Stand to Reason Blog

Plans for a Temple to Atheism

Big news from London:

The philosopher and writer Alain de Botton is proposing to build a 46-metre (151ft) tower to celebrate a "new atheism" as an antidote to what he describes as Professor Richard Dawkins's "aggressive" and "destructive" approach to non-belief.

Rather than attack religion, De Botton said he wants to borrow the idea of awe-inspiring buildings that give people a better sense of perspective on life.

"Normally a temple is to Jesus, Mary or Buddha, but you can build a temple to anything that's positive and good," he said….

De Botton said he chose the country's financial centre because he believes it is where people have most seriously lost perspective on life's priorities….

Dawkins criticized the project on Thursday, indicating…that a temple of atheism was a contradiction in terms….

Notice what De Botton wants to restore to atheism: awe, a right perspective, proper priorities, and an honoring of something that's positive and good. All of these things require a standard and objective purpose outside of ourselves in order to exist. (Otherwise our own priorities and perspectives are always the "proper" ones, regardless of which ones we choose. Who, or what, could judge them?) And all of these things are subjective illusions in a materialist universe where only what is is objective. There is no ought. A piece of machinery acts, but what ought its "priorities" to be? What makes one piece of matter good and worthy of exalting over another? Can you make value judgments about rocks and trees?

Yes, a temple of atheism is a contradiction in terms, and this whole project ought to cause atheists to ask themselves two things: 1) In a world that began not with a living Person, but with dead atoms, where only randomly-developed matter is real, where there is no objective purpose and no objective standard, where everything in the unknowing, uncaring universe will eventually cease to exist, how do you explain our very real experience of these greater, powerful, non-material aspects of our lives? And 2) If they're not objectively real (as a materialist universe would prove), why is it that we can't live a fully human life without them?

Here's what the temple will look like:

De Botton revealed details of a temple to evoke more than 300m years of life on earth. Each centimetre of the tapering tower's interior has been designed to represent a million years and a narrow band of gold will illustrate the relatively tiny amount of time humans have walked the planet. The exterior would be inscribed with a binary code denoting the human genome sequence.

The temple features a single door for visitors who will enter as if it were an art installation. The roof will be open to the elements and there could be fossils and geologically interesting rocks in the concrete walls.

You'll see a picture of it to the right. (Well, okay, we added in the eye because, admit it, that design was begging for it.)

Humanists said it was misplaced for non-believers to build quasi-religious buildings, because atheists did not need temples to probe the meaning of life.

"The things religious people get from religion – awe, wonder, meaning and perspective – non-religious people get them from other places like art, nature, human relationships and the narratives we give our lives in other ways," said Andrew Copson, chief executive of the British Humanist Society….

Notice that Copson didn't say atheists don't need awe, wonder, meaning, and perspective; he merely said they don't need temples to explore these things. They still want to get them from places other than God. The question is, is that possible? Would those things ever be anything more than useful illusions in a materialist world?

De Botton has insisted atheists have as much right to enjoy inspiring architecture as religious believers.

"The dominant feeling you should get will be awe – the same feeling you get when you tip your head back in Ely cathedral," he said. "You should feel small but not in an intimidated way."

Human beings are built to desire that experience of awe in contemplating something greater and more beautiful than ourselves. This is because human beings are built to worship God. If a person denies God, he will seek to fulfill that need in some other way, even if doing so makes no rational sense within his own worldview.

All of this only goes to show that we can't live consistently in a materialistic worldview. We long for those parts of life that were declared subjective and/or unreal by empiricists and rationalists over the past couple centuries. And I wish De Botton and his fellow atheists all the best in truly finding what he knows they need.

In the meantime, Strange Herring has some suggestions for a more suitable atheist temple:

It would be made entirely of smoked glass, with no foundation or floor plan. Negotiating the space would be an act of sheer will and chance, and only the smartest and strongest will make it through the entire structure, although even they will be left with a nagging feeling that it was all ultimately futile and for no good purpose. A waste of money? I think not. Before something can be wasted, it must have some endogenous purpose, no?

Do We Need Religion for Morality?

Richard Dawkins says no.  “We don’t need to get morals from our religions … We don’t want to find morals from the holy books. We can have our own enlightened secular values.”

We do need God, however, to account for the existence of morals.  Evolution - no natural process - can do that.  Morals are immaterial, universal values.  They aren't physical things so science can't study them and natural processes can't explain them. There's no mechanism in nature or evolutionionary theory to explain the nature or existence of morality.

The only alternative for a committed naturalist as Dawkins is is moral relativism.  But then naturalists have to give up their claim that morality has any obligation on us because relativism gives up any universal claim.  Yet naturalists such as Dawkins and Michael Shermer want to maintain that they do believe in objective morality.  This was illustrated in Greg Koukl's debate with Shermer a couple of years ago.  But they have no adequate explanation for morality in their materialist worldview. 

Morality has to be explained and fit in a worldview.  And theism is the only one that has explnatory resources for the source and nature of morality.  It's called the "grounding problem." Religions and holy books may or may not reveal specifics of morality, but it's God that is the explanation for why morality exists. 

At the end of the article, Dawkins blunders by claiming that if God created the universe then His existence needs an explanation, so it explains nothing.  Dawkins obviously has never attempted to consider the arguments he disagrees with. 

We know from observation, and it's a fundamental fact of science, that events need causes.  No event occurs without a cause.  There are two kinds of causes - other events and persons.  Persons can be independent actors, causes without a need for further explanation.  God is a person, and as an immaterial being wthout a beginning, He has no need of a cause and is an adequate explanation in Himself. So God as the first cause of the universe needs no further explanation for His existence.

Now Dawkins may not accept that this God exists.  But the cosmological explanation is logically sound and doesn't beg the question of God's existence.  In that way at least, it is explanatorily superior to evolution for the origin of the universe.

Francis Schaeffer - 100 Years

Today is the 100th anniversary of Francis Schaeffer's birth.  He has had a tremendous influence on defending the faith.  Greg mentioned him as part of the "first column" in the current Solid Ground.  And Greg talked about Schaeffer's influence on him on yesterday's program.  You can watch it on STR's Ustream channel.

Does God Hate? (Video)

Does God hate? If so, then how is it “God is love”?

Why Would God Want Us to Praise Him?

I was recently asked why God would want us to praise and worship Him. This is a question I hear every so often since we immediately assume that a person who demands praise is a pompous big-head. I think there are many Christians out there who secretly wonder about this—afraid to ask the question (lest they be thought unspiritual), but bothered all the same.

God is completely self-sufficient and doesn't need our praise and worship. However, He does deserve it. Would you agree that it is right and good to praise someone who is worthy of praise? We instinctively know this and praise people for all sorts of achievements. We praise the people we love and admire, and it's not right or good for us to withhold praise from them.

We all understand the concept of praise being due certain people. Imagine that you crafted an incredibly beautiful sculpture and won a prestigious award for your creation; but when the time came for the award ceremony, they gave the prize for your sculpture to the wrong artist! That would not be just, right, or good. In the same way, God—as the only being perfect in goodness, justice, love, etc.—is worthy of our praise. We do, in fact, owe Him that praise. He wants us to praise Him because it is right and good for us to do so. Since God wants us to do right and good things, of course he wants us to praise and worship Him.

Beyond the praise being right and good (and because of its being right and good), worshiping God also brings us joy and enhances our relationship with Him. We see this in human relationships as well—think of a man with his wife. Doesn’t it bring him great joy to praise her?

Here's how C.S. Lewis puts it in Reflections on the Psalms:

I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise…. The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game…. I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: 'Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?' The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.

Finally, God created us for His pleasure (just as we create delightful things for our pleasure). Praising God—acknowledging His goodness, love, perfection, and all the incredible things He has done for us—brings Him pleasure. If you have children, you know what a beautiful thing it is to have them praise you. You also know the pain of having them selfishly take you for granted and ignore you. When that happens, neither you nor your children are enriched, and your relationship is strained. In the same way, the right response from us toward God is praise because He deserves it. When we act out our love and acknowledgment of Him in this way, we fulfill our purpose; and when we are rightly fulfilling our purpose, we have the best possible joy—God is pleased, our relationship with Him is enhanced, and He has rightly received what He deserves. Luckily, this is not a difficult command to follow, for when we truly love Him, our praise will flow naturally from that love.

Links Mentioned on the Show

The following are links that were either mentioned on this week's show or inspired by it, as posted live on the @STRtweets Twitter feed:

• Francis Schaeffer

• eBooks by (and about) Schaeffer on sale for $3.99

• Euthyphro's Dilemma

• Darwin's Heretic

Register at str.org and sign in to listen to today's show or download any archived show for free.

Darwin's Heretic

Alfred Russel Wallace was a 19th century scientist who came up with a theory of natural selection remarkably similar to Darwin's.  This made the men colleagues and comrades.  Wallace was a member of the close, inner circle Darwin and Huxley gathered around them in London. 

But as Wallace's scientific investigations continued, he came to the conclusion based on the evidence that natural selection was inadequate to explain the complexities apparent in the natural world.  He concluded that the cell, consciousness and sentience, and the origin of life were too complex and must have the guidance of agent behind them.  He came to believe there was an overruling intelligence behind the natural world, though he was never a Christian or believed in the Bible.  He continued to believe in common descent and evolution, but he believed it was purposeful and designed.  He wrote:

"Materialism is a most gigantic foolishness."

"Everywhere...there is purpose."

When Darwin read Wallace's paper explaining his studies and conclusion, he was shocked.  "Eheu, eheu, eheu!," Darwin wrote on the article when he read it and sent it to Wallace. Though they continued to be friendly, Wallace was expelled from the inner circle.

Wallace represents a different perspective on science that isn't guided by methodological naturalism.  He used logic and inference to the best explanation, and followed the evidence where it led - regardless of the conclusions that are disallowed by naturalism.

Michael Flannery has researched Wallace and The Discovery Institute has produced a movie about Wallace because he represents a tradition in science that predates Darwin and is carried on today by scientists who reject Darwinism.  Wallace illustrates that science, not religion, motivates the inference to a designer. 

(Note: Michael Flannery will be on the radio program Sunday, January 29 to talk about Darwin's Heretic.)

Christianity As Science-Starter: Newton

Nancy Pearcey gives yet another example in Saving Leonardo of how the Christian worldview led to the rise of science:

It was the work of Newton, however, that finally persuaded people of the power of mathematics to explain nature. His law of universal gravitation demonstrated that a vast range of natural phenomena could be described by a single mathematical formula—from the familiar motions on earth (the arc of a cannonball) to the far-distant motions in the heavens (the orbit of a planet)….

His dramatic breakthrough came about through a biblical insight. Aristotle had drawn a sharp distinction between the earth—the realm of change and decay—and the heavens, which to the naked eye appeared unchanging and eternal. Aristotle decided that the two must be composed of completely different substances. He concluded that it was impossible to apply the principles of physics worked out on earth to things in the heavens, like stars and planets.

This Aristotelian picture of the cosmos remained virtually unquestioned for nearly two millennia. What finally undermined such a long-standing intellectual tradition? Reflection on the biblical concept of creation. As [Morris] Kline explains, "God had designed the universe, and it was to be expected that all phenomena of nature would follow one master plan." It was natural to think that "one mind designing a universe would almost surely have employed one set of basic principles to govern related phenomena." Operating on that assumption, Newton demonstrated that the heavens are not composed of a different substance after all. The universe is a unified cosmos. It can be described everywhere by the same mathematical laws.

So for a third and final time in this series, we see how a false idea originating from an older, non-Christian worldview remained unquestioned, despite the clear teaching of the Bible that a single, intelligent, orderly God created the heavens and the earth, and that the heavens themselves, as part of a unified creation, would one day pass away. It was only when the truth was thought through and applied—when Newton tried to live consistently with what he believed about the Christian worldview, integrating the truth of Christianity into this area of his life—that the truth caused science to flourish.

(See also Part 1: Kepler and Part 2: Galileo.)

Radio Sunday

Greg is on the air Sunday 2-5 p.m. PT.  Greg's guest will Michael Flannery, biography of Alfred Russell Wallace - Darwin's Heretic.

Listen live on the air or stream it on the STR app or online.

 

Christianity As Science-Starter: Galileo

Continuing from Wednesday's post, here's what Nancy Pearcey had to say in Saving Leonardo about the effect the Christian worldview had on Galileo's scientific advances:

Galileo shared Kepler's conviction that God created the world with a mathematical structure. But not everyone did. This was the question at the heart of the famous Galileo controversy. The typical story is that Galileo was persecuted because he championed the heliocentric theory of Copernicus. But the truth is that no one at the time objected to Copernicanism—as long as it was used merely as a calculating device. There was not enough empirical data yet to decide between an earth-centered and a sun-centered system. Both systems worked equally well for navigation, which was the main practical use of astronomy at the time. Most people were willing to use whichever astronomical theory worked best, without worrying about whether it was physically true.

Galileo attracted controversy because he insisted that the Copernican system was not just a useful calculating tool but physically true. The central question at stake was thus the status of mathematical truth: Does mathematics tell us what is true in the physical world? This was a philosophical question, not a theological one. And Galileo's main opponents were not churchmen but the Aristotelian philosophers in the universities. For them, mathematics was not high on the list of what makes the world what it is. The essential feature of Aristotle's universe was not quantity but quality—hot and cold, wet and dry, soft and hard. In the universities, mathematics ranked much lower than physics. A mere mathematician was not supposed to dictate to the physicists what theory they could hold.

We get a fascinating glimpse into [the] mindset of the time from the words of one of Galileo's opponents, a philosophy professor at the University of Pisa. "How far from the truth are those who wish to prove natural facts by means of mathematical reasoning," he wrote indignantly. "Anyone who thinks he can prove natural properties with mathematical arguments is simply demented, for the two sciences are very different"....

Today it seems obvious that science is about explaining nature using mathematical formulas. Not so in Galileo's day. When he declared that the book of nature is written by God in the language of mathematics, those were fighting words—a declaration of war on Aristotelian philosophy….

Galileo's victory was the triumph of the idea that nature is constructed on a mathematical blueprint.

Christians were aware that God had created the universe out of nothing, and yet they still held on to ingrained cultural ideas that grew out of a previous worldview—a worldview opposed to their Christian beliefs, containing an eternal universe, where matter wouldn't necessarily conform to the ideals of mathematics. Once again, this speaks of 1) the enduring power a worldview has over a culture, and 2) our limited ability as faulty human beings to recognize what is influencing us and submit all of our beliefs and practices to what we know to be true.

People ask, if Christianity was responsible for the development of science, why didn't science develop earlier? This is why.

(See also Part 1: Kepler and Part 3: Newton.)

"Like" Ratio Christi

Chance to win today---Ratio Christi, a ministry placing Christian apologetics clubs in universities, is hosting a giveaway.  Click this link  & "Like" their page for a chance to win a copy of STR's "Ambassador’s Basic Curriculum" (ABC): Includes 15 CD’s of training with Greg Koukl—a $69.95 value. Ratio Christi is meeting a real need for so many students struggling with their faith in college.

Is Homosexuality the Worst Sin of All?

Christians define sin as “missing the mark.” It almost sounds cute. Kyle lied so he missed the mark…Oops. Katy gossiped...Shucks, that was wrong. Randy was prideful…Yikes, better stop that.

But homosexuality? Whoa! That’s more than missing the mark. That’s an abomination! Homosexuals aren’t just sinners. They’re revelers consummating their reprobate mind. Someone please cite one of the Levitical prohibitions against homosexuality (preferably Leviticus 20:13 since it includes the death penalty) and say it in the King James Version for rhetorical effect.

And Christians don’t just think homosexuality is the worst sin. We act like it too. Christians who rarely cite scripture suddenly invoke Bible verses when the topic comes up. We get uneasy when gay men come to church, but we gladly welcome post-abortive women.  We’ll move a lesbian who sits next to other females at youth group, but we won’t separate girls who gossip.

It’s no wonder the culture thinks Christians hate homosexuals. We give their behavior a unique status: the worst sin of all. And because homosexuals are committing the supreme evil, we treat them like pariahs.

As a result, not only do homosexuals think their sin is the worst, but they are the worst. They’re the chief of all sinners. That’s why our verbal antidotes like, “God hates the sin, but loves the sinner” are so ineffective. They only hear the word, “hate.”

We shouldn’t be surprised, then, when homosexuals get anxious around Christians. It shouldn’t shock us that they start their own denominations. These men and women still have spiritual yearnings, but because Christians keep them at arm’s length, they have no choice but to turn to churches with pro-gay theology that accept them.

Don’t get me wrong: homosexual behavior is a serious sin. I’m not trying to downplay the gravity of what they do. But the Bible doesn’t elevate its status above all other sins.

Although homosexual behavior was a capital crime under the Mosaic Law, so were blasphemy, false prophecy, adultery, bestiality, and many other sins. Under today’s New Testament teaching, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 places homosexuals among other sinners like thieves, drunks, swindlers, and fornicators. And 1 Timothy 1:8-11 lists them among liars, rebels, slave traders, and other sinners. There’s no special designation for any of these sins (although sexual sins are grouped together since they are sins “against the body” in 1 Corinthians 6:16-20).

Many homosexuals have come to Christ. But they didn’t do it because they believed their sin was the worst. Instead, they recognized their sin was an obstacle to fellowship with God. Making homosexuality the worst sin isn’t merely a peculiar theological mistake. It has practical ramifications that alienate men and women engaged in homosexual behavior. And it creates unnecessary offense to the gospel that’s already offensive.

 

This post is part of a series responding to common challenges on the topic of homosexuality. If you missed the first post (Did Jesus Never Say Anything about Homosexuality?), you can find it here.

Sinners Unaware

To expand my thoughts at the end of yesterday's post about the slow-moving nature of worldviews, I thought I'd post a piece I wrote a few years ago after reading a chapter called "Trusting the Theology of a Slave Owner" in A God Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards. It's a sobering reminder of our limitations as human beings in applying revealed truth to our practices:

Even as Edwards argued against the slave trade, saying it was wrong because we're all of the same human race, made by the same Maker in His image, and we ought not steal human beings and tear them away from their families, nor should we profit from others who do so—even as he argued this, Edwards continued to own slaves.

It's a scary thought that a man who knew God's word far better than I do and who spent far more time in prayer, study, and meditation than I do was blinded enough by his own sin and culture not to see a sin that is now glaringly obvious to us—that a man of such incisive and precise thinking could not see that he condemned himself with his own arguments against the slave trade.

His son, who was able to follow the logic of Edwards's arguments and the implications of his theology to the end, argued eloquently against slavery, not just the trade.  But it took those of that next generation to finally work their way completely out of the blinders of cultural complacency.

It's difficult to see clearly and then fight against a sin you're already participating in.  How much more so if your culture condones it!  Our sin blinds us and distorts our perception (a frightening reality that ought to make us more careful about giving into temptation).  Edwards had slaves, so he was not able to see the wrongness of it, and while he was ahead of his time morally in many ways, including in his arguments against the slave trade, his treatment of his slaves, and his inclusion of slaves as members of his church, we can see now how far he was from God's standard of perfect righteousness.

If this doesn't point out the need of all of us for a savior, I don't know what does!  We are all desperately in the “sinner” category (a category which includes everyone but God) in ways of which we haven't even a clue.  Edwards fought so hard for holiness in himself and mastery over his sin, and people around him would have considered him a very good man.  Some who misunderstood the gospel probably thought he was good enough to get to heaven based on his works.  But they could not even see the sin of slavery.

In the same way, as best as we try to conquer our own sin, there will be sins in our lives that we will never even recognize.  This is a humbling thought to which we are forced to respond like Paul:

Wretched man that I am!  Who will set me free from the body of this death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!... Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…. For what the Law could not do [i.e., make us righteous], weak as it was through the flesh, God did:  sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Tomorrow I'll get back to the "Christianity As Science-Starter" series.

Christianity As Science-Starter: Kepler

In Nancy Pearcey’s excellent book, Saving Leonardo, she explains why Greek thought didn't create modern science:

[T]he ancient Greeks are often given credit for the origin of modern science. But that is a mistake. The Greeks locked up mathematical truths in a kind of Platonic heaven of ideal forms—a realm of mental blueprints or templates for all the objects in the material world. The problem was that these blueprints did not match their objects except in a rough and approximate way. Why not? Because the Greeks regarded matter as eternal, not created. Therefore matter had its own inherent, independent properties, which did not necessarily line up with the blueprints in the ideal realm.

It was their view of the nature of the universe that held them back from scientific discovery, and it was Kepler's Christian view of the creation of the universe that drove him on towards science:

[H]ow did Johann Kepler discover that the planetary orbits are ellipses? Ever since antiquity, people had thought the planets moved in circular orbits. The idea went back to Aristotle. He had reasoned that the heavens are “perfect,” and the circle is the “perfect” shape, ergo the heavenly bodies must move in circles. (This was an example of the Greeks’ deductive approach to science.) How did Kepler succeed in breaking through a settled belief in circular orbits that had held sway for two thousand years?

It began when he had difficulty plotting the orbit of Mars. The most accurate circle he could construct based on observations was slightly wobbly. Had Kepler retained the Greek mentality, he would have shrugged off such a minor aberration. His thinking would have been that objects correspond to geometrical ideals, after all, only approximately. But Kepler was a devout Lutheran. He was convinced that if God wanted a line to form a circle, it would be exactly a circle. And if it was not exactly a circle, it must be exactly something else. It would not be merely an arbitrary departure from the ideal. This theological conviction sustained Kepler through six years of intellectual struggle and thousands of pages of scientific calculations before he finally hit upon the idea of ellipses.

Kepler later spoke gratefully of the minor mismatch in Mars’ orbit as a “gift from God” because it spurred his greatest scientific breakthrough. The chief aim of science, he said, is “to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.”

One aspect of this I find interesting is the fact that it took so very long for the ideas of Christianity to overcome previously held cultural ideas left over from the Greeks. As was the case in the moral realm (as I discussed yesterday), the Christian worldview in reference to the physical realm was slowly working its way through Western culture. No culture turns quickly, and God has a very long-term view of progress, working within the human limitations that make it difficult for a massive group of people to change an entrenched, accepted paradigm.

I think we underestimate the power culture has over our view of the world, and this often causes unfair scorn of those in the past who couldn't see the applications of truths that we easily see today. This underestimation also leads to accusations against God for not completely remaking human culture when He gave the Israelites the Law. But the truth is, human society can be dangerously fractured by radical, abrupt, imposed change, and God wisely chose to work through the centuries in as stable a way as possible. It's amazing to think how far we must still have to go.

Over the next few days, I'll continue this "Christianity As Science-Starter" series with Galileo and Newton.