Those are strong words, but they are justified. This, we will now explore in 101 level outline.
Now, again, let us refresh our memory of Mr Gordon Robinson's key accusation in the Sunday Gleaner on August 26, 2018, as we already noted on Nov 7th:
“Either the Church has NO CLUE about who/what God really is [--> educational fraud], or it deliberately misrepresents God's essence in order to frighten people into becoming church members and tithing [--> financial fraud]. Nothing else makes sense.” Other assertions: “dangerous dogma promulgated by the Church and its many brainwashed surrogates,” “perverse propaganda spread by Christian churches,” “sycophants” and the like.We need to ask, first, what has brought Jamaica and the wider Caribbean to a place where one of our region’s top five newspapers feels free to publish such ill-founded accusations against the Christian faith? For, the Gleaner has in effect accused the Church of posing as teachers about God, ethics and the like while being utterly ignorant and/or greedy for money. Then, tellingly, it felt it appropriate to suppress correction.
(BTW, this suppression of the right of responsible reply already indicates a terrible situation. For, when we see controversial, one sided assertions, reporting or opinions in our regional media without effective reply, it may well mean little more than that such media houses are captive to particular agendas and are using their editorial power to suppress the other side of the story. Sad.)
Now, as was discussed on ZDK Radio Tuesday last (and as has been in this blog and elsewhere for years), we are facing a civilisational tidal wave of de-Christianisation from the North, and another due to radical Islam from the East. We are also now facing a rising influence from China. Which, is itself in a race between the spread of the gospel and the current re-assertion of harsh Communistic, Atheistical radical secularism.
(Historically, the tipping point is when a community becomes 20 - 30% Christian in adherence. In a democracy, 5% can sharply swing an election for good or ill. For +5% for A means - 5% for B, a 10% shift. When A goes up, those votes come from B; B must go down. Say, B was 52% and A 48%. That shifts to 53% for A and 47% for B, which in a "first past the post" system can move numbers of seats far more sharply, especially if B's support is heavily concentrated in urban centres and A's is spread across the hinterlands. This is where it is a political maxim that elections are won in the mushy middle, the swinging vote. A 5% rise in the vote for sound reformation can make a big difference; and likewise if the mushy middle can be polarised against those who support sound, gospel-ethics driven reformation, that can and does move the balance of power towards putting evil for good and good for evil, leading to a voyage of folly for the proverbial ship of state. (Also see here on the Ac 27 example.) That unwise polarisation -- better, pushing to the disreputable stereotyped scapegoat margins -- would then shift the terms on which policies are hammered out and elections are fought through moving the BATNA-points in the Overton Window. Too often, to bitter cost. As Ac 27 shows.)
Let me refresh our memories on the parable of the ship of state:
[T]he idea is that the owner-merchant captain of a ship (= the people of Athens c. 430 - 400 BC) was blind and could not navigate or steer the ship. Members of the crew (= political leaders and pundits who got that city into the ruinous Peloponnesian war) then tried to befuddle him, and clamoured to gain control of the helm through having popular support; even though they plainly lacked character and competence. Meanwhile, away in a corner was a disdained, “useless” stargazer – the skilled navigator. The fate of such a “ship” was sadly predictable; a grim warning on how democracies can fail.
So, in a certain sense it is unsurprising to see the sort of development we now face; our region is not insulated from the big global trends in a global, Internet age. As I summarised in 2016:
But that does not answer the charges. Where do we begin?
First, Christians will note that the Bible nowhere sets out to prove the existence or credibility or moral soundness of God beyond all doubt or objection. (That's a futile task in a world where post Godel even complex axiomatic systems in Mathematics are inherently incomplete or are self-contradictory and we have no process to create a known coherent system.)
Instead, as Romans 1 records, it points to the evident signs in creation around us and to our own inner life as making acknowledging God so compelling that to walk away from God leaves us without excuse and is ruinous to a civilisation:
Rom 1:18 For [God does not overlook sin and] the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who in their wickedness suppress and stifle the truth, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them [in their inner consciousness], for God made it evident to them.
20 For ever since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through His workmanship [all His creation, the wonderful things that He has made], so that they [who fail to believe and trust in Him] are without excuse and without defense . . . .
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or consider Him worth knowing [as their Creator], God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do things which are improper and repulsive, 29 until they were filled (permeated, saturated) with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice and mean-spiritedness. They are gossips [spreading rumors], 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors [of new forms] of evil, disobedient and disrespectful to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful [without pity].
32 Although they know God’s righteous decree and His judgment, that those who do such things deserve death, yet they not only do them, but they even [enthusiastically] approve and tolerate others who practice them. [AMP]
Those are hard words, but a glance to our North (and increasingly, around us here in the Caribbean) should give us sobering pause. For, Rom 1 reads uncomfortably like our headlines.
That's part of why, in the first response to Mr Robinson [the one that was refused publication], R and I briefly drew attention to three crucial bits of evidence that we too often tend to overlook:
EXHIBIT I: >>Over the years, many millions have met and been transformed through meeting God in the face of Christ. This includes countless Jamaicans [--> and we can obviously add, Antiguans, Montserratians, Bajans and other Caribbean citizens]. It also includes many famed scholars, eminent scientists and leaders of powerful reformations. Logically, if just one of these millions has actually been reconciled with God through Christ, God must be real and the gospel must be true. (Where, if instead so many are deeply delusional, that would undermine the rational credibility of the human mind.) >>In short, we first have many people all around us and down the ages whose lives have been positively transformed through meeting God in the face of Jesus, through the gospel.
EXHIBIT II: >>consider how for sixty years now we have known that the DNA in the cells of our bodies has in it complex, alphanumeric, algorithmic code that is executed through molecular nanotechnology to build proteins, the workhorses of biological life. That’s why Sir Francis Crick wrote to his son Michael on March 19, 1953 that “we believe that the DNA is a code. That is, the order of bases (the letters) makes one gene different from another gene (just as one page of print is different from another).”
Sir Francis Crick's March 19, 1953 letter to his son Michael,
describing DNA, and pointing out its textual, linguistic character
Yes, alphanumeric code (so, language!), algorithms (so, purpose!), i.e. intelligent design of life from the first living cell on. Including, us. No wonder the dean of the so-called New Atheists was forced to admit that Biology studies complicated things that give a strong appearance of design.>>
EXHIBIT III: >>Next, Mr Robinson and others inevitably appeal to our known duty to truth, right reasoning, fairness, prudent judgement, etc. But, where did that inner moral law (testified to by our consciences) come from? Surely, it is not a delusion; or else responsible, freely rational discussion would collapse into nihilistic chaos: might and manipulation (= “power and propaganda”) make ‘right,’ ‘rights,’ ‘justice,’ ‘truth,’ ‘knowledge’ etc. Instead, our conscience-guarded hearts and minds clearly show the Creator’s design that we freely live by the light and law of truth and right.
Such considerations – and many more – point us to the only serious candidate for the source of reality that can bridge IS and OUGHT: the inherently good (and wise) Creator God, a necessary and maximally great being. Who, is fully worthy of our loyalty and of humble, responsible, reasonable service through doing the good. Then, we may readily draw out the classic understanding of God described in scripture and studied in systematic theology: all-good, eternal, creator and Lord with sound knowledge and full capability to work out his good purposes in the right way at the right time. >>
Where, yes, there are many hypocrites and we all struggle to walk in the truth.
That's why scripture counsels us to fight the good fight of faith, and it is why Jesus taught in a famous parable that an enemy would sow poisonous weeds among the newly planted wheat so that one could not uproot the weeds without fatally damaging the crop. (Cf. here.)
Nor, will it do to wave hands and dismiss successful discipleship and living relationship with God as psychological delusion (a well-known objection, post Freud and Marx et al). For, "if instead so many are deeply delusional, that would undermine the rational credibility of the human mind" -- including the minds of the selectively hyperskeptical objectors. As in, self-referential incoherence that undermines the very minds that we need to be rational and responsible.
(Sadly, there are more objectors who are perfectly willing to throw away rationality than one might suspect.)
Rom 1 is already biting hard.
Then, when we look at DNA [which we all study in school and know to be at the heart of cell-based life], we find a world of code-based molecular nanotechnology.
Code? Yes:
Code-using, algorithmic information tech, that had to be in place for cell based life to exist.
[In a nutshell, algorithms are step-by-step finite procedures that achieve a definite target.]
Ponder, for example, protein synthesis, the metabolic process that builds the workhorse molecules of cell based life, proteins (including most enzymes):
Where, the well-known Origin of Life researcher Yockey, pointed to the implicit communication system:
We can readily compare here, the "layercake" communication system framework that for example runs the Internet:
No, it will not do to point to the existence of a physical-chemical layer and hyperskeptically pretend that the layered codes and protocols do not exist. Or to airily wave hands and sneer at "analogies" as though this and other forms of inductive reasoning are little more than fallacies, implying (so bad is this objection) that they are not foundational to science and our day to day reasoning.
Self-refuting self-referential incoherence in the heart of selective hyperskepticism, yet again.
And that extends to the notion that "evolution" solves the problem.
For, the above challenge is antecedent to cellular self-replication. Without it, there is no room to have mutations of the genetic code that then somehow happen to be incrementally advantageous.
 |
| Astrophysicist, Luke Barnes illustrates the fine tuning challenge, just on two of dozens of parameters and constraints on physics |
(And it is a huge, unanswered challenge to empirically ground the extraordinary claim that code systems [= language], algorithms, executing machinery and then the complexities of organisms from amoeba to Mozart wrote themselves bit by bit through lucky noise filtered by finding successive needles in the incomprehensibly vast haystack of possible Amino Acid sequences. For example, a typical protein is 300 AA long, pointing to a field of possibilities of 20^300 ~ 2.04 * 10^390. That is vastly more possibilities than can be explored at a fast organic chem interaction rate of 10^12 - 14 interactions/s by the ~ 10^80 atoms of our observed cosmos in ~ 13.85 billion years from the singularity on the conventional timeline. Far too much haystack for our universe to credibly search through Dawkins' blind watchmaker processes. A cell actually needs thousands of proteins to function properly. Where, too, if you suggest a "golden search" you face the issue that a search is a sampled subset of a space of possibilities. Search for a golden search thus comes from the power set of the original configuration space; the collection of all subsets. Where for a set of n members, the power set has 2^n members. 2^[2*10^390] is already computer smoking territory. And if you appeal to as yet undiscovered laws that write life into the cosmos, you are looking at fine tuning on steroids, pointing strongly to the design of the cosmos. Where, just to get to C-Chemistry, aqueous medium, cell based life on "privileged" terrestrial planets in galactic habitable zones, we are already looking at a serious fine tuned cosmos challenge. Pointing strongly to design of our observed universe. Another whole subject!)Famed evolutionary theorist, J B S Haldane long since posed the un-answered self-referential incoherence challenge of evolutionary materialist scientism:
"It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. (NB: DI Fellow, Nancy Pearcey brings this right up to date (HT: ENV) in a current book, Finding Truth.)]Let's just draw the quick point that language (as strong a mark of intelligence as there is) is causally antecedent to cell-based life.
Rom 1 is biting harder and harder.
Then too, Exhibit III pointed to our own inner life and nature: our minds are governed by known duty to truth, right reason, fairness and justice, etc. Indeed, the whole rhetorical force of Mr Robinson's objections and similar arguments pivots on their knowledge that we are so governed. We are morally governed creatures in our inner life, thought, speech and outward behaviour -- as our consciences bear witness (if we haven't managed to befuddle, utterly warp or kill them yet).
Something that is universally known.
Another clue, and a big hint.
No wonder (as is in the second article in the series) we see from the pagan Roman statesman and Lawyer, Cicero, c. 50 BC:
. . . For, he summarised the received view in his day, on how Law is “highest reason, implanted in [our] nature, which prescribes those things which ought to be done, and forbids the contrary.” He continued: “the voice of conscience is a law . . . moral prudence is a law, whose operation is to urge us to good actions, and restrain us from evil ones.” He then concluded in his own voice: “the origin of justice is to be sought in the divine law of eternal and immutable morality.” [Cf. De Legibus.2]
__________
F/N 2: See: http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/cicero-treatise-on-the-laws
Also, when John Locke penned his famous Second Treatise on Civil Government (which is known to be foundational to modern democratic self-government) he cited Anglican Canon Richard Hooker on the linked Golden Rule taught by Moses, Jesus, Paul and the other Apostles. We thus see, at the pivotal point in his argument:
“. . . my desire . . . to be loved of my equals in Nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to themward fully the like affection. From which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn for direction of life no man is ignorant.” [2nd Treatise on Civil Government, Ch 2 Sec. 5 (1689), citing Eccl. Polity, preface, Bk I, Ch. 8.]Let me add Paul's remarks on the law within and on the golden rule, which Hooker also echoes:
{Hooker then continued: "[citing Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 8 and echoing Justinian's Jurisconsults in The Institutes of Law, the built-in textbook in the key synthesis of Roman Law, Corpus Juris Civilis:] as namely, That because we would take no harm, we must therefore do none; That since we would not be in any thing extremely dealt with, we must ourselves avoid all extremity in our dealings; That from all violence and wrong we are utterly to abstain, with such-like . . "}
Rom 2:14 When Gentiles, who do not have the Law [since it was given only to Jews], do [c]instinctively the things the Law requires [guided only by their conscience], they are a law to themselves, though they do not have the Law. 15 They show that the [d]essential requirements of the Law are written in their hearts; and their conscience [their sense of right and wrong, their moral choices] bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or perhaps defending them . . . .
13:8 [b]Owe nothing to anyone except to [c]love and seek the best for one another; for he who [unselfishly] loves his neighbor has fulfilled the [essence of the] law [relating to one’s fellowman]. 9 The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,” and any other commandment are summed up in this statement: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor [it never hurts anyone]. Therefore [unselfish] love is the fulfillment of the Law. [AMP]
Thus, not only is it known that we are morally governed, but this is foundational to self-government, law and community, thus to civilisation. We cannot not know this.
So, how can we ground this in our worldviews? How can we bridge and fuse IS and OUGHT, forming a coherent morally governed understanding of reality?
After Hume pointed out how there is a categorical leap in arguments that go IS, IS . . . OUGHT, there is just one place: the source or root of reality. In that root we need an entity that is both the source of being and by core characteristic so good that it is at the same time inextricably the adequate wellspring of moral government so that Euthyphro's dilemma or the like cannot thereafter sever the fusion of IS and OUGHT.
Unsurprisingly, as was noted, there is just one serious candidate: the inherently good (and wise) Creator God, a necessary and maximally great being. Who, is fully worthy of our loyalty and of humble, responsible, reasonable service through doing the good that accords with our evident nature.
(If you doubt or dismiss this, this is philosophy on comparative difficulties not "dogma" or "brainwash[ing]", simply put up an alternative that is factually adequate, coherent and explanatorily powerful without being simplistic or an ad hoc patchwork: ______ . You will readily see why I can freely write as I just did.)
It will help to reflect on "necessary being" in light of the logic of being. In a nutshell:
Then, we may freely draw out the classic understanding of God described in scripture and studied in systematic theology: all-good, eternal, creator and Lord with sound knowledge and full capability to work out his good purposes in the right way at the right time.
Rom 1 has bitten home with terrific force.
Also, we are at the threshold of Christian, redemptive ethical theism, and of its powerful answers to the Idea of God [aka Philosophy of Religion] and to Systematic Theology. Which is far beyond the dismissive insinuations and talking points that seem to increasingly be an ill-advised common-place in too many influential circles in our region. Where of course, those who are dismissive need to face the force of the testimony of the 500, and other evidence on Jesus of Nazareth.
Instead of going on and on in what is already a far-ranging blog post, let me first use a link pointed to by reader S, on the credibility of the Gospels etc (for the Bible is a key source for Christian Theology):
This introduction to the rational defence of the Christian Faith will also be helpful:
(Cf. Full course from RZIM here.)
Where, too, we may now see useful courses on Systematic Theology online. Wayne Grudem has a useful brief introduction:
(And this course seems to be a good survey, based largely on Grudem's 1,000+ pp introductory work. [Let me also point to unit 2 in my own online draft "street-level 101" course. Grudem's video lectures on his well-received textbook are here, and here at Amazon; currently US$ 26.96. U/D Dec 4, Grudem's Systematic Theology is readily available through Amazon . . . unsurprisingly, no. 1 bestseller on this topic . . . etc, and is archived at the Web Archive project here in various formats -- warning, a fat download.])
Let me embed one session on the doctrine of God:
These are of course just a beginning. END
