A new start this Thursday

And so it starts again. For the fourth time, my wife and I will be hosting a twelve-week series on apologetics at our church, dealing with rational defenses of the Christian faith. I'm really looking forward to it.

One joy is the people involved. We have met teens, young marrieds, older marrieds dealing with adult children, singles dealing with careers, and those in their 80s. They all share a love of learning and a love of discussion. We have some thoughtful sessions in which people share their experiences in whatever area we are studying.

I also love the material we cover. This time we'll be reading a book called Evidence for God, edited by William Dembski and Mike Licona. These men have organized fifty interesting articles showcasing various approaches to Christian apologetics. There's a wide range of material here--philosophy, science, Biblical research, the historical Jesus, etc. The authors are some of the best in the field of apologetics--Craig Blomberg, Darrell Bock, Paul Copan, William Dembski, Mike Licona, Gary Habermas, Paul Maier, Nancy Pearcey, and Ben Witherington.

In addition, I enjoy dealing with a topic that is so relevant today. Christianity is under attack from the new atheists, college professors, the mass media, as well as others who have more emotion than logic. The good news is how well the faith holds up under this pressure. Each of us has a responsibility to defend Christianity as a way to strengthen our faith and challenge those who bring charges agaainst it.

Finally, I like seeing how the members of the class take on this challenge. I get to hear of conversations, letters, classroom discussions, and other opportunities in which it has been demonstrated that Christianity is not a simple leap-in-the-dark faith. Instead, it can more than hold its own against the prevailing doctrines of the day.

Our so-called "summer of recovery"

According to the White House, this was supposed to be “the summer of recovery.” Really. Let’s see . . . How is the recovery doing now that the summer is winding down?

The Wall Street Journal gives a very different picture as it lists economic statistics. Earlier this month, first-time claims for unemployment hit a nine-month high. The unemployment rate remains at 9.5% and 18.4% of workers are out of a job, can only get part-time work, or have given up looking for a job altogether. Sales of existing homes dropped 27% from June to July, hitting the lowest point since data were first collected in 1999. The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index fell to 50.4 in July, continuing a slide that started in February. And the stock market is down 11% from its peak in April.

Does this look like “recovery”? It’s no wonder that the President’s ratings have plummeted even in the area he was supposed to be good at—economics. Around one-third of the public approves of the way he’s handled the economy. That’s disastrous for Democrats, who were promising so much over the past few months.

And it’s not just Obama who has a problem. His Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer—speaking before the 2009 stimulus was approved—said unemployment would top out at 8% by the third quarter of 2009 and decline to less than 7% by the end of 2010. Even the White House now admits that the unemployment rate will stay at or above 9% through 2011.

The stimulus was sold as a fix-all, but reality has set in. Since the stimulus passed, 2.6 million Americans have lost their jobs and 1.2 million people have given up even looking for work.

Then there’s the health-care fiasco. After ramming it down the throats of the American people, Obama and his allies told us how wonderful it was all going to be. They have made three claims-- health-care reform will reduce costs and the deficit, no one who wants to keep existing coverage will lose it, and the law's cuts in Medicare won't threaten any senior's health care. Does anyone still believe this??

By overselling the stimulus and the incredibly complicated health-care program, the President has really only accomplished one thing. He’s angered the public to the point of a November disaster for his party. This is not America's “summer of recovery” after all. It’s a wake-up to millions who have seen where leftist rhetoric and action leads.

SETI fifty years later

I'm sure most of you have heard of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It began in 1960 when Frank Drake, an astronomer, pointed a radio telescope toward the stars to listen for the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. Thanks to Carl Sagan and many others, there was enthusiasm and real optimism that life could be found. It was their belief that life was easy to get started; all you needed were the right chemicals. After all, it wasn't like a god intervened, you know. But things have changed.

I was reminded of this when I read a book review for The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence. The author Paul Davies, who is a physicist, cosmologist, and astrobiologist at Arizona State University, has written a book that examines why it is taking so long to establish communications with other life forms in the universe.

Remember the book and movie called Contact? The main character says there's got to be a lot of life in this huge universe. But since Contact came out, scientists have discovered how difficult and complex life really is. I have reviewed two books which discuss this in some depth -- The Signature in the Cell and The Cell's Design. Check my past blogs for further information about these two books. So it appears it's much more difficult than previously thought to get life started.

Davies is referencing years of failure with SETI in the title of his book. It has been nothing but false alarms, interstellar static, and random noise. ET has not phoned home. That's the eerie silence Davies is referring to.

Here's the punchline of the book. Davies concludes with these words: "We are probably the only intelligent beings in the universe, and I would not be very surprised if the solar system contains the only life in the universe." I don't believe Davies is a theist, but he certainly recognizes the extreme difficulty of getting life started. It almost seems like a miracle, doesn't it?

Islam and Christianity--the struggle continues

This fourth and final blog from God Is Back deals with Christianity's interaction with Islam. I found this fascinating and important today as the West confronts an aggressive Islamic faith.

The authors see the world in a deadly cycle of Western advance and Islamic reaction. They say there are good reasons for thinking that globalization will gather pace in future years, and, therefore, there will be clashes far into the future. As a result, the authors spend a great deal of time dealing with the struggle between Christianity and Islam. Specifically, they wish to deal with who is winning the religious struggle.

They believe the main advantages are with Christianity, not Islam. For one thing, America's war on terror makes it more difficult to spread the Islamic message. Contributions to Muslim charities have fallen in the last several years. For another thing, Christians are much more enthusiastic than Muslims about translating their holy book. Followers of Islam believe the Koran is the literal word of God in Arabic, which makes Muslims uncomfortable with translations.

Another advantage Christianity has is its ability to turn the Bible into a commercial enterprise. Koran production is dominated by the state, but the Bible is put out by many different publishing firms. Consider also the user-friendliness of both books. There are Bibles in everyday language or slang. Plus, there's more innovation with Christianity. Here's one example -- there are now BibleZines, crosses between Bibles and teenage magazines. Another advantage in this area is the sophisticated dramatizations that can be purchased of the Bible with well-known actors and state-of-the-art sound effects.

One more advantage Christianity has over Islam is the wealth of its believers. The United States, the world's richest most powerful country, can do so much more with missionaries and media organizations than any other country.

T religious freedom in the West allows Christianity one further advantage. Look at what is in the heartland of Islam -- a theocracy. The open marketplace in religion for the West promotes innovation while the Muslim world's closed marketplace promotes nothing but rigid conservatism.

The authors consider one other important advantage Christianity has -- the relative ability to thrive in the face of modernity. Islam has never had a huge debate about the relationship between faith and authority. Christianity, on the other hand, has resolved those debates in a way that has rendered it well equipped to thrive along with modernity. The Muslim world has never had a reformation or an enlightenment. The Arab world lags behind the West in economic success as well as political maturity. Muslim economies are falling behind despite the huge income from oil. Islam, in addition, has a bigger problem with the notion at the heart of Western modernity -- individual conscience. Add to that other defects in Islam--doctrinal splits, reformers who look only to the past, and ingrained hostility to pluralism.

The test of pluralism is how a society views conversion, the freedom to join a religious community or leave it. You know how that is treated in the Islamic world. It's seen at best as a grave sin and at worst a crime that should result in punishment. This aversion to pluralism poisons everything, according to the authors. It encourages unthinking deference to authority and tradition.

The authors do see some grounds for hope, but not in the Muslim world. They believe Turkey, Europe, and the United States may provide some reforms. However, since this book was written, Turkey seems to be drifting back into the stifling, closed, conservative Islamic world.

Toward the end of the book, the authors turn again to the genius of our Founding Fathers. They say America does a better job than any other country of combining religious vitality with both religious diversity and religious toleration. They believe the First Amendment still achieves its two goals -- it keeps churches firmly apart from the state and protects churches from the state.

Overall, God Is Back is an interesting look at religious fervor in the world today. You might like it, but I'd suggest waiting until a paperback copy comes out to save some money.

Some good news for a change

I'm still working my way through God Is Back. This time I wanted to share some good news, always nice to hear in this troubled time.

For one thing, America today is a strong refutation of the idea that modernity was bound to destroy religious faith. The United States today is still very religious. For example, 9 in 10 Americans believe in the existence of God or universal spirit. A majority of American adults say they pray at least once a day. Around 75% believe in life after death. Nearly 80% believe that miracles still occur today as they did in ancient times. Over 60% report they or members of their family belong to their local church or house of worship. One statistic I found interesting was that 21% of atheists say they believe in God or universal spirit. How does that happen? Oh well...

Europe seems to be waking up to religious faith too. Over 2 million Britons have taken the Alpha course, which focuses on spiritual growth. Pilgrimages are booming. The number of adult confirmations in the Church of England has risen sharply. Religious people in Europe reproduce more enthusiastically than secular people, which may give religion an important long-term advantage.

The authors report a mountain of evidence that religion is good for you, according to social scientists. For example, one doctor has discovered that weekly church attendance can add 2 to 3 years to your life. Another study found that religious observance might enhance immune systems and lower blood pressure. Religion also seems to be correlated with happiness. Attending religious services weekly has the same effect on people's reported happiness as moving into a higher income distribution. Religion can also combat bad behavior. One study found, for example, that religious participation is associated with lower rates of crime and drug use.

Religions in America provide much good for their communities. The authors use Philadelphia as an example. More than 90% of the city's congregations provide a social service of one sort or another. They provide medical care, they work to alleviate poverty, they help prisoners, they try to improve the lot of single-parent families. One person calculated that it would cost Philadelphia $250,000,000 a year to replace all the work done by the churches.

In a later chapter, the authors talk about an interesting change in Christian intellectualism. At one time evangelicals were not considered intellectual heavies. But today, the authors report, evangelicals are rediscovering the life of the mind. They credit Billy Graham and C. S. Lewis as major influences. Over the past 30 years the proportion of evangelicals earning at least a college degree has increased more than any other religious tradition. Several universities have set up Veritas forums that bring students and professors together to discuss the relevance of Jesus Christ with intellectual issues.

Yes, there are terrible things happening in the world today. But it's nice to know that religion, and especially evangelical Christianity, is on the rebound. We are part of a movement that is helping the world today.

God is Back--life without God didn't work out so well

I'd like to continue summarizing an interesting new book called God is Back.

After the introduction the authors look at what happened to religion in Europe -- the triumph of secularism. The Enlightenment began it all. Two characteristics of this movement were confidence in human reason and confidence in human goodness. Wow, today, of course, we see the flaws in that type of thinking, don't we? The key event that demonstrated believe in reason and goodness was the French Revolution in the late 1700s. Following this event, several intellectual giants chipped away at the foundations of faith. The main challenge came from Charles Darwin, but there were others -- Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud,, and critics who attacked Christianity and the Bible as a historical document.

The authors have an interesting statement by Voltaire that shows down deep what these critics really believed. No matter how he and his kind argued against religion, he knew there was value in it: "I want my lawyer, my tailor, my servants, even my wife to believe in God, and I think that then I should be robbed and cuckholded less often."

Those that knocked down religious faith felt the need to replace it with some other ideology. One of the most powerful as the call of science. For example, H. G. Wells and others believed that the world should be ruled by a scientific elite. Another religion substitute that flourished in the 19th century was the call of culture (the arts). A third secular ideology was the worship of the nation-state. Finally, the fourth ideology was socialism. In the 20th century many of these new faiths came together under vicious totalitarian regimes--communism and Nazism leading the list. If this political nightmare was the result of these replacement ideologies, we today should not place our hopes in them. But people don't seem to learn.

By the mid-20th century it looked like secularism was a total success. One author in 1968 assured the New York Times that by the 21st century, "religious believers are likely to be found only in small sects, huddled together to resist a worldwide secular culture." Things did not work out quite that way.

In a following chapter the authors ask why America evolved so differently from Europe. Of course, we know the story of our founding by religious groups. But the authors say America was not born religious -- church members never made up more than one-third of the adult population of New England before the American Revolution. Instead, they assert that America became religious. In the 1740's the land experienced the first of what was called a Great Awakening. And then the American Revolution came along, a unique event in modern history because it was a revolution against an earthly regime but not an exercise in anti-religious sentiment. The colonies embraced religion along with liberty, reason, and popular government.

The Founding Fathers did not want to see an established church like those in European countries, but they did not want to drive religion out of the public square. They believed the answer was making religion a matter of individual conscience rather than statecraft. They argued that the separation of church and state was good for both religion and state. What resulted was a free market in religious forces, which cause clergymen to compete. The result of all this religious energy was spectacular. The proportion of churchgoing Americans rose, another great awakening took place, and a true American ideology developed, which rejected hierarchy and tradition.

American evangelicals took over. They formed societies of all kinds, they provided an inspiration for America's emerging political system, and they swept away the age-old distinction between the clergy and the laity. This accomplished much good, another refutation to those secularists who fear American religious fervor.

But the 20th century saw several setbacks to American religion. First was the split in American Protestantism between liberals and fundamentalists. Protestants also lost battles against drink (Prohibition) and Darwin (evolution). Academic reformers came up with new, secular models for university life, replacing the religious model that emphasized virtue as well as knowledge.

Evangelical America had a resurgence later in the 20th century. Liberals had overreached with court decisions, protest marches, soft-on-crime judges. Billy Graham, Campus Crusade for Christ, Jerry Falwell and other individuals and groups kept religion in the news.

The authors seem fair in their historical analysis. They leave me with a good feeling, knowing that America got it right and avoided the horrors of secularism in control.

God is Back--some good news

A few months ago I read an article in World magazine about an interesting new book called God Is Back by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. The overall point of the book is the explanation of how and why religion is booming around the world, contrary to what many secularists expected as the 21st-century began. I bought the book, read it, and would like to take you through certain portions of it.

In the authors' introduction they discuss the amazing growth of Christianity in China. Even a conservative estimate of the total number of Christians in that country exceed the total number of members in the Communist Party. Some believe Christians may well number over 100 million. They focus on a Chinese government economist, who wrote in a widely read essay about his travels around America. He argues in this essay that the key to America's commercial success is not its natural resources, its financial system, or its technology but in its churches -- "the very core that binds Americans together." The authors reveal that this economist later converted to Christianity.

This growth of Christianity has surprised many people who believe that the modern world would marginalize religion. Europeans have spent the last 200 years trying to free themselves of religious influences. America was a bit odd in their eyes since its people had always assumed religion and modernity could thrive together. Right now it looks like the American model is succeeding -- religion and modernity are going hand-in-hand all across the globe.

Secular intellectuals were looking forward to an atheistic world. Boy, have they been disappointed. You can see their exasperation in such books as The End of Faith, The God Delusion, and God Is Not Great. They are confronted with seeing the wrong sorts of religion worshiping -- not the mild, mainline Protestantism, but evangelicalism. In fact, the most remarkable religious success story of the past century has been the most emotional Christian religion of all -- Pentecostalism. Atheists are also frustrated by the kinds of people who are turning to religion. They expected it would be the weak, the ignorant, or the fearful. However, today it's actually the upwardly mobile, educated middle classes who are driving the explosion of faith. In America, the evangelicals are well educated and well off, much to the surprise of secular leaders and mass media pundits who have incorrect stereotyped images of religious people.

The authors give several reasons for the increase in religious beliefs. For one thing, the political classes in the West are waking up to the enduring power of religion. People over the last forty years have seen the overreach of elitist secularism. Politicians who have told us they can solve our problems have been shown to be failures. The authors believe competition and choice are driving the surge in religion just as they have in market capitalism. They say the American model of religion, one that is based on choice, is winning because it effectively blends God with modernity.

Christianity has spent longer grappling with modernity than other religions, so it's no wonder that it is doing so well on the world stage. The authors compare this attitude with Islam, where modernity does not sit well. It remains the world religion that has found pluralism hardest to cope with. Islam has not been through a Reformation, let alone an Enlightenment. The authors grant Islam is a power today, but they believe it will not be the direction we go in the future. Let's hope they are right.

This brief overview gives you an idea of the book's premise. In future blogs I would like to explore a few more specific points the authors bring up.

Gay marriage is in the news again

Just when you thought the people had voted clearly in California that they didn't want same-sex marriage, a judge comes along and throws the results out the window. In our local paper today, I read about an exultant gay woman who held up a sign reading, "Life Feels Different When You're Married." This sign encapsulates the entire pro-gay marriage argument as one of feelings rather than logic. Maybe it would be helpful for you to see a piece I wrote for the same paper a little over a year ago. It gives logical, non-religious answers to those who urge gay marriage. Here goes:



A recent letter by Peggy Hart (February 9th) looked forward with delight to the possible overturn of Proposition 8, the ballot measure that rejected same-sex marriage in California. She suggested the proposition passed only because churches “intimidated their flocks by telling them the Lord does not want gay people to have the same rights as straight people.” Hart later claimed Prop 8 supporters were “threatened with damnation” if they didn’t back the measure. Is that why the proposition passed? No, of course not. There were solid, non-biblical, non-theological reasons why California should have voted no to same-sex marriage.

First, Prop 8 didn’t take away any rights or benefits of gay/lesbian domestic partnerships. California Family Code 297.5 says that “domestic partners shall have the same rights, protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law.” Gays are asking for a special right, namely to wed someone of the same sex. It is not a violation of the equal protection clause to deny this special right. If it’s not really about rights, what is it about? In one word—approval. Same-sex marriage is an attempt to force society to approve a lifestyle that many oppose for various reasons.

Secondly, the proposition established a positive type of discrimination. We discriminate all the time. For example, we don’t let blind people drive. We are simply making a legitimate distinction in that case between sighted and blind individuals. We think it’s better for society to limit drivers based on vision. The same is true for marriage. We discriminate between two types of marriages for legitimate reasons that benefit society. Researchers have found children do best having both a mother and a father, an arrangement that occurs in opposite-sex marriages. However, same-sex marriages deny children either a mother or a father. Therefore, government protects and sanctions opposite-sex marriages, which produce the next generation and creates civilization itself.

In addition, Prop 8 recognized that any change in the institution of marriage opens the door to all sorts of odd and potentially destructive relationships. Once we have redefined marriage to include a gay or lesbian couple, how can we exclude any arrangement? What’s to keep three men from wanting to have a “marriage”? Why not a 10-year old girl and a 50-year old man? A brother and a sister? There’s no logical or legal reason why any other grouping should be excluded.

If people wish to reconstruct an institution and its legal definition, the burden of proof for the change is on them. It’s unfair to attack those who simply hold the traditional, legal, social, and linguistic meaning of a word. It’s especially unfair to do what the letter writer did—assume the Prop 8 supporters were religious bigots, carrying out the commands of their church leaders. Instead, there are plenty of logical, non-theological reasons to oppose such social engineering. Gays and lesbians have the liberty to live as they choose, and that’s as far as the law should go.

A last look at Keller's book

This will be the last blog on Timothy Keller's book, The Reason for God. So far I have covered the first six chapters, which offer various defenses of the Christian faith. This blog will take on the challenge by secularists who say that you can't take the Bible literally.

The author tells an interesting story about Anne Rice, famous as the writer of Interview with the Vampire and other horror/erotica books. She started out as a Catholic but lost her faith at a secular college. After wild success at writing vampire books, Rice announced she had returned to Christianity. Why? She had initially accepted recent scholarship that offered historical reconstructions of the early Christianity. This scholarship suggested there were new gospels and that most of the classic Christian teachings about Jesus were mistaken and based on legends. Then she did her own research. She says she was amazed at how weak this recent scholarship is: "Some books were no more than assumptions piled on assumptions... Conclusions were reached on the basis of little or no data at all... I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I've ever read."

Keller takes on scholars who argue that the Bible is a historically unreliable collection of legends. He specifically points out the Jesus Seminar, a group of people who say very little of Jesus sayings and actions can be historically validated. They believe the New Testament Gospels were written so long after the events that they cannot be trusted. They also believe there were many other gospels that were suppressed by the church in a power play. Does this sound familiar? It's the same message contained in a wildly popular book The Da Vinci Code.

But Keller has strong arguments against these ideas. First, the timing is far too early for the gospels to be legends. Paul's letters, written within 15 to 25 years after the death of Jesus, contain the same basic message that we see in the gospels -- the miracles of Jesus, his claims, the crucifixion, and, most importantly, his resurrection. He cites other authors who say at the time the gospels were written there were still numerous well-known living eyewitnesses to Jesus's teaching and life events. In addition, there is no other alternative gospel that was written as early as the four canonical books (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John). For example, the Gospel of Thomas is dated no earlier than 175 A.D. Secondly, Keller says there is no evidence the later church created the gospels to support their views since Jesus never takes sides in any debate they were going on in the early church. In addition, the content in the gospels is far too counterproductive for the gospels to be legends. Consider how the disciples are shown -- petty and jealous, slow-witted, and cowards. Another point Keller raises is the literary form of the gospels. It is too detailed to be considered as legend. As support, he uses C. S. Lewis, a world-class literary critic, who said there is a huge difference between gospel accounts and ancient legends. There is irrelevant detail, and the stories often take the limited vantage point of a participant rather than that of an omniscient narrator.

Keller notes another approach by critics is to complain about the Bible's cultural stance. Some see the Bible as outmoded because it seems to support slavery and the subjugation of women. However, in the first-century Roman empire at the time the New Testament was written, there was not a great difference between a slave and the average free person. This was not the slavery of the African slave trade nearly 2000 years later. In Roman times slaves made the same wages as free laborers and often were able to buy themselves out of slavery. Keller says it's arrogant for us to use our time's standard of "progressive" as the plumbline by which we decide which parts of the Bible are valid and which are not.

I have only covered half of Keller's book through these seven blogs. The second half of The Reason for God deals with effective reasons to have a faith in Christianity. This part of the book is well done too, but I want to move on to other topics. This book is for both Christians and non-Christians alike -- check it out for yourself.