Archived Posts For 2007 November
dawkins’ deity, part ii - responding to transcendence
Posted on November 25, 2007 by Geoff Matheson
Filed Under Books, Emerging Questions | 3 Comments
In the first chapter of “The God Delusion”, Richard Dawkins describes the difficulty he has with reconciling that which scientists know and hypothesise about the natural world with traditional religious belief. He quotes Carl Sagan in “Pale Blue Dot”
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded ‘This is bigger than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our great prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant’? Instead they say, ‘No, my God is a little god and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”
In embracing the belief that all good things come from God, we have drawn boundaries around what God is, and then dismissed anything which does not fit into our traditional understanding of God. Our response to a world that is more complex, more beautiful and more vast than we have understood it to be has been to protect the ground we’ve always stood on, and to hold tight to the truth we know. It’s what the church did to Galileo, and when we put our fingers in our ears and sing “la la la I’m not listening” to increased scientific pontification around origins of life, etc we do the same thing.
So here’s the question: where are we as the church, still doing this? The challenge here has to be to recognise where we’ve limited God to our previous understanding of theology, and allow that theology to become flexible enough that we can see God in the Universe and even in scientific discovery, rather than seeing God opposed to these things. Where would your theology be too inflexible to accomodate for scientists discovering more about our world?
This could be a long series - two posts and I’m only 5 pages in.
dawkins’ deity, part i - preliminaries
Posted on November 22, 2007 by Geoff Matheson
Filed Under Books, Emerging Questions | Leave a Comment
This is the beginning of a series on Richard Dawkins’ book: “The God Delusion”. I’ll be writing the series “as I read it”, which given the way that life has been looking recently, could result in this series finishing around late 2020, but with a little bit of application, we should be able to get “something” out on this weekly (or so).
I believe that while the easiest, and most tempting response to the sort of criticisms that a fundamentalist atheist such as Dawkins presents is to dismiss him out of hand as a radical who doesn’t have any concept of what Christianity is really on about, I don’t believe that such a response is sensible, nor is it helpful. Whether we like it or not, voices like Dawkins, along with Sam Harris, etc. are being heard loud and clear. So this is an attempt to respond to “The God Delusion” and to sort the truths that the church needs to hear from the “other stuff”.
Because I’m attempting to find the “things we need to hear” and even some issues to wrestle with, this will (attempt to) be the last time I’ll address the style in which Dawkins’ has written his manifesto. I admit, I’ve seen Richard appear on television interviews before, so I was a little prepared for what I would be reading. He writes as he talks, with a steady, calm, English gentleman sensibility - all the while conveying sentiments which border on ridicule. His rhetoric includes regularly referring to religion as one would a virus, commonly using references to the bodies immune system as imagery for those who resist religious thought and ideas.
There is little doubt in reading the little I have already, that Dawkins writes with a deep personal conviction that he is hoping to help people out of a “broken” way of thinking. I don’t think he “hates” religious people, but I think that he has seen a great deal of hurt and “backward thinking” and has identified that he believes the root cause to be this thing we call religion, or even this idea of “God”. Richard Dawkins sets out his intentions early in the book:
“If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.”
and I’ve laid out mine. I realise this post might not have much to comment on it, but stay tuned because coming soon: chapter 1 - a deeply religious non-believer.
modern crusades and the story
Posted on November 20, 2007 by Rebecca Matheson
Filed Under Culture, Emerging Questions | 3 Comments
I’m not a great fan of the whole ‘pass the email petition along’ but I was especially disturbed when I received one about the author Phillip Pullman (of the controversial series: His Dark Materials) and the soon to be released movie of The Golden Compass. Pullman is controversial in his anti-C.S Lews, anti-Christian/Religious themes. What disgusted me, was not that these books were now ‘a bit more public’, but that emails like this are sent with ‘all the information needed’ for an individual to create a certain opinion.
People’s naivety is conducted into some kind of modern crusade. It becomes a propaganda of distrust of perhaps even hate, which doesn’t seem very Christ-like to me! I understand the concern, but I think there are limits as to how far we can jump moral our hobby horse and ride it.
We claw at the few often minor imperfections in light of our often ridiculous ‘Christian’ moral positions and forget to search fiction such as this (or Harry Potter) for it’s redemptive themes, it’s story and the why of the story. Why are things like this written? Why don’t we bravely engage the debate rather than sulk from the sidelines? Why don’t we tell the story we know.
Following on from this, but less related directly to crusades, I was reading an interview between Phillip Pullman and the Archbishop Rowan Williams. Williams says the following,
“You can’t communicate Christianity simply as a set of ideas. At some point you’re going to have to sit down and tell a story. And tell a story which, because it’s a story, is bound to have some loose ends, some awkwardnesses. As it is we have four versions of the story of Jesus in the New Testament, because of that sense that a story can always be retold. And that introduces a bit of this irony in the narrative, which is very important in reinforcing the sense that this is something mysterious. I think there is something in that fundamental characteristic of Christianity which helps to enable a particular kind of storytelling.”
His words ring brilliantly true after a discussion I had with a guy this week about why I believe in this Christianity stuff. Anything of worth that I said (and I said more that was not valuable than was) came from a personal narrative within God’s broader narrative and not the relaying of facts.
I would like to see an approach of beginning to understand Christianity coming from more of a narrative than set of ideas.
death and doubt
Posted on November 19, 2007 by Geoff Matheson
Filed Under Discipleship | 2 Comments
I’m aware that this blog has tended to lean towards a more theoretical approach to issues, so here is a specific practical situation for your reflections. In our Sunday morning youth session, we were discussing how we deal with (rather than ignore) doubts, and in the small group discussion afterwards had one of our girls asking their leader-person the following question (or words to that effect):
I’ve got a friend who has had three of her friends die in the past year and now they’re not sure if they believe in God. What should I tell them?
It’s a scary question, and by the sounds of it our leader-person did an admirable job in trying her best to handle it. But I’m intrigued to hear what you, the wise readers out there think. How does someone respond to that situation?
the church lobby
Posted on November 15, 2007 by Geoff Matheson
Filed Under Church | 13 Comments
*WARNING* - You are reading a post on politics by a self-confessed lefty. Be careful.
At the moment, in Australia (where lots of your Amateur Theologians are living), we are in the midst of a Federal election campaign. I’m also aware that our poor cousins in the You-nited States are revving up for a big presidential election next year. So politics, and political campaigning is everywhere. And there’s no doubt that some of the really loud voices on both sides of the pacific come from christian churches and lobby groups. From the hard-right conservatives, through to the environment-loving lefty christians - it seems that Christianity is involving itself in the political process more and more. For the moment I’m not really looking to the “what” of their message (although that will inevitably seep into the conversation), but the “why” and “how” of church involvement in politics.
The way I see it, there are a few different approaches to politicking that churches and para-church groups take:
- The “Jesus would vote for…” approach. It’s not that hard to spot, but it’s certainly around - even from pulpits. It’s distasteful to many (myself included), but it does have one thing going for it: it’s transparent and honest. There’s no “read-between-the-lines-to-see-who-you-should-vote-for” - it’s this guy or you’re going straight to hell. I’d include in this basket the approach of: “we think you should be very serious about who you vote for so we’ve invited one candidate from a certain party to speak at church”.
- The “this position is the Christian position…” approach. A slight deviation from the “vote for Bob” but it can often end up being a thinly veiled attempt to say exactly that. At it’s best, this approach shows genuine concern for a specific issue and asks people to vote for whoever they feel best responds to that issue. At it’s worst, it reads from a party policy document (or words to that effect), highlights who might be aligned with that particular view.
- The “these are things that Jesus spoke about” approach. A deviation further away from number 2 - this presents issues as less explicitly political, but more issues of morality or justice. It has the advantage of not patronizing the people being presented to, but also has the potential to have people miss the connection between their Christianity and the rest of their lives (duality, etc.)
I can see people in churches and church-organisations adopting all three of these approaches. So I’m interested to see what people think? Should churches be voicing their opinions on political issues? Should that come from the pulpit? Is the line between issues that are “political” and “non-political” a furphy? Is it more OK for Christian organisations than it is for churches?
Rhetorical questions over. Comment away.
