Science proves God doesn't exist?

In Eurekalert we find the following description of yet another book in what David van Biema in Time Magazine called an "atheist literary wave":

In God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist, physicist Victor Stenger argues that science has advanced sufficiently to make a definitive statement on the existence or nonexistence of the traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. He invites readers to put their minds--and the scientific method--to work to test this claim.

After evaluating all the scientific evidence--the studies done by
reputable institutions on the power of prayer; the writings of philosophers who have puzzled over the problem of God and of good and evil; the efforts of biblical scholars to prove the accuracy of holy scriptures; and the work of biologists, geologists, and astronomers looking for clues to a creator on Earth and in the cosmos--Stenger concludes that beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God. He convincingly shows that not only is there no evidence for the existence of God, but scientific observations actually point to his nonexistence.

I haven't read this book yet, so I won't comment on it, except to say that even Richard Dawkins, of The God Delusionfame, says he "learned an emormous amount from this splendid book."

What I will comment on is the "studies done by reputable institutions on the power of prayer". I have read the findings of some of these studies, and looked with wonder at their methodology - things like doing brain scans while a person is praying and trying to see what changes, statistical surveys of prayer results, double blind trials of intercessory prayer for heart surgery patients, etc.

Of this last one, Bishop Tom Wright said on BBC News, "Prayer is not a penny in the slot machine. You can't just put in a coin and get out a chocolate bar. This is like setting an exam for God to see if God will pass it or not."

There is an implication here that God is obliged to cooperate in such experiments, because otherwise he is a completely uncontrolled variable, thus invalidating the results. Unless, as I believe is usually the case, one of the assumptions made before the experiment is that prayer is a purely human activity - some sort of psychic force that has nothing to do with God, or spirit. In this case then, the experiment says nothing about God at all, and can't be used as evidence of his non-existence.

If it is assumed that prayer is an activity of the human spirit in conjunction with the Spirit of God, I wonder how the participants were selected, given that even for many (most?) Christians prayer appears to be a pretty hit-and-miss, "if it be thy will", "please give us what we need and not what we want" sort of thing, rather than a Holy Spirit driven conversation developing out of an intimate and very personal relationship with the person of God? Was any study first carried out to first find out who could really pray, and then select the prayer team from those?

Then there is the implication that the Judeo-Christian God is the same one as the Islamic one, despite their enormously different demonstrated nature and behaviour. And I've come across a few "gods" who would only be too happy to participate in trials like the above if only to perpetuate their deceptive ways.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is such a critical component of healing. Knowing the forgiveness of God through the reconciling work of Jesus on the cross is the beginning of peace with God. For many we struggle with unforgiveness - of ourselves, others and God. Much has been written on the need for us to forgive if we are to receive the forgiveness of God.

In the area of forgiving, Joy Dawson has some helpful thoughts in The Fire of God: Discovering Its Many Life Changing Purposes. Shippensberg, PA: Destiny Image, 2005.

On pages 70-71 she speaks of the sin of resentment towards those who have wronged us, and the difficulty of forgiveness where we have wrongly judged people.

"We can only forgive people who have wronged us. However, we must not presume
that because we're feeling hurt, that the person connected with the pain was
necessarily guilty of doing wrong."

Mis-communication, our expectations, misunderstandings and perceptions often lead us to judge others and hold unforgiveness against them wrongly. She gives seven scenarios and the way to
deal with hurt caused by such situations.

"Let's look at some reasons for feeling hurt, where we could be tempted to wrongly judge people:

1. We were not consulted before a decision was made. Perhaps we were not meant to be involved in that responsibility.
2. We were not told about something for which we should have been informed. Maybe the breakdown of communication was with someone else who had been delegated to do so and had failed.
3. We were not given the attention we requested from an indi­vidual, or insufficient attention for our liking. It could be, that for a number of reasons our receiving attention was not a legitimate priority for that individual at that time, or their amount of availability was equally limited.
4. We were not given the recognition for our labors that we thought we deserved. Perhaps God overruled the recognition by withholding it in order to test the motivation of our hearts. Jesus said, "I do not receive praise from men," simply because He gave all the glory to the Father.
5. We were corrected by someone where we considered the judg­ment to be unfair. Maybe we were immediately defensive and didn't have the humility to ask God to show us if there was even a small percentage of truth in their overall judgment.
6. We were seemingly ignored by someone when we were in the presence of others. It's absolutely possible that the person either didn't see us, or never heard us, or for any number of reasons wasn't able to speak or respond to us. For example, it could be because of the pressures of responsibilities on the person,
   or their physical condition, or because they were under great stress, to name a few.
7. We were not included in a group situation where we thought we should have been. It could be that there was an unexplain­able oversight, or perhaps the group felt it would be wiser and more beneficial for all concerned, including ourselves, if we were not included.
   

We need to honestly ask the Holy Spirit to show us where our ego and pride may have been the cause of our pain when we're feeling offended. When we really come to the place of death to that monster called self and want it to be crucified, we enter into real freedom. You can't offend a dead man."

Scott Adams on Irrational Atheists

One of the blogs I like to read is The Dilbert Blog by Scott Adams. Scott is the author of the Dilbert Cartoon, a favourite with most geeks. What many don't realise is that his quirky sense of humour also comes out in his writing. So often his unusual mind is able to see right through the fog and put a subject into refreshing perspective. He reminds me a lot of Michael Leunig, whose free calendar from The Age keeps my head straight every day.

Anyhow, in the light of my earlier post I just had to share Scott's take on the Irrationality of Atheism:

Allow me to summarize every discussion of atheism that has ever occurred on the Internet:

Atheist: “Religion is irrational.”

Believer: “Oh yeah?

Atheism is a religion too, because it’s a cause that’s believed on faith! See Merriam-Webster’s 4th definition of religion.”

Atheist: “Atheism is religion the same way that NOT collecting stamps is a hobby.”

Believer: “You can’t prove the non-existence of God. And belief without proof is faith. Check Merriam-Webster’s second definition of faith. Therefore, atheists are irrational by definition.”

Atheist: “You can NEVER (or almost never) prove a negative.
Besides, some things are so obvious that proof is unnecessary. Do you believe there’s a monster under your bed? You have no proof that it doesn’t exist. Therefore, by your reasoning, it’s only reasonable to believe there MIGHT be a monster under your bed.”

Believer: "Hey, you never know."

And so it is argued by both believers and agnostics that atheists must be either irrational – believing the non-existence of God without proof for that position – or atheists are really just fence-sitting agnostics and don't admit it.

My question is this: If you reckon that the existence of God has less than a 1 in a trillion chance of being true, based on all the available evidence, but not proof, can you call yourself an atheist? And if so, would you still be irrational?

Check out the original article, the comments are becoming interesting!

The demise of 'evangelical'

Almost exactly two years ago I wrote an article about the words 'charismatic' and 'pentecostal' having reached their use-by dates. Well, here goes another one, although I believe its demise will hardly be news to many people. In USA Today we read:

Who's an evangelical? Until last year the answer seemed clear. Now the word may be losing its moorings, sliding toward the same linguistic demise that "fundamentalist" met decades ago because it has been misunderstood, misappropriated and maligned.

In fact, as well as it becoming difficult to now discern just who are the evangelicals in the Church, 'evangelical' now applies to many non-church activities, such as politics and business, though to look at the behaviour of some large denominations, perhaps 'non-church' isn't accurate. It is also increasingly used among a variety of religious groups (I refuse to count Christianity as a religion).

Some of the most evangelical people I have encountered are those atheists who are so 'convinced' that there can not be a God that they never seem to be able to stop talking about him. In a recent interview on Front Row, as reported by KesterB at The Complex Christ Signs of Emergence, rock musician Brian Eno admits:

... to being an 'evangelical atheist' but that he is 'jealous of the spiritual experiences the religious have access to.' His recent work seeks to provide 'Secular Spiritual places.'

Richard Dawkins is another that immediately comes to mind, with his book The God Delusion. The Publishers Weekly review is interesting:

For a scientist who criticizes religion for its intolerance, Dawkins has written a surprisingly intolerant book, full of scorn for religion and those who believe. ... While Dawkins can be witty, even confirmed atheists who agree with his advocacy of science and vigorous rationalism may have trouble stomaching some of the rhetoric: the biblical Yahweh is "psychotic," Aquinas's proofs of God's existence are "fatuous" and religion generally is "nonsense." (Publishers Weekly, Oct 18, 2006)

As well as an evangelical atheist, perhaps Dawkins could also be described as a fundamentalist, in the modern misusage of the word.

Is the emerging church new?

We're just back from a relaxing week doing nothing in particular at Phillip Island. It was generally rainy and very windy, so we read a lot of books. Now I have a heap of blogs to catch up on (no wireless in range where we were).

Maggi Dawn made an interesting comment in her blog about whether the emerging church is really new. Considering that we've been doing our version of it for 15 years now at Beth Tephillah, I guess it depends on what you mean by new!

But as Maggi says,

I don't think there has to be an opposition of whether it's new/not new, and neither do I think it matters particularly. I think it does matter that we hold together both the history we've inherited (and the graciousness and humility to acknowledge it) and the freedom to live thoroughly in the present. I don't think Church works unless you hold both those two things together in some lively way.

I believe Maggi is right when she says there is no one way of being emergent. After all, most emerging churches wouldn't even recognise ours as such. What is important is that all of those years ago God told us he wanted to do a new thing with Williamstown Baptist Church, and we're doing it to the best of our ability.

Baptists Don't Drink?

Following our Anazao ministry course in Queensland with Peter and Heather Toth I have been wondering how to introduce the subject of drinking alcohol into our fellowship. I haven't yet decided how to do it, but see the need to do so in regard to a more authentic celebration of communion.

In the meantime, I greatly appreciated Tall Skinny Kiwi's article We Baptists Do Not Drink ( . . . in front of each other).

Steve Chalke - Storyteller

I first encountered Steve Chalke in Birmingham at the Baptist World Alliance Centenary Congress in July 2005. I remember sitting spellbound as this master storyteller shared his tale about how the church is having a powerful effect in the most hostile and disadvantaged areas in Britain, winning the approval and support of both national and local government, and Islamic and Hindu communities, and all of this without a moment's compromise of the Gospel of Jesus.

I remember thinking then that Australian Christians really need to hear this man.

So it was with delight that I discovered a couple of Steve's books at Koorong the other day. I bought his Intelligent Church: A Journey Towards Christ-Centred Community.

I've only just begun to read it, but what I want to share now is something that Brian Mclaren says in his foreword to Steve's book:

... too often our churches have become human warehouses, where people are
gathered and stored so that they can be delivered after death to heaven with
minimum loss, spoilage, rust, rot, or breakage. These air-conditioned warehouses
are equiped with every comfort - from padded seats to a kind of religious muzak
- so that those who enter will be happy and never want to leave until they are
shipped to their final destination.

Steve Chalke's message and mission is to get us out into the streets. Often those involved in what is now called emerging church profess this aim, but my experience of it has not been too encouraging so far - the danger of just creating a different warehouse looms large. As Steve says in his introduction to the book:

Much has been said of late about the concept of 'emerging church' - the
phrase itself speaks the language of change and transistion. But the truth is,
of course, that the church has been emerging for two thousand years.

We at Beth Tephillah are certainly conscious of the need to take a fresh look at ourselves through the eyes of Jesus, and not just because we are beginning a new year!