Month: March 2015

We’re Not All Happy. They’re Not All Miserable.

Are we putting too many false images on Christianity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

There is a meme that I have seen and it looks like it first showed up on the Freedom From Atheism Foundation page, which tells me I have no need to take them seriously until this is changed. This meme there developed great controversy and I am not going to show it because I find it exactly that horrid. The meme is to illustrate the difference between Christians and atheist. On the left is a picture of a father and mother happy with their children playing together. It’s a beautiful picture and meant to show what Christians are like. On the other side, meant to show an atheist, is a punk goth kid in a Nightwish T-shirt about to cut his wrist. Am I going to put a picture up of it? No. I don’t want to see it and I don’t want to do it justice.

I tend to be a guy with a very long fuse.

This set me off immediately when I saw it.

You see, it’s true no doubt that there are many Christian families that are very happy. That’s wonderful. It’s true that there are many atheists that could say they are miserable. That’s true and that’s not wonderful. Of course, I want them out of atheism, but I don’t want to see someone miserable just because they’re an atheist, though I would hope God will use that misery in their life to show them Christ. Yet we all know in reality that this is not the way the world really works. There are also Christians that struggle with depression regularly. There are atheists that are having the time of their lives and are quite happy.

We do not want to send a promise that Jesus never gave. Now I think in reality, we should all be much happier if we’re Christians. We should realize the joy of Christianity, and if we don’t, we might have to strengthen our understanding of what we believe, but I also know there are times of sorrow. There are chemical imbalances some people have that leave them depressed. There are times that are temporary but we have to deal with. Paul said when it comes to death, for instance, that we grieve, but we do not grieve like those who have no hope. Being a Christian does not mean that you have to be happy all the time. In the same way, while I do think atheism is a hopeless and miserable worldview, I do not think that means an atheist will be miserable all the time. There are plenty of good and wonderful things to be happy about on this Earth.

Also, I have a great concern of what an image like this does to Christians who do struggle. There are Christians who wrestle with cutting and depression. What happens when they see something like this? Well you’ve just added guilt to the grief over whatever it is that they’re already struggling with. In fact, this is one reason we should support the ministry of counseling. It’s good that we have these people and I have in fact taken use of a counselor in the past myself. We all could use people to help us with these issues.

In the end, wherever I see this meme, I do intend to go against it. I think it makes a false reality that will drive more people away than bring to Christ and it will hurt many that do belong to Christ.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Embarrassment of Christian Media

Why is it that we are not making the most of media? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

My church meets at a movie theater. Yesterday, my wife and I arrive to help set up in the auditorium. As we’re going back and forth, I see behind the counter a promotion for an upcoming movie called Four Blood Moons. I’m looking at this as one who has written on it before and I’m thinking “Please, please, say it isn’t what I think it is.” Unfortunately, if you’ve clicked the first link, you already know that this is not a joke.

As you can see by the description given by the producer of the film.

It is rare that science, history and scripture align with each other, yet the last three series of Four Blood Moons have done exactly that. Are these the “signs” that God refers to in the Bible? If they are, what do they mean? What is their significance for us today? In his riveting and highly acclaimed book, Pastor John Hagee explores the supernatural connection of certain celestial events to biblical prophecy-and to the future of God’s chosen people and to the nations of the world. In the movie “Four Blood Moons,” produced by Rick Eldridge and directed by the Academy Award Winner, Kieth Merrill; these veteran filmmakers illustrate this fascinating phenomenon in a very compelling docu-drama. Cinematic recreations of historical events from the United States, Israel and throughout the Middle East; along with expert testimonials from scientists, historians and religious scholars, are used to illustrate this story told in narrative format by a celebrity host. Just as in biblical times, perhaps God is controlling the sun, the moon, and the stars to send our generation a signal that something big is about to happen. The question is: Are we watching and listening for His message?

It is hard to say if I’m more angry or sad about this coming out.

To begin with, I happened to like D’Souza’s What’s So Great About Christianity?, but if this is the way that he’s going to be going now, then I have to ask D’Souza to please step down from doing this sort of thing. This is an embarrassment. Anyone can do some basic research and see that the blood moon phenomena just doesn’t apply. It is the kind of thing that skeptics of the Christian faith will just mock and sadly. Worse, I think nothing will really happen that is major, though it is the Middle East so anything could be construed as a fulfillment. When that happens, atheists will be able to point to something in recent history and use that to not only not take the movie seriously, but not take Christianity seriously.

I have also been disturbed to see that both Hugh Ross and Dennis Prager are in this. I fear I am hoping against hope that their only role in the movie will be showing up and saying “No.” Unfortunately, there is a strong part of me that is quite sure that they’re not being invited on to give a negative critique of the idea.

In fact, let’s consider what’s going through the minds of people behind this film at the time. “Let’s see. Easter is coming. What kind of film should we make? We could make a film that will go public where we’ll discuss the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, the reason why we observe Easter. We would discuss with Gary Habermas, N.T. Wright, Mike Licona, William Lane Craig, and others. If Christians went to see it, they would learn about the reality of the resurrection of Jesus. If non-Christians went to see it, they would have a case made that they might never see otherwise. We could do that, or we could go with blood moons. Let’s do blood moons!”

In a recent book review, I wrote about how we Christians keep blundering in media. We make movies that only appeal to Christians. How are we going to reach the world if we stay in the circle of our own interests and make films that only those like us will want to see? Of course, there’s a place for encouraging each other, but we hardly see films pushing a Christian message, unless that message is made cheesy and explicit. Fellow Christians. Please realize this. The world makes movies that espouse a view of the world that is not in your face and that view of the world is in fact having an impact on people. Dare I say it but maybe we could learn something from our opponents? Maybe we could learn that our audiences are not supposed to be so dumb that they have to have everything spelled out for them? Why do you think a series like the Chronicles of Narnia is so enthralling? What about Lord of the Rings? The Gospel is NEVER spelled out in these and you’ll find fans of those series all across the religious spectrum.

It is my sincere hope that Four Blood Moons will be entirely neglected and that the studio will lose out on this project. If this is the way that D’Souza is going to go with jumping on bandwagons in this way, then it would do him well to just get out now. When people come and hold to theories like this, it makes me really wonder if I can take their viewpoint seriously on other matters. If that is what I can think as a Christian, what will those outside Christianity think? They already think our view is crazy enough as it is. Is there any need we have to add to that?

How about we spend this Easter focused on the resurrection and not blood moons?

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Simplistic Answers

Are we just not thinking enough about deep issues? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

One great hazard of doing apologetics today is our culture has been trained to think in soundbites. We often hope we can have that one great line of wisdom that we see in the movies that will just leave us spellbound. Unfortunately, real life is rarely like that. Usually if you are struggling through a hard time, there is no one thing anyone can say that will suddenly make you see the light. It is often a long process of healing and thinking and in the case of Christians, prayer and Bible study. Those who wants simple answers are often just going to turn out to be simplistic thinkers.

One great culprit today of this is the meme. Now don’t get me wrong here. I love memes. Memes are hilarious if you want to just make a joke. Memes can be effective also if you have made an argument and are wanting to make a visual impact with how wrong the other side is with what you’ve already demonstrated. In that regard, I have no problem with memes. Too often however, memes are seen as the start of the argument. Memes are sound bite arguments and they come loaded with beliefs that are supposedly already seen as correct and before you can deal with what the meme itself says, you have to deal with all the back issues and that can be extremely taxing and time-consuming.

That’s a problem for a culture with a short attention span that now just posts tl;dr. (If you’re not up on internet slang, it simply means “Too long. Didn’t read.”)

Religion is a difficult topic and unfortunately people think the answers should be simple. Why does God allow evil? How do you know that He exists? What about the relationship between science and religion? What does the Bible say about slavery or homosexuality or any other topic? Why should I believe that Jesus rose from the dead? Any religious system will have the hard questions that comes its way and when a religion has a strong intellectual culture to it, as Christianity does, those answers are not going to be simplistic. If you think you’re going to topple Christianity or any other worldview by just using a meme, you are a simplistic anti-intellectual.

The sadness is that many people who take this kind of approach consider themselves intellectual. From the atheist side, I call this atheistic presuppositionalism. Too many internet atheists have the idea that if you’re an atheist, you are rational. No need to read the other side because, hey, those are indoctrinated fundies there. You can just easily spread all the information you find through those great sources of knowledge, Google and Wikipedia. When you set the standards for what the other side must do, they are impossible to meet, such as people that demand that God do a miracle for them or say “Well if it was true, everyone would believe it.” (As if God just wants your intellectual assent.)

And let’s be fair. We Christians aren’t much better. If you want to topple an idea like evolution, you might have to do something like, I don’t know, study evolution? (Yeah. I know that’s really far out there to suggest doing that, but hey, I think it could work.) How can you call yourself someone who is able to critique evolution if you are never willing to go out and actually read what the evolutionists themselves write? I in fact think that if you want to argue against a viewpoint, you need to know the best arguments that exist against that viewpoint well enough that you could argue it yourself.

In our day and age, this simplistic thinking is going on and what we need to do is move past it more and more. There will always be people on both sides who only hear what their itching ears want to hear. It’s one reason in debates I’ve been asking “When was the last time you read a work of scholarship that disagreed with you.” If someone doesn’t answer the question, I find it incredibly revealing.

While we cannot change what happens on the other side, we who are Christians can do better. It’s why we need to start serious discipleship in our churches with learning how to work through and think through issues. I consider it wrong when a non-Christian engages in simplistic thinking, but it is a direct contradiction of the commands of Christ to us when we who are Christians do the same thing. No, we’re not all going to be great intellectuals. But still, what we do have, we are commanded to love Christ with it. We are commanded to think about the things of Christ. This is not optional.

If we are complaining about those outside the fold, let’s make sure our own house is in order.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 3/7/2015: John Walton

What’s coming up on the Deeper Waters Podcast this Saturday? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Back in 2013, we were blessed to have John Walton come on the show and talk about The Lost World of Genesis One. Now John Walton has brought us another excellent book, The Lost World of Adam and Eve. As soon as I saw this was coming, I knew I wanted Walton back on the show again and indeed, he was happy to come back again to what I believe could be the first podcast interview on the book that will be done.

So who is John Walton?

Walton

According to his bio:

John’s research and his energized presentations are rooted in his passion for drawing people into a better understanding of God’s self-revelation in Scripture. John (PhD, Hebrew Union College) is a professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School. He focuses his research on the literature and cultures of the ancient Near East and the Old Testament, with a particular interest in Genesis. Before his role at Wheaton, John taught for 20 years at Moody Bible Institute.

John has authored many articles and books, including The Lost World of Adam and Eve, The Lost World of Genesis One, Genesis 1 as Ancient Cosmology, and Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament. John also served as general editor of the Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary: Old Testament and co-author of the IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament.

John’s ministry experience includes church classes for all age groups, high school Bible studies, and adult Sunday school classes, as well as serving as a teacher for “The Bible in 90 Days.”

I have found John Walton’s viewpoint on the Old Testament to be incredibly eye-opening. Prior to reading the book, I had done my own research project on science and Christianity and came to the conclusion that the best arguments I could find are metaphysical arguments and it does not help to marry our apologetics to science. If some want to do scientific apologetics, that’s fine, but it’s really not something that I prefer to use. Also, N.T. Wright had been a scholar definitely helping with my understanding of the New Testament. For years, I had been working to learn how Jews at the time would understand Jesus and thought “How would Jews at the time of Moses understand Genesis?” John Walton provided the answers.

That’s why I’m thrilled to have him come back on the show again. We’re going to be talking about his views on Adam and Eve and asking the hard questions. We will be asking what role scientific data does play and how much impact should it have on our reading? We will be asking him what the impact is of other human beings besides Adam and Eve being around. Doesn’t that go against what Jesus said in the Gospels? We will be asking about the serpent in the Garden and what was the impact of the event called the fall on humanity?

So be watching your podcast feed! You won’t want to miss this one!

In Christ,
Nick Peters

The Implosion of Richard Carrier

Has the breakdown come? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

A little over a week ago, I wrote on Carrier’s decision to come out as polyamorous. You see, Richard Carrier, who is the go-to guy practically for atheists in their apologetic defense, has announced that he is divorcing his wife. Alone, this would be a tragedy and nothing that we should celebrate. Divorce is a sad breaking of a union that was meant to last until death do the lovers part. When it is even something that could be necessary, it is a tragedy that it has come to that point.

What made it worse was Carrier working to justify himself and say “I’m polyamorous.” He had been cheating on his wife and just decided that this had to be his orientation. He was a man who wanted to have sex with many other women, including ones he isn’t married to. With this, Carrier falls into the small category of every single married man on the planet. Most of us just learn to control our desires because we care more about loving our wives properly than we do about women fulfilling our own desires.

In my critique, I was told I should later write on what ethics of Carrier that Carrier was violating. As I was doing some checking for that both in his book and online, I found that some had already been doing that. What was most amusing is it looks like the atheist community has been doing the policing. Let me say first then that it’s wonderful to see the atheist community calling out their own, something we Christians need to do too when one of ours steps out of bounds with a major moral failing.

Now keep in mind that in these blogs we’re not dealing with Christians so the language will be that which we do not normally care for, but in these blog pieces, you can see Carrier being demolished. What makes it more amusing is that when Carrier shows up himself, he actually makes it worse. We could have it said “Better to have people think you’re a polyamorous narcissist than to use your keyboard and remove all doubt.”

Our first posting will come from The Yeti’s Roar. Here, the writer has compiled a number of statements of Carrier and even pointed out how some of them have been edited. It has also been pointed out that he has condemned Michael Shermer, but yet he falls at the same level as Shermer and does not seem to see it. His narcissism has also been pointed out and having him like one of his own comments on the blog page did not really help matters.

I invite the reader to simply read the posts and then read all the replies and yes, I’m in that mix as well if you see a familiar name. I happen to share the question of a recent comment on how Carrier will support himself now. After all, since he’s endorsed the Christ-myth idea, he has pretty much killed any chance of getting a job teaching at an accredited university. If he doesn’t wind up speaking constantly at atheist conferences, what then? Will other women be willing to offer the support when how he treats them, especially his own wife who I make it a point to pray for regularly and I hope you will too?

Another blogger who has been blogging about this is Shermertron over at Orwellian Garbage. He has several posts on the prominent internet blogger Dr. Richard Carrier Ph.D. The first one that I ever read was comic gold. What is fascinating about watching this whole affair is that it’s kind of like watching a disgraced televangelist. Carrier is trying to deflect the criticism that he’s receiving and yet, it’s not working. It also reminds me that indeed, marriage is something that is seen as sacred today. You just don’t cheat on your wife.

On that point also, I have made it even more of a vow to honor Mrs. Peters over here. You see, I have long told men in apologetics, and the same counterpart would apply to women in the field, that if you are able to debate every atheist and answer every question in the field, yet you end up not being a loving husband to your wife, then I count you as a failure in ministry. There are plenty of people in the field who can answer the questions that are out there. Of course, do your part, but you are not the only one. Yet when it comes to loving your wife as Christ loved the church, there is only one person who can do that. If you are an apologist who is married, you cannot be both a good apologist and a bad husband. (This is also why I set up a group on Facebook for Christian men who are married, engaged, dating, or hoping to date, so we could learn to love our wives better and encourage one another. My wife has the counterpart for women.)

To get back to this whole spectacle, it will be interesting to see what the future holds. We in the Christian community should celebrate atheists that are willing to call out their own and remember that we need to be doing the same thing. What will happen to all the atheists who put all their eggs in the Carrier basket meanwhile? Will this damage Carrier’s reputation? Will atheist fathers not want their atheist daughters at his talks? Will atheist husbands not want to go to them with their wives not wanting to get near the guy?

Has Carrier by his actions ended his fifteen minutes of fame? Only time will tell, but we can remember to pray in this situation and see what could happen with that. Who knows? Until then, we have a reminder that ultimately, no one is above criticism in this area and we all know that if you’re married, you are to honor your spouse and to say you’re polyamorous is a way of saying “You’re not enough for me.”

Along those lines, it’s worth pointing out who Carrier dedicated Sense and Goodness Without God to.

For Jen…

My buxom brunette
My wellspring of joy
My north star of sanity.

Sure seems real now. She is certainly getting an example of the sense and goodness without God. Apparently, it’s sensible to admit you’re polyamorous, which means living with the unique desire as a married man to have sex with other women, and it’s good to go out in that and try to live as an ethical human being the best you can, despite cheating on your wife.

Again, I do not know what the future holds here, but I am certainly watching. It will be interesting to see where Carrier is twenty years from now and see if it was worth it. I personally do not doubt that Jen will be much better off and will be much happier.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Do We Really Know More?

In the age of the Internet, it’s easy to say we have more access to knowledge than anyone else today, but does that mean we’re smarter?

I’d like you to imagine you live in the ancient world. In fact, you live next to a great bastion of learning, the Library of Alexandria. Within walking distance from where you are is a great collection of knowledge from all over that you can read when you want to. Here is the question then. Does that mean that you automatically know better than anyone else out there?

No. No you don’t. You might have more access to information than the average person, but it doesn’t mean you know better. One person who could make it to the library perhaps once a year, but knows how better to sift through information, will be more informed on topics than you will be. This person will know what books they need to read, how to read them, and how best to process new information when they get it in.

Today, we live in the age of the Internet. Most everyone can have access to the knowledge of the world immediately. It is sitting right at our fingertips. (Though often we miss it while looking at pictures of cats and debating what color a dress is.) There is no doubt that the Internet is a vast reservoir of knowledge overflowing and that a person can give themselves a decent education on a topic by doing some good looking on the net.

And yet, therein lies the danger.

Many of us remember seeing this commercial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_CgPsGY5Mw

Funny? Indeed. We all laugh at the gullibility of the girl. How could someone possibly believe anything that they read on the Internet? We laugh, but don’t realize that too often, that describes many of us. In the age of the net, it’s easy to have anyone set up a blog or a web site or a podcast or anything of that sort and be seen as an authority. Many of us can self-publish EBooks and have us look like people who know what they’re talking about.

At this point, an obvious rejoinder comes up. “Well you’re not a scholar in the field and you have a blog and web site and podcast! Why should we listen to you? Couldn’t you be wrong?”

I absolutely could be wrong. I would hope you would listen because I do think I read profusely and seek to find out whatever I can in my field. Plus, when I interview someone, they are usually a scholar in the field and that means they are definitely worth listening to. When it comes to my own opinions on here, I will admit it’s really awesome to have so many people respecting and liking what I have to say, but I am not Scripture. I am not infallible at all. I would not want you to believe something just because I say it. Please feel free to research what I say. Even N.T. Wright has said that he can be sure 1/3 of the stuff he teaches is wrong. I would be quite the anomaly if I had everything that I taught be correct.

Too often on the net, people just hear what they want to hear and there is always a voice speaking loud enough on this. Recently for instance, I reviewed David McAfee’s Disproving Christianity. Quite simply, this is a terrible book, but if you go to his Facebook page, his followers, and it looks like there’s a lot of them for some strange reason, are just so impressed by what is being said. All I conclude is that people hear what they want to hear. The claims are not questioned. Rarely can you expect the other side to be read.

Christ mythicism is another example of this. While this position is a joke in the world of NT scholarship, it is seen as if it’s a hotly debated theory on the Internet. See for instance this quote by McAfee as well concerning John 14:6.

“This verse is, however, only one of the many indicating the necessity not of moral behavior to be saved, but of accepting Jesus Christ—who, according to doctrine, is supposed to have lived thousands of years ago and for whose existence we have little to evidence, neither as a man nor as part of the divine Christian God-head”

The tragedy in the atheist community is that this is fallen for hook, line, and sinker. It’s quite interesting that so many people who claim to be freethinkers tend to think exactly alike. Of course, there are exceptions to this. Many of you out there know who you are. For too many atheists, it is as if anything in the Bible is shown to be true, then at this point, one must commit ritual suicide. It cannot be allowed that a worldview like Christianity got anything historically accurate.

Okay. Someone might say I’m picking on the atheists. Christians do the same thing.

Yes. The sad thing is that too many atheists who tend to be all about the evidence will often believe something despite the evidence for it being flimsy and the scholars in the field rejecting it. Too many Christians meanwhile who claim to follow the one who said He is the way, the truth, and the life, and who are told to be on their guard against false doctrine, will too often not bother to do any of the research either. They will believe something just because it already fits in with what they already believe.

To an extent, that does make sense. The problem is our worldview is just often not informed enough to see if we have any reason to believe what we come to the data believing. So you’re a Christian who has grown up all your life believing Jesus is the Son of God and the Bible is God’s infallible and inerrant word. You have not really looked at the evidence, but you believe it. So you have someone email you a story about how NASA scientists had their calculations wrong until someone on a team told a story about Joshua’s missing day. Wow! How incredible! This just confirms what you believe! Unfortunately, that story if you believed it, is bogus.

If you don’t know how to process the information you have already, then any discovery that comes along that fits in with what you already believe will be believed by you. On the Internet, this is especially so if it comes in a nice-looking package, such as a well-designed web site. It can also happen if a speaker knows how to speak persuasively even if his points are nonsense. This is in fact one reason I consider debate helpful. If both participants are well-informed, you can get to hear the views all critiqued. It’s also way counterpoint books can be so fascinating to read.

If what I’m saying is accurate, then having knowledge there to us will not helpful to us if we don’t know how to process it and question it. This is one reason especially churches need to be encouraging their members to ask questions and they need to discuss those questions openly. People who are not questioning what they believe and asking about it quite frankly are not growing as disciples of Christ.

For my non-Christian readers, while you might deplore Christians sitting and just believing everything their pastor says, something I also deplore, make sure you’re not doing the same thing. Have you set your own authorities up as people who are going to be correct on whatever they say? Too often from our perspective, it looks like that is exactly what is happening. There’s a great danger I see, especially in the atheist community, where it is assumed that if you are an atheist, you are a person of reason and evidence. If someone is a Christian, they are a person of faith. Why should anyone listen to faith and why should anyone go against reason and evidence? Therefore, anyone who is rational will be an atheist. I refer to this as presuppositional atheism.

The best antidote to this is to learn how to interact with the opposite viewpoints and check up on the claims. You read something on the net? Go and check and see if it is true first. Don’t just believe something. In all honesty, if my own wife tells me about a story she’s read, I always ask what the source of that story is first.  When I have seen people post interesting stories on the Internet, I have often been the bearer of bad news by saying “It’s a good story. Unfortunately, it’s false.”

For Christians, this is especially the case. We claim to be followers of Christ. If people cannot trust what we say on mundane ordinary matters that could be shown to be false by five minutes of research, why should they trust us on ultimate life-changing issues that five minutes worth of research would not be sufficient for?

(btw, along those lines, Christian issues such as the resurrection are deep issues. I do not trust anyone who thinks that a major decision like this can be decided after a brief time of research. There are Ph.D.’s who study these subject in depth and simplistic answers will just not work. This is also why I oppose using memes as arguments. Memes can be humorous illustrations of arguments, but they should not be the arguments themselves.)

It’s easy to pride ourselves as thinking we possess knowledge in the age of the Internet, but let’s be careful about it. We could very well fulfill the Scripture where it says that proclaiming ourselves to be wise, we became fools. Rest assured, every side does have fine and intelligent minds on it, but every side also has their share of fools. Be sure to investigate what you believe. We should not desire to be fools.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Fact Vs. Value

What do I think of John Lepp’s self-published book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

factvsvalue

John Lepp was looking for people to read this book. A friend recommended me so I figured I’d give it a look. I am someone who is not really interested in science as science, but I am interested in the philosophy of science and the supposed history of the warfare between science and religion. Because of that, I figured I would give this one a look and see what I could find out as I am always interested in learning more about this area.

Now my position on this is unusual to some. I am not one who can say yet that I support the movement of Intelligent Design. I think it still ends up with a too mechanistic universe and I do think there are better arguments out there, arguments that hinge on final causality which I consider much more important. When I use the Kalam, I do not use the version of Bill Craig. Frankly, I don’t care if the universe had a beginning or not, though it is my understanding that scientific evidence today does lean that way.

I can’t say I really found what I was looking for here. I found some arguments against Dawkins and Harris and Hawking and others, but these are also found in several other places. I also would have liked to have seen more emphasis on the real enemy here and why there is no real conflict between Christianity and science. The real enemy is not science. Science is to be our friend and ally. The main enemy is scientism, which shows up quite frankly everywhere on the internet.

You see, it’s believed that in medieval times, the priesthood controlled everything and theology was seen as having all the answers. This is simply false. When explanations were given for natural phenomena, natural explanations were preferred. It could be that those answers were wrong many times, and in fact they were, but this was before advanced means of research was around to answer such questions. The point is that attempts were made and these did not run to “God did it!”

In fact, the medievals were people who were looking constantly for scientific explanations and when it was found, it was not like God was less out of a job. In fact, God was held in greater awe. It was the way of saying “I never would have thought of doing it that way.” The medievals expected to find explanations for the phenomena. That is why it was that they were looking in the first place.

Despite this, it is believed that the priesthood was seen as the group that could answer every question. Today, there is a new priesthood and that consists of science. Now not all of the scientists today hold to what is thought to be the classical priestly vows of the scientist. Not all of them believe that science is the answer to everything. Some do believe that there are questions that science cannot answer.

Unfortunately, the group that speaks the loudest often gets the most attention, and that is the group that holds to scientism, the belief that either all questions must be answered scientifically, or else that the only way to know something for certain is through science. Both of these of course are self-refuting positions, but they are still the real enemy that is around today.

Today then, science has become a new priesthood and the scientists are the bearers of all knowledge. Keep in mind this is not saying anything about science. This is saying something about some views of science. An example of this kind of scientism is found in JT, an opponent that John Lepp has a debate with at the end of the book. An example of this is a statement like this JT makes in the debate:

“The bible makes numerous claims that conflict with the way science has revealed the universe to work over a long list of different disciplines. For instance, the idea of somebody rising from the dead could not be more offensive to our understanding of biology and medicine. We have established this so completely that virtually nobody opposes interring the deceased, regardless of how loved they were in real life, for fear that they will reanimate”

This kind of statement is so incredibly hysterical. Does JT really think that ancient people didn’t know this? Does he really think that people were hesitant to bury the dead because they thought the dead would return to life? The Jews were the ones that had sects that believed in resurrection and even they buried their dead. That the dead don’t naturally come back to life is not a discovery of modern science. It has been a well-known fact for ages before.

resurrectionmostinteresting

JT goes further with this kind of statement saying that walking on water is offensive to physics. It is as if JT does not know that ancient people built boats. Why did they do this? It’s really quite simple. They knew that people don’t naturally walk on water. This is not a discovery of modern science. This is something that those stupid ancient people who did not have modern science already believed. Contrary to what might be thought, ancient people were not stupid.

Yet people like JT believe that we can no longer believe in miracles because, hey, we live in an age of science. It is in fact because of basic rudimentary science that people could believe in miracles if they happened. Why? Because in order to recognize something outside of the normal realm of nature, you have to know what the normal realm is. You won’t consider a virgin birth a miracle unless you know people don’t get naturally pregnant on their own. You won’t consider walking on water a miracle unless people naturally don’t walk on water. You don’t consider a resurrection a miracle unless you know that dead people stay dead.

Unfortunately, I think Lepp on his end of the debate focused too much on science and not enough on scientism, the real problem, not just for religion but also for science. I did not see in the debate with JT an argument made for the existence of God or the reliability of Scripture or the resurrection of Jesus. JT’s problem was not really bad science, and I am not to say if he had it or not, but bad metaphysics, a metaphysics that holds to scientism and does not then answer basic questions on our existing.

So in the end, I found the book to be an okay read, but not what I was expecting. I will say that the book does end on a happy note, and one that I was pleased to read, and also one that I will not share on this blog. It is not part of the main thesis of the book, but it is a story that should be heartwarming still.

If the author wrote a second edition or a sequel, I would like to see more on scientism. I would look to see more on showing why the claim about the Dark Ages is frankly a myth. I would also like to see more quotations from leading scientists on how they are not opposed to religion to show that the viewpoint that says they are at war is a loud and ignorant mythology.

In Christ,
Nick Peters