Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Religious Education

  • New Year Blog Dressup

    I spent a good bit of time yesterday dressing up my blogs for the new year. This unseemly waste of time on the merely visual probably came to pass because I’m fighting a cold.

    I like to keep my three blogs, this original Threads blog, and the two I derived from it (Participatory Bible Study Blog, and the Jevlir Caravansary) similar in appearance. I’ve used the same theme on all three with a different header image and different sidebar arrangements.

    For those who may be new to Threads, I created the Participatory Bible Study Blog in order to separate material strictly on Biblical exegesis from the more general “religion and society” theme of this blog, and the Jevlir Caravansary to separate out my occasional flights into fiction or poetry writing. While Threads is my personal blog, I do stay closer to my professional work in religious education here. My life is divided these days between writing and teaching on the one hand, and continuing computer business on the other. As I’ve developed the teaching ministry, I’ve spent less and less time on the computers. In turn, the computer business is divided into managing networks for small businesses, which provides a steady income, and the occasional spurt of activity producing custom software. It will probably surprise nobody who is involved in any ministry work that while I spend probably 80%+ of my time on the writing/teaching, and 20% on the computer related business, a majority of my income still comes via technology. I call it modern tentmaking.

    As for the new year, my plan (business plan, not resolution) involves putting more time into writing, especially for print, and spreading the other work around.

    A blessed New Year to all!

  • The Problem with Public School Bible Classes

    I have noted before that while Bible classes taught from an academic perspective have been ruled constitutional, I still think they are very bad ideas. Including the Bible as it applies in literature and history classes is appropriate, though it should be proportional to its importance to the field, and should be taught in a way that is neutral.

    While problems may arise in such classes about the way in the which the Bible is taught, there is at least a good basis for setting the boundaries–the standards of the field in question.

    Chris Heard at Higgaion tells of a community college teacher who has been fired because his teaching of Genesis 1-11 offended some of his students. You see, he taught what would be regarded as the academic mainstream view of these passages, and thus didn’t take them as narrative history, which his students would have preferred. Now this was in a western civilization course.

    Imagine what would happen if the course was a High School Bible course, and someone taught critical views of these passages? That is what many, many academically trained teachers would do, and it would certainly be a violation of church and state separation to have teachers required to teach a particular sectarian view of the passages. Remember that it is not even the majority Christian view that these passages should be read as narrative history. (No, I will not be impressed by arguments that involve saying that Catholics aren’t Christians, and thus don’t count for the “majority.”) Such a class taught to high school students would result in an uproar in the Christian community. At the same time, they will try, as they have through the truly National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools.

    The best way to teach young people the Bible is for the individual churches to provide their own instruction. I would suggest that instruction be broad and include an overview of how other people understand the texts. The young people can be introduced to more academic views in civilization and literature classes.

    If the Bible is to be taught in public schools, the approach must be academic and critical, and must include all those views to the left of fundamentalism. Most of the parents aren’t even aware of such views, and will be shocked at what happens in those classes. Their hope is to get NCBCPS curriculum accepted and put it in the hands of underqualified teachers who will accept it as it is.

  • Sneaking God into Public Schools

    I have previously written about my opposition to including specific Bible classes in public schools, and to the NCBCPS curriculum in particular, if one chose to have such a class in any case. Now in a column on WorldNetDaily Chuck Norris talks about using this curriculum as “Your first step to get God back into your public school.” It’s nice to know that this was your goal all along, Chuck. I must admit that I was certain of that from the moment I read about this curriculum.

    I know many people who would like to get God back into public schools, and who admit it openly. I can respect their stated position, though I disagree very strongly. But to try to sell a curriculum to school boards as constitutionally safe, while at the same time proclaiming it to be a means of getting God back into the classroom–that’s deceptive, and I don’t think it’s an appropriate approach for Christians to take. While I did not actually see this, Ed Brayton reports that that the NCBCPS web site initially posted Chuck Norris’s column, and then removed it. The obvious reason would be that they would not like that column quoted in court when their curriculum is challenged.

    Personally, I would simply say again that there are quite a number of things I don’t trust the state to do properly, and teaching religion is high on that list. Let’s provide appropriate religious education in our homes and churches. I don’t ever recall my parents having problems over prayer or Bible study in school–Oh, that’s right, I was homeschooled! Problem solved.

  • Fighting the Devil or Suppressing the Mind

    Today I went on a sort of odyssey through a couple of theologically conservative blogs. My journey started at Adrian Warnock’s blog, where he has another quote from somebody supporting penal substitutionary atonement (PSA):

    While not denying the wide-ranging character of Christ’s atonement, I am arguing that penal substitution is foundational and the heart of the atonement. — Tom Schreiner, quoted by Adrian Warnock

    I quote this because I have been misunderstood on this point. My objection to PSA as I see it taught is not merely that there is more to the atonement than PSA, but also that PSA is simply one among many metaphors by which we discuss the atonement, and is not central. That, however, is not my topic.

    Following a link from Adrian’s blog, I read this interview with Tom Schreiner on Against Heresies, in which, after being asked how he would approach a student or professor who disagreed on this topic, he said:

    I would be patient with a student and try to persuade them of the biblical standpoint. Patience is initially the right stance for a professor as well. But if a professor comes to a settled conviction against penal substitution, he should be removed from his position in my judgment.

    In other words, accept penal substitionary atonement as the basis of forgiveness or get out. (You can find Dr. Schreiner’s quote on this in the interview itself.) Two additional recent posts, not to mention the name of the blog–Against Heresies–support the same approach, and I would hardly regard it as a particularly virulent form of the species. The blog’s mission statement says it’s a “thinking blog” and I note that the tone is much more constructive than some organizations and sites I encounter.

    The current dust-up over PSA, however, leads me to think just a bit. I’m quite certain that these folks believe they are fighting the devil. One must guard the standards lest false brethren come along and derail the faith. But it’s interesting just how frequently these false brethren seem to turn up, and how many of them are dedicated Christian workers, and even missionaries and evangelists. I have wondered once or twice why I bother responding to issues of the atonement, considering how far I am from the position of these reformed scholars. And yet I care about this issue, I care about the Christian faith, and I care about those in ministry who may pay a higher cost for marginal disagreements than I ever will.

    I am not suggesting that the Christian faith, or any community within it, should not have any boundaries at all. Community requires commonality, and commonality will require some definition, especially when the community is larger than a handful. At the same time, there is a level of doctrinal tenseness that can easily become destructive. At the congregational level, it can manifest itself in a critical attitude toward the less theological church members, such as those who might read the wrong books from time to time, or who listen to preachers from a different tradition.

    Here in Pensacola, I experienced it in connection with the Brownsville Revival. I personally have a number of theological issues with some things that occurred in connection with that revival. I could certainly debate quite a number of those points. But frequently new believers, or people who were becoming involved in church life for the first time, were cut down by the doctrinal watchdogs of their various congregations without a chance to work into fellowship. This sometimes came from fundamentalists. One student of mine was told he wasn’t saved because he had heard the preaching of the gospel from something other than the King James Version. But more commonly criticism came from evangelicals and even mainliners. There the issues were sometimes social. The behavior of people at the revival was embarrassing, and their theology lacked intellectual rigor. Thus rather than disciple people that came to them, other churches filtered people doctrinally and drove them out by criticizing the experience that had led them that far.

    On the congregational level, I think this type of speaking can be much more destructive than the errors it proposes to expose and root out. Rather than learning by studying and listening to the Holy Spirit, people are expected to jump through the appropriate doctrinal hoops, get their house in order, and then join a church. New members are looked upon as a threat, rather than as a blessing. Who knows what doctrines they have brought? Perhaps we should keep them from taking any position in the church until we have thoroughly checked them out!

    As an illustration, let me continue with the next post from Adrian’s blog, this one from C. J. Mahaney:

    . . . very small errors in a person’s understanding of the Gospel seemed to result in very big problems in that person’s life.”

    What about small errors in the presentation of the character of God? Are they important as well? If someone presents PSA in such a way as to display God as a vengeful tyrant rather than as the author of the plan of salvation, should I be just as worried about that? What if your terror of legalism results in someone believing they have permission to behave as they wish, ignoring ethics, again something I have personally encountered?

    Frequently, I see people who are very concerned with the most minor detail of the atonement who are completely unconcerned with the picture they give of God, yet this doesn’t seem to be a major issue for many who are very rigorous about doctrine in general.

    Mahaney continues, still as quoted by Adrian:

    . . . legalism is essentially self-atonement for self-glorification, and ultimately for self-worship.

    But in vigorously combatting their concept of legalism, it seems to me that this same group has gotten into a new variety of salvation by something other than God’s grace–salvation by correct doctrine. That is the notion that in order to be saved, one must understand some detailed set of doctrines with precision. In fighting legalism, I believe some have introduced this as a new form of legalism.

    I had such a person come to my house once. He concluded that he was concerned for my salvation. Why? Was it because I did not confess Jesus as Lord and Savior? No. It was because I failed to express the completeness of Christ’s work on the cross (in which I do believe), and repudiate works in vocabulary which matched his. That person was the product of destructive theology, and while repudiating works as a means of salvation, he was completely comfortable substituting intellectual understanding for works.

    Now C. J. Mahaney, who talks about the need to understand this precisely, is one of the authors of the Together for the Gospel statement, which, in Article XVI, somehow seems to make rejection of women in teaching roles an essential of the gospel. Is this also a boundary to be enforced? Actually I don’t need to ask that question. It already is a boundary enforced in many places, and is itself a travesty on the gospel, a denial of one of God’s purposes in it.

    I note with interest that so many people who come from a tradition that called for “the Bible only” now find it necessary to write length confessions, and then to enforce those on other people studying the Bible. It seems as though the Bible may not be quite as good a guide to faith and practice as they thought. One has to fence in the seminary professors lest they wander from the pasture, a pasture defined not by the Bible, but by doctrinal statements. Is this a problem with the Bible? Is it not rather a problem with over-defining Christian doctrine so that honest seekers after truth can no longer truly explore all the possibilities opened up by God’s multifaceted word? I firmly believe it is the latter.

    You see, when I read the comment by Dr. Tom Schreiner about removing a professor from his post for disagreeing on the issue of PSA, two words came to my mind: Academic freedom. Now a number of people will find it quite inappropriate that I bring this point up right here. Academic freedom, after all, is for secular institutions, not seminaries. In this country, we push academic freedom primarily for institutions that are government supported in some way. And let me be clear: I don’t question the right of private institutions in general, and religious institutions in particular, to set their own standards. I’m not suggesting that the government come in and enforce some kind of academic openness on seminaries. I don’t questions their right to do so, but I do question whether it is right.

    But in my view academic freedom is more principle than policy. When I read the works of a scholar who works at an evangelical school that requires endorsement of a particular doctrinal statement, I have a certain potential discount. It depends, of course, on the detail of the doctrinal statement. An institution might, for example, simply require that professors belong to their particular confessional group of churches. The more detailed the statement, however, the more I question. Could a professor at a college that accepted the affirmations and denials of the Together for the Gospel statement discover an egalitarian meaning in Galatians 3:28? (In practice I think there are a large number of evangelical scholars who do not merit such a “discount.” There are, however, a number of others who do, in my view.)

    I have previously discussed this in relation to the doctrine of inerrancy. Acceptance and rejection of inerrancy are not two equal platforms. In each affirmation from a Biblical writer that I consider I have the option of determining that it is without error–or not! A person who has signed a declaration in favor of Biblical inerrancy is restricted to discovering the explanation that supports inerrancy. I do not mean that nobody can both do good scholarship and accept inerrancy. There are many who do. The question is whether their belief in inerrancy is a conclusion they have adopted, or an external standard imposed on them.

    As a result, in trying to fight off the devil and “maintain standards” I believe that Christian institutions frequently fall into the trap of suppressing the mind. They are more concerned that the theological ducks line up in a row and quack in unison than that the ducks survive and grow. It’s a distinction that is difficult to maintain in theology, which lacks the empirical testing of a scientific field. I would suggest coming down clearly on the side of tolerance. Jesus reserved his most vigorous criticism for those who upheld the doctrinal orthodoxy of the day.

  • Bible Curriculum in Odessa

    Ed Brayton has an informative post on the process of selecting a Bible curriculum in Odessa, TX. I haven’t had time to follow the case closely, but it appears that Ed is doing so.

    If one is to have a specifically Bible curriculum in high school, as opposed to appropriate mentions in literature, history, and various social studies classes, I would prefer the BLP curriculum strongly. I do not, however, think it is good either for the state or for the church to venture into this area. I realize it’s constitutional when done right (and NCBCPS is not done right), but I still do not think it is a good idea, as I explained in a previous post.

  • Why Talk about Evolution in Church?

    Watching recent commentary on the Answers in Genesis creation museum, that huge waste of $27 million designed to proved that dinosaurs lived with human beings and even were preserved on the ark has led me to believe that education on this subject in church and Sunday School is even more important than I thought.

    I do not believe the Museum glorifies God. It presents one rather lousy interpretation of Genesis, one that is at war with the facts, and in the long term will turn more people away from Christ by making Christians look as though they have no interest in honesty and integrity in science.

    There are two major problems that I see in terms of public education about science. The first is the quality of science education in public schools, which is not good, and the quality of the public’s knowledge about science in general, however acquired. Many people who claim to reject evolution, for example, reject a caricature of what is actually taught by professional scientists in the relevant fields. Often that rejection comes about because of conclusions drawn from evolution which are not part of the science at all. I’ve written about this before.

    A good, basic education based on the best scientific research available is essential. This is why I have regularly opposed the teaching of ID. My assessment of the scientific value of intelligent design (ID)–it has no value at all–is not the important thing here. The bottom line is that ID has not gone through the kind of rigorous research and testing required for a new scientific theory to be accepted as consensus science, which should be a prerequisite to its presence in high school science textbooks.

    But more importantly, I know that a very large number of Christians do accept the theory of evolution and are also very serious about their Christian faith. The problem is that very often they are quite vague both on what evolutionary theory is (see above), and on how it relates to their faith. The standard response to such a discussion is simply that they don’t take the Bible all that literally, but that leaves open the door for groups such as AiG to come in and claim that they represent the real “Bible believers.”

    It is not simply a matter of taking the language of Genesis less literally. One needs to carefully examine it to discover just what type of literature it is, and then interpret as one would normally interpret that type of literature. It is not just that AiG is taking Genesis literally; they are taking it as a form of narrative history. It’s not. Their interpretation is fundamentally flawed, and has created the huge clash they present between the findings of modern science and what they teach from the Bible. The clash is not necessary, however, if one simply deals with Genesis as what it is. (For introductory material, see my essays Genesis Creation Stories – Form, Structure, and Relationship and The Two Flood Stories. I link to many other essays from those posts.)

    When I try to talk to people in churches about creation and evolution, however, most are quite resistant, even when they accept evolutionary theory. It’s easier to be quiet and just hope that the extremists will go away. But many in the church need to know not only that pastors and teachers can accept the theory of evolution and still be Christians. They need to know how they do it. Too often I hear, “I don’t see the problem.” Well, having grown up young earth creationists–and I literally mean from the earliest memory I have of thinking of creation I was educated YEC–and having accepted evolutionary theory later in life, I do see the problem. Doctrines are stated in terms that seem to support the literal, narrative history view.

    Again, some have suggested to me that they don’t want to waste their time on such a non-spiritual issue. But here I agree with the young earth folks. Creation is an important spiritual issue. (For my view of a Biblical doctrine of creation, see the pamphlet God the Creator.) But even further Bible study is falling off in our churches today and people are losing Biblical literacy. Genesis provides an excellent workshop for teaching methods of Bible study and ways of discerning the literary genre of various passages. It can provide the foundation for a much more effective Bible study discipline for church members. Their Bible study will become much more enlightening when they understand how to handle various literary genres. What information can you get from them? What are they intended to convey? What value might they have other than conveying propositional truths?

    I think that we, as Christians, would do well to talk about this more, to preach it and to teach it in our Sunday School classes. And in spite of my own strongly held views, I do suggest that this happen no matter what your position. I no more want theistic evolution to become a Christian doctrine than I want young or old earth creationism to become enshrined in doctrinal statements. I think that we should use doctrinal statements to describe God’s relationship to us, and allow scientific study to determine how things work in the physical universe. I would be and have been perfectly willing to share Sunday School classes and even the platform with advocates for young earth creationism.

    But the discussion needs to get out in the open, especially in those mainline churches who tend to hope that such arguments will go away. If we in mainline churches are embarrassed by the creation museum, we need to get more vocal about how we understand science, our faith, and their relationship.

    Expect me to continue to be vocal on this issue for a long time to come.

  • Response to Misquoting Jesus – I

    I have finally started reading Misquoting Jesus, by Bart Ehrman. It came in about a week ago via interlibrary loan, and I have now gotten through the introduction and the first chapter. Unlike my response to The God Delusion, I’m not going to post all sections at once, but rather I’ll just post my reactions a chapter at a time.

    Before I get started, however, I want to mention that Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. has joined the list of speakers at Running Toward the Goal, a 5 minute +/- audio podcast sponsored by Pacesetters Bible School, Inc.. Elgin will focus on Christian apologetics and chose to give his response to Misquoting Jesus in his first podcast. There is also a link to the transcript there. Elgin accepts the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, as he mentions in the show, so he will have a somewhat different perspective than I do, though his response is surprisingly similar.

    I read the introduction to Misquoting Jesus with a great deal of empathy. Going into college, I was in many ways where Bart Ehrman was. I benefited from three important differences, however. First, though my parents were very conservative in their own beliefs, they did not discourage me from questioning. Second, I had already seen the number of manuscript variations by looking at the New Testament in the old Nestle-Aland text (25th edition, I believe) that I started Greek with. Third, my undergraduate professors gave great attention to dealing with questions that arise because of the differences.

    Amongst my own experiences I would count a time when I was 12 years old and became concerned with just how one could prove that the Bible was true. This happened some time during Sabbath School (I was raised Seventh-day Adventist), and by the end of church I had found my solution–Bible prophecy. We could be certain the Bible was true because of prophecy. I proudly proclaimed my solution to my Dad who affirmed that prophecy was important, but pointed out that there were ways to get around prophecy. The bottom line was faith, he told me.

    In college I recall facing question after question. I confronted a young earth when studying the texts of the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11. I located the paper I wrote at that time when going through my files recently. The contents are hardly stunning, and my conclusions appear somewhat timid to me now, but I was raised on the 6000 years period–no 6-10 thousand variation for me–and the textual differences were the first break with the young earth view for me.

    So dealing with manuscript variations has played a huge role in my own development as it did for Dr. Ehrman, even though the outcome was not the same. I would note that I did leave the Seventh-day Adventist Church out of seminary, and didn’t return to church, now as a United Methodist, until 12 years later, but that didn’t have to do with doubts about the Bible. I was liberal enough by the time I was working on the MA degree to have some difficulties at the SDA Theological Seminary. They were rather minor problems, to be sure, and I managed to resolve them quite reasonably, but they made it clear to me that not everyone was primarily interested in finding the truth, particularly in Biblical studies.

    Since I do not believe in Biblical inerrancy myself, and have not almost from the time I formed a conscious view of inspiration, the fact that there are variations in the wording is not that major of an issue. (Note that while my views of a number of issues were altered as I discovered manuscript variations, I had not truly formulated my own view of inspiration before I was a college student. It was all sort of ad hoc.) But there is a certain shock in discovering the actual history of the Bible if one hasn’t spent serious time thinking about it.

    This is very important for Christian education. I think that we are wasting most of our available educational time in the church in the mistaken view that if we have reaffirmed the doctrines enough times as a young person is growing up, they will stay in the church. Of course at the same time, many church leaders complain about the number of young people who leave the church when they get to college. The shock, in my view, is not how many leave, it’s that any of them stay.

    The time is past when one can get by with providing only part of the truth. It was never right, but with the internet and the available of information generally, any young person who is reasonably curious will have access to all the negative information that the Sunday School teacher may be trying to avoid.

    I realize it seems like a risk to expose children and young people to other religions, but a faith that cannot survive information is not going to be much of a faith. I have blogged on this before here.

    Since I have already read chapter 1, I believe I can fairly confidently say that I will post a few thoughts on it (canonization) tomorrow.

  • Points of Agreement

    [Continuing my series responding to The God Delusion. The starting entry is From the Land of the Deluded.]

    It may surprise many readers to know that I have a number of points of agreement with Dawkins. Since I have blogged about many of these things before, I’m only going to give a basic list with an occasional link to other writing I have done on the subject.

    First, I accept the theory of evolution, and I even appreciate the description Dawkins gives about it. For an understanding of atheistic evolution (and I believe the adjective is not unfair in his case), I recommend The Blind Watchmaker (link to my brief review). But I also recommend it to anyone who simply wants to understand the simple power of variation plus natural selection to produce amazing things. It’s wonderfully well written and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I even understood Gould’s punctuated equilibria much better after I read it! (Gould is one of my favorite science authors of all time, but he tends to be more wordy and is easier to misunderstand than Dawkins.)

    Second, while I know that many Christians have been offended by the title and the tone of the book, I’m afraid I don’t see the point. I titled my opening entry From the Land of the Deluded. Why? Is it because I believe I am, in fact, deluded? No. I just find it amusing. What is puzzling to me is that Christians are concerned that an atheist calls them deluded. If he is, in fact, an atheist, as what else could he regard them? If he is an atheist he doesn’t share many basic assumptions with them. What possible offense can his judgment have on them? I’m a believer in dialog, and I think dialog needs to be courteous. But dialog also needs to be clear. We need to know what each party to the discussion actually believes, otherwise we cannot possibly hope to come to a real understanding.

    Third, I deplore the negative stereotyping of atheists in American or any other culture. I do not believe that atheists are by nature immoral any more than anyone else. I would have no problem voting for an atheist for public office.

    Fourth, I do not believe in indoctrination. I do believe in religious education. I advocate this distinction in churches. A child should know about more than his birth faith and should have the right to make an informed choice. This means hearing about other faiths and about the option of no faith, and I would provide this training in Sunday School. Note that I don’t mean teaching from one of the little “Different Religions and How to Convert Them” kind of books, but from materials that positively present the views of the particular group. I blogged about this previously here.

    Fifth, I’m pretty happy both with the Zeitgeist commandments enumerated on page 263 and 264, and with Dawkins’s amendments to the same. It’s perhaps odd that coming from such different positions, we look for such similar things in society, but I think it is a good indication that moderation is a possible option.

    Sixth, I do believe that religious beliefs should be subject to challenge, and I agree pretty much down the line with his comments on the Danish cartoons story (p. 24ff). I blogged about it previously here.

    Sixth, last but not least, I must call attention to the footnote on page 321, quoting Ann Coulter: “I defy any of my co-religionists to tell me they do not laugh at the idea of Dawkins burning in hell.” Well, I have not read Ann’s book, so assuming Dawkins has quoted her correctly, I will say simply that I do not laugh at any such thing, nor do I regard it as a Christian attitude for anyone to laugh at the prospect of anyone else burning in hell. (Hell itself is another worthwhile topic, but I’m not going there right now.)

    When there is conflict on issues such as this, I am in favor of religious freedom. I wish I had come away from The God Delusion with the feeling that Dawkins also favors freedom, but I’m not certain. He seems to have a certain tendency to assume that he is right (not necessarily a bad thing), and to assume that he can also make a better choice for everyone else, which I think is a bad thing.

  • Diversity and Raising Children

    [This is part of my series of responses to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. The parent entry is From the Land of the Deluded.]

    I truly have to wonder to what extent Dawkins is arguing in favor of freedom, and to what extent he is arguing in favor of the enforcement of his own scientific ideas. For example, starting on page 311, Dawkins tells us the story of a young boy taken from his Jewish parents by authorities in 19th century Italy because he had been baptized by a maid, and was therefore Catholic. This is truly an excellent example of something bad done by religion. We can and should deplore what was done. I think he diminishes the impact of his case by in turn criticizes the parents for being faithful to their own religious beliefs:

    . . . It would be grossly unjust to equate the two sides in this case, but this is as good a place as any to note taht the Mortaras could at a stroke have had Edgardo back, if only they had accepted the priests’ entreaties and agreed to be baptized themselves. Edgardo had been stolen in the first place because of a splash of water and a dozen meaningless words. Such is the fatuousness of the religiously indoctrinated mind, another pair of splashes is all it would have taken to reverse the process. to some of us, the parents’ refusal indicates wanton stubbornness. To others, their principled stand elevates them into the long list of martyrs for all religions down the ages.

    There are two elements of this criticism that I want to note. First, there is the assumption that the parents cannot truly be convinced of their own position. It is only through indoctrination that they could hold that position. Raised freely, they would, presumably, have agreed with Dawkins. Second, there is an assumption that going along with an irrational requirement is an acceptable option. Now on many issues I would tend to go along with something irrational simply because it was not worth the effort of fighting it. I suspect this second assumption is unconscious, that Dawkins does not, in fact, believe that going along with tyranny is an effective strategy.

    But as we continue through the book, we come to the case of the Amish (pp. 329-331), the shoe is on the other foot, and now Dawkins is going to decide for the parents just how they are to raise their children. Apparently we are to assume that the goals that Dawkins has for society are necessarily better than the goals that the Amish have. For the type of society in which the Amish wish to live, their educational system is quite well suited. But here again we make an assumption that a maximum pursuit of technological and scientific progress is the best route for all of humanity.

    Now I happen to prefer the future that Dawkins envisions on this point. He’s made queasy by the idea of letting the Amish children stay where they are. I’m made queasy by the notion of forcibly removing them and altering their culture simply because he (and in this case I) believe they would be better off. In that battle, my choice is to give up my vision for their lives and allow their parents to make those early choices.

    This is not, however, as easy of a decision as many on both sides will probably believe. Many on the Christian side will argue that we should definitely give parents the freedom to choose how to raise their own children. But we don’t do that in fact. There are many things that a parent is not permitted to do in our society, including various forms of abuse and definitely murder. This has not always been true in all societies. There is a tension here between freedom and diversity and “the best interests of the child” that will always make issues such as this one a bit difficult to settle.

    Nonetheless I find the combination of attitudes that Dawkins expresses interesting, to say the least.

  • From the Land of the Deluded

    A couple of weeks ago I made the mistake of trying to reply to a point in Plantinga’s review of The God Delusion, and got caught. The first commenter on that post suggested I should read the actual book “if only to be able to evaluate reviews of a different book going by the same title.”

    Well, I have now read the book, and it was less irritating than I expected, though my expectations were fulfilled. In general, I was not surprised by anything Dawkins had to say. This should not be shocking considering that I have studied Christian theology fairly extensively for a non-theologian (I remind readers that my field is Biblical studies, not theology, and thus at theology I am an amateur), and I have also read a good bit of Dawkins’s writing, and I am very fond of it, even though I recognize that I am precisely the type of Christian theist for which he has the greatest contempt. This latter point is repeatedly emphasized in the text of The God Delusion.

    There is, however, one way in which the book is worse than I expected. I linked earlier to a post by Bruce Alderman, in which he performed a humorous source analysis on this text. I got a good laugh out of it, but at the time I was assuming it was pure humor. Having read the book, I think I can build on his analysis.

    Bruce’s H source writes much like the Richard Dawkins of books like The Blind Watchmaker. He does surgery on ideas with a laser scalpel, coming to specific points, and then rebuilding the structure with care and precision. You may disagree with his conclusions, but you normally do so by debating his premises, not by criticizing his logic. Such a person presumably wrote most of chapter 5. There, even though I disagree with some conclusions about religion in general, we find an excellent presentation of Darwinian explanations for the evolution of religion, or a propensity to religion in humanity.

    I originally intended to say that Bruce’s A source, contrary to H, uses a shotgun approach, but on further reading and reflection I don’t think that is an adequate description. The approach would better be compared to the use of a blunderbuss, a weapon to which I was introduced by Tolkien in “Farmer Giles of Ham.” There the question of what a blunderbuss is received this response:

    Indeed this very question, it is said, was put to the Four Wise Clerks of Oxenford, and after thought they replied, “A blunderbuss is a short gun with a large bore firing many balls or slugs, and capable of doing execution within a limited range without exact aim. (Now superseded in civilized countries by other firearms.)

    However, Farmer Giles’s blunderbuss had a wide mouth that opened like a horn, and it did not fire balls or slugs, but anything he could spare to stuff in.

    The aforementioned farmer Giles of Ham used a blunderbuss on a giant with the result that:

    . . . By luck it was pointed more or less at the giant’s large ugly face. Out flew the rubbish, and the stones and the bones, and the bits of crock and wire, and half a dozen nails. And since the range was indeed limited, by chance and no choice of the farmer’s many of these things struck the giant; a piece of pot went in his eye, and a large nail stuck in his nose.

    “Blast!” said the giant in his vulgar fashion. “I’m stung!” . . .

    So DawkinsA has loaded his blunderbuss with whatever was available, pointed it in my general direction (or perhaps I stuck my face in front of it), and fired. And thus, in the words of the giant, “Blast! I’m stung.” Well, actually, not so much, and unlike Tolkien’s giant I have no inclination to turn aside.

    Those who haven’t dealt with the vagaries of source and redaction criticism will perhaps get less amusement from Bruce’s analysis or from my aside, but those who have will recognize the stylistic differences that can make one wonder what happened between one passage and the next. I think this is also the problem that resulted in the exchange in the comments to my previous post. Basically you can get two completely different impressions from reading this book. The first is of a proposed dialog which invites a broad range of people who are opposed to placing religious dogma above science, of indoctrination, of forcing religious beliefs on people, and of limiting the freedom of scientific inquiry. The second is of a desire to suppress religion if it is possible to do so by any means short of violence, and describes all people of any variety of religious faith in disparaging terms.

    There is one basic element that I fully expected, and did in fact find. For Dawkins science is all there is. There is no supernatural of any kind, and his use of the term “supernatural” is not so nuanced as that of some theologians. For him, “supernatural” is anything that cannot in theory at least be fully investigated by scientific means.

    Thus he occasionally indicates that he is not arguing against the guy in the sky with a beard concept of God, yet in practice he is arguing against the philosophical equivalent. His God must be measurable and explainable in natural terms, thus any attributes one supposes God might possess that do not fall within that scope are automatically dismissed.

    Dawkins operates with a thoroughgoing ontological naturalism. This is it. If I were to allow him that assumption, generally implicit, we could simply say, “That’s the ball game.” And in fact most of the book is superfluous for the simple reason that Dawkins never allows a supernatural definition of God to come into play at all. Despite what he says, God is not a hypothesis. He would be a rather bad hypothesis if he were one.

    While Dawkins does not believe in God, he appears to believe he has god-like powers. Repeatedly he suggests that the religious faith of scientists or other thinkers whose work he appreciates were not really sincere, but rather went along with their time. Such is the case with Kant (footnote to p. 231, quoting A. C. Grayling favorably), Mendel (p. 99 becoming a monk was ” . . . equivalent of a research grant.”), the American founding fathers (p. 39 – “. . . the greatest of them might have been atheists. Certainly their writings on religion in their own time leave me in no doubt that most of them would have been atheists in ours.”).

    It’s astonishing how easy it is to know what someone would have been years after the fact!

    In my view, more even than an attack on belief, this book is an attack on moderation. By moderation I mean any system that does not automatically push for the extremes, but recognizes that there are a range of positions between. I do not mean that one has to accept that those other positions have an equal claim to truth; I simply suggest recognizing that they exist. Dawkins wants the conflict to be between fundamentalists of any religion and atheism. He objects to being called a fundamentalist atheist, but this very attitude suggests that in some ways the title fits. My experience with Christian fundamentalists indicates to me that if you disagree with them in any little thing, you are the enemy. I’m often called an atheist by such people because I accept the theory of evolution. Dawkins has problems with all of the folks in the middle, with moderates being a frequent target. (For notes on my view of moderation, see Moderate Thinking.)

    I’m going to divide this response into several posts, though I will post them all together. A directory follows, though you can find the entire series by choosing category The God Delusion.

    So from the land of the deluded, let me present just a bit of a response. I’m not an apologist. I’m frequently embarrassed by what Christian apologists have to say. My apologetic is very simple, and we sang it in the Easter Sunrise service at my church: “You ask me how I know he lives, he lives within my heart.” It’s subjective. I don’t expect it to convince you. But it’s what I bring to the table. Categorize me as a deluded simpleton, but a joyful one!