Daniel C. Dennett is at it again. In his new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Dennett applies his radical vision of Darwinism to belief in God, and the entire question of faith and belief. As you might expect, Dennett doesn’t think much of belief in God.
Dennett is famous for his idea that Darwinism functions as a “universal acid” in contemporary thought–an idea that relativizes all other ideas and reshapes the intellectual culture so that all other ideas must give way or disappear.
Atheism is a central tenet of Dennett’s faith, and he has previously argued that the belief in a personal and self-existent God–any kind of God for that matter–must simply give way to the inexorable progress of evolution. As he sees it, belief in God is a “meme” that functioned for some time as an evolutionary advantage, but has long since outlived its usefulness and now serves as an impediment to the forward progress of the human species.
Accordingly, the concept of God might continue as an intellectual concept that offers a mythological explanation for wonder and beauty, but not in the form of theism or theological realism. In other words, it’s alright to believe in God so long as you do not actually believe that He exists.
In his new book, Dennett calls for what he calls a “common-sense” understanding of religion. For too long, this issue has been avoided out of social politeness, he argues, and now is the time to confront believers with the danger of their belief and the nonsensical nature of their convictions.
The persistence of belief in God does pose something of a difficult question for evolutionists like Daniel Dennett. “According to surveys, most of the people in the world say that religion is very important in their lives. Many would say that without it, their lives would be meaningless,” Dennett concedes. “It’s tempting just to take them at their word, to declare that nothing more is to be said–and to tiptoe away. Who would want to interfere with whatever it is that gives their lives meaning?”
Nevertheless, Dennett argues that to do that is to willfully ignore serious questions. He suggests that some forms of religious belief are more inherently dangerous than others, but wonders whether right-minded (which is to say atheistic) observers should leave believers “to their comforts and illusions” or, in the service of humanity, “blow the whistle?”
Never underestimate Dennett’s capacity for condescension. “Dilemmas like that are all too familiar in somewhat different context, of course. Should the sweet old lady in the nursing home be told that her son has just been sent to prison? Should the awkward 12-year-old boy who wasn’t cut from the baseball team be told about the arm-twisting that persuaded the coach to keep him on the squad? In spite of ferocious differences of opinion about other moral issues, there seems to be something approaching consensus that it is cruel and malicious to interfere with the life-enhancing illusions of others–unless those illusions are themselves the cause of even greater ills.”
The diversity of religious beliefs and the persistence of belief itself provides Dennett with evidence that faith in some form must have served as an evolutionary meme that helped the species to perpetuate itself against the fear of death and tragedy. In other words, the experience of death, he argues, provided the need for some mythological projection of an afterlife in order to assist survivors to continue life and productive work. In an interview with The New York Times, Dennett said: “When a person dies, we can’t just turn that off. We go on thinking about that person as if that person were still alive. Our inability to turn off our people-seer and our people-hearer naturally turns into our hallucinations of ghosts, our sense that they are still with us.”
But make no mistake, Dennett does not allow for a moment that the afterlife, or the soul, can possibly be real. “I don’t believe in the soul as an enduring entity,” Dennett told the Times. “Our brains are made of neurons, and nothing else. Nerve cells are very complicated mechanical systems. You take enough of those, and you put them together, and you get a soul.” Got it?
Dennett’s biological reductionism is almost breathtaking in its inflexibility. Throughout Breaking the Spell, Dennett applies biological reductionism to every conceivable aspect of life–from a parent’s commitment to take care of children to the experience of love. Beyond this, he seems even to suggest that parents should provide their children with an adequate sex education in order to give evolution something of a boost.
One of the most interesting aspects of Dennett’s new book is his suggestion that belief is a less interesting question than “belief in belief.” Accordingly, he attempts to take something of an intellectual step back from the question of belief (at least at some points) and suggests that many persons who appear to be believers actually do not believe in the tenets of their faith, but only in belief itself.
He enters this issue through the prism of the modern cult of tolerance. He suggests that those who call themselves believers in God but advocate tolerance of other belief systems are either disingenuous or confused. That is to say that those who believe in God but are satisfied to see others accept alternative belief systems either do not understand the importance of the question or they do not actually believe in the God they claim as the object of their worship.
Dennett is on to something here, but not what he thinks. He seems to lack any understanding of religious liberty as a social compact and he avoids the idea that persons can be sincere believers and still accept the right of others to disagree. Christians can never be satisfied to know that others reject faith in the one true and living God and resist the gospel of Jesus Christ, but we can accept the fact that we have no power to coerce the soul and we would seek no state coercion, even if available.
A key insight from Dennett’s eccentric theory is the fact that “moderates” in matters of belief are truly in a most awkward situation. “There are moderates who revere the tradition they were raised in, simply because it is their tradition, and who are prepared to campaign, tentatively, for the details of their tradition, simply because, in the marketplace of ideas, somebody should stick up for each tradition until we can sort out the good from the better and settle for the best we can find, all things considered.”
A close look at that statement reveals something of genuine importance–there are persons who believe in the tradition simply because it is traditional–whether or not it is true. To a great extent, this explains the quandary of mainline Protestantism and the inherent weakness of revisionist theologies.
As Dennett looks at the moderates, he sees their faith as something more like “allegiance to a sports team.” Such “belief” can give zest and meaning to life, but is not to be taken seriously as a worldview. He refers to his own allegiance to the Boston Red Sox as “enthusiastic, but cheerfully arbitrary and undeluded.” “The Red Sox aren’t my team because they are, in fact, the Best,” he concedes. Instead, “they are the Best (in my eyes) because they are my team.”
Those who hold to such moderated views of theistic belief are actually affirming belief in belief, rather than the truths themselves. They see religious conviction as something that can provide meaning to life and solace in the midst of sorrow, but not something that is to be understood in terms of a realist conception of truth. In other words, belief in God is helpful and potentially healthy even if untrue.
This is the very formulation Dennett just will not accept. His own self-designated intellectual superiority leads him to look upon moderates with disdain even as he looks upon true believers with pity. Belief in belief is actually no less dangerous than belief itself, if for no other reason than it helps to foster the illusion of widespread faith in God.
As in his previous writings, Dennett straightforwardly suggests that theists should be excluded from all public conversation. Those who base their worldview in theism “should be seen to be making it impossible for the rest of us to take their views seriously,” Dennett argues. Believers are “excusing themselves from the moral conversation, inadvertently acknowledging that their own views are not conscientiously maintained and deserve no further hearing.”
Those who base their worldview on the existence of God and the centrality of that belief are “taking a personally immoral stand,” he asserts.
In an article published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Dennett suggests that those who believe in God are “disabled for moral persuasion, a sort of robotic slave to a meme that you are unable to evaluate.” So, “your declarations of your deeply held views are posturings that are out of place, part of the problem, not part of the solution, and we others will just have to work around you as best we can.”
His conclusion: “It is time for the reasonable adherents of all faiths to find the courage and stamina to reverse the tradition that honors helpless love of God–in any tradition. Far from being honorable, it is not even excusable. It is shameful. Here is what we should say to people who follow such a tradition: There is only one way to respect the substance of any purportive God-given moral edict. Consider it conscientiously in the full light of reason, using all the evidence at our command. No God pleased by displays of unreasoning love, is worthy of worship.”
All this verbiage amounts to a display of Dennett’s own Darwinist fundamentalism. He is at least as unbending and fideistic in his acceptance of the central tenets of Darwinism as any orthodox believer in God.
This point was eloquently made by Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic in his review of Breaking the Spell in the February 19, 2006 edition of The New York Times. Wieseltier describes Dennett’s book as “a merry anthology of contemporary superstitions.” As Wieseltier explains, Dennett’s book is not even based, “in any strict sense,” on scientific research. Instead, Dennett is telling a story and Breaking the Spell “is a fairy tale told by evolutionary biology.” Wieseltier asserts that Dennett provides “no scientific foundation” for the book’s basic argument. “I am not at all claiming that this is what science has established about religion . . . . We don’t yet know,” Dennett admits.
Wieseltier’s rejoinder is classic: “So all of Dennett’s splashy allegiance to evidence and experiment and ‘generating further testable hypotheses’ not withstanding, what he has written is just an extravagant speculation based upon his hope for what is the case, a pious account of his own atheistic longing.”
Even more important, Wieseltier points to the central flaw in Dennett’s argument. “He thinks that an inquiry into belief is made superfluous by an inquiry into the belief in belief. This is a very revealing state. You cannot disprove a belief unless you disprove its content. If you believe that you can disprove it any other way, by describing its origins or by describing its consequences, then you do not believe in reason. In this profound sense, Dennett does not believe in reason,” Wieseltier concludes.
Our contemporary world is a circus of competing worldviews, and Daniel C. Dennett is, along with Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, one of the most radical theorists in the Darwinian camp. Nevertheless, we owe him his due in acknowledging that he (and Dawkins) are simply more willing to say what other evolutionists surely think, for the strident and condescending atheism of Dennett and Dawkins is actually the logical conclusion of the Darwinian project.
In this sense, Breaking the Spell is a truly revealing book, but it doesn’t reveal much insight concerning belief in God. Instead, it reveals the hardening contours of the Darwinian worldview.
I grew up in a Christian home. I came to Christ at five and was baptized at six. My family was very committed to the local church. I was a leader in my youth group and a ministry intern as a senior in high school. I had plans to serve God in vocational ministry.
But then I met Dr. David Lane.
It was my freshman year in college and the course was Philosophy 101. Dr. Lane systematically dismantled the Christianity I grew up with. In class. In front of everyone. And I was not ready.
Neither are most of our young people.
Now you know why I am so passionate about training the next generation. I’m preparing students so they will be equipped to face their own Dr. Lane. High schoolers, college students, and yes, even wild little junior highers. I’m not just training students but parents and leaders too, those who are responsible for teaching our youth.
So check out some of the unique work I’ve been doing with adults and students. And let’s partner very soon.
No. The fossil record provides no evidence for macroevolution.
Scientists suggest there is evidence for macroevolution. They point to the fossil record. They argue we have transitional forms. These are intermediate fossils that demonstrate gradual change from one type of species to another. Scientists hold up examples like Archaeopteryx. Maybe you’ve seen this lizard-like-bird fossil in your biology book (if not, google it). Supposedly, it’s a transitional form between lizards and birds. But there’s a major problem with transitional forms in general.
A few potential transitional examples here and there are not enough. Evolutionists need a lot more. Darwin said so himself in Origin of the Species. “The number of intermediate and transitional links, between all living and extinct species, must have been inconceivably great (emphasis mine).” In other words, if Darwin’s theory is true we should find tons of transitional forms in the fossil record. But we don’t.
Take Archaeopteryx as an example. Where are the “inconceivably great” number of fossils showing the evolution from lizard to Archaeopteryx? Don’t have them. And where are the “inconceivably great” number of fossils showing the evolution from Archaeopteryx to bird? Don’t have them either. The fossil record should show how you get all the way from lizard to bird. Only one fossil? C’mon. In fact, many scientists today consider Archaeopteryx nothing more than an extinct species of bird. Yeah, maybe it’s a weird-looking animal but so is the duck-billed platypus. And nobody considers it a transitional form between ducks and beavers.
But don’t take my word for it. Ask a paleontologist, the scientists who study the fossil record. Better yet, ask one of the world’s leading paleontologists, Niles Eldredge. When it comes to paleontology, Niles is a rock star. He says the fossil record has produced no evidence of transitional forms. In a moment of honesty, Niles writes that it is no surprise “paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It never seems to happen.”
No gradual changes from one type of species to another in the fossil record. No “inconceivably great” number of transitional forms. No, the fossil record is not evidence of macroevolution
Richard Dawkins discusses the concept of ‘Love thy neighbour’ in The God Delusion in order to debunk the claim of religion that it’s main message is love and compassion. How independent do we think this analysis is? Let’s look at this analysis as objectively as we can.
Dawkins begins with the assertion that ‘neighbour’ in biblical terms only refers to the Jews, and that ‘Thou shalt not kill’ really means ‘Thou shalt not kill Jews’. The merit of the idea of ‘Love thy neighbour’ itself is, of course, ignored. Dawkins is far too concerned with the prosecution of his agenda. With regard to truth of the matter, he draws most of his quoted ‘evidence’ from a paper by John Hartnung. Dawkins provides no substantive proof but simply claims that Hartnung’s research demonstrates it to be the case. By way of example of this ‘evidence’, Hartnung refers to a study of Jewish children’s attitudes by an Israeli psychologist George Tamarin. This draws a contrast between the group’s attitude towards the deaths of Jews and non-Jews in the Old Testament. Not surprisingly, the children were much more prepared to countenance the killing of non-Jews than Jews. Dawkins himself concludes that these children have been indoctrinated into a racist attitude by their religion.
This all sounds very telling, but it does not demonstrate much other than that things were very different at the time of the Old Testament. Whether we like it or not, God chose the Jewish nation to receive the word that he was the one and only God. The events of the Old Testament need to be evaluated in the context of that truth. We cannot draw conclusions based on current day interpretations of events that happened thousands of years ago, particularly when those interpretations are made by children. Furthermore, Dawkins’ point that the opposite results obtained by the control group, (where mention of Judea was replaced with a fictional Chinese kingdom), demonstrated that religion had affected the children’s morality, is exactly as one would expect. The religious perspective is that morality derives from God. Therefore, no doubt the children believed that ‘God had his reasons’. For my part, I too struggle with some of the events of the Old Testament but it doesn’t undermine my faith. I realise that we cannot compare current day attitudes with earlier times, when ideas, canons and creeds were propagated and enforced exclusively by violence. I would be confident that if you took out the historical context out of the Hartnung study, the results would be very different.
As regards the New Testament, Hartnung draws the same conclusions, claiming that Jesus was a devotee of the same in-group mentality and that it was Paul who invented the idea of taking the gospel to the Jews. This seems to me to be little more than wishful thinking on the part of Dawkins, and it is interesting to note that he doesn’t expand on this idea except to make the unsubstantiated quote from Hartnung that ‘Jesus would have turned over in his grave if he had known that Paul was taking his plan to the pigs.’ I won’t comment on this except to say that, in my opinion, the language Hartnung uses tells us more about him than his comment tells us about Jesus.
The issue of to whom Jesus directed his message is directly addressed by Geza Vermes in The Authentic Gospel of Jesus. He considers the question: did Jesus intend to address only Jews or did he expect the gospel to benefit the entire non-Jewish world? (Geza Vermes, by the way, is an ex-Christian and ex-Catholic priest). He concluded that there were clear affirmations that Jesus intended only to address the Jews, but equally clear affirmations that broadcast the opposite view. He, therefore, after “having considered the whole evidence”, identified the following dilemma:
“Either Jesus adopted a strictly pro-Jewish stance and the later introduction into the Gospels of pro-gentiles leanings must reflect the point of view of the early church, which was by then, almost exclusively non-Jewish. Or it was Jesus who adopted the universalist stand and this was replaced at a later stage by Jewish exclusivism.”
So, according to Geza, one way or the other, the gospels have been subject to later revision. Either, the almost exclusively non-Jewish make-up of the early church introduced pro-gentile leanings, or Jesus adopted a universalist stand that was later replaced by Jewish exclusivism. Vermes himself adopts the former view, that the verses that reflect a pro-gentile view were introduced to appeal to the non-Jewish early church. Vermes has no proof, (he himself says that, “having considered the whole evidence”, there is a straight choice), he simply chooses one over the other on the basis of his own personal inclination.
Vermes’ is a scholar well-known for his books on Jesus but this does not mean that his interpretation is not open to dispute. There are two grounds upon which we might find fault. Firstly, if the early church was so totally non-Jewish as he claims, then surely the revisions to the text would have been more significant with many of the references to Jewish exclusivity being expunged altogether. Secondly, he ignores the possibility that the gospels are, in fact, accurate and simply reflect different considerations at different times. Considered in this light we can see that, though most of Jesus’ ministry was undoubtedly directed for the most part at the Jews, this does not necessarily mean that his intention was not to bring salvation to all. Upon setting out on his task, he would have been aware that his message would have had to favour the Jews or they would not have followed him. Once Jesus had achieved a critical mass in his ministry, so the target of his message could begin to broaden. This broadening was then handed over to Paul and the other evangelists who brought it to the rest of the world. This interpretation is the one most consistent with the evidence.
Having dealt with the ‘Jewish’ problem, Dawkins expands his ideas on group enmity. Though Dawkins recognises that violence is perpetrated on the name of countless other ideologies, he argues that religion is particularly pernicious as it is passed down through the generations. Without the labels of in-group/out-group enmity he contends that the divide would not exist, and hence the reason for violence would disappear.
Dawkins has a point when he identifies group loyalty as a powerful force. However, there is nothing to suggest that religious divide is any more or less pernicious than any other divide. Man has what Dawkins himself calls “powerful tendencies towards in-group loyalties and out-group hostilities.” The truth is that it is man’s nature to group together and fight other groups, whatever the labels. Much of the fighting and suffering done in the name of religion has nothing whatsoever to do with God, in the same way that much fighting and suffering done in the name of freedom and equality has nothing to do with this ideals. This is explored in more detail in the section on Hitler and Stalin.
Dawkins concludes the section by saying:
“Even if religion did no other harm in itself, its wanton and carefully nurtured divisiveness – its deliberate and cultivated pandering to humanity’s natural tendency to favour in-groups and shun out-groups – would be enough to make it a significant force for evil in the world.”
This point is totally fallacious. It is akin to a child saying, he made me do it, in that it passes responsibility on to someone or something else. Ultimately, man commits evil and is responsible for it. This is nowhere more clear-cut than in Dawkins’ won philosophy. God does not exist, religion is a creation of Man – so where is the culpability? It is simply too convenient to blame ‘labels. Who has created these ‘labels’, ‘forces for evil in the world’, these ‘religions’. Dawkins is hoist by his own petard, because there is only one answer. Man. Therefore, if there is only Man and he has created such forces, if we got rid of religion, you would have to assume that Man would re-invent it all over again, or at least a variety of the same thing (a ‘religion’ believing in no God, perhaps – let’s call it atheism). Unless, of course, you believe in the generally progressive change of the moral zeitgeist, that we have now evolved to a state of superior morality. Even a brief view of twentieth century history debunks any such claim.
Dawkins devotes a section in The God Delusion to the Old Testament. However, there is little objective analysis and his musings are primarily a journey through a number of violent tales, including:
• The tale of Noah – God drowns the whole of mankind except one family and countless animals.
• The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah – Lot offers his two daughters to the mob in Sodom rather than hand over two angels. Lot’s wife subsequently died (killed by God for turning around to watch the destruction of the city) and his two daughters who later slept with their father whilst he was drunk.
• The story of the Levite – a Levite gives over his daughter to a mob to be sexually assaulted.
• Various stories about Abraham – Abraham twice pretends his wife is his sister. Worse, he is prepared to sacrifice his son to God on God’s say-so.
• Jephthah’s daughter – If God will deliver him victory in battle, Jephthah promises to sacrifice the first person who comes out to meet him upon his return home from the battle. This person turns out to be his daughter and, despite his grief, he fulfils his vow.
• The slaughter of the Midianites – God incited Moses to attack and destroy the Midianites.
• The many examples of God’s jealousy – God frequently warns the Israelites against worshipping false gods.
• The book of Joshua – this includes a mass of bloodthirsty violence.
• The story of wood-gatherer – a man is stoned for deliberately breaking the Sabbath.
Interspersed with these examples of brutality, Dawkins makes the following points:
• Theologians argue that much of the Bible is not taken literally any more. This says Dawkins is his point; we pick and choose what we want, therefore this is not an absolute morality.
• Despite this, many people continue to take the Bible literally. Many Asian holy men blamed the 2004 tsunami on human misdemeanours. Further examples of literalism are quoted from America’s fundamentalist right.
• He points out that some of the stories reveal the lack of respect accorded to women in this religious culture.
Before we consider each of Dawkins’ points in turn, let us put the Old Testament in its context. C S Lewis describes the Old Testament as the period in history when God tried to hammer into one particular people (the Jews) the nature of his character, that is, that he was the One and only God and that he cared about Right Behaviour. This is the context in which the Old Testament should be evaluated.
Many people argue that we see a different God in the Old and New Testaments. This is not the case. We may see a different side of God in each case but his nature is entirely consistent across the entire Bible. For example, the loving, compassionate God of the New Testament is equally present in the Old Testament. Let us be clear about this because Dawkins’ pernicious portrayal of Yahweh is contradicted in many places. For example, Exodus 34:
“The Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.”
This is an unequivocal description of the God of the Old Testament. There is no doubting his goodness, but perhaps what is most striking is that, exactly like the New Testament, he is a personal God. This unequivocal description of the nature of God and his personal relationship with man contradicts much of what Dawkins says when he relates tales of wickedness and brutality from the Old Testament. Dawkins also (again) confuses God with Man. Many of the stories that he quotes are simply stories of man’s corruption. Look around at the world today and we see exactly the same stories happening every day, Man abusing his privileged position in the universe. It is a gross mistake to ascribe characteristics to God based on these stories.
Another factor we need to bear in mind is one mentioned by Dawkins, that there are passages in the Bible that are figurative in nature and others that are literal. Christians differ in their opinions as to which are which but whatever each of us believes, it does not change the truth of the existence of God. Contrary to Dawkins’ claim, this does not mean that we can pick and choose what we believe in the Bible. Whether something is literal or figurative does not change its underlying truth. The message is the same.
What about the specific stories of violence taken from the Old Testament and quoted by Dawkins? Let us take one take one of them and see if we can make any sense of it; say the case of Jephthah’s daughter. If God will deliver him victory in battle, Jephthah promises to sacrifice the first person who comes out to meet him upon his return home from the battle. This person turns out to be his daughter and, despite his grief, he fulfils his vow. What does this story tell us?
The most striking thing about this passage is that it is about Jephthah, not about God. God is not said to condone the sacrifice. In fact, the opposite is true. The terrible outcome of Jephthah’s oath merely serves to underline the wrongness of his oath. God does not want spiritual deals; he wants obedience. In fact, Jephthahs’ oath reveals a lack of faith because there was no need for him to make it. God would have delivered the enemy in any event. Some may argue that the tale is figurative, others that Jephthah did not ultimately sacrifice his daughter but, for our purposes, the point is irrelevant. These were simply the actions of a man a long time ago and many men have committed similar acts of folly in the interim. Our job is to take a message from the story; perhaps that we should be careful what we promise in the pursuit of our own ends, particularly when these promises are made to God. God does not want promises for the future but obedience for today.
As for the many other stories related by Dawkins, he takes his usual simplistic six-year-old approach to the Old Testament and, taking them out of context, seeks to apply them to the modern world. Clearly, this is grossly inappropriate. Man’s cultural, social, economic and political development in the intervening period means that we cannot judge events in quite the same way. Again, my advice for those interested would be, not to rely on Dawkins, but to do your own research.
Dawkins’ unreliability in matters of religion is underlined by his comment that, if God were all-powerful, he would not be bothered with human misdeeds.
“By the way, what presumptuous egocentricity to believe that earth-shaking events, on a scale at which a god might operate, must always have a human connection. Why should a divine being, with creation and eternity on his mind, care a fig for petty human malefactions?”
Dawkins fails to grasp even the simplest of Christian principles; that God is a personal God and that his purpose is to enjoy a meaningful relationship with Man. In this context, it is inconceivable that God, in his contemplation of the universe, would not always have Man on his mind. He cares about petty human malefactions because he cares for us. As a parent with a child, he knows that all malefactions, no matter how petty, will hurt us, unless checked.
In support of his argument he quotes like-minded people such as American physicist Steven Weinberg, who says:
“religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things it takes religion.”
These are not the words of an impartial observer. Weinberg also said:
“I am all in favour of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue.”
In case there is any doubt to his own personal agenda, consider his partisan interpretation of the anthropic principle:
“Reasoning like this is called ‘anthropic.’ Sometimes it just amounts to an assertion that the laws of nature are what they are so that we can exist, without further explanation. This seems to me to be little more than mystical mumbo jumbo. On the other hand, if there really is a large number of worlds in which some constants take different values, then the anthropic explanation of why in our world they take values favourable for life is just common sense, like explaining why we live on the earth rather than Mercury or Pluto.”
The anthropic principle, rather than a meaningless tautology, is now just common sense. Only someone starting with a preconceived answer would use the anthropic principle to justify any argument. And what of his claim that religion is an “insult to human dignity”? Oh dear, how we elevate ourselves. If there is any “presumptuous egocentricity”, then it is not to be found in religion but in the posturings of such as Weinberg and Dawkins.
Furthermore, I take issue with his statement hat it “takes religion for good people to do evil”. In what name did we fire-bomb the cities of Germany, slaughtering and maiming millions? In what name did we drop the second atomic bomb on Japan, achieving the same? In what name did we napalm the jungles of Vietnam, ditto? The list goes on. For good people to do evil things, it takes religion? Wishful thinking on Weinberg’s part, I am afraid.
Finally, women! Dawkins claims that some of the stories he quotes from the Old Testament reveal the lack of respect accorded to women in this religious culture. This is probably true but it would be more accurate to describe the culture to which this relates as historical rather than religious. I cannot answer for any other religion, but there is no question that Christianity dictates that men and women are born equal and should be treated so.
In conclusion, Dawkins stresses that his main purpose in this section has been to demonstrate not that we shouldn’t get our morals from scripture, but that, in fact, we don’t. To my mind, he has not demonstrated this at all. He shows a lack of basic understanding of the subject he claims to be investigating and has clearly done little genuine research. Furthermore, most of his argument is of the diatribe variety and superficial in nature.
His argument also suffers from the weakness of his own position with regards to the principle of morality. As we have seen before, his view of morality is that it is an evolutionary construct, whether as by-product or otherwise. Therefore, to Dawkins, morality is a word used to describe a behavioural consensus and has no relevance to any standard of goodness; indeed, this standard does not exist. As such, his argument is that morality, as most people understand it, does not exist. We are not good or bad people, we simply act in a particular way consistent with our evolutionary heritage. If circumstances change, and it becomes necessary for us to act in what many would consider an immoral fashion, then so be it. Given this view of morality, how can take his pontifications seriously?
As for relevance to the everyday world, I dare anyone to read Ecclesiastes and not recognise its timeless currency:
“If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things: for one official is eyed by a higher one, and over them both are others higher still. The increase in the land is taken by all; the King himself profits from the fields.
Whoever loves money never has money enough;
Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.
This too is meaningless.
As goods increase,
so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owner
except to feast his eyes on them?
The sleep of a labourer is sweet,
whether he eats little or much,
but the abundance of a rich man
permits him no sleep.
I have seen a grievous evil under the sun:
Wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner,
or wealth lost through some misfortune
so that when he has a son,
there is nothing left for him.
Naked a man comes from his mother’s womb
And as he comes, so he departs.
He takes nothing from his labour
that he can carry in his hand.
This too is a grievous evil:
As a man comes, so he departs,
and what does he gain,
since he toils for the wind?
All his days he eats in darkness,
With great frustration, affliction and anger.
Then I realised that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labour under the sun during the few days of life God has given him – for this is his lot. Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work – this is a gift of God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart.”
(Ecclesiastes 5:8-20)
Dawkins ends the section with the conclusion that the values of the Old Testament are “pretty unpleasant”. This seems to me something of a simplistic conclusion, particularly as Dawkins’ assessment of the text is practically non-existent. He now turns to the New Testament and asks the question; is it any better?
Many times people have not been able to deal with the nihilistic views they have embraced and they have turned to Drugs or alcohol. Take notice of the lyrics below from the Velvet Underground:
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I don’t know just where I’m going
But I’m gonna try for the kingdom, if I can
‘Cause it makes me feel like I’m a man
When I put a spike into my vein
And I tell you things aren’t quite the same
When I’m rushing on my run
And I feel just like Jesus’ son
And I guess that I just don’t know
And I guess that I just don’t know
I have made big decision
I’m gonna try to nullify my life
‘Cause when the blood begins to flow
When it shoots up the dropper’s neck
When I’m closing in on death
You can’t help me now, you guys
And all you sweet girls with all your sweet talk
You can all go take a walk
And I guess I just don’t know
And I guess that I just don’t know
I wish that I was born a thousand years ago
I wish that I’d sailed the darkened seas
On a great big clipper ship
Going from this land here to that
On a sailor’s suit and cap
Away from the big city
Where a man cannot be free
Of all the evils of this town
And of himself and those around
Oh, and I guess that I just don’t know
Oh, and I guess that I just don’t know
Heroin, be the death of me Heroin, it’s my wife and it’s my life
Because a mainline into my vein
Leads to a center in my head And then I’m better off than dead
Because when the smack begins to flow I really don’t care anymore
About all the Jim-Jims in this town
And all the politicians making crazy sounds
And everybody putting everybody else down
And all the dead bodies piled up in mounds
‘Cause when the smack begins to flow
And I really don’t care anymore
Ah, when that heroin is in my blood
And that blood is in my head Then thank God that I’m as good as dead And thank your God that I’m not aware And thank God that I just don’t care
And I guess I just don’t know
Oh, and I guess I just don’t know
Andy Warhol got the Velvet Underground started and they were close.
Here is what Francis Schaeffer wrote about Andy Warhol’s art and interviews:
The Observer June 12, 1966 does a big spread on Warhol.
Andy Warhol, “It doesn’t matter what anyone does. I wish I were a computer.”
He is really telling you what is in his head. There is no difference between this and other forms of absurdity. Here you have a man who has taken absurdity and projected it commercially, and what it really is, is an absurd statement with absurd means. Not everyone understands it, but it has it’s impact. Billy Link is the forman of the factory. “Warhol does practically nothing, but he does it very well and that is all he has to do.”
These people are not dummies. Warhol calls his nightclub “The Plastic Inevitable.” I think this he really understands. If you get away from nature and away from reality and if you are going to build these things then it is better to just build them in plastic.
Warhol says, “My work won’t last anyway. I was using cheap paint.” I think he has a purpose. Don’t think those men don’t understand. the imitators don’t understand, but the people who do it do understand.
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Warhol said, “I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.”
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Francis Schaeffer noted:
I have lots of young people and older ones come to us from the ends of the earth. And as they come to us, they have gone to the end of this logically and they are not living in a romantic setting. They realize what the situation is. They can’t find any meaning to life. It’s the meaning to the black poetry. It’s the meaning of the black plays. It’s the meaning of all this. It’s the meaning of the words “punk rock.”
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“They are the natural outcome of a change from a Christian World View to a Humanistic one…
The result is a relativistic value system. A lack of a final meaning to life — that’s first. Why does human life have any value at all, if that is all that reality is? Not only are you going to die individually, but the whole human race is going to die, someday. It may not take the falling of the atom bombs, but someday the world will grow too hot, too cold. That’s what we are told on this other final reality, and someday all you people not only will be individually dead, but the whole conscious life on this world will be dead, and nobody will see the birds fly. And there’s no meaning to life.
As you know, I don’t speak academically, shut off in some scholastic cubicle, as it were. I have lots of young people and older ones come to us from the ends of the earth. And as they come to us, they have gone to the end of this logically and they are not living in a romantic setting. They realize what the situation is. They can’t find any meaning to life. It’s the meaning to the black poetry. It’s the meaning of the black plays. It’s the meaning of all this. It’s the meaning of the words “punk rock.” And I must say, that on the basis of what they are being taught in school, that the final reality is only this material thing, they are not wrong. They’re right! On this other basis there is no meaning to life and not only is there no meaning to life, but there is no value system that is fixed, and we find that the law is based then only on a relativistic basis and that law becomes purely arbitrary.
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OUTLINE OF ECCLESIATES BY SCHAEFFER
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William Lane Craig on Man’s predicament if God doesn’t exist
Read Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. During this entire play two men carry on trivial conversation while waiting for a third man to arrive, who never does. Our lives are like that, Beckett is saying; we just kill time waiting—for what, we don’t know.
Thus, if there is no God, then life itself becomes meaningless. Man and the universe are without ultimate significance.
Francis Schaeffer looks at Nihilism of Solomon and the causes of it!!!
Notes on Ecclesiastes by Francis Schaeffer
Solomon is the author of Ecclesiastes and he is truly an universal man like Leonardo da Vinci.
Two men of the Renaissance stand above all others –Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci and it is in them that one can perhaps grasp a view of the ultimate conclusion of humanism for man. Michelangelo was unequaled as a sculptor in the Renaissance and arguably no one has ever matched his talents.
The other giant of the Renaissance period was Leonardo da Vinci – the perfect Renaissance Man, the man who could do almost anything and does it better than most anyone else. As an inventor, an engineer, an anatomist, an architect, an artist, a chemist, a mathematician, he was almost without equal. It was perhaps his mathematics that lead da Vinci to come to his understanding of the ultimate meaning of Humanism. Leonardo is generally accepted as the first modern mathematician. He not only knew mathematics abstractly but applied it in his Notebooks to all manner of engineering problems. He was one of the unique geniuses of history, and in his brilliance he perceived that beginning humanistically with mathematics one only had particulars. He understood that man beginning from himself would never be able to come to meaning on the basis of mathematics. And he knew that having only individual things, particulars, one never could come to universals or meaning and thus one only ends with mechanics. In this he saw ahead to where our generation has come: everything, including man, is the machine.
Leonardo da Vinci compares well to Solomon and they both were universal men searching for the meaning in life. Solomon was searching for a meaning in the midst of the details of life.His struggle was to find the meaning of life. Not just plans in life.Anybody can find plans in life. A child can fill up his time with plans of building tomorrow’s sand castle when today’s has been washed away. There is a difference between finding plans in life and purpose in life. Humanism since the Renaissance and onward has never found it and it has never found it since. Modern man has not found it and it has always got worse and darker in a very real way.
We have here the declaration of Solomon’s universality:
1 Kings 4:30-34
English Standard Version (ESV)
30 so that Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt.31 For he was wiser than all other men, wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman, Calcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol, and his fame was in all the surrounding nations.32 He also spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005.33 He spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall. He spoke also of beasts, and of birds, and of reptiles, and of fish.34 And people of all nations came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth, who had heard of his wisdom.
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Here is the universal man and his genius. Solomon is the universal man with a empire at his disposal. Solomon had it all.
Ecclesiastes 1:3
English Standard Version (ESV)
3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
Schaeffer noted that Solomon took a look at the meaning of life on the basis of human life standing alone between birth and death “under the sun.” This phrase UNDER THE SUN appears over and over in Ecclesiastes.
(Added by me:The Christian Scholar Ravi Zacharias noted, “The key to understanding the Book of Ecclesiastes is the term UNDER THE SUN — What that literally means is you lock God out of a closed system and you are left with only this world of Time plus Chance plus matter.” )
Man is caught in the cycle
Ecclesiastes 1:1-7
English Standard Version (ESV)
All Is Vanity
1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. 3 What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? 4 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. 5 The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. 6 The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. 7 All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.
8 All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. 9 What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. 10 Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us.
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Solomon is showing a high degree of comprehension of evaporation and the results of it. Seeing also in reality nothing changes. There is change but always in a set framework and that is cycle. You can relate this to the concepts of modern man. Ecclesiastes is the only pessimistic book in the Bible and that is because of the place where Solomon limits himself. He limits himself to the question of human life, life under the sun between birth and death and the answers this would give.
Ecclesiastes 1:4
English Standard Version (ESV)
4 A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.
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Ecclesiastes 4:16
English Standard Version (ESV)
16 There was no end of all the people, all of whom he led. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind.
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In verses 1:4 and 4:16 Solomon places man in the cycle. He doesn’t place man outside of the cycle. Man doesn’t escape the cycle. Man is only cycle. Birth and death and youth and old age. With this in mind Solomon makes this statement.
Ecclesiastes 6:12
12 For who knows what is good for a man during his lifetime, during the few years of his futile life? He will spend them like a shadow. For who can tell a man what will be after him under the sun?
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There is no doubt in my mind that Solomon had the same experience in his life that I had as a younger man. I remember standing by the sea and the moon arose and it was copper and beauty. Then the moon did not look like a flat dish but a globe or a sphere since it was close to the horizon. One could feel the global shape of the earth too. Then it occurred to me that I could contemplate the interplay of the spheres and I was exalted because I thought I can look upon them with all their power, might, and size, but they could contempt nothing and I felt as man as God. Then came upon me a horror of great darkness because it suddenly occurred to me that although I could contemplate them and they could contemplate nothing yet they would continue to turn in ongoing cycles when I saw no more forever and I was crushed.
THIS IS SOLOMON’S FEELING TOO. The universal man, Solomon, beyond our intelligence with an empire at his disposal with the opportunity of observation so he could recite these words here in Ecclesiastes 6:12, “For who knows what is good for a man during his lifetime, during the few years of his futile life? He will spend them like a shadow. For who can tell a man what will be after him under the sun?”
Lack of Satisfaction in life
In Ecclesiastes 1:8 he drives this home when he states, “All things are wearisome; Man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor is the ear filled with hearing.” Solomon is stating here the fact that there is no final satisfaction because you don’t get to the end of the thing. THERE IS NO FINAL SATISFACTION. This is related to Leonardo da Vinci’s similar search for universals and then meaning in life.
In Ecclesiastes 5:11 Solomon again pursues this theme, “When good things increase, those who consume them increase. So what is the advantage to their owners except to look on?” Doesn’t that sound modern? It is as modern as this evening. Solomon here is stating the fact there is no reaching completion in anything and this is the reason there is no final satisfaction. There is simply no place to stop. It is impossible when laying up wealth for oneself when to stop. It is impossible to have the satisfaction of completion.
Pursuing Learning
Now let us look down the details of his searching.
In Ecclesiastes 1: 13a we have the details of the universal man’s procedure. “And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven.”
So like any sensible man the instrument that is used is INTELLECT, and RAITIONALITY, and LOGIC. It is to be noted that even men who despise these in their theories begin and use them or they could not speak. There is no other way to begin except in the way they which man is and that is rational and intellectual with movements of that is logical within him. As a Christian I must say gently in passing that is the way God made him.
So we find first of all Solomon turned to WISDOM and logic. Wisdom is not to be confused with knowledge. A man may have great knowledge and no wisdom. Wisdom is the use of rationality and logic. A man can be very wise and have limited knowledge. Here he turns to wisdom in all that implies and the total rationality of man.
Works of Men done Under the Sun
After wisdom Solomon comes to the great WORKS of men. Ecclesiastes 1:14, “I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is [p]vanity and striving after wind.” Solomon is the man with an empire at this disposal that speaks. This is the man who has the copper refineries in Ezion-geber. This is the man who made the stables across his empire. This is the man who built the temple in Jerusalem. This is the man who stands on the world trade routes. He is not a provincial. He knew what was happening on the Phonetician coast and he knew what was happening in Egypt. There is no doubt he already knew something of building. This is Solomon and he pursues the greatness of his own construction and his conclusion is VANITY AND VEXATION OF SPIRIT.
Ecclesiastes 2:18-20
18 Thus I hated all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun, for I must leave it to the man who will come after me.19 And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the fruit of my labor for which I have labored by acting wisely under the sun. This too is vanity.20 Therefore I completely despaired of all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun.
He looked at the works of his hands, great and multiplied by his wealth and his position and he shrugged his shoulders.
Ecclesiastes 2:22-23
22 For what does a man get in all his labor and in his striving with which he labors under the sun?23 Because all his days his task is painful and grievous; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is vanity.
Man can not rest and yet he is never done and yet the things which he builds will out live him. If one wants an ironical three phrases these are they. There is a Dutch saying, “The tailor makes many suits but one day he will make a suit that will outlast the tailor.”
God has put eternity in our hearts but we can not know the beginning or the end of the thing from a vantage point of UNDER THE SUN
Ecclesiastes 1:16-18
16 I said to myself, “Behold, I have magnified and increased wisdom more than all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge.”17 And I set my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly; I realized that this also is striving after wind.18 Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain.
Solomon points out that you can not know the beginnings or what follows:
Ecclesiastes 3:11
11 He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.
Ecclesiastes 1:11
11 There is no remembrance of earlier things; And also of the later things which will occur, There will be for them no remembrance among those who will come later still.
Ecclesiastes 2:16
16 For there is no lasting remembrance of the wise man as with the fool, inasmuch as in the coming days all will be forgotten. And how the wise man and the fool alike die!
You bring together here the factor of the beginning and you can’t know what immediately follows after your death and of course you can’t know the final ends. What do you do and the answer is to get drunk and this was not thought of in the RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KAHAYYAM:
Ecclesiastes 2:1-3
I said to myself, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure. So enjoy yourself.” And behold, it too was futility.2 I said of laughter, “It is madness,” and of pleasure, “What does it accomplish?”3 I explored with my mind how to stimulate my body with wine while my mind was guiding me wisely, and how to take hold of folly, until I could see what good there is for the sons of men to do under heaven the few years of their lives.
You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.
from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Translation by Edward Fitzgerald)
A perfectly good philosophy coming out of Islam, but Solomon is not the first man that thought of it nor the last. In light of what has been presented by Solomon is the solution just to get intoxicated and black the think out? So many people have taken to alcohol and the dope which so often follows in our day. This approach is incomplete, temporary and immature. Papa Hemingway can find the champagne of Paris sufficient for a time, but one he left his youth he never found it sufficient again. He had a lifetime spent looking back to Paris and that champagne and never finding it enough. It is no solution and Solomon says so too.
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(End of Schaeffer comments)
I want to talk about a subject that is very sad indeed and it is the attempt by many today to find their meaning in life through drugs and alcohol. Perhaps they are trying to escape the hard realities of life by taking this path. Like everyone around us, I too have many close friends and relatives who have fallen into this trap. I have a great deal of compassion for these individuals. In fact, several times this month I have taken time to drive individuals from a facility that my church sponsors to AA meetings. We want these individuals to overcome their addictions and live in victory. I can’t do anything to go back and save those who have passed on in the past, but I can do something to encourage those who have obstacles to overcome today!!!!
Our church FELLOWSHIP BIBLE CHURCH sponsors HIDDEN CREEK REENTRY CENTER, Assisting incarcerated individuals with a successful transition to their community. I have had the joy of giving some of my time to help these gentlemen. Let me share some posts from their Facebook page:
Well its been a eye jerker today… great tears of joy!! I have watched these guys grow so much… I pray they continue to grow out there… next month they graduate the program!!
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I have just finished a book about a man who had a tough time breaking drug addition and the it is entitled, FEARLESS: The undaunted courage and ultimate sacrifice of Navy Seal Team Six Operator Adam Brown by Eric Blehm.
This is how the book opens:
When Adam Brown woke up on March 17, 2010, he didn’t know he would die that night in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan—but he was ready….Adam Brown did understand what it meant to disappoint, to feel the shame he’d experienced on a hot, humid August afternoon years earlier when his parents had him arrested.“It’s time for you to face what you’ve done,” his father had told him in 1996, just before Adam was handcuffed and escorted to the backseat of the Garland County sheriff’s cruiser. When the deputy slammed the car door shut, Adam watched his mother’s legs buckle, and as she collapsed, his dad caught her and held her tightly against him. She began to cry, and Adam knew he had broken her heart.That vision—of his mother sobbing into his father’s chest—would haunt him for the rest of his life, but it also sparked the journey that defined who he would become. Officially known as a Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL), Adam Brown was one of the most respected Special Operations warriors in the U.S. Navy.
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Why do so many individuals today turn to drugs or liquor? There are various reasons, but let us look at the reason Ernest Hemingway became a drunk.
Ernest Hemingway turned to liquor as a device of escapism because he reached the conclusion that life has no lasting meaning.
“Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada.” This quote from Hemingway’s short storyA Clean Well Lighted Placeshows that Ernest Hemingway embraced nihilism. The Spanish word NADA meaning NOTHING. The old man in the story tried the previous week to commit suicide but was saved by his niece, and he saw it as a temporary saving.
Hemingway also wrote in his last book THE GARDEN OF EDEN,“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”A sensational bestseller when it appeared in 1986, The Garden of Eden is the last uncompleted novel of Ernest Hemingway, which he worked on intermittently from 1946 until his death in 1961.
In you go to You Tube and watch the video Woody Allen talks ‘Midnight in Paris’ which was posted on January 27, 2017 and runs 43 minutes and 37 seconds, you will notice at the 27 minute mark that Woody Allen says:
I have never gotten to the point where I can give an optimistic view of anything. I have these ideas for stories that I hope are entertaining and I am always criticized for being pessimistic or nihilistic. To me this is just a realistic appraisal of life. What I have learned over the years is that there is no other solution to it. There is no satisfying answer. There is no optimistic answer I can give anybody.
Ernest Hemingway in one of his stories ( A FAREWELL TO ARMS)is looking at a burning log with ants running on it. This is the kind of thinking that has over powered me over the years and slips into my stories.
Drinking was a large part of Hemingway’s life. Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes also takes a long look at liquor and tries to see if it will bring any satisfaction UNDER THE SUN.
In fact, Solomon filled his home with the best wine (Eccl 2:3).
Concerning the Book of Ecclesiastes Francis Schaeffer noted:
Solomon was searching for a meaning in the midst of the details of life.His struggle was to find the meaning of life. Humanism since the Renaissance and onward has never found it and it has never found it. Modern man has not found it and it has always got worse and darker in a very real way.
Ecclesiastes is the only pessimistic book in the Bible and that is because of the place where Solomon limits himself. He limits himself to the question of human life, life UNDER THE SUN between birth and death and the answers this would give.
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In 1978 I heard the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas when it rose to #6 on the charts. That song told me thatKerry Livgren the writer of that song and a member of Kansas had come to the same conclusion that Solomon had. I remember mentioning to my friends at church that we may soon see some members of Kansas become Christians because their search for the meaning of life had obviously come up empty even though they had risen from being an unknown band to the top of the music business and had all the wealth and fame that came with that. Furthermore, like Solomon and Coldplay, they realized death comes to everyone and “there must be something more.”
Livgren wrote:
“All we do, crumbles to the ground though we refuse to see, Dust in the Wind, All we are is dust in the wind, Don’t hang on, Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and Sky, It slips away, And all your money won’t another minute buy.”
Both Kerry Livgren and Dave Hope of Kansas became Christians eventually. Kerry Livgren first tried Eastern Religions and Dave Hope had to come out of a heavy drug addiction. I was shocked and elated to see their personal testimony on The 700 Club in 1981 and that same interview can be seen on youtube today. Livgren lives in Topeka, Kansas today where he teaches “Diggers,” a Sunday school class at Topeka Bible Church. Hope is the head of Worship, Evangelism and Outreach at Immanuel Anglican Church in Destin, Florida.
The movie maker Woody Allen has embraced the nihilistic message of the song “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas. David Segal in his article, “Things are Looking Up for the Director Woody Allen. No?” (Washington Post, July 26, 2006), wrote, “Allen is evangelically passionate about a few subjects. None more so than the chilling emptiness of life…The 70-year-old writer and director has been musing about life, sex, work, death and his generally futile search for hope…the world according to Woody is so bereft of meaning, so godless and absurd, that the only proper response is to curl up on a sofa and howl for your mommy.”
The song “Dust in the Wind” recommends, “Don’t hang on.” Allen himself says, “It’s just an awful thing and in that context you’ve got to find an answer to the question: ‘Why go on?’ ” It is ironic that Chris Martin the leader of Coldplay regards Woody Allen as his favorite director.
Lets sum up the final conclusions of these gentlemen: Coldplay is still searching for that “something more.” Woody Allen has concluded the search is futile. Livgren and Hope of Kansas have become Christians and are involved in fulltime ministry. Solomon’s experiment was a search for meaning to life “under the sun.” Then in last few words in the Book of Ecclesiastes he looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture: “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”
You can hear Kerry Livgren’s story from this youtube link:
(part 1 ten minutes)
(part 2 ten minutes)
Kansas – Dust In The Wind
Ecclesiastes 1
Published on Sep 4, 2012
Calvary Chapel Spring Valley | Sunday Evening | September 2, 2012 | Pastor Derek Neider
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7 years ago on November 15, 2005 Adrian Rogers passed away. This is a series of posts about the life and ministry of Adrian Rogers. Adrian Rogers Memorial – Come To Jesus Uploaded by jonwhisner on Jan 20, 2011 This video is from Adrian Roger’s Memorial Service held at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN in […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers | Edit | Comments (0)
7 years ago on November 15, 2005 Adrian Rogers passed away. This is a series of posts about the life and ministry of Adrian Rogers. Adrian Rogers Memorial – Come To Jesus Uploaded by jonwhisner on Jan 20, 2011 This video is from Adrian Roger’s Memorial Service held at Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, TN in […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers | Edit | Comments (0)
Picture of Adrian Rogers above from 1970′s while pastor of Bellevue Baptist of Memphis, and president of Southern Baptist Convention. (Little known fact, Rogers was the starting quarterback his senior year of the Palm Beach High School football team that won the state title and a hero to a 7th grader at the same school named […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)
Some ethicists argue that the unborn becomes fully human sometime after brain development has begun, when it becomes sentient: capable of experiencing sensations such as pain. The reason for choosing sentience as the criterion is that a being that cannot experience anything (i.e., a presentient unborn entity) cannot be harmed. Of course, if this position is correct, then the unborn becomes fully human probably during the second trimester and at least by the third trimester. Therefore, one does not violate anyone’s rights when one aborts a nonsentient unborn entity.13There are several problems with this argument. First, it confuses harm with hurt and the experience of harm with the reality of harm.14 One can be harmed without experiencing the hurt that sometimes follows from that harm, and which we often mistake for the harm itself. For example, a temporarily comatose person who is suffocated to death “experiences no harm,” but he is nevertheless harmed. Hence, one does not have to experience harm, which is sometimes manifested in hurt, in order to be truly harmed. Second, if sentience is the criterion of full humanness, then the reversibly comatose, the momentarily unconscious, and the sleeping would all have to be declared nonpersons. Like the presentient unborn, these individuals are all at the moment nonsentient though they have the natural inherent capacity to be sentient. Yet to countenance their executions would be morally reprehensible. Therefore, one cannot countenance the execution of some unborn entities simply because they are not currently sentient. Someone may reply that while these objections make important points, there is a problem of false analogy in the second objection: the reversibly comatose, the momentarily unconscious, and the sleeping once functioned as sentient beings, though they are now in a temporary state of nonsentience. The presentient unborn, on the other hand, were never sentient. Hence, one is fully human if one was sentient “in the past” and will probably become sentient again in the future, but this cannot be said of the presentient unborn. There are at least three problems with this response. First, to claim that a person can be sentient, become nonsentient, and then return to sentience is to assume there is some underlying personal unity to this individual that enables us to say that the person who has returned to sentience is the same person who was sentient prior to becoming nonsentient. But this would mean that sentience is not a necessary condition for personhood. (Neither is it a sufficient condition, for that matter, since nonhuman animals are sentient.) Consequently, it does not make sense to say that a person comes into existence when sentience arises, but it does make sense to say that a fully human entity is a person who has the natural inherent capacity to give rise to sentience. A presentient unborn human entity does have this capacity. Therefore, an ordinary unborn human entity is a person, and hence, fully human. Second, Ray points out that this attempt to exclude many of the unborn from the class of the fully human is “ad hoc and counterintuitive.” He asks us to “consider the treatment of comatose patients. We would not discriminate against one merely for rarely or never having been sentient in the past while another otherwise comparable patient had been sentient….In such cases, potential counts for everything.”15 Third, why should sentience “in the past” be the decisive factor in deciding whether an entity is fully human when the presentient human being “is one with a natural, inherent capacity for performing personal acts?”16 Since we have already seen that one does not have to experience harm in order to be harmed, it seems more consistent with our moral sensibilities to assert that what makes it wrong to kill the reversibly comatose, the sleeping, the momentarily unconscious, and the presentient unborn is that they all possess the natural inherent capacity to perform personal acts. And what makes it morally right to kill plants and to pull the plug on the respirator-dependent brain dead, who were sentient “in the past,” is that their deaths cannot deprive them of their natural inherent capacity to function as persons, since they do not possess such a capacity
It is argued by many people in the pro-choice movement that legal abortion helps eliminate unwanted children. They believe that unwanted children are indirectly responsible for a great number of family problems, such as child abuse. Hence, if a family can have the “correct” amount of children at the “proper” times, then these family problems will be greatly reduced, if not eliminated.9 Once again, we find several serious problems with the pro-choice argument. First, the argument begs the question, because only by assuming that the unborn are not fully human does this argument work. For if the unborn are fully human, like the abused young children which we readily admit are fully human, then to execute the unborn is the worst sort of child abuse imaginable. Second, it is very difficult to demonstrate that the moral and metaphysical value of a human being is dependent on whether someone wants or cares for that human being. For example, no one disputes that the homeless have value even though they are for the most part unwanted. Now, suppose the pro-choice advocate responds to this by saying, “But you are treating the unborn as if they were as human as the homeless.” This is exactly my point. The question is not whether the unborn are wanted; the question is whether the unborn are fully human. Third, an unwanted child almost never turns out to be a resented baby. This seems to be borne out statistically: (1) there is no solid evidence that a child’s being unwanted during pregnancy produces child abuse; (2) according to one study, 90% of battered children were wanted pregnancies;10 and (3) some writers have argued that there is a higher frequency of abuse among adopted children — who were undoubtedly wanted by their adoptee parents — than among those who are unadopted.11 In his voluminous and scholarly study on the moral, political, and constitutional aspects of the abortion issue, Professor Krason summarizes his findings concerning the argument from unwantedness by pointing out that “the factors causing child abuse cited most frequently by the researches are not ‘unwantedness,’ but parents’ lack of social support from family, friends and community, hostility to them by society, based on a disapproved sexual and social pattern of existence, and — most commonly — their having been abused and neglected themselves when they were children.”12Fourth, the unwantedness of children in general tells us a great deal about our psychological and moral make-up as a people, but very little about the value of the child involved. For it is only a self-centered, hedonistic people who do not consider it their self-evident obligation to care for the most vulnerable and defenseless members of the human race. A lack of caring is a flaw in the one who ought to care, not in the person who ought to be cared for. Hence, whether or not abortion is morally justified depends on whether the unborn are fully human, not on their wantedness.
As I noted in Part Three, viability is the time at which the unborn human can live outside her mother’s womb. Some have argued that prior to this time, since the unborn cannot survive independent of her mother, she is not a completely independent human life and hence not fully human. Bioethicist Andrew Varga points out a number of problems with the viability criterion. First, “how does viability transform the nature of the fetus so that the non-human being then turns into a human being?” That is to say, viability is a measure of the sophistication of our neonatal life-support systems. Humanity remains the same, but viability changes. Viability measures medical technology, not one’s humanity. Second, “is viability not just an extrinsic criterion imposed upon the fetus by some members of society who simply declare that the fetus will be accepted at that moment as a human being?”9 In other words, the viability criterion seems to be arbitrary and not applicable to the question of whether the unborn is fully human, since it relates more to the location and dependency of the unborn than to any essential change in her state of being. This criterion only tells us when certain members of our society want to accept the humanity of the unborn. And third, “the time of viability cannot be determined precisely, and this fact would create great practical problems for those who hold this opinion.”10 For example, in 1973, when the Supreme Court legalized abortion, viability was at about twenty-four weeks. But now babies have survived 20 weeks after conception. This, of course, puts the pro-abortionist in a morally difficult situation. For some health care facilities are killing viable babies by abortion in one room while in another room heroically trying to save premature infants (preemies). It seems only logical that if the 21-week-old preemie is fully human, then so is the 28-week-old unborn who can be legally killed by abortion. This is why philosopher Jane English, who is a moderate on the abortion issue (i.e., her position does not fit well into either the pro-life or pro-choice camp, although she seems closer to the latter), has asserted that “the similarity of a fetus to a baby is very significant. A fetus one week before birth is so much like a newborn baby in our psychological space that we cannot allow any cavalier treatment of the former while expecting full sympathy and nurturative support for the latter…An early horror story from New York about nursers who were expected to alternate between caring for six-month premature infants and disposing of viable 24-week aborted fetuses is just that — a horror story.” English writes that “these beings are so much alike that no one can be asked to draw a distinction and treat them so differently.”11 Many who defend the viability criterion argue in a circle. Take, for example, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun’s use of it in his dissenting opinion in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989):
The viability line reflects the biological facts and truths of fetal development; it marks the threshold moment prior to which a fetus cannot survive separate from the woman and cannot reasonably and objectively be regarded as a subject of rights or interests distinct from, or paramount to, those of the pregnant woman. At the same time, the viability standard takes account of the undeniable fact that as the fetus evolves into its postnatal form, and as it loses its dependence on the uterine environment, the State’s interest in the fetus’ potential human life, and in fostering a regard for human life in general, becomes compelling.12
Blackmun first tells us that viability is the time at which the state has interest in protecting potential human life because the fetus has no interests or rights prior to being able to survive outside the womb. But then we are told that viability is the best criterion because it “takes account of the undeniable fact that as the fetus evolves…and loses its dependence on the uterine environment, the State’s interest in the fetus’ potential human life… becomes compelling.” In other words, Blackmun is claiming that the state only has an interest in protecting fetal life when that life can live outside the womb. But why is this correct? Because, we are told, prior to being able to live outside the womb the fetus has no interests or rights. But this is clearly circular reasoning, for Blackmun is assuming (that the fetus has no interests or rights prior to viability) what he is trying to prove (that the fetus has no interests or rights prior to viability). This argument is no more compelling than the one given by the political science professor who argues that democracy is the best form of government because the best form of government is one run by the people (which, of course, is democracy). Such arguments are circular because they provide no independent reasons for their conclusions.
I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength#2 Bible verse for Encouragement- Do not Fear as God is with you
Isaiah 41:10 (New International Version)
So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand
#3 Bible verse for Encouragement- We are blessed
Matthew 5:4-12 (New International Version)
4Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted. 5Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth. 6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled. 7Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy. 8Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God. 9Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called sons of God. 10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
#4 Bible verse for Encouragement- Be Strong
Deuteronomy 31:6 (New International Version)
6 Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
#5 Bible verse for Encouragement- Not Destroyed
2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (New International Version)
8We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.
#6 Bible verse for Encouragement- Power of God in us
2 Timothy 1:7 (New International Version) 7For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline
#7 Bible verse for Encouragement- God directs your life
Proverbs 3:5-6 (New International Version)
5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.
#8 Bible verse for Encouragement- Faith and Hope
Hebrews 10:22-23 (New International Version)
22let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. 23Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
#9 Bible verse for Encouragement- Do not be anxious about anything
Philippians 4:6 (New International Version)
6Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
#10 Bible verse for Encouragement- In His time
Galatians 6:9 (New International Version)
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
The Daily Hatch 