inner Ape, a Darling and the Human Mind does a masterful job and explaining and demonstrating the actual difference between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom.  The chapter is worth the price of admission and is a needed argument in light of the atheistic mantra than human beings are nothing special in the universe.  I tell my own kids that you don't see alligators, or chimps for that matter, launching a mission to Mars.  The difference between man and ape is massive and Berlinski gives a great treatment of this subject.

Questions

Now, there are a few problems with the book and a puzzle I find in Berlinski himself.  First, there are a few places that he seems a bit unfair to his opponents.  Now, I know, Sam Harris is a big boy and can take it but it does seem he gets thrown into a bit of a guilt by association argument in aligning him with holocaust denying David Irving. Though Harris' views that the Jewish people's beliefs and actions could have brought on their suffering, making him an ally of source with Irving seemed a bit unfair (see Berlinski, 28). 

Finally I have one question for Dr. Berlinski.  Why don't you go ahead and leave the skeptical place in your views about God and come on over to the team.  He defends theism masterfully, seems to understand the biblical message and spent quite a bit of time in the book making a pretty good case for the theistic arguments.  There is a place for skepticism, in seeing through things.  But as CS Lewis once said, if you see through everything you lose your ability to see.  So I hope Dr. Berlinski would accept that which he seems to have some good knowledge thereof.  That there is a God, who created us in his image, who orders the moral universe and to whom we will give an account. 

Conclusion

Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit.  I particularly enjoyed the discussions of various scientific theories as I still remain a huge fan of the scientific enterprise.  This is no anti-science book, but rather a book which will not allow the smuggling of atheistic philosophy into the room by putting a lab coat on its back.  Science is the empirical study of repeatable causes, it is not the sum of all knowledge and human experience.  All of us have some sort of faith commitment from which they launch into daily life. Some trust in the creator, others trust that they themselves will solve every problem and explain away all spiritual reality and every mystery when science is given enough time.  I find such an existence absurd and quite boring.  Science from a theistic perspective is quite fascinating and I commend the young minds of the world to take up science and give glory to God.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Appendix - A few More Berlinski Zingers.

In speaking of the confidence some have in certain quantum mechanical theories, Berlinski again is a bit of a meddler:

It has not, however, explained the connection between the quantum realm and the classical realm. "So long as the wave packet reduction is an essential component [of quantum mechanics]," the physicist John Bell observed, "and so long as we do not know when and how it takes over from the Schrodinger equation, we do not have an exact and unambiguous formulation of our most fundamental physical theory."

If this is so, why is our most fundamental theory fundamental? I'm just asking. (94)

In sticking with the "science functioning for some as a religion" Berlinski actually produces a "Catechism of Quantum Cosmology" which I found ridiculous and wonderful.  Just so you can catechize your own children (found on pp 104, 105)

Q: From what did our universe evolve?
A: Our universe evolved from a much smaller, much emptier, mini-universe. You may think of it as an egg

Q: What was the smaller, emptier universe like?
A: It was a four-dimensional sphere with nothing much inside it. You may think of that as weird

Q: How can a sphere have four dimensions?
A: Asphere may have four dimensions if it has one more dimension than a three-dimensional sphere.  You may think of that as obvious

Q: Does the smaller, emptier universe have a name?
A: The smaller, emptier universe is called a de Sitter universe. You may think of that as about time some one paid attention to de Sitter.

Q: Is there anything else I should know about the smaller, emptier universe?
A: Yes. It represents a solution to Einstein's field equations. You may think of that as a good thing.

Q: Where was the smaller, emptier universe or egg?
A: It was in the place where space as we know it did not exists. You may think of it as a sac.

Q: When was it there?
A: It was there at the time when time as we know it did not exist. You may think of it as a mystery

Q: Where di teh egg come from?
A: The egg did not actually come from anywhere. You may think of this as astonishing.

Q: If the egg did not come from anywhere, how did it get there?
A: The egg got there because the wave function of the universe said it was probable.  You may think of this as a done deal.

Q: How did our universe evolve from the egg?
A: It evolved by inflating itself up from its sac to become the universe in which we now find ourselves.  You may think of that as just one of those things.

Now you are ready to sing the hymns of the new world order and your kids can report for confirmation.  He is not trying to make light of the hard work of theoretical physicists, bu the is saying that they appear to be saying a bit of nothing disguised in mathematical flair that has no experimental connection to the observational world...and it is funny.  Let me close this section with his quote about the continued and multiplied musings of string theory.

In the end, string theorists argued that the extra dimensions of their theory were buried somewhere. At each point in space and time, they conjectured, there one would find a tiny geometrical object know as a Calabi-Yau manifold, and curled up within, there one would find the extra dimensions of string theory itself.  It was an idea that possessed every advantage except clarity, elegance, and a demonstrated connection to reality. (119, empahis in original)

Ok, I must have a weird sense of humor because once again I had a chuckle at those lines.

The Unsettling of Sir Richard...

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...

Sending Text Messages

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.

The Loneliness of Immortality

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.

Why Science in a Theistic Universe Does Not Suck

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.

Morality, spirituality, the meaning of life — science doesn't handle those issues well at all. But that's cool. We have art and religion for that stuff. Science also assumes predictable cause and effect in a world that's a chaotic, bubbling stew of randomness. But that's OK, too. Our approximations are usually good enough. No, the real reason science sucks is that it makes us look bad. It makes us bit players in the Big Story of the universe, and it exposes some key limitations of the human brain.

Look at it this way: Before science, we humans had dominion over Earth, the center of the universe. Now we're just a bunch of hairless apes on a wet rock orbiting a minor star in a marginal galaxy.

Even worse, those same cortexes that invented science can't really embrace it. Science describes the world with numbers (ratio of circumference to diameter: pi) and abstractions (particles! waves! particles!). But our intractable brains evolved on a diet of campfire tales. Fantastical explanations (angry gods hurling lightning bolts) and rare events with dramatic outcomes (saber-toothed tiger attacks) make more of an impact on us than statistical norms. Evolution gave us brains that crave certainty, with irrational fears of crashing in an airplane and a built-in weakness for just-so stories about intelligent design. Meanwhile, the true wonders revealed by the scientific method — species that change into new species over time, continents that float around the planet, a quantum-mechanical world where nothing is for sure — are worse than counterintuitive. To a depressingly large number of us, they're downright threatening.

In other words, thanks to evolution, half of all Americans don't believe in evolution. That's the universe for you: impersonal, uncaring, and ironic.

Now, I hope you realize why science sucks for Hayden - for in its reductionistic forms it makes us idiots.  All can be explained by science, even those idiots who think that all inexperience cannot be explained or reduced to naturalistic understandings.  Hayden is locked inside a materialistic prison, with artists and priests around...and proponents of intelligent design.  Yet he cannot really hear them - it is as if his ears are tuned only to hear the dance of the DNA.  Scientific or naturalistic reductionism leaves us in a universe that is impersonal, uncaring and ironic.  In other words, it just sucks - so you better laugh about it.  Yet what if you are like John and are tired of the naturalistic jailer telling you HIS just so stories about eggs.  Perhaps there is another view in which science sucketh not.  To this view we now turn.

It is no coincidence that the achievements of science found their cradle in the academy of Christian Europe.  For in the Christian worldview you do not have an impersonal, irrational, uncaring universe - even if it is a bit ironic.  To have the rise of the scientific method you must have certain intellectual presuppositions to pursue the scientific quest.  First, you must believe that the universe is itself rational rather than random.  That it displays an intelligibility.  The Christians of Europe and their deist children understood the world to be the creation of a rational mind - the mind of God.  As such they expected it to be orderly and rational - available for study if you will. Second, you must think that our minds are capable, even made for, such a task.  In other words we must expect that Reason is reasonable - not chaotic - our minds must be able to function in such a matter to arrive at True truth.  Nancy Pearcy and Charles Thaxton explain the rise of science in western culture much more thoroughly in their work The Soul of Science.  Highly recommended. 

In this universe, the one seen by the eye of the Christian believer, the world and all that is in it cannot be reduced to its material fluctuations.  It is highly personal, rational universe, yet with mysteries and puzzles which require both thought and trust.  It is a universe where we can pursue science without ruining your scrambled eggs or saying that love between persons is an illusion which is JUST our beastly urge to simply mount the opposite sex.  This is a prison to which we need not to submit...for a worldview where science sucks seems to suck even more.  Perhaps we need a prison break of our own.

Googling The Reason for God...

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.

Ole Keller...Old Enough to be Your Dad...But Cooler Than You

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.

Tuesdays in Time

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.

Creation Confusion...On Science and New Creations

This past week