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Watching this debate between Alister McGrath and Christopher Hitchens I noticed that McGrath pulled out a quote from CS Lewis that I've seen him use before.

It goes something like this: I believe in the Sun not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.

McGrath's Christianity leads to a whole worldview which helps him understand and make sense of the world. Ok. So what? Should Ahmed stand up and say "I believe in Islam because by its teachings, I see everything else."? Should some JW stand up and say they believe in the Watchtower Society because by its teachings he sees everything else? Successful religions usually offer a worldview through which their adherents see and make sense of the world. The problem I have with this is that if these worldviews are based on myth, and superstition, then the way in which they influence their adherents to view the world may well be destructive, or counterproductive.

When I was a teenager it was patently obvious to me that the Soviet Union and the United States were the powers that represented the sides of the Antichrist, and God, respectively, and that Armageddon was inevitable, in the form of nuclear warfare between the two powers. I thought that the end-times prophecies fit the circumstances of the Cold War so well that this was simply beyond dispute. Through my church's theology and prophecies I saw the world. And I was wrong. Other good examples of people seeing the world falsely because they see it through the lens of their religion's worldview include things like that AIDS was put on Earth by God to punish homosexuality. I submit to you all that to the likes of Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, this judgment is/was patently obvious.

I find that the essence of McGrath's justification for his Christian beliefs is fundementally utilitarian. He thinks it gives him a positive worldview, and that's as good a justification for it as he requires.

This is an interesting "debate" to watch, but in fact they seem to talk past each other the whole time. They don't ever, at least during their main speech portions, address each others' arguments, they each just deliver the same message that they usually do. I've seen Hitchens give almost exactly the same speech several times before, to several different audiences, and I've seen McGrath make the same points he makes here, in other interviews I've seen with him on YouTube or Google videos. He used a lot of the same stuff in his discussion with Dawkins during the making of "Root of All Evil".

Sethbag, You describe having some religious ideas about the end of the world which were wrong. The world showed you that. The process of seeing the world through a religious belief is not a one way street where beliefs get to dictate the process. The world talks back. Not all religious ideas help understand the world. When Lewis says the world is illuminated he means that the speak back from the world is for him confirming his faith. Now it would not be suprising if there were spots t that for him the facts of the world demanded adjustments in faith ideas. Those occurances(such as how old is the world) need not disrupt traffic on the two way street.

I can see that for you, or others not believing, the Lewis observation probably does not create a lot of pressure to believe in God.

Some atheists have become frustrated with what they felt were shortcomings in the descriptive capabilities of a nonspiritual world view and shifted to faith. I understand that was Mcgraths path. Of course we have heard of believers who change the opposite way.

Either way I hope people keep thinking.

huckelberry wrote:Sethbag, You describe having some religious ideas about the end of the world which were wrong. The world showed you that. The process of seeing the world through a religious belief is not a one way street where beliefs get to dictate the process. The world talks back. Not all religious ideas help understand the world. When Lewis says the world is illuminated he means that the speak back from the world is for him confirming his faith. Now it would not be suprising if there were spots t that for him the facts of the world demanded adjustments in faith ideas. Those occurances(such as how old is the world) need not disrupt traffic on the two way street.

I can see that for you, or others not believing, the Lewis observation probably does not create a lot of pressure to believe in God.

Some atheists have become frustrated with what they felt were shortcomings in the descriptive capabilities of a nonspiritual world view and shifted to faith. I understand that was Mcgraths path. Of course we have heard of believers who change the opposite way.

Either way I hope people keep thinking.

At the risk of back-patting, I say Bravo.

Huck, yes, there is feedback from the world. The problem is that often a person won't accept that the world is telling them that their worldview was wrong. They'll make excuses, rationalize things away, etc.

It's just like when the JWs made their first prediction that the world would end on a certain day. That day came and went, and the world was still going. The world was telling them that they were wrong. That's OK, they made some adjustments and came up with a new date. That date came and went, and they made some more adjustments, etc. Now they don't make predictions about the end of the world anymore, and have come up with a new way of interpreting some of their past predictions that sidestep the natural conclusion that they were wrong. For example, JWs now will tell you that Christ actually did return in 1914, in some sense - it's just that his coming wasn't how a lot of people had imagined it would look like.

This whole issue, actually, of how people process and interpret the feedback from the world with respect to the interpretations of the world that they derive from their religious worldview, plays out pretty dramatically in a lot of areas.

For example, early LDS leaders perceived the world in essentially young-earth Creationist ways. Adam and Eve were real, historical figures, just a few thousand years before, Noah's Flood had really happened on a global scale, etc. The world has since provided us with feedback on these beliefs, in the form of physical evidence and the kinds of investigation and interpretation to properly understand the evidence. Now we know that the world is very old, that there were no Adam and Eve a few thousand years ago who were the first homo sapiens, and that no global flood almost wiped out humanity four or five thousand years ago. How do people react? By realizing that their worldview was fundamentally flawed? In some cases, like my own, yes, but in most cases I'd say no. People either reject the evidence, or rationalize the contradiction, saying it's not important and sweeping it under the rug.

So I agree that the world gives feedback that should help people weed out falsehood and error from their worldviews, but the very nature of religious belief, emphasis on "faith" in things insupportable by evidence, and emotional investment in the group, all make it very difficult for this feedback to have its proper effect on a great many people.

Sethbag wrote:I find that the essence of McGrath's justification for his Christian beliefs is fundementally utilitarian. He thinks it gives him a positive worldview, and that's as good a justification for it as he requires.

This is an interesting "debate" to watch, but in fact they seem to talk past each other the whole time. They don't ever, at least during their main speech portions, address each others' arguments, they each just deliver the same message that they usually do. I've seen Hitchens give almost exactly the same speech several times before, to several different audiences, and I've seen McGrath make the same points he makes here, in other interviews I've seen with him on YouTube or Google videos. He used a lot of the same stuff in his discussion with Dawkins during the making of "Root of All Evil".

Perhaps in this debate, you're right: McGrath does sound a bit utilitarian. And, I agree, they do seem to be talking past one another at several points.

Still, it's clear that Hitchens utterly rejects a priori some foundational Christian beliefs (e.g., original sin, and, I would say, theological determinism--a belief with which I think McGrath would disagree [but, I don't think Lewis would]), which is certainly Hitchens's right (as McGrath makes clear).

I think McGrath's main problem is that he rejects determinism, and yet wants to uphold belief in the God of the Old Testament. Thus, he's at least somewhat vulnerable to Hitchens's critiques of so-called Old Testament atrocities. The "so-called" is purely descriptively-utilitarian here rather than pejorative.

My point is that, insofar as McGrath rejects ultimate determinism--be it theological, psychological, physiological, quantum (all of which are, if true, mutually inclusive, I'd say)--he rejects a thoroughgoing Christian worldview. But, then, I am speaking as a thoroughgoing determinist. A determinist who fully admits that Christian theology is violent, ugly, and totalizing.

I guess I'm a fundamentalist in that regard.

Chris

Chris, would you mind expounding a little bit more on what you are calling determinism in the religious context? I'd very much like to understand all of what you said in your previous post, but I'm struggling to do so.

Sethbag wrote:Chris, would you mind expounding a little bit more on what you are calling determinism in the religious context? I'd very much like to understand all of what you said in your previous post, but I'm struggling to do so.

Hey Seth--

I should say up front (and should have said in my earlier post) that McGrath has forgotten more about Christian theology than I'll probably ever learn: I think the man is brilliant. Moreover, he strikes me as genuinely winsome and engaging.

In one sense, my critique of McGrath is quite narrow, at least in terms of intra-Christian discussion. I wouldn't for a moment want to suggest that he is not genuinely a "real" Christian, which is what I think might possibly be inferred from my post above. I didn't--and don't--mean that, so my apologies for being unclear at that point.

I'll try to sketch out what I was thinking last night...

From McGrath's first comments (re: extremist violence):

"But is it God who is doing this?

...

Clearly, a very important question here is how we know what God is like. Can you imagine God saying, 'Go and do violence to someone?' Well, I think that some could, quite easily. But, I speak from a specific perspective, namely that of a Christian theologian; and for Christianity, the identity, the nature of God is disclosed in Jesus of Nazareth."

I'm one of those who easily can because I've read the Old Testament:

This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. (1st Sam 15:2-3)

So as not to cloud the issue, I'm here assuming (for the sake of the discussion) that Old Testament reliably relates the interactions of Israel's God with his people. At the very least, readers of Old Testament are assumed to believe this.

My point is simply that, in the interest of full disclosure, I think McGrath should have at least mentioned and commented, even in rudimentary fashion, on Old Testament texts like 1 Samuel 15.2-3.

But, he doesn't. Hitchens, therefore, is perfectly right to point out (as he does) that the Judeo-Christian God does command--or, at least, has commanded--violence. This is a non-debatable point, if one accepts Old Testament as sacred scripture. McGrath doesn't deal with the force of Hitchens's critique head-on at this point and he probably should have. (That said, this was, admittedly, a very, very short debate and not much more than broad positions could be sketched by either participant.)

When McGrath extols the non-violent aspect of Christ's ministry on earth, and makes wide application of his example, I am completely on-board with him and agree without reservation. (See, if you're interested, Walter Wink's wonderful little study, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way [Fortress Press].)

But, this isn't the whole story. New Testament is also clear that Jesus will return in violence--with a metaphorical sword protruding from his mouth (symbolizing judgment). And traditional Christian theology has identified Jesus with Israel's God (see, if interested, Bishop N.T. Wright's massive, multi-volume work beginning with The New Testament and the People of God.

What is at stake in ignoring or glossing over Jesus' identification with the sometimes-violent God of Old Testament is this: without this identification, everyone can admire and respect Jesus. It takes no imagination whatsoever to realize that, in general, people will like a moral teacher who teaches good ethics and exudes compassion. What's not to like? McGrath in no way whatsoever denies the deity of Christ, but other folks (perhaps like yourself, I don't know) do; and yet they still like the man Jesus all the same.

McGrath believes that Christ's compassionate, non-judgmental, non-violent example is normative for Christians. I completely agree. Christianity is--or, at least, should be--utterly in keeping with Christ's mode of existence in his incarnation. There is no wiggle room here.

But, again, this isn't the whole story. To downplay God's violence (and, by extension, per a traditional Christian worldview, in some sense, Jesus Christ's violence) is to minimize controversy while increasing confusion about who God(=Jesus) is.

An intervening anecdote.

Yesterday, I was discussing theology with a friend at work. She attends a local Baptist church and I like her (and her husband, a completely uninterested agnostic) quite a bit. For some reason, we were discussing the identification of Jesus as God. At some point, she said, "Well, there's God [her hand held high in a measuring gesture] and then there's another [her hand dropping a bit; referring to Jesus]." In something akin to dismayed bemusement, I thought, "Goodness! Amanda's a Nestorian." [That is, she's an unfashionably-late, c. fourth-century, Christian heretic.]

At any rate, my point is that, if we are to view Jesus as God, then we have to admit that Jesus is the God of the Old Testament. I mean this in a traditionally-orthodox, trinitarian Christian sense--not in an LDS Christ=Jehovah sense.

The cost of ignoring this is an unwarranted bifurcation of Jesus's identity. In for a penny, in for a pound, so to speak.

I'm losing steam here, Seth. The conclusion must await another post: more to come.

Chris