New Atheists having second thoughts?

This new video by Argon of Akkad is worth viewing.

There are several mentions of C S Lewis in the comments, including one by me that I just added. A few commenters refer to Lewis’s important essay ‘The Abolition of Man’ in which amongst other things he says that ideas have consequences that we might not have intended but in fact have made inevitable by our actions. For example, castrating horses and then expecting them to beget offspring or promoting disloyalty and then being surprised by treason.

This video by Sargon is a reflection on some words of Richard Dawkins in a recent interview in which he appeared to be saying that he had some regrets about the decline of Christianity, despite working very hard for years to accelerate this decline. Dawkins, choosing his words carefully, expressed disquiet about widespread Muslim Ramadan celebrations in London, and while still disbelieving the central claims of Christianity, saw himself as a ‘Cultural Christian.’ Sargon, while stressing that he remains an atheist, said that the idea of getting rid of actual Christian belief while still expecting to retain nice things around belief (like cathedrals and Christmas carols for example) is wishful thinking.

I think Dawkins speaks for quite a few people who never go to church or read their Bibles and make little or no attempt to revere or follow Jesus in their daily lives, but who appreciate having the trimmings of Christianity around. Christmas, Easter, christenings, weddings, old churches and cathedrals, and stuff like the idea that if you were good you might be rewarded in a life beyond this one. I remember reading in a survey that a large majority of non-religious people, including quite a few professing atheists, believe in some kind of afterlife.

I hear all sorts of whimsical stuff about ‘…wherever you are; floating in the breeze, looking down from the stars, in the summer wind and the autumn leaves…’ etc at secular funeral ‘services’ (who is being ‘served’ if there’s no God?) But if atheism is true, then the departed person being addressed is now a total non entity in the void. However difficult it is for even atheists to come to terms with and admit it, that’s what their faith teaches. Of course, it’s nice to think about a nice afterlife (at least for nice people like them-because we are all nice in our own eyes, aren’t we?). A lot of people believe stuff that makes zero sense if atheism is true. Atheism/materialism is a bleak and comfortless world view if you take it seriously, which is why so many like to keep some and fluffy Christianity Lite up their sleeve.

So what are the effects of the well documented, and unprecedented, decline in Christian belief on this country? Difficult to measure. We can’t run a trial by comparing 2 Britains, one of which didn’t reject Christ, side by side to measure the outcomes over a century or so. But life in Britain does seem to be getting worse in many ways. One of the worst things today (unless you own several homes, like most of our rulers) is unaffordable housing. Why should housing be so unaffordable? This should matter to Christians, poor people having somewhere decent to live mattered to Jesus.

When I recently visited my brother Chris in Devon we heard the pub landlord saying how some new houses were being built but selling for at least £350,000, but ‘Everyone round here is on the minimum wage-they can’t afford to buy them.’ We didn’t have a housing crisis like this when we were growing up-anyone who was willing to work and save could get a place to live, now they can’t. What has made the difference, and why can’t we fix it? There are many obvious and workable solutions, why don’t we deploy them? I think it’s because of widespread greed, selfishness, a lack of love for others and corruption (and mass immigration but I don’t want to go there is the context of this conversation). Is any of that to do with the decline of Christian faith? I can’t prove it, but I suspect it is, and it is consistent. I think that people are just greedier and more selfish than they used to be. And they have been being told for decades that they should do what they feel, not feel guilty, and above all not to worry about the Big Scary God who might send them to hell if they behave selfishly.

C S Lewis wrote somewhere that where a society is largely guided by authentic Christian belief (love God, love your neighbour, don’t take more than your fair share, be humble, tell the truth, work hard etc) you will have a more just and humane society, better laws, schools, even better art and literature, BUT we mustn’t use those utilitarian arguments to promote Christ. We should believe in Christ because He is true, even if it makes us worse off in this present world.

It is interesting to see the growing number of atheists-people like Pat Condell and Douglas Murray for example- who while still disbelieving the Gospels, are starting to see some negative effects of the decline of Christianity which they regret, for example, the transgender madness, the decline in freedom of speech and the massive and unprecedented growth of Islam in the midst of us. If our society is radically transformed in a bad way because of a general departure from Christian faith and the embracing of different ways of viewing the world, ourselves, duty, personal accountability and eternity, then that will not of itself prove that Christianity is true. But it would count as supporting evidence, just as a glowing character reference would not prove that an accused person was innocent of a crime but it would make it seem more likely.

Sargon mentions that former atheist Ayaan Ali Hurst has come out as a Christian, not least as she sees Christian faith as the only answer to the problems facing the western world (see above-I hope her faith is sincere). I don’t think Western Civilisation can now be saved (it would be great to be proved wrong) and hold out no hope for a mass revival, but the ship hasn’t quite gone down yet. But the flood is coming, I should get in The ark (who is Jesus) ASAP if I were you, dear reader, the flood is coming.

Are there no stupid questions?

I remember hearing from one of my kindly old professors at medical school in the 1970s that ‘There are no stupid questions, except the questions you failed to ask.’ The professor (the late Jack Howell, who sadly died with dementia some years ago) went on to say that if you had failed to understand something in the lecture being given, it was more than likely that at least one other person in the theatre had also failed to understand it, and that you would be doing them a favour by asking the question.

Professor Howell never humiliated a student for asking a question, but I am sorry to say that some of his peers did. On at least one occasion, I remember asking a question and being made to feel foolish for asking it. I was not the brightest student in my year group.

I was set thinking about the issue of what might be called ‘innocent versus culpable ignorance‘ over recent days by two discussions I came across on Facebook. In each case, an atheist (one of whom I knew from previous conversations and had met in the flesh) said that they did not understand/could not make sense of an assertion made by Christian protagonist and therefore rejected it.

In the first case, and it being Eastertide, someone had posted about the atonement-the Christian doctrine that Christ had died for our sins, the just for the unjust, as the perfect Lamb of God. This is the central truth claim of Christianity, but the respondent said that it made no sense to him. I took it upon myself to respond, saying that if he (or she) was genuinely perplexed and curious as to how the atoning death of Christ made sense, then they had made a good start in a journey towards understanding.

Ca’ Rezzonico – Innalzamento della Croce (Inv.065) – Sebastiano Mazzoni

I briefly pointed out that the whole of the Old Testament looked forward to the Atonement, including the entire ‘spotless lamb’ blood sacrifice/Passover, was to get the Jews used to the idea that their Messiah would become an offering to enable their reconciliation with God through the cancellation of their sins by transfer to a scapegoat, and that this difficult but very real doctrine was set out in the Isaiah 53 prophecy, given 500+ years before the death of Jesus. This prophecy is very startling in it’s detail, particularly when taken in conjunction with Psalm 22, which describes death by crucifixion some centuries before it was invented and includes the phrase ‘My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?’ which Jesus cried out from the cross.

It is argued by biblical apologists ike myself that the fulfilment by Jesus, especially the counter-intuitive fulfilment, of multiple prophecies from the Jewish Scriptures, constitutes a high level of evidence for the veracity of the Christian narrative. Jesus thought so too, hence His words in Luke’s Gospel charter 24 where He explained to the disciples ‘…all the things that were written in Moses and all the prophets’ concerning Himself. Multiple, detailed, accurately fulfilled prophecies of this kind do not occur in any other faith tradition and point to an intelligent and purposeful power who exists outside of time and is not subject to it.

Anyway, if the questioner was genuine (which one has to assume, at least in the first instance) I hope I may have helped guide them on their way. But that’s out of my hands. The idea that Christ’s death could atone for our sins and reconcile us to God is both counter-intuitive and offensive (*) but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. People called it ridiculous back then, and still do today.

The other situation regarding a campaigning atheist whom I knew from before was on a creation/intelligent design site where a detailed post had been made about cosmic fine tuning. (**) This protagonist, and I quote, stated

“Let me get this straight: an all knowing, all powerful god “fine tuned” this universe for life and the only place life can exist is in a very thin band of crust and atmosphere of a tiny inconsequential planet in an otherwise sterile universe for a few billion years and before ad which the whole universe will be lifeless. Are you sure?”

I have heard this individual make this exact same objection previously. I responded as politely as I could and suggested that he had not understood the issue that is raised by the design argument from fine tuning. The argument runs that if the small and large nuclear forces, gravity, relative sizes of electrons and protons, and numerous other laws of nature were slightly different, then chemistry as we know it could not operate and NO life would be possible ANYWHERE. I thought this was quite a straightforward argument. Anyway, he came back at me basically repeating his original statement that it made no sense to him that god (He’s one of those atheists who for whatever reason refuses to capitalise the word God) would behave in a certain way.

I responded again to the best of my ability and said I would leave it there, which I will.

Reflecting on the exchange, I thought that this was a typical example of a kind of “1st proposition, 2nd proposition, conclusion” argument that runs as follows

‘proposition 1-If there was a God anything like the God of the Bible, He would do such and such.

proposition 2-I do not see such and such

conclusion: therefore there is no God.

Now the trouble with the above form of reasoning is that proposition 1 is wholly subjective. (proposition 2 has other problems but let’s leave that for today). In this case, the proposer is making a theological or philosophical statement about a theoretical deity that accords with their subjective opinion, rather than any known fact or indeed biblical assertion. The proposition effectively states that God would not (should not? could not?) have created a vast universe just for the purpose of putting life on one planet. Note that the protagonist describes Earth as ‘insignificant.’ Why? What is insignificant about the Earth, particularly as it is the only place where we know there is life. Surely that fact alone makes earth highly significant! What would the Earth have to do to, in his opinion, achieve ‘significance.’? Significant compared to what, and significant to whom? It seems there is more rhetoric than logic being deployed here.

Another fault with the proposition is the idea that a vast universe, if it is mostly devoid of life, is not significant. This makes no sense to me. Lewis wrote somewhere that Christians will always be criticised whether we think that the universe is very big or very small! Even if we assume that deep space and the billions of galaxies that we see only as tiny specks of light in the most powerful telescopes are devoid of organic life, that does not mean they are without meaning.

Psalm 19 tells us that ‘The Heavens are telling the glory of God.’ Christians marvel at the vastness and beauty of the stars in the sky, which we understand that God created for His good pleasure, and also for navigation, times and seasons on the earth, for humans’ benefit and to display His glory. And that’s before we get on to the subject of possible spiritual beings that might inhabit the spaces between the planets. I’m not saying that this is the case, but C S Lewis discussed the possibility beautifully in his science fiction trilogy, particularly in Out of the Silent Planet, where he envisages (during a trip from Earth to Mars) that ‘Deep Heaven’ (space) is filled with glorious, sentient, spiritual beings without bodies. Also, in the ‘Gloria’ at the end of ‘Perelandra: A Voyage to Venus’ there is a Psalm like sequence in which the glories and purposes of creation are celebrated including planets where no foot has ever stood, or ever will. Such worlds, although uninhabited, are significant.

Furthermore, although the design/fine tuning argument had been set out in scientific/rational terms, the respondent had chosen to ignore this and attack the fine tuning argument by making a theological/philosophical point (and I had to say, making it very badly). I pointed this out to him but he ignored my criticism and simply repeated his assertion. OK, that’s down to him, but this is someone who is well educated and proudly boasts about how intelligent and scientific he is.

Anyhow, perhaps I have wandered off the subject a little here. The point I wanted to make was that not all questions or doubts are honest. As we read in Proverbs, the fool takes no pleasure in knowledge, but only in expressing their opinion. Some questions seem to me to be designed to prevent knowledge rather than discover it.

C S Lewis wrote that not all questions are honest searches for knowledge, but some were used as distraction tactics, almost as weapons. ‘Some people don’t want answers, they only want to wear you out-as soon as you answer a question, they just change their ground.’ Jesus exemplifies this with accounts in the Gospels of the Pharisees and other opponents using questions to try to catch Him out. We are allowed to walk away from such conversations once we have done our best once or twice, leaving the self proclaimed ‘sceptics’, who are often enough convinced believers with strong faith in their own righteousness and wisdom to have the last word (for now) and do their little victory dance.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is death. May God have mercy on all us sinners and direct our paths into the light.

(*) Paul sets this out in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 , Galatians chapter 5 and elsewhere, the teaching of the cross is offensive to those who do not accept it. Always has been, always will be.

(**) The argument about fine tuning runs something like this: the known universe (time, space, matter, energy, and life including human life) are governed by diverse laws of nature. Each of these laws is set at a precise parameter, and in most if not all cases, the operating of the law has to exist within very narrow parameters in order for the conditions that make life possible to exist at all. The simplest of these to explain is gravity, which could in theory be weaker or stronger on an almost infinite scale. If gravity was a little stronger, the Earth would be pulled into the Sun and destroyed, whereas if it was a little weaker, the Earth would not be held in orbit around the Sun but would be flung out into deep space-in either case, Earth could not exist as a survivable planet, nor could any other solar system.

It is argued by creationists that to find so many physical laws whose settings are ‘just right’ is extraordinary and points to design. The usual response to this by opponents is to suggest that there are countless billions of alternative universes (the Multiverse), of which ours just happens to be fitted for life, by blind chance. There is zero evidence for this desperate ‘kicking the can down the road’ riposte to the fine tuning argument for design.

There is plenty about fine tuning out there, www.creation.com is usually a good place to start, but Martin Rees’ book ‘Just Six Numbers’ is good too. Rees isn’t a Christian but still finds the fine tuning of the universe extraordinary. Which it is. And so is the complex, compact and highly specific information carried on DNA, but that’s another story.

What problems does embracing atheism solve?

In last Saturday’s Telegraph supplement there was a piece about best selling novelist Ken Follet. I had been thinking about him recently because I need to get a historical novel of his that touches on the Huguenots, as I plan to write a novel about them.

Follet told us how he was raised in a Christian family, adhering to the very strict Plymouth Brethren sect, about which I know a little from direct contact. There was no television allowed etc. He said in the Telegraph article that as he grew up, he asked his father why the Bible could be relied on. Follet didn’t enlarge much on how this conversation developed or concluded, but stated that he became an atheist, which he remains to this day, and that had solved the problem. I’d have appreciated more detail, but maybe Telegraph readers wouldn’t. In any event, we weren’t informed on this occasion what evidence had or had not been forthcoming about the Bible’s reliability.

As I type, I recall listening to another story from a radio interviewee who had also grown up in but abandoned the Plymouth Brethren sect. He stated ‘There are lots of religions in the world, they don’t all agree so they can’t all be right, so probably none of them are.’

By all means, let us have the freedom to choose our beliefs, and whatever Christopher Hitchens and others say in denial, atheism IS a set of beliefs. At the very least, the professing atheist is asserting that he believes that the evidence for God is so weak that God can be dismissed from consideration, and also that he believes that our existence (cosmos, time, space, matter, energy, fine-tuned laws of nature, biosphere, humans and consciousness) can be satisfactorily explained without God. I would (and do) argue that both of these beliefs are wholly inadequate given what we know. I don’t know what evidence Follet thought was on his side in the conversation with his father.

C S Lewis wrote that he was against compulsory religion and theocracy. But given the claims made by and about Jesus of Nazareth, and given that Pascal’s Wager is still on and we all must and do wager whether we have thought it through or not, I can’t help feeling that (based on the little I know) both of the above gentlemen may have dismissed the case for Christianity being true too lightly.

Lewis wrote that an atheist can no more abolish God by saying ‘I don’t believe.’ than a lunatic can abolish the Sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the wall of a room in the asylum. And as to the argument that because religions make competing truth claims therefore all can be considered false, is a wholesale denial of truth. All truth claims compete with others, it is possible as any mathematician knows (Pascal was a mathematician as well as a philosopher and Christian) that out of 1,000 answers only one is correct. The fact that the other 999 are wrong doesn’t mean that the 1,000th is wrong too.

In a conversation between two men, a chemist and a sociologist (both atheists as it happens) in Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength, they are arguing about a particular matter about which the chemist (Bill Hingest) has reached a firm conclusion. The sociologist (Mark Studdock) says that he supposes that there are many different answers to any given problem. ‘Maybe’ replies the scientist, ‘Until you know the answer. after that, there’s only ever one.’

We may choose a piece of music, a holiday or a painting based on our preference, and nobody can say we have made a bad choice even if they would have made a different one. But when we are talking about our very existence, our origin, our destiny, and the possibility (let’s assume for the sake of argument it is only a theoretical possibility) of our being accountable to a Creator, Lawgiver, Judge who has absolute authority over our eternal destiny-shouldn’t we make a very careful evaluation of the evidence? For all I know, Follet has done so, but from his reported words he gives the impression that he abandoned Christianity in favour of atheism as a matter of personal preference and because he didn’t enjoy churchgoing. You can’t establish that atheism and all that goes with it is true by simply stating that you are an atheist.

Pascal’s Wager is a philosophical construct which sets up an either/or situation in which there either is, or is not, a God who will judge us in eternity and send our undying spirit to heaven or hell based on how we conducted ourselves during our Earthly lives. We must wager for or against there being such a God. The atheist is wagering the pleasures of atheism for a limited number of years of his life if he wins the wager (there being no God) versus eternal damnation if he loses the wager. The Christian (for the sake of the wager we assume that Christianity is true and that the believer is sincere and authentic and therefore gains the promises of Christ) is wagering whatever temporary discomforts that might result from the outworking of his faith during the years of his life, against everlasting joy in the presence of God, his Redeemer, if he wins the wager. If he loses (there is no God) then he passes into everlasting non-existence and knows nothing about it.

It can be seen that the Christian who wagers will, at worst, deny himself certain questionable pleasures (intoxication, adultery, theft, gambling, lying, cheating, addiction to junk TV and porn, cursing??? and of course he doesn’t have to bother with going to church or obeying any of the commandments of Jesus). But in fact the Christian way of life (if you aren’t living under persecution, which sadly many are) can often be very pleasurable compared to that of the unbeliever. Mine is anyway. Jesus said that His yoke was easy and His burden light. And if the Christian believer loses his wager, he will simply fall asleep forever and never know anything about it. This is the worst he has to fear, and the best the atheist can hope for. On the other hand, if the atheist loses Pascal’s Wager, he will have all eternity to curse his culpable folly. Pascal argues therefore that the odds are stacked so heavily that we all ought to wager on Christ.

Of course, there are weaknesses in Pascal’s Wager, for example what if Islam of Buddhism are better representations of reality than Christianity, what forms of Christianity do you mean, and the idea that we should believe in and follow Jesus just because of the threat of damnation are all issues that could be discussed, but nevertheless I would argue that the overall construct is at the very least a reasoned theorem to make us think very hard before we dismiss Jesus of Nazareth with out doing some pretty serious due diligence.

Free Speech Alert

Hello again. This isn’t pure C S Lewis, but everything is connected and our friend Jack certainly couldn’t have written and said what he did (and nor can we study, interpret and pass on his work today) without the assumption of free speech.

It may surprise American readers (and some British ones) that we in Britain do not have a codified right to freedom of thought, belief and expression, as the US Constitution guarantees. It is sometimes said that -our famously unwritten Constitution with it’s complicated checks and balances is ASSUMED to permit everything that is not explicitly outlawed, while Continental European constitutions are more inclined towards outlawing everything that is not explicitly permitted.

The above statements are contestable and many bags of worms would be opened if I tried to explain exactly what I mean, but generally there has been a widely held assumption that Britain explicitly allows free speech, going back to The Bill of Rights and Magna Carta. But this is not so. And the situation has become much more complicated in recent times, and looks likely to become even more complicated in the near future. Specifically, moves to outlaw ‘Conversion Therapy’, ‘Misogyny’ and ‘Islamophobia’ are afoot and could become law WITHIN MONTHS. Each of these three issues is important, but the big one at present is ‘Islamophobia’ and I will discuss this a bit. As ever, take my word for nothing but do your own research.

So why shouldn’t Parliament stop people saying things that upset people? For lots of reasons, but above all because of power. As the saying goes, ‘Find out who you aren’t allowed to criticise, and you find out who is ruling over you.’

As a Christian believer, thinker, writer and sometime activist, this couldn’t be more important to me. Those who don’t think it will affect them are much misinformed. My autistic daughter Sarah (*) when asked a question more complicated that what bus she took yesterday, will often stammer ‘I haven’t thought about it.’ If you are British and you aren’t very concerned about the threat to freedom of expression (particularly as concerns the Sexual Revolutionary agenda and Islam) then you haven’t thought about it. But, unless you are a sexual revolutionary or Muslim activist, or the sort of person who has no fixed opinions about anything and is happy to comply (even when asked to believe absurdities and contradictions, or to dig your own grave) then I respectfully suggest that YOU haven’t thought about it, and you ought to-because IT is thinking about YOU.

Below is a briefing from the Free Speech Union (which was formed only quite recently in response to the growing threat of ‘cancel culture’ where people with ‘unacceptable’ opinions are being bullied and threatened for holding legitimate opinions). It is worth of note that the bulk of the item is written by Tim Dieppe of the organisation Christian Concern, a campaigning organisation which takes a very traditional Biblical world view, and has a foreword by Richard Dawkins, arguably the world’s most forthright atheist activist. A colleague of his is quoted as saying that when The National Secular Society agrees with Christian Concern about something, which is a very rare thing, people ought to sit up and take notice.

banning-islamophobia_3Download

The late Christopher Hitchens (**), who was a close friend and fellow atheist campaigner with Dawkins, has a famous quote about the weasel term ‘Islamophobia’ which I post below.

I broadly agree with the sentiment in the post, but would argue that it’s meaning would be more to the point if it stated that the term ‘Islamophobia’ was used by, not only cowards but bullies and tyrants.

The word is an abomination. For a start, a ‘phobia’ means an IRRATIONAL fear for something that is quite harmless. Richard Dawkins makes this rather simple and incontestable point in his foreword (click above). However, to give a crude example, if you lived in South East Asia where tens of thousands of deaths from snake bite occur each year, and where deadly venomous reptiles like saw scaled vipers, Russell’s viper, Kraits and cobras abounded-you would not be ‘phobic’ if you were anxious about snakes. Rather, you would be an ignorant fool if you did not take reasonable precautions when walking in areas frequented by deadly serpents. The term herpetophobia exists, but could you reasonably criticise anyone who insisted on wearing high boots and carrying a long stick and when appropriate?

Islam, sadly (or certainly elements of it) can kills people as effectively as a cobra or mamba bite. It is not hard to find examples. I support a charity Open Doors which provides care and advocacy for Christians who are robbed, defrauded, threatened and murdered for their faith-usually by Muslims. The Religion of Peace web site (which is not explicitly Christian) documents violent acts perpetrated by Muslims, against other Muslims or members of other faith traditions. This site would undoubtedly be classed as ‘Islamophobic’ under the definition of the word adopted by our politicians and likely to become law under a Labour government, but when armed jihadis come to your village to rape, rob, burn and kill in the name of their god and prophet-it is not ‘phobic’ to be very anxious.

If anyone, perhaps a secularist, reading this far is tempted to say ‘They’re all as bad as one another!’, I beg you to get some facts rather than rely on slogans and anecdotes. Of course you can produce examples of peaceful Muslims and violent Christians, but the NUMBERS and the AUTHORITY matter. I appeal to people to do the scientific/sceptical investigation thing and look at (A) how typical is violent behaviour coming from Christian and Muslim angles, and (B) what of the teaching and example of the respective religions’ founders? As a Christian, I have often been on the receiving end of insults, slanders, sneers and misrepresentation. Jesus, founder of Christianity, specifically told his followers to return a blessing for a curse and patiently endure insults. For example in Matthew 5:11-12. If a professing Christian kills in the name of Christ, he is disobeying the actual teaching of Christ and disregarding his example. With the founder of Islam and his followers, it’s a different story. Searching on the term ‘does Islam command killing those who insult Muhammed’, I quickly found the advice below on a Muslim web site

And this is what we find, for example the Danish cartoonists, the Charlie Hebdo murders, the Batley school teacher and Salman Rushdie. These cases (many more could be found with ease) all demonstrate that Muslims consider it normal, appropriate and quite within their rights to KILL anyone who upsets them by saying something critical about their faith, their holy book, the founder of their religion. The government of Pakistan, a nuclear armed country that Britain provided with hundreds of millions of pounds of aid annually and from whom we have accepted millions of immigrants, has a statutory death penalty for anyone who ‘insults the prophet.’ As the linked article states, so far although many have been arrested, charged and imprisoned for ‘blasphemy’ against Muhammed, the Pakistani State has not yet executed anyone (I would like to think that the British Consul has said that British aid would be stopped immediately if this happened) at least 89 people have been publicly lynched. It’s not all Muslims, OK, but a significant number believe it’s OK to kill infidels if they say what Muslims think they shouldn’t say.

To say that I am disappointed that British politicians are in bed with people who want to make ‘Islamophobia’ a crime, is something of an understatement. The Muslim Council of Britain has been demanding that any criticism of Islam be criminalised-in effect, a Blasphemy Law, but one that only protects Islam. Years ago, when the late Mary Whitehouse was campaigning against perceived anti-Christian blasphemy and sexual obscenity in public broadcasting, most main stream churches saw her as something of an embarrassment, and the Left leaning establishment ridiculed and cursed her-all in the name of individual liberty and freedom of speech. And yet, decades later when she is all but forgotten, the BBC, the Guardian and the Labour Party now seem to be poised to introduce the most draconian restrictions on free speech and the promotion of religious tyranny that we have known in this country since the days of Mary Tudor.

(*) I am not breaking confidences here, she wears autism T shirts and will tell you about her mental health problems if you meet her at a bus stop.

(**) Not to be confused with his brother Peter Hitchens, who is very much still alive and abandoned his atheism for Christianity.

Undesigned coincidences-good Bible apologetics or just words?

I recently came across the work of Christian apologist Lydia McGrew who has written and broadcast on what she calls ‘Undesigned Co-incidences’ as supporting evidence for the veracity of the New Testament. Here is a link to a video in which she explains what this is all about and defends the idea.

Lydia describes herself as a widely published analytical philosopher and author, and wife of philosopher and apologist Timothy McGrew. What does she mean by the term undesigned coincidences? Essentially, she seems to mean where two different descriptions or phrases about the same event are found in different books of the New Testament (particularly the Gospels and Book of Acts) and the descriptions overlap and/or complement each other in a way that is evidentially supportive. She talks about ‘Making common sense rigorous‘ a phrase I like very much.

One of the things that supports my faith is the way that Scripture-both individual books and the whole collection that makes up the Bible- just seems to hang together and make sense more than any other narrative I have encountered. This is very real to me but I can see that sceptics would write this off as subjectivism, wish fulfilment etc, so ideally we need someone skilled in the analysis of words and language to clarify and quantify. We humans need clarification, not least as opponents are always trying to muddy the waters, and very often succeeding.

If the Scriptures are from God, and God wishes to be understood, and they are presented to enable reasonable people to believe, then you would expect that God, the author of language, should make sure enough that the Scriptures, in fair translations, are sufficiently understandable to enable an honest seeker to find enough to support a sincere faith without committing intellectual suicide. This idea is sometimes called the The Perspicuity (or clarity) of Scripture. And if Scripture is true, we would also expect bad actors, men and devils, to be constantly trying to undermine, misrepresent and confuse-and of course this is what we do see, as in 2 Timothy 3:1-9, The Letter of Jude, 2 Peter 2:1-3 etc.

Lydia has written a book about this concept as applied to the veracity of New Testament as near-contemporary eyewitness statements rather than fiction that was invented at a much later date as opponents allege.

She describes the book thus:

>>>Christians should be prepared to defend and share their faith, even while wrestling with doubts and questions that arise from within and without. With thousands of books out there-not to mention content on social media-where do we start? Testimonies to the Truth, my fourth book on New Testament reliability, provides a great starting point. I bring together new arguments and old ones in a form that is readily accessible to laymen while being careful and rigorous. With these arguments in hand, you will never be stumped when someone asks, “Why should I believe what the Bible says about the life and teachings of Jesus?” Above all, I point to Jesus himself, true God and true man, the One who teaches, loves, and suffers for us, described by the Gospels in vivid and credible detail. Including suggested study and discussion questions and references for further reading and research, this book is an excellent resource for personal study, Sunday School, high school and college classes, and small groups.<<<

The idea of undesigned co-incidences seems a useful line of argumentation in response to those who say that the New Testament, particularly the Gospels, were simply fiction and were made up by some shadowy group years after the supposed events. Several examples are given in a series of short videos by her husband Timothy, basically connections between names and places, and sayings of Jesus which are stated in an incomplete but complementary manner of 2 different sources. This is like real life.

The example is given of two witness to a robbery, one of whom mentions that she saw the robber trip as he ran away, another mentioning that she saw he had one shoelace undone but does not mention the trip. Each account is different, but each is fully true as far as it goes and they support each other in an evidentially positive way. And remember the classic Japanese film Rashomon where we hear several accounts of the same events from different protagonists, each of whom saw only part of the truth.

Trivial discrepancies between different witness accounts add to credibility. If the stories about Jesus had been falsely invented by some unidentified shadowy group, as atheists often assert, they would have produced only one authoritative gospel, not four.

She rightly says that this is only one of several possible lines of apologetic argument, and is open to question, but taken together, many such interesting coincidences tend to support the traditional view that the early New Testament books were written in good faith by people who saw something really big and important actually happen, and not a conspiracy cobbled together later.

From the apologetics I have seen and done in my 40 plus years as a Christian, I am sure that no apologetics or reasoning however sound will persuade those who are determined not to believe. After all, some of Our Lord’s opponents refused to believe in Him even after he fulfilled multiple Messianic Scriptures in their sight and raised people from the dead. As He said to them ‘You snakes! You vipers! How will you escape the judgement of Hell?’ I once argued with a man, a doctor, who said he would rather go to Hell than bow before God, ever if God appeared to him. You can’t help some people.

Apologetics is important. Mere Christianity was massively important to me as a new believer when my faith immediately came under intellectual attack. It didn’t make me a Christian, but it helped me to stay one. As Lewis said, apologetics is not the whole story: first of all you have to have the evangelist, his heart and words on fire for the Gospel. But having heard the Gospel presented, there are questions that honest sceptics deserve to have answered, and also false arguments and disinformation from dishonest sceptics, of whom I fear there are many, which need to be disarmed. At least, as Lewis wrote somewhere (I think in one of his letters) it is essential that Christians have learned and visible philosophers and other experts in our camp, so that the less learned humble believer-who accepts the Gospel like a little child but lacks the intellect and learning to process it all intellectually-can feel ‘Ah, well they may have some clever people on their side, but so do we.’

Some will say that this is all so much arguing about words. Well, words communicate meaning, and truth and lies both exist, and it matters. If we are interested in pursuing truth and avoiding deception, we cannot help but argue about words. So, this is a shout out for the McGrews and all who labour in ‘the army of translators’ that C S Lewis earnestly hoped would carry on his efforts to make Christ known and understood after he had sailed into the West.

The Falling of the West-can we save ourselves?

Heads up to a blog I have just discovered, ‘A Grain of Sand’ written by ‘Campbell’, a retired minister from Scotland. It’s not very cheerful, but then neither is a cancer diagnosis-yet if the disease is present, the diagnosis must be made and communicated before action can be agreed that may save the patient. The chances of success decline the longer that diagnosis and treatment are delayed.

THE CHURCH IN A FALLEN WEST

In the linked post, last in a series of four, Campbell laments the failing state of the Church in Britain and sadly can only see things getting worse. He mentions the fact (usually forgotten, overlooked or denied) that our Western Civilisation, and certainly Britain, was founded to a large extent on Christianity. Just as fish do not see the water they swim in, we do not see the Christian assumptions that underlie so much of the world view that we grew up with.

We hear people talk about ‘British Values’ but seldom are these values set out and defined. 50 years ago, there was a much clearer shared understanding that these values derived from the Bible, particularly the Ten Commandments and The Sermon on the Mount, but that shared set of ethical values and view of the world has been steadily eroded-and no accident. The revolutionary Left hates ‘Traditional British Values’ as understood by people over 60 and has been working steadily to overthrow them for at east the whole of my adult life time. And now they find that Islam is a useful tool for their purposes-overthrowing all of the institutions of the West. This might seem very incongruous, since the things they hate about Christianity are present in much stronger and less compromising forms in Islam, which prescribes the death penalty for homosexuals (*), but a shared hatred of Bible religion can be quite a strong motivator. Logic was never a strong point for the Revolutionary Left.

What is interesting to me is that recently a growing number of public intellectuals such as Pat Condell, Douglas Murray, and David Starkey (all professing atheists), and homosexuals like Starkey and Andrew Doyle are writing and broadcasting with growing anxiety about the possible, if not probable, Islamification of Western Europe. Of course they are shouted down by the usual people with the usual slanders, smears and slogans, but looking at comments across a wide range of social media, many people feel the same sense of unease that ‘something‘ has gone badly wrong in our culture. There is a sense that we have lost something that we could not afford to lose (what could that ‘Something’ be, how and where and when and why did we lose it, and can we possibly get it back?) and are gaining some things that will be worse for us that we can at this time imagine.

In his greatest novel ‘That Hideous Strength’ C S Lewis prophetically imagines humanity being surrounded and threatened by the coming together of two forces, re-discovered evil magic from the Dark Ages and a powerful modern technologies deployed by corrupt men who have been ‘freed’ from all restraint by their throwing off of the Christian morality they had inherited from their ancestors. Each of these forces was powerful, but the greatest threat to liberty came from the conjunction of the two. A growing number of commentators-including atheists and homosexuals (see above), see the alliance between revolutionary Jihadism and revolutionary Marxism as the greatest existential threat to Western Civilisation.

Watch this space, and do give Campbell a read. Hopefully both he and I will not be censored or arrested for these forbidden views.

(*) I am of course well aware that the Law of Moses in the Bible also prescribes the death penalty for male homosexual acts, but I am not aware of any Christian church or organisation (apart from the notorious Westboro Baptist Church, who are extreme outliers and are detested by all Christians I know), who calls for this, and it is certainly not a New Testament ordinance. Male homosexuals are actually being executed today in many Islamic countries, not least in Iran, which arms and trains the genocidal Hamas rapists and killers under whose flag leftists are proudly marching.

Ayan Ali Hirst says she is now a Christian

This is massive. Hirst is well known for having rejected Islam and for being an outspoken atheist, she has now written an essay for Unherd explaining the reasons why she is now a professing Christian and attending church. Her reasons boil down to the need to resist evil, coercive forces (essentially jihadism and communism) that are set to take over the de-Christianised West, and the lack of spiritual fulfilment in atheism.

SO, I am not the only one who believes that it will take more than a secular humanist consensus to resist the newly awakened global jihad. I hope that Hirst will grow in faith, love and grace. C S Lewis wrote (I forget where) that we should embrace Christianity, or rather embrace Christ, because Christianity is true and God is good, and that we should beware of embracing Christianity as a means to various ends, even good ends. And yes it is true that societies where there is a high level of authentic Christian belief and people acting on it are better societies. But we must not prostitute faith in order to get things.

Read this on Unherd.

Why I am now a Christian

https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups%5B0%5D=18743&tl_period_type=3

My own feeling is that it is probably too late for the West. People who want the benefits of Christianity without repentance and faith are likely to be disappointed. But these last few weeks in England I have never heard so many people express real anxiety about the future and ask ‘How did it come to this?’

I am hearing people say ‘Glad I’m old, but I fear for my grandchildren/glad I don’t have grandchildren’ I’m 67 with a good memory, and I have never heard people say that kind of thing before.

I think our society ifs failing because we have abandoned Christian morals, faith and shared belief. More to it than that of course, but if you just consider that since 1967 we have done over 10 million abortions and imported 10 million immigrants to do jobs we didn’t have people to do…it rather looks as if we set out to abolish ourselves as a nation, and that’s just the bare logistics.

More on this theme later.

What is ‘spirituality’?

Yesterday evening we watched another episode of ‘Scottish Sacred Islands’ on BBC iPlayer, narrated by the very likeable adventurer, broadcaster and writer Ben Fogle. It was pleasant watching, Mrs Hayes and I both love the Scottish landscape, have had a couple of holidays there and hope to return.

However, I was a bit perplexed by the narrative, including Fogle’s monologues. It did not come across to me as an accurate or balanced history of the essentially Christian religion of these islands, which you might have expected from the title. The above poster for the series indicates that Fogle was keen to search out minority Eastern religions and people who liked to talk about their feelings rather than the historical Christianity that the Scottish islands are well known for. Above all, he used the word ‘spirituality’ maybe 20 times, the term ‘Christian’ not so much. On one occasion, visiting the picturesque abandoned island of Mingulay where there are some particularly spectacular cliffs, he proclaimed ‘This is my church, my synagogue, my mosque’.

Can anyone tell me what ‘spirituality’ means? I have my own ideas about what people think it means when they use the term subjectively, but objectively, what is it? Is there anything about ‘spirituality’ that is definite enough to be discussed? People whom I hear using the term about themselves seem to be saying ‘I am a good person because I think nice thoughts…when I look at the beauty in nature I experience certain pleasurable feelings…I have a warm heart and feel that there is ‘something’ beyond but I won’t be tied down by dogma: dogma is divisive…‘ The latter idea is interesting and somewhat contradictory because it is of course a truth statement, i.e. a dogma. All truth claims are divisive, including the claim that ‘division’ is automatically bad. See St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians in which, while deploring the fact that there were divisions in the church, it was appropriate that those who were in the right stuck to their position.

Like C S Lewis, I believe in real reality: truth claims of all kinds may be set out to be questioned and if questioned must be defended. Also, competing/contradictory truth claims cannot both be equally true. A true truth is still true if set out imperfectly and/or by an unpleasant person-the Devil himself can tell the truth when it suits his purposes. Dangerously false claims may be put forward in a winsome and persuasive manner, and yet ‘There is a way which seems right to a man, but it ends in death.’ (Proverbs chapter 14 verse 12).

People understand this when we are talking about matters of physics and chemistry. It really does matter how you design and build bridges, medicines and aircraft because if you get these things wrong, people can die. Since physical realities are what they are objectively shown to be, however ‘inclusive’ and ‘non-dogmatic’ people may be disposed to feel, why do so many of us feel that it’s fine and dandy to embrace any kind of ‘spirituality’ that we fancy at any given moment? Hard line materialist atheism seems a more logical position, at least it’s a defined truth claim that can be questioned and/or defended, but how do you evaluate the truth or falsehood of ‘spirituality’? I have heard people address departed loved ones with terms like ‘wherever you are’ as if they could be anywhere, or perhaps wherever you, or they, might daydream of being. Somewhere nice of course. Assuming on the basis of subjective feelings that our lives in some sense continue after our body dies but giving no thought as to what this future eternal existence might be like or making suitable preparations for it seems to me more intellectually lazy than atheism. And, like atheism, ‘spiritual but not religious’ seems for most who adopt it as a philosophy to depend on a handful of unexamined sayings than any sort of intellectual rigour.

In Elwin Ransom’s initial dialogue with the strangely altered (*) Professor Weston in ‘Perelandra: A Voyage to Venus’, Weston talks about his new ‘spiritual’ life. As the conversation develops, Ransom grows increasingly uneasy. Weston talks about ‘the religious view of life’ to which Ransom replies that he is not at all sure about ‘the religious view of life‘ as he is a Christian. This might seem an odd reply to some (certainly Weston doesn’t’ like it) but Lewis knows exactly what he is writing here. The authentic Christian is not interested in ‘the religious (or ‘spiritual’) view of life’ but in God, the God who is What He knows Himself to be. Accept no substitutes or imposters! Similar views are expressed in Lewis’ after-life fantasy ‘The Great Divorce’ in which a protagonist says ‘We know nothing of religion here, only Christ.’

As the conversation between Ransom and Weston develops, Weston states that he has a new sense of purpose as he has been guided by a spiritual force. He asks if Ransom does not worship God because He is a spirit? Ransom replies that Christians worship God because He is good, not because He is a spirit. He mentions that a thing could be a spirit and not good for you, that the Devil is a spirit. Things go downhill from there, do read the whole book (indeed, the whole trilogy).

Just saying-spiritual does not automatically mean good. I have nothing against Mr Fogle or the BBC’s right to commission, create and broadcast a ‘spirituality lite and vague’ documentary (although I wish there could be something about authentic Evangelical Christianity for balance) but I do think such an intellectually vacuous approach should at least be politely questioned.

In ‘That Hideous Strength’ which I have just finished re-reading again, the character William Hingest, a chemist, when discussing a serious matter with Mark Studdock (a sociologist) responds to Studdock, who has just said that there are many ways of looking at certain things. Hingest responds that this may be so, until you know the answer. After that, he says, there is only ever one way of looking at it.

Truth is, always has been, and always will be, divisive.

(*) You’ll have to read the book to understand the full horror of what this means.

Film review-Killers of the Flower Moon

I haven’t seen this new Martin Scorsese film, discussing with my film club mates over coffee after church yesterday, we decided it as at 3.5 hours it’s really very long, but Daniel Blackaby has posted an excellent review on The Collision with can be read here.

The film showcases the effects of greed on Christless men. It’s not nice.

Human ability to appreciate music-a divine gift

I was having a chat with a friend (let’s call him Jimmy) over coffee after church recently. We talked a bit about music, not least as I had just been playing my mandolin in the church worship group for the first time. We are of a similar age-both have grow up children who have left home, and we talked about our tastes in music. I saw classic rockers Wishbone Ash live last week.

The conversation revealed some overlap in our tastes and preferences, and many differences. Jimmy and I both like contemporary singer-songwriters from the 70s onwards, he is more into Paul Simon and Billy Joel, I am more into Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. We both like classical music, but different sorts. He used to play the trumpet and sing in choirs, I play guitar and mandolin. We agreed that there was more music in the world than either of us would ever be able to appreciate, but we were content with what we had and happy to pick up some more new stuff now and then.

I told Jimmy how my wife and I were at our orchard once and a piece of music came on the car radio (I often have it on with the windows open while I am working, usually Classic FM or Radio 3) which she instantly loved and asked me to write the name down and get a CD. It was Welsh harpist Katrin Finch and a tune from her ‘Tides’ album. We have since been to see her twice, playing with a Columbian band called Cimmaron. Very good indeed.

Why do we humans like sophisticated music so much? Is it chance, necessity or design? For the Christian it’s fairly simple. God made us in His image, wanted us to be happy, and endowed us with many abilities way beyond what we need to simply survive, because of His generous love. But for the materialist, who believes that we evolved by numerous successive gradual chance modifications from slime via jellyfish, worms, fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and ape like ancestors, it’s a problem so difficult that it tends to be ignored or denied.

I read a book on the subject ‘The Singing Neanderthals’ by Steven Mithen, (*) and without wishing to be unduly disrespectful, I thought it was simply so much waffle. In a style I have become used to from evolutionary commentators, a good number of facts are collected (a fossil here, an anecdote there), and then explanations are overlaid on them in order to make them fit the pre-ordained evolutionary narrative. Whatever the data is, they say, it fits evolution because we know that ‘Evolution is true, as the sky is blue.‘ But how is evolution supposed to work?

According to Darwin, Dawkins and the rest of them, to get from an ape like ancestor to a human, genetic accidents happened ‘Lucky, but not too lucky’ as Dawkins puts it, which give the possessor of the new genes an advantage sufficient to enable their improved differential survival. That is what natural selection is, differential survival (also called survival of the fittest). Since this is evolution’s only supposed progressive mechanism, that’s how our ability to appreciate sophisticated music must have evolved, if evolution is true.

Setting aside the very difficult issue as to how our fantastically sophisticated ears developed at all, to say nothing of how our consciousness developed the ability to appreciate a C sharp minor diminished seventh chord, the mixolydian scale, a full orchestra with horns, strings, piano, woodwind and all, or Wagner’s Ring Cycle, or Joni Mitchell’s unusual guitar tunings and wistful voice and lyrics, how on Earth would the development of such abilities give individuals and reproductive groups a sufficient competitive edge against other developing pre-humans whose ability to appreciate sophisticated music had not evolved? Surely sheer brute force and aggression would give much more of an advantage in reproductive success?

Think about the music of Bach, Beethoven, Shostakovich, Mozart, Miles Davis or whoever your favourite musician or composer is-and think of the gap between us and the apes in music appreciation. Is it likely that the ability to imagine, produce and appreciate sophisticated music could really have evolved by natural selection acting on random mutations?

Consider the design of the human ear. To call it very complicated is an understatement. the following diagram, taken from Creation.com, is complicated enough, but it is a simplification and doesn’t include the sophisticated ‘software’ in the brain which enables us to receive, make sense of, interpret and appreciate music.

We humans spend a lot of money, time and trouble on music. I recently attended-and enjoyed- a packed out performance of Das Rheingold at Covent Garden, mist tickets were priced between £150 and £300. I have spend maybe £10,000 on CDs over the last 20 years, I spent about £1,000 attending 3 music festivals so far this year. And it’s not just me. A Stradivarius violin or a vintage guitar can sell for huge sums, indicating that even rock musicians have sophisticated tastes in music. But what survival value does music give us? Enough to make the difference between life and death? Enough enhancement to reproductive success to change the course of our supposed evolution from ape like ancestor to human? It’s hard to imagine, certainly impossible to observe. It’s much more reasonable to suppose that our ability to create and enjoy music is a God-given gift. And it is one for which I am (as C S Lewis was-big fan of Wagner) truly thankful.

This article on the Creation Ministries International site discusses attributes that humans have but animals don’t, including the ability to appreciate music.

(*) By the way, the more we learn about Neanderthals, the harder it is to see them as really distinct from modern humans. They appreciated art and music and buried their dead respectfully, and as far as we can tell from fossils and burial artefacts, their hearing was as good as ours.