The problem of good

Christians are often asked to defend God, from attacks using the problem of evil: If God is good, and all-powerful, why are there things such as earthquakes, meteors, and Alzheimer's? Why does God allow human-caused evils, like global climate change, child sexual exploitation, and war? These can be serious questions, and hard ones to answer. This area of thought is often called "the problem of evil." C. S. Lewis answered that problem in his The Problem of Pain.

There are, then, problems for Christians. However, there are corresponding problems, much less frequently discussed, for atheists, namely the problem of good. As N. T. Wright put it in his Surprised by Scripture: Engaging Contemporary Issues, if the universe is here because of mindless chance, how is it that there is so much in our surroundings to appreciate and cherish: leaf colors, rainbows, music, innocent laughter, beautiful human constructions, unselfish good deeds, uplifting literature, and much more?

Thanks for reading.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 73

But this larger and more adventurous Christian universe has one final mark difficult to express; yet as a conclusion of the whole matter I will attempt to express it. All the real argument about religion turns on the question of whether a man who was born upside down can tell when he comes right way up. The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality. That is the inmost philosophy of the Fall. And when rationalists say that the ancient world was more enlightened than the Christian, from their point of view they are right. For when they say “enlightened” they mean darkened with incurable despair. It is profoundly true that the ancient world was more modern than the Christian. The common bond is in the fact that ancients and moderns have both been miserable about existence, about everything, while medievals were happy about that at least. I freely grant that the pagans, like the moderns, were only miserable about everything—they were quite jolly about everything else. I concede that the Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace about everything—they were at war about everything else. But if the question turn on the primary pivot of the cosmos, then there was more cosmic contentment in the narrow and bloody streets of Florence than in the theatre of Athens or the open garden of Epicurus. Giotto lived in a gloomier town than Euripides, but he lived in a gayer universe.

Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 72

The unpopular parts of Christianity turn out when examined to be the very props of the people. The outer ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical abnegations and professional priests; but inside that inhuman guard you will find the old human life dancing like children, and drinking wine like men; for Christianity is the only frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern philosophy the case is opposite; it is its outer ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated; its despair is within. And its despair is this, that it does not really believe that there is any meaning in the universe; therefore it cannot hope to find any romance; its romances will have no plots. A man cannot expect any adventures in the land of anarchy. But a man can expect any number of adventures if he goes traveling in the land of authority. One can find no meanings in a jungle of skepticism; but the man will find more and more meanings who walks through a forest of doctrine and design. Here everything has a story tied to its tail, like the tools or pictures in my father’s house; for it is my father’s house. I end where I began—at the right end. I have entered at least the gate of all good philosophy. I have come into my second childhood.

Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 69

Note: This post doesn't have anything to do with Mother's Day, at least not on purpose. Sorry.

If a shade arose from the under world, and stared at Piccadilly, that shade would not quite understand the idea of an ordinary closed carriage. He would suppose that the coachman on the box was a triumphant conqueror, dragging behind him a kicking and imprisoned captive. So, if we see spiritual facts for the first time, we may mistake who is uppermost.

I have now said enough to show (to any one to whom such an explanation is essential) that I have in the ordinary arena of apologetics, a ground of belief. In pure records of experiment (if these be taken democratically without contempt or favour) there is evidence first, that miracles happen, and second that the nobler miracles belong to our tradition. But I will not pretend that this curt discussion is my real reason for accepting Christianity instead of taking the moral good of Christianity as I should take it out of Confucianism. I have another far more solid and central ground for submitting to it as a faith, instead of merely picking up hints from it as a scheme. And that is this: that the Christian Church in its practical relation to my soul is a living teacher, not a dead one. It not only certainly taught me yesterday, but will almost certainly teach me tomorrow. Once I saw suddenly the meaning of the shape of the mitre. One fine morning I saw why windows were pointed; some fine morning I may see why priests were shaven. Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture tomorrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before. There is one only other parallel to this position; and that is the parallel of the life in which we all began. When your father told you, walking about the garden, that bees stung or that roses smelt sweet, you did not talk of taking the best of out of his philosophy. When the bees stung you, you did not call it an entertaining coincidence. When the rose smelt sweet you did not say “My father is a rude, barbaric symbol, enshrining (perhaps unconsciously) the deep delicate truths that flowers smell.” No: you believed your father, because you had found him to be a living fountain of facts, a thing that really knew more than you; a thing that would tell you truth tomorrow, as well as today.

Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 67

Suppose we were investigating whether angry men really saw a red mist before their eyes. Suppose sixty excellent householders swore that when angry they had seen this crimson cloud: surely it would be absurd to answer “Oh, but you admit you were angry at the time.” They might reasonably rejoin (in a stentorian chorus), “How the blazes could we discover, without being angry, whether angry people see red?” So the saints and ascetics might rationally reply, “Suppose that the question is whether believers can see visions—even then, if you are interested in visions it is no point to object to believers.” You are still arguing in a circle-in that old mad circle with which this book began.
The question of whether miracles ever occur is a question of common sense and of ordinary historical imagination: not of any final physical experiment. One may here surely dismiss that quite brainless piece of pedantry which talks about the need for “scientific conditions” in connection with alleged spiritual phenomena. If we are asking whether a dead soul can communicate with a living it is ludicrous to insist that it shall be under conditions in which no two living souls in their senses would seriously communicate with each other. The fact that ghosts prefer darkness no more disproves the existence of ghosts than the fact that lovers prefer darkness disproves the existence of love. If you choose to say, “I will believe that Miss Brown called her fiancé a periwinkle or, any other endearing term, if she will repeat the word before seventeen psychologists,” then I shall reply, “Very well, if those are your conditions, you will never get the truth, for she certainly will not say it.” It is just as unscientific as it is unphilosophical to be surprised that in an unsympathetic atmosphere certain extraordinary sympathies do not arise. It is as if I said that I could not tell if there was a fog because the air was not clear enough; or as if I insisted on perfect sunlight in order to see a solar eclipse.

Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 64

I have given an imaginary triad of such ordinary anti-Christian arguments; if that be too narrow a basis I will give on the spur of the moment another. These are the kind of thoughts which in combination create the impression that Christianity is something weak and diseased.

First, for instance, that Jesus was a gentle creature, sheepish and unworldly, a mere ineffectual appeal to the world; second, that Christianity arose and flourished in the dark ages of ignorance, and that to these the Church would drag us back; third, that the people still strongly religious or (if you will) superstitious—such people as the Irish—are weak, unpractical, and behind the times.

I only mention these ideas to affirm the same thing: that when I looked into them independently I found, not that the conclusions were unphilosophical, but simply that the facts were not facts. Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry god—and always like a god. Christ had even a literary style of his own, not to be found, I think, elsewhere; it consists of an almost furious use of the a fortiori. His “how much more” is piled one upon another like castle upon castle in the clouds. The diction used about Christ has been, and perhaps wisely, sweet and submissive. But the diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque; it is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled into the sea. Morally it is equally terrific; he called himself a sword of slaughter, and told men to buy swords if they sold their coats for them. That he used other even wilder words on the side of non-resistance greatly increases the mystery; but it also, if anything, rather increases the violence.

We cannot even explain it by calling such a being insane; for insanity is usually along one consistent channel. The maniac is generally a monomaniac. Here we must remember the difficult definition of Christianity already given; Christianity is a superhuman paradox whereby two opposite passions may blaze beside each other. The one explanation of the Gospel language that does explain it, is that it is the survey of one who from some supernatural height beholds some more startling synthesis. 

Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton, 63

If I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe in Christianity, I can only answer, “For the same reason that an intelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity.” I believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence. But the evidence in my case, as in that of the intelligent agnostic, is not really in this or that alleged demonstration; it is in an enormous accumulation of small but unanimous facts. The secularist is not to be blamed because his objections to Christianity are miscellaneous and even scrappy; it is precisely such scrappy evidence that does convince the mind. I mean that a man may well be less convinced of a philosophy from four books, than from one book, one battle, one landscape, and one old friend. The very fact that the things are of different kinds increases the importance of the fact that they all point to one conclusion. Now, the non-Christianity of the average educated man today is almost always, to do him justice, made up of these loose but living experiences.

I can only say that my evidences for Christianity are of the same vivid but varied kind as his evidences against it. For when I look at these various anti-Christian truths, I simply discover that none of them are true. I discover that the true tide and force of all the facts flows the other way. Let us take cases. Many a sensible modern man must have abandoned Christianity under the pressure of three such converging convictions as these: first, that men, with their shape, structure, and sexuality, are, after all, very much like beasts, a mere variety of the animal kingdom; second, that primeval religion arose in ignorance and fear; third, that priests have blighted societies with bitterness and gloom. Those three anti-Christian arguments are very different; but they are all quite logical and legitimate; and they all converge. The only objection to them (I discover) is that they are all untrue.

If you leave off looking at books about beasts and men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then (if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It is the monstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation.

That man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of barbaric architecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a rococo style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material of many camel’s-hair brushes. Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. We talk of wild animals; but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk. So that this first superficial reason for materialism is, if anything, a reason for its opposite; it is exactly where biology leaves off that all religion begins.
It would be the same if I examined the second of the three chance rationalist arguments; the argument that all that we call divine began in some darkness and terror. When I did attempt to examine the foundations of this modern idea I simply found that there were none. Science knows nothing whatever about prehistoric man; for the excellent reason that he is prehistoric. A few professors choose to conjecture that such things as human sacrifice were once innocent and general and that they gradually dwindled; but there is no direct evidence of it, and the small amount of indirect evidence is very much the other way. In the earliest legends we have, such as the tales of Isaac and of Iphigenia, human sacrifice is not introduced as something old, but rather as something new; as a strange and frightful exception darkly demanded by the gods. History says nothing; and legends all say that the earth was kinder in its earliest time. There is no tradition of progress; but the whole human race has a tradition of the Fall.
And if we took the third chance instance, it would be same; the view that priests darken and embitter the world. I look at the world and simply discover that they don’t. Those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.
Thus these three facts of experience, such facts as go to make an agnostic, are, in this view, turned totally round. I am left saying, “Give me an explanation, first, of the towering eccentricity of man among the brutes; second, of the vast human tradition of some ancient happiness; third, of the partial perpetuation of such pagan joy in the countries of the Catholic Church.” One explanation, at any rate, covers all three: the theory that twice was the natural order interrupted by some explosion or revelation such as people now call “psychic.” Once Heaven came upon the earth with a power or seal called the image of God, whereby man took command of Nature; and once again (when in empire after empire men had been found wanting) Heaven came to save mankind in the awful shape of a man. This would explain why the mass of men always look backwards; and why the only corner where they in any sense look forwards is the little continent where Christ has His Church.

Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here. Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.

Biologos visits Answers in Genesis's Creation Museum

I've never been to the Creation Museum, and I probably won't ever go. But the idea is interesting, and the museum is, too.

In case you didn't know it, Ken Ham is the guiding light behind the museum, and behind Answers in Genesis. Ham debated Bill Nye, "the Science Guy" at the museum, a few months ago.

A pair of scientists, from the BioLogos Forum, visited the Creation museum recently. I found their remarks enlightening. Perhaps you will, too.

Thanks for reading. Read the article.

God's Not Dead -- report on the movie

I saw the movie, God's Not Dead, today. It stars Kevin Sorbo, as Professor Radisson, and Shane Harper as a university freshman, Josh Wheaton. Radisson begins his philosophy class by having the students all write "God is dead" on a sheet of paper, with their names, and hand it in. Wheaton says that he can't do that, and Radisson says that, as an alternative, Wheaton must prove, in three 20 minute presentations at the end of the next meetings of the class, that God is not dead.

This movie was obviously made by Christians, and the intended audience is also Christians. Sorbo, and, probably, all the other actors, are also Christians. The Newsboys and Willie and Korie Robinson, of Duck Dynasty, appear as themselves, and are portrayed as outspoken Christians.

Some (not all, I'm sure) Christians may be disturbed by some aspects of the film. A Christian character prepares a meal, and purchases and serves wine. Wheaton's defense of God's existence includes the following, which some will not appreciate: 1) It's not possible to disprove God's existence, but it's not possible to prove it, either. 2) God worked through the Big Bang in the origination of the universe (for more on that, see here) and this is consistent with "Let there be light!" in Genesis 1. 3) Evolution occurred, as God's method of establishing the diversity of living things. This last point got only a couple of sentences, and neither Radisson or Wheaton mentioned the origin of humans.

I will try not to give away much of the plot, and there is a plot. In fact, there are several plots, more or less woven together, involving several characters. I will say that three different couples broke up during the film, and one of the less believable aspects of it is how they stayed together long enough to be presented as couples in the first place, considering that each one had at least one seriously self-centered egotist as one partner. (One of these was supposedly a Christian.) I thought there was too much going on in the movie, actually.

The film is a dramatized version of Christian apologetics. In my view, it does this well, presenting most or all of the important reasons that atheists claim argue against God's existence, and some rebuttals of these reasons. One apologetic defense is to ask "Why is there something rather than nothing?" or to ask "Who started the Big Bang?"

Stephen Hawking is a prominent atheist, and was named, by Radisson, as the greatest scientific mind in the history of the world. (That claim could certainly be disputed, with, say, Newton, as another candidate!) In his book, The Grand Design, co-authored by Leonard Mlodinow, the following statement occurs, and Radisson quoted all or part of it: Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

There are some problems with using this passage to disprove God's existence. First, as you will see if you go to the Wikipedia article on the book, you will read that by no means all scientists are in agreement with Hawking and Mlodinow, and apparently some who don't agree with them are also unbelievers. Second, why is there gravity at all? (I am sorry that I have yet to read this book -- possibly the authors answer that, but I really doubt it.) Third, as Wheaton pointed out to Radisson, ". . . philosophy is dead." (p. 5)

There was an apologetics advisor for the film. I glimpsed that in the opening credits, but do not recall the name given, and I haven't found it in the movie's web site. Whoever this was, I thought he did a good job. (It was a he. That much I can recall.) At the end of the film, as part of the credits, there was a rather long list of universities that had been sued by Christians (and possibly by some others) for denying Christians their constitutional rights. I'm not sure that any of these were directly related to the subject of the movie. I found one such case on the web site of the Alliance Defense Fund. A student was required to argue in favor of adoption by same-sex couples, and asked for a different assignment, but, instead, was subjected to an examination ". . . for hours about her Christian faith," by a faculty committee. Eventually, apparently after action by the Alliance Defense Fund, she was exonerated, the professor was fired, and she was offered compensation by the university. The credits also said that, at the University I graduated from, the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship was banned as a student organization, and that ruling was overturned, after intervention by the ADF. I checked, and found that that claim seems also to be true.

Is being told that there is no God, by a professor, persecution? I don't think so. Being required to act as if you agreed with it, when you don't, would seem to be, however. I don't think being asked to defend one's beliefs is persecution either, in and of itself. It is often part of a higher education, on all sorts of issues.

At least one university philosophy professor has written in defense of Radisson. One claim he makes is that it is Christian universities who deny freedom of thought, by expecting students and faculty to agree to statements of belief, and then expelling them, or firing them, if they don't live up to such an agreement. To some extent, this is true. However, I was on the faculty of a Christian university for over four decades, and never heard of a student being asked to leave for unbelief. (Some were asked to leave for various kinds of bad behavior.) Some students did not believe, of course. At least a couple of faculty were let go precipitously, also for behavior inconsistent with the university's statement of belief. The professor cited claims that state universities are tolerant of all beliefs, and allow freedom of thought. Cases like the ones mentioned above indicate that freedom of thought isn't always tolerated on secular campuses, in spite of what the professor believes. He makes other claims. Some of them seem to be at least partly valid.

I'm glad that I went to see God's Not Dead. It wasn't the greatest movie ever made, but it was thought-provoking.

Thanks for reading! 

* * * * *
Note added, May 21, 2014. I have now read, and discussed, the book by Hawking that was so central to the conflict in the movie. My discussion is here. 

June 17, 2014. The Speculative Faith blog has published a review of the film, which points out some of the same flaws as the post above. 

How not to defend the Bible

God is, and has, defended and preserved the Bible, for centuries, even millenia. Nonetheless, some of us feel that it is necessary to defend it, or, in other words, to defend our faith. The best way, and the most effective one, to defend the Bible is to live a Christ-like life. Period.

This is not to say that it is wrong to defend the Bible. God can, and has, worked through people to do this. Through Bible translators, for example. Sometimes, you or I should defend it.

Unfortunately, there are a number of bad ways to defend the Bible. They actually are ways to attack its truth, not to defend, even though in most cases that wasn't the intention. Here are a few of them:

1) Claim, loudly and publicly, that the Bible tells us exactly when the next event in the unfolding of history will occur, or what it will be. See here for a recent unfortunate example. See here for an indication that prophecy is not as easy to interpret as some people seem to think that it is.

2) Claim that the Bible unequivocally supports what you believe about a controversial subject that Christians disagree on, such as the ordination of women, eternal security, the nature of baptism, proper church government, use of unknown languages, and many more. We are entitled to our beliefs, and some of them are right, we hope, but some of them may be wrong. To say that the Bible supports only our view, when there are God-fearing, praying, Bible-believing Christians that have another view, which they also think is supported by scripture, is just plain wrong. I'm not the only one who thinks so. We should say something like "I personally think that X is true, and I hope I am right" or "this passage of the Bible supports my view. There are people who also believe the Bible who disagree. Perhaps they are right."

3) Say that the Bible says something that it doesn't. A trivial example is to claim that the Bible says that "cleanliness is next to godliness," or "God helps those who help themselves." (It doesn't say either of these.) Another example would be to claim that the Bible says that behavior Y, whatever that is, is wrong, when it doesn't. I have seen the Bible used to attack hair styles, church music, tattoos, and what people wear to church, when it doesn't say that that particular behavior is wrong at all. (Some behaviors, like gossiping, are wrong, and the Bible says that they are.) Some behaviors are foolish, maybe even sinful, but not because the Bible says, in so many words, that they are. The Bible says nothing direct about smoking, for one example, although it's dangerous.* Another way of doing this would be to claim that the Bible says that the earth was created about 6,000 years ago. Some people think that the Bible supports that view, and perhaps they are right, but it makes no such statement. Such a statement is an interpretation of what the Bible says, requiring some assumptions, not what it says. Other Christians interpret the Bible differently. (See point 2.)

*My own denomination, and others, forbid smoking to members. Therefore, if I smoke, I am breaking a covenant with my church, so I shouldn't smoke. That would be true even if smoking weren't dangerous, so long as the covenant said that I shouldn't. Other practices, such as not eating properly, eating too much, not getting enough sleep, not exercising enough, and too much exposure to the sun or tanning beds, are also dangerous to our health. The Bible doesn't say anything directly against any of these, but Christians, and others, should be careful in all these areas. However, I suspect that there will be smokers, overeaters, and sleep-phobics in heaven.

4) Fail to use good sense, and what others have learned. Peter said that no prophecy was of private interpretation. This probably means, although it doesn't exactly say so, that it's a good idea to find out what other Christians think, or have thought, about a particular topic before striking out on one's own. Before stating some view, check a commentary, or ask a person who knows the Bible well. Consider the context before taking a particular verse as the centerpiece of some crusade.

5) Claim that the Bible supports a particular political party. What do you get when you mix religion and politics? politics. Many Christians are politically conservative. Perhaps that's what God wants them to be, and there are some things that current conservatism supports, in the US, that are good, and things that it is against that are not good. But to say, for example, that the Bible teaches that the best government is least, that taxes are thievery, and the like, is a real stretch. (See point 3) It's an interpretation of scripture. It's an interpretation that leaves out some parts of the Bible, such as 1 Kings 4 - 7, which indicate that Solomon taxed the people heavily for food, and for his horses (and probably for his army) and that he sent tens of thousands of them off to work on his projects for about 7 years. This was a time, according to 1 Kings 8:10-11, when God blessed Solomon's main project, building the Temple. Another part that's left out, in arguments like that, is Psalm 72, which speaks of a welfare state for the poor, by the government of the time, namely the king. Most likely God is not thrilled with many of the views, and actions, of both the left or the right.

The best way to defend the Bible is to live like it was true -- to follow Christ. I hope I am doing so. Thanks for reading.

A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists, by David G. Myers

I recently read A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists: Musings on Why God is Good, and Faith Isn't Evil, by David G. Myers. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008). Myers is a psychologist.

I have read a few books by atheists, and apparently Myers has, too. I don't know if most atheists have bothered to read good books by Christians. I doubt if many, or even any, have read Myers. From my perspective, that's unfortunate. Myers, from my perspective, understands atheism well, and although he makes no arguments that demolish such a point of view completely, he does show that intelligent, bible-believing Christianity, which is respectful of science, can hold its own in a discussion with atheism.

Myers quotes liberally from Richard Dawkins. He discusses some of the misconceptions of Christianity held by atheists, or -- let's be fair -- some of the eccentricities of some Christians. To Myers, the Bible does not require that Christians deny descent of organisms with modification, that they be prejudiced against people of other faiths, that they believe that the soul is separate from the body, or, even, that they oppose same-sex unions, provided that these relationships are between individuals who have a long-term exclusive commitment to each other. Some Christians are going to disagree with Myers on some things, I am sure. I'm not sure that I agree on the last point myself. (He says, correctly, that the Bible doesn't deal with such relationships when it mentions homosexuality, but it doesn't necessarily follow that such relationships are approved by God.) But most of Myers' ideas should be no problem for most educated Christians.

His main thrust is that a lot of atheistic attacks are on positions that Christians don't hold, or that they don't need to hold. I believe that he is correct in that.

I found the book to be well written, and easy to read. (It's only 152 pages long, and that includes an index and notes.) I recommend it to any Christian who is dealing with atheism. I also recommend it to any atheists who may read this.

Thanks for reading. I have posted previously on some of the writing of Richard Dawkins. Here's one such post.

Apologetics according to James W. Sire

I recently read A Little Primer on Humble Apologetics, by James W. Sire. It is little, being small in format, and only 111 pages long. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002)

So what is apologetics? Sire tells us that "Christian apologetics is simply the presentation of a case for biblical truth, most notably the central truth of Jesus Christ as Son of God and Savior." He elaborates on that, of course, and emphasizes the truth that, especially for persons of an intellectual disposition, it is often true that that central truth must be presented in a way that touches their mind. He also writes that appeals to the intellect don't always work, even if they are valid, and even with intellectuals, but says that people are just not going to believe in something that they are deeply convinced is not true. He believes that all Christians are at least partly apologists for the faith, and that we need to present reasons to believe even to believers -- many of them are ill-equipped to answer questions about the validity of Christianity, or about problems, such as the existence of evil. Sire believes that some Christians, including himself, are specially called to this work.

Sire writes of his own experiences. He tells us that he believes that he has been called to be an apologist, and led to the work he now is doing, and that his past experiences, in graduate school, in teaching, in publishing, and as an author, have helped him to do this.

The book does not have "humble" in the title for nothing. For one thing, Sire tells us that, to reach people, we have to listen to them. Really listen to them, even learn from them. We don't know everything. He also believes that, even with an unassailable argument, we won't get assent from listeners if we present our side proudly and triumphantly.

The author gives lists of books that would be good background for work in apologetics.

I was surprised that Sire didn't mention Ravi Zacharias, a notable contemporary apologist.

Thanks for reading. Read Sire.