Stand to Reason Blog

Raise Your Hand for Faith & Reason

At the Republican debate hosted by MSNBC and Politico, a question was posed to the candidate from an email:  Do you believe in evolution?  All of the candidates were asked to raise their hands if they did not believe in evolution.  It was an unfair way to pose the question, allowing no opportunity for explanation.  It seemed to me that the point of the question was to classify whoever raised their hands as "religious" and "anti-science." 

Since evolution doesn't seem to have much to do with policies the president has authority over (school boards decide local curriculum), the question seemed inappropriate in the debate.  And I wonder whether it's an example of a secular-religious divide in our culture that will put religious candidates under increasing scrutiny.

Senator Brownback was one of those who raised his hand in response.  Today he offers a very thoughtful explanation in The New York Times:

But limiting this question to a stark choice between evolution and creationism does a disservice to the complexity of the interaction between science, faith and reason.

The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two. The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover truths about the nature of the created order and how it operates, whereas faith deals with spiritual truths. The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God.

People of faith should be rational, using the gift of reason that God has given us. At the same time, reason itself cannot answer every question. Faith seeks to purify reason so that we might be able to see more clearly, not less. Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose. More than that, faith — not science — can help us understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love. Faith and science should go together, not be driven apart....

It does not strike me as anti-science or anti-reason to question the philosophical presuppositions behind theories offered by scientists who, in excluding the possibility of design or purpose, venture far beyond their realm of empirical science.

(HT:  Justin Taylor)

American Taliban

With Adam Gadahn, unfortunately, in the news again, I thought it might be wise to repost this as The New Yorker article may get some attention.  From January 19, 2007:

An article in The New Yorker about how American-born Adam Gadahn evolved into an Al Qaeda spokesman mentioned that Gadahn had attended a lecture Greg Koukl gave back in the summer of 1995.  That was a surprise to us, to say the least.  We figure it must have been something Greg did for a church or another group since STR didn't host anything that summer.  Nothing from the calendar that year stands out as the lecture he might have attended.  We don't exactly specialize in Armageddon rantings.  Since we don't take the common End Times view, it's hard to imagine anything Greg said being characterized this way. 

Nothing in our records indicates Gadahn ever contacted STR directly.  Anyone can attend a lecture - and listen to the radio show.  It's very tragic that what he heard didn't help redirect the course his life has taken.  I'm not sure what, if any, connection the reader is to infer from this connection in cited in the article.

The writer or magazine never contacted us for clarification or comment.  Here's the excerpt:

Gadahn wrote of a yawning emptiness, and he sought ways “to fill that void.” He began scrolling through AOL’s religion folders on the Internet and tuning to Christian programming on the radio. That summer, he attended several Christian lectures and events, including one led by Gregory Koukl, an evangelical talk-show host who argues against religious pluralism. But Gadahn found evangelical Christianity’s “apocalyptic ramblings” to be “paranoid” and hollow. As he later recalled, “I began to look for something else to hold onto.”

And here's the letter to the editor Greg has sent:

Dear editor:

I would like to clarify a reference you made to me in your story about how American Adam Gadahn became a terrorist.

Yes, I am an Evangelical Christian, and I do host a radio show. But mentioning me and then saying in the next sentence, "But Gadahn found evangelical Christianity's 'apocalyptic ramblings' to be 'paranoid' and hollow," is misleading, albeit unintentionally.

I use reason to advocate a Christian point of view. Rather than dwelling on the apocalypse, I talk about other biblical and spiritual concerns, and issues in the here-and-now such as abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage.

At Stand to Reason, as our name suggests, we favor careful thinking and moral persuasion as the tools to effectively reach people with differing views.  Words like "rambling," "paranoid," and "hollow" describe neither our content nor our style.

Sincerely,

Gregory Koukl
President, Stand to Reason

Modern & Progressive

There are a lot of books about Jesus, the Bible, and theology being published.  The ones that inevitably make a splash offer new and controversial theories.  Of course, that's what our culture craves.  And it's quite easy to portray this strain of scholarship as the better because it is new.

This Newsweek article by Lisa Miller about Pope Benedict XVI's new book did just that in contrast to the old story the Pope offered.  As a news piece, it's a little surprising to find the guilty adjectives.  Miller refers to the new, liberal, controversial scholarship about Jesus as "modern" and "progressive."  She tells us the disagreement "many scholars" would have with the Pope's historical take, but makes only the briefest note the agreement of many biblical scholars. 

Miller tells us that "faith may actually be the most productive approach to finding truth in Scripture; the historical method has so far gleaned very little in the way of facts."  The "historical method" she's referring to is the modern, critical method that dates the Gospels very late and tends to be anti-supernatural by presumption.  She states that the "Gospel stories were written at least 30 years after his death," a "fact" contradicted by many New Testament scholars.  She tells us that "for more than 1,500 years, no one even thought to seek the 'truth' about Jesus.  For Christians, Jesus was the truth."  Now that is surprising since the later is a very recent claim, and the former would come as quite a shock to the Church Fathers who defended the faith and those who formulated the early confessions in the ecumenical councils that sought to define orthodoxy, the truth about Jesus.

This portrayal in the media is quite common.  What is rarely noted is the spate of "non-modern," "non-progressive" scholarship coming from historians, theologians, and New Testament scholars who have concluded (not presumed) that the Bible is historical and Jesus is what the church has taught for 2000 years.  Here are three very good examples that I recommend.

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses:  The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham
Fabricating Jesus:  How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels by Craig A. Evans
What Have They Done with Jesus? by Ben Witherington III

The general public gets the impression that "modern," "progressive" scholarship undermines the Bible and what Christianity teaches.  I fear many Christians get the same impression.  We need to equip ourselves and be prepared to offer better information than the mass media cares to feature

Beckwith Explains His Decision

Frank Beckwith speaks about his decision to return to the Roman Catholic Church.

Three Ex-Terrorists to Speak at UC Irvine

This Wednesday (May 30th) at 7:30pm, three former terrorists--Walid Shoebat (author of Why I Left Jihad and Why We Want to Kill You), Zak Anani, and Kamal Saleem--will be speaking at UC Irvine, discussing their experiences and firsthand insight into the root cause of terrorism and some possible solutions.

From Anani's bio:

At 13, he joined one of the many military groups that existed in the early '70s....  "I was trained to fight and kill Jews, and to hate Christians and Americans...."

Soon after enlisting, he made his first “kill.” By the time he turned 16, "life meant nothing," Anani says. "Every time I killed someone and two or three fighters witnessed it, they would give me a point on my chart. I carried 223 points."

Their perspectives should be interesting.  If you're not able to attend, you can watch this five-minute interview with two of the three speakers on YouTube.  A more lengthy interview is available here on the website for the event.

I don't know if the speakers will discuss this as well, but all three converted from Islam to Christianity.  As Americans, though occasionally we must confront books that accuse religion of poisoning everything or analyses that put us in the same category as violent Islamic fundamentalists, we have no real idea what it means to suffer for our faith.  Anani's bio puts our relatively small complaints into perspective: 

Anani initially tried to keep his new faith secret. Apart from one professor, no one at his university suspected he was a Christian. But in the Muslim neighborhood where he grew up, everyone knew it and he was harassed and persecuted. He moved to the city's Christian sector, but the persecution continued. Even his father hired assassins to kill him.

Finally church leaders convinced him to leave Lebanon because his presence endangered others....  After Anani debated with a Muslim scholar in the United States, his family was attacked in Lebanon. Two of his children required surgery.

When in Lebanon, he was nearly beheaded and was only saved when an army patrol came by and the Islamist gang dispersed leaving Zak with a huge wound on his neck. Zak nearly bled to death and was actually technically dead for 7 minutes, before being revived.

Click here for directions to the UCI event. 

Civil Dialogue

I like a good argument - as in lively discussion and engagement.  I like it when the other person has strong convictions and reasons for them he's willing to contend for.  I like a disagreement without being disagreeable.

I don't like it when a discussion of ideas gets personal and mean.  That seems to happen to often in all sorts of topics.  Too often people seem to think that meanness and nastiness is justified by the worthiness of their idea.  It happens a lot in politics, and ends up poisoning the discussion.  Especially when Christians display that bad attitude toward those they disagree with, it's disappointing and destructive because we are supposed to value people as well as the truth.  It doesn't honor God to abuse people in pursuit of defending the truth.

In that kind of atmosphere I found this discussion between Tony Campolo and Michael Medved interesting and surprisingly pleasant.  I think Campolo models here a civil disagreement.  I disagree with many of his ideas - I disagree with a lot of what Campolo has said and written about a lot of things, but I appreciate the way he engages the disagreement with Medved and with President Bush and others in government he takes issue with.  He exemplifies constructive disagreement, engaging the issues without attacking people.

God Is Not Great

Dennis Prager discussed with Christopher Hitchens the claim that "religion poisons everything."

Is God a Megalomaniac?

A common objection has been raised by a number of the "new atheists."  In the ABC News debate, Kelly’s remark express it well:  Even if there is a God, she “would rather go to hell than go to heaven and worship a megalomaniacal tyrant”  It comes up on Hitchens new book. 

It's one way of interpreting the God of the Bible who expects worship and obedience.  I don't think it's the accurate interpretation, and I don't think it's how we normally respond to appropriate authority in our lives and society.  The expectation of respect, obedience is a very familiar one to us.

Do parents expect to be obeyed and respected by their children?  Of course, because there is a certain relationship in place.  Do we tend to show respect to a boss?  Of course.  Don't we naturally show respect, and even awe, when we meet someone for whom we have tremendous respect because of their achievements?  Yes.  We experience relationships all the time where a certain deference is due the person in the higher station.  That's the case with God.  It's not at all outrageous.

It's not megalomaniacal for someone to expect the kind of deference due his accomplishments and station. The expectation isn't arbitrary; it's appropriate given accomplishments and position.

Now grant for a moment that God is the person who created the universe, created each one of us, sustains us and provides for all of our needs and well-being, if He is perfect, holy and good, then wouldn't it be reasonable that respect, obedience, and even worship are due Him?  We don't worship other human beings, but if God is the being the Bible describes, then worship seems like an appropriate expectation, and it's not a strange, outrageous expectation given familiar human relationships.

Memorial Day

With gratitude and reverence for the courage, love, and patriotism that motivated - and motivates - those who sacrificed their lives for our country.

What's the Point of Being a Christian?

I'm reading a chapter titled "The Sweet Problem of Inclusiveness" in An Emergent Manifesto of Hope where the author, Samir Selmanovic, expresses his disapproval of the exclusive claims Christians make about Jesus:

Christianity's idea that other religions cannot be God's carriers of grace and truth casts a large shadow over our Christian experience. Does grace, the central teaching of Christianity, permeate all of reality...? Is the revelation that we have received through Jesus Christ an expression of what is everywhere at all times, or has the Christ Event emptied most of the world and time of saving grace and deposited it in one religion, namely ours?  (p. 191)

For Selmanovic, religions other than Christianity can be "carriers of grace." This is because forgiveness and loving actions toward others are most important to him; these things are bigger than our understanding of the person of Christ, and they aren't necessarily tied to knowledge of Christ. It's His instructions about living in the Kingdom, not Jesus Himself, that really matter, and goodness can be discovered by people outside Christianity. Exclusive truth claims, therefore, make no sense to Selmanovic:

In the Scripture God has established a criteria of truth, and it has to do with the fruits of a gracious life....  This is unnerving for many of us who have based our identity on a notion of possessing the truth in an abstract form.  (p. 195)

Somewhere along the way, many people began dividing Christians into two camps: those who value possessing abstract truths and those who live out Christlike lives. But the point of being a Christian, though it involves both abstract truth and good behavior, holds neither of these things at its core. The point of being a Christian is to be reconciled to the true, real, existing God of the universe through our relationship with the person of Jesus. We are after God, not a better world or an intellectual exercise. We desire Him, we love Him, we commit our hearts, minds, and wills to Him. To do this, we need true knowledge of Him, and out of this flow good works, but in the center of all is Jesus.

Selmanovic speaks of a different center:

When I put myself in the moccasins of chief Chomina [who did not want to accept Christ lest he be separated in the afterlife from his family], I feel God's Spirit asking me, "What would you choose, eternal life without your loved ones or eternal death with them?" Chomina knew his answer. He would rather die than live without his beloved. Moved by the Holy Spirit, people like Chomina reject the idea of allegiance to the name of Christ and, instead, want to be like him and thus accept him at a deeper level.  (p. 191)

For Selmanovic, the goal of religion is to be "Christlike" (loving people well just as Christ loved us), and those who do so at the expense of the name of Jesus are more closely following in His footsteps than those who find themselves separated from others for the sake of His name. But is it more Christlike to reject Christ's name in order to "love" people? Or should Christ Himself be the purpose of all that we do? We are to rather die than live without our beloved, yes. But our beloved is to be Christ above all else. There is no deeper level than this. As Jesus said:

If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.  (Luke 14:26)

Selmanovic has embraced the behavioral teachings of Christ, but he has missed the whole point of being a Christian.