withallyourmind.net

It’s a precept of my Christian faith that my redemption comes through Christ. But I’m also a big believer in the Golden Rule, which I think is an essential pillar not only of my faith, but of my values and my ideals and my experience here on Earth. And I’m also a believer, as part of my faith, that I am a limited being, with limited understanding. And so I operate on the basis of, I operate knowing what I know for myself, but not presuming that I know everything, certainly not enough for me to condemn others, or to presume that their path is wrong.

These words were uttered by a presidential candidate in a recent Newsweek article about his religious faith. Melinda, over at Stand to Reason, has an excellent post in which she takes a closer look at this explanation of religious conviction. In her insightful commentary, she notes the following:

This, of course, isn’t an unusual sentiment these days - even among those who profess Christ, as the Senator does. But the only way a rational person can make such a statement is if they don’t believe religion is objectively true with any factual basis. This kind of statement can only be made if religion is a different kind of conviction than the rest of our beliefs that we live and function by. Religion is a personal preference with no objective, rational, truthful basis. The evidence that this is how Senator Obama views religion is how he treats other things he believes in, like politics. He is running for president because he thinks he knows the solutions for America and he’s comfortable saying that President Bush and Senator McCain are wrong in politics. Why else would you run for president and be interested in putting your ideas into public policy and law? So he’s comfortable presuming he knows true things that he wants to persuade others of in politics, but not religion because religion is somehow not truthful or factual in the same way.

She further notes:

Disagreeing with someone’s religion is not condemning them. Saying someone will go to Hell isn’t condemning them. It’s expressing a viewpoint. We don’t have control over whether someone goes to Heaven or Hell, and it’s possible we are wrong. But it’s God who condemns - or forgives. Not us. This common compulsion to compare disagreement with condemnation is false.

Here’s what I would love for a politician to say in reference to his religious beliefs (and moral beliefs for that matter). “I am firmly convinced that my religious faith (whatever that might be, Christian, Muslim, etc.) is true. That, of course, means I think other religious viewpoints are false in many of thier claims. Since we make contradictory claims, we cannot all be correct. I feel similarly about my political views. I believe I am right and the other candidate is wrong. This does not make one a bad person. I could be wrong about my beliefs and am always willing to reexamine them and rationally discuss them with those who disagree. I believe people should be free to embrace whatever religious beliefs which they feel are correct.”

Wouldn’t that be refreshing? (Of course, perhaps the person is a pluralist, in which case he should simply state that he is. He should then drop the line about his own faith and admit that all belief is equally true and valid and he chooses his own faith for reasons other than the truth value of it.)

In Al Mohler’s latest blog entry, Modernity, Madness, and Morals, he uses a recent Minette Marrin article in the London Times discussing a secular form of ethics called rational choice theory. According to this theory of ethics, which has features of a social contract theory, a person decides what is the correct course of action based on a rational choice. Mohler summarizes:

More recently, moral philosophers have settled on a more clearly secular theory of morality — rational choice theory. According to rational choice theory, people tend to settle on a moral code that fits their needs and leads, or is likely to lead, to their desired outcomes. In other words, individuals make a rational choice. A young woman might make a rational choice not to engage in premarital sex because she does not want to harm her reputation or opportunities or marriage. A young man might not shoplift because it would harm his chances of advancement. Rational choice theorists argue that their theory can explain virtually any human behavior, including moral choice.

As Marrin laments, and Mohler agrees, such a theory fails as an adequate theory upon which a society can base morality and ethics. Mohler uses the analogy of two boys, the first of which does well and receives positive reinforcement for his “good” decisions. The second receives no such reinforcement. Mohler observes:

The second boy has no experience of similar controls. He does not expect life to go better for him if he behaves well. He may lack parents who would even teach him how to behave, much less reward him when he obeys and punish him when he disobeys. Instead, he learns that cutting corners, breaking rules, flaunting his misbehavior, and playing the part of the “bad” boy works for him. He gets more attention (even if negative attention) and gains the respect of his peer structure by misbehavior.

Marrin astutely observes:

Morality depends on having something to lose. It isn’t just a matter of learning right from wrong, least of all in a post-religious society. Morality is socially constructed. I will respect your property and your person because I want you to respect mine. We both have something to lose. One does not have to be educated in political philosophy to understand that ancient deal. But if I have neither property nor respect from anyone, what’s in the deal for me?

Rational-choice theory certainly explains much of our behavior, but it is incapable of providing a firm basis of morality. This is the first of Mohler’s observations. The second is since much of our behavior may be explained by rational choice, humility should be embraced by all Christians who think they’re “good.” Much of our good behavior may be readily explained simply on the basis of rational choice. There is no place for pride. Mohler concludes thusly:

The rational choice theorist has little or nothing to say to the boys and young men of Minette Marrin’s concern. The Christian church does have something to say — the liberating truth of the Gospel. But in order to be heard, we had better first be humbled by the honest recognition that we are not as “good” as we like to think. We are all delinquents — every last one of us.

Mary Jo, of Confident Christainity, has reviewed Eckart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose, here. This book has been touted by Oprah Winfrey in her promotion of her new age religious philosophy.

Mary Jo does a nice job explaining the basic premises of the book and pinpointing the major problems:

Though there are numerous problems with Tolle’s philosophy, there are three glaring issues that I will touch on in this review: 1) Tolle’s view of thought processes: Through excessive reliance on thinking, reality becomes fragmented (page 196) and Being must be felt. It can’t be thought (page 40), 2) The problem of special knowledge, and 3) The refuting of “either/or” logic using “either/or” logic.

She fleshes out these problems in more detail in her post. While acknowledging that Tolle is not wrong in everything he states in the book, she asserts that much more is wrong than is right. She further states:

This is only a brief review of some of the problems with Tolle’s book. There are many more issues to deal with such as the relativism problem, the revisionist history included, and the cherry-picking of arguments to make a better case. There are also numerous theological issues; such as Tolle’s concept of the Christian view of God, his exegesis of passages of Scripture, his doctrine of the nature of man, and his doctrine of Jesus.

This NY Times article discusses a controversial ancient tablet that was found approximately 10 years ago, but is now attracting lots of attention. This stone, which some call Gabriel’s Revelation (Since it contains an apocalypse given by the Angel Gabriel), was found in the Dead Sea area and is possible a Dead Sea Scroll on a 3 foot high piece of Stone. It is felt to date from the first century B.C.

The controversy arises from a small section of the text in which many words are missing and is very hard to make out what the text is saying. Some believe that the tablet contains a reference to a Jewish messiah figure who dies and is then resurrected three days later. The significance of this, according to one scholar, Israel Knohl:

“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

New Testament scholar Ben Witherington has a brief commentary on the significance of this tablet at his website and Amy Hall, of Stand to Reason, comments on the finding here.

The bottom line is this:

1. Ben thinks the tablet is probably authentic given the guys who have examined it and have weighed in on its authenticity and dating.

2. The section which is said to contain the reference to the death and resurrection of a messiah figure three days later is not at all clear and there may be some reading into the text what one wishes the text to say.

3. Let’s assume the tablet is authentic and the text does contain the reference which some claim that it does. What follows? Nothing which “shakes our basic view of Christianity. As Amy points out, it seems that the outcome is rigged against the basic truth of the Christian message. For a long time, critics have claimed that the resurrection story cannot be true because the Jews of that time had no concept of such a messiah. This story, therefore, must have been subsequently added back in to the Gospels to make them support later Christian teaching. Now that we have possible found a 1st century B.C. Jewish source which does contain the concept of a resurrected messiah, the Gospel message is obviously not true since it just copied from an earlier Jewish source.

4. It is not surprising that there might be 1st century B.C. references to such a messiah given certain O.T. texts, such as Isaiah 53.

5. The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth should be evaluated on its own evidence (which is substantial), whether or not there was such a concept in the Jewish thought of that time.

Ben Witherington concludes:

This stone certainly does not demonstrate that the Gospel passion stories are created on the basis of this stone text, which appears to be a Dead Sea text. For one thing the text is hard to read at crucial junctures, and it is not absolutely clear it is talking about a risen messiah. BUT what it does do is make plausible that Jesus could have said some of the things credited to him in Mk. 8.31, 9,31, and 10.33-34.

Addendum: (Al Mohler also addresses the topic here.)

Yesterday, I came across what appears to be an excellent website and resource for presenting and defending the Christian worldview, PleaseConvinceMe.com. There is a wealth of material available covering a range of topics pertaining to Christian apologetics. I appreciate the nonconfrontational approach with which these topics are discussed. Check it out.

The latest edition of Truth & Consequences, a product of Summit Ministries, is a piece by Chuck Edwards encouraging Christians to engage the culture. After discussing the impact of popular culture on society, Edwards turns to the mandate Christians have to shape that culture. He does so by appealing to Genesis 1:28 in which God gives man the responsibility to care for creation, and then to Matthew 5:13-16 in which Jesus refers to his followers as “salt” and “light” in the world.

Edwards then challenges Christians to impact culture from the perspective of a Christian worldview. Here are his closing remarks:

Learning to be discerning enables the Christian to avoid two undesirable extremes: what Brian Godawa describes as cultural anorexia and cultural gluttony. Anorexia is avoiding the culture altogether. On the other hand, cultural gluttony ignores how popular culture affects us, for good and evil, and takes it all in indiscriminately, consuming everything in front of us.

A third alternative for the Christian is to engage the culture: “interacting redemptively” with non-believers by understanding the good things in our popular culture and using those as a bridge to God’s truth.

Again, Paul models for us how to engage the culture when he spoke before the religious and civic leaders of Athens (recorded in Acts 17). Here we see Paul as a student of his culture; he did not try to isolate himself from it. He had studied the religious worldviews of his day, even looking “carefully” at their idols. In his speech before the Athenian leaders, he quoted from their own pagan poets and philosophers (apparently from memory). He discerned what was true in their pagan worldview and used that as a starting point to present what they had missing concerning God’s true nature, man’s true nature, and God’s redemptive plan through Jesus Christ.

Based on a biblical worldview, if our culture is tasteless and wicked it is because Christians are not doing their job! We cannot point fingers of blame at non-believers if our society is deteriorating. Non-Christians are simply living according to their view of life. Therefore, those of us who understand the truth must live it out on every level of society, from the boardroom to the classroom and the courtroom, and yes, even the sound stage. There is no area of society that is outside God’s concern. Cultural discernment and engagement are part of our Christian calling.

Access Research Network, an organization which seeks to provide accessible information on science, technology and society from an intelligent design perspective, has launched a new website called ID Arts. As an ID supporter who also has an interest in the arts, the site looks quite interesting. The website contains the following explanation about their site:

Our worldview impacts all areas of life including the arts. The arts also reflect philosophical and cultural trends in human societies. If philosophical and scientific concepts of intelligent design (ID) are valid, we believe they will both inspire, and be reflected in, our art, music, literature and film.

This is not a brand new observation, of course. Francis Schaeffer has written numerous books explaining the relationship between worldview and art and culture. ID Arts further explains its goals:

We’ve been talking with artists, musicians, authors, poets, and filmmakers about these ideas and we’ve discovered several who are already producing creative works that fit into the ID Arts category. This website features the work of some of these artists and we hope will inspire others. Our desire is that the ID Arts initiative will open up a whole new dialogue in our culture about whether we live in a world of chance or a world of design.

The homepage of the site contains a small reproduction of apainting by Salvador Dali called Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid (See below). I’ve actually seen this large painting in person at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. It also links to this interesting commentary on the work by Jonathan Ashar. In it, Ashar concludes (you’ll have to read more of the commentary to see his support for his conclusion):

The Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid is essentially a tribute to lives lost in the Barcelona flood. However, Dalí makes the painting into a synthesis of the ideas of science and religion. I see two possible interpretations of Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid: either, God has the ultimate higher significance, or, religion and science are parallel and balancing. This is certainly not Dalí’s first painting without a single clear meaning.

I’ve only briefly looked at the site and hope to spend more time examining it later.

I’ve recently finished the latest issue of Salvo Magazine, an excellent issue dealing with the sordid state of higher education in America. In Mind Control: Now Occurring at a University Near You, Herb London writes:

Professor Richard Rorty, the much acclaimed philosopher who shuffled off this mortal coil last June, argued that professors in the university ought “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.” Rorty noted further that students would be fortunate to find themselves under the control “of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.” Indeed, parents who send their children to college should recognize that professors “are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable.”

These were not comments made at Marxist Leninist University or by the Red Guard. Nor was this the ranting of a deranged atheist who opposed the Commandment to “honor your father and mother.” These views were those of a greatly respected senior professor who not only influenced his colleagues but, to a degree, embodied their sentiments.

I recommend subscribing if at all possible. Their website describes their mission as:

Blasting holes in scientific naturalism, marveling at the intricate design of the universe, and promoting life in a culture of death;

Critiquing art, music, film, television, and literature, interrupting mass media influence, and questioning the sanity of our consumerist lifestyle;

Countering destructive ideologies, replacing revisionist fictions with undeniable facts, and paring away political correctness;

Debunking the cultural myths that have undercut human dignity, all but destroyed the notions of virtue and morality, and slowly eroded our appetite for transcendence;

Recovering the one worldview that actually works.

Over at Scriptorium, you will find a couple of posts worth reading by two of my favorite comtemporary philosophers, J. P. Moreland and John Mark Reynolds.

Reynolds discusses a contemporary issue, personal vs. non-personal causation, from a Greek Classical perspective in this post, Before Socrates: the Tension between Personal and Impersonal Causes. In this excerpt, he argues that Christianity brought about a resolution of the tension present in the works of the philosophers of Greek antiquity:

The coming of Christ was, therefore, good news for science and philosophy.

The Christian church would eventually fill the gap between the two extremes of Greek thought. Christian theology, with a God outside of nature, would allow for both natural and personal cosmic cause. Some things could be recognized as divine action, the creation of life for example. Other things, such as the cycle of seasons, could be given natural explanations in the context of an overarching divine purpose. Only Plato and Aristotle would come close to grasping this elegant solution. As we shall see, neither fully grasped it and only with the coming of Christianity were the necessary philosophical distinctions to be made. Christianity allowed for the final birth of a truly modern science.

Moreland has a post on Human Persons and Equal Rights. In it, he discusses how that only the Judeo-Christian view of humans as being made in the image of God can adequately ground human rights. Naturalism (and belly-buttons, among other things) cannot. Here’s the beginning lines:

It is a cherished belief of most people that human beings simply as such have equal value and rights and that they have significantly greater value than animals. However, this claim is difficult if not impossible to justify given a naturalist worldview. For many naturalists, the best, perhaps only, way to justify the belief that all humans have equal and unique value simply as such is in light of the metaphysical grounding of the Judeo-Christian doctrine of the image of God. Such a view depicts humans as substances (a particular thing like a dog that is a simple, indivisible unity of parts and attributes at a time, that remains the same through change, and that has a nature (being a human, being a carbon atom, being a dog) that provides an answer to the question “What kind of thing is this particular object?”)…

Mary Eberstadt, at National Review, has just produced her third installment in a series of “Loser Letters” in which she assumes the position of a former Christian (”Dulls”) who has recently converted to atheism (”Brights”). In these correspondences, she offers advice to the leading athiests on how to better promote the athiest cause. As a new “convert” to atheism, she is in prime position to do so.

They are all done in a tongue-in-cheek manner, actually offering a defense of Christian theism. The letters, from A. F. Christian, are addressed thusly:

An open letter to those spokesmen for the New Atheism who have labored mightily these last few years to sweep aside religion’s paralytic webs of superstition and prejudice, and to liberate the rest of our Species via Science and Enlightenment:

Here are the links to the present letters (I suspect more are coming): Letter I, Some Little Contradictions and How They Grew, and The Trouble with Good Works.

Here’s a taste from letter three, in which she advocates pointing out the evils committed by religious people, but strongly advocates against promoting atheism as capable of producing good:

The trick to end-running it is clear enough: Just keep focused at all times on the evils committed in religion’s name. Never mind how long ago they were! Try not to let the Dulls point out that you are comparing religious apples (i.e. what institutionalized religion did in Europe 600 years ago) with atheist oranges (i.e. what institutionalized atheism did in Europe 60 years ago). Mercifully, as it were, many of them are just ignorant enough of history not to call our bluffs on rhetorical saves like that.

Addendum (6/7/08): Here is the fourth letter, The Trouble with Dull Art.