remnants of remnants

Advance warning: this is less like a pithy, interesting blog entry and more like a long, boring essay in philosophy (a “blessay”, as Stephen Fry calls it).

I worry about free will. Specifically, I worry about the role free will plays in Christianity, and the kinds of theological explanations that depend on it. Just recently, the more I think about it, the more I just don’t get it. I’ve almost got to the point now where it looks impossible to me that the concept of free will could do what it’s supposed to do for Christians.

Free will plays a key role in popular Christian apologetic by providing a solution to the so-called ‘problem of evil’: it explains how there can be suffering in a world even when that world is run by a good God. My worry at the moment is that this explanation doesn’t hold much water when you think about it. I’ll try and explain why, but before I start, let me first discharge my responsibilities as a philosopher. I’m going to make my boring philosophical excuses now, in a single paragraph that you can just skip over:

<heavy philosophy>Free will is a pretty slippery concept which philosophers have been debating for centuries, and I really don’t want to get into the whole freedom-vs-determinism debate, not for a second. So for the purposes of what I’m writing here, I’m going to assume a particular solution to the philosophical debate – namely, that something like the libertarian conception of free will is true, and we humans are capable of originating genuinely undetermined choices that causally affect the world. I think something like this view is a necessary part of a mainstream Christian worldview – I think it would be very hard to be a Christian if you were a hard determinist. (That’s not to say some, like Calvin, haven’t tried.) And if that conflicts with determinism, as philosophers generally think it does, then so much the worse for determinism.</heavy philosophy>

There, that’s that. Non-philosophers, welcome back. And let’s go.
Read the rest of this entry »

An unusually entertainingly written piece from Mediawatchwatch:

While it may seem hard to believe, reports have confirmed that a group of Christians in Iowa have recently been offended.  While initially dismissed as a hoax (due to the almost unheard of notion of a religious group taking offense at something) reporters at the scene found overwhelming evidence to suggest that a number of Christians – including some who wield considerable political power – had been offended.

Via an entertaining spoof, I’ve just had my attention drawn toa 25-minute interview with Richard Dawkins for the BBC’s Hardtalk programme:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

It’s most frustrating, as an atheist who generally disapproves of Dawkins’s way of going about things and who finds his philosophical and theological arguments rather flimsy, to see interviews like this — because it undermines my general opinion of him. He comes across as articulate, polite, genteel, sophisticated, and almost entirely right.

Ho-hum:

As prime minister, he famously “didn’t do God” but, having left office, Tony Blair is travelling the world to launch his new Faith Foundation. … On a cold winter’s day in New Haven, Connecticut, Tony Blair is preparing for a new challenge – teaching. His new inter-faith foundation has linked with Yale University and launched a new course, on Faith and Globalisation.

Not yet sure what I think about this, but more soon.

Science and religion, we are told, don’t conflict. Why not? Because the two subjects deal with different domains. Plenty of scientists (usually the religious ones) have nailed their colours to this particular mast; and plenty of religious thinkers (usually the scientifically-minded ones) are willing to join them. A couple of hand-picked quotes serve to get across the general idea — first from eminent scientists Omann and Leschner:

Science seeks natural explanations of the natural world, focusing on how the Earth and life developed over millions of years. Religion deals with questions of the supernatural and the ultimate meanings of life, totally different domains.

…and then from super-eminent theologian Rowan Williams:

Scientific explanation always looks for specific causes inside the universe. That’s what science is. Theological language, religious language asks if there is a ground for the very idea of a regular world of which you can make sense.

One of the most well-known defenders of a peaceful co-existence for religion and science – from the scientists’ side, as it happens – was the noted biologist and science populariser Stephen Jay Gould. His most extended and eloquent exposition of the idea was a little book entitled Rocks of Ages (remember the old quip? – religion is about the rock of ages, science is about the age of rocks):

I write this little book to present a blessedly simple and entirely conventional resolution to an issue so laden with emotion and the burden of history that a clear path usually becomes overgrown by a tangle of contention and confusion. I speak of the supposed conflict between science and religion, a debate that exists only in people’s minds and social practices, not in the logic or proper utility of these entirely different, and equally vital, subjects.

An essay-length summary of his argument is available online.

Gould calls this principle of peaceful co-existence ‘NOMA’, which stands for ‘No Overlapping Magisteria’. A ‘magisterium’, he explains, is a “domain of authority in teaching”. The principle is simple: science and religion don’t conflict because they can’t conflict. They are about different things.

This is a seductive idea. And Gould is keen to emphasise that it’s not just a diplomatic solution, an agreement of mutual tolerance to avoid argument – it’s a description of how things really are, or at least, how they ought to be. Read the rest of this entry »

A commenter on my last post said:

What is sad is that many Christians themselves are the cause why many reject the churches.

Psychologically, that may be true. But there’s an important point to make here: The truth of Christianity (or any other religion) is logically independent of the qualities of those people who subscribe to it. Christians could all be the nicest people in the world, and that wouldn’t make Christianity true; equally, Christians could all be the nastiest people in the world, and that wouldn’t make Christianity false.

It’s not quite as simple as that, of course. The two things are logically distinct, but in practice they have a bearing on one another. For instance, based on some claims of Christianity, I might infer that Christians should be filled with the Holy Spirit and hence behave in a certain way. So when I’m considering whether or not to accept those claims as true, I might look at the behaviour of Christians and try to judge whether they appeared to be filled with the Holy Spirit. If I judged Christians to be generally a grumpy, malicious or unhappy bunch, that would then provide evidence against those claims.

But, logically speaking, the two are strictly mutually independent. Certainly, it’s not sensible to infer from the fact that any given Christian is no more likely to be more pleasant or moral than any given atheist to the conclusion that Christianity is false.

My attention was drawn to a false dichotomy during a recent debate on Christianity and religion. The question from the audience was the old chestnut: Why should someone who lives a moral life but doesn’t believe in God go to hell?

The answer was long, but it basically boiled down to this (also an old chestnut): Christ teaches that salvation doesn’t depend on our morality, but on our acceptance of Him. We each of us have a choice: to accept Christ or to reject Him, to welcome Him into our lives or to turn our back on Him. That is a morally culpable choice, and what happens to us in the next life will depend on it.

Hang on a minute. That’s a false dichotomy, isn’t it? It suggests that there are two kinds of people:

1. Those who believe in Christianity and choose to follow Christ.
2. Those who believe in Christianity and choose not to follow Christ.

I can accept — or at least I can see how it might be plausible to say — that people in category 2 could be held morally culpable for their rejection of God. But what about a third category: those who don’t believe in Christianity? What about those people who consider the claims of Christianity carefully and with an open mind, but find themselves unconvinced? They are not choosing to go their own way in life. They are not ignoring or disregarding or willingly rejecting Christ. They are simply observing that he doesn’t seem to exist.

Consider someone who honestly and passionately wants to believe in Christianity. He feels that Christ would be welcome into his life, that so much more about the world would make sense if he was a Christian, and so on. But when he considers the issue rationally, he can’t accept that there is any good reason to believe in the factual claims that Christianity makes. And because he has to be true to himself, he acknowledges that this implies he’s not a Christian.

It seems strange to say that this is a rejection of Christ, at least in any way that could lead to moral culpability.