Hear the rumble of the mad-man

Richard Dawkins has his latest in the Times - "Hear the rumble of Christian hypocrisy". His points are many and all over the map. The main one appears to be that Christian theology is inherently a glorification of meaningless retribution - a furious God who delights to inflict unnecessary punishment. This is accompanied by scores of other asides showing how really, really angry the thought of God makes Dawkins. Revealing.

Dawkins' arguments make me think of a mad-man climbing into a ring with a heavyweight boxer. Because the mad man runs around furiously, throwing punches everywhere with rapid-fire, eventually you suppose one must hit. In just a few paragraphs, Dawkins goes over much of the whole map of Christian theology with great bravado - surely one of those punches connected?

In reality, the real boxer would just tip-toe around for a few seconds as he got a good look at the mad-man, and then lean forward with one mighty, all-sufficient knockout blow, and the mad-man thuds onto the mat with no likelihood of getting up.

All that Dawkins writes is predicated on what comes at the opening. According to him, no other explanation is needed for the Haitian earthquake other than the physical explanation. Two tectonic plates bumped and ground over each other; result, earthquake. That's it. As Dawkins says, "a force of nature, sin-free and indifferent to sin, unpremeditated, unmotivated, supremely unconcerned with human affairs or human misery."

That's the logical outcome of Dawkins' own atheism. The world is self-contained, and physical explanations not only describe what happens, but are also entirely sufficient to account for what happens. No ideas of personal agency should be sought. This is not the way that anyone deals with the events of their own life, though, or indeed how Dawkins does. "Yes, officer, I know that he's dead, and that the autopsy shows cyanide poisoning. But this is all just the outworking of chemical laws. Cyanide is fatal, so he died - why look for another explanation? No need to arrest me."

The problem with Dawkin's position is that, according to him, human beings are also a part of nature. Thus, they are constrained by the same laws as the rest of nature. We evolved ultimately from impersonal matter, according to fixed biological principles. Hence Dawkin's own screed in the Times is not something to take seriously - it's just the law-bound outworking of his own biochemistry. All the ranting about hypocrisy and other moral crimes is not to be treated as meaningful; it's only what the natural principles at work within him made him do.

For Dawkins to impute wickedness to the personal intentionality of Christians who disagree with either him or Pat Robertson (which I do) is no more or less rational than for Christians to impute any particular activity within the world to God's personal intentionality. Dawkins is self-refuting. If we use his own measure, he's not to be taken seriously. His thoughts aren't meaningful; they're just what nature enforced upon him. Tip-toe, tip-toe, tip-toe.... THUD.

Who are you?

Who, or rather what, are you from an atheist point of view?

A man says that he is a rationalist and refuses to believe anything without sufficient evidence. Then he goes on to add that he thinks there is no such evidence for anything outside of nature, and therefore he is an atheist.

Perhaps that's you. But before we examine what you think, can we be allowed first to ask - what exactly is this "you" that is doing the thinking?

That we exist as self-conscious, self-aware beings is as basic a fact about our own existence as there can be. Beyond the mere firing of neurons through my brain, somewhere there is an "I" that actually experiences all that is going on around me. The materialist/atheist picture is of a giant biochemical machine that responds to stimuli and exists basically to pass on its genes to the next generation. But this picture does not even have in view one of the most basic facts of our own existence that we can be assured of: namely, the fact of our own existence as a distinct, personal subsistence. Or in English, I am me, and I am not you and you are not me. There is an "I" which transcends mere mechanical functions to actually observe and experience them.

Despite the ongoing replacement of all my body tissues through various biological processes, yet there is I am sure (as sure as I can be of anything at all), that there is an "I" which has continually been since my earliest remembered moments onwards.

The imagined atheist universe cannot account for personality - i.e. the existence of distinct personal self-conscious subsistences. It only allows matter/energy in constant re-arrangement. An impersonal and non-conscious machine is the most it can rise up to. Our most basic experience - of existing - tells us that the atheist universe does not exist.

Is penal substitution Biblical, continued

Nick replied to my post "Is penal substitution Biblical?", as follows. As that post has been buried under a few others, I'm posting it as a new item and am interacting with it here.

Hello,

I was away from the computer during Thanksgiving, but I am thankful that you made a new post on this addressing the issue.

Here are my thoughts:

1) Dying for sin does not entail a penal substitutionary framework. In otherwords, you're quoting 1 Cor 15:3 and such, but you're inserting the notion of 'punished' into it, as if a judge sentenced someone to receive the electric chair but was legally transferred so that Jesus received it in their place. I don't believe Scripture is describing that concept.

I did not simply arbitrarily "insert", but explained why "for sin" in 1 Corinthians 15v3 should be interpreted as penal substitution - you've ignored the explanation. We won't go far if you do that. Let me state again. In 1 Cor 15:3 in the phrase "for sin", "for" can only mean "on account of", "because of". And in Pauline and Scriptural theology, the reason why people die on account of sin is because death is the penalty for sin. This context is fixed from the beginning; Genesis 2:17 - "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." Romans 6:23 - "for the wages of sin is death". "The soul that sins, it shall die", Ezekiel 18:20. Please interact with this argument and don't simply say I'm "inserting" things without reason!

2) Regarding 1 Jn 3:16, you said I was making a grammatical error. I would hope "lay down life for" means the same thing when used twice in the same verse. My point was that "on account of" does not necessitate a legal transfer of punishment, because using the parallelism indicates believers will undergo that as well. So, simply turning to a passage indicating Christ died "for" sins, that is not evidence for Psub in particular but only atonement in general.

You've side-stepped my argument here too. The grammatical error I said you made is including that "for" in one verse necessarily must mean the same as in another (such as 1 Cor 15v3). I actually agreed with you that for (Greek "huper") in 1 John 3:16 cannot carry the sense "in the place of"; what I denied was your deduction that therefore it cannot carry that meaning in a different verse. If your theory here that a preposition can only carry only meaning in every usage is correct then every lexicon of the Greek language is wrong.

You said: "the only way that someone dies on account of sin is because death is a punishment"
I'm not sure how what you mean here. Christians still die physically, so Christ didn't take this punishment.

Though Christians still die physically, they no longer die penally. Death is no longer the gateway to eternal misery, but ultimately to glory because of resurrection. Thus in the essential substance of it, Christ has indeed taken this punishment for us. 1 Corinthians 15:26 states that physical death is an enemy which is destroyed through Christ's death and resurrection. Christ has removed the sting from death for us because having paid the price for sins, death is no longer penal.

 Also, your quote from 1 Cor 15:17-18 is about Christ being resurrected, not His death.

You have made an arbitrary separation here. Christ's death and resurrection in Scripture are different nodes of a single event, e.g. Romans 4:25 (and these verses in 1 Corinthians). In those Corinthian verses Paul says that if Christ was not raised then we are still in our sins; this is just after saying that Christ died for our sins. Obviously the death-resurrection is a single sequence because according to Paul in these words it had one great end in view - dealing with our sins.

3) Regarding the scapegoat: I still don't see how keeping the penal substitute alive helps prove Psub.

Well, surely the fault is in your vision if you cannot see! The Bible is full of warnings that we cannot see, not because the glorious light is not shining, but because we are blind to it, e.g. John 9:39-41. It's dead (!) simple: penal substitution takes place when there is a punishment (penalty), endured by a substitute. The scapegoat fulfils these conditions, and is therefore an example of penal substitution.

4) Regarding the punishment of hell: What is the "equivalent" of suffering in Hell?

What a daft question. The acceptable substitute for all of God's people suffering in hell is obviously the death of Christ at Calvary. That's the whole thing we're discussing. The only way to deny this is to a) assert that you, the guilty sinner, are a more competent judge of the fit punishment for sin than God, the righteous judge, is and/or b) to deny the value of the person of Christ as the Son of God and to put a lesser value on his death than God does.

5) I should have been more clear on my comment regarding transfer of punishment in the Mosaic Law. When it comes to 'confessing sins over' with the hands, the scapegoat is the only time such instructions are given.

In a debate, you only need to concede a principle once to allow its validity. Once it is established once that the OT contains an example of penal substitution, then that is all I need to do. If the scapegoat is a shadow to teach us about Christ's death (which it is, Hebrews 13:12-13), and if the symbolism of the scapegoat exemplifies penal substitution, which you've conceded, then that's what was being argued for.

6) You said: "Nobody claimed that every sacrifice in the Bible was penal and substitutionary."
True, but then two issues arise: (1) the example I gave was of the sin offering, and if Psub isn't taking place then, then I don't know what other offering you can look to; (2) other sacrifices, not relating to atonement, entailed the death of an animal, which means a death need not correspond to Psub.

Your logic here in (1) is wonky. You're arguing that:
1) The sin offering could be substituted with grain for the very poor
2) Therefore, the sin offering was not substitutionary as grain cannot endure punishment
3) Therefore, the sin offering was never substitutionary
The fallacy is of failing to consider alternative explanations. The sin offering could exemplify penal substitution in its normal and usual mode, but God could make a provision for the poor Israelite so that they could make an offering. The substitution of the grain here would then simply be a social provision for the circumstance, and not intended to alter the essential meaning of the normal offering. You cannot prove that this is not the case (and I assert it is the case), and thus it cannot be a grounds for an absolute assertion as you've made.

In relationship to (2), you need to substantiate this point. Are you talking about a bloody sacrificial death, offered by a priest on an altar, or some other animal death? Are you making a comparison that is truly valid? I can't know this until you give examples of what you mean.

7) You said: "All such examples are in principal moot. Read Romans 3:25-26"

Rom 3 has not been established as a Psub proof, so I don't think they are moot. Rom 3 mentions 'atonement', the very term I'm demonstrating doesn't require Psub. Further, Rom 3:24 mentions "redemption," which is likewise not a psub term but instead indicates a buying back at a price (Ex 21:28-30 is a good example).

You've missed the argument I was making in citing this Scripture, which is as follows:

• Christ's death, in Romans 3:25, is said to be an act in which the subject performing the action is God. "Whom God has set forth".
• Furthermore, the verse tells us the reason why God set him forth as an atonement: it was "to declare his justice for the remission of sins that are past."
• In other words, the death of Christ was an act in which justice is satisfied on account of sin. Which is as much to say that Christ's death was penal, unless you want to deny that justice in regard of wrong-doing means punishment!
  
• Whose sins? Not Christ's, of course. According to the verse, "sins that are past" - in other words, the sins committed by people before the coming of Christ. Which is to say, that his death was substitutionary.

Romans 3:25 says that God satisfied his own justice in respect of certain people's sins, through the death of Christ. Cunning parsing of certain words, such as "atonement" or "redemption" can't get you off this hook - the whole context makes the meaning abundantly clear.

Next, you went on to address my atonement passages, here are my comments:

-"Phinehas slays the sinner."
The sinner wasn't the only guilty party, the Israelites as a whole were engaging in sin and under a plague. Killing the guilty individual is not making atonement. Verse 25:11,13 is clear God's wrath against the whole Israelite camp was propitiated.

I have no problem in accommodating this observation. As explained above, the true and ultimate atonement for sin was at the cross of Christ - Romans 3:25 - when Christ made the true atonement for past sins. All previous atonements were symbolic, shadows and anticipations. Here you're finding fault because you're demanding that every anticipation should be whole and entire - it must shadow every single aspect, perfectly. This is an arbitrary and unreasonable demand. But in any case, you've still missed the point - which was simply that you can't use these verses to establish that death is not a penalty for sin, when in actual fact a sinner died.

-"Exodus 32, the Levites go out to slay the evildoers."
You're not addressing Deut 9:16-21, esp 9:18-19, and Ps 106:23 where God spared them on Moses' intercession. The fact some of the guilty were killed off does not address the fact the nation as a whole was guilty for engaging in sin and had to be atoned for as per Ex 32:30.

Again you've missed the impact of Romans 3:25-26. Why could Moses' intercession be accepted? Why could anyone be accepted under the Old Covenant? Because of the great act of justice at the cross that would actually pay the price. And again I'd assert that you can't use verses to prove that death is not the legal penalty for sin, when in the same incident a sinner endures a penal death.

-"Num 16, lots of people die in a plague - and it is stopped using implements from the tabernacle"
That some of the guilty died is irrelevant to the fact more would have died had not atonement been made. The atonement required no Psub.

Same here.

-"Surely you're not seriously suggesting that Proverbs 16:6 and 14 are intended by the author as statements about the wiping away of a man's sin before God?"
The main purpose was to show "atonement' need not require Psub, and those verses say that.

You're loading an unbearable burden onto these verses. They were never intended to teach a complete theory of atonement, and to make them carry that weight is something someone would only do if they were fishing around for a hook to hang their pet theory on, instead of believing the Bible's own explanations of what Christ's death achieved in the key and primary passages. Using this method we could prove anything. If "The wrath of a king is as messengers of death: but a wise man will pacify it" in verse 14 was intended by the Holy Spirit to teach that God's justice does not require that the wages of sin be death and that Christ's death was not a penal substitution, then "In the light of the king' countenance is life" in verse 15 could equally mean that looking at the face of an earthly king will deliver you eternal life. This is arbitrary exegesis, reading in your own ideas.

The Biblical idea that atonement can be made without Psub has not been overturned by what you've said. Just so people don't misunderstand me: I believe Christ made atonement for our sins, but I don't believe the form of atonement was PSub.

It would be difficult for me to even begin to overturn a Biblical idea which is not in the Bible, so I won't be too sad about my alleged failure! To say that Christ can make atonement for sins without paying the penalty for them is a nonsense statement; it's like saying that you believe that Christmas Day comes in the last month of the year, but not in December. The very core of the Biblical teaching on atonement is that "without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins" (Hebrews 9:22) - where there is no just penalty exacted, there is no atonement.

Is Penal Substitution Biblical?

The other thread, "Is Penal Substitution immoral?" spawned a different question in the discussion - is penal substitution Biblical? I've moved it up here to give it more visibility as it's another vital question to discuss.

My discussion partner identifies himself by nothing more than Nick. Let's hear him...

Let me highlight some specific points then, and I will be arguing along the lines of Scripture and leave the philosophical issues of morality aside for now:

1) You began by saying the phrase "Christ died for our sins" signifies Penal Substitution

Yes. I was referring to 1 Corinthians 15:3. Penal substitution contains two ideas:

1) Someone is punished for some wrongdoing, i.e. endures a penalty (it's penal!)

2) That punishment is endured on behalf of another (it's substitutionary).

When Paul says "Christ died for our sins", it fulfills both criteria:

 
1) His death was specifically for sins - i.e. it was penal

2) His death was not for his own sins, but for ours - i.e. it was substitutionary

So there it is. But if I was making a full case, I'd go to many other even more direct Scriptures such as 1 Peter 3:18, "For Christ also has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust" or 2 Peter 2:24, "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes you were healed" or Galatians 3:13, "Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us". If those verses don't contain the very definition of a penal substitution, then I think words have no definite meaning.

, but note what 1 John 3:16 says:

"Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers."
Notice the parallelism here, if "lay down life for" means a PSub framework, the second half wouldn't make sense; it would be calling Christians to be Penal Substitutes for other Christians.Thus, saying "Christ died for our sins" and other such phraseology does not indicate Psub but instead put the burden on oneself to correct a problem, in a similar sense the way a father takes the burden of providing for his family on his shoulders (1 Tim 5:8).

This is multiple misunderstanding.

1) It is a grammatical error - you imply that "for" (Greek, huper) must carry a single meaning in all contexts. (Which you say, because it can't be "on account of" in 1 John 3:16, must therefore be "in order to help correct the problem of" because that meaning fits there). This is a lexical novelty and you won't find it taught in any Greek language resource.
"For" does not carry a unique meaning in English either. Prepositions simply don't work like this in any language I know. "I played for England", "I died for lack of water" and "I took a bullet for Fred" are three different meanings. To insist that "for" must mean the same in each sentence is gratuitous.

2) Secondly, I never intended to imply that penal substitution was implied simply by the word "for". As explained above, its the context that fixes the meaning. The word "for" in this context carries the meaning of "because of, on account of". But in the context of Scriptural theology, the only way that someone dies on account of sin is because death is a punishment for sin - the wages of sin is death. Hence later in the same chapter of 1 Corinthians 15 (verse 17) Paul states that if Christ did not do this, then you are still in your sins and (verse 18) will perish. Why do people perish because of sins? Only one reason: they are being punished for them. Moreover, the alternatives are absurd. Yours doesn't work - you make "for our sins" to mean "for us, to help us with our sins", changing the object of "for" from an impersonal entity (sins) into a person (us, who need help). This is rewriting the verse instead of learning from it.

2) You mentioned the scapegoat was an example of Penal Substitution, but the fact is the scapegoat was never killed, in fact it was set free (i.e. kept alive)!

You're confused here. If I'd said "the scapegoat is an example of a penal substitutionary death" then you'd have a point. But "penal substitution" simply means 1) penalty 2) substitution. The scapegoat was an example of these things, even though it did not die. Your thought here would ultimately rule out all teaching in advance by God to symbolically represent Christ's penal substitution, because the only thing that would exactly match all the details is the event itself!

3) You stated that hell was the primary punishment for sin, but using Penal Substitution means Jesus had to undergo hellfire in your place. The Bible simply nowhere teaches this, nor does it fit Trinitarian orthodoxy.

This is an arbitrary and unjustified assertion. Penal substitution does not mean that the suffered must experience precisely the same experience; it simply means that they must suffer a penalty of equivalent value. When the Kenyan government found my burglar guilty, they didn't sentence him to having the precise same items stolen from his own house - that would be impossible. Instead, they sentenced him to what they considered an equivalent punishment (ended up being 8 weeks in jail, since you ask).

4) Nowhere in the Bible is there a model for transferring punishment either in the Mosaic Law or in other cases of the atonement.

Well, we've been discussing one - the scapegoat. If there was no (symbolic, typical) transfer of guilt onto the scapegoat, then these verses have no meaning:

Leviticus 16:21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: 22 And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness.

Hands are laid on the goat, symbolising transfer of sin. He is then said to go away outside the camp (into the wilderness), bearing the iniquities. If that's not transfer, then there must be no such thing as  transfer.

Consider the sin offering in Leviticus, note especially 5:11 where an animal could not be provided for the sin offering so a sack of flour was used instead. That is impossible if Psub were the framework, for you cannot kill a bag of flour. Further, the sin offerings were made for sins which did not require the death penalty, thus a 'life for life' model would not make sense.

Here you're attacking a strawman. Nobody claimed that every sacrifice in the Bible was penal and substitutionary.

As for turning away God's wrath and making atonement, the Bible gives many solid examples of where a hero turns away God's wrath and makes atonement without recourse to Psub (i.e. the hero getting punished in their place), consider:
-Num 25:1-13 (Ps 106:30-31);
-Deut9:16-21 (Ex 32:30,Psalm 106:19-23);
-Numbers 16:42-49
-Proverbs 16:6 says: “Through love and faithfulness sin is atoned for,” and 16:14 says, “A king's wrath is a messenger of death, but a wise man will appease it.”

All such examples are in principal moot. Read Romans 3:25-26, which explains that all the forgiveness given under the Old Testament era was predicated upon the future death of Christ, by which God could then be just. Without a death, it seemed (according to Romans 3:25-26) that God had passed over sin and left it unpunished.

But in any case, none of these sections establish your point. In Numbers 25 Phinehas slays the sinner. Likewise in Exodus 32 at the golden calf, the Levites go out to slay the evildoers. In Numbers 16, lots of people die in a plague - and it is stopped using implements from the tabernacle which are typical of the work of Christ; thus none of these prove that no penalty need be inflicted. Surely you're not seriously suggesting that Proverbs 16:6 and 14 are intended by the author as statements about the wiping away of a man's sin before God? That's torturing verses, not reading them.

What I've learnt from this Nick is that you don't like the idea of penal substitution. Of course you don't; nobody does. It implies that we're so sinful in God's sight that we can't save ourselves - the only remedy is as drastic as the Messiah suffering in our place. That's the humiliating truth of the gospel, and why you need to be born again - to accept God's verdict against you, and then to receive penal substitution not as a humiliation to be fought against, but as a saving truth in which we receive the love of God for all eternity.

What problem of evil?

A very good (in the main points) post on the "problem of evil", and why it's impossible for an atheist to use it against Christianity, here:

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/09/theodicy_without_god.html

The author says he does not know what the theological explanation for "natural evil" (natural disasters, etc.). The Bible's answer is the Fall and the ensuing curse.

Dear Atheists. Please update your arguments.

"Kids' author says Jesus is not God: An atheist children's author is to use his latest book to say that Jesus was not God, instead claiming the Apostle Paul imagined the idea."

Read the story and you'll see that atheist campaigner Philip Pullman's idea is to argue that the idea of Jesus as God was a later encrustation on a primitive Christianity, dreamt up by the apostle Paul.

This was a popular idea in liberal academic scholarship in the 20th century up until the 1980s, but is now generally recognised, not just by evangelical scholars, as a huge mistake. It's a mistake that came from the presupposition that the New Testament documents should be read and interpreted against the background of Hellenistic philosophy. This mistake led to many of the Hebraic messages being filtered out - at least for those in the world of academic scholarship. Happily this enormous dead-end in Biblical studies bypassed the ordinary Bible-reading Christian!

The New Testament was written against a Hebraic background, and the above way of doing things is now widely recognised as completely untenable. The gospel writers and Paul and the other apostles alike approach the story of Jesus as a continuation of the Old Testament narrative. And in particular, his deity is clearly endorsed by all of them, because they all uniformally and continually attributes acts, achievements and attributes to Jesus which the Old Testament makes explicit belong exclusively to Jehovah. In both testaments, theological questions are not approach in the Greek manner - as matters of fine philosophical analysis (though of course such analysis is legitimate), but as being revealed progressively in history through God's saving interventions. And the interventions written about by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as well as Paul reveal with crystal clarity that they viewed Jesus of Nazareth as being one and the same in his being as Jehovah. Put simply, their message about the person of Christ is that he achieves everything for his people that Jehovah is meant to achieve. (And this observation eventually gives rise to the whole doctrine of the Trinity when all other Biblical considerations are factored in).

Mr. Pullman, though, is going to try to discredit Christianity with mouldy, rusted, defunct old bunk that has been debunked for decades. Good for pulling the wool over the eyes of the naive and the willingly ignorant, I suppose. But if the "New Atheist" crowd want to convince us that they're dispassionate investigators of facts, serious students of scholarship, coldly and impartially following hard evidence wherever it leads, this sort of thing won't help. Don't expect Pullman to be called out by his fellow "New Atheists" for this slip though, because the problem isn't intellectual - it's moral. They simply latch on to whatever argument seems to support their cause, whatever kind of argument it is, good, bad or ugly. The "New Atheists" have gained a reputation for being intellectually shallow and not widely read in their attempts to establish their position - and this kind of thing will only help that reputation roll on.

Modern apologies

The storm-in-a-tea-cup in which the president of the USA criticised and then apologised for criticising a particular police department is a good illustration of the fall of the modern West.

This isn't a remark about President Obama personally; his "apology" is simply a good specimen of the corruption of modern manners. As society progressively does its best to abolish the idea of sin, trailing along with that the idea of taking responsibility for sin goes the same way.

Here's what was said. On Wednesday, the President said, "The Cambridge police acted stupidly". Now, he has said, "I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge police department". (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8168313.stm)

Now, to anyone in the world who's still sane, the President obviously did directly "[malign] the Cambridge police department". He called them stupid. If the word "malign" has any meaning at all, he maligned them, and that was precisely the intention when he opened his mouth to speak. But note now the very modern apology. He didn't actually malign them; rather, he gave that impression. Not a reality, note! Or rather, he thinks he gave an impression - there's still some room for doubt, if you've got time to do a thorough investigation. It's regrettable if you picked up that intention from his words.

This is original sin and human pride in action. To say "sorry, I maligned them and it was wrong" is just 8 words, that costs not one dime to say and only about 2 seconds of your time (much less than the long-winded, convoluted alternative). What it does cost, is a little loss of personal pride, a price which we all find a lot harder to pay. There's a tension between the fuss caused by having done something wrong, and this price - so instead, he tries to pass us a counterfeit instead; de-weaselising the code, he said "you misread me in thinking I said something regrettable, which ultimately is your mistake as much as mine, so we're about evens". Original sin in action: a man with the gifts, intelligence and drive to rise to the highest office in the world yet has not enough control over his own ego to admit to having been wrong about something totally and utterly trivial.

Again, this isn't about President Obama - he's hardly the first or the last politician to promise "change" and "a new politics", blah blah, but it's also useful to note how quickly such promises turn into the "same old, same old". Original sin is real, and can't be abolished simply with good intentions, charisma, education, better politics, etcetera. The world needs one thing and one thing only - to acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, and to bow to him.

Let me repeat again - it's not about Barack Obama. What he did is totally common-place. It happens so often that we don't even notice it. And that again is a proof that original sin is exactly what the Bible says it is - rampant, everywhere. That's why we need such a solution as the Son of God dying for us - everything else, however good it sounds, doesn't actually deal with the problem. If a world leader can't even say "yup, I was wrong, let's not make excuses", what does that say about the condition of man?

A Higher Law

The expenses scandal concerning MPs in the UK has made the national press even here in Kenya. It's very informative to see the wide-scale outrage as I read the websites of the UK press. Right across the spectrum - people of all shares and stripes of ideological opinion are agreed that gross, iniquitous excesses have taken place.

What I find particularly informative though is to look at one of the places where this agreement has concentrated. Whilst many MPs protest that what they did was "within the rules", there's basically unanimous agreement that a) that isn't good enough b) the rules are crooked and c) we expect MPs as public servants to obey principles which are more ultimate than simply what's in their own self-imposed rule-book. There is, we're all quite sure, a rule book beyond the rule book. There are principles which the rule book should be judged by. The self-made laws of parliamentarians, even though parliament is the highest body in the land, must bow before and be judged by the higher ideals. Corruption has an independent existence from human opinion, and can never be made right just by the fiat of even kings.

The elephant in the room which I don't find the commentators in the UK press then raising a question about, is this: what exactly is this "rule book to rule the rule books"? What is the source of these higher values that can judge the highest body in the country? Who made these laws that judge the law-makers? If we all agree that such things exist - and there seems to be no disagreement about that at all - then shouldn't someone at least ask on what basis such things can be?

You know the answer; as I say, it's the elephant in the room, and that's why the secularist UK press can't bring itself to mention it. Man is bound by the law of God. It's external to him and imposed upon him - he must ultimately bow to it, whether he pleases to do so or not. It's written on our consciences, and we know that we are ultimately accountable.

Ultimately the secular principles on which the UK has been governed by its present elite float in mid-air. The MPs who protest "I was within the rules!" are actually 100% right on their own secularist principles. As good secularists, those MPs are simply protesting on the same basis as they previously governed. It is truly a bit rich for the secular press which never questioned them before to now be raising these higher principles which before could be so conveniently ignored. But that's the tragedy of unbelief - it can't be carried out consistently. Once you try to press it too far, something has to give. If you try to bring it too much out of your private thought world of unbelief and into the real world that God created, pressure will build up until something bursts. It doesn't work! The pressure just burst in Westminster - the irresistible force of the idea that man was the highest being and could make his own laws met the immovable object of man's knowledge that "thou shalt not steal" is an immutable law of God that all men must bow to, and it lost.

The real tragedy behind the tragedy is that this obvious question that's been raised - of how we can be so angry about these higher principles being broken when we've spent so many decades refusing to officially acknowledge their real existence and trying to build a society without them. And what that means is that if and when we clear the decks of the present exemplars of our moral corruption, we'll just wheel in some more. What the UK needs is not a change of faces without questioning its underlying principles; we need to turn in godly sorrow to the God whose laws we routinely despise but can't ultimately escape from. Jesus Christ is still a gracious Saviour, and will receive us - even us - still.

Accounting For Life

What does the breadth of the reality of human experience point to? What set of facts can most easily account for life as we know it? What ultimate reality most comfortably explains the wide range of things that happen in the world? When I ask those questions, the things I'm thinking about are those which cluster around man. He's an amazing creature. He can accomplish astonishing things when he puts his mind to it, in a breath-takingly wide realm. Breath-takingly good, and breath-takingly bad. Men can plan and study to reach the moon - and get there. On the other hand, ten-year old children can torture and then murder toddlers in cold blood. Man can work obsessively for years for some grand achievement of study, athletics, business or otherwise. Or they can lie around wasting their lives doing nothing, taking drugs, stealing, etcetera. Amazing acts of good can be performed - whether one-off acts of incredible heroics, or lifetimes of self-less service. Appalling atrocities of evil can also take place - whether the one-off act of slaughter of 9/11, or the year-after-year killing machines of Stalin's Russia or Tsedong's China. There is the beauty of a classical symphony, and the genius of the boy chess grandmaster; there is the pointlessness of going out every Saturday night to get drunk. There's all the world of literature and arts; and the empty lives wasted in bitterness, moaning and complaining and watching never-ending television. What account of reality can most comfortably take in all of this?

Some atheists try to rule this question out of court as soon as it's asked. They are called "logical positivists". They believe that no idea should be accepted unless it can be proved from first principles. Unless there's a mathematical-type working out beginning at the assumptions and landing at the conclusion "therefore, God", they won't accept it. Because the above set of questions aren't in this mode, therefore they think its OK to ignore them. Logical positivism, though, is not itself logically provable. You have to accept it as a prior philosophical assumption before you begin. Or in other words, it's a faith position. There's no way of proving from first assumptions that logical positivism should be dictating what is or isn't an acceptable argument - and there's no non-arbitrary set of "first assumptions" for the logical positivist to start with anyway. If logical positivism can't account for itself, it's not reasonable to make it the arbiter of what else we should accept. It's an intellectually vacuous position, and those atheists only cling to it because they don't like where reasonably considered evidence actually leads.

If, then, it is reasonable to toss aside logical positivism and ask whether atheism or Christianity most reasonably accounts for reality as we know it, what do we get?

Christianity accounts for the range of human experience with two key assertions. Firstly, an original perfect creation by God. Secondly, a terrible fall when the first humans rebelled against their maker. The wonderful beauty of the creation and the incredible achievements of man are because we are not just animals - God made us in his own image. The heights we can climb are echoes of what he made us for. The terrible pits of depravity come from the fall, when sin came into the world and corrupted everything. We are now not only objects of God's love and kindness, but of his wrath and displeasure, and he often withdraws his favour and the restraint that holds the flood-tides of our evil back. As a result, we are still capable of wonderful things - but also of terrible things. Indeed, it's only because we remember the wonderful that we are so appalled by the terrible. If one ant fights and kills another to be queen, it has no real significance. But when one child kills another, we're right to be appalled. Christianity asserts that both the beauty and the squalor are real - and make perfect sense, because of where we've come from.

The consistent atheist, though, is at a real loss here. Relying on Darwinism as his explanation for man's nature, he only has one tool to explain humanity where the Christian had two. The Christian can use both creation and fall to interpret what he sees; but the atheist has only a single idea - the survival of superior genes. According to the atheist, man comes as a result of the struggle for survival. Features that had some survival value have survived - features that didn't, haven't. All that we have now is something we have because it was somehow useful in the competition for limited resources. Our ancestors were fish and before that amoeba - and everything that makes us differ from them is in our genes, because of Darwinism. Whether it's the ability to compose Beethoven's third, or the genius who can do university-level abstract mathematics at age 11, or the senseless killing of Jamie Bulger, somehow it's all something to do with those selfish bits of DNA. Does someone perform some heroic self-sacrifice for no personal benefit? That's because of Darwinism. Does someone perform some horrifically selfish and pointless act of wanton destruction? That's because of Darwinism too.

The problem the atheist has here is that Darwinism is a monergistic system. It has only one principle to explain everything. Does X happen? Darwinism. Does the opposite of X happen? Darwinism again. Darwinism's a hammer, so everything's got to be a nail. When dealing with such a wide and impressive range of data as that found in man, though, this fails badly. In this kind of case, when a single idea purports to explain both everything and its perfect opposite, it testifies that really it explains nothing. If selfish genes lead both to pointless destruction and glorious creativity, then ultimately they lead to neither. They become nothing more than a "just so" story, retro-actively engineered not to explain the facts, but to explain them away. Handel's Messiah, the nun's vow of perpetual chastity, and the desire of this blogger to run a faster marathon are self-evidently not mere by-products of the struggle for limited resources or opportunities for reproduction. The attempts to make them appear so serve only to make the Darwinian Emporer's lack of attire more obvious.

Christianity provides a plausible explanation for man, in his height and in his depths. The atheistic alternative explains neither. That's because the former, unlike the latter, is actually true. Wouldn't it be better to face up to the implications of that, instead of running away?

The Rational Structure Of Reality - Summing Up

Well, I've found the attempt to make atheists justify some of their assumptions interesting. I am very grateful for the interaction and the opportunity it's giving me to find ways to express my case more clearly. The attempts in the comments to avoid having to justify the assumptions used by atheists have very quite creative - and mutually contradictory. One commenter denies that his assumptions carry any burden of proof; another tentatively suggests that survival-of-the-fittest might have the answer; another seeks to evade the challenge by denying that the genetic mutations leading up to man should be called "copying errors" and so don't undermine the assumption of his rationality; another seeks a get-out by arguing that life may after all have been created by aliens. This total confusion as to how to meet the challenge well illustrates the strength of the challenge itself.

Summarising the case

I think this one has probably run its course and should be tied up for now. I'd like to just summarise in a hopefully fresh and final way what atheism fails to do. Here's what I've been saying:

• The universe apparently has a rational structure. That is, we expect that there is a coherent system of truth "out there".
• Moreover, human beings are apparently rational beings - that is, they, unlike the lower animals, have the capacity to process, compare and contrast arguments and ideas, and to organise them.
• More than that, it seems that the two points above fit neatly together. Humans believe and act on the basis that they are in a position to explore and discover, using their rational faculties, the truth that is "out there". They have the necessary mental furniture to follow the clues and understand what reality is all about.

Those assumptions underlie basically all debates about reality. The Christian and the atheist come together to debate truth - using the above as an assumed starting point.

What I've sought to do is to shine the spotlight on these assumptions. They are, after all, part of the whole system of reality - the system which is to be explained either on the basis of Christianity or atheism (or something else, if someone else wants to come to the table). They're part of what needs accounting for. Before I'm going to respond to the atheist challenge "show us your evidence", I want to put an equal challenge to the atheist - show us how, on your grounds, we can know that we're even equipped to have this discussion to begin with?

I've been asking, "does Christianity or atheism explain these assumed facets of reality best?" Or to put it more sharply, "Is the Christian or the atheist actually justified in making these assumptions? Can their explanations of reality actually account for these assumptions, or do they just hang in the air or even contradict the position being argued for? Are atheists trying to build their system using materials that they stole from Christians?"

What I've argued, and my commenters have illustrated, is that atheism cannot account for the basic structure of rationality in the universe. How to connect it with the atheist story - that man is nothing more than the sum of his parts, no more than basic biology, the result of a long, undirected neo-Darwinian process of errors in copying DNA - is an entire mystery. How do we account for the universe and particularly man's rational composition, on the atheist basis? It's evident that atheism implies irrationality, not rationality - a universe of undirected chaos, not of ordered truth.

Making the pieces fit

Christianity, on the other hand, has a very simple and coherent explanation. If you accept as your presupposition the truth of the Bible, then the above phenomena all fall out quite easily:

• The universe is the handiwork of an immense rational mind: a vastly intelligent Creator God.
• Man, as part of that universe, is likewise created by God. Moreover, he is created as a unique and distinction creation: made in the image of God.
• As such, man also carries the characteristics of rationality. As God has created man to know and to enjoy his Maker, he has equipped him with the ability to seek him, find him and hold fellowship with him.
• Therefore, it's no surprise to find that the pieces fit. Man is the kind of creature who seeks and is able to find and process truth, precisely because he is created by God.

So, here we are. The Christian explanation of reality gives a coherent and simple explanation for the phenomena of rationality. The atheist one completely fails. Atheism cannot even explain why we should believe in our ability to discuss and debate ideas in the first place. Ergo, which of Christianity or atheism is, on this basis, the more likely to be an accurate explanation of reality? My commenters keep banging on about evidence - but it's in front of their noses. Every time they seek to employ the unaccounted for, on atheist assumptions tools of logic and reason to interact with me, they testify that they really do know what I'm talking about.

Most of today's campaigning atheists have been spent too much time drinking at the fountain of amateur-philosopher-cum-part-time-scientist Professor Richard Dawkins and his ilk. They have swallowed the philosophy that empirical and positivist proofs are the only valid types of proof. This philosophical belief of his (which isn't itself provable by positivism or empiricalism, and hence is self-refuting) wouldn't pass muster in a sophomore philosophy class. Nevertheless, it's pawned off by Dawkins onto his willing drones, who apparently fail to notice that Dawkins himself relies heavily on other types of philosophical proof in his own arguments.

Ho hum; we press on. Lined up for the near future, God-willing, is something which I think you'll find more accessible if you found the above a bit too abstract and philosophically deep. I want to start opening up the question "Can we be good without God?" Stay tuned!

Making atheism justify its assumptions

My earlier post, "How not to argue with an atheist" (http://mothwo.blogspot.com/2008/02/how-not-to-argue-with-atheist.html) generated a couple of responses from two atheists, Justin and Samuel. Their replies have brought a good illustration of some of the points I was trying to make. Hence this post to draw some attention, hopefully to bring more clarity to anyone who was trying to follow what I was saying. The comments thread to read is here: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6097581429595233439&postID=8635448673055433548

Samuel and Justin both seem, from our discussion so far, to be complete newcomers to the idea that atheism should have to justify its own assumptions. Their responses thus far indicate that they have both taken completely for granted their own nature as logical, rational beings - and the idea that truth should be investigated and received on the basis of arguments based around proving propositional statements.

In other words, they have taken completely for granted that man is precisely the kind of being that the Bible says he is - made in the image of God, with intelligence and the scope for processing, discussing, accepting and rejecting of ideas. He's not just an ape whose only purpose is eating, sleeping and reproducing - he's made for higher things. He has a generally reliable reasoning faculty that reflects the perfect one of his Maker, and that should be used to think great thoughts, not just hunt for food and sex.

But hang on! This is the Christian set of assumptions. It's fine for me to behave as if rationality was handed down from heaven on a plate - because that's my position. For the atheist to do so, though, is serious inconsistency. Atheism's assumptions are that our thought processes are the result of millions of copying mistakes in DNA. Our reasoning faculties are just chemical machines, constructed through a long series of errors. On that basis, why should we trust it? Is it rational to trust the result of millions of mistakes? Shouldn't Justin and Samuel have to justify what they're doing before I let them do it - why should they get a free pass?

My correspondent Justin is continuing to stick to his guns. He tells me that I'm the one making the case for God, so I must prove it - and resolutely refuses to justify any of his own atheistic assumptions. The onus is on me - and we'll just shove the issues of why he, from an atheist point of view, should believe in logic, reason and rationality under the carpet. But from his point of view, this is just illogical. As there's as yet no reason offered as to why I should believe that Justin is a logical, reasonable being, it would be a bit silly of me to start offering him logical reasons. Shouldn't he have to justify his own assumptions? He wants to continue taking all the fruits that flow from his being created by God for granted - yet maintain that he isn't accountable to God for them. The only line of attempted justification for his own position so far is this: "Mine has been clearly demonstrated as correct through your avoidance of any real conversation by using word games to hide your lack of reasons to believe." Justin - come on - it's only schoolboy debates that are won by scoring points when your opponent makes (supposedly) bad arguments. Atheism needs just a little more justification than saying that theists are talking twaddle to explain how we come to be the rational thinkers that you say we are.

The interaction so far has well illustrated the point I started from - that atheists figure that the way to maintain their position is to award themselves a massive set of privileges. Theists will, they assert, have to justify all of their assumptions - but atheists get a free pass on theirs. When the debate is set up this way, it's no wonder that the atheists often walk off feeling smug that they didn't end up being convinced. They want to assume that logic works in an atheistic universe just like it would in a created one - but without explaining why. To fight God, they can't find any tools to use - apart from God's. Or in other words, the Bible is true; they have the knowledge of God, but wilfully suppress it (Romans 1:18ff).

How not to argue with an atheist

Most of todays atheist activists believe themselves to be championing the values of reason, logic, rationality and science.

If you find yourself in a debate with one, you'll often find that they give you a challenge something like this:

"OK. You say there is a God - so you get to prove it. Show me the evidence - and I'll follow you wherever it goes. I'm a reasonable person; show me the reasons, and I'll worship your God; but if you don't, please don't say I shouldn't be an atheist."

Sounds fair? Uh-uh. Agree to a debate on those terms, and you're selling the pass.

Huh?

How come? Because you've just allowed the atheist a free ride. You've let him claim for himself a load of territory which, as an atheist, doesn't belong to him.

On the supposition that God is, and is our maker, then a lot of things follow very quickly. Firstly, it means that everything is his. That's everything as in everything - things you can see, and things you can't. All the physical territory in the earth, solar system and universe - and all the intellectual territory that you can tour through too.

In other words, all the tools of logic, reason, rationality and science are his too. They're part of the fabric of his creation - we think rational thoughts because God constituted us as rational beings; he made us and he owns us.

So...

That means then, that on the supposition that God is our maker, that all the "neutral territory" from where the atheist presumes to sit and judge the evidence that you throw his way, isn't in fact neutral at all. It's God's.

In a created universe, made by an intelligent and personal God, things like logic, reason and rationality can be accounted for easily. On the supposition that God is a logical, reasoning, rational being, it is easy to understand that the world he made would be populated by other logical, reasoning, rational beings. If he made man to reflect something of his own being and character, then it is no wonder that we do things like seeking after meaning, thinking great thoughts, process and understand great concepts, etcetera. When I make a cake, it reflects something of my being - I'm a poor cook, so it's a mess! When God makes a world, it reflects something of him - immense, glorious and to bring it to the point - rational.

And...

What about atheism, though? How does it account for all of this? If impersonal matter is the origin of everything and if immense amounts of time and random chance are the explanation for everything - then what is this "logic" that we speak of? If the universe is a closed system, working out according to fixed laws, then what is this apparent experience of free thought and inquiry? If our behaviour is ultimately reducible to nothing more than atoms banging together, then a) why should we trust the results of this banging together, b) what significance does it have anyway and c) what, in this atheistic impersonal universe, is this "we" that we're talking about anyway?

Do you get it?

What I'm saying is this. When you allow the atheist to set the terms of debate as above, you've just allowed him to seize whole tracts of intellectual real estate for free. By allowing his claim to be a rational, logical, thinking and personal being without having to justify it on his own, atheistic terms, you basically allow the atheist all that he wanted in the first place. Allowing him his place to sit and reason independently of God, you've already given him what he was seeking. Instead, you need to say:

"Whoah! Steady on there. I'm happy to discuss my evidence and talk about reason and logic with a fellow Christian, because my fellow Christians believe in the God who is the basis for it all. You, though are an atheist! I'm not going to allow you to masquerade as a rational being until you've justified it. Please, what are logic and reason in your atheistic universe, and why should we trust them or care about it all anyway? If atheism is true, then it's just atoms banging together - why should we believe that any certain results can come from that?"

This is called a presuppositional approach. It exposes the fact that the "neutral" territory in between atheist and Christian doesn't exist. It exposes the atheist to the fact that from the point of view of atheism, he can't even begin to think, let alone come to any worthwhile conclusions.

In other words, it exposes the atheist to the inescapable fact that hate him as he does, this is still God's world. The facts are not neutral, to be used to construct competing arguments. Unless we begin by presupposing the reality of the Creator God, we can't actually prove anything at all.

Commentary on an interview with NT Wright (installment 2)

Here's we having a bit of a fire-side chat in which I attempt to introduce people who are interesting in the "New Perspective(s)" and the theology of N T Wright to the topics, using a recent interview as our guide - in bite-size chunks!

Part one (introduction): http://mothwo.blogspot.com/2008/02/interview-with-n-t-wright-with.html

Link to the interview (which you'll need to have open to folow this commentary): http://trevinwax.com/2007/11/19/trevin-wax-interview-with-nt-wright-full-transcript/

The interview starts off with a few softballs. The first answer, given to the question from Trevin Wax "Would you tell us about your spiritual journey, how you came to faith in Christ?" is rather interesting for what it omits.

Firstly, Wright's polemic when explaining the "New Perspective" is often aimed against conservative evangelicals. Interestingly, Wright omits to mention his time as president of that historical bastion of 20th century conservative evangelicalism, the Oxford University Inter-Collegiate Christian Union. During that time he co-authored (together with some of his fellow OICCU executives) a book "The Grace of God in the Gospel" published by the Banner of Truth Trust, in which pulled no punches in setting out and defending the historical Calvinist position. This is particularly interesting to Calvinist critics of Wright (such as myself), because Wright is often guilty of putting forward some fairly ugly caricatures of historic Reformed orthodoxy. This might be excusable if Wright were coming from somewhere completely different and just didn't know what he was talking about - but in fact, he actually in the past wrote a book to defend that position, which makes it something else entirely. I found it interesting that Wright chose to omit this phase of his life from his answer to the question. I think there is a strong case to be made that a lot of Wright's later theology is a manifetation of "the zeal of the convert" - he displays an excessive zeal to downplay or combat the position that he once stood in.

A second omission also struck this critic as being in line with Wright's theology in general. Asked to explain his experience of Christian conversion, Wright omitted any mention of conviction, sin, need for atonement, the cross of Christ, personal repentance, awareness of free grace, etcetera. Now, don't get me wrong - I well know that Christian conversion is a varied experience and that there is no merit in testimonies being tediously formulaic. We don't want to sound as if we were all drilled in the same barracks! There are no set phrases that we must trot out to prove the reality of our love to the Lord Jesus. The point, though, is that this testimony is also reflective of the omissions which Wright's critics have identified in his theology - without being denied, important fundamentals (and always the same ones) of the gospel are all but missing, hovering somewhere in the background. What makes this omission all the more interesting is the fact of these things' prominence in Wright's first book, "The Grace of God in the Gospel". Whereas in his 60th year Wright's testimony has very little to say about these matters, at the other end of his scholarly career he could hardly be quiet about them. I think this is reflective of the direction in which Wright's theology has taken him and no doubt we'll unpack this a bit more as the interview goes on. Note that Wright says that his theology before his twenties wasn't sacramental enough.

Trevin Wax: Why is it that you have never pursued exclusively an academic post? Why have you chosen to remain so connected to the local church?

The answer to this question has a few interesting insights into Wright's personality. Valuable as that may be though, it's not hard to feel disapointed that the answer completely focused upon personality, and had nothing to say about the importance of local churches in Christ's kingdom. Really the answer is rather weak from a spiritual point of view.

Trevin Wax: How is the worship of the church central to your calling?

This is the last of the soft-balls! The answer, though, is again spiritually very weak. Now, because I'm a critic of the distinctives of Wright's theology it's very tempting just to fall into nit-picking everything the fellow says. Tom Wright is an intellectual and theological giant and nit-picking won't impress anyone who can see that fact. However, if we were interviewing a candidate for the Christian ministry we might hope that a question about worship would give us an answer telling us something about the worthiness of the one being worshipped rather than his great love of eclecticism in music, or the beneficial, renewing effects upon the worshipper.

OK...

This is all a bit of by the by. We haven't learnt much about Wright's theology here. My point in looking at the answers to the easy questions is that I see the whole bent of Wright's theology reflected in them. Historical evangelical distinctives aren't denied, but are shoved out of view, and replaced by something rather weak. At this point if you're unfamiliar with Wright I think you may feel I'm being harsh. I think though that as we get into the meatier theological questions you'll be likely to become a lot more sympathetic.

More next time!

A Mathematical Universe

My first love in academic study was mathematics. At school I drank it up, and I studied it for my degree at university.

Mathematics, Realism And Theism

Mathematics is also a very interesting field if you have an interest in philosophy and questions about design in nature. Almost all mathematicians are in practice realists - they believe that as they make progress in their field they are involved in discovering and not in inventing. (See here for more on this distinction). That is, they act and research as if there is already a transcendent, pre-existing mathematical universe "out there" that is waiting for us to find and explore it. The opposite of that is behaving as if mathematics is our arbitrary toy, to be played with, deconstructed and rebuilt as we please. Shall we adopt the convention that 2+2 = 5 from now on and see where that takes us?

In my observation most "mathmos" haven't done much by the way of questioning themselves over this realism - they just accept it. If, though, you want to have a coherent and comprehensive view of reality, you have to start looking at this. In my view, the atheist materialists who have tried to explain their view of reality are in an exceptionally weak position when they seek to explain mathematics in non-transcendent terms. Mathematics resists, at multiple levels, any attempt to treat it as an arbitrary invention of the human mind. Almost at every turn it cries out "I was here before you, and I am bigger than you!". Maths is a very theistic subject!

Abstract or Concrete?

What I wanted to talk about here though was down a little bit of a different track. It is about the connection between mathematics and the physical universe that we live in.

Mathematics is, from one angle, an entirely abstract subject. When we do algebra, we are manipulating symbols on paper - but we are really talking about something that exists behind the symbols. Mathematics basically has its seat of existence in the mind, and not on the paper. I can of course always add two apples to two apples and will always get four apples (an inconvenient truth for the atheists who want to argue that mathematical truths are not transcendent!) - but as I do so I'm conscious that there is a notion of "two-ness" or "four-ness" that goes far beyond the tasty bits of fruit and is independent of them. If I add two oranges to two oranges I get four of them as well. The more complicated the mathematics gets, the more obvious this becomes. I can move from the simple adding of objects to a dimension up and do calculus to work out the area under a graph. I can then accelerate to five or six dimensional spaces and work out their corresponding concept of volume. I can work out the properties of completely theoretical objects. you get the idea. Mathematics speaks to us of an ideal reality which depends on the mind.

We've already said more than that, though. Whilst it depends on the mind, mathematics also seems to have an unbreakable link to the physical world. In the most simple example, there's something about those two oranges that has the notion of two-ness. The notion of two-ness is contained, but not exhausted, by them. I can create a two-dimensional shape that is approximately (but never exactly - because we live in a world of discrete atoms and molecules) equal to the one in the equation of the graph I was using. This is all simple enough. What is more breath-taking, though, is to understand that correspondences between abstract mathematics and the physical world have also been discovered in far more complicated cases. In some areas, mathematicians discovered new theorems in highly abstract areas that nobody thought would ever turn out to have a practical application - but in fact they actually perfectly described physical phenomena observed decades later. Do you get that? Away in his dusty study somewhere, the mathematician was working on a problem that was thought to be far too abstract to have any real application. Some time later, a physicist realised that this bit of mathematics was the key to something that he was observing. Quantum physics provides a number of illustrations of this.

Summing Up...

I hope you're still with me! The point here is this:

Observation one: Mathematics has its seat in minds. Observation two: We also now know that mathematics is also embedded at a fundamental and essential in physical reality. Inescapable conclusion: Physical reality is the product of a mind.

As a Christian I believe that all knowledge can only ultimately be rightly understood when we see its integration point in our Maker. Or in other words, unless we begin with God in everything, we'll eventually go wrong somewhere down the line. When I say things like this, a response I often get is "but lots of knowledge is neutral and has no religious implications. Take maths - 2+2 is 4 whether you are a Christian or an atheist!" Above I've explained just one reason why that answer is on a wrong track. The objectivity of mathematics and its fundamental connection to the physical world are two more places where God speaks clearly - and leaves the atheist without excuse. They cannot be accounted for on purely materialist assumptions. Mathematics is universal, transcendent, comes from a mind, and is embedded at the deepest level in the world we live in. Mathematics speaks clearly of the immense and wonderful mind of the one who is.

Inventions or discoveries?

There are plenty of things in everyday life we don't think much about - but we ought to!

One thing I am profoundly grateful for, and amazed by, is modern technology. There is such a vast amount of technology involved just in the act of blogging that it is breath-taking

Just to mention a few...

• The laptop it's typed out on. The processor, the display, the battery (power cuts happen here!), etcetera...
• Then it gets beamed a short distance through the air to my mobile phone,
• from where it gets beamed to the nearest mobile tower.
• Then a combination of fibre-optics and/or satellites get it to blogger, somewhere in the USA, where it is stored on magnetic disks.
• And then over to you!

I live in Africa, but because of the Internet in many ways the distance feels quite short. I can e-mail video clips and photos, receive e-mails, read the BBC news, send SMS messages, just as when I lived in the UK. If I really wanted to, I could do all of those things on a mobile phone handset costing about £80 (it's probably cheaper where you live!). A tiny thing that fits in my pocket and is so light I don't notice it's there can do all of that. Amazing!

The reason I find it amazing isn't because I think it's magic. I studied scientific subjects at school and university, and as a boy technology was always one of my interests. My understanding of how many of these things work doesn't make them seem less wonderful - it makes them seem far more wonderful. The above list includes the technology involved in electricity, electro-magnetic radiation, satelite technology, magnetism, fibre-optics. When we understand more, we don't marvel less: quite the opposite.

Coming To The Point...

So, what am I saying? Did you notice that I said I was profoundly grateful for these things? Where should that gratitude be directed, exactly?

Often we describe these things as being "inventions". And indeed, in an important sense, they are. There's a big step in between understanding the principles of fibre-optics, electricity, and so on, and then actually putting together all the equipment that uses those principles to make it possible for my thoughts to get out of my head, though the air, and onto your screen. It needed someone to make the long route from A to B.

Fundamentally, though, these things are not inventions, but are discoveries. For the human "inventor", they did not come out of nothing at all, but were a harnessing of things that already existed. In the days when our ancestors did not have electricity, mobile phones or e-mail, the potential for such things were all still latent in the world around them - they just had not been harnessed.

The Big Question

So, is that all just luck? Our "gratitude" is misplaced - a false emotion? We should just be saying, "that's a stroke of fortune"? It is just a wonderful coincidence that such "blessings" (wrong word again!) just "happen" to exist?

Such things are reasons why it's impossible to be a consistent atheist. To have to attribute these things, and many more besides, just to happy coincidence. Let's call it the "good-luck-of-the-gaps" explanation - denying the reality of God, who made all these things for our pleasure and his glory, we have to write off huge areas of human life as being mere fortune. An appeal to "luck", though, is not an actual explanation - it is a confession of ignorance. "Luck" is not a cause or a mechanism - it is a philosophical abstraction. Luck is not a person or mind, and cannot actually do anything.

Such things as the above also make it hard to be an inconsistent theist. By that I mean, acknowledging in our minds the reality of God, but failing to give him thanks or worship with our lives. Technology depends upon minds - human minds which piece it all together, understand it, and manufacture the wonderful little gadgets that result. Much more fundamentally, though, technology depends upon a divine mind. A divine mind, that constructed the creation where all those possibilities have lain latent until a spark of inspiration moved the human inventor to harness them. The enormous potential in the material world for technology speaks clearly of a divine mind behind it. A mind that made it all, and made us so that we might discover and harness it - and give him the praise. We, unless we totally refuse to think about these things, have a corresponding and correct sense that we ought to direct our gratitude and praise somewhere. That's a sense which shouldn't be suppressed, but yielded to.

Much better to live as a convinced worshipper. Or as the Psalmist wrote, 3000 years ago:

O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.

When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet:

All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field;

The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.

O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!

(Psalm 8)