Living in Cyberspace

Thanks Andy S for pointing out this fascinating, mind-blowing, slightly scary video. Just over a decade on from William Gibson, it seems we are all living in cyberspace...

Truth and Revelation 2

Following on from yesterday, here is the post I intended to put up then. The main thing I want to get across is how readily truth claims about the gospel are dismissed without any investigation because of the prevailing pluasibilitystructure of society. But also how dangerous it is for Christians to accept the truth claims of the gospel without investigation just because it is the prevailing plausibility structure in their environment. That leads to faith without foundation, which may prove to be fatally weak under challenge, and in which a person will never actively take responsibility for their own growth in Christ.

As I say below:  Dismissal without investigation is intellectual suicide. It is the chief aim of spin, and it is not worthy of us. But neither is unthinking, baseless acceptance. 

Truth and Revelation

Our contention is that knowledge and truth are both vitally important and actually possible, precisely because God is there and is not silent on questions like these. He is knowable because of revelation. Therefore no discussion about truth is possible without discussion about revelation. Revelation is the guarantor of truth. It is crucial to maintain in the public arena that the exact claim of the Bible is that God, the creator of all, the person who made everything, speaks. He reveals Himself. He may be known. He may be known about but may also be known personally. He invites people into a relationship with himself.

Contained in that contention is the idea that God is the creator. He created the universe, but he also created and defined value, knowledge and meaning and he speaks those things. What relativism says cannot be known, the Bible says God reveals. What contemporary theory says is impossible – namely communication – the Bible says God does faultlessly. He communicates Himself. He speaks. And He came, personally, and spoke.

Saying this we commit the ultimate heresy for the postmodernist: claims to certainty. We will be accused of arrogance, but we are not arrogant. It isn't arrogance to bear witness to truth. We do not claim that we are great and wise, but that God has come and spoken. In fact it is the opposite of arrogance. We claim we know nothing because of ability in ourselves, but only because of one outside ourselves before whom we are humbled.

The plausibility structure of our society is such that people want to dismiss this claim without ever investigating it. It just can't be true, can it? It isn't easy to break into this mindset. Perhaps the most we can do in the short term is raise dissatisfaction with relativism and challenge people to think about another possibility for knowledge – revelation.

I think the best way to do this is to show that there is literally no meaning in relativism. If you take any defining relativistic statement and apply it to itself then it doesn't work on its own terms. Most crudely the statement that "all truth is relative" is nonsensical. Literally there is no sense in it because it is only ever self-refuting.

And then to point out that the reason people unthinkingly accept relativism is because of the plausibility structure. They are not thinking for themselves, but are being led to dismiss God without investigation and accept relativism without reservation. Led along like the crowd applauding the naked emperor. Dismissal without investigation is intellectual suicide. It is the chief aim of spin, and it is not worthy of us. It's time to reveal that the emperor has no clothes.

Darwins Rottweiller preaches again!

When I was a boy I looked to God. And then I was introduced to Charles Darwin. I realised that if such a simple theory could explain so much. I reasoned it could explain everything! I became an atheist.

In the third episode of The Genius of Darwin Richard Dawkins turns once more on the ranks of religious fundamentalists who disagree with him despite having made at least two big steps of faith in his extrapolation that evolution could explain everything and secondly to become an atheist. Dawkins is reasonable, we are unreasonable. End of story.Dawkins meets John Mackay who challenges him for having faith since evolution in unobservable in a human lifetime, or even the time since Darwin.

"The refusal to believe in anything you can't see is absurd" says Dawkins.

In America Dawkins enjoys being a rockstar and when asked if he's religious quips 'do I look religious?' before he descends to high-brow argument by reading his hate mail. His crusade against the condemnation of children to ignorance continues. He's accused of being a closed minded censor of arguments and differing views... to which he says they're blind to the beauty of the evolution of the reptile jaw! And then on to the evidence in DNA and scare tactics 'would you let this man teach your children science...' he says of Nick Cowan.

It's not that I mind Dawkins getting a hearing -  I find him quite entertaining really as he takes moral highground over everyone who differs from him repeating again and again 'Evolution is a fact.' and like a modernist Dinosaur in a supposed postmodern age...

'Somethings are just true. They're not a matter of opinion'

The leaps of Darwin and Dawkins from evolutionary thinking to anti-God determination reveal their presuppositions. He berates multicultural Britain for defending faith views and avoiding offence in the classroom by not forcing children to believe Darwinism. He says people should see evidence and evaluate it. I'd agree.  The teacher says we believe it because we're scientists and so evidentialists. But, Dawkins says - no it's not because you're a scientist it's because of the evidence. The prof is seriously blind to his presuppositions. A brief anti-Relativism rant helpful 'it's a pretentious cop-out'. before he cites his creed again: Evolution is the plain truth, you don't decide to accept it or not, it just is.

Dawkins is a preacher who sermonises his audiences with statement after statement, rather than putting together persuasives arguments. He does the same things that most of those he picks to argue with do, and shuts down debate.

In considering Darwin he reveals the original evolutionist's hatred of Christian doctrines, particularly of hell. A doctrine that one who isn't a Chritian has a vested interest in trying to demolish. It's hear that the underlying issues become clear (if they weren't already) - he can't settle for a God & Science combination because God must be eliminated and excluded not just science advanced. Moderation wont do for the professor.

Dawkins says the central doctrines of Darwinism declare of relatedness to everything and proudly boast that our ancestors were winners. This consoled Charles Darwin in suffering - though what comfort is it to know your children are being culled by evolution, dying young as failures...

The alternative is the Christian view that there is a God to whom we can relate who will accept the humble. Darwinism is the religion of the proud, Christianity of the humbled.