Hate the atheist, love the human

I mentioned in the last post the need to have a balanced approach in thinking about atheists. I need to talk more about the other side of that balance. While we need to recognize that atheism is a great moral evil, we also need to remember that atheists, like all human beings, are made in the image of God. They therefore possess a great value that we ought to recognize and respect. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves because we love God and our neighbors are made in God's image. This translates into various concrete attitudes and behaviors. We are to value the lives and happiness of all our human neighbors. We are to treat them with honesty and respect in our dealings with them. We are to keep our promises to them. We are to hate their suffering and strive to relieve it when we are in a reasonable position to do so. And so on.

There is a quote from atheist philosopher Austin Dacey (from his book, The Secular Conscience) that I really like, and I think it sums up an important part of what I am saying here: “We do not respect people by accepting whatever they think and do, but by holding them to the same intellectual, moral, and legal standards we apply to ourselves." This is the principle of fairness. All of us as human beings are made in God's image and have a natural equality of value. This means we should treat people by the same standards. We should do unto others as we would have them do unto us. That is exactly what Dacey is saying. Some people seem to think that respecting people as human beings necessarily involves accepting, tolerating, agreeing with, or thinking acceptable whatever they believe, value, or do. It does not. It does, however, mean treating all human beings with fairness. I should never give myself an unfair advantage. As Peter said, “Indeed I see that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is accepted by him.” And, on the contrary, whoever does evil deserves the appropriate punishment, no matter who they are.

We need to also remember that we are sinners saved by grace. All of us, by nature, are children of wrath, evil rebels against God by nature, deserving of his infinite punishment. Our salvation in its entirety—in justification, sanctification, adoption, and all other benefits—is entirely owing to the unmerited grace of God through the sacrifice and righteousness of Christ. Our merit plays no role in this at all. Indeed, we have no positive merit to deserve anything good from God. All we have is infinite demerit to deserve God's infinite punishment. There is a difference between a believer and a non-believer. The one is forgiven of his sins, he has faith and repentance, and he lives a life of (imperfect) obedience in this life. The other remains in the natural state of complete rebellion against God, refuses to repent, and is not forgiven of his sins. Some people turn from their sins to God through Christ in faith and repentance, and some don't. But, contrary to Arminian theology, we Calvinists know that the only ultimate reason why there are these differences is God's electing grace, whereby he chooses some for salvation not due to any goodness or merits they possess, but due to his own sovereign purposes. Therefore, since the only thing that makes the difference is God's grace, we Christians have no room to boast. When we look at the evils of atheism, we need to remember that there but for the grace of God go we. And, as God has not yet perfected us in sanctification, the evils of human nature all too often creep up into our own attitudes, values, and behavior as well. These facts require us to have a humility in our dealings with non-believers. Yes, we must point out evil as evil and not downplay it, but we also must recognize the graciousness of our salvation, and this should produce in us humility and compassion towards non-believers.

Here's a slogan to put these two strands—hating the evils of atheism and standing up against them, while loving atheists as human beings made in the image of God and our fellow sinners—together: Hate the atheist; love the human. In each atheist, there are both the evil of atheism and also the value of humanity. Our attitude therefore must encompass both. We must see all of our fellow human beings for the complex beings that they are, just as we learn to look at ourselves in the same way. We must love our neighbors as ourselves.

Another way in which this double-stranded reality manifests itself is in our personal relationships with atheists. As fellow human beings, we can learn to appreciate each other and enjoy each other's company. (Of course, we can also find that there are some people whose company we will never truly be able to enjoy in this life, both among non-believers and believers!) At the same time, though, we can hate the evil attitudes and actions that our fellow human beings often encrust onto themselves. Can we be friends with non-believers? Yes, I think we can. But it certainly can be a difficult balance. And there will always be a distance in such friendships arising from being on opposite sides of such important subjects as truth and goodness. No matter how much we wish to pursue friendships and dialogue with non-believers, we need to realize that our attitudes and actions regarding them must always reflect the balance that comes from recognizing the full complexity of our fellow human beings, however difficult that may sometimes be.

Of course, the basic principles of the above discussion (in both posts) apply not just to atheists, but to all those who follow a false religion/worldview.

On the existence of the supernatural

I've been reading Carl Sagan's book, The Demon-Haunted World. He has been talking about belief in demons and witches through the ages, pointing out that most everyone believed in these kinds of things through most of history. People have often believed they have had interaction with demons, spirits, and gods. They have sometimes believed that spirits have had sexual relations with women and men, and even produced children by such relations. Sagan is arguing that, now, we have naturalistic explanations that explain these sorts of phenomena. People are capable of hallucinating and dreaming, and it is interesting that many of these phenomena have occurred when people are close to sleep, have been alone for a long time, etc. Today, interaction with spirits has been joined by interaction with aliens, and the patterns of interaction are very similar. This is not surprising, as people today, living in a more naturalistic, science-oriented world, have the opportunity to gravitate towards the "scientific" equivalents of supernatural beings--namely, advanced extraterrestrials. Therefore, Sagan argues, a scientific, skeptical attitude would have us leave off the old supernatural explanations that almost everyone used to believe, and go with naturalistic explanations.

I think there is much merit to what Sagan has to say. But I think he may be jumping to conclusions in a similar way to the way many have through history, but in a different direction. In the past, people jumped to supernatural explanations. Sagan's tendency seems to be to jump to naturalistic explanations. He is quite right to point out the likely fictional nature of much of the supposed experiences people have had with the supernatural (and with naturalistic aliens). But pointing out false experiences is not the same as showing that all experiences are false. Consider this scenario: People really have had interactions with supernatural beings in history. Some people have had encounters with God. Some have interacted with angels and/or demons. The Bible tells of supernatural encounters--though, interestingly, there seem to be times when such things happen more often than at other times. In the Old Testament, there is very little interaction, overall, with supernatural beings such as angels and demons. Angels do appear, but only rarely. There are very few encounters with evil spirits. Of course, there is much interaction between God and a few people, known as prophets. In the Gospels, there is an explosion of demonic activity, which again dies down to a significantly lesser degree in the Book of Acts. Perhaps one reason for the increased demonic activity in the Gospels is that Jesus, the Son of God, is on the earth. It is a time of increased supernatural activity. Satan knows his time is short. There is a strong and visible exhibition of the ongoing war between good and evil. God has often, according to the Bible, spoken to people through dreams, visions, etc. Such visions are associated with going out into the desert, being alone, sleeping, etc.--sometimes. Sometimes not. Sometimes miracles are in broad daylight, with lots of people around, in non-hallucinatory conditions. Perhaps God designed odd states of consciousness partly as a vehicle for occasional communication, while at other times those states are left to wander randomly through the mind's experiences and imaginations. (And we are asked by the Bible to "test the spirits," and not be gullible.) However, even though there really have been supernatural encounters, even at times where there were not such encounters people have dreamed them up, often in imitation, perhaps, of the real thing. At the basis of many myths is some real event or person, exaggerated by men's imaginations. The same thing seems likely here. According to the best reading of the Bible, revelation has ceased at the end of the apostolic age, in the first century. Satan has been bound, and the gospel has gone out to all the world. Miracles (of the good sort) seem to be associated with revelation, so we would expect a ceasing of such miracles after the apostolic age. Since Satan has been bound (as well as since Jesus is no longer on the earth), we might expect a ceasing or at least a diminishing of demonic activity as well after the first century. (It is possible that such ceasing of demonic activity might have been all at once, or perhaps it has been gradual, as the gospel has gone out to various nations.)

If such a scenario as I have described above is true, it would explain the phenomena Sagan observes at least as well as his own naturalistic account. Sagan is right to point out much superstition in people's thinking and experiences, but he is jumping to conclusions when he reasons from that to the non-existence of supernatural encounters. A biblical picture of the activities that have gone on and that go on in the world seems to me to explain the data at least as well as Sagan's naturalistic view; but he doesn't consider that, perhaps because he has already concluded on other grounds that naturalism is true. Skepticism needs to be applied not just to supernatural explanations, but also to naturalistic ones. We need to avoid jumping to any conclusions, but instead to try to apportion our beliefs as precisely as possible to the actual state of our known evidence. It may be hard to prove which one is right--the biblical view or Sagan's view--on the evidence of the anecdotal data alone. But since I have other reasons that lead me to be convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, I justly favor the biblical explanation.

It's as easy as "A is not non-A"!

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, wrote an article July 9 in the Ottawa Citizen (you can find it here: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/views/story.html?id=711a0b47-29d5-426d-a273-a270817b000e&p=1) on Intelligent Design. Shermer has a wonderful, fool-proof way to solve the debate between evolution and Intelligent Design. Just recognize that Intelligent Design is religion, and that science and religion must remain separate: "Belief in God depends on religious faith. Belief in evolution depends on empirical evidence. This is the fundamental difference between religion and science." It's all really very simple, as Shermer explains:
"The problem with all of these attempts at blending science and religion may be found in a single principle: A is A. Or: Reality is real. To attempt to use nature to prove the supernatural is a violation of A is A. It is an attempt to make reality unreal. A cannot also be non-A. Nature cannot also be non-Nature. Naturalism cannot also be supernaturalism.
Believers can have both religion and science as long as there is no attempt to make A non-A, to make reality unreal, to turn naturalism into supernaturalism. The Separate-Worlds Model in which science and religion deal with completely different subjects is the only way to do this. Thus, the most logically coherent argument for theists is that God is outside of time and space; that is, God is beyond nature - super nature, or supernatural - and therefore cannot be explained by natural causes. This places the God question outside the realm of science."
See, now doesn't that clear it up? If theists would only remember that God is not real, they wouldn't keep trying to mix religion and science. It's fine to believe in Santa Claus; just don't invoke him as an explanation for why your chemistry experiment resulted in a strange orange goo. What theist would have a problem with that?
Sometimes I wonder if atheists like Michael Shermer really believe that theists are so stupid that they won't notice the atheist-bias underlying Shermer's simple little arguments.
Atheist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, ironically, shows more respect to theists by taking their views more seriously. Not that Dawkins doesn't have a ways to go before "respect" would be a good word to describe his attitude towards theism, but at least he doesn't treat them like children quite as much as Shermer does. Dawkins has this to say about God and science in The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), pp. 58-59:
"And whatever else they may say, those scientists who subscribe to the 'separate magisteria' school of thought should concede that a universe with a supernaturally intelligent creator is a very different kind of universe from one without. The difference between the two hypothetical universes could hardly be more fundamental in principle, even if it is not easy to detect in practice. And it undermines the complacently seductive dictum that science must be completely silent about religion's central existence claim. The presence or absence of a creative super-intelligence is unequivocally a scientific question, even if it is not in practice - or not yet - a decided one."
Theists, like atheists, make real claims about the real universe. Those claims must be taken seriously as such and subjected to the bar of reason and evidence, just like any other claim. They cannot simply be excluded on the basis of semantic tricks, as Shermer tries to do.

Starting out . . .

Hello!

Welcome to this new weblog! To start out, let me refer you to an interesting article on a recently published book by Austin Dacey, a secularist atheist philosopher who has come to the conclusion that the social and moral issues that divide our modern western culture cannot be dealt with adequately without dealing with the underlying religious/philosophical assumptions that undergird the various positions. In other words, we can't keep saying that religious and philosophical topics are off the table in discussions in the public square. They need to be on the table and even the focus of the discussions. The article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/24/us/24beliefs.html?_r=3&sq=dacey&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&scp=1&adxnnlx=1213717793-KKDwHvA0YrXmjCmnhmuj9Q

Enjoy! I'm sure I'll have more to say on this subject in days to come.