Mother Theresa's Advice

Tom Rapsas on Patheos descibes how John Templeton asked a question that stopped him in his tracks

Was the Earth a better place because you were born?

Mother Theresa apparently had some advice on how to achieve this noble goal.  Although Christopher Hitchens has made some allegations in a book (which I have not read) saying Mother Theresa deliberately increased the suffering of the poor for some religious reason, one might think this would be irrelevant since otherwise we would have an ad hominem fallacy.  On the other hand you'd expect she would take her own advice and thus make the world a better place but unless the allegations are false this seems not to have worked in Theresa's case.  

Her advice was to go home and love your family.  Taking this in spirit, this didn't seem bad advice as the proceess of caring other people would then one would expect make one sensitive to the cares and woes of people in general.  

Apparently she also thought our society was poor in spirit.  Being anti-religious this could ruffle my feathers a bit, but it could be interpreted as our society lacks empathy for those less fortunate than ourselves which I would agree with: we live in a society where people (mostly the fortunate) care more about money than other people.  For example, Gawker Media cares more about making money than avoiding ruining people's lives by spreading salacious gossip and rumour.  Apparently by caring for people at home this would make you a more caring person generally.  Maybe that's not necessarily so.  But then she talks about spreading love everywhere you go: leaving people who approach you happier.  A bit mushy: love is perhaps too strong a word for my tastte but the underlying principle might work.  Pratice would make perfect.  Also small acts of kindness seem more realistic tusually than grand plans to achieve world peace etc.  

Kaepernick's Protest

Today I'm going to ramble on about an article I read on Patheos which is available at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2016/08/30/answering-the-pseudo-patriots-on-kaepernicks-protest/?.   I shall present my view on whether Kaepernick's protest is justified although this view may change as and if I learn more about what's going on.  On the whole I have some sympathy with such protest.  Patriotism I think is over-rated because most countries seem to be doing bad stuff.  Should one be a patriot if one lives in Saudi Arabia?  My country is the UK which our former prime minister David Cameron insisted is a Christian country.  I'm not exactly wild about Christianity such as the part which says nonChristians burn in hell as I think that's not a good way to treat people who don't follow a particular religion.  I do admit there is a good part of Christianity which is to help people less fortunate than ourselves.  However, this part is probably ignored by many UK citizens especially those wealthy and powerful who might be inclined out of greed to squeeze every last penny from vulnerable people whose credit card was abused.  In all,  the UK contains a mixture of bad and good and singing or standing for the national anthem like Corbyn has been forced to do now by the media could be construed as endorsing the whole package, the bad as well as the good.  So if you don't think your country is up to scratch, why pretend that you think your country is wonderful?

The quibble I have with Ed Brayton is the claim "cops gunning down unarmed black men routinely".   The question is whether the worfd "routinely" truthfully describes the situation at hand.  The stats say more white people are shot though that is of course black people represent only 13% of the population.  More black people seem to be shot than you would expect from blacks being 13% of the population.  However this does not account for the higher crime rate amongst black people which presumably has something to do with black poverty.  Also my impression is that many of the cases of police shootings of unarmed civilians had some circumstances attached which made the shooting justified such as the so-called victim trying to use the police officer's gun against the officer.  So I am not sure and somewhat wary of the Black Lives Matter movement paricularly in view of slogans on banners or chanted inciting the killing of cops which in one case seems to have worked. 

But at least most of the David Cross video that Brayton presents at the end I identify with.  

Indescribable

In the interests of seeing something that might change my mind and cause me to see the light even though I thought this unlikely, I watched a video on Youtube called Indescribable.  A Christian Louie Giglio with an interest in astronomy uses the immense size of the Universe and projects it onto God in order to show how glorious God is.  Apparently the purpose of the immense universe is to show us what God can do.  God is basically showing off.

Apparently God is indescribable.  He is described as indescribable, ginormous and being greater than every thought ever held of him.  Louie accepts the Big Bang Theory and equates it with the creation event. He claims that when God said 'Let there be light!' a big stream of light came out of his mouth at a speed of 186,000 miles per second the speed of light in a vacuum.  He also says that the light came out of his mouth in the form of all the stars in the Universe.  But if this were so, then they would not travel at the speed of light because while light travels at 186, 420 miles per second, sources of light such as stars do not.  If Louie had stuck to the idea that the light which God created was what is now the cosmic microwave background radiation then there would still be problems.  The CMBR would appear to come from a single source like light comes from a star.  Maybe a microwave detector could make out features of God's mouth!  It would also take time for the light to spread through the gigantic universe.  If the universe was only 10,000 years old as some creationists say then the light would only spread 10,000 light years, a tenth of the size of the Milky Way.

But Louie says the stars in their entire form came out of God's mouth.  This ignores the fact that astronomers witness in their telescopes star forming regions where the stars actually emerge.  They condense from huge gas clouds and their light ultimately has its source from the nuclear reactions taking place inside the star.  No evidence not even scriptural (as far as I know) that stars came from God's mouth.

Louie mentions the book of Job where God excuses the evil of the world by his own might.  He is so big, being able to hold the Pleiades in his hand, that it follows that he is also incomprehensible and therefore there is some incomprehensible complicated reason why he allows evil in the world. Well, he may be big but if he is just big enough to hold the Pleiades in his hands he is not big relative to the Universe or even relative to our own galaxy.  Assuming a hand three times as long as the Pleiades and average body proportions (so he is not a freaky giant with relatively tiny hands) I calculate God would have a body height of 361 light years, less than a hundredth of the width of our galaxy (100,000 light years) .  I note also lots of anthropomorphism in Louie's picture of God.  He has hands like us, a mouth like us even though he is said not to have a brain like us.  Louie's picture of God also implies a being that interacts with matter directly as opposed to being a bodiless mind that influences matter by some sort of ultimate psychokinetic power.

Louie talks about the amazing grace of God in trying to save us from what we deserve.  God takes on the punishment that all of us sinners deserve.  But does everyone deserve to be crucified?  I don't think so.  I am not sure that even Hitler deserves to be crucified (some might disagree).  The point is that torture in modern society is supposed to be an absolute no no, although in practice humans seem to be so barbaric that they engage in it anyway.  But two wrongs don't make a right (again some might disagree).  In any case we are told that the punishment awaiting us in our afterlife is not crucifixion but  eternal hell.  Jesus is only crucified.  After one day his punishment is over and this is supposed to be taking the punishment for our sins.  The fact that God allegedly has to dole out punishment even if it is to his Son suggests God does not make the rules but only enforces them.  So what authority is forcing God to be the strict but rather odd sort of judge?  Maybe God wants to show the depth of his love by allowing himself to be tortured as Jesus Christ.  That's like a mother throwing herself in front of  a train when her children are already safe and out of danger, to show how much she loves her children.  That would be kind of creepy and scary.  So presumably the sacrifice is necessary to save us from something.  But God has to save us by allowing himself to be tortured.  He doesn't make the rules.  But then he wouldn't be God.

Atonement

I got bored of writing about funny little creatures called hobbits on my Bookworm blog and anyway I had to return the book I was writing about back to the library.  Losing my notes on what I was going to write didn't help either.  So I've started a new blog.

Today I am going to write about a newsletter I received from the 'Reasonable Faith' website run by the Christian philosopher (should he be called 'theologian' instead?) William Lane Craig.

In the newsletter he says:

Regular readers of this newsletter know that I’ve embarked on a study of the doctrine of the atonement, and visitors to our website will have seen two recent Questions of the Weekdevoted to just this subject. The traditional Protestant doctrine of the atonement faces significant challenges both exegetically and philosophically. Unfortunately, it seems that on the contemporary scene few scholars take on both challenges. 

So it seems that Craig is finding at least apparent flaws in the doctrine of atonement.  Makes me wonder if the scholars concerned did not want to address it because it was too difficult or else they decided they did not need to address it because they thought their faith in it was sufficient.  Reason is usually only resorted to when it presents an impediment to faith.  Craig, however, so it seems to me, wants all the logical holes sealed up and is not satisfied with relying on faith alone.  He goes on:

Evangelical biblical scholars do a good job of defending the traditional doctrine biblically, but they seem somewhat naïve respecting the philosophical challenges. To illustrate, I just finished reading a large book entitled The Glory of the Atonement (IVP, 2004), written in defense of the traditional doctrine. I was taken aback by the opening sentences of the book: 

"The analytic philosopher A. J. Ayer argued that a strong case could be made that of the world religions, Christianity was the worst. He based his judgment on the fact that Christianity rests on the ‘allied doctrines of original sin and vicarious atonement,’ which, he added, ‘are intellectually contemptible and morally outrageous’."

Here is a significant challenge from one of the twentieth century’s most famous philosophers. And yet, to my dismay, the book includes no section devoted to a philosophical defense of the doctrine of the atonement! Instead, it examines the doctrine from the three angles of the Bible, church history, and the Christian life, thereby ignoring Ayer’s challenge altogether. It escapes me how the editors can begin the book with a philosophical challenge to the doctrine of the atonement and yet include no philosophical discussion of the doctrine. 

On the other hand, Christian philosophers, whose job it is to examine such doctrines philosophically, have been of little help in understanding the biblical doctrine of the atonement. They have instead typically invented atonement theories of their own liking that have little connection with biblical teaching. For example, one gifted Christian philosopher has proposed a theory of the atonement according to which God, rather than punishing Christ for our sins, actually punishes us for our sins by inflicting suffering on Christ, just as a terrorist might punish you by torturing your daughter before your eyes. Never mind the fact that such a theory is useless in explaining the redemption of persons who through hard-heartedness or ignorance aren’t bothered by Christ’s suffering. The more important point is that such a theory can make no sense of key biblical themes like Christ’s bearing our sins and being a sacrificial offering. In fact, on this view the Gospel of grace is denied, since by paying the penalty for your own sins, you achieve your own salvation! 

Craig gives a good riposte to the theory of atonement mentioned above.  Another point that could be made is the immorality of making an innocent person suffer just in order to punish the guilty party.  Perhaps he does not make this point, because it could suggest to people that sacrificing an innocent person in order to save the guilty party is also immoral.  To which I'd add that punishing someone for eternity with torture is also immoral (this latter point applies to Islam also).  Telling people that they will suffer such punishment and endorsing such punishment also strikes me as immoral.  I've been told this myself on a number of occasions as I'm sure other non-Christians have.  This is a 21st century belief.  A different version of hell I've heard is that of residing in a place without goodness which apparently God has the monopoly of.  This also strikes me as immoral since I don't see why non-Christians should be marginalised as being without goodness.  It also seems designed to manipulate people into becoming Christians: OMG I'd better be Christian otherwise I'll be in some afterlife limbo without goodness forever!  In any case I regard good and evil as categories of behaviour.  This raises the question of who is going to perform bad deeds in limbo land and nary a good deed?  Us non-Christians?  We're all evil then?  No goodness at all?  

I guess Christians need to threaten punishment in order to encourage more people to sit in a cold church and sing about the glory of God and such like.  Anyway back to the newsletter.  

So we need a coalescence of sound biblical exegesis coupled with rigorous philosophical reflection to craft a sound doctrine of the atonement. As you can imagine, this is proving to be very thought-provoking, indeed! 

This sounds like even Craig is finding serious problems in the doctrine of atonement.  What strikes me is that it does not seem to occur to him that this might be that the doctrine of atonement is indefensible.  I also think the doctrine of hell is indefensible.  Rather Craig takes it for granted that there is a solution to all the problems and he will find it.  No consideration of the (plausible) possibility that it's all rubbish.  The result will be his new book.  I'd be interested in what he makes of it.