Category: New Atheists

Book Plunge: In God We Doubt Part 9

What is the core defense of Christianity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

So we’re back to Humphrys book again and at the start, he is going on the same old game that we always see. The idea of the evangelical is of course that with Jesus you can go to Heaven. Now I am a critic of this in that we treat Jesus as a means to an end, our own joy, without considering that we in response are to serve as well. We also then ignore what we are supposed to do on Earth. The purpose of Christianity is to get you to Heaven! End of story!

Humphrys does say the problem is no one can prove this. Well first off, we should take the idea of Near-Death Experiences seriously. We cannot veridically prove Heaven in some sense like that, but shouldn’t we consider that if people have these experiences, there might be something to them? I understand fully that this is not proof, of course, but it is still evidence.

Naturally, Humphrys says evangelical promises come without a shred of evidence, despite, you know, him referencing a William Lane Craig debate where he gave five pieces of evidence for belief in the existence of God and the only response was that none of it was true. Now some people could be believers on poor evidence, and I’m sure they are, but there are many intellectual people who are believers on grounds of solid evidence. Humphrys can say they’re wrong, but they’re still using evidence.

Then at the end of this chapter we’re covering, he says the core defense of Christians is that if they could prove it, it wouldn’t be faith. This is a horrid misunderstanding on many levels. For one thing, there is plenty in this world we accept as true that cannot be proven, such as scientific truths. These are inductive truths. They’re only known with greater degrees of probability.

Second, there is a great difference between not being able to prove something and having no evidence whatsoever for it. In a court of law, a prosecution is not told to prove that the defendant did the crime. They are to make a case that eliminates reasonable doubt. That doesn’t mean they get up and say “I can’t prove it, so it must be faith.”

A lawyer will produce his evidence, his opponent will reply, and then it is up to the jury to decide based on the evidence. It could be everyone agrees on the evidence presented, but the interpretation is different. This is something that you see regularly if you read mystery novels. There can be a lot of evidence that makes it look like X did the crime, but then when all is revealed, it turns out Y did it and you look back and say “Of course. Now it makes sense.” Despite that, the evidence NEVER changed. It’s the interpretation that did.

Finally, and obviously, Humphrys does not know what faith is, any more than the new atheists that he relies on knows what it is. I have written this article that I refer to time and time again. When Humphrys thinks he’s criticizing my position, he’s not. If this is what he thinks it is, I can see why he thinks the new atheists are so persuasive. Unfortunately, when you go against the real thing, it’s easy to see why they are not persuasive.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: In God We Doubt Part 8

What is the impact of bad sermons? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Most every speaker has had a bad presentation at times. They have had something happen where they didn’t know what to say or where they said something outright stupid. Unfortunately, when that happens in ministry, the results can be disastrous. Reviewing what I highlighted in chapter 11 where we start today, I saw one pop up immediately and as soon as I started it, I remembered how it ended because of how terrible it was.

Even worse, this took place at a funeral with the wife and kids right there. A funeral is worse not just because the people are grieving, but weddings and funerals are two of the times you are most likely going to have lost people in the church. Your average person who doesn’t want anything to do with a church can come to one of these out of deep respect, and personally, a funeral usually has the closest to a sermon.

So what does the vicar say here?

Terrible though it is to us, God grants the same freedom to cancer cells that he grants even to the most noble and virtuous of us.

Humphrys is right in pointing out that cancer cells are not intelligent agents that can move and make decisions. Of course, Christians need to be able to have a place in their worldview to explain cancer, but this is not a valid parallel at all. God does allow bad things to happen, including deaths from cancer, but are we going to put cancer cells on the same level as human beings?

Fortunately, Humphrys I don’t think sees all ministers like this, but too many will remember this. Sadly, we will have people easily remember the worst things we did to them. “Think of someone who hurt you.” Right now, most all of you have the image of someone in mind immediately.

Moving on from here, Humphrys asks about prayer. Isn’t it a pointless exercise? Isn’t the main emphasis asking for something? Well, no. The main emphasis should be worship and glorification, something I admit I need to work on as well. There is also thankfulness and the asking is not just health and material objects and items like that, but also forgiveness.

Humphrys also says in the Bible, God was performing miracles all the time. Hardly. You have an abundance of miracles in only three time periods, the Exodus and the conquest, the ministries of Elijah and Elisha, and the apostolic age starting with the ministry of Jesus. Miracles are recorded not because they are common, but because they are exceptional.

Getting back to prayer after all of this, Humphrys says God hears every prayer that is offered up, and yet doesn’t bother to intervene. I daresay Humphrys knows a lot of people who can speak of an answered prayer, yet will he say that is a coincidence? It seems that he has to.

What about something like Craig Keener’s works on miracles that show miracles specifically coming after prayer? Humphrys and others who do this have a unique method. If you pray for something and it doesn’t happen, that proves God doesn’t answer prayers. If you pray for something and it happens, that proves that coincidences take place.

Rabbi Sacks thankfully does deal with Humphrys well in an interview style saying that Humphrys seems to have this idea that the world ought to be just. This is ironically where C.S. Lewis began as well. Humphrys then says it needs to be like science where we test something again and again and it is proven and religion is asking the opposite.

Well, that’s just false. Having something happen again and again in science doesn’t mean “proof.” It means that it is incredibly likely, the same as in history. It can be so likely it would be nonsense to try to do some things again. If I stick my hand on a hot stove and I burn it, I’m not going to want to try it again. If I drop something and it falls repeatedly, I’m justified in thinking, contrary to Hume, that that is what will happen every time, all things being equal.

Sacks also rightly says that Humphrys buys into a sort of soft scientism where something should be scientifically established before it is acceptable. Much of our knowledge does not come about that way, such as our moral judgments and the rules of math and any number of other ideas we hold. Most of the claims we hold dearest are those that are NOT scientifically proven, such as that our loved ones love us, or that something is good to do, or that beauty is real.

Humphrys lists a lot of things he considers evils and said this would not happen in a just world. Well first off, who said the world is just right now? In a just world, the Son of God would not be crucified when He did no wrong. God promises justice, but He never promises a timeframe to it for us. Justice delayed is not justice denied.

Briefly, Humphrys talks about biblical interpretation with the idea that we are supposed to take the texts literally, though not stating what that means. I contend you should always take the text literally, but not literalistically. If something is written as a metaphor, taking it literally is reading it as a metaphor. If something is taken as a straight forward account, taking it literally is doing just that. Literalistic reading says there can be no inflection or change in language and no stylistic ideas of hyperbole, sarcasm, etc.

So ultimately as we conclude this part, it still looks like again all Humphrys really has is evil. This has just never really struck me as a strong objection to Christianity, especially since Christianity by necessity has an evil action right at the center, the crucifixion of Christ. Christianity is about dealing with the evil in part, so how is evil a defeater for it?

Beats me.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

 

Book Plunge: In God We Doubt Part 7

What is Humphrys looking for? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We’re moving ahead now to where Humphrys starts doing interviews. In this, he interacts with a Christian, a Jew, and a Muslim. To his credit, he brings on people who are informed about what they believe. WIll he find God doing this?

Doubtful, especially since at the start he says he doesn’t want to convert to Judaism any more than he wants to be a Muslim or recover his Christianity, but he would like to believe in God. But why? What benefit does he get from this? Is God just a means to an end? Will Humphrys feel better about himself if he has God?

If he finds the Christian God, for instance, that will mean repentance. That will mean humility. That will mean he has to accept that God has a good reason for allowing the evil that he complains about. If he accepts Islam, will he be willing to embrace all of the teachings and follow Muhammad as a prophet? Is he prepared to have his good and bad deeds weighed out on the scales? For Judaism, it will depend on the branch, but there’s not much emphasis from what I see usually on an afterdeath.

Humphrys gives no reason, though he admits it sounds pathetic.

But if you only want God as a means to an end for you, it’s not a shock if you don’t find Him. Why think He will let Himself be used?

One big issue he has for his interviewees is evil. This is Humphrys #1 argument against God. Now I have said before that I don’t understand what you gain from the problem of evil if you remove God. The problem is still there and you get rid of a solution of hope to the problem.

Humphrys says that most tyrants seem to die peacefully on their beds. Hitler could have had he not gone after Russia and just stayed in his own land. For Humphrys, this dispels the idea that virtue is its own reward and that God is merciful.

For the first, why would Humphrys want to be virtuous? It is not so he can please God obviously. Is he just wanting to please his fellow man? Does Humphrys do good purely because he benefits from it? These tyrants certainly didn’t care what anyone else thought of them, unless they wanted to kill them. What makes Humphrys different in the long run?

For the second, God is only merciful if He deals with evil on Humphrys timescale? Who says? If Christianity is true, God is merciful to all of us as we all deserve death right now. Of course, Humphrys would likely say he doesn’t deserve that as he’s generally a good person. What about all those evil people though?

Because it’s always someone else’s evil that needs to be dealt with. Whenever I hear atheists complain about evil, they are complaining about what other people do. They are not complaining about what they do.

Rowan Williams is shown in the interview of saying that with God, there is always hope. Of course, this is hard to explain to someone who doesn’t understand the concept of Heaven or especially of resurrection. If you think death is the end of the story, then obviously the story is terrible sometimes. Williams’s view is that it is not the end.

That doesn’t mean those words are always helpful to parents who have lost a child to cancer, but arguments aren’t the purpose of that. Charity is. This is when you come alongside and listen.

Humphrys also said that Abraham was presented with a choice that God said “If you believe in me, you must sacrifice your child.” We can question the premise, but even if we go with it, note something important. Isaac never died. It was just to show how much Abraham believed in the promise that through Isaac his covenant of offspring would be fulfilled. Abraham had to believe that either God would stop it or else He would raise Isaac from the dead.

Sacks, the rabbi, also tells Humphrys that if Humphrys didn’t have faith, he wouldn’t ask the question. I think faith is being misunderstood, but I get at what Sacks is asking. The question is asked because you expect there to be an answer. Why? If this was an atheistic universe, well, it’s just some people are going to get the short straw and tough luck it turned out to be you. You can be comforting and kind to someone suffering, but there’s really no meaning in their suffering nor any ultimate hope.

Humphrys says Sacks ultimately says that if it happened, there must be a reason why it happened and God will use it for good. Can you argue with that? Humphrys says no, which is the problem for the problem of evil. The one using it has to demonstrate that there is no good reason for God to allow evil XYZ. Quite a tall order. Not only that, he also has to deal with all the positive arguments for God’s existence, which thus far Humphrys never does.

Thus far then, color me unconvinced.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: In God We Doubt Part 5

How does an agnostic describe Christianity? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The main point of this chapter of John Humphrys’s book I want to comment on is something he says in response to Cargo Cults. After describing them, he says we might find them to be ludicrous, but imagine going back in time and having to explain Christianity to people of the past. What would it look like?

I can assure you that my explanation would be nothing like what Humphrys says. This is a large part of the problem. Humphrys knows intelligent Christians. He could have easily ran this by them and all of them I am sure would have said “I don’t believe that!” Naturally, he didn’t. The description is too long to quote entirely, but as I read it, I didn’t recognize the worldview that I was reading.

He says that your God had His Son born of a virgin (Which I do affirm) and yet He was somehow the Son of God despite that, and He is a God of love who loves so much He had His own Son brutally killed to atone for everyone’s sins, but this was good since after He died He rose again and ascended into Heaven. Even if you are a non-Christian, just look at that introduction even. Does that sound anyway like how a Christian would present their message?

Let’s say something about this God of love part. Yes. God is a God of love, but the problem is so many people think He’s JUST love. Consider marriage as an example. Love is foundational to a marriage and greatly important, but while everything revolves around love, it is not just love. It’s building a life together, planning out finances, deciding about children, having a healthy sex life, learning to deal with conflict, etc.

As for what happened to Jesus, it is so much more than that. It is also about Jesus being the king of the world. Jesus is now the judge sitting at the right hand of God who will return to judge the world, but for now He rules and we are all to be in service to Him.

Okay, but that’s it. Right? That’s not so bad. Oh no. Humphrys has more to say.

He goes on to say you eat his body and blood which is not really His body and blood and it’s not one God, but three, because there is Father, Son, and a Holy Spirit. When asked about sacrifices, you say that they are not needed, but if you were honest, your God is also a mass-murderer and that millions have been killed in the name of His religion. As for blasphemers, Humphrys decides to switch to what you might say about Muslims and concludes your listeners might wonder who is primitive and who is civilized.

Except this isn’t an honest representation. It’s entirely a straw man. Humphrys would balk if we presented evolution as from goo to the zoo and then to you. Not only that, but he would be right to do so. Your opponents should be presented in their best light. That Humphrys doesn’t do this leads me to conclude he’s not really honest in his presentation.

On a minor point, he does have a comment about the Shroud of Turin which he says is a fake. Unfortunately, this is something still hotly debated and I have numerous books I can refer to that make a compelling case for the Shroud being authentic. Would it have killed Humphrys to consider presenting the case?

Finally, one statement he does get right a professor of divinity or an archbishop to know that if Jesus did not rise body and soul from the dead, then He is a mere mortal. There might be a great church in His name today, but He is a mortal, and he rightly quotes Paul saying that if Christ is not risen we are still in our sins. At least that much is right.

When we return to this work, Humphrys will start talking about the state of the nation.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

David Silverman’s Regret

What happens when you defeat your opponent only to unleash something worse? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Remember the new atheists? For a while, they were all the rage with people talking about them regularly. They made atheism more public than it had been before. While they had declared a war on religion, it was mainly Christianity. After all, Sam Harris began writing The End of Faith when 9/11 took place, and yet most of that was not geared towards Islam but Christianity.

And what is Sam Harris doing today? He’s well-known now for his remark about the 2020 election that he didn’t care if Hunter Biden had the bodies of dead children in his basement. All that mattered was getting Trump. Whatever you think of Trump, Harris’s statement is extremely problematic. He was willing to go with a known lie and sacrifice truth and lie to the public because, well, he knows what is better for them.

Silverman looks at what he saw and is aghast at it. I was recently pointed to an article he wrote on substack.

I cannot quote it entirely seeing as it is behind a paywall. (Remember, I have a Patreon below) However, I do have a friend who quoted a large part of it in sharing it. Basically, it’s about how the new atheism was supposed to destroy religion and thus create a utopia of freethought and rationalism where the days of insane religious ideas was behind us.

It didn’t work out that way.

First off, I am in no way saying the new atheists were really a formidable force. They weren’t. I have several blogs here on that front. However, they were certainly a force rhetorically. They had cute little slogans that seemed sensible, but most people weren’t interested in the unpacking necessarily to show their numerous errors.

Second, I am also sure if he were alive today that Christopher Hitchens would be one against this movement as well. That cannot be known for sure, but I do remember him as being one very interested in American history. When he visited SES for a debate, I was told he was impressed by the seminary and even offered to teach a course on Thomas Jefferson.

Third, and this is really important, I do want to commend Silverman on this. It takes a lot of guts to write a public article and say “I was wrong.” Silverman did that. We should not be attacking him for this. We should be commending him.

Now let’s look at the part that I have to quote.

I failed to consider that the members of my movement could reject skepticism yet label this rejection as skepticism to excuse their actions—and get away with it! I never envisioned that every significant player in the movement (save the fledgling Atheists for Liberty, on which I currently serve as Advisory Board Chair) would abandon our core principles and embrace the political hard Left, forsaking every belief and individual that was even slightly to the Right. I did not anticipate that the movement would leave the movement, become swallowed in Critical Social Justice, and lose its relevance and effectiveness in the process. I did not see it coming.
Man by nature is a religious creature. If you remove something for him to worship, he will find something else. That something could be himself, his own happiness. God is often a restraint in many ways on what a man can do. If a man knows there is a judge that He will stand before someday who has all the omni qualities, that can affect his living. If he knows what he does impacts for eternity, that should definitely affect his living.
While there is often something consistent between Christians and the right, the atheist movement saw it necessarily so. So why jump on the bandwagon to defend the LGBT group? Well, they oppose the Christians so let’s go for it! Anything that opposes Christianity is a friend since Christianity is seen as a great evil that has to be eradicated.
If man becomes the god, ultimately, that will pass to the state and who will become the new rulers? It will be those who consider themselves the elites. (Perhaps the term “brights” comes to mind?) It is a parallel with how the new atheists saw Christianity. After all, their opponents were the ones who were people of faith (Which they did not understand) and the new atheists were the people of reason. Obviously, reason is superior to faith. Right? Obviously then, what should be rejected are the standards the Christians lived with.
Thus, get rid of all of this outdated morality, especially when it comes to sex. Get rid of anything that is said to be “Faith-based” (A term I don’t like anyway.) If the Christians tend to want the people on the right to be our governing leaders, then we will reject that. Whatever we can use to paint Christians as the enemy, it will be done. If your identity is not to be found in Christ, then it will be found in your tribe instead.
So, what has happened since we “killed God”? Not atheist Utopia. We won the booby prize—the religion of wokeism has completely taken over the Left side of politics, splitting both families and the nation itself. Riding on a wave of vapid emotion and a juvenile refusal to apply skepticism, the Woke Left—mostly atheists—have embraced this belief system as though it were the greatest new religion ever. Maybe it is.
Any attempt by man to bring about Utopia on Earth has always failed. Always. My ex-wife was once going through a book about how what was being sought was progress and not perfection. Progress though requires a true goal. If progress is just wherever you are going, then everything is progress. However, if you are going the wrong direction, progress is turning around and going the other way.
Silverman is also right in that this has split families and our nation. The best way to split the nation is really to split the family. The family is the foundation. Remember that meme that was shared years ago before the Supreme Court redefined marriage about what would happen if “same-sex marriage” was allowed?
That bottom one? Yep. Happening now. It didn’t start falling apart when marriage was redefined, but that was a killing blow in many ways. I blame a lot of this going all the way back to the sexual revolution. We unleashed a power that we did not know what it was capable of.
And ironically as a Christian, I think what the chart says would happen didn’t, since two people of the same sex can’t marry each other no matter what the court says.
Could it be the sexual standards of Christianity had a point? Could it be there was a reason abortion was a great evil and reproduction was a great good? Could it be that there was a reason that marriage should be for life for the majority of people and that marriage isn’t about your personal happiness? Could it be there’s a danger that happens when sex is removed from the confines of marriage? Could it be there was a reason marriage was established as between one man and one woman?
The new atheists also saw Christians making their decisions based on emotion alone, something I have spoken against as well here, but made a mistake of thinking themselves immune to that. After all, they were the men of reason. They would not fall to such a thing. Unfortunately, they have. One of the surest signs you will fall for something is that you think you cannot fall for it.
I have said before that I am the man who has avoided pornography throughout my life. So in my dating life, I throw caution to the wind. Right? Wrong. Nowadays, I don’t go up elevators alone with women or ride in cars with them and if on a date, I would never go back to her place or have her come to mine. The moment I think I am above the temptation, I have started my fall.
However, lacking a deity, it allowed wokeism to reside within—and be propagated by—the state. This is why the Left has adopted it. We may have subdued the lion of Christianity, but we failed to eradicate religion; we merely revealed that the lion might have been safeguarding us from the Woke Kraken. This creature is now unshackled, entrenched in our government and education system, and is literally coming for your children.
Pay attention to that first part. Remove the deity, and the deity becomes something within. What is the means of the new evangelism? It is the State. When the Christians disagreed with you, they disagreed. They didn’t try to force their way. When the left disagrees, here comes the power of the State!
Silverman did not eradicate religion as was his goal. He instead just moved it somewhere else. He defeated in his mind what was the greater evil without realizing that that “evil” was keeping something else at bay. Chesterton said years ago that before you remove a fence, you should see why it was put up in the first place.
Christianity did serve to contain man’s great evil and propel him to something greater than himself, and not the state. It still does for many of us. It teaches us that there is a real king named Jesus and we owe our allegiance to Him. It teaches us that there is a real right and there is a real wrong and there is a purpose to our lives here and we are to seek more than just the temporary good.
This idea—that atheists should stop resisting and instead actively promote Christianity, perhaps even joining churches, in an attempt to fortify it so that it may defeat wokeism—is gaining traction. Evan Riggs wrote in the European Conservative: “This is a call for sheer pragmatism… Of the two inescapable religious choices before us, Christianity is undoubtedly the better option.” My friend Peter Boghossian echoed a similar sentiment, tweeting, “Better to believe that a man walked on water than all men can give birth.”
I have been pleased with what I have seen from Boghossian and Lindsay lately on this front, two writers I have critiqued on their work on atheism before. However, a word of caution to the atheist movement. You might just wind up seeing that there is a lot more reason and truth to Christianity than you thought. Be prepared. The king will not be used. Christianity is not a means to an end. We go with Christianity not because it produces the best end result, which it does, but because it is true.
Maybe you should consider that question as well.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: In God We Doubt Part 4

What happens when worldviews debate? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this chapter, Humphrys writes about an interaction between a Christian, William Lane Craig, and an atheist, Lewis Wolpert. It was a debate done in England and done to a packed house. Humphrys freely admits the reason for that was Craig. He also says most of the audience consisted of Christians.

So how does he describe Craig’s opening statement?

Craig had these arguments. The first is that God explains the origin of the universe in that whatever begins to exist had a cause and since the universe began to exist, it has a cause beyond it found in a personal God. Also, God fine-tunes the universe. Third, God makes sense of the reality of moral values. Fourth, the case for the resurrection of Jesus shows that Christianity is true. Fifth, God can be personally experienced. If you’ve seen Craig debate, you know all of these arguments already.

Now I have been paraphrasing, but when he gets to Wolpert’s response, I can easily quote him. This he says is the essence of Wolpert’s rebuttal:

It’s bunkum.
All of it.

He then says that of course, he said more with wit, but how can an atheist intellectually engage with a believer? This is an astounding claim. So Humphrys admits that five arguments are made and Wolpert’s response is just “It’s bunkum” and the problem is on the side of the believer?

For Humphrys, it boils down to one question.

“If God created the universe, what created God?”

Of course, if Humphrys had someone on like Edward Feser, he would find this question simple to dispense with. Naturally, Humphrys uses Dawkins’s quote about how complex the designer of the universe must be. All this assumes God is a material being composed of parts. As a strict holder of divine simplicity, I deny that outright. God’s very nature is to be and asking what made Him is like asking “What created existence?” It would have to be something that exists and then you get into a contradiction. Those looking to read Feser can go here. The second objection he deals with that is not serious is the one about “What caused God?” I will quote his final paragraph.

So, to ask “What caused God?” really amounts to asking “What caused the thing that cannot in principle have had a cause?”, or “What actualized the potentials in that thing which is pure actuality and thus never had any potentials of any sort needing to be actualized in the first place?”, or “What imparted a sufficient reason for existence to that thing which has its sufficient reason for existence within itself and did not derive it from something else?”  And none of these questions makes any sense.  Of course, the atheist might say that he isn’t convinced that the cosmological argument succeeds in showing that there really is something that could not in principle have had a cause, or that is purely actual, or that has a sufficient reason for its existence within itself.  He might even try to argue that there is some sort of hidden incoherence in these notions.  But merely to ask “What caused God?” – as if the defender of the cosmological argument had overlooked the most obvious of objections – simply misses the whole point.  A serious critic has to grapple with the details of the arguments.  He cannot short-circuit them with a single smart-ass question.  (If some anonymous doofus in a combox can think up such an objection, then you can be certain that Aristotle, Aquinas, Leibniz, et al. already thought of it too.)

Humphrys says that Craig and his followers dismiss the conundrum. I’m not defending Craig’s version of the cosmological argument, but it is not the classical one that was used by Aquinas and others. Theirs was not about the origin of the universe. We who use this one do not dismiss the question. We show why the question is a nonsense question. I suppose I can just easily say “But Humphrys and his followers dismiss any such interaction on those grounds and want to stick with what they think is a stumper.”

Along these lines, he also makes the case about Bertrand Russell’s teapot. I have already dealt with this here.

He then goes on to talk about Douglas Adams and says that when Adams put the words into God’s mouth that “I refuse to prove that I exist for proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing”, he got to the essence of religion.

It’s really embarrassing seeing what these people think is a powerful argument.

I challenge them to go back and see the word that was used in the time of Jesus, pistis, and show me where it was meant to be “Belief without evidence” and before they gleefully turn to Hebrews 11:1, nope. That’s not it. These people have bought into this false notion so long they’ve come to have “faith” in their idea of faith.

He then goes to Keith Ward who is a Christian and in response to his idea of God creating, asks why would God create the world if He already had everything for His happiness in Himself? Now you must understand that for an atheist, their fault with Christians is they ask questions and don’t do science to say “Let’s find out!” However, if you’re an atheist, you can just ask the question and the question alone is the defeater. Obviously, brilliant Humphrys has thought of a question that no one in 2,000 years of Christianity ever thought about.

The reply generally has been God’s desire to spread love beyond Himself. God created because creation is good and extending love is good and God wants to create other beings who will come into the joy that He has. It was said in the past, I think by the Celtics, that the Trinity has been in a dance of love for all eternity and mankind is made to join in the dance.

He then later says that if you are a Christian philosopher, don’t you already have the conclusion beforehand and find the arguments? This is simply a genetic fallacy. Even if that is the case, the arguments stand or fall. Could I not say to Humphrys “Don’t you already have the conclusion of Wolpert that it’s total bunkum and thus have the conclusion before the arguments? Sauce for the goose and all that.

He then goes on to say that something Craig said was foundational in his conversion was a smiling girl who got him to become a Christian. Naturally, Humphrys thinks Craig has stayed there. He has to after all. It can’t be the arguments. Gotta love atheist psychologizing. Craig’s arguments remain untouched. The man, on the other hand, has to be analyzed to find out why he’s really holding these positions.

I come back to what I said in the first part. Humphrys says someone with the mind of an inquisitive child can see past the arguments for God. Therefore, it must be a psychologizing thing. It’s too bad Humphrys doesn’t treat his skepticism the same way.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: In God We Doubt Part 3

What are the battle lines? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In chapter 2, (And we won’t always be going one chapter a day) Humphrys starts what he calls the battle lines. He has said that only recently in history have we been allowed to question the existence of God. I cannot help but wonder what history he is reading. These are usually people who don’t understand either the Crusades or the Inquisition, or both. The treatment of Galileo and Bruno (To be fair, we don’t talk about Bruno), also misunderstood, didn’t even happen during the so-called “Dark Ages.”

Yet then he goes and points to the Enlightenment as the dawn of rational debate. Seriously? What was going on between Augustine and Faustus? In the medieval schools of thought, debate was taking place regularly. The rule was even you couldn’t comment on your opponent’s view until you could say it in your own words to his satisfaction. (Would that we had that today!)

Naturally, he also has the line about debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. While in a sense, this is a real question to discuss, it was never one discussed in that period. It was one made up later on to mock the kind of discussions that took place in that period. Mission accomplished, I suppose.

He then writes about figures like William Lane Craig, Richard Dawkins, and Alister McGrath. He notes Alister McGrath as saying he converted to Christianity because it worked. He says that it actually brought purpose and dignity to life. I can accept this provided that by works we don’t mean something like Christianity meets emotional needs since as Lewis once said, if he just wanted to be happy, a bottle of port could do that. If he means it makes sense of the world we live in, that is fine.

Humphrys goes on to say that there is a lot of dogmatism on both sides of the debate, but to call Dawkins non-thinking is a bit below the belt. Of course, it was entirely acceptable to say in the first part that anyone with the mind of an inquisitive child can see through the arguments for the existing of God. No harm in implying that your opponents don’t think that well, but if you say something about the new atheists, well that’s just mean.

Do I think Dawkins is non-thinking? No, but he has a gigantic flaw many atheists have in their approach. When Dawkins writes about science as science it is beautiful. I imagine I could read him for hours as he describes the wonders of especially the animal world. Dawkins is a magnificent writer there.

However, he then takes the mindset that because he understands this, then he is also qualified to speak on theology and philosophy and history. The new atheists seem to assume that anything religious is nonsense and stupid and so they don’t need to study it. Many internet atheists do this today, and when they do, they make embarrassing blunders and cannot see it no matter how many times it gets pointed out to them.

So yes, when it comes to writing on religion, I do consider Dawkins to not really be thinking. There’s no real attempt to engage with the substance matter. If you want to see this, consider what I wrote on the shoddy research of the new atheism.

Humphrys says the approach of someone like Dawkins won’t work on many because they weren’t reasoned into their faith. They were born into it or indoctrinated or had a Damascus Road experience or something like that. It never seems to occur to him that that can happen on atheism as well.

There can be many non-intellectual reasons for being an atheist. They could have had an experience with evil and don’t understand why a good God would allow it, or they could not like the political stance of Christians, or they could even just want to have a free sex life without the idea they are doing something wrong. It is foolish to say that most Christians come to their position emotionally, but atheists don’t have that problem. News flash. Humanity has that problem.

However, when it comes to choosing a belief system, one should take the best proponents of it. Consider their arguments. Just as I as a Christian have to put up with bad arguments and reasons from fellow Christians that can make me cringe, atheists have to do the same. As Michael Ruse has said:

Their [the new atheists] treatment of the religious viewpoint is pathetic to the point of non-being. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing.

This is an accurate description. My copy of The Dawkins Delusion by Alister McGrath and his wife had a quote by Ruse on the front along the lines of “Dawkins makes me embarrassed to be an atheist and the McGraths show why.”

The problem with Humphrys when he fails to do this is the hidden implication that if you are a Christian, it is most likely for emotional reasons, but if you are an atheist, well that is most likely for intellectual reasons. He himself does this without dealing with the arguments for theism. As we go along, we will see that that happens consistently. I have not finished it thus far, but so far, I have not seen him dealing with the arguments, just with the arguers.

But we will see more next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: In God We Doubt Part 2

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

Let us continue looking at Humphry.

Humphrys is in England and talks about being raised going to church, except for his Dad. For Humphrys, there was no question that he would, but the problem of the father not going doesn’t surprise me. Humphrys admits that he was usually quite bored and had no idea what was meant by “The quick and the dead” or the Holy Ghost, or the Trinity. That is certainly a failure on the part of us to educate our youth.

He also said he read the Bible from cover to cover, but it might as well have been the phone book for all he got out of it. Again, there is this emphasis on experience. Could we not be overdelivering and not properly preparing people? I wonder about people who say “I get something new out of the Bible every day!”

He talks about the first time he took the Eucharist and how he expected something grand to happen since he was taking the body and blood of Christ. Well, it didn’t. I wonder how common this might be, and anyone in the Anglican or Catholic or Orthodox traditions can tell me. Again, could we be overdelivering? Is this not more a danger of putting the emphasis on experience. (That being said, he does say the words and the solemnity of the Eucharist still stays with him.)

He talks about being thirteen and the priest talking about the blood of Jesus and he’s sitting there and wanting to get between two of the girls in the church. What thirteen year-old boy doesn’t? I dare say he is not alone in this. Not condemning that either.

He also talks about how even after he left church, he still had prayer, but he doesn’t feel like he connected with anyone. Again, what does this mean? Do we gauge how well our prayer life is by how we feel as a result?

He does have what I think is a proper criticism of too many preachers. When trying to reach unbelievers, they will use the Bible as their authority for what the unbelievers should believe. The problem is that if they already believed the Bible, wouldn’t they agree? If they don’t believe it, then why share what they don’t believe?

If anything, Hanby at least shows that man does seem to have a spiritual desire of some kind wanting there to be something more, which is perhaps why it is really difficult to be an atheist. I daresay that I do not think anyone consistently lives out atheism. Someone like Nietzsche if he was here today would be stunned at the new atheists and tell them that they need to give up on these ideas of something being good if they get rid of Christianity and of God. Keep in mind, he also spent the last years of his life in a mental institution as he had gone insane.

We’ll continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Book Plunge: In God We Doubt Part 1

What is the challenge? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

As I started this book, Humphrys seemed to write with some kindness. I thought this might be different. It’s confessions of a failed atheist so maybe he would bring forth the best of both sides. As I have gone through this book, and I am still going through it, that is not the case.

The first part before chapter 1 is called the challenge, and it is not one. Right off the bat, we see where Humphrys is coming from.

I’ll tell you what’s easy. Atheism for a start. Anyone with the enquiring mind of a bright child can see that the case made for God by the three great monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – is riddled with holes. Christopher Hitchens rumbled God when he was nine – or so he tells us in his book on atheism, God Is Not Great. His teacher, Mrs Watts, had demonstrated to the class how powerful and generous God was by pointing out that he had made the trees and the grass green – exactly the colour that is most restful to our eyes – instead of something ghastly like purple.

So look people, if you don’t see that the case for monotheism is false, then you don’t even have the enquiring mind of a bright child. Unfortunately, Humphrys here doesn’t tell us what these holes are. Later on, he will produce what he thinks is a great stumper for us. Spoiler alert: It isn’t.

But as for the above, Hitchens goes on to say according to Humphrys that he knew that our eyes had become attuned to nature and not the other way around. If this did turn Hitchens into a fierce opponent of religion, then it more demonstrates childishness on the part of Hitchens. As for me, my answer is perhaps a bit of both. Does it really matter?

Humphrys does say that when it comes to the question of why is there something rather than nothing, this is hard question for atheists. Believers have an easy time. God made it all. Of course, this will get to our stumper later, though some of you can probably see where this is going.

I do not argue for intelligent design, but he says that belief in intelligent design is based on faith, hope, and a large dollop of wishful thinking. Evolution is based on reason and science. Whatever one might think about ID, they do at least present what they consider scientific data, and on some level, it is quite respectable, such as the idea of a Goldilocks zone or the anthropic principle. One could even say God intelligent designed through evolution.

In the very next paragraph, Humphrys tells us about how each cell in our body has a nucleus with two sets of the human genome and each genome contains enough information to fill 5,000 books. That’s something that is meant by ID. Does that mean it’s faith and hope with wishful thinking thrown in?

He also says for a believer, that whatever is happening right now is because God willed it and it is good. This might be for an extreme hyper-Calvinist, but I know several theists and I don’t know anyone who would hold to this. Humphrys doesn’t show us any examples either. We can say that all that God wills is good, but that not all that happens is because God directly wills it.

He talks about arguing with a well-known evangelical and asking if he would abandon belief in God if all his arguments were disproven. He said no. He would always believe in God and if it could be proved, it would not be faith. Assuming this account is accurate, I can also say that that is not at all what is meant by faith.

He then talks about the ferocity of the campaign of the enemies of faith, and with this he has in mind the New Atheists. Are they fierce? Yes, but at the same time I recall a neighbor once who had a little teacup poodle that I could hold in my hand easily and that one would turn fierce many times, and be licking my face the next. We all know of little dogs who think they are big dogs. Fierce? Yes, but that does not mean formidable, and the New Atheists are certainly not formidable.

Daniel Dennett, Lewis Wolpert, A. C. Grayling, Sam Smith, Christopher Hitchens, Michel Onfray. They are the masters of many disciplines – you could paper the walls of an aircraft hangar with their degrees and qualifications – admired and envied throughout academia and journalism for their knowledge and intellect. They argue their case, as you would expect, with skill, wit and passion. But ultimately they fail – at least for me.

Wit and passion can be granted, definitely passion. Skill? Not so much.

He goes on to say that it’s hard to not be impressed by the arguments of the atheists. Logic and science are on their side. Well, there you go! If you disagree with them, you are obviously not on the side of logic and science. Never mind that there are plenty of people on the other side who know logic and science as well.  Humphrys has accepted his conclusion already.

He goes on to say the good thing about science is that it can be proved. This is simply a false statement. Science cannot be proven. It is inductive. Does this mean we doubt it? No. It cannot be proven any more than it can be proven that George Washington was the first president of the United States. You cannot prove that, but there is not enough evidence anywhere near needed to overturn that.

What is science in one generation can be disproven by the next and should always be open to that. Many of the harder truths we know are not from science. I can easily anticipate that many of our beliefs about diet and health and other such matters could be shown to be false. I cannot anticipate that we will ever find evidence that it is okay to rape someone.

He then says the atheist demands proof while the theist turns to mystery. That might work for your average Christian in the pew, but the Christians I interact with in this field would never say that. Humphrys puts his opponents in the worst light and his allies in the best light.

He also says what the New Atheists have done is like a blitzkrieg and compares it to a boxing match where he wants to say at one point “Enough! Your opponent is down! You can stop hitting him!” You can search this blog for where I have reviewed New Atheist literature. It is not a blitzkrieg. It is barely even a spark.

He then describes how belief in God was going down and then the twentieth century was a real test of faith in a God of peace. Why? Yes, he is right that we killed and maimed each other more than ever before, but seems to ignore that perhaps this is because we did abandon that God of peace and He has no obligation to save us from ourselves. This was not a test for theism. This was a test for atheism, and atheism failed.

One final thing he says is that he doesn’t think people are stupid if they believe in God. No. He just says you don’t have the intellect of an enquiring bright child and you aren’t on the side of logic and science. But hey, you’re not stupid. He has already cut off that branch. Excuse me if I question the fruit he says comes from it.

We will continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

 

Book Plunge: God’s Gravediggers Part 7

Is there an afterlife? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I went to my copy of this on Kindle, which is how I read it, and I started looking through this chapter for what I highlighted. What is there? Turns out, there wasn’t anything.

There’s two reasons for this.

First off, I have not done a lot of looking into the question of the soul. Yes. I have read some matters, but if you ask me my opinion on these kinds of matters, I will refer you to other books. One cannot study everything.

Second was the biggest flaw I had with this chapter. There was nothing on near-death experiences. I consider near-death experiences (NDEs) to be some of the best evidence that can even be accepted by some secularists that on a general revelation principle can demonstrate that there is more to us than our bodies.

This data has been gathered for decades, and yet Bradley doesn’t interact with it at all. I have often said that this is one of my biggest problems with many atheistic writings. They do not interact with the best material on the other side.

Now I will briefly say what I can on the other points. For one thing, when we are told that if there is a soul, how do the body and the soul interact? This strikes me as a really poor argument because we all use things everyday that we don’t understand how they work.

I am a multi-tasker. As I sit here in my own room writing, I have a TV on, I have my Android phone here, and I’m on my laptop. There are two game consoles in here as well as an Alexa and an Echo. I can use all of them.

Please don’t ask me to explain how they work. I don’t have a clue.

Not only that, there’s something else in this room that I don’t have a clue how it works, but i use it every day. That’s my own body. If you remember the original Peter Pan movie, something that was hard to explain was how to fly. You just do it. For me, it’s like how I can try to explain to someone how to play a video game. I have to look at the controller when I do it, because for me, I touch the buttons so regularly that it’s second nature and I don’t always remember what button I am pushing when I have to explain it.

So picture this. How would you explain to someone how to walk? How am I willing myself to type at this computer? I am sure there are some people who have written on this, but I am speaking from my own experience and that’s that I have no clue. I can have an idea that I want to write something and yet do nothing, but then somehow I start typing and I cannot explain the difference.

So ultimately, someone who is interested in body-soul debates could say a lot more than I have here, but ultimately, while there are hard questions, the questions don’t pose to me much of a problem in light of the other evidence that is not touched by Bradley. Namely, this is the NDE aspect. I would have liked to have seen that, but I am not surprised that I didn’t.

Next time, we look at much more liberal ideas that he interacts with.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)