Friends:  What science reveals is “how”; what Jesus reveals is purpose. Last in a series.  Have a great week! Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #902

February 27, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

I See Smart People, Part 3

By Bob Walters

“So we are left with the fundamental question and the incapacity of science to answer that question: Does life have purpose or not?” ornithologist/essayist Reverend Professor Andrew G. Gosler of Oxford in Coming to Faith Through Dawkins

Dr. Gosler wasn’t so much an atheist as a cultural Jew, i.e., non-Christian, whose depth of study and knowledge about birds – ornithology – provided an ideal scientific seat from which to calculate and critique Dawkins’ message of atheism and evolution.

And, in the process, Gosler found Christ.

One scientist to another, Gosler was not impressed with the argument genetic biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins, author of the 2006 book The God Delusion, made for either evolution or atheism. Gosler’s essay in Coming to Faith, “Hearing God Through an Enchantment with Nature,” deftly points out not only holes in Dawkins’s science and atheistic polemics, but applies a science career’s worth of professional observations to note the overall backwardness of popular evolutionary assumptions.

If one knows nothing else of Charles Darwin’s 19^th century investigations and suppositions about Evolution and Creation, one knows “Survival of the Fittest.” Dawkins buys into Darwin, further claiming uncreated genetic preferencing leads to conflict and competition among species which led and still leads to biological development. 

Gosler’s investigations don’t reveal a God whose purpose of Creation is conflict, nor “the belief accepted within biology that exclusive and bitter self-interest underpins life.” Gosler’s study of nature revealed to him God’s “Shalom,” or peace. “Creation and sustaining of life is not of competition or conflict, but of mutual dependence. … Open-mindedness,” Gosler writes, “is the invitation to truth itself; openness to the Spirit.”

God’s Creation, you see, is meant to work together, not against the other parts.

Raw survival, if I may lean on C.S. Lewis’s rationalization of morality, implies that whatever organism is trying “to survive” has an interior intent and purpose.  That’s where Darwinism and Darwinists veer off course: they call creation a purposeless place, yet invoke the purposeful and moral quality of “survival” to explain purposeless-ness.

Gosler has a great example of biological complementarity among a species of birds, first noted by Maori tribesmen in New Zealand. The male and female huia birds mate for life and have vastly different shaped bills that allow a “knife and fork” utility as they feed each other and their nests.  “Rather than Darwin’s competition driving evolution,” Gosler writes, “they were the model of mutual dependence.”

Denis Alexander and Alister McGrath have provided a comforting service to the faithful in compiling Coming to Faith Through Dawkins. Gosler, who now is an Anglican priest (since 2018) and a third-order Franciscan, and eleven other essayists, smoothly describe their trips into and out of atheism, be it by science, experience, or philosophy.

Each essay called to my own mind specific friends and acquaintances who have rebuffed faith generally and/or Jesus specifically.  The over-arching weakness of atheism is its absence of purpose or cause, and concomitant denial of truth and reality.

Granted, not everyone thinks deeply, faithful or not. But I believe every life is enhanced by feeling purpose and knowing truth.  The created world, by God’s purpose, is gifted to be loving and relational; Jesus fixes the fallen state that clouds those gifts.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) resides squarely with those who see purpose in life.

Friends: This is about when atheists laugh ... nervously.  See the column below.  Also, a link to last week's "Finding Genius" podcast is below the column.  Blessings! Bob

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Spirituality Column #901

February 20, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

I See Smart People, Part 2    By Bob Walters

“On its own, the word ‘Jesus’ seems to say both too much and (somehow) too little.” – Christopher Hitchens, from the afterword of his book, God is Not Great (2007)

We are actually focusing our attention on the recently published book, Coming to Faith Through Dawkins, but the late conservative polemicist Christopher Hitchens similarly energized the “New Atheist” movement of two decades ago.

Richard Dawkins, of course, is the noted British genetic biologist / atheist who famously wrote The God Delusion in 2006.  Denis Alexander and Alister McGrath, British Christian scholars and apologists, assembled Coming to Faith with twelve erudite essays from twelve New Atheists whose journeys let them to Christ, not oblivion.

This week and next, we will look at a few of these accomplished but generally non-famous essayists from a variety of countries, cultures, faith histories, generations, and academic interests, who clamped tightly onto atheism at one point or another in their lives.  What the essays give us are a dozen pictures of disciplined, deep-thinking, talented folks who arrived at the Cross – unexpectedly – after previously not believing it was there.

The Hitchens’ quote above, about ‘Jesus,’ drew a welcoming and large giggle from his (presumably) atheist book tour audience in Little Rock, Ark. On his way to the event, Hitchens had seen “an enormous black-and-yellow billboard bearing the single word jesus (sic),” he said, and introduced his talk with the billboard and the above quote.  Ashley Lande, a formerly LSD-taking atheist who grew into a published writer and artist whose work is shown internationally in large-city galleries, commented on Hitchens’ quote:

“I can almost hear that laughter: chattering, light, and adoring … but I also imagine in it a nervous edge. …while some of us can laugh off God, we cannot laugh off Jesus. …we can pshaw at the parting of the Red Sea, or at Noah, a lunatic building a boat ... But … laugh at Jesus, the rogue Jewish preacher condemned to death by torture, the fully human man with the spit of contempt mingling with sweat on his destroyed brow …?

“No … even the unbelievers, can’t laugh.”

Lande, a California girl who declared her teenaged atheism loudly to her Christian parents, is, like all the book’s atheist-turned-lucidly-Christian essayists, a life-long, deeply curious thinker about life’s purpose, spiritual reality, and the nature of truth.  I came to faith late, myself, but never recall the same lifelong, intentional, spiritual questions about God and religion as these essayists.  I didn’t think about God any more than I thought about accounting or Antarctica; I knew they existed but had neither interest nor questions.

Coming to Faith made me recognize my own lack of spiritual curiosity prior to finding Christ.  The book would have had no effect on me 30 years ago because I gave no serious thought to any religion.  Now I appreciate the book’s armory of rationally and spiritually arrived-at truth.  We all have family and friends who are too smart for Jesus, and we all want to share.

Case in point is the non-believing, adult godson of my church buddy Dave, a retired urologist who the past several years has taught our Adult Bible Fellowship (Sunday school) “Logos” class.  Dave sent a note early last week about his successful adult godson, educated at Princeton and Harvard, who announced to his Catholic family that he was an atheist.

Dave sent Coming to Faith to him, noting the essay by Judith Babarsky, a psychologist in Washington, D.C., who describes her road to Catholic faith heavily quoting G.K. Chesterton (one of my favorites), and Joseph Ratzinger’s (later Pope Benedict XVI), Jesus of Nazareth.

She notes, “Atheism is an emptiness, a belief in nothing beyond the observable, [We too often] root ourselves in a timeline, in our own age, [rather than attaching ourselves] to a wisdom that is eternal.”  Dave’s godson is in his 40s, like I was when I found faith. I hope he does too.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) often notes his own surprise that upon first attending church at age 47 (OK, he was Episcopalian as a child) and growing into Bible study and Christian life, he found truth that was expansively intellectual and freeing, not a strait-jacketed prison.

PODCAST LINK: Discussing Paul The Apostle With Bob Walters

 

Friends: When thoughtful atheists discover saving faith in Christ … what happened? A really good book.  And below today’s column are links to my latest podcast with Rich Jacobs (Feb 2024), and archived columns about Valentine’s Day (2008) and Ash Wednesday / Lent (2010). - Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #900

February 13, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

I See Smart People, Part 1

By Bob Walters

“I have found the Bible to be more coherent than I ever imagined.” – from “Coming to Faith through Dawkins,” edited by Denis Alexander and Alister McGrath.

When renowned British biologist, atheist, and author Richard Dawkins published The God Delusion in 2006, his timing was nearly perfect. But his argument was flawed.

Smart people noticed and found Christ instead.

Good timing?  You bet.  Five years after 9/11 re-drew the secular argument for and against religion in general, the world pounced on what seemed to be the shaken underpinnings of faith.  The “New Atheism” berated a Christian “god” it pronounced unlikely to exist, and uncaring if it did, and castigated Islam, whose seeming calling card was mass murder and terrorism.  Dawkins set many, many people thinking.  God? Bah.

It wasn’t just 9/11. Christianity in the West, particularly Europe, seemed to be dying anyway. Previous decades saw church attendance dwindle, while cultural conversation rarely called on Christian values, scripture, or teaching to resolve myriad social ills.  The Enlightenment had finally won; man’s own mind had become the ascendent and even lone arbiter of truth and lie, good and evil, justice and injustice.

American religious polls also showed a marked decline in church attendance and influence, and by the mid-2010s the “Nones” – as in religiously “None of the above” – grew to a dominant slice of American faith, or rather, non-faith, life and perspective.

Public education throughout the West had ditched the Bible, Prayer, and Jesus in the 1960s, replacing scripture and prayer with Darwinism and secular social programs.  Popular culture became both king and queen, comforts became the goal of life, and Dawkins’ masterful command of biology and vitriol against God, religion, and believers made Dawkins a pop-culture, science-answers-all-questions millennial rock star.

Funny thing though.  Many atheistic thinkers noticed logical, practical, and philosophical holes in Dawkins’ best-selling Delusion book, and upon vigorous investigation of Dawkins, rather, discovered the vigorous comprehensibility not just of the One True God, the Bible, Church history, and Christian philosophy, but rethought their jeering atheism with well-thought-out reverence for Christ.  Reason to the rescue.

A month ago, I wrote about Coming to Faith through Dawkins (Link #895, 1-8-24, 'Atheism is Rather Simplistic')having only seen an interview about it. Now I’ve read the book and swear it is an apologist’s delight of why and how smart people find Christ.

Twelve smart people, to be exact.  Co-editor Alister McGrath, well-known British author and apologist in his own right, introduces the 2023 volume with a five-point appraisal of Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, cites other prominent “New Atheist” writers, notes the movement’s rise and fall, and explains the book’s structure and intent.

This volume rings loudly in my faith.  The twelve authors – each one presenting a stand-alone essay/chapter – say the smart stuff I wish I’d think to say.  They all bring salient perspective to modern culture vs. Christian faith, and are all current, working, writing, thinking professionals – academics, engineers, philosophers, pastors – very much alive, very much Christian, and very smartly observant of contemporary trends.

My guess is that like me, you’ve never heard of any of them.  I’d also hasten a guess that for the robust, thinking Christian, reading the robust, faith-settling thoughts of how the Bible became coherent to others deepens our own faith, peace, and grace.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) did the math and, God willing, column #1,000 should hit Tuesday, January 13, 2026. Let’s all try to make it. More on Dawkins next week.

PODCAST LINK: Discussing Paul The Apostle With Bob Walters

VALENTINE’S DAY: Valentine’s Day Column #66 2-12-08

LENT: Ash Wednesday / Lent Column #171 2-16-10

Friends: Perhaps historians have that “Dark Ages” thing backwards; the light of Christ was and is always there. See the column below.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #899

February 6, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

History’s Fog Lamp

By Bob Walters

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” – Jesus, John 8:12

“But men loved darkness instead of light ...” – Jesus to Nicodemus, John 3:19

History’s “Dark Ages” may not have been all that dark; it’s just that “darkness,” rather than light, grabbed the dominant publicity in Europe after the Middle Ages.

And believe it or not, it was the Apostle Paul who was, and to some extent still is, frequently blamed for the “darkness.”  How? Let’s just say, the fog was not Paul’s fault.

There are different ways to express it, but here is a good one: Paul, in the first century, did such a thorough job of explaining Christ and nascent Christianity that the dominant paganism and contemporary philosophies of both the Greek and Roman eras stumbled in the face of the newly-found and growing Christian church.  Faith in Christ and the power of the Church, in those middle centuries, superseded man’s own understanding of humanity.

Jesus, after all, brought the good news of restored relationship with God through personal faith in Jesus as God’s Son. The Holy Spirit, at Jesus’s ascension, arrived among humanity for our spiritual strength and faithful understanding. Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection – and His eternal message – compose the most important, paradigm shifting, and philosophically delineating point in human history.

The Greek academy and civilization following Alexander the Great (approximately 400-200 B.C. to the time of Christ … the “Intertestamental Period” for us Bible folks) set a centuries-long course for the Hellenization – Greek intellectual and cultural dominance – in all quarters of the Mediterranean basin: Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Arabia, Egypt, Carthage, and the northern rim of Africa.  This foggy philosophical “light” of man was merely the human-focused wisdom of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian thinkers and writers. The One God, for many, was unwelcome

The Jews were not the only ones to take exception to the teachings of Jesus: He who redefined the true light of life from God’s Law and man’s own ideas to the truth of a one-for-all God.  In the Old Testament we see God calling the Jews as His own; in the New Testament, Paul explains the truth that Jesus – by His own words – was now the ascendant light and truth of all that was knowable. The Greeks taught “proof,” Jesus the Son of God taught love and faith.

So how did this “Dark Ages” identity happen to the “Medieval” / “Middle Ages” era (roughly 600-1400 A.D.)? The Italian poet, scholar, and early humanist Petrarch (article link), in the mid-1300s, took vigorous exception with the cultural and intellectual dominance of Christianity in general, and the Roman Church in particular. He interpreted the Christian faith as merely an unprovable mysticism that had interrupted the progress of his favored human-centric Greek and Roman philosophies of antiquity.  Evidently hating the light – or at least loving man’s knowledge – Petrarch pronounced centuries of Christian faith to be “The Dark Ages.”  It stuck.

G.K. Chesterton noted in his 1908 classic Orthodoxy, that it was the Church that brought the true light of Christ through those ages, and guarded Greek literature as well. Darkness? No.

Admittedly, Rome of Petrarch’s era was a corrupt, theological mess which led to Martin Luther’s 16^th century Protestant Reformation.  The concurrent “Renaissance” age of art (Michaelangelo, Da Vinci), literature (Shakespeare), technologies (the printing press), and thinking (Descartes) renewed focus on man’s capacities. The secular Renaissance competed with the Bible-based Reformation.  The world’s tendency and preference for powers of theological darkness – i.e., humanism – clashed with Christ’s divine, eternal guiding light.

It is an enduring clash, casting a fog over humanity hiding divine light that truly exists.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) considers the Enlightenment to be mainly more fog.