Thoughts on Dawkins' "The God Delusion" 2

In the last post, we ended up having a discussion about first causes, while Richard Dawkins was off on a tangent. (This is in chapter three of his book, where he rebuts the “Arguments for God’s Existence.” I'm looking at Dawkins' responses to the arguments, and then giving a few thoughts.)

Following his little diversion Dawkins goes back to the argument about what kickstarted the universe and says it's irrational to call the first cause "God" because invoking the “God” explanation is "at best unhelpful and at worst perniciously misleading."

Let's see that again, in simpler terms: "It is irrational to call the first cause 'God' because calling it God is irrational." Does that about sum it up? This takes me back to Year 12 Logic and Philosophy class. There is more discussion about this in the next chapter, where he explains why it’s irrational. But we’ll get to that later.

Moving on, he points out that Thomas Aquinas’ next argument for God (The Argument from Degree) is illogical, and I agree.

The Argument from Design is next to face up. Simply stated, "things look like they've been designed, so they probably are." This is an argument that’s used fairly frequently by Christians. Nevertheless, how do you think this next sentence might sound to the thousands of people who aren't up-to-date with the whole discussion? "The argument from design is the only one still in regular use today..."

Clever. He's effectively told the uninitiated that this is the only argument religious people have, and, lucky for him, it's also the one where Dawkins' is in his own element, one that he is going to systematically destroy throughout the rest of his book. He's set the field (in his own field), and now he'll go to town (sorry for the mixed metaphors).

But I don't think that really is the right field for this whole discussion. Many of us Christians have already left that field and gone to town (again, sorry).

I think his response (natural selection over millions of years) is absolutely valid. I have no problems with natural selection. It makes sense, I don't think it contradicts God, and the archaeological record supports it. If I was having this conversation with Dawkins, that would be the end of that discussion. And I'm a passionate "religious" person.

And there are many many more Christians like me - notably among academics and intellectuals, scientists, doctors, archaeologists, etc. We're not debating that one.

But he is partly right, in that there are many Christians who think the Design Argument is a good one. I'd like to have a word with them.

And that’s the last of Thomas Aquinas’ proofs for God’s existence. We’ll carry on in the next post with the Argument from Beauty, after skipping quickly past the Ontological Argument, which I think is a little ridiculous myself.

Let me know your thoughts!

Pastor Irene's Manifesto

Here's another part I loved from Eugene Peterson's The Pastor. I post these kinds of things so I can get back to them easily!

Peterson was facilitating a class with a group of soon-to-be-starting pastors. After a few days together, he asked one young lady who'd been quiet what she was thinking. This was her response, which Peterson called Pastor Irene's Manifesto. I want to make it mine too.

"When I get a congregation, I want to be a patient pastor. I want to have eyes to see and ears to hear what God is doing and saying in their lives. I don't want to judge them in terms of what I think they should be doing. I want to be a witness to what God is doing in their lives, not a schoolmistress handing out grades for how well they are doing something for God.

"I think I see something unique about being a pastor that I had never noticed: the pastor is the one person in the community who is free to take men and women seriously just as they are, appreciate them just as they are, give them the dignity that derives from being the 'image of God,' a God-created being who has eternal worth without having to prove usefulness or be good for anything. I know that I will be doing a lot of other things too, but I might be the only person who is free to do this.

"I don't want to be so impatient with the mess that I am not around to see the miracle being formed. I don't want to conceive of my life as pastor so functionally that the mystery gets squeezed out of both me and the congregation."

Thoughts on Dawkins' "The God Delusion" 1

A friend has given me Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion to have a read of. I'm finding it very interesting actually. It’s great to be able to see things from his perspective for a bit. I've only ever read Dawkins' stuff as quoted (and misquoted) by Christians in apologetic books – most of which I wasn’t too impressed with anyway. I have to say I respect the guy a lot more now.

The aim of the book is to prove that belief in God is unnecessary and deluded. He goes about it in a few different ways, one of which is to offer rebuttals of the arguments for the existence of God. Some of his rebuttals are right on the money. That is, some of the arguments Christians have used to “prove” God’s existence really are not brilliant arguments (I’m sorry to say that some of them I’ve used before, thinking they were awesome).

However I do want to go through them in these next few posts, because I see some holes in Dawkins’ thinking. Most of these are from Chapter Three in the book, “Arguments for God’s existence.” I’ll briefly summarize the Christian argument and then his response, and give my own thoughts. Let me know if I’m missing anything. Read the chapter yourself if you can, to make sure I’m not misrepresenting Richard Dawkins.

Thomas Aquinas' 5 "Proofs"

The Unmoved Mover, The Uncaused Cause, The Cosmological Argument. Dawkins puts the first three together, which I think makes sense. Basically it's the argument of first causes: something must have kicked it all off. Dawkins’ response is (in my non-academic paraphrase), "Well, who caused God then?" and then he diverts the discussion into a conversation about the incongruities with the terms omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience etc.

My response to that is: God by definition is not characterized or limited by the way the universe works, so why does God need a first cause? It seems to me that Dawkins has first defined God as needing a first cause, and then gone on to ask, "Well, what caused him then?" I've noticed this happening a bit in his book. He defines God within the laws of this universe (e.g. science and physics) and then denounces the result.

Having said that, I do understand how my response looks to an atheist. Unhelpful at best. Frustrating and immature probably. It looks like I’ve pushed the discussion beyond the realms of what we can test and see - the physical, material, natural universe - which in many ways shuts down the conversation if you're talking to an atheist. Or at least removes the conversation from their field of expertise.

And that’s exactly what I’ve done. My view is that you can’t prove OR disprove God using science. There are incredibly intelligent people on both sides of the discussion. Neither side is stupid. It’s the wrong field altogether when we’re talking about God.

To me the First Cause argument makes sense, as it did to Aquinas, because I’m open to the possibility of a God. But to an atheist who is by definition not open to this possibility, it’s a ridiculous argument.

Dawkins goes on later in the book to offer alternative explanations to the First Cause problem. E.g. There might be billions of other universes, and this just happens to be the one where everything works – which I think is entirely valid, but obviously untestable (like God?). Or, the universe might be continually expanding and contracting (the term used by physicists is “bouncing”), producing many big bang singularities in a long chain of universes – and this universe just happened to work perfectly. Probability-wise, this also makes sense, although I think it’s a little more difficult physics-wise.

At first glance, with both of these it might seem too good to be true that we just happen to be in the one-in-a-billion universe that worked. But if you think about it that makes sense too. Obviously this would be the one that works, because otherwise we wouldn’t be here. If that still doesn’t make sense I’m not explaining it well enough. Keep thinking and you’ll get it!

So there are viable alternatives. It really just comes down to belief again. I’m open to the possibility of God, so it makes more sense for me to say God designed it all perfectly and kicked it off. Dawkins is not, so that perspective makes no sense at all to him. It makes more sense to Dawkins to believe that it was something other than God.

On another important note: the fact that there are other possibilities doesn’t disprove God. It just means we’ve thought of other solutions, which humans are notorious for being able to do. That’s intelligence. It’s not intelligent to think: “I’ve proven God is unnecessary, so therefore God doesn’t exist.” You have to go further than that, which Dawkins attempts to do in later chapters.

But that’s more than enough for now. Let me know what you think if you’ve read this far!

"We always marry the wrong person"

"Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become "whole" and happy. The assumption is that there is someone just right for us to marry and that if we look closely enough we will find the right person. This moral assumption overlooks a crucial aspect to marriage. It fails to appreciate the fact that we always marry the wrong person.

"We never know whom we marry; we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being [the enormous thing it is] means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married."

- Stanley Hauerwas

Dead Letter Chorus - Run, Wild

Love this song, by Sydney band "Dead Letter Chorus."

Big Random Odds

From "The Daily Galaxy"...

"'The discovery of the Higgs boson represents a milestone in the exploration of the fundamental interactions of elementary particles,' states Professor Dr. Matthias Neubert, Professor for Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics and spokesman for the Cluster of Excellence PRISMA at JGU.

"On the one hand, the Higgs particle is the last component missing from the Standard Model of particle physics. On the other hand, physicists are struggling to understand the detected mass of the Higgs boson. 'Using our theory as it currently stands, the mass of the Higgs boson can only be explained as the result of a random fine-tuning of the physical constants of the universe at a level of accuracy of one in one quadrillion,' explains Neubert."

One in one quadrillion? Is that even a number?

Which Way Is Up?

Here are some very interesting world maps, forcing a change of perspective.

No prizes for guessing why the Europeans put themselves at the top, but how many of us are aware that this is just a perception? Really it could easily be the other way round. Our world in space doesn't really have an "up" or "down."

Enjoy!

The Skin Map

It was an exciting day for me when I discovered that my favorite fiction author had started a new series. I've just finished the first one today, "The Skin Map," and I loved it. Stephen Lawhead has an amazing way of taking the ordinariness of our familiar world and connecting it with much bigger worlds of colour, mystery and life. His books make me see our own world with new eyes.

I would only say that you couldn't read this book on its own. No problem for me, as I was always going to read the whole series. And luckily for me I just looked it up and the second book's available now too. Brilliant. I don't want this guy to ever stop writing.

Homosexuality and Heaven

Can homosexuals get to heaven? According to some so-called "Christians" (a frustratingly ill-used term), apparently not.

I just read an article from the New York Times about the values of Exodus International, an organization existing "to provide spiritual support for Christians who are struggling with homosexual attraction." Recently there has been some controversy surrounding statements made by the president, Mr Alan Chambers, in which he declared "that there was no cure for homosexuality and that 'reparative therapy' offered false hopes to gays and could even be harmful." Apparently for many years Exodus has operated under the idea that anyone can be cured of homosexuality through prayer and psychotherapy, and now Chambers is calling for people to be more realistic. According to the article, "he said that virtually every 'ex-gay' he has ever met still harbors homosexual cravings.... But those who fail should not be severely judged, he said, adding, 'We all struggle or fall in some way.'"

I won't go into the details of that debate (maybe another time), but I was struck by a statement made by one of the people who want Chambers to resign. From a man who is supposedly an associate professor at a US theological seminary: "My greatest concern has to do with Alan's repeated assurances to homosexually active 'gay Christians' that they will be with him in heaven..."

This brings to light quite clearly a view I've sadly heard before, that practicing homosexuals are somehow disqualified from God's grace. Let me say this as clearly as I can: this is not true, and grossly misrepresents God. The idea that ANYTHING can disqualify us from God's grace is utterly false.

If it were true, how would any of us be saved? To use a verse the conservative evangelicals love, "For all have sinned..."

The amazing beauty of the gospel is this: that ANYONE can turn to Jesus and be saved. It's not about what we've done, or (let's be honest) what we might yet do. It's about God's love. The thief on the cross turns to Jesus and says "Remember me when you come into your kingdom," and Jesus' immediate response is "Today you will be with me in paradise." This guy could have done anything. Murderer? Fraud? Terrorist? But it wouldn't have mattered. It doesn't matter because of God's love and grace. Anyone can go to heaven.

No one is disqualified, thank God. Anyone can turn to Jesus and be a part of his future kingdom.

Any other message is NOT Christianity.