As I started listening to the series of lectures Old Testament by Professor Amy-Jill Levine produced & published by The Great Courses, I had a sudden realization of the impact this and other lectures from The Great Courses have had on my understanding of the Bible. After listening to the lectures I’m able to get a much deeper understanding of the message being convey in specific scriptures.
They have helped me put the books of the Bible into context and understand the literary form of the books. Understanding whether it’s law, history, wisdom, etc. helps to understand how to interpret what the author is trying to portray. One does not treat non-fiction the same as fiction. Both can have a valuable message but we understand one is literal and one is an example.
Without the understanding of the genres, nuances, back stories, etc. I was frustrated for years. Now it’s a joy to appreciate the real genius of the Bible and to be able to absorb its wisdom. Someday I may even be wise, I’m a long, long way from it now, but I’m enjoying the process much more thanks to The Great Courses lectures.
After reading the excellent book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by biologist Francis Collins, I had to view it as a solid challenge to Intelligent Design, especially with the author’s emphasis on Theistic Evolution—it may be a more rational and compatible with the evidence. Collins makes a solid case for Theistic Evolution, especially where he deals with the issue of Irreducible Complexity.
I knew when I read these sentences I’d need to pay attention:
“Intelligent Design” (with capital letters) has become a term of art carrying a very specific set of conclusions about nature, especially the concept of “irreducible complexity.” An observer unaware of this history might expect that anyone who believes in a God who cares about human beings (that is, a theist) would be someone who believes in Intelligent Design. But in the sense of current terminology, that would in most instances not be correct.
What Collins points out throughout this book is evolution does not exclude God; many dogmatic scientists have jumped to that conclusion without a scientific basis. Such a person brings atheistic faith into play rather than science or reason. On the other hand, as believers, we have to be intellectually honest as well. We cannot presuppose science is abusive to a belief in God and, therefore, settle for a concept such as Intelligent Design. Concerning Intelligent Design Collins says:
…if the logic truly had merit on scientific grounds, one would expect that the rank and file of working biologists would also show interest in pursuing these ideas, especially since a significant number of biologists are also believers. This has not happened, however, and Intelligent Design remains a fringe activity with little credibility within the mainstream scientific community.
His straightforward conclusion concerning the viability of Intelligent Design:
Intelligent Design fails in a fundamental way to qualify as a scientific theory. All scientific theories represent a framework for making sense of a body of experimental observations. But the primary utility of a theory is not just to look back but to look forward. A viable scientific theory predicts other findings and suggests approaches for further experimental verification. ID falls profoundly short in this regard. Despite its appeal to many believers, therefore, ID’s proposal of the intervention of supernatural forces to account for complex multicomponent biological entities is a scientific dead end. Outside of the development of a time machine, verification of the ID theory seems profoundly unlikely.
I like the book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, and I like this book. Where this book, with its emphasis on Theistic Evolution, gets its upper hand is from its compatibility with science. Atheistic Evolution wants to throw out a creator—not because of the results of scientific method but from faith in the non-existence of God—and Intelligent Design which wants to put God’s hand in every event no matter the size. I am not completely hostile toward Intelligent Design; at least the two books agree on the Big Bang Theory.
I’m so excited that the authors of I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist quoted Søren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard, really the first existentialist philosopher, is complex and intellectually stimulating. Reading Kierkegaard helped me understand the paradox—which is not contradiction—of faith. How we have to get to the point of taking a leap of faith—what Dr. J. Ellsworth Kalas called in a lecture I attended, a leap into faith. Here’s the reference from the above mentioned book:
You can reject Christ because he has left your free will truly free. Author Philip Yancey adapts a parable by Christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard that helps us understand how God attempts to save us while respecting our freedom. It’s a parable of a king who loves a humble maiden:
The king was like no other king. Statesmen trembled before his power. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents. And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden.
How could he declare his love for her? In an odd sort of way, his very kingliness tied his hands. If he brought her to the palace and crowned her head with jewels and clothed her body in royal robes, she would surely not resist—no one dared resist him. But would she love him?
She would say she loved him, of course, but would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, nursing a private grief for the life she had left behind. Would she be happy at his side? How could he know?
If he rode up to her forest cottage in his royal carriage, with an armed escort waving bright banners, that too would overwhelm her. He did not want a cringing subject. He wanted a lover, an equal. He wanted her to forget that he was a king and she a humble maiden and to let shared love cross over the gulf between them. “For it is only in love that the unequal can be made equal,” concluded Kierkegaard.
I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist
This is going on my list of “Books Every Young Man Should Read” along side other great books like C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. I love to read books that have one “Aha!” moment after another. This one does.
More to read. I believe this is an area in which I need to increase my understanding. It’s comforting to see so many brilliant apologists—like C. S. Lewis–writing on the subject.
When I read a book which causes me to have epiphanic moments I know I’m mentally closing the gaps in my knowledge. Great authors have the ability to take complex ideas and percolate them down into language mere readers can understand and use. I’ve often had those moments reading C. S. Lewis but the moments are hard won in his writings. I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist is a book that delivers those moments straightforward.
Below is a quote from the book I found fun:
“If there is no God, why is there something rather than nothing?” is a question that we all have to answer. And in light of the evidence, we are left with only two options: either no one created something out of nothing, or else someone created something out of nothing. Which view is more reasonable?
…if you can’t believe that nothing caused something, then you don’t have enough faith to be an atheist!
The most reasonable view is God. Robert Jastrow suggested this when he ended his book God and the Astronomers with this classic line: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
It’s moments like this that make me realize my mental limits. Someday, perhaps, I’ll be able to absorb these complex strings of words with ease—but not yet. Here’s what I’m talking about:
All purposive action of men rests upon and presupposes the constant operation of natural forces. I plan for tomorrow and for next year on the supposition that the revolution of the earth upon its axis and about the sun will continue. If in following up my plan I walk along a street at the precise moment when a chimney is blown down so that it nearly or quite kills me, that is an “accident”; the fall of rocks from a mountain into an empty valley is not called an accident unless there is a person, or a building representing the purpose of a person, near where the rocks fall. It appears then that while the constancy of natural processes is the necessary prerequisite for intelligent, purposive and moral action, that same constancy may sometimes cut across the sequence of purposive actions and hinder the fulfillment of purpose.
—William Temple
Ouch. Free will? Problem of Pain? My brain is hurting.
The following quote is from the book, I Don’t Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist:
Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living. We believe that the unexamined faith is not worth believing. Furthermore, contrary to popular opinion, Christians are not supposed to “just have faith.” Christians are commanded to know what they believe and why they believe it. They are commanded to give answers to those who ask (1 Pet. 3:15), and to demolish arguments against the Christian faith (2 Cor. 10:4-5). Since God is reasonable (Isa. 1:18) and wants us to use our reason, Christians don’t get brownie points for being stupid. In fact, using reason is part of the greatest commandment which, according to Jesus, is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37).
Much—perhaps most—of my life I’ve been apathetic in professing the truth of the Christian faith. My education concerning my faith was faulty, downright wrong in many areas.
I can’t hold a position and argue it if I don’t believe it. The problem wasn’t in Christianity itself, rather it was the erroneous data I had concerning Christianity. Also, it wasn’t honest to blame those who taught me the errors as truth.
It was and is my responsibility to know all I can know of the truth and to be able—in a loving spirit—to profess that truth.
That’s why the quote hit home with me. I’m excited to read more of the book, it’s empowering.
Source: The Sermons of John Wesley – On The Education Of Children (Sermon 95)
Of John Wesley’s sermons I’ve read, this turned out to be one of the longest. Recently, when Corbin started confirmation, I began to wonder, “What would Wesley say about the education of children?” and, “Is there something I’m supposed to be doing that I am not?” As I have usually found, there’s a sermon on that—below are my clippings from that sermon:
- “…good men have not always a good understanding; and, without this, it is hardly to be expected that they will know how to train up their children.
- “…those who are in other respects good men have often too much easiness of temper; so that they go no farther in restraining their children from evil.
- “…as the only end of a physician is, to restore nature to its own state, so the only end of education is, to restore our rational nature to its proper state. Education, therefore, is to be considered as reason borrowed as second-hand, which is, as far as it can, to supply the loss of original perfection.
- “Christianity has, as it were, new created the moral and religious world, and set everything that is reasonable, wise, holy, and desirable in its true point of light; so one would expect the education of children should be as much mended by Christianity, as the doctrines of religion are.
- “…[Christianity] has introduced a new state of things, and so fully informed us of the nature of man, and the end of his creation; as it has fixed all our goods and evils, taught us the means of purifying our souls [and] of pleasing God[.]
- “…is it not reasonable to suppose that a Christian education should have no other end but to teach them how to think, and judge, and act according to the strictest rules of Christianity?
- “…those that educate us should imitate our guardian angels; suggest nothing to our minds but what is wise and holy; help us to discover every false judgement of our minds, and to subdue every wrong passion in our hearts.
- “…it is as reasonable to expect and require all this benefit from a Christian education, as to require that
physic[medicine] should strengthen all that is right in our nature, and remove all our diseases. Let it be carefully remembered all this time, that God, not man, is the physician of souls; that it is He, and none else, who giveth medicine to heal our natural sickness[.] - “Let it be carefully remembered all this time, that God, not man, is the physician of souls; that it is He, and none else, who giveth medicine to heal our natural sickness[.]
- “[It] is generally his pleasure to work by his creatures; to help man by man. He honours men to be, in a sense, “workers together with him.” By this means the reward is ours, while the glory redounds to him.
- “…what is that way wherein we should train up a child, let us consider, What are the diseases of his nature? What those spiritual diseases which every one that is born of a woman brings with him into the world? Is not the first of them Atheism?
- “Indeed it may be said that every man is by nature, as it were, his own god. He worships himself. He is, in his own conception, absolute Lord of himself.
- “His own will is his only law; he does this or that because it is his good pleasure.
- “Another evil disease which every human soul brings into the world with him, is pride; a continual proneness to think of himself more highly than he ought to think. Every man can discern more or less of this disease in everyone — but himself.
- “The next disease natural to every human soul, born with every man, is love of the world. Every man is, by nature, a lover of the creature, instead of the Creator; a ‘lover of pleasure,’ in every kind, ‘more than a lover of God.’
- “Whether this be a natural disease or not, it is certain anger is. The ancient philosopher defines it, ‘a sense of injury received, with a desire of revenge.’
- “A deviation from truth is equally natural to all the children of men.
- “All natural men will, upon a close temptation, vary from, or disguise, the truth. If they do not offend against veracity, if they do not say what is false, yet they frequently offend against simplicity.
- “Everyone is likewise prone, by nature, to speak or act contrary to justice.
- “Neither is any man, by nature, merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful…
- “Now, if [Atheism, pride, love of the world, anger, deviation from the truth, acting unjust, and being unmerciful] are the general diseases of human nature, is it not the grand end of education to cure them? And is it not the part of all those to whom God has entrusted the education of children, to take all possible care, first, not to increase, not to feed, any of these diseases; and next, to use every possible means of healing them?
- “What can parents do, and mothers more especially, to whose care our children are necessarily committed in their tender years, with regard to the Atheism that is natural to all the children of men?
- “From the first dawn of reason continually inculcate, God is in this and every place. God made you, and me, and the earth, and the sun, and the moon, and everything.
- “[And that] God orders all things: he makes the sun shine, and the wind blow, and the trees bear fruit. Nothing comes by chance; that is a silly word; there is no such thing as chance.
- “Without [God] we can neither think anything right, or do anything right. Thus it is, we are to inculcate upon [our children], that God is all in all.
What is evil? Could it have a purpose? Here is a view of evil from an adult rather than a childish perspective.
