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Posted by Anthony on November 10, 2009
As of this writing, I am facilitating a course/discussion regarding the decline of Christianity in America. Someone made a point in the discussion that is similar to one I’ve made previously… but I can’t find where I made it so I’m making it anew. 
The question begins with a look at the measured increase in self-identified ‘religious nones’ in America since around 1990. (This data can be found linked to here.) In 1990, some 8% of Americans identified themselves as having no religion. Today, that figure has doubled. In the meantime, there has been a drop in those identifying themselves as Christians, from about 86% to 76% of the nation’s population. Some back of the napkin calculation suggests that some 30,000,000 fewer people call themselves Christian than did in 1990 with a significant portion of these falling into the ‘religious none’ category.
However, of note, the number of outright atheists has seen only a moderate increase. Even many of the ‘religious nones’ say they believe something.
You would hardly know this in a survey of the content on the Internet. The hard core atheists and secular humanists are over represented in blogs, forums, and the like. In the meantime, atheist apologists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, etc, have a firm hand on the direction of dialog. Throughout this, the evolutionary party line is enforced in almost every place, except for the private consciences of the individual (for now). Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on March 23, 2009
I’m getting some hits regarding scientism but don’t actually have any posts dedicated to it. I thought if I’m going to be looked at on the subject I should make at least a few deliberate comments. They should not be construed, however, as exhaustive.
Scientism can refer to a few different ideas and I denounce them all. It goes without saying that people who exhibit ‘scientism’ would not use the word to describe themselves and they will resent the suggestion that they are as described.
Because this post is pretty lengthy here is a list of the headings in order of appearance:
- Science as the Only Reliable Source for Knowledge
- Scientific Reality the Only Reality
- Science as Club for Ending Debate
- Scientific Inquiry Always Righteous
- Scientism as Fundamentalist Faith: “Atheism of the Gaps.”
- Conclusion
Science as the Only Reliable Source for Knowledge
One aspect of scientism is the unbridled deference to Science in all matters as the only reliable source of knowledge. Apologists such as myself frequently point out that there are numerous areas in our lives where we believe we know things where that knowledge is not derived from science, the scientific method, empirical inquiry, or anything that could possibly be considered ‘Science.’ One can bemoan it, but some things just are not suited for scientific inquiry and there is nothing you can do about it. Experiential realities like ‘love’ and and abstractions such as the law of noncontradiction are things we ‘know’ but not through science. That is reality. You don’t have to like it. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on February 16, 2009
I’m not really in the mood to discuss evolution right now but I feel it is my job to keep my devoted readers informed about such things.
One of arguments I’ve made in my ministry is really an observation: in the hard core atheistic naturalistic community, if you don’t come to the same conclusions as they do on the science you are one of those dastardly, anti-intellectual, irrational creationists. (For full effect, say that aloud, scratch yourself, and then at ‘creationists’ spit on the ground. That will give you the attitude).
If you don’t seem dastardly, are very intellectual, and obviously rational, the atheist is quick to prove that no good theory need fair actual facts. In this scenario, you simply label the person a ‘closet creationist.’ This is essentially the attack on the Intelligent Design community.
Today I present you another example that illustrates the phenomena in large letters.
Evolutionist Simon Conway Morris wrote an article in the Guardian over the weekend commemorating Darwin’s birthday. Mr. Morris is a Christian. The article calls attention to ‘unfinished business’ of Darwinism (and reductionism) and spends a fair time talking about the problem of Mind which I personally find fundamentally insurmountable on naturalistic terms, and was famously raised by C.S. Lewis, and carried further by scholars such as Angus Menuge (book: Agents Under Fire, Materialism and the Rationality of Science
).
Mr. Morris is a Christian, but he is also an evolutionist. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on June 25, 2008
You may discuss this post at the corresponding discussion forum thread.
In the midst of my various activities lately (finishing my own book, finishing books for review, etc) I have been contemplating and discussing what the proper attitude and conduct should be among Christians towards things like oppressed workers in China and things of that sort. In the current climate that pits left versus right, even among Christians, I believe that I have a unique view that deserves a hearing.
Here it is in a nutshell: The Bible calls Christians to reach out first to their own family, than the family of believers, and then the outside world. It is my view that most of the emphasis on social affairs, from both the left and the right (speaking here only of the Christians on that spectrum), is on the outside world. Like for example, oppressed workers in China. Like for example, the Alaskan tundra. And yes, even issues like gay marriage and abortion on demand.
But the New Testament is clear about the scope of our efforts and I’m afraid we’ve failed dismally about what we’ve already been told. In short, even if the Christian ought to be concerned about some of these other larger issues, until they’ve done the duties that have been clearly set before them, it is dubious how much effort they should place on doing the things that are extended from principles derived from what is clearly set before them. If you should like a direct example of what I mean, it is nonsense for the Christian community to be heavily involved in pro-family iniatives while the Christian community itself endures a divorce rate as high as the non-Christian community.
It might be argued that something like Jesus’ words in Matthew 23 applies: “But you have neglected the more important matters of the law- justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”
I am calling attention to the former things that have been neglected, notwithstanding the fact that in some of these issues what we attempt to strain out may not be a gnat anymore, but a ‘camel’ in its own right. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on June 9, 2008
A recent commenter said: “Well I don’t believe in invisible entities like gods, angels, spirits, or pixies, faeries,etc…”
I immediately thought to myself all the invisible things that he does believe in. I thought of the invisible things that the scientific community believes in- like all the missing dark matter and the millions of years which life is said to have evolved in which is ever and always invisible to direct observation- and realized with a start a fact which of course I have long been aware of… atheists who hide behind science in their mockery of those who believe in invisible realities mask their true objection- not that invisible realities might exist, but that these realities might be an entity.
For my part, once one has contented oneself with the fact that there are invisible realities, I see no justification for the belief that they cannot be personal. I’m not saying that they are all personal… I’m saying I don’t see why they couldn’t be. This curious denouncement of beliefs in invisible things as though making it is a mark of self-evident intellectual superiority combined with the contradictory fact that one lives every day on the presumption that there are invisible realities- yes, even atheists do- reminded me of two passages I’ve read in the last year.
I’ll quote them and let the reader make the connections.
The first from Charles Williams and his Desecent Into Hell:
The shock almost restored him. If he had ever hated Sir Aston because of a passion for austere truth, he might even then have laid hold on the thing that was abroad in the world and been saved. If he had been hopelessly wrong in his facts and yet believed them so, and believed they were important in themselves, he might have felt a touch of the fire in which the Marian martyr had gone to his glory, and still be saved. In the world of suicides, physical or spiritual, he might have heard another voice than his and seen another face. He looked at Sir Aston and thought, not “He was wrong in his facts”, but “I’ve been cheated”. It was his last consecutive thought.
The second from the diary of CS Lewis All My Road Before Me, all written before Lewis was a Christian, and while he himself was an atheist:
I forgot to say that yesterday I met Fasnacht in town… We discussed the ideal of extinction for the planet: he admitted that it was hopeless, as you couldn’t destroy all life before you retired yourself, and even if you did, nature might still have something up her sleeve. He then went on to expound what he called Idealistic Nihilism- the theory [that] nothing at all exists…. I attempted to give a serious answer to Fasnacht’s theory and this led to an argument on Nothing. … Fasnacht was once more proof how little purely intellectual powers avail to make a big man. I thought that he had not lived a single one of his theories: he had worked them with his brain but not with his blood. … When he went I walked with him to the corner of the road. I said I believed the things I had said but he had been playing with counters. He admitted he could only clinch his view by committing suicide. He then left me. [italics his]
Posted by Anthony on May 25, 2008
I was handed a bunch of interview questions a while back and we actually had an audio interview but that interview is now lost in the hills of Argentina (I kid you not). I have been answering them one by one on my blog at www.birthpangs.com but this one (and a couple to come) I thought would be relevant here. You can read the other four questions and answers at the Birth Pangs site. Here, reprinted, is question five and my answer:
Why pick a post-nuclear war setting to explore these themes: first, the theme of human virtue and fortitude, and, second, the theme of ultimate truth?
Interestingly, what I wanted to do in the book decided this setting. I didn’t start out wanting to have a Mad Max landscape. A Mad Max landscape was the natural outgrowth of some of the purposes of the book. What I wanted to get at is a point where everything is stripped away leaving only individual people striving on their own, free from the structures of government, church, and civilization. There aren’t many plausible scenarios that can give you that and one of the things I wanted to remain is plausible. I know that there are fantastic elements to the book… but under my argument (slowly revealed over all the books), is that everything in the books can actually be true in our own world. So, how do we get from the world we are in now to a world in which every man has to fend for themselves, rebuilding what they believe and how they think free from peer influence? A post-apocalyptic setting is required, unless I want to have a completely fantastic Perelandra world.
Now, I wanted that setting to help lay out virtue and fortitude and even ultimate truth because I believe we take the crutches of society for granted. I am not saying that society’s influence is bad or improper, only that we shouldn’t take it for granted. We like to think of ourselves as good and righteous and brave people, but really, what would we be like if there was no policeman to think about or no armies to concern ourselves with? I think we need those curbs, but my point is that we shouldn’t fool ourselves about ourselves. We may only be civil because it is imposed on us. But what if those curbs weren’t in place?
If the curbs weren’t in place, we’d really find out the robustness of our virtues. We’d find out if we’d behave if there was no policeman to tell us to do so. We’d find out if we were brave when confronted with an injustice or a dastardly deed we had no policeman to call, but had to do something ourselves.
This ties in now with the question of ultimate truth. You don’t have anyone telling you what is right or true anymore, yet each and every one of us has an innate sense that there are right or true things, though we grasp at them and nearly always fail to meet our own standards, let alone the standards of others (think CS Lewis’s Mere Christianity, the first chapter). What are you going to do? You can’t rely on authorities- authorities are gone.
In the Birth Pangs world, this is the real situation and the people struggle endlessly with them. But I do not think that our situation is much different. We still have to answer the same questions, only now we might say there are too many authorities, too many voices telling us what is true and real. Our problem is sorting them out and that basically requires the same process and methodology as starting over from ’scratch.’
I should say that I had wished to make a clean slate in the Birth Pangs world, with literally everything stripped away, but found that I couldn’t. The same principles I explore are the ones that demand that certain realities persist. There are still lingering tensions from past hates, for example. The UN has come in and taken away all of the guns, and a gunless world truly gives us an opportunity to be courageous and test our mettle, but I couldn’t realistically get rid of them all. That meant an on-going discussion about ‘gun rights’ which couldn’t be avoided. There are various political movements that surface that have their origins in our own times, and I couldn’t realistically suggest that they were completely gone, either. What to do about them forms a backdrop to the series.
Still, the main objective I think was reached: people found out what they were made of without the boundaries and crutches of ‘civilized’ society and likewise flail about for ideas on determining the source and nature of real truth.
Posted by Anthony on February 18, 2008
At long last I have managed to get the video of my graduation speech online in a workable format. I have them up on Youtube right now in two halves and on Apologeticsvideos.net in whole (shown below). This is a graduating class that I had for their 7th and 8th grade years, teaching religion, social studies, and PE. This is one of the few presentations that I have given from a written text. Below the video I have the full text.
The Fellowship of the King
Direct Link to Apologeticsvideos.net video.
(link to Youtube) Part 1:
(link to Youtube) Part 2:
To read the text click… Read the rest of the entry… »
