Gods and men with three sides

In his opening chapter of Adams Vs. God: The Rematch, Phillip Adams quotes Charles de Montesquieu as saying,

If a triangle made a god, it would give him three sides.

This is true, as evidenced by the many god's that humans, religious and otherwise, have created after their own likeness.

However, if the three-sided God pre-existed the creatures (John 1:1-3), and made creatures in his own image (Genesis 1:26), wouldn't they still have three sides?

Adams vs God - the rematch

I've long enjoyed listening to Phillip Adams interview interesting people on his Australian ABC's Late Night Live program. Given that Adams is an avowed and somewhat evangelical atheist, this may seem strange. However, it is not, and I challenge any Christian with a truly open mind and a love for human kind to read or listen to him and not find something to enjoy or even love.

Yes, he will call you a 'God botherer', but I've been called far worse and lived! However, unlike his firend Richard Dawkins, he will treat you with respect, especially if you are as equally genuine in your beliefs as he is in his.

I've just read the introduction to his new edition of Adams Vs. God: The Rematch. This is a collection of essays from more than two decades of Adam's jounalism.

From my reading I gain the distinct impression that the sort of religion Adams is so appalled by, any genuine follower of Jesus would also reject, as I do. Let me indulge myself by quoting one passage, from pages xxiv and xxv:

One of the problems with religious upbringing, with childhood indoctrination, is that beliefs are rarely, if ever, tested. To a large extent, most true believers are not entitled to their beliefs because they're entirely unexamined. This is painfully apparent in the letters I receive from Christians. It matters little if they're aggressive or patronising - whether they threaten me with damnation or undertake to pray for me so that I'll be more quickly propelled down the road to Damascus. These correspondents have one thing in common. They know far less about Christianity than the atheist they're writing to. Theirs is a comfortable Sunday school Christianity. They remain in the kindergarten of faith knowing nothing of biblical scholarship, of the history of the Old Testament or the contradictions of the New.

Oddly, their ignorance of their professed faith makes them more confident, or at the very least more complacent. They're true believers in belief, blissfully unaware of the disagreements in the approved gospels let alone the existence of the gospels that were rejected. The essential difference between those who write to admonish and those who write to save is that some believe that every biblical word is holy and beyond challenge whereas others can see that perhaps Noah's ark will not be unearthed on Mount Ararat. But whether they've eaten the three-course meal of Christianity or have chosen to pick at the food, to go on a sort of religious diet and reject the high calories of virgin birth, bodily assumption and eternal damnation, their innocence (a kind word for their ignorance) is astonishing.

I've more sympathy with the unthinking than the half-hearted, whose low-cal version of faith often encroaches upon agnosticism or the turf of the atheist.

Of course, Adams isn't being original here. Jesus got there first in Revelation 3 with his admonition to the church in Laodicea.

Where twenty years ago Adams thought that religion was in its death throes, he now seems content to hope that it will simply become reduced to some sort of historical hobby. I think that even in this he is being wildly optimistic - the real Jesus is not going to go away. Neither are the opposing forces nor the fakes.

Of course, Adams does know more about Christianity than many Christians, but in common with many of them he also 'knows' and believes a lot about it that is erroneous. Having rejected God on logical grounds at the age of six, it is to be expected that he has not put himself in a position to encounter a great deal of the genuine article since then, but has certainly come across a lot of the sort of Christianity that would cause Jesus to roll over in his grave, in the unlikely event of anyone ever finding one that could hold him.

But Adams is a genuine believer in his own worldview, and if you'll excuse my use of an old cliche, this is one which takes a great deal more faith to hold on to than being a follower of a living person that one has actually met and conversed with.

Besides, according to Adams, and I believe him, we have him to thank for the formation of the Family First party, following the challenge he put to a group of Pentecostal leaders that Jesus was not at all conservative.

And even God was apparently impressed enough by him to strike his plane with lightning twice while flying over the Vatican. At least, that's Adam's interpretation of the event (surprising for an atheist, even if tongue in cheek). Personally I'd advocate a far different supernatural and more troublemaking source for those particular atmospheric volts and amps.

Phillip Adams might feel justified if he included me in his list of the patronising, if he bothered to think of me at all, but that is not how I feel towards him. Yes, I believe he is wrong about many things, but I would not try to change his thinking unless he asked me to. What I will do is to continue to enjoy listening to and reading a very erudite man, and recommend that you do also.

Is Richard Dawkins a Level Five Atheist?

Perhaps Richard Dawkins is at least a level five atheist (see previous post - Level Five Agnostic). This quote from a Fr Frank Brenan SJ's book review of Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion would seem to indicate this:

Dawkins claims that moderation in faith fosters fanaticism: “even mild and
moderate religion helps to provide the climate of faith in which extremism
naturally flourishes”. Dawkins’ “take home message is that we should blame
religion itself, not religious extremism – as though that were some kind of
perversion of real, decent religion”. The same argument would not be put for
scientific inquiry. Imagine a call to ban all scientific inquiry because those
who engage in responsible scientific inquiry may be providing the opportunity
for fanatics to harness science for their own purposes. Dawkins and his ilk
think religious belief of any kind is meaningless, infantile and demeaning, so
nothing is lost by agitating in the most illiberal way for the suppression
of all religion and not just religious extremism which causes harm to others.

Makes sense to me. What do you think? Comments please.

The Dawkins Delusion

It's nice to have agreement in high places. Further to my article on atheism, Science proves God doesn't exist? , John Sexton at Verum Serum has posted the comments of Oxford University theologian and historian, Alister McGrath on Dawkin's The God Delusion. Since I am greatly enjoying McGrath's insights into atheism in The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World, I was greatly interested in John's post, so I will reproduce it here:

The Dawkins Delusion.
That’s the title of a new book by fellow Oxford professor (of theology) Alister McGrath. McGrath is a former atheist who, prior to pursuing theology, received a Phd in molecular biophysics. Here’s what he has to say about Dawkins:

I have known Dawkins for more than 20 years; we are both Oxford professors. I believe if anyone is “immune to argument” it is him. He comes across as a dogmatic, aggressive propagandist.

[snip]

Our paths do cross on the television networks and we even managed to spar briefly across a BBC sofa a few months back. We were also filmed having a debate for Dawkins’s recent Channel 4 programme, The Root Of All Evil? Dawkins outlined his main criticisms of God, and I offered answers to what were clearly exaggerations and misunderstandings. It was hardly rocket science.

[snip]

But when I debated these points with him, Dawkins seemed uncomfortable. I was not surprised to be told that my contribution was to be cut. The Root Of All Evil? was subsequently panned for its blatant unfairness. Where, the critics asked, was a responsible, informed Christian response to Dawkins? The answer: on the cutting-room floor.

That sounds about right. McGrath concludes that Dawkin’s legacy may be a backlash:

Aware of the moral obligation of a critic of religion to deal with this phenomenon at its best and most persuasive, many atheists have been disturbed by Dawkins’s crude stereotypes and seemingly pathological hostility towards religion. In fact, The God Delusion might turn out to be a monumental own goal - persuading people that atheism is just as intolerant as the worst that religion can offer.

I’ve learned (from speaking to atheists) that there are a significant number who do not find Dawkin’s approach at all appealing and who find his seeming compunction for self-aggrandizement even less appealing. In the end, Dawkins may be a jerk, but he’s their jerk. I can appreciate that.

Still, I predicted that celebrity atheism would lead to the same sort of problems and embarrassments associated with Christian televangelists. The first big scandal is probably still a few years away, but it’s coming. Dawkins has a lot more in common with Pat Robertson than he realizes.

Related Articles:
The New Atheists: Arrogant, Rigid and Charmless
Some Atheists Not Thrilled with the New Atheism
Dawkins' Faith in Foam
NY Times Reviews Dawkins' Delusion
Dawkins' Fawlty Idea

John's last paragraph accords with my own conclusion that Dawkins is a prize example of a (non-Christian) fundamentalist. And I agree - we haven't seen the end of the story yet!

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.