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Posts from the ‘Apologetics’ Category

Jun 18

11 Comments

Searching for God Knows What

Last night at our young adults group we talked about, among other things, the frequently encountered view that Christianity is a strange relic of the past, that has nothing useful to say to us in the present, no normative force or existential/moral relevance in a world that has “grown up.” It is a well-rehearsed and often repeated story: once upon a time, primitive people thought there was objective meaning in the cosmos, we now know this to be false, and our only course of action is to salvage what personal meaning we can from the scrap heap of a random and chaotic universe. Read more

May 17

18 Comments

Marvels, Meat, and Minds

A few weeks back, while browsing the Regent College Bookstore, I was surprised to see a new book by Marilynne Robinson called Absence of Mind that deals with issues around the philosophy of mind. I was familiar with, and deeply appreciative of, Robinson’s novels (e.g., Gilead and Home), but this topic seemed like a rather radical departure for her—at least based on my limited exposure to her work. I did a quick scan and of the contents, mentally put the book on my “to read someday” list, and pretty much forgot about it. Read more

May 12

9 Comments

The Only Question That Matters

I’m still mulling over some of the excellent lectures I heard last week at Regent College’s Pastors Conference on Science and Faith. One lecture, in particular, focused on the “new atheists” (who are increasingly becoming, well, not new) and their often simplistic misunderstandings of the scope of science, the relationship between science and faith and the roles both play in our consideration and adoption of world-views (incidentally, I noticed today that David Bentley Hart has another wonderfully entertaining and insightful critique of the new atheism up over at First Things). The basic idea in the lecture (delivered by Denis Alexander) was familiar enough: just because science can explain one level of reality very well, it is not thereby equipped to explain or even suited to address every level of reality. All that was very good, if relatively standard stuff. Read more

Apr 13

20 Comments

A “Thick Enough” Worldview

The controversy around the Bruce Walke story has led to some interesting conversations (on this blog, and elsewhere) about the relationship between science and faith, questions about how we read Scripture, and others. One of these conversations took place this morning. Read more

Dec 15

12 Comments

On Empathy and Exclusivity

I couldn’t help but be curious when I saw the title of Vancouver Sun spirituality and ethics columnist Douglas Todd’s latest article come through my reader this afternoon: “Embattled Clergy Could Use Christmas Empathy.” Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I read on to discover why I might be the appropriate destination for someone’s Christmas empathy. Read more

Jul 1

8 Comments

Stuck in the Cave

It’s fairly common these days to see religious belief presented as a kind of primitive holdover from our superstitious past. So in that sense, yesterday’s article from the National Post‘s religion blog, “Holy Post” was nothing new. What was interesting was the angle Prof. Hank Davis has apparently taken in his book called Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in the Modern World. The objects of Davis’s criticism—what he sees as prime examples of “caveman logic”—are the purposive phrases we use in everyday life. “It was a sign,” “thank God,” even “good luck”—we use these phrases seemingly instinctively (in fact, Christians seem to have a whole separate arsenal of them: “it was a ‘God thing’,” “it’s all part of God’s plan,” etc.). But do they make any contact with what is objectively true? For Davis, the answer is obviously “no.” Read more

Jun 18

17 Comments

How Do We Know God?

A quick look at the calendar shows that we are coming up on the one year anniversary of a very happy day in my life—the completion of my thesis. This is probably one of those anniversaries that will remain significant in my mind only, but I figured it’s as good a time as any to reflect on the subject matter I spent sixteen months of my life reading/writing about. I’ve continued to follow the exploits of folks like Dawkins and Hitchens over the last year as well as those who “defend the faith” against them. Mostly, the tone and the content of the discussions have seemed fairly belligerent, sterile, and unhelpful to me. The same old arguments, the same old defenses. People on both sides simply dig in their heels, talk a little louder (or more condescendingly), and try to prove who’s really the smartest. All in all, it’s not very inspiring stuff. On this level, I do not miss the debate. Read more

Jun 27

6 Comments

Done!

Well, sixteen months of toil came to an end today as I finally submitted my thesis for grading. I can’t tell you how good it felt to plunk that big stack of paper down at the Regent front office today. I am very relieved to have this completed—it’s a huge load off my mind. For those who might (still) be wondering about what, exactly, I’ve been beavering away at for so long, I’ve reproduced the abstract below. If you’re interested enough to read more, drop me an email and I’ll send you a copy. Read more

May 9

12 Comments

The Peculiar Human Organism

One of the central components of my thesis (which is, mercifully, coming closer to completion) is that the new atheist account of reality is not “deep” enough—it does not provide a rich or satisfying enough account of the phenomenology of being human. Huge swaths of human existential concerns are relegated to the realm of evolutionary peculiarities or “misfirings” in the attempt to squeeze everything into what John Haught has called an “explanatory monism” which assumes that one mode of explanation—the scientific one—is all we need. This reductive approach to human beings is then held alongside (awkwardly and incoherently, in my view) an arrogated moral authority in the attempt to discredit the very religious traditions which it is unwittingly borrowing from. Read more

Apr 22

4 Comments

A Strange Salvation

One of the dangers of choosing a thesis topic related to a relatively recent (and controversial) socio-cultural phenomenon is that there is invariably a lot of material produced on the subject that one should at least attempt to keep abreast of while writing. In the case of the phenomenon that is the new atheism, this is proving to be a monumental task. Read more

Apr 14

15 Comments

How Do You Know?

This weekend, a friend alerted me to an interesting DVD special where four of the more prominent atheists out there right now (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris) get together for a round-table discussion. The two hour unmoderated discussion is, interestingly, entitled “The Four Horsemen“—a reference, presumably, to the protagonists’ understanding of themselves as the agents entrusted with the hastening of the demise of the blight upon human history that is religion.
Read more

Jan 21

3 Comments

Truth and Beauty

A couple of interesting conversations over the last couple of days have got me thinking about the relationship between truth and beauty. First, I had the chance to talk over a couple of ideas related to my thesis with my brother during a rare visit out to Saskatchewan this past weekend. We spent some time last night on the nature of the new atheism’s protest against God/religion, and how as human beings we simply do not and cannot know as much as we might like prior to making decisions about ultimate matters such as these. The “what if we’re wrong about all this?” question still comes to mind now and then (at least my mind) and I suspect that this is a normal part of life for most people, whichever side of the atheist/theist divide they find themselves on. Read more

Nov 6

2 Comments

Who Goes Where (or Who Cares)?

A couple of articles in the New York Times caught my eye over the past couple of days, the first dealing with the “conversion” of a prominent atheist and the second using this “conversion” in a discussion of the problem of evil. Antony Flew is a British philosopher who in 2004 announced, after a lengthy career as a professional philosopher devoted, at least in part, to arguing for the truth of atheism, that he had changed his mind. Professor Flew is apparently now an advocate of a form of deism—a long way away from belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but a significant change of course from the the position he held for the bulk of his career, to put it mildly. Read more

Sep 8

37 Comments

What’s Religion Ever Done for Us?

I’ve come across Sigmund Freud relatively frequently over the last couple of years, and I’ve read and heard just enough to be familiar with the broad outlines of his views on religion. Simply put, he wasn’t very high on it. According to Freud, religion represents the childish illusion of a creature that lacks the intellectual fortitude or the courage to face the world as it really is. It is the projection of all our fears and hopes onto an imaginary cosmic screen in order to provide comfort and security in a world where neither are possible. Freud (along with Schopenhauer, Marx, and Nietzsche) is often presented as a paradigmatic example of the modern atheistic critique of religion. It’s for the weak and the deluded, a “collective neurosis” for those who can’t handle the cold hard realities of the world in which we live. Read more

Aug 30

7 Comments

Everything Will Be All Right?

I’ve been reading a lot of Peter Berger lately. His approach to theology, not to mention his honesty regarding doubt and certainty are aspects of his thinking that I am finding deeply resonant. He calls his approach to theology “inductive” in that it starts from human experience in the world, and then proceeds to ask what might account for it. While he certainly doesn’t claim that this provides us with proof of God’s existence, he does think there are enough “signals of transcendence” to take seriously the idea of a personal God who is in the process of redeeming a damaged world. Read more

Jun 3

7 Comments

Forgiveness and the “Poison” of Religion

I suspect that many do not share my interest in topics such as the problem of evil, the rise of neo-atheism, and whatever else I tend to post on ad nauseum. So if any are exasperated or wondering why I keep referring to the same topics and the same authors over and over again I can only plead, in my defense, that in the middle of researching a cluster of subjects one tends to filter almost all of what one sees and hears through that grid. I anticipate that someday—some glorious, eschatological, post-thesis day—my horizons will broaden; but until that day… Read more

May 28

7 Comments

Fear, Zen Neighbours, and the Nature of Faith

I’ve been thinking a lot about fear over the last couple of days. A couple of conversations and an article contribute to what follows. First, I had a discussion last night with someone who is struggling to navigate the tension that is arising in a church which is becoming polarized over the issue of whether or not the “Emergent Church” is a phenomenon that ought to be embraced or rejected. Not surprisingly, there are strong feelings on both sides of this issue, but at least as troubling as the division this is causing is the role that fear is playing in the discussion. I am certainly no cheerleader for the Emergent Church (in fact, I wish whatever it is that this term designates would just emerge already…), but I am troubled by the attempts of some to convince others that the ideas of this movement are “dangerous” and that we have to be “careful” that they don’t lead our children woefully astray. This seems to be nothing more than fear-mongering to me, and it does not portray the beliefs one is attempting to “protect” in a very positive light. Read more

May 22

2 Comments

Hard-Wired for Redemption

The concept of redemption has occupied my mind for quite some time now, partly, I suspect, due to my interest in the problem of evil. The existence of evil forces serious reflection on what it means to be a human being—both in terms of what and how we think about evil, and what we do about it. Human beings have the capacity to both imagine and work towards improvement—to bring goodness out of evil, truth out of falsehood, beauty out of ugliness. From my perspective, this redemptive capacity is one of the most important and praiseworthy elements of human nature. Read more

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