Runaway Planet

QUESTIONS ABOUT CHRISTIAN TRUTH CLAIMS: A RESPONSE TO LISTENER EMAIL

I received this nice email from a listener to the podcast (click here for iTunes) of some of my radio show debates and thought it was worth posting here. My response follows.

Dear Mr Johnson,

The evidence you proposed, as far as I understood it, was that it is more conceivable that Jesus rose from the dead than that certain people chose to follow the teachings of Jesus through persecution and to their eventual deaths. I must admit that although this seemed an absurd argument to me at first, I have thought about it quite considerably and I dismissed it less lightly than I did originally. Haven't many people been willing to die for other faiths and beliefs, this doesn't prove that their beliefs were correct. What other evidence proves that Christianity is the true faith or indeed that there is a creator at all?

If it is true that Jesus performed all these miracles and if I witnessed them then maybe I would believe too. However the only reason for believing this is based on scripture, which is part of Christianity and christian writings. There is no impartiality there, nothing to prove that stories weren't embellished or even made up. I am sometimes confronted by stubborn and ignorant people who claim that there is no evidence for evolution because I haven't seen evolution occur, in a sense I'm not there as it  Happened and yet these same people expect me to believe something on the basis of a testament from witnesses far removed from myself.

Is Christianity more rational than Judaism, or Islam?

I am also surprised by your views about science and religion, I wouldn't argue that there can be an intelligent conversation about faith and god within the context of religion, but it is a self contained system (like having a debate within the lord of the rings universe). That doesn't mean that nothing can be gained from religious debate, especially when it comes to understanding between different beliefs and exploring one's own beliefs.

You seem to think that we shouldn't separate faith and science, but we have to because there are many faiths but only one science. As much as religion can be rationalized it must still have certain elements of faith, the only faith that science requires is a faith in the scientific method to yield results and you wouldn't argue with that would you?

Finally I notice you class atheism as a religion and I can agree that it is a faith in a sense because you have made a decision on what to believe (although it isn't a religion in that it isn't an organized set of laws by which to lead your life). What is your view on agnostics? In my opinion science is more akin to being agnostic, taking the view that we cannot form definite opinions on a subject where evidence is too thin.

Here is my response:

TEACH THE CONTROVERSY

Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews, a self-described Darwinist, today wonders why much of the scientific community is so afraid of letting the intelligent design argument into schools. After all, what's wrong with a little debate?

SCIENCE AND RELIGION COMING TOGETHER

Some very wise words from the new recipient of the Templeton Prize for advancement in spiritual knowledge, UC Berkeley professor Charles Townes:

"If you look at what religion is all about, it's trying to understand the purpose and meaning of our universe," he said in a telephone interview from New York this week. "Science tries to understand function and structures. If there is any meaning, structure will have a lot to do with any meaning. In the long run they must come together."

Townes is absolutely right to argue that science and religion must support each other. As he explains in the rest of the article, there is only one ultimate truth about reality and since science and religion both claim to explain part of that truth, good science and good religion cannot contradict. That is one more reason to believe Christianity. It is the one religion that not only accepts this premise, but is supported by the evidence this premise produces.

FIGHTING THE DEVIL

Devil fighting has been getting a lot of press lately. Not only did Keanu Reaves' Constantine open last weekend, but we learned that the Vatican is making a concerted effort to train exorcists. According to the LA Times,

The Catholic church is facing a shortage that you might not have heard about: qualified exorcists.

Thursday about 100 priests stood, prayed for protection, then sat down to begin an eight-week study of how to distinguish and fight demonic possession.

The course at Rome's Regina Apostolorum, a prestigious pontifical university, represents the first time a Vatican-sanctioned study at this level has been dedicated to exorcism.

In Italy, the number of exorcists has soared over the past 20 years to between 300 and 400, church officials say. But they aren't enough to handle the avalanche of requests for help from hundreds of tormented people who believe they are possessed. In the United States, the shortage is even more acute.

One of the more interesting things about this story is that it lays bare people's worldview presuppositions. Many in the media have reacted to this effort with mocking condescension For example, I heard radio talk show host Bill Handel refer this morning to people who think they are possessed as "lunatics" (or something along those lines).

It is important to understand that this reaction is not usually based on any evidence or have any well thought out support. Instead it is based on an article of faith - a belief that says the universe is a closed system of cause and effect and made up of strictly matter. In other words, the mocking reactions are based on a blind trust in philosophical naturalism. There is no evidence for this belief - it is simply accepted. As such, conclusions reached based on this worldview are not as solid as they are made out to be.

For example, if a hurting person has symptoms that could be interpreted as legitimate demon activity, people who hold to naturalism never allow for that theory to be surfaced because they have already decided that can't be true. Not based on the evidence, or on good science, but on blind faith in their worldview.

As such, they immediately conclude that any problems must have some sort of psychological (biological) basis. (Notice that if only matter exists, there can be no real difference between psychology and biology in a naturalistic worldview - that is why drugs are described for psychological disorders.)

This is a real weakness in contemporary health care, and I, for one, applaud the Vatican for addressing people's needs at more than a surfacy, physical level. I think the evidence strongly suggests that angels and demons are real and that we do live in a supernatural battle zone. To ignore this theory based on nothing but blind faith seems to me the height of folly.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN INSTRUCTION

Michael Behe explains what the Intelligent Design movement is (and is not) in this morning's NY Times. He starts by addressing the perhaps the biggest misconception in the controversy, one that is promoted explicitly by Gerald Zelizer in this morning's USA Today:

Evolution makes specific propositions that are testable, provable and disprovable through a measurable and observable process that takes place in nature. That categorizes it as science. Intelligent design, on the other hand, cannot be proved or disproved by natural evidence because its design is supernatural. That categorizes it as religion.

Absolutely wrong. The claim of ID is that it is much better science than evolution - and it is. This is not about science versus religion - its about science versus science, and as I have said before, religion versus religion.

MORALITY AND EVOLUTION

Added an interesting blog to my list today. Check out Ex Nihilo and this post about the moral implications of evolutionary theory.

STICKER WARS

Chuck Colson has some interesting thoughts about the removal of the "evolution is a theory" stickers in Georgia (see below for original post on this story):

This is just the latest example of a plague of intellectual blindness among our secular elites.

In Georgia’s Cobb County, school officials added the stickers two years ago onto the textbooks which presented evolution as an established fact, ignoring competing ideas about life’s origins. Now, this is not just another burst of Christian-bashing. What this ruling really represents is a blindness to reality—a mindset rampant within our culture.

According to this mindset, any challenge to Darwinism is by definition religious. Now, imagine applying this logic to any other area. Suppose your state passed a law against murder, and the ACLU went to court, claiming it was an endorsement of religion. After all, the Ten Commandments prohibit murder! Or imagine someone suing a town over its zoning laws. The Bible tells us to put a fence on our roof so that no one will fall off. Are building codes, therefore, religious? If the courts approached conflicts over other laws the way they do over biology, we’d soon have no laws left at all—except maybe pooper-scooper laws, because I don’t think the Bible says anything about that.

Check out the rest of the article here.

RELIGIOUS LAB RATS

I argue often in this space that religion is often misunderstood to be a tool that humans use to achieve certain ends - perhaps comfort or meaning in trying times, etc. The premise of this false notion is that religion is not objectively true - it does not tell us anything about reality - but rather is a projection of the mind. In the context of a naturalistic worldview in which matter is all there is,  the brain works up "useful lies" in order  to get through human animal through life.

Here is a story that gives a perfect example of this idiocy taken to its logical ends. Researchers in Britain are preparing to conduct pain experiments on "faith-filled" humans to see if they can locate the neurological basis of religious belief. By determining where it comes and how it operates, one assumes they think that perhaps they will be able to start controlling it and do great things for the world like deprogramming terrorists of their convictions.

The study could help to reveal how faith is represented in the brain. Other projects will look into the conditions that make people susceptible to strong yet irrational beliefs, such as the age people are exposed to certain ideas and the frequency with which religious messages are reinforced.

The centre has been set up for an initial two years with a $2m (£1m) grant from the US-based John Templeton Foundation, which promotes research into theology and science.

"People are realising these are the most exciting questions that anyone can ask," said Lady Greenfield. Understanding the basis of religious and other types of belief could help to shed light on the surge in fundamentalism and terrorism.

"One of the fundamental reasons why religious beliefs have to be taken seriously ... is that they are potentially very dangerous, and that can be true of other dogmatisms too," said John Brookes, professor of science and religion at Oxford.

Unbelievable.

(And how is it that the people on this planet who understand religion the least are the religion professors?)

INSECURE BELIEVERS

Tsunami relief agencies are being closely monitored in order to make sure they are not trying to proselytize the local Muslim population. I have to wonder what Muslims (an admittedly they are not the only religious group that frowns on evangelism from outsiders - the Southern Baptists got in trouble for targeting Jews, for example) are so afraid of when it comes to letting people who believe different than they do have a say.

If what Muslims believe is true, it should hold up quite nicely in the marketplace of ideas, should it not? An if it is false, I would think they would want to know that. Who wants to go through life believing a lie? Come to think of it, I could say the same thing about militant Darwinists who want to ban discussing intelligent design theory in the classroom. (see previous post) If Darwinsism is true, what is the problem? Everyone should be able to see that the evidence supports your position, right? The evidence does support it, doesn't it? Hardly.

FACTS OR FANTASY?

The creation / evolution war is heating up this week, as battles in Georgia and Pennsylvania over what to teach kids made the headlines. As usual, it is reported by the media to be a fight between religion and science. It is no such thing, but when you have religious studies professors giving quotes about creationists like this, one can understand why are confused:

"A lot of the Lutherans have lived there for generations, primarily rural and blue collar, a very stable population that goes back to the 18th century, and it's a conservative group," says Annabelle Wenzke, a religious studies professor at nearby York College. "They think religion deals with facts and the here and now."

They believe religion deals with facts and the hear and now because IT DOES, Professor Wenzke. You may think religion is the opiate of the simple minded, but it is you who are mistaken, not them. Religion is about explaining the facts of the universe and one should follow the evidence to the best explanation of the universe one can find. Ironically, it takes far more reality denying faith to believe in the religion of the Darwinists - that matter is all there is and that it popped into existence from nothing and has been evolving ever since - than it does to believe in a Creator God. This is a not a battle between science and religion, it is a battle between philosophical naturalism and theism. Science is just a tool to gather and examine the evidence and all the good science supports theism.

MORE: Here is an interesting post from worldmagblog on the nature of faith.