Karen Armstrong Divorces Faith from Knowlege. Wall Street Journal dual with Richard Dawkins.

Trying to divorce faith from reason in seeking to answer the new atheists, Karen Armstrong flys south as she also divorces faith from knowledge. The implications are disastrous. As believers, we must not capitulate with those who attempt to relativize faith in order to preserve it. Rather, we should pursue the development of solid rejoinders which refute the ideas of men like Dawkins. Much better rejoinders are available.

Karen Armstrong says we need God to grasp the wonder of our existence

The Wall Street Journal commissioned Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins to respond independently to the question “Where does evolution leave God?” Neither knew what the other would say. Here are the results.

Richard Dawkins has been right all along, of course—at least in one important respect. Evolution has indeed dealt a blow to the idea of a benign creator, literally conceived. It tells us that there is no Intelligence controlling the cosmos, and that life itself is the result of a blind process of natural selection, in which innumerable species failed to survive. The fossil record reveals a natural history of pain, death and racial extinction, so if there was a divine plan, it was cruel, callously prodigal and wasteful. Human beings were not the pinnacle of a purposeful creation; like everything else, they evolved by trial and error and God had no direct hand in their making. No wonder so many fundamentalist Christians find their faith shaken to the core.  Read more…

Perception May Be the Ultimate Reality, but Is It the Ultimate Truth?

 

Recently I watched an online debate on the existence of evil between Deepak Chopra and Mark Driscoll on NBC’s face-off.  In addition to these two guests were an ex-prostitute, who came to give personal testimony to the objective demonic influence in her industry, and a catholic bishop who persistently relegated these experiences to her perception.  The assertion was repeated more than once, "Perception may be the ultimate reality, but it is not the ultimate truth."  In other words, there may be objective reality, but we can’t know it because we are all trapped behind our perceptions.  Perceptual reality, according to the skeptic, is all we can actually know.  Ultimately, objective truth about reality is epistemically unattainable.

Sound good?  Many seem to think so.  I just have one question (okay, maybe several) regarding a teeny tiny little inconsistency that keeps coming back to weigh down my mental makeup bag.  That is, I can’t help but wonder that if perception is personal reality, and everyone is trapped behind their perceptions, then what about those prescribing this skeptical view of knowledge?  Are they themselves also not trapped behind their perceptions of reality?  If so, how then do those who prescribe the view actually know this ultimate truth about everyone not being able to know any ultimate truth? 

It just puzzles me you see, since everybody is trapped behind their perceptions of reality.  Nevertheless, the epistemic genius of the skeptic is really mind boggling.  I mean, how cleaver are they to have figured out a way to get outside of their own perception in order to help the rest of us understand that nobody can get outside our own perceptions. 

But, since this view sounds so good, my perception of it must be true.  After all, skeptics ultimately know best.

TL

Your Mind Really Matters

 Believe it or not, the development of a well-formed thought life is actually contained in the first and greatest commandment.  In Luke 10:36 (Matt. 22:37) Jesus commands us to love God with our heart, soul, strength and mind. Jesus is actually quoting the verse from Deuteronomy.

However, evangelicalism has sought to be culturally revelant and reach out to the post-modern generations, we have become over-focused on our relationship and personal experience of God.  We’ve lost the understanding of how important it is to love Him intellectually and to glorify Him through our capacity of reason. In a nutshell, in pursuit of our hearts, we’ve totally lost our heads!  

Anti-intellectualism is a serious issue in the American Church.  We must recover a more balance approach to our faith, and this ought to include the pursuit of a well-formed thought life.  Developing the skills necessary to better reason through our worldview and articulate it effectively to a lost and dying world is vital.  God gave us the capacity of reason so that we would be able to love and worship Him with our minds.  It is through ideas that we tear down falsehoods that are set up against the knowledge of God.  A well-formed thought life enables us to better understand the nature of our ideas and what consequences they may have.  

Further, and more importantly, this is the way God intended us to be. Having a well-formed thought life translates into well being because it entails thinking more accurately about ourselves, the world, and God.  Knowing Him and His will for us is the ultimate prize.

Oh…one final thing…if your mentally deranged, you’ll most likely need a different website. But feel free to poke around in the absent minded category!

Glue Dot Culture

Recently, a friend broke up with me. There was no explanation, there was no conversation.  My friend just stopped being friendly after 11 years of enjoyable and solid relationship. 

What could I have done?  What could I have said?  Alas, even after making inquiry after inquiry, I received no response to voicemails , e-mails , or Facebook messages .  I had to face it.  I’d been dumped.

It saddens me greatly to see the passive aggressivity in our culture run rampant over relationships. The entitlement issues we have with respect to how we deem we are to be treated, and what we do if we are not treated that way are at epidemic proportions.

Since I’ve been doing a bit of reading on popular culture lately, the analogy of my failed friendship that came to mind was that of a glue dot. Glue dots are quick ways to stick stuff together, they are tiny pieces of thin circular sticky rubber used in crafting to hold things in place. They are easy to use and initially very strong, but they are not permanent adhesions (over time their tackiness degrades). Introduce any stress and the things they hold together typically come apart. My friend’s sudden cessation of communication reflects this; whatever stress he experienced, it was enough in his mind to pull us apart as easily as if we had been held together with a glue dot.

The longer I pondered this, the more I thought how unconscionable it seemed to just allow ourselves to degenerate into a culture that holds this view of community. Now I don’t mean to say it’s this way everywhere, but when those we claim to care about aren’t constantly making us feel Über special or good about ourselves; when they are not totally focused on our lives (because they, in fact, have lives of their own); when a friend expresses disparate honesty that doesn’t exactly meet our incessant need for approval, then it would seem that our our commitment to a "through thick and thin" relationship proves to be ephemeral at best.

As author Dick Staub puts it, "Today’s popular culture generally reveals that humans, despite our magnificent spiritual, intellectual, and imaginative capacities, have chosen to wade in the shallow but spiritually toxic waters of superficiality." In essence, we have become a culture of glue dots.

Sadly, the consequences of this type of glue dot mentality are throwaway relationships. This is obviously most clearly seen in the popularity of social networks. We have Facebook friends, Twitter followers, & MySpace micro-celebrity, and yet how many of us can honestly say we reach out to others on these venues with much sincerity or intent of commitment? Not enjoying someone’s updates? It’s just a click away to "unfriend" them.

Perhaps this is appropriate for online interaction, but do we really want the same spilling over into our face-to-face friendships? We need not squint long to see that the result of a desire to use relationships as entertainment in today’s popular culture reflects a radical diminishment of God’s image in all of us. In so doing, we damage own souls. Staub points out that, as a result, we experience is a lack of a deep sense of self which is instead replaced by façade where our identities are formed through the attachment of purely external features much like ornaments on a Christmas tree.

How can we avoid a glue dot mentality? Well, as always I have some suggestions. First, let’s purpose to dwell on the fact that commitment to community is as vital as healthy connective tissue in the body, and that the virtue of commitment to others is deeply valuable. The Creator had specific purpose for making us communal beings. As such, we should be intentional in protecting our relationships.

Second, let’s recommit to those who have invested in us, especially in light of stress. This year, let’s tell those that care about us that we are a "through thick and thin" kinda friend. Third, let’s take some time to focus on how we are a benefit to those friendships, rather than mainly focusing on the melioration they provide us.

Finally, if you don’t think any of this applies to you, it may be helpful to ask those you feel close to if they think you sport a glue dot mentality. You might be surprised. I was.

TL

Dick Staub, The Culturally Savvy Christian

To Die For A Lie! Sure, Why Not?

In the essay “Capturing the Imagination Before Engaging the Mind,” in Apologetics For a New Generation, Craig Hazen writes about a play that he remembers attending as a very young Christian.  The dialogue in a particular scene was written by Eusebius of Caesarea and is absolutely gripping.  Hazen writes, “Skeptics sometimes bring up the objection that the closest followers of Jesus probably made the miracle stories and the account of the resurrection.”  The following dialog “demonstrates in an unforgettable way just how ludicrous that idea is.”  The scene is a group of the apostles of Christ sitting around a first-century fire “cooking up a story” about what lies they were going to tell the world.

 

“Dear friends, you and I are of all men the best-informed with regard to the character of him [Jesus], the deceiver and master of deceit of yesterday, whom we have all seen undergo the extreme penalty, inasmuch as we were initiated into his mysteries.

He appeared a holy man to the people, and yet his aims were selfish beyond those of the people, and he has done nothing great, or worth a resurrection, if one leaves out of account the craft and guile of his disposition, and the crooked teaching he gave us and its vain deceit.

In return for which, come, let us join hands, and all together make a compact to carry to all men a tale of deceit in which we all agree, and let us say that we have seen him bestow sight on the blind, which none of us ever heard he did, and giving hearing to the deaf, which none of us ever heard tell of: (let us say) he cured lepers, and raised the dead. To put it in a word, we must insist that he really did and said what we never saw him do, or heard him say.

But since his last end was a notorious and well-known death, as we cannot disguise the fact, yet we can slip out even of this difficulty by determination, if quite shamelessly we bear witness that he joined us after his resurrection from the dead, and shared our usual home and food. Let us all be impudent and determined, and let us see that our freak lasts even to death. There is nothing ridiculous in dying for nothing at all. And why should we dislike for no good reason undergoing scourging and bodily  torture, and if need be to experience imprisonment, dishonour, and insult for what is untrue?

Let us now  make this our business. We will tell the same falsehoods, and invent stories that will benefit nobody, neither ourselves, nor those we deceive, nor him who is deified by our lies. And we will extend our lies not only to men of our own race, but go forth to all men, and fill the whole world with our fabrications about him. And then let us lay down laws for all the nations in direct opposition to the opinions they have held for ages about their ancestral gods. Let us bid the Romans first of all not to worship the gods their forefathers recognized.

Let us pass over into Greece, and oppose the teaching of their wise men. Let us not neglect the Egyptians, but declare war on their gods, not going back to Moses’ deeds against them of old time for our weapons, but arraying against them our Master’s death, to scare them so we will destroy the faith in the gods which from immemorial time has gone forth to all men, not by words and argument, but by the power of our Master Crucified.

Let us go to other foreign lands, and overturn all their institutions. None of us must fail in zeal; for it is no petty contest that we dare, and no common prizes lie before us—-but most likely the punishments inflicted according to the laws of each land: bonds, of course, torture, imprisonment, fire and sword, and wild beasts. We must greet them all with enthusiasm, and meet evil bravely, having our Master as our model.

For what could be finer than to make both gods and men our enemies for no reason at all, and to have no enjoyment of any kind, to have no profit of our dear ones, to make no money, to have no hope of anything good at all, but just to be deceived and to deceive without aim or object?

This is our prize, to go straight in the teeth of all the nations, to war on the gods that have been acknowledged by them all for ages, to say that our Master, who (was crucified) before our very eyes was God, and to represent Him as God’s Son, for Whom we are ready to die, though we know we have learned from Him nothing either true or useful.

Yes, that is the reason we must  honour Him the more—-His utter uselessness to us—-we must strain every nerve to glorify His name, undergo all insults and punishments, and welcome every form of death for the sake of a lie. Perhaps truth is the same thing as evil, and falsehood must then be the opposite of evil.

So let us say that He raised the dead, cleansed lepers, drove out daemons, and did many other marvelous works, knowing all the time that He did nothing of the kind, while we invent everything for ourselves, and deceive those we can.

And suppose we convince nobody, at any rate we shall have the satisfaction of (c) drawing down upon ourselves, in return for our inventions, the retribution for our deceit.”

Hazen asks, “Why would any of these “deceivers” face tremendous loss and death to maintain a life that didn’t benefit them, their families, or difference whatsoever?”  The obvious answer?  They wouldn’t. 

 

When you become so intimately familiar with the truth, lies truly seem ludicrous.  Let’s become this familiar with the reasons for the truth of the Gospel!!