A random blog reader wd probably take one look here, think 'Ooh my word' and go looking for something a bit lighter. Oh well... it's a tight market, but an engaged one at least - cheers guys.
To pick up one of Jonathan's Friday points:'survival of the most adequate': a basic question remains: what drives life and, if you believe in it, evolution? What is at the root and foundation of it? Without getting tied up worrying just now about details of the Bible's vision of God, which I know Billy at least has serious issues with, let's think for a moment about a possible basic definition of 'God', first used by a theologian called Paul Tilloch, as 'the ground of being'. I'll tell you one of the basic reasons I believe in God as a purposeful, personal being. It's this. We humans have a sense of purpose, and personality with all its qualities such as capacity to love (as well of course as hate), appreciate beauty and all the rest. And it's difficult to see how such attributes and qualities could have arisen in creatures in this universe unless they, or qualities greater than them, are not present in the ground of being, in the foundations of reality. Now that sounds all very abstract, but from the perspective of reason I guess that thought has always been at the root of my belief in God. How could a blind meaningless process give rise to all this? I'm opening up a question here which I'm interested to hear the atheist response to. Christianity would then go on to talk about 'revelation' of the divine, in the Bible, in Christ etc...
Just a taster on the resurrection: Billy started to pick holes in the gospel accounts which I'd need to go back to, but just off the top of my head, the kind of 'large areas of evidence' you need to get to grips with are: multiple documentation of eye witness testimony in the New Testament, and the phenomenon of the rise of the early church - rooted, in the face of fierce persecution, in the firm conviction Jesus had risen...
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4 comments:
Hi Bruce, I'll get back to life later. It is a big area, and you are making the argument from incredulity logical fallacy here ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity )You could also try reading The Ancestors tale by Dawkins. I could lend you a copy, but would like it back before you go down south.
Anyway, regarding the witness of the bible. Dont you realise that all the inconsistenies that I brought up previously (when did it happen, who did jesus first appear to, was he recognised, how many were at the tomb etc all comme from the variant accounts in the bible. There is much more difference between accounts as there are similarities. I have asked you this before, WERE MARK, LUKE AND PAUL WITNESSES? No, the were not. Their credibility is instantly compromised. Was the Apostle John really the writer of that gospel? Possibly not, again, unreliable as a eye witness. What about Matthew? Well, if he was the apostle of that name, did he even see jesus "die"? So, from five "witnesses", we have 3 we can discount as actually being eye witnesses, one who we cant be sure about, and another who there is still a possible question mark over. Now, in a way, using the bible to confirm itself is somewhat circular in its logic, especially when one considers the creation of the cannon and how many gospels were left out.
Surviving persecution does not make something true. If anything, persecution makes some people stronger in their beliefs. The spread of christianity probably had more to do with its use by the emperor Constantine.
More on life and your argument from incredulity later
Billy
Billy, Jonathan, see what you make of this:
http://www.dailyreckoning.co.uk/article/christianityiswhatmademodernsciencepossible0459.html
He says that the Almighty God
Might be above the world so high,
Like a tea-tray in the sky….
No, I’m not joking. Dawkins really does say that if there is a God, then we ought to be able to observe him as we would observe any other object in the universe – through a telescope, perhaps, or a microscope. This is really idiotic and shows that Dawkins knows no theology. No Christian has ever suggested that God is just one more object in the universe – bigger and more powerful but an object just the same. Dawkins is merely pig-headed and ignorant. How would he react if I suggested that the sum total of all biology is to be found in the little book, Janet and John Look at Frogs?
In the old days God had worthy opponents. David Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding gave theologians something to think about. Schopenhauer’s Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung was frankly atheistic, but in an intelligent and amusing style. Nietzsche hated God – but at least he hated with real panache. But the gang of fifth-raters presently sneering at Christianity – Dawkins, Hitchens and Polly Toynbee – are massively ignorant not only of theology but of the basic procedures of rational thought. They say that Christianity is irrational. But they don’t know the first thing about how rationality works. They know as much about philosophy as Hello! Magazine.
These uncultured despisers of our faith say that believers are merely superstitious and unscientific. Thus they set Christianity in opposition to science. In today’s sermon I will show that, so far from being in opposition to science, Christianity is what made modern science possible. Without the work of the Christian Fathers – Ambrose, Athanasius and Augustine – there would have been no philosophical basis for science at all.
The first great age of rationality was that of the ancient Greeks. They were so brilliant in so many ways: in philosophy, sculpture and the drama they excelled. So ask yourself – why did such an intelligent and developed culture never get round to inventing science in the modern sense? Partly, this was because they had no sense of the oneness of the natural world. Consequently, each aspect of the natural world was perceived differently. This was symbolised by the many Greek gods. The Greek thinkers never imagined that these gods actually lived up there on Mount Olympus. Rather the various gods symbolised and represented the different aspects of the natural world.
This is the difference between the Greeks and us today. As R.G. Collingwood puts it: It is an axiom for us that in any realm of nature there are certain laws which hold good not only there but in all other natural realms without exception. Christianity abolished the many pagan gods and, by claiming that there is only one true God, laid the philosophical basis for a universal science – that is science in the modern sense.
But there is more to it than this. While there is one set of scientific laws, there are departments of science: physics, biology, chemistry and so on. The Greeks had a problem for five hundred years trying to sort out the relationships among the various areas of nature. Specifically, this was known as the problem of the pan and the hen – because pan is Greek for all and hen was their word for one. So they had this problem of the one and the many. Collingwood explains it:
Since metaphysics is inseparable, as regards success or failure, from ordinary thinking, this breakdown of Greek metaphysics implied a breakdown of Greek science.
The Christian Fathers solved this problem by declaring that God is one but that there are many modes of God’s activity. Collingwood says again: The solution to this problem in terms of religion is not to be found in a polytheism which asserts a diversity of departmental gods; it can only be found in a monotheism which regards the one activity of the one God as a self-differentiating activity
In other words, Christian philosophers of the 4th century corrected the philosophical error which finally killed of classical civilisation. And this correction was the doctrine of the Trinity. Of course the Trinity is an eternal mystery delivered to mankind by God’s revelation. But it also has these practical implications for natural science: By believing in God the Father, they believed that the world is one. By believing in the Son, they meant that the one world is also a multiplicity of natural realms. By believing in the Holy Ghost, they meant that the world is a world not just of things but of movement.
This is the meaning of The Athanasian Creed which we say here from time to time: Whosoever will be saved it is necessary above all things that he believe the Catholic Faith. And the Catholic Faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity. It is necessary, said the Fathers, that a man believes this if he will be saved. And this means not only the salvation of his soul through all eternity, but the salvation of his sanity and his intellectual integrity in the here and now.
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This is not fanciful. It is the philosophical basis which makes modern science possible and which, by implication, governs all the ordinary practicalities and benefits of living in a modern scientific age. But there is something else which the Fathers knew that Dawkins and his gang don’t understand at all. Scientists such as Dawkins (and his supporters in the British Humanist Association and the so-called Rationalist Press) talk as though we learn that the world is one, and that the same laws operate throughout, simply by observing the world.
But this too is a mistake. We could never conclude that the world is one simply by observing it – for it might be that one of our observations one day contradicts this. For example, scientists believe that the rules of mathematics apply universally. But this is not something proved by observation. How would you set about doing such a thing? No: the belief that the world is one and that mathematics is universally valid is a presupposition. More than that, it is an absolute presupposition.
Scientists absolutely presuppose the oneness of nature and the universal validity of mathematics – and it is those presuppositions which make their science possible. So whether you call yourself a scientist or a Christian – or both – you rely on absolute presuppositions. St Augustine and The Athanasian Creed did not use the phrase absolute presuppositions. They used the word faith. But they meant the same thing. St Augustine said:
Faith is to believe what you do not see. The reward of faith is to see what you believe.
And again:
Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.
In modern terms, we must start off with the correct presuppositions if we are to have any hope of arriving at true knowledge. You cannot just start off reasoning as it were in thin air. You have to start with something, and what you start with determines how far you’ll get. Do you remember when you began geometry at school and you were given some basic axioms? You were told at the same time that you could never prove the axioms, but if you accepted them as true, then lots of priceless true knowledge would follow from them. And it did.
Collingwood demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt the facile and stupid thinking of the likes of Dawkins and his gang:
Being the declared friends of natural science such people would never dream of making a fuss about anything which natural scientists find it necessary to take for granted – such as mathematics. So they drop heavily upon the proposition ‘God exists’ because they think that nobody believes in God except poor, miserable parsons. If they knew a little more about the history of science, they would know that the belief in the possibility of science – which is applied mathematics – is only one part of the belief in God.
Regards,
The Reverend Dr Peter Mullen
For The Daily Reckoning
Editor's Note: The Reverend Dr Peter Mullen is rector of St Michael's Church, Cornhill and chaplain to the stock exchange. If you're interested in reading more of his sermons and thoughts, or wish to visit his weblog, go to:
Bruce, I’ll get on to that article later, but are you serious? The early Christians threw us into the dark ages. Go read up on how the pope threatened to kill Galileo, read about the problems that Bacon had with the pope. Copernicus only rediscovered what the ancient Greeks already knew. As for the Dawkins quote, shame on you, put it in context. I notice that no quote was actually given. Its not the first time a fundie nut bag has twisted his words, but you Christians all want to believe he knows no philosophy, how desperate that they resort to lies. Anyway, even if he were wrong for the sake of argument, how does that create evidence for your case?
“To pick up one of Jonathan's Friday points:'survival of the most adequate': a basic question remains: what drives life and, if you believe in it, evolution? What is at the root and foundation of it?”
It’s not too clear exactly what you mean here, but it doesn’t appear what I thought you originally meant. The desire to reproduce drives life – one reason I keep asking Jimmy about ugly burds. Now, evolution is not necessarily driven by anything as such. There is no end goal. It is an interaction between the environment and genes. Put very simply, environmental factors, such as temperature, predators, prey, conspecifics, oxygen tension, salinity etc all provide problems for living organisms. Natural selection favours those that are best adapted. Mutations in genes occasionally throw up new organisms that are better suited to a particular environment, and they can be favoured over non mutants, so their numbers can increase, and the new gene gets fixed. A classic example would be the evolution of antibiotic resistance. Gene duplications, translocations, extensions, truncations, shuffling, retrotransposition, unequal chromosome segregation and horizontal gene transfer can all facilitate the generation of new characteristics. These processes are random. Many of these events offer no advantage or are bad for the organism, but some are useful and can get fixed. Gene duplication for example is the reason we can see in three colours. No god is required.
“ let's think for a moment about a possible basic definition of 'God', first used by a theologian called Paul Tilloch, as 'the ground of being'. I'll tell you one of the basic reasons I believe in God as a purposeful, personal being. It's this. We humans have a sense of purpose, and personality with all its qualities such as capacity to love (as well of course as hate), appreciate beauty and all the rest.”
Explain purpose. Chimps have a personality, your point is? “Love” has good evolutionary advantages – pair bonding for example, making sure you stick around to look after your offspring. Hate can be good in an evolutionary too, it can stop you being taken advantage of, or give you the desire to drive out competitors. This makes much more sense than claiming the bad aspects of human behaviour are because we ate an “apple” that we didn’t know was “wrong” to eat in the first place. Beauty – why do we prefer beautiful women I wonder. Could it because their genes have a higher survival potential. Therefore, if we are more attracted to beauty, then our children will be more desirable etc. We can tell many things about potential mates by assessing their beauty. For example, Down’s syndrome sufferers are not generally considered attractive. This reflects the fact that they are genetically corrupt (and no, in anticipation of emotional knee jerk responses, I’m not advocating eugenics ). There are more subtle disorders that we can detect too, such as Jacobsens or fragile X syndrome that can be picked up too. So the ability to appreciate beauty has in built biological advantages
And it's difficult to see how such attributes and qualities could have arisen in creatures in this universe unless they, or qualities greater than them, are not present in the ground of being, in the foundations of reality.
The argument from ignorance appears again. Consider the above. So, does this ground being have qualities of greater hate than us? Gain, you argument loses its consistency here if you claim god is love (more of which at the end). This sounds very like the ontological argument here. The problem is that it is a circular argument. It assumes that qualities that exist must be perfected in this “ground being” it provides no evidence that he actually exists. Surely a greater being would be one who created the universe despite being handicapped. There is no greater handicap than non existence, so the “ground being” with the greatest “perfection” is non existent
“Now that sounds all very abstract, but from the perspective of reason I guess that thought has always been at the root of my belief in God. How could a blind meaningless process give rise to all this?”
See above
“I'm opening up a question here which I'm interested to hear the atheist response to. Christianity would then go on to talk about 'revelation' of the divine, in the Bible, in Christ etc... “
OK, I am told that God is Love. In 1 Cor 13, Paul describes Love thus: “4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
I would also add takes people as they are. So, how does god measure up?
Patient? In Genesis 6: 3, god is fed up with people and decides to put a cap on our life span.
Kind? In Exodus 11, God Kills some babies for being Egyptian. He commands the killing of men women and children in Jericho. Read Deut 28 again. Anyone heard of a place called Hell?
Not envious? Afraid not, he is a jealous god who will punish the children’s, children’s children etc of those who give their attentions to other gods (Ex. 20:5)
Boastful? – well, he claims to have made everything.
Self seeking? His will be done? Concerned about his own glory. Feels the need to ruin Job’s life to prove something to the devil. He is also anly worried about his own reputation and how he looks to others (Ex. 32:11-14 and Num. 14:15-20).
Not easily angered? Well, apparently calling one of his prophets a slap head is enough make him angry (2Kin. 2:23-24), as does exercising your free will not to follow him
Keeps no record of wrongs? Well, apparently we will be judged and punished for it.
Does not delight in evil and rejoices in truth? Well, he did create evil (the talking snake gen 3:1) He even uses evil to bring harm to others (Lam. 3:38, Jer. 26:3, 36:3, and 1Sam. 16:33 to name a few). When it suits him, he uses lies (2Chron. 18:19-22) - I guess that is a problem for moral absolutists – god is above his own laws.
Always protects? Hmm, read Deuteronomy 28 and see what happens if you don’t do what you are told.
Where on earth does anyone get the idea of a loving god from? With him its all me me me – not a being I consider worthy of praise.
Billy
Bruce-
"We humans have a sense of purpose, and personality with all its qualities such as capacity to love (as well of course as hate), appreciate beauty and all the rest. And it's difficult to see how such attributes and qualities could have arisen in creatures in this universe unless they, or qualities greater than them, are not present in the ground of being, in the foundations of reality."
Argument from incredulity. Just because it's hard to see how it could have happened, doesn't mean that it didn't. I think I may have mentioned in a previous comment about how our minds have evolved to be really good at certain things, and bad at others. And not just out minds, but our bodies too.
Define purpose! Humans have a purpose in the sense of survival, siring the next generation etc, but I'm sure you undoubtedly imagine purpose to be something nobler than that. Your talk of "purpose being a quality that has arisen in creatures of this universe" is indeed very abstract. All living things exist to survive. That is their purpose, if you choose to define it that way.
Personality, as I understand it, arises through a blend of instinct, interaction, and bodily function (ie glands, and stuff). It is not something unique to humans. Household pets and animals in the wild have it, or at least the vestiges of it.
You believe that such things come about through being present in the "foundation of reality", but let me ask you this. Assuming that you are right, imagine a place where such things are not part of the foundation. How do you think creatures of that universe would behave? What would be so radically different about them?
"The phenomenon of the rise of the early Church". I think a lot of that had to do with Christianity being adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire. It's amazing how much more effective proselytising can be with an army backing you up! Plus I'm sure there would have been a large amount of "convert or else" going on, just as there was when Christian missionaries reached Africa and the Americas.
Jonathan.
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