R.C. Sproul answers this in his teaching series called The Psychology of Atheism.  He gives four basic reasons why bright, intelligent thinkers disagree with one another:

• Differing epistemologies (theories of knowledge, how you to know what you know)
• Formal, logical errors
• Factual errors
• Prejudicial bias

Understanding this is really helpful in dialoguing with people with whom you disagree.  Knowing this allows you to zero in on the point of disagreement.  Furthermore, it helps you to chill out, understand people better,  and listen to what they are saying and carefully analyze it.

Of course, before you turn your guns on someone else you should first take a look at your own position. Is your theory of knowledge valid?  Are you making logical errors?  Are there errors of fact in what you’re saying?  And are you biased one way or the other?

I hope to unpack these a bit more in upcoming posts.  Watch out!

Anyway, the dialogues are pretty good and touch on the issues of: what is science?  what is intelligent design? the history of science, theistic evolution, and much, much more.

Here they are:

• A dialogue between Ron Number and Paul Nelson, “Inside the Mind of a Creationist.”
• A dialogue between John McWhorter and Michael Behe, “Irreducibly Complex Edition.”

What these show, I think, is that there are a lot more folks (and smart folks too!) out there asking these questions.

Collins, in his book, eggs on fellow evangelical Christians in their anti-scientific beliefs. He tells them that they are “right to hold fast to the truths of the Bible” and to “the certainty that the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted.” Granted, he is not a young-earth or intelligent-design creationist. But he has stated that God interacts with creation, in particular, that he designed the evolutionary process to ensure that human intelligence, morality, and Judaeo-Christian religious belief would evolve.

That is far more than just expressing an opinion. That is advocacy, which gives incalculable encouragement the forces that have been hostile to science for the past eight years. And this is not just a theoretical fear: a number of right-wing, religious apologists (e.g., Dennis Praeger, in his debate with Sam Harris) used Collins as a stick to beat secularists:  “Here is a famous scientist who takes an interventionist God and the Bible seriously; who are you to contradict him?” This is going to be multiplied if Collins becomes an even more prominent face of science.

And yes, he’s right, it does mean something to me as a believer that an outstanding (and wildly successful) scientist also is a believer in the God of the Bible.  May his tribe increase!  While it doesn’t prove anything scientifically it does show that compatibility of the Christian faith with science and scientific research.

What seems a bit amazing to me is why do such hardcore atheists never seem to sit down and ask themselves, “why do other equally brilliant minds disagree with me on the question of God?”  Instead, most of these hardcore atheists seem quite willing to just call all the rest idiots.  How nice, how open-minded, how philosophically fairminded, how scientific!

While Collins was successfully apointed as head of NIH the reaction to his appointment shows what is at stake in the debates with new atheism.  The new apologists for atheism are no longer willing to just have the niche carved out in the academic world over the past century and a half by their forebearers, instead they want the whole playground to themselves.  If they can they are going to have the authorities send everybody home who won’t play the game by their rules.

Bad design does not mean “no design.”  The Pinto may have been a bad design, but it was designed nonetheless.  At best, bad design could tell us something about the abilities of a designer, but it doesn’t mean there is no designer.  Furthermore, what we often call “bad design” really isn’t bad design at all.  Whenever you design something, there are trade-offs.  Think of cars.  There are all sorts of things that can be better about cars: more speed, lighter in weight, roomier interior, etc.  But there are constraints that require these things to be balanced.  More speed would be nice, but it may require an engine so big that the car would be too large to navigate easily.  It might be nice to have a lighter car, but if it is too light it could go airborne as the car picks up speed.  A roomier interior would be nice, but the car still needs to fit in the garage.  So we trade-off on the optimal this and the optimal that to produce something that fits a wide range of needs.  There are two other problems with the bad design argument as put forth by Darwinists: (1) It admits design is empirically detectable (making ID a true scientific enterprise); (2) To say something is sub-optimally designed presumes to know the objectives and purpose of the designer to know how the design fell short of the objectives and purpose.  How could they possibly know that?

Right.  You can’t say design on the one hand, and NOT say design on the other.  And while we’re on it, you can’t claim to have knowledge of the intentions of a designer that you are certain doesn’t exist, and oddly, be so certain about it.

Nevertheless a couple of things should be pointed out:

1. No one can reasonably claim that the universe and life does not appear designed.  Even some of the most militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins admits that the universe and life appear to be designed, but they do not think that it really is.  They believe that little Lego toysets can build themselves given enough time and material.

2. The opponents of ID who claim bad design as a rebuttal are generally two-faced.  These are often the same folks who wax eloquent about the beauties of pictures of the stars and galaxies taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, or praise the wonders of life-it’s amazing diversity, order, and the fact that it is beautifully based in information found in the genes of all life forms.  They  stand back in awe at the order, symmetry, and organization of physical reality and it’s amazing correspondence with mathematics.  And they’ve spent their lives in research and study because they are amazed by what they see out there in space and down here on earth and in here in us.  Yet when such opponents of ID hear a believer stand back in awe and say, “Ah!  Look what the Lord has done!” they have an apoplectic fit and gasp in elitist horror at such simple praise as they shout, “we didn’t mean you to take all these pictures that seriously, He’s not that good of a designer!”  One may praise Mother Nature, or evolution, or the universe, or life itself, and quite safely speak without drawing ire, but dare to mention God and prepare to be subjected to snarky sarcasm and spite.  Indeed the same folks who will point fingers and throw rocks back at you for praising God as the designer, will turn around and preach the wonders of raw evolution and it’s powers of creating such diversity, (apparent) design, and beauty.   Such folks just don’t get that you are not necessarily quibbling with or even questioning the details of astronomy or biology per se (indeed there are many diverse positions among Christians on creation), but just as you praise the author of a book and not the press operator who ran off the copies, we are stopping to stand in awe of the Author of the universe, the One who actually conceived the whole thing and brought it about.

3. Ultimately, the retort that the universe is badly designed fails because it is a non sequitur.  If something is badly designed it does not follow that it is not designed at all.  Of course, the truth is that the universe is a marvelously designed place with awe-inspiring order and life is incredibly complex, beautiful, and efficient, and the most amazing thing is that we have minds that can discover and understand this universe that we live in.

This all reminds me of what God told the atheist at the end of that well-worn joke: “Get your own dirt.”  Exactly.

Words have meaning,

therefore God exists.

Ok, you either get this or you don’t.

The point of my response was that similarities and commonalities of experience, religious experience in this instance, is to be expected on the one hand because of our shared humanity (and religious orientation, imo), and on the other hand it has no conclusive bearing on the truth/falsehood of truth itself, religious or otherwise. So the fact that  a Pentecostal speaks in tongues and a Buddhist speaks in tongues and the physiological, emotional, mental experience is similar to the person says little about the truthfulness or falsehood of either Christianity or Buddhism. And putting the experience into a science lab and mapping the brain and confirming the similarities of the experience at that level really has no bearing either; it just shows that just like two people speaking in tongues are doing the same thing with their tongues they are also doing the same thing with their brains though the person is conscious of the one (tongues) but not of the latter (brain waves).

This very point, that humans can have such religious/spiritual experiences in various religious contexts whether sacrificing to an idol, shouting for Jesus, contemplating the sound of nothingness, or chanting to achieve a state of inner peace, is a point that is affirmed throughout the Christian Scriptures. Thus, when Paul addresses the gifts of  the Spirit, including tongues, in 1 Corinthians 12 – 14, his very first point is that such experiences are from God only in the context of the basic Christian confession that Jesus is Lord (12:3). Paul is admitting that experiences can be misleading and come from many sources and or inspirations. Thus, he sets out what differentiates the influence of God’s Spirit from other sources: God’s Spirit leads people to confess that Jesus is Lord and live their lives for Him and manifest the kind of love that characterizes God Himself (1 Co. 13).

I think Paul’s words in 1 Co. 12:1-3 show us that the experience of speaking in tongues or other spiritual/religious experiences is not the foundation of the Christian faith and never was intended to be. Instead, the foundation is the truth about Jesus: He is Lord. This is the central truth of the Christian faith and this is confirmed by His resurrection. The historical event of the resurrection of Jesus is the hinge of this whole thing, which is exactly Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 15. Either Jesus rose from the dead and validated His claims to being the Christ and the Son of God or He did not rise from the dead and the New Testament is a lie. Thus, one needs to decide what they believe about Jesus and His life, death, and resurrection and go from there.

So one can argue religion and spirituality to the day of the big crunch when the universe collapses in on itself and do so from every conceivable angle – psychological, physiological, sociological, comparative religious studies or whatever – and get pretty much no where. But if Jesus really was dead for three days and walked out of His tomb on the first day of the week then that changes everything.

So, in summary, the foundational event for the Christian faith is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth not your personal spiritual experiences.  This is not to denigrate one’s experiences of the Spirit but to qualify them and make an absolutely vital distinction, one that the New Testament makes as well particularly in 1 Co. 12-15.  At the end of the day we must deal with facts not feelings and I believe that the Scriptures are more than able to handle that.

What do you think?

Experience is just that: experience. Jews pray and some pray very intensely, like at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Muslims pray rather intensely. As you know, Pentecostals and many Christians pray intensely as well. Most likely the physical, mental, physiological, and emotional experience is probably not that much different. Sounds like common sense. That’s because all the folks praying are, well, all human and the basic orientation of humanity is religious.

His response to this was to say this:

I disagree that the basic orientation of humanity is religious. I do think modern man has certainly spread the notion of religion, however, I believe mankind’s basic orientation is that of ‘animal’. By that, I refer to the orientation to breed, to propagate the species. We eat, make money, go on dates, etc., to create more of us. This, of course, rarely occurs to those doing it. Fact is, we question this ‘life’ thing now more than we ever have, thanks to the development of the human brain as it relates to language (primarily). But just because we question life (whether at a Pentecostal altar or the Wailing Wall in Israel) does not mean there are answers, i.e., a ‘God’. Brain development->Questions->Brain development->more questions, but new questions…
(I don’t mean our actual brain size, as Neanderthal man actually had a bigger brain than us; I mean areas of brain)

Interestingly (and I have read no research on this subject), I believe religion is born from nothing more than the evolutionary ‘desire’ to continue the species. What better way to guarantee forever existence than to build a place (or have Jesus build it) wherein a certain number (of chosen ones, no less…another marker of natural selection) of people will literally live forever? That place, of course, is often called heaven. At least by those who trust the King James Version

Better than finding an insect in amber or a mammoth in ice. Actual, living humans encased under an eternal Spirit and his manifested Son… It has been an interesting ten years for me and I really hope my mind always stays open; true ‘atheism’ is nothing more than another religion, imo. I’d much rather be open to what might be or not be. Unfortunately, at this time in mankind’s existence, all science points to this morbid and powerful point: we are flesh and blood animals only.

And later on he said this about tongues:

There was nothing more I loved than ‘working’ the altar… I watched a man “pray more than a 100 people thru to the Holy Ghost”. I paid close attention to what he was saying and he was correct: when a person truly believed and opened their mouth, they spoke in tongues. So, I tried it. And it worked marvelously. Until…. I tried it without telling the people they would speak in tongues. And I also didn’t speak in tongues in front of them. (I did a lot of this outside the church, including in a homeless shelter…

When I didn’t tell people they were going to ‘speak’, they simply showed lots of emotion; crying, hollering, etc. Which was POWERFUL. But no tongues. Ever. But the moment I would either a. tell them they could and that they MUST or b. speak in their ear quite vehemently, well, then they did. Easily. I can speak in tongues today and it’s EXACTLY as it was then. In fact, it brings up a lot of emotion still. I assure you, it’s not God living in me. It’s me letting go completely….

Of the 1000′s of people I’ve observed speak in tongues, I have never, not one single time, watched them use an actual foreign language. I’ve studied Spanish, some French, Dutch, German and tried like hell to study Chinese; people do not actually speak in a different language. We all know this, we’re just afraid to bring it up. The syntax and rhythm is not that of another language.

Is this hard to believe? Absolutely. Without tongues, the Pentecostal religion is just another religion. and that’s frightens …those who cling to it. I was one. And I was sincere, completely. I would have taken a beheading for God/Jesus/The Oneness, etc. Now I understand it for what it is: an idea that immortalizes humanity, keeps us alive forever, and while we’re on earth even offers medical healings (another topic for another night! . Yes, I miss the feeling that having ‘God’ gave me. It’s lonelier knowing we are just here for a speck of time and then gone. But I would never, ever, trade the peace I now have. The realization that I am part of this planet, this galaxy, and perhaps the only animal who talks about his existence… And once a man or woman knows, they cannot pretend they don’t know, unless they want endless internal conflict.

There is a lot being said in that response and one could respond at many points but I wanted to stay on the issue of experience, so what to say to all that? That’s in part 2.

The last debate I posted was on the existence of the devil and was interesting but fairly shallow.  This one is meaty and very, very provative.  If you’ve never heard the sorts of questions about the faith that Hitchens asks, you need to, and you need to think them through.  I think that the four apologists do a tremendously good job of answering Hitchens and showing how inconsistent his beliefs are. Here’s the blurb:

The New Atheists usually make two charges against Christianity: (1) that it is untrue and (2) that it is harmful. A panel of Christian apologetics experts responds to an atheist critic with evidence from Scripture, science and, history about why faith is both reasonable and good for the world. Moderator: Stan Guthrie, Christianity Today Panelists: * Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus, The Case for a Creator (Zondervan) * William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith (Crossway) * Douglas Wilson, Is Christianity Good for the World? (Canon Press) * Christopher Hitchens, Is Christianity Good for the World? (Canon Press) and God Is Not Great (Twelve Books) * Jim Denison, Wrestling with God (Tyndale)

Anyways, watch if for yourself here.  And let use the comments below and speak your mind: what do you think?