Thinking Christian

First Things has published Anthony Sacramone’s review of Vox Day’s book, The Irrational Atheist: Dissecting the Unholy Trinity of Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens. It includes:

To take just one of many examples, a common trope among atheists is that religion is the No. 1 cause of wars in history. “If religion were an important element of warmaking, one would expect to find a great deal of text commenting upon it,” Day writes. But you don’t. After reading the great war theorists, from Sun Tzu to Von Clausewitz, Day found pages and pages about perseverance, spies, geometry, inspirational music—but virtually nothing about religion.

As for the nature of the wars themselves, talk about specific: Day found 123 wars that could validly be claimed to have religion at their heart—a grand total of 6.98 percent of all wars fought. “It’s also interesting to note that more than half of these religious wars, sixty-six in all, were waged by Islamic nations,” Day offers as an aside.

About 7% of identifiable wars in history war fought for religious reasons. Most of those were initiated by Muslims. This does not justify any war fought for the purpose of advancing Christianity. But it certainly puts the lie to beliefs that Christianity bears the blame for a large part of the violence in world history.

We might as well add this current item to the point, too: 150 million murdered in the 20th century–by whom?

Hat Tip: One Eternal Day

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This ER clip on a dying patient’s intense spiritual questions has gone viral, according to viralvideochart.com, which ranks it at number 11 on their list this afternoon. (The list is apparently generated by the number of blogs referencing each video.)

This patient was asking for–no, demanding–straight answers to straight questions. The chaplain couldn’t answer (SteveK showed us additional context in support of that conclusion). The patient didn’t want maybe, didn’t want doubts, didn’t want what-ifs; he wanted certainty. What do we make of that kind of demand? Is it legitimate? Most believers in Christ would say “yes, absolutely!” We think there are real answers to his questions.

It’s terribly counter-cultural, though, to talk in terms of spiritual certainty* and “yes, absolutely.” We’re a pluralistic culture, especially in regards to religion and values. If the chaplain had told him, “You can find forgiveness only by placing your faith in Jesus Christ and His death for you,” she would have been violating one of the Western world’s cardinal rules: Never claim one religion is better than any other.

That’s a rule we followers of Christ break all the time. It’s one reason Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins think we’re so dangerous. We’re exclusivistic.

This is a great time to introduce Timothy Keller, senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. It’s a seriously New York kind of church. They have two classical worship-style services every Sunday, and three jazz services. Did I mention they have five services every Sunday? Close observers point out that the church has grown primarily by Keller’s taking New Yorkers seriously, especially intellectual New Yorkers. He has just published a book handling their most serious questions, and from the book’s website you can connect to a message (mp3)he gave on the first of those objections: Christian exclusivity.

Keller displays a C.S. Lewis-like ability to explain complex topics clearly and cleanly. My summary here will not do his message justice, so I urge you to listen to it yourself. It boils down to these points:

1. Religious exclusivisity can indeed be extremely odious, if not dangerous: it typically leads to the belief in one’s moral and intellectual superiority, which leads to de-humanizing others who disagree.
2. Christianity is not the only exclusivist belief system; in fact, all spiritual belief systems are exclusivistic.
3. Christianity is the one belief system that (if practiced for what it truly is) leads to peace rather than to a de-humanizing belief in one’s moral superiority.

I’ll take these up in turn. Please continue to bear in mind this is just a brief version.

1. Religions generally teach that one attains one’s spiritual goal (however defined) by doing what’s right. If I believe I’m on the right spiritual path, then, I must also believe I have a better sense of what’s moral and ethical and right than you do, if you’ve chosen a different spiritual path. If I think I’m making any progress at all on that path, I’m bound to believe that I’m behaving more morally and ethically and rightly than you are. Now, if evangelical Christianity is the first thing to pop into your mind when you hear that, please consider 2:

2. Every spiritual belief is exclusivistic. Evangelical Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the one answer. Muslims believe theirs is the one answer. Hindus do too, at least in the home of Hinduism–the apparently pluralistic version we know in the West is considered heretical back in India. But what if you take a more inclusivist view? Then you are bound to believe that we Christians and Muslims and Hindus are all wrong–and that you’re right! The chaplain on this ER episode considered it wrong to take a definite spiritual position–but in so saying, she was taking a definite spiritual position.

Furthermore, your belief system entails an ethical system to go with it, for example, “It’s rude and odious and wrong for Christians to say Jesus Christ is the one answer.”

I could go on, but I’m really just trying to whet your appetite to listen to Keller, whose next point is:

3. Given that all spiritual belief systems are exclusivistic, which one is most likely to produce peace in human relationships? The true uniqueness of Christianity shows its importance now. First, let’s take honest note of the moral exclusivisity of pluralism. It is genuinely a sin–and frequently punished–to deny pluralism. Try disagreeing with homosexual practice on a modern campus if you doubt this. The hammer will fall.

What about Christianity? We are committed to a belief in the goodness of Christ, a conviction from which we cannot budge. We are not, however, committed to believing in our own moral or intellectual superiority. Far from it. We believe that Jesus Christ had to die just because of our moral weakness, that we were enemies of God, that intellect has nothing to do with salvation, that one of our chief callings is to love those with whom we differ and disagree, and to treat them well. The apostle Paul summarizes it (emphasis added):

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit,serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. To the contrary, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

No one has lived up fully to this ideal since Jesus Christ himself. Keller is very forthright on this, both here and in other messages in this series of his. I could point out, with tears, many examples of our failure. The greatest Christian heresy down the ages has been legalism, the belief that one’s own actions actually can lead one to the goal, and that one actually can some kind of moral superiority over others.

This is where the beliefs of Christianity essentially aim, however. Jesus Christ took such a strong stand against legalism (or moralism) that the ones He was opposing had Him executed to get Him out of their way. (It didn’t work.) The more thoroughly one adopts the exclusive message of Jesus Christ, the more peace his or her life will display. The fully believing Christian will contend for the greatness of Jesus Christ and for the unworthiness of self. Humility, not superiority, is written deep into Christian exclusivity.

What about Christians’ calls for Biblical morality? I did not say we believe that no moral beliefs are better than any other. I said that we believe no one of us is more morally qualified before God than anyone else is. We stand for what we believe in. By God’s grace, we also strive to act accordingly. We fail. Often. We rely on God’s grace to pick us up from there.

So to summarize my summary, all belief systems are exclusivistic. One of them, though, at its very core, leads to humility rather than de-humanizing superiority. And for the man on ER, the same one could have showed him how to be forgiven.

Keller (need I say it again?) covers it all far more thoroughly. His talk will be well worth the time you spend listening to it.

*I must qualify what I mean by “certainty.” It’s not that I can prove my beliefs are true, or that they are as demonstrably certain as the fact that George Bush is the current President of the United States. For me, they are certain enough that I can feel confident and comfortable staking my whole life on them. I know I could be wrong; but I’m certain of it enough that if I had to, I would be willing to die for my beliefs.

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Banishing Christianity from the public square (From Gene Veith)

A letter-writer to the “Washington Post” fulminates at the way NASCAR allowed the Daytona 500 to begin with a prayer. Not only a prayer, but one that “invoked Jesus Christ by name.” This, says the letter-writer, is another step in the effort to make Christianity into our nation’s official state religion. Read the letter.

Notice what is happening. Yes, the government is not allowed to favor Christianity in schools, the military, and public events. But now that same standard is being applied to a private event that receives no federal money (why should NASCAR need to?).

From “seeker” at two or three.net: 13 Misconceptions About Evolution. Seeker is a brave blogger. What he has listed there is quite good–but I can just imagine the missiles flying if I put the same up here at Thinking Christian!

One ancient mystery solved–but the big one remains (Scientific American, on the Burgess Shale, famous as one locus of research into the Cambrian explosion)

Michael Ruse on Dawkins’ Delusion (Uncommon Descent)

And more, this time from N.T. Wright quoted at Covenant, on what Archbishop Rowan Williams actually said, including:

First, quite simply, the Archbishop didn’t say what the media said he said. His real offence is that he has presumed to challenge the media’s vice-like control on public opinion, and so is being called arrogant and patronizing by people who don’t want reasoned discourse and prefer only catchy soundbites.

The second issue raised by the Archbishop’s speech is his careful deconstruction, in line more or less with that of Professor John Gray of this institution (Straw Dogs, False Dawn, Heresies, etc.), of the Enlightenment myth of secular progress and its accompanying political discourse. He has pointed out on the one hand the religious and indeed Christian roots of the Enlightenment’s vision of justice and rights, and on the other the way in which the secularist rhetoric, growing ever more shrill these days, effectively cuts off the branch of Reason on which it claims to be sitting – as, again, we see in the media reaction.

The Washington Post on The King’s College–a conservative Christian college in the heart of Manhattan (associated with Campus Crusade for Christ, by the way).

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One of the characters in this video is displaying some serious spiritual naivete, a dangerous disconnection from reality. My question for you is, which one, and why?

(The clip is 2 minutes, 38 seconds long. Use this alternate link if the video fails to display properly–it hasn’t always been behaving today. I have another question specifically for followers of Christ to discuss at my Strategic Christian blog.)

Hat tip to Joe Carter

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“Not tonight, dear, I have to reboot.”

Artificial-intelligence researcher David Levy projected a mock image on a screen of a smiling bride in a wedding dress holding hands with a short robot groom. “Why not marry a robot? Look at this happy couple,” he said to a chuckling crowd…. In his 2007 book, Love and Sex with Robots, Levy contends that sex, love and even marriage between humans and robots are coming soon and, perhaps, are even desirable.

Related:

• Woman “Marries” Dolphin
• Woman “Marries” Herself
• Portable Alternative “Marriages”

… and any article you see on same-sex “marriage.”

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Science and Christianity–are they at odds with each other? Is science the kingly road to knowledge, and is religion a matter of mere belief? Do they speak to each other, or do they occupy (as Gould said) non-overlapping magisteria? To the heart of the point: can a Christian really take her faith seriously in this scientific age? Can a scientifically-minded person take religion seriously?

I’m convinced the answers to these questions all point in positive directions for both Christianity and science, properly understood. My convictions come in large part from J.P. Moreland’s Christianity and the Nature of Science: A Philosophical Investigation. First published in 1989, it is the best non-specialist’s overview of these issues I have yet seen. There is a 1999 edition available, but my dog-eared earlier version–which though it predates the term “Intelligent Design” remains relevant to all today’s issues–has been my standby.

I run the risk of contradicting myself by my own actions here, for I want to persuade you to buy the book, study it, and absorb it; for a full, extended treatment is well worth your time. Yet I am also going to blog from the book, in a series beginning with this post. If I cannot convey the range and depth that the book can, I can at least raise some issues for discussion and whet your appetite for more.

Moreland begins by asking what is the definition of science. That’s certainly still relevant: Is Intelligent Design science? How would we know? What characteristics must it have to qualify as such? What is it about ID that causes so many to declare it is not science, and do these characteristics really disqualify it? Ideally, there would be some descriptors of science that, taken together, would clearly mark out what it is and does, and exclude other fields of study.

An early “creation science” trial, the McLean case in 1989, shows that the answer is more elusive than many think. Judge William R. Overton wrote in his opinion,

“More precisely, the essential characteristics of science are: 1) It is guided by natural law; 2) It has to be explanatory by natural law; 3) It is testable against the empirical world; 4) Its conclusions are tentative, i.e., are not necessarily the final word; and 5) It is falsifiable.”

Presumably what meets these criteria is science, and what does not meet them is not. But the first one is ambiguous: does it mean that science seeks to explain by natural law? If so, it is redundant with (2). Does it mean “motivated by a desire to find a natural explanation”? Moreland reminds non-scientists may have the same goal, for example philosophers seeking to find a natural explanation in evolution or the brain for morality. On the other hand Carl Linnaeus’s (1707-1778) pioneering work in taxonomy, while clearly science, was “motivated and guided by his belief that no natural explanation was available for the existence and nature of living organisms.”

Mathematicians often refer to non-supernatural laws of mathematics and logic, yet their work is not science. And scientists often appeal to brute fact, not law, as explanations: the Big Bang and various physical constants being examples. (The discovery, after Moreland wrote this edition of the fine-tuning of these constants adds extra interest to that point.)

Do Overton’s points (1) and (2) mean that science only deals with “the world of physical things having only physical properties that are part of one spatio-temporal system?” If so, it’s not at all clear that psychology is a science. Whether it deals with just physical properties and events is a matter of considerable controversy. If it were someday settled that thoughts, feelings, morality, the unconscious, etc. are not just physical, would that mean that every psychologist in history had been a non-scientist? Hardly.

Overton says that science involves empirical testability, apparently meaning that theories may be subjected to observational confirmation or disconfirmation. But theories may be empirically equivalent, for example, certain competing views of quantum phenomena, or (some forms of) theistic evolution compared to naturalistic evolution. More crucially, there is no such thing as observation independent of theory, so testability just by observation alone is impossible. Further, other disciplines appeal to observation: history, literary scholarship, and philosophy.

Is science defined by being tentative? Since Moreland wrote this, we have been treated to the Michael Ruse’s terribly tentative shout that “Evolution is fact, FACT, FACT!” Apparently evolution is not science. Moreland asks, “Was Newton tentative about his belief in the existence of forces? Would any contemporary scientist seriously question the theory that blood circulates?” And is science the only discipline that uses a principle of tentativeness? “Christian theologians are often tentative, that is, open to new evidence about a number of issues ranging from interpretations of specific passages to the inerrancy of the Bible and the existence of God.”

Finally, is science necessarily falsifiable? Many of us are skeptical of evolution’s falsifiability. Evolutionists say that one good fossil anachronism would be sufficient to falsify it. But they remain impervious to failed predictions, like Darwin’s prediction that the fossil record’s gaps would be largely filled in, or that there would be at least one observable instance of a new structure or function evolving under laboratory or field conditions. Moreland if extremely helpful on this.

The nature of falsifiability in science is often difficult to clarify. For example, seldom if ever are individual scientific propositions tested in isolation from other propositions or theories…. let H stand for [a given hypothesis], and let Ci – Cn be the various auxiliary assumptions involved. Then these are related to the experimental observations O in the following way:

(H & Ci & Cj & . . . Cn) –> O
___________Not – O__________
Therefore, Not – (H & Ci & Cj & . . . Cn)

The experiment shows that H or Ci or Cj or … Cn is mistaken. Which is it? Falsifiability is not always as simple as it seems. I learned in high school that the famed Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887 proved that light does not propagate through an ether. In fact, the ether theory lasted a long time after Michelson-Morley as scientists adjusted their auxiliary hypotheses to fit. It took Einstein to finally settle the question; and it took several years before Einstein’s theories were observationally vindicated. They’re still working on the cosmological constant, in fact.

Other disciplines can point to falsifiability as part of their criteria. Historians’ theories can be falsified by new documents. Christianity could be falsified by the discovery of Jesus’ bones, though identifying them would be hugely problematic. Moreland clarifies,

Now, world views can be falsified in principle, at least some of them can . . . but doing so is very difficult, because their epistemic support is so multifaceted. Broad research programs in science are like this as well, and they are not unscientific for that reason.

All of Judge Overton’s criteria fall short. And so do several other definitions of science Moreland offers as examples. Now, lest you think this conclusion is just the anti-faith position of some Christian apologist, in fact Darwinist Michael Ruse came to the same conclusion in the 1996 edition of But Is It Science, the volume he edited in the wake of the McLean case. There is an updated edition of this book available, too, but it’s very new and I have not read it yet. It’s unlikely to say anything different, for philosophers have agreed that the demarcation problem–finding what clearly demarcates science from other disciplines–has no one simple solution.

In the end, Moreland, one of whose degrees is in chemistry, is not saying we can never tell science when we see it. He’s saying that the charge, “It’s not scientific” may not be as clear-cut as we have thought. More than that, though, he’s laying a careful groundwork to begin his investigation into Christianity and the nature of science. We’ll continue to follow him through that investigation in future blog posts. On the way, we’ll also take a short detour into a more recent court’s definition of science.

Related, February 26, 2008: On Blogging a Philosophy Book

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Gene Nichols resigned as president of the College of William and Mary–just five miles or so from my office–this week. In his resignation letter he listed four things that he thought had led to College’s decision not to renew his contract for next year, which in turn led to his stepping down. The letter includes:

First, as is widely known, I altered the way a Christian cross was displayed in a public facility, on a public university campus, in a chapel used regularly for secular College events — both voluntary and mandatory — in order to help Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and other religious minorities feel more meaningfully included as members of our broad community. The decision was likely required by any effective notion of separation of church and state. And it was certainly motivated by the desire to extend the College’s welcome more generously to all. We are charged, as state actors, to respect and accommodate all religions, and to endorse none. The decision did no more.

[From Statement from Gene Nichol: Feb. 12 | University Relations]

A teacher at church this morning said that in effect, Nichols had decided the cross’s presence in the chapel was illegal, exclusivistic, and odious to other groups. (There’s more on that controversy here.) What strikes me is that he did not even address whether the cross represents any actual reality. Whether the Cross of Christ speaks of any truth seems to have become irrelevant. It didn’t even enter into his decision.

Facts and values continue to be separated by miles.

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