100 Sermon Illustrations on Skepticism

It is foolish to claim that present scientific knowledge is all there is to know, and that spiritual matters are rubbish simply because existing science cannot explain them. Stranger things than ghosts exist. Or, to be more precise, things that we accept as commonplace, such as radio communication, would have seemed, to our ancestors, every bit as strange and surprising as spirits. As Arthur C. Clarke, the distinguished science-fiction writer and evangelist for the limitless power of science and technology, has said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Examples of dogmatic skeptics gone wrong:

• William Thomson, the first Lord Kelvin, was one of the most distinguished and influential of nineteenth-century British physicists. He was a thorn in Darwin’s side because he “proved,” with massive authority but, as we now know, equally massive error, that the earth was too young for evolution to have occurred. He is also credited with the following three confident predictions:

° “Radio has no future,”

° “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible,”

° “X-rays will prove to be a hoax.”

Here was a man who took skepticism to the point where he courted — and earned — the ridicule of future generations.

•When Edison announced that he was working on a project to develop electric light, a British Parliamentary Commission was set up to investigate whether there was anything in the idea. The committee of experts reported that the idea (what we now call the electric light bulb) was “good enough for our transatlantic friends … but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men.”

• On airplanes:

° The American astronomer Simon Newcomb was unwise enough to remark, only shortly before the Wright brothers’ famous exploit: “The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which men shall fly long distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be.”

° Another noted American astronomer, William Henry Pickering, categorically stated that, although heavier-than-air flying machines were possible (he had to say that because the Wright brothers had by then already flown), they could never be a serious practical proposition: “The popular mind often pictures gigantic flying machines speeding across the Atlantic and carrying innumerable passengers in a way analogous to our modern steamships. … It seems safe to say that such ideas must be wholly visionary, and even if a machine could get across with one or two passengers the expense would be prohibitive… Another popular fallacy is to expect enormous speed to be obtained.” Pickering goes on to “prove,” by means of authoritative calculations on the effects of air resistance, that airplanes could never travel faster than the express trains of his day.

These stories are, indeed, awful warnings of the dangers of an overzealous skepticism.

Skeptics don't need arguments so much as they need to hear what Jesus has done for us personally.

William Barclay tells a story about how, at the turn of the century, Thomas Huxley, the great agnostic, was attending a party at a country mansion. Rich people do parties different than us - the guests stayed for several days. Sunday came around, and most of the guests prepared to go to church.

Very naturally, Huxley did not get ready. Instead, he approached a man known to have a simple and radiant Christian faith. Huxley said to him, “Suppose you don't go to church today. Suppose you stay at home and you tell me quite simply what your Christian faith means to you and why you are a Christian.”

“But,” said the man, “you could demolish my arguments in an instant. I'm not clever enough to argue with you.” Huxley said gently: “I don't want to argue with you. I just want you to tell me simply what this Christ means to you.”

The man stayed at home and told Huxley most simply of his faith. When he had finished there were tears in the great agnostic's eyes. “I would give my right hand if only I could believe that.”

It was not clever argument that touched Huxley's heart, but the simple story of a man's faith. The best argument is to say to people, “Come and see!”

We can build bridges to people who believe that truth is different for everyone. SIDEBAR: resources that answer challenges to Christianity.

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[A succinct summary of the varieties of Skepticism]

Briefly stated, a skeptic is one who is willing to question any claim to truth, asking for clarity in definition, consistency in logic, and adequacy of evidence. The use of skepticism is thus an essential part of objective scientific inquiry and the search for reliable knowledge. Skepticism provides powerful tools of criticism in all areas of thought.

It is thought to be exceedingly difficult to apply it to ordinary life or to live consistently with its principles. For human beings seek certitudes to guide them, and the skeptical mode is often viewed with alarm by those who hunger for faith and conviction. When people demand definite answers to their queries, skepticism always seems to give them further questions to ponder. Skeptics are considered dangerous because they question the reigning orthodoxies, the shibboleths and hosannas of any age.

Skeptics always bid those overwhelmed by Absolute Truth or Special Virtue to pause. They ask, “What do you MEAN?” – seeking clarification and definition – and “WHY do you believe what you do?” – demanding reasons, evidence, justification, or proof. Like natives of Missouri, they say, “Show me.”

Skepticism is ESSENTIAL to the quest for knowledge; for it is in the seedbed of puzzlement that genuine inquiry takes root. Without skepticism, we may remain mired in unexamined belief systems that are accepted as sacrosanct yet have no factual basis in reality.

There are various kinds of skepticism:

NIHILISM

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Total Negative Skepticism, the most extreme form. It is a complete rejection of all claims to truth or value. This kind of skepticism is mired in unlimited doubt, from which it never emerges. Knowledge is not possible, total skeptics aver. There is no certainty, no reliable basis for convictions, no truth at all. Total skeptics end up in utter subjectivity. Nihilistic skepticism has also been used in ethics with devastating results. Here the total skeptic is a complete relativist, subjectivist, and emotivist. “What is “good” or “bad,” “right” or “wrong,” varies among individuals and societies.

This kind of total skepticism is self-contradictory; for in affirming that no knowledge is possible, these skeptics have already made an assertion.

NEUTRAL SKEPTICISM

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Neutral skeptics neither affirm nor deny anything. The ancient pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Cratylus (c. 428- c. 348 B.C.) was overwhelmed by the fact that everything is changing, including our own phenomenological worlds of experience; and he therefore concluded that it is impossible to communicate knowledge or to fully understand anyone. According to legend, Cratylus refused to discuss anything with anyone and, since it was pointless to reply, only wiggled his finger when asked a question. [His skepticism is said to have been so extreme that he refused to answer questions and would only wave a weary finger at his interlocutor to indicate that truth was so elusive and ephemeral that it would be useless to reply. – William Grey, Skeptical Inquirer, Spring 1994, page 291.]

The neutral state of suspension of belief, now known as Pyrrhonism, was defended by Pyrrho of Elis and had a great impact on the subsequent development of skepticism. It applied primarily to philosophical and metaphysical question, where one is uncertain about what is ultimately true about reality, but it put aside questions of ordinary life, where convention and custom prevail. This form of skepticism also degenerates into nihilism, for in denying any form of knowledge it can lead to despair.

MITIGATED SKEPTICISM

====================

The above skepticisms are contrary to the demands of life. David Hume came up with mitigated skepticism, which questions our ability to discover ultimate truth but develops viable generalizations about life and our ability to make choices. Morality is contingent on the sentiments of men and women who agree to abide by social convention in order to satisfy their multifarious desires as best they can.

UNBELIEF

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Often confused with skepticism but distinct: one is the REFLECTIVE conviction that certain claims are unfounded or untrue, and hence not believable, and this seems a reasonable posture to take; the other is the negative a priori rejection of a belief without a careful examination of the grounds of that belief. Critics call this latter form of skepticism “dogmatism.” The word UNBELIEF is usually applied in religion, the paranormal, and the occult.

Reflective unbelievers find the language of transcendence basically unintelligible, even meaningless, and that is why they say they are skeptics. Or, more pointedly, if they have examined the arguments adduced historically to prove the existence of God, they find them invalid, hence unconvincing. They find the so-called appeals to experience unwarranted: neither mysticism nor the appeal to miracles or revelation establishes the existence of transcendental realities. Moreover, they maintain that morality is possible without a belief in God. Unbelievers are critics of supernaturalistic claims, which they consider superstition. Indeed, they consider the God hypothesis to be without merit, a fanciful creation of human imagination that does not deserve careful examination by emancipated men and women.

These skeptics are no longer open-minded inquirers, but debunkers. They are convinced that they have the Non-Truth, which they affirm resolutely, and in doing so they may slam shut the door to further discoveries.

SKEPTICAL INQUIRY

=================

In this form, inquiry rather than doubt is the motivation. It is also called the New Skepticism, although it has emerged in the contemporary world as an outgrowth of pragmatism. A key difference between this and earlier forms of skepticism is that it is POSITIVE and CONSTRUCTIVE. It is basically a form of methodological skepticism, for here skepticism is an essential phase of the process of inquiry; but it does not and need not lead to unbelief, despair, or hopelessness. This skepticism is not total, but is limited to the context under inquiry. Hence we may call it selective or contextual skepticism, for one need not doubt everything at the same time, but only certain questions in the limited context of investigation.

The new skepticism is not dogmatic, for it holds that we should never by "a priori" rejection close the door to any kind of responsible investigation. Pyrrhonistic skepticism is today invalidated, because there now exists a considerable body of reliable knowledge. Accordingly, it is meaningless to cast all claims to truth into a state of utter doubt.

Religious claims, using biblical criticism, the sciences of archaeology, linguistics, and history, have today given us a basis for skeptical criticism of the appeals to revelation and theories of special creation.

We have long since transcended cultural relativism in values and norms and are beginning to see the emergence of a global society. Thus extreme cultural subjectivity is no longer valid, for there is a basis for transcultural values. There is also a body of tested prima facie ethical principles and rules that may be generalizable to all human communities.

Doubt plays a vital role in the context of ongoing inquiry. It should, however, be selective, not unlimited, and contextual, not universal. We should not make absolute assertions but be willing to admit that we may be mistaken. Our knowledge is based upon probabilities, which are reliable, not ultimate certainties or finalities.

The key principle of skeptical inquiry is to seek, when feasible, adequate evidence and reasonable grounds for any claim to truth in any context.

–––––––––

Paul Kurtz is the founding Chairman of CSICOP and professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

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[A Skeptic's views on Biblical prophecy and the millennium]

Millennium hysteria has been with humankind for a long time, but when it is combined with doomsday prophecies, the result can be a dangerous flight from reason. The following was adapted from the opening address at the Second World Skeptics Congress held in Heidelberg, Germany.

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Is the world about to end? Are we living in the last days of civilization? Will the human species and the planet Earth be engulfed in fire storms, earthquakes, floods, or be destroyed by the impact of an asteroid? As we approach the year 2000 we are surrounded by prophets of doom who predict that terrible disasters await us. Obviously the year 2000 has special significance in these scenarios, for it marks the beginning of a new millennium. The year 2000 and the years soon thereafter seem to be the deadline for many end-time prophets. But we may ask: Does the new millennium start January 1, 2000 or 2001? The calendar we use begins at year 1 instead of 0 -- for a zero was left out in the transition from b.c. to a.d. Thus, a century does not begin with a double-zero year, but ends with it. If this is the case, the new century and millennium begin with an 01-year, not an 00-year.

But it is not clear that 2001 is the beginning of the new millennium, because the Western world measures it by the birth of Jesus Christ. But many Biblical scholars agree that we know very little if anything about him, though many believe that he was actually born four to six years before the year a.d. If this is the case, the third millennium might already may have begun in 1996, not in 2000!

The millennium is actually a human creation of our culture, an arbitrary date in eternity. Why it should be of special significance is muddled, aside from its religious meaning or cultural bias.

Most non-Christian cultures in the world do not measure the calendar by the date of Christ's birth. The Chinese year in 1998 is 4696, the Hebrew calendar 5760. For the Muslims, the calendar begins in 622 a.d., when Muhammad went from Mecca to Medina, and 1998 is actually the year 1420. It is 6236 according to the ancient Egyptian calendar, 2749 for the Babylonian, 2544 for the Buddhist, 5119 for the Mayan great cycle, and 2753 according to the old Roman calendar.

The Gregorian calendar was first initiated by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, replacing the Roman Julian calendar of Julius Caesar, which was ten days different from today's. After the decline of Rome, Britain celebrated New Year's Eve on December 25th -- until William the Conqueror changed New Year's to January 1, 1066, the date of his coronation. Britain subsequently changed it to March 25th, and later to accord with other countries. The French desired Easter Sunday to be New Year's Day. For the Chinese, New Year's Day is at the end of February.1

Thus, January 1, 2000 or 2001 is really a meaningless non-event -- an expression of Western socio-cultural prejudice, of no special significance in the nature of things.

Secular Doomsday Prophecies

Nonetheless, there is a perennial concern for the future. Human beings always wish to peer ahead and know what will ensue tomorrow or next year or in the next century. Many of these interests are based on expectations of a better and more promising world. But there are often predictions of gloom, and great apprehension.

Three kinds of forecasts may be distinguished among the Doomsday prophecies. First, secular predictions. We recently enjoyed a period of great economic optimism, as stock markets, at least in Europe and America, soared. The bulls dashed forward with rosy forecasts. There was sustained technological scientific expansion. Some people even predicted a long boom in which the economic cycle had been overcome. This was based on new industries: telecommunications and the information revolution, biogenetic research, and space technologies. Under this scenario the bulls predicted that Germany and France would overcome their recession, unemployment would be solved, the Asian and Russian economic slump would become a thing of the past, and gross domestic products would continue to expand as prosperity gains. This scenario was one of unlimited horizons. By contrast, the bears focus on the negative: The year-2000 computer bug will wreak havoc everywhere, they warn, oil shortages will appear, either deflation will overcome us or inflation will re-ignite, and the Dow-Jones stock exchange average will plummet from 9,300 to 3,000 in a short period of time. Here the pessimists prevail. Following the scenario of the Dutch Tulip bubble bust, crowd psychology rules the day, as the public is engulfed first by the fervor of speculative binge and then by pessimistic forecasts of doom. One may ask: whose prophecy of the future will prevail -- the optimists, pessimists, or neither?

Another key source of present doomsday scenarios is science fiction, in which the future is unusually bleak: either Big Brother will emerge, or complete anarchy will prevail. Science projects doomsday asteroids or comets striking the earth. Deep Impact and Armageddon, two Hollywood movies, arouse fear and terror, and Jurassic Park brings back the dinosaurs to devour us.

Probably the most frightening secular prognostications are environmental scenarios of runaway population growth and devastating ecological pollution.

Many of these forecasts are not end-of-the-world predictions, but they illustrate the difficulties of making long-range extrapolations. Of course there are real dangers -- from environmental damage to nuclear war -- and we need to be aware of them and to take rational precautions; for example, global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer. I am surely not denying that there are genuine problems that need to be seriously addressed. But not too long ago we were warned that the world would be overtaken by famine, that hundreds of millions -- even billions -- of people would starve to death, and that the cities and countrysides would be teeming with swollen bellies. Contrary to expectations, India and other impoverished countries have managed to increase their food production, and while there are famines in Africa, the predicted worldwide famine has not occurred.

Demographers told us only a decade ago that population growth would increase exponentially and that there was no way to stop it. By the year 2000, they said, there would be seven billion inhabitants on the earth, and by 2020, 15 billion or more. But, in many parts of the world, there has been a significant decrease in the rate of population growth; and the extreme projections for 2020 are most likely exaggerated.

Some ecologists maintained only twenty years ago that by 1980 the atmosphere would be so polluted that we would need to wear gas masks year-round -- not even in Los Angeles has this occurred! They warned that many of our lakes and waterways would be so despoiled that all of their fish and plant life would be destroyed. The Great Lakes, they said, would be totally dead. President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 visited the Buffalo River in western New York and ignited it with a match. Massive efforts to clean it up followed. There has been a noticeable increase in the fish harvest in Lake Erie, and the lake seems to be coming back. Ecologists have warned that we would deplete our natural resources and run out of oil, gas, and other fossil fuels in the near future. In the long run they are probably correct, but new resources have been discovered and new sources of energy developed.

A frenzied phobia of the unknown surrounds the additives and chemical wastes of modern technological society. There is fear of cancer-causing agents; everything from fluoride to sugar has been claimed to be noxious.

We have been told by successive Cassandras that the imminent collapse of major banks would bring down the entire world financial system, that galloping inflation was uncontrollable, and that we were on the verge of a depression that would change the face of society. No doubt we will continue to experience recessions, possibly even depressions, in the future. Marx predicted armageddon for the capitalist system. Millions of pessimists are still waiting for that to occur. They think every recession will lead to a worldwide economic collapse. Interestingly, George Orwell's 1984 has arrived and passed and our freedoms are still intact, much to everyone's surprise.

Overhanging all of this is the sword of Damocles -- nuclear energy. Nuclear fears engulfed large sectors of society. Anything related to radiation was considered diabolical. In many countries the public shrinks in terror at the thought of the opening of new nuclear power plants. The greatest fear of all is the fear of a thermonuclear holocaust. We are admonished on all sides that death stares us in the face and that some miscalculation would inevitably trigger a worldwide nuclear war. The results, we were told, will be a nuclear winter and the near extinction of all life on this planet. This was the Age of Anxiety par excellence.

Pessimists become angry at realists who think that civilization and the human species are likely to muddle through periodic crises and mini-crises but still survive these end-of-the-world forecasts. I am only advising that we place them in a balanced perspective. But to say this infuriates those who are convinced that our whole universe will collapse. In one film Woody Allen worried about what modern astronomers have to say about the cosmos, that there are two ultimate possibilities: either the universe will expand into infinity, cool down, and die, or eventually collapse into itself like an accordion.

For many the Apocalypse seems to be almost a wish fulfillment. The mundane world lacks the drama that a fertile apocalyptic imagination produces.

Religious Doomsday Prophecies

A second area for Doomsday scenarios are religiously based. Indeed, we today find hundreds of millions of people who interpret the world primarily through a biblical lens and see their own end-of-the-word scenarios. Much of this is based on the Book of Daniel of the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation of the New Testament. But their vision is far more terrifying than anything that mere secularists can dream up, because it is all part of God's plan of punishment for sinners. And it is imminent. Moreover, only a small portion of suffering humanity will be saved from it. Several Protestant sects, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, have held apocalyptic theologies in the past.

Today the message that fundamentalist prophets are preaching is one of a millennial Armageddon. They are truly convinced that we are living in "the last days," and they view earthquake tremors, wars, and rumors of war as signs of the impending apocalyptic disaster. The last great battle of Armageddon is approaching, we are warned. Indeed, this generation, many of them insist, is the last generation, and this was all foretold in the Old and New Testaments. Jesus said: "I tell you this: the present generation will live to see it all" (Matt. 24:34-35, New English Bible). And "Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled" (Matt. 24:34, King James Version). Many of Jesus' disciples believed that his admonitions applied to his own generation in the first century a.d. That prophecy did not come true for the early Christians, and almost 2000 years have since passed. We were told by Pat Robertson, Hal Lindsey, David Koresh, Harold Camping, Edgar C. Whisenant, and other evangelists that the generation referred to is ours. Even President Ronald Reagan was quoted as saying in the 1980s: "You know, I turn back to your ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself considering if we're the generation that is going to see that come about. I don't know if you noted any of those prophecies lately but, believe me, they certainly describe the times we're going through."

In his book, The Late Great Planet Earth (a bestseller in the U.S. in past decades), Hal Lindsey claimed that Armageddon is just around the corner. According to biblical prophecies, seven years of terrible tribulation will soon befall mankind. This period is about to begin because the Jewish people after the long Diaspora have finally returned to their ancient homeland in Palestine, which they left after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in a.d. 70. And it is a genuine reality, we are told, because of the establishment of the State of Israel.

Next, Lindsey says, the Israelis will rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Then a whole series of cataclysmic events will trigger the final Armageddon. A great war will ensue. Israel will be invaded from all sides: by a confederacy from the North (which was said to be the Russians), by the Arab nations, and by a great power from the East (which was identified as the Chinese). During the period leading up to these events, there will also emerge a European confederation -- the old Roman Empire, now the European Common Market -- headed by an Antichrist preaching a new religion. These years will witness the greatest devastation that mankind has ever seen. The valleys will flow with blood, cities will be destroyed by torrents of fire and brimstone -- this, it is said, represents a thermonuclear war, World War III, the most awesome holocaust of all time. At that moment, Jesus Christ will return to rescue in rapture those true believers who accept the word. Christ will reign for a thousand years and eventually establish his final kingdom throughout all eternity.

In a series of four new books that have suddenly swept to the top of the bestseller list, millions of people disappear from the face of the earth. The have been snatched from homes and offices, automobiles and airplanes -- all saved by the rapture, which has taken God-fearing Christians to heaven, while the rest of humanity is left behind to suffer the terrible trials and tribulations inflicted by the Antichrist. This is the plot of the fictionalized apocalyptic series, Left Behind, by fundamentalist preacher Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.2 LaHaye ominously forewarns on his Web site that the year 2000 computer problem could trigger a "financial meltdown" as prelude to the world's destruction.

Fears of the "last days," it has been claimed, appeared at the end of the first millennium. Charles Mackay, in his 1841 work, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, depicted the epidemic terror that seized Christendom in the middle of the tenth century, as people expected the last judgment.3 Some said that Mackay's account was pure hyperbole. In any case, the first millennium passed without the destruction of the world! Why should it occur in the second?

Many people in history have believed in the end-of-the-world scenario based on the Bible, and they often thought that it applied to their own age. A graphic illustration is the case of William Miller and his followers in the nineteenth century. Miller, a fundamentalist Protestant preacher from Vermont (and precursor of the Seventh-Day Adventists) studied the Bible carefully. He was convinced that the world would come to an end in his own day, sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. He based his analysis upon a specific biblical passage that draws on the Book of Daniel. "And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed" (Dan. 8:14, King James Version). Miller interpreted "days" as "years." Since the prophecy was dated 457 b.c., the end of the world, he said, would occur two thousand and three hundred years later, in 1843. The Millerite groups -- which numbered in the thousands -- sold their possessions and awaited the final day. But, as we know, nothing happened. When 1843 passed he extended his prediction by another year, but again nothing happened. This forecasting of the end of times has been repeated many times throughout history. The same thing is most likely true, in my judgment, of present-day predictions of Armageddon.

Other religious traditions have prophetic-apocalyptic themes: Buddhism awaits Lord Matrieya, Islam the Madhi; Orthodox Judaism the Messiah; and Native American Indians wish to return to nature as it was before the European invasion. For those who use the Mayan calendar, the world will end in 2012.

It is clear that a state of belief may help create a self-fulfilling or suicidal prophecy. A widely held belief can have profound political and social ramifications, especially if it is held by people in positions of power. Apocalyptic thinking may mean that those who are under its sway will do little or nothing to prevent overwhelming disaster, fatalistically awaiting what is inevitable; or they may so act as to allow it to come true, believing that they are fulfilling divine prophecy. The problem with faith in prophecy is that it can take control of the future out of the hands of those best able to shape it. We are supposedly impotent and helpless creatures awaiting our fate, unable or unwilling to exert any influence to rectify or modify the course of events. The fixation on apocalypse grows out of fear of the unknown, and it is fed by hope for redemption. Often when the prophecy is falsified, the convictions of the believing group are intensified and the prophecies extrapolated.4

In democratic societies we need an informed public capable of wise decisions and without fantasy. We know of the dangers that distorted, apocalyptic, survivalist, conspiratorial, or pseudoscientific ideologies have had on societies.

New Age Doomsday Prophecies

A third kind of doomsday prophecy is that offered by New Age cults. The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and the world skeptics movement have examined a great number of the paranormal claims that are proliferating today from psychics, fortune tellers, seers, and gurus of various kinds. These include the failed predictions of Edgar Cayce, "the Sleeping Prophet," who warned of a massive shifting of the poles in the years 2000-2001. They involve a number of suicide cults, such as the UFO-related "Heaven's Gate" and the French-Swiss-Canadian space-age religion, "The Order of the Solar Temple." They also include the bizarre annihilation agenda of Japan's "Aum Shinrikyo" cult, and the many New Age cults proliferating in Russia today. There are also numerous astrological predictions of disaster due to planetary alignments, such as the so-called "Jupiter Effect." And psychics are now having a field day in their Armageddon prophecies. How many times are those who claim to have precognitive or psychic powers correct in their prophecies? The track record, I submit, is extremely weak. We can and do make predictions about the future based on evidence and rational inference, and often these predictions are reliable. But those made on the basis of mystic power, psychic intuition, or astrological forecasts prove to be no more accurate than anyone's wild guesses. Those who make such claims often fit a prophecy or vision to present circumstances after the fact, or they make the prophecy so general that it can be related to virtually any case. This has been done with the predictions of the ever-popular Nostradamus, the sixteenth-century seer. His quatrains have been read by every generation, including the present one, and his prophecies have been adapted to all sorts of circumstances in every time period. Often what is taken as prophetic is only due to coincidence; events are not preordained and predetermined as the prophetic tradition maintains. The future depends upon our own actions in the given situations. There are no special secret paths to knowledge of the future.

In conclusion, we live in a highly developed scientific and technological society. We face awesome problems. If we are to solve them, we must draw upon the best critical intelligence available. We need to use our rational powers, not abandon them. In free societies anyone is entitled to his convictions. Yet democracy presupposes an educated citizenry. When apocalyptic faith is intermingled with ideology, it can have deleterious social, political, and military consequences. It is at this point that all those committed to skeptical inquiry have an obligation to carefully examine those claims being made about our collective future, whether they are based upon so-called revealed prophecies or not, and to submit them to empirical criticism. There is thus a compelling need for critical examination of the prophecies of doom -- whether secular, religious, or New Age -- for these have serious implications for the world at large. And that is one of the key tasks of this World Skeptics Congress.

Notes

For fuller discussion of this, see Richard Abanes, End-Time Visions: The Road to Armageddon? (New York and London: Four Worlds Eight Windows, 1998).

The four books, all by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, are Left Behind (1995), Tribulation Force (1996), Nicolae (1997), and Soul Harvest (1998), all published by Tyndale House Publishers.

Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (New York: Crown, 1980).

See Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of Modern Groups That Predict the Destruction of the World (New York: Harper and Row, 1956).

About the Author

Paul Kurtz is Chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo.

info@csicop.org (comments), webmaster@csicop.org (web-related problems)

Web site design by Patrick Fitzgerald. Articles and graphics are copyright by CSICOP or their respective copyright holders. Do not redistribute without obtaining permission.

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Skeptical conference looks at the human "belief engine" - how world views are formed. We must always be suspicious of our own experience. (example given of "bending spoons")

Andrew Neher, professor of psychology at Cabrillo College, in Aptos, California, says believers and skeptics often construct their views in similar ways. Each learns from families, friends, different organizations, and the society at large, and each tends to stereotype the other - sometimes members of their own group.

Three Pillars of Modernism.

1) Acceptance of the Natural World and Rejection of the Supernatural.

• The only reality is that which you experience – sensory.

• Miracles are myth.

• The orderliness of nature proves existence of God, but He is no longer

involved with His creation. (Deism, the belief system of the

American founding fathers.)

• More recently, the modern world determined there is no real need of a

God who is not involved in His creation.

2) All of society and human tradition is to be built on reason alone.

• All things can be understood by ways of human reason.

• Personal faith requires no need for revelation.

• Great challenge for the Church is to prove that Christianity is true.

3) Science and education are the preeminent values that produce progress.

• Truth is objective, factual.

• Absolute truth rules the universe apart from God’s intervention:

• More education is the answer to most human problems.

“For the last two centuries, modern thought has assaulted Christianity in the name of reason and in the name of humanism. Christian theology was dismissed as superstition, unworthy of rational, educated human beings. Christian morality was also dismissed as repressive, built around fear and guilt.”

Postmodern Times, Gene E. Veith, page 71.

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"The News From The Cosmos Is Staggeringly Improbable And Theologically Suggestive."

Soon the American Civil Liberties Union, or People For The American Way, or some similar faction of litigious secularism will file suit against NASA, charging that the Hubble Space Telescope unconstitutionally gives comfort to the religiously inclined. For people so inclined, science, especially cosmology, is augmenting, not subverting, the sense of awe that undergirds religious yearnings.

Hubble recently sent back to Earth - to this strangely lush speck in one of perhaps 50 billion galaxies - infrared images of the faintest, most distant galaxies ever seen. They could be more than 1-2 billion times 6 trillion miles away. (That is, 12 billion light-years away, a light-year being the distance light travels in a year - approximately 6 trillion miles, at 186,000 miles per second.)

Someday, if Congress thinks spaciously (thinks of things grander than ethanol subsidies), even better telescopes can peer into the remotest - what? edge? - of the universe and see galaxies being born. Looking deep into space is looking back in time. Hubble may have seen light emitted when the universe was 5 percent of its present age (it is approximately 13 billion years old), light cast by stars materializing in the formless dark that prevailed after the instant of bright light cast by the Big Bang.

Sometime - perhaps half a billion years - after that explosion, the first stars formed and light returned. Abraham Loeb, a theoretical astrophysicist, says, "Suddenly, the universe lit up like a Christmas tree." How? That is an interesting question. Why? That is a really interesting question.

One that interests Gregg Easterbrook in his fascinating, elegant new book, "Beside Still Waters: Searching for Meaning in an Age of Doubt." By noting the relevance of today's astronomers to ancient theologians, he invests the timeless question of life's meaning with distinctly contemporary pertinence.

In the late 1920s astronomy established that numerous galaxies near ours are racing away from us and each other at millions of miles per hour. This, and the fact that the universe is bathed in radiation, suggested that matter and motion originated rather as Genesis suggests, ex nihilo, out of nothing, in a stupendous explosion of light and energy.

For extravagant implausibility, writes Easterbrook, nothing in theology can hold a candle to what science says about the Big Bang. From a pinpoint of compressed potential - "a microscopic, transparent, empty point in primordial space-time" - it sent a cosmos hurtling outward at an unimaginable speed. The forces loosed were - are - remarkably (miraculously?) balanced:

If the Big Bang had been slightly less violent, the expansion of the universe would have been less rapid, and would soon (in a few million years, or a few minutes - in any case, soon) have collapsed back on itself. If the explosion had been slightly more violent, the universe might have dispersed into a soup too thin to aggregate into stars. The odds against us were - this is just the right word - astronomical. The ratio of matter and energy to the volume of space at the Big Bang must have been within about one quadrillionth of 1 percent of ideal.

This good news - that is the meaning of "gospel" - from science suggests, Easterbrook says, "a buoyant view of our being." Life is so improbable it must somehow be favored by something. By some First Cause, "to which," said Aquinas, "everyone gives the name of God."

The idea of purposefulness, an idea that science seemed, for a while, to drain from life, may be making a comeback. Science no longer suggests a meaningless mechanics of mere genes and whirling atoms. If the universe seems to desire life, it is odd to say that life is an automated artifice arising from an accidental cataclysm that was full of sound and fury but signified nothing.

What stance should humanity take toward a poignantly welcoming universe? One of gratitude for life, which begins to look less like a chemical fluke and more like what one Nobel biologist calls "an almost obligatory outcome," given the conditions caused by the First Cause.

At about the time Hubble, one of the world's most advanced scientific instruments, was reporting in, the world's oldest institution was weighing in. In his 13th encyclical, "Fides et Ratio," Pope John Paul II aims to close the "fateful separation" of faith and reason. To that end, he defends reason against its cultured despisers, many of whom are, strange to say, philosophers.

A tenet of fashionable philosophy is that humanity has progressed far enough intellectually to know that intellectual progress has never been possible. That is, truth is unattainable - a chimera, in fact-because all truths are "social constructs," culturally conditioned, etc. Pope John Paul II summons the faithful to the barricades against postmodernism's belief that all truths are merely "perspectival" - matters of points of view.

It may seem that the times are indeed out of joint when it falls to the Bishop of Rome to issue a ringing defense of belief in reason's capacity to encompass the most important truths. But, then, do the world's religions contain tenets more difficult to believe than what science is suggesting about the origin and trajectory of the cosmos?

One of the most impressive results of the "meaningless accident," the "chemical fluke" that produced life was the man who wrote: TAKE BUT DEGREE AWAY, UNTUNE THAT STRING, AND, HARK! WHAT DISCORD follows. Shakespeare was writing about society. What he wrote is even more true of the universe. Take but degree away (see above, the one quadrillionth of 1 percent margin for error), untune THAT string, and what follows is not just discord but eternal entropy and ice. So, what - who? - was the great Tuner?

Science increasingly validates a heartfelt - and rational - "Eureka!" in response to the (literally) cosmic surprise of life. As playwright Tom Stoppard puts it, "The idea of God is slightly more plausible than the alternative proposition that, given enough time, some green slime could write Shakespeare's sonnets." To say no more (but this is saying a lot), what is is staggeringly implausible, and that is theologically suggestive.

A skeptic's viewpoint on why religion "works":

The anthropologist Ruth Benedict first pointed out the common thread of religious practice in all cultures: religion is a technique for success. Ambrose Bierce defined "to pray" as "to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy." People everywhere beseech gods and spirits for recovery from illness, for success in love or on the battlefield, and for good weather. Religion is a desperate measure that people resort to when the stakes are high and they have exhausted the usual techniques for the causation of success - medicines, strategies, courtship, and, in the case of the weather, nothing.

A few years ago, people exploring the caves around Jerusalem made the discovery of a lifetime: an ancient burial site containing the remains of a crucified man.

The find was only one in a series that have overturned a century-old consensus which held that the gospels are almost entirely proclamation, with little, if any, real history.

It turns out the remains belonged to a man who had been crucified in the first century A.D. As Jeffrey Sheler writes in his book "Is The Bible True?", the skeleton confirms what the evangelists wrote about Jesus' death and burial in several important ways.

First, there was the location. Scholars had long doubted the biblical account of Jesus' burial. They believed that crucified criminals were tossed in a mass grave and devoured by wild animals. But this man, a near contemporary of Jesus, was buried in the same way the Bible says that Jesus was.

Then there's the physical evidence from the skeleton. The man's shin bones had been broken, which confirms what John wrote was the practice of the Roman executioners. The Bible tells us that, because He was already dead when the executioners reached him, Jesus was spared this act.

The evidence is especially important since scholars have long dismissed the details of John's Passion narrative -- treating them as theologically-motivated embellishments.

Another account that has been corroborated by archeology is the story of Jesus healing the lame man in John chapter 5. In this story, John describes a five-sided pool just inside Jerusalem's Sheep Gate, where the sick came to be healed. Since no other document from antiquity -- including the rest of the Bible -- mentions such a place, it had long been assumed that John invented the locale.

But, as Sheler points out, when archeologists decided to dig where John said that the pool was located, they found a five-sided pool. What's more, the pool contained shrines to the Greek gods of healing. John hadn't made up the locale, after all.

This dismissing of the biblical text, without bothering to dig, points out the weakness of liberal scholarly opinion: much of the suspicion about biblical texts can only be attributed to prejudice. That is, it's a conclusion arrived at before the facts are all in.

Scholars long assumed that the Bible, like other documents of antiquity, is essentially propaganda. But this prejudice manifests profound ignorance of what Christians believe. Central to faith are history and memory. Christians believe that God has acted, and continues to act, in history. For us, remembering what God has done is an act of worship -- something that brings us closer to God.

Thus, while all these discoveries in the desert may come as a surprise to the skeptics, they're no surprise to believing Christians.

Archeology alone, of course, cannot bring a person to faith, but finds like these offer an eloquent argument for not dismissing the truth of Scripture before the evidence has been examined.

Because, as we are learning, more and more every day, Jesus wasn't kidding when he told us, "the stones will cry out."

___________________

Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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[slightly modified version from March 25, 2002]

"The Stones Cry Out: Archeology Bears Witness To The Gospels"

A few years ago, people exploring caves outside Jerusalem came across the find of a lifetime: an ancient burial cave containing the remains of a crucified man.

This find is only one in a series of finds that overturn a century-old scholarly consensus. That consensus held that the Gospels are almost entirely proclamation, and contain little, if any, real history.

The remains belonged to a man who had been executed in the first century A.D., that is, from the time of Jesus. As Jeffrey Sheler writes in his book IS THE BIBLE TRUE? the skeleton confirms what the evangelists wrote about Jesus' death and burial in several important ways.

First, location -- scholars had long doubted the biblical account of Jesus' burial. They believed that crucified criminals were tossed in a mass grave and then devoured by wild animals. But this man, a near contemporary of Jesus, was buried in the same way the Bible says Jesus was buried.

Then there's the physical evidence from the skeleton. The man's shinbones appeared to have been broken. This confirms what John wrote about the practice of Roman executioners. They would break the legs of the crucified to hasten death, something from which Jesus, already dead, was spared.

This point is particularly noteworthy, since scholars have long dismissed the details of John's Passion narrative as theologically motivated embellishments.

Another part of John's Gospel that archeology has recently corroborated is the story of Jesus healing the lame man in John 5. John describes a five-sided pool just inside the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem where the sick came to be healed. Since no other document of antiquity -- including the rest of the Bible -- mentions such a place, skeptics have long argued that John simply invented the place.

But as Sheler points out, when archeologists decided to dig where John said that the pool had been located, they found a five-sided pool. What's more, the pool contained shrines to the Greek gods of healing. Apparently John didn't make up the pool, after all.

The dismissal of biblical texts without bothering to dig points to a dirty little secret about a lot of scholarly opinion: Much of the traditional suspicion of the biblical text can only be called a prejudice. That is, it's a conclusion arrived at before one has the facts.

Scholars long assumed that the Bible, like other documents of antiquity, was essentially propaganda, what theologian Rudolf Bultmann called "kerygma" or proclamation.

But this prejudice does an injustice to biblical faith. Central to that faith are history and memory. Christians believe that God has acted, and continues to act, in history. For us, remembering what God has done is an act of worship -- something that brings us closer to God.

Thus, while these discoveries in the desert may come as a surprise to some skeptics, they're no surprise to Christians.

While archeology alone cannot bring a person to faith, these finds are an eloquent argument for not dismissing the truth of Scripture before at least examining the evidence -- because, as we are learning every day, Jesus meant it when he said that "the very stones will cry out."

For further reading:

Jeffrey Sheler, IS THE BIBLE TRUE? (HarperCollins, 1999).

Visit the Biblical Archaeology Society website.

Randall Price, THE STONES CRY OUT: HOW ARCHEOLOGY CONFIRMS THE TRUTH OF THE BIBLE (Harvest House, 1997).

_________________________

Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

*

"I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph."

--Shirley Temple

Gilbert West and Lord Littleton were two brilliant skeptics of another day. They made fun of Christians and Christianity. One day they decided that in order to defeat Christianity they must explain away the resurrection and the change in Paul and his influence on history. One of them said, “I’ll study the resurrection and write a treatise showing the fallacy of it.” The other one said he would write about Paul. They agreed to meet several weeks later and publish their findings. On the given day they came together and Lord Littleton said, “West, what have you to say?” He replied, “I must be honest, I studied the resurrection of Christ and found it to be absolutely true. I saw myself as a sinner, I trusted Him as my Saviour and now I have peace for the first time in my life.” “Thank God for that,” said Littleton, “I studied the conversion and the life of Paul and, like him, I saw myself as the chief of sinners, and on my knees I became a Christian.” Oh, I tell you, only Christ can take men like that and make them over into the image of God.

Ford, Sinful Age, p. 15.

G. K. Chesterton once said, "It is impossible to live without contradiction when you live without God."

His reasoning so fitting for our times, I quote his explanation at length. He writes:

The moment you condemn something you have to assume there is some

standard by which to condemn it. The modern day rebel has got no

standard left because he's rejected everything. The new rebel is

a skeptic and will not entirely trust anything... The fact that

he doubts everything gets in the way when he wants to denounce

anything. For all denunciation applies a moral doctrine of some

kind, and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the

institution he denounces but the doctrine by which he denounces

it... [He] goes to a political meeting first where he complains

that savages are treated as if they are beasts. Then he takes

his hat and umbrella, goes to a scientific meeting where he

proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern

revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in

undermining his own mines.

A colleague speaks of an old college friend who taught her something profound about contradiction. We will call him Chad. They first became acquainted in a communications class. Born with Athetoid Cerebral Palsy, Chad was an unlikely candidate for a career in public speaking - he is unable to speak. Or walk. He communicates through a computerized voice by typing with only his big toes. Overcoming more in his lifetime than most dare to hope, Chad has become a much in demand public speaker. His body a slow moving, twisted shell of uncontrollable muscle, his life is a picture of what he calls nothing short of wholeness. This glorious contradiction he attributes entirely to Jesus Christ.

You see, the gospel is unique in its power to contradict our own contradictions, compelling us to drastically redefine what we mean by life. As Paul W. Hoon the author once noted, Jesus repeatedly contradicts us in the way we experience ourselves as alive, just as he encountered the disciples on Easter Sunday. They were the ones marked out for death. He, the "dead" was really the living. [1]

Jesus Christ has placed the greatest of all reminders before us: "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." This, properly understood, offers truth and eternal life.

________

1. Paul W. Hoon, Integrity of Worship Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971, p. 141.

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Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

=============================

Version from January 12, 2004:

G. K. Chesterton once made the proclamation that it is impossible to live without contradiction when you live without God. If the whole universe has no meaning, said Lewis, we should never have found out that it had no meaning. We live in a world where the skeptic objects to everything under the sun. Yet, the moment you condemn something you have to assume there is some standard by which to condemn it. The modern day rebel, as Chesterton refers to the skeptic, has no standard left because he has rejected everything; he lives in contradiction. As Chesterton's reasoning is so fitting for our times, I quote his explanation at length. He writes,

“The new rebel is a skeptic and will not entirely trust

anything... [T]he fact that he doubts everything really gets in

his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation

applies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern

revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces but

the doctrine by which he denounces it... [He] goes first to a

political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as

if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes

on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically

are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an

infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines.

In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality;

in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men.”

Moreover, it is the Gospel that is entirely unique in its power to shore up our own contradictions, and it is Christ who repeatedly challenges us in the way we experience reality, in the way we experience ourselves as alive.

A friend of mine in college illustrated to me this profound truth. He was born with Athetoid Cerebral Palsy, and as a result he is unable to speak or walk. He communicates through a computerized voice by typing with his toes. Overcoming more in his lifetime than most can imagine, he was in a public speaking class when I first became acquainted with him. Though an unlikely candidate for a career in public speaking, he has become exactly that, and is now a much in demand public speaker. His message is powerful. “My body,” he says through the voice of a computer, “is a slow moving, twisted shell of uncontrollable muscle, and yet my life is a picture of nothing short of wholeness. This glorious contradiction I attribute entirely to Jesus Christ.”

Indeed, Jesus compels us to drastically redefine what we mean by life, just as he did the disciples on Easter Sunday. “They were the ones marked out for death,” writes author Paul W. Hoon, “He, the 'dead' was really the living.” In the One who lives we find coherence and wholeness. In Christ alone we find life.

__________

Copyright © 2004 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

"Don't talk to me about the authority of the Bible," one of my neighbors told me flatly. "Now, if other ancient writers could document the life of Jesus, then I might believe it. But you can't expect me to believe a bunch of stories written by his friends."

What this man wanted was corroborating evidence, and I can understand why people ask for that. Most of us, when we hear something unusual, are a bit skeptical. We withhold judgment until the story is confirmed by a source we trust.

In the gospels, we have many eyewitness accounts of the life of Christ. But as former journalist Lee Strobel asks in his book, The Case for Christ, "Are there writings outside the gospels that affirm or support any of the essentials about Jesus?"

For the answer, Strobel went to Edwin Yamauchi, former president of the Institute for Biblical Research. Let's be honest, Strobel told him. Is there really much corroboration of the events in Jesus's life outside the Bible?

Absolutely, Yamauchi replied. "We do have very, very important references to Jesus in Josephus and Tacitus. Josephus was a first-century Jewish historian who, because of his collaboration with the Romans, was hated by his fellow Jews. In the Testimonium Flavianum, Josephus writes of Jesus' life, miracles, death, and resurrection. Josephus wrote, "On the third day [after his crucifixion] he appeared to them restored to life."

As Yamauchi explained, "Josephus corroborates important information about Jesus: that he was the martyred leader of the church in Jerusalem ... who had established a wide and lasting following, despite the fact that he had been crucified."

Tacitus, the most important Roman historian of the first century, was an unsympathetic witness to the spread of Christianity. So, his testimony is especially credible. Tacitus wrote that an "immense multitude" held so strongly to their beliefs that they were willing to die rather than recant.

And the Jewish Talmud, Yamauchi notes, finished in AD 500, also mentions Jesus. Although it calls him a "false messiah," the fact that it mentions him at all is a corroboration of his life in ancient Israel.

Finally, we have the writings of the apostolic fathers," the earliest Christian writers after the New Testament. Among them was Ignatius, who went to his execution claiming that Jesus rose from the dead, and that those who believe in him would be raised, too, Yamauchi said.

Put together the writings of Josephus, the Roman historians, Jewish writings, and the apostolic fathers, "and you've got persuasive evidence that corroborates all the essentials found in the biographies of Jesus." And, he added, "Even if you were to throw away every last copy of the gospels, you'd still have a picture of Jesus that's extremely compelling -- in fact, it's a portrait of the unique Son of God."

In the Information Age, it's hard sometimes to separate truth from falsehood. So it's not surprising that people like my neighbor are skeptical.

We need to make sure people like this understand that there's plenty of corroborating evidence of what the gospels have to say. Evidence that points to the fact that Jesus is exactly who he said he is: the Son of God -- and our Savior.

For further reading:

Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998.

____________________

Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Skepticism as society's 'death knell'

Ian Hunter

National Post

'One word of truth outweighs the whole world."

So said Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his 1974 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Does anyone today remember that? When Solzhenitsyn spoke, the Berlin Wall was intact and the Soviet Union appeared impregnable, the linchpin of a Communist empire on whose killing fields, (according to The Black Book of Communism published last year in Europe) more than 100 million people were to perish. Yet within a decade of Solzhenitsyn's words, the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Empire had both collapsed, crumbling because they were constructed not on truth but on lies.

Czech President Vaclav Havel explained how and why this happened:

"The crust presented by the life of lies is made of strange stuff. As long as it seals off hermetically the entire society, it appears to be made of stone. But the moment someone breaks through in one place, when one person cries out, 'The Emperor is naked!' -- when a single person breaks the rules of the game, thus exposing it as a game -- everything suddenly appears in another light and the whole crust seems then to be made of a tissue on the point of tearing and disintegrating uncontrollably."

Truth is the subject of a slender (120 pages) but powerful recent book by Os Guinness: Time for Truth: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype and Spin (Baker Books). Guinness's focus is less on the lies of communism, more on the lies by which we all try to nourish our impoverished lives.

Guinness is especially intrigued by the lies of post-modernism. He likens our situation today to a baseball game with three umpires. The first umpire is an old-fashioned traditionalist whose credo is: "There are balls and there are strikes, and I call them as they are." The second umpire is a relativist, who says: "That's arrogant. There are balls and strikes, and I call them as I see them." But it is the third umpire who today gets all the important assignments; he (or more likely, she) is a postmodernist and she says: "Let's be realistic -- there are no such thing as balls or strikes until I call them." In other words, post-modernism holds that there are no pre-existing immutable truths; the illusion that there are serves only to conceal ways of achieving and exercising power. Since all cultures, and all individuals, are equal, value judgments must be avoided. You have your truths, I mine.

When truth is dethroned, only power remains. Deconstruct the claims to truth and you are left with competing claims to power based on race, class, gender and generation. This is the prevailing view today.

Os Guinness, who was born in China, educated in England and now resides in the United States, sets himself in polar opposition to the temper of the age. He writes:

"My purpose is to argue the exact opposite ... far from ushering in a brave, new world of enlightenment and freedom, the radical skepticism of today's new sophists actually sounds the death knell of Western civilization ... Postmodernism's current assault on truth is the cultural vanguard of developments that amount to a profound crisis of cultural authority in the West -- a crisis in beliefs, traditions and ideals that have been decisive for Western civilization ... Truth matters supremely because in the end, without truth there is no freedom. Truth, in fact, is essential to freedom; it is freedom, and the only way to a free life lies in becoming a person of truth and learning to live in truth."

Guinness cannot resist (who could?) using our foremost public liar, Bill Clinton, to illustrate his point. When Clinton looked straight into the camera's unblinking eye and proclaimed: "I never had sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky," and then, when his lie was exposed, proffered defences such as "How do you define sexual relations?" and "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is," truth was the loser. Guinness calls Clinton the man who made the United States "learn to live with the lie." The White House is rid of Bill Clinton, but whether his stain on U.S. public life is as easily erased is questionable. The wretched saga of the presidential pardons suggests it is not.

Nor may Canada gloat. Truth was seldom on display in our federal election; the Liberal party, in particular, seems to regard truth in public discourse as a plague to be avoided.

Law has played an important role in the debasement of truth. The critical legal studies movement effectively undermined what were once considered foundational legal concepts -- "the rule of law," "trial by peers," "bias," and even "evidence." Our courts -- composed of judges often appointed less for ability than to fit an affirmative action profile and, once appointed, determined not to be thought fuddy-duddies -- soak up many post-modernist notions that are rife in the law schools through their law clerks. Consequently, court judgments are full of post-modern blather and have come to rival law review articles for turgid unreadability.

Os Guinness's book is a sober and succinct examination of a problem that threatens our existence -- the decline of truth as the guiding principle of life.

The widespread Muslim rejection of the embarrassing bin Laden tape illustrates a truth of human conduct, the same one shown by the O.J. Simpson acquittal. Will often trumps reason. We're disinclined to believe what we don't want to believe, however striking or weighty the evidence.

It's odd that the Muslims count themselves the model of rationality. They're proud that they don't give in to such "silliness" as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and salvation by faith alone. By their light, theirs is a much more reasonable religion. But it's hard to see that clear thinking is their strong suit.

Consider the crash of EgyptAir 990 off Nantucket in October 1999. (The November issue of The Atlantic gives an excellent account.) Lacking the resources to do the job right, Egypt asked the FAA to take the lead in the investigation. When all the evidence pointed to the suicidal intervention of a reserve pilot, Gameel al-Batouti, they rejected the finding out of hand. It had to be the equipment. No way that their man would do such a thing.

A few more liberal arts colleges in the Middle East might help. Somebody needs to be teaching canons of logic and skills of critical thinking to balance the demands of cultural solidarity. Someone needs to walk them through alien perspectives to make their reflection more supple and circumspect.

We Americans are awash in second and third guessers, protected by both law and public sentiment, and they keep us honest. Would that the Arab-speaking world enjoyed the same level and tradition of respectable and respected dissent.

Yes, of course, it is remotely conceivable that a double played bin Laden or that some computer genius worked a simulation. But it's very, very unlikely. The burden of proof rests upon those who would cast doubt on the tape. They need to know it's not enough to throw sand in the air and call names. We need a responsible effort at proof. And in the meantime, they need to show humility, for it's certainly warranted, given the implausibility of the fraud charge.

Is this a peculiarly Arab problem? I'm afraid not. It's the problem of Adam' s race. It's the same problem that gave us John 12:37 -- "Even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him."

Saturday before last, we were visiting newcomers to our community when I spied a man across the street putting sod around a big tree in front of his house. I hustled over to hand him a couple of items from our church, only to be rebuffed. He called Christianity nonsense and refused to take the handout.

Smiling, I asked him what he meant by "nonsense." He began by saying that the Gospels were full of contradictions, and I asked him to give me one that bothered him. He said that the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew was different from the one in Luke. I noted that some prominent scholars found the former to be the line through Joseph, the latter through Mary.

At that point, he exclaimed, "My goodness. How silly of me. It never occurred to me that I could be leaning on such a flimsy prop in my resistance to Christianity. You know, if I was wrong about that, I could be wrong about other Bible difficulties. Have you got a minute? This is pretty important stuff. I'm not ready to buy what you're selling, but I sure need to give it a second look."

Just kidding.

You know how it went. He wasn't interested in more evidence that the Gospels were harmonious. He'd made up his mind, and it was impervious to anything that would upset it. Yes, I suppose he'd had a liberal arts education in the current secular sense, but it was obvious he'd not enjoyed the richer sort that incorporates biblical perspectives at every turn.

Darwinians show the same blind obstinacy. For instance, give them "Darwin's Black Box" by Michael Behe, the book which demonstrates that the evolutionary account just won't work at the microbiological level. They won't blink. Their faith that random mutation and procreative advantage, given enough time, could produce from primordial soup Harvard, Billy Graham, the Fox Network, the Rose Bowl and the Internet is unshakable.

No wonder it takes the Holy Spirit to save men. Whether Egyptian Muslim or Chicago atheist, we're tough nuts to crack.

________________

Coppenger is pastor of Evanston (Ill.) Baptist Church. Other reflections by Coppenger can be viewed at www.comeletusreason.com.

*

A few years ago, a very influential philosopher named John Searle wrote a book called THE REDISCOVERY OF THE MIND. Searle is a philosophical naturalist, and as such he has no room for God or anything else supernatural. In his book, he comments on the reactions he receives when people realize that in his worldview there is no God, no soul, and no afterlife. He writes, "When we encounter people who claim to believe [in God], we may envy them for the comfort and security they claim to derive from these beliefs, but at bottom we remain convinced that either they have not heard the news or they are in the grip of faith."

Searle continues, relating a time when he lectured in India and some in the audience objected due to their belief in the afterlife. Their objections did not move him one bit, he says, because their beliefs simply were not "serious candidates for truth." In other words, once you move beyond the material, all you have are pie-in-the-sky fantasies rather than facts.

For some of you, Searle's beliefs may seem shocking. But to those of you familiar with the trends in higher education over the last few decades, this is standard fare. Many will not discuss belief in God or supernatural events because they have already decided, a priori, that things of this nature cannot exist. To put it simply, the existence of all things is due to the purely physical processes of evolution, so there cannot be anything besides matter. People can believe in God or that the moon is made of green cheese if they want to, as long as we all recognize that to be faith, rather than based on reality.

We have been discussing the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Perhaps you are wondering, what does John Searle's book have to do with the resurrection? More than you might think. This drift in academia that I have roughly outlined has incredible consequences for beliefs in events such as the resurrection. Indeed, naturalism has changed the very rules of the debate!

How? If you attend a debate on the resurrection these days, often the opponent will not even argue against the historical record, as you might expect. Instead, he almost ignores the entire topic, and argues that a supernatural belief should not even be considered a viable option for a rational person.

Can a rational person believe in a supernatural event such as the resurrection? Give it some thought, my friend, as we continue to consider this.

_________________________

Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

Psychologists have long noted the “Consistency Principle” as a central motivator of human behavior. Research shows that our desire to be consistent with what we have previously done or decided, quietly but powerfully directs our actions. And while consistency is a good and valued trait, our longing for it can just as easily be detrimental. Professor of psychology Robert Cialdini makes this powerful statement: “Sealed within the fortress walls of rigid consistency, we can be impervious to the sieges of reason.” [1]

What might this mean to us? It is natural to want our philosophies and mindsets to be right. We want to remain unswerving in thought and deed with the things we have already done or said. We want to remain consistent and appear consistent. The fearsome thing is when we want to be consistent more than we want an honest reasoning of truth.

When I look at the agonized questions of Job in his unimaginable suffering, I am reminded of the difficult choice we face when contradicting information comes our way. Every principle and mindset that governed Job's life was suddenly pulled out from under him by contradicting information. Perhaps you can recall a similar moment in your own life. I remember the first time my worldview was shattered by moving outside of it. Living in another country, experiencing a different culture and mindset, the longing to hold on to all that I thought I knew was potent. At times all I wanted was to hold on to some sense of consistency in my mind.

Job's anguish shows his longing for what he thought he knew. The temptation to hold the pieces together was certainly present. Yet, even as the foundations of Job's worldview cracked and crumbled, he refused to soothe the gaping wounds of his soul with theological fillers or compromising explanations. He remained utterly resistant to the easy answers, turning away from the superficial pieties of his friends. Job held fast to a sincere reasoning of truth.

His friends were not so willing. Their only goal was to remain consistent with the knowledge they possessed, which meant countless attempts to argue away Job's situation. Vigorously driven by their desire for self-exoneration, they overestimated and misused their understanding of truth, turned a deaf ear to contradicting information, and blinded their eyes from the truth itself.

Today's skeptical worldview can also be so blinding. Such a mindset filters truth through the Socratic observation: “All I know is that I know nothing.” But this approach by definition is unreasonable, for a truly skeptical mindset would require skepticism about one's own skepticism. A prominent skeptic publication hints at an even deeper irrationality. The article explains matter-of-factly, “One person's skepticism is another's credulity.” In other words, you choose what to filter, and what you want to hold on to.

We must each ask ourselves: Is the goal to be right in my mind alone or sincere in the reasoning of truth? Job cast the inconsistencies of his experience upon his relationship with God and the consistency of God's character. What he found was God Himself.

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1. Robert Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice (Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2001), 55.

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Copyright © 2004 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

WOODY ALLEN, director/actor/writer

“I do occasionally envy the person who is religious naturally, without being brainwashed into it or suckered into it by all the organized hustles.” [Rolling Stone magazine, 1987]

DAVE BARRY, humorist / syndicated columnist

Dave Barry reportedly said, “I decided I was an atheist early on” in a 25 Nov 2001 interview with the Dallas Star-Telegram profile.

BILL BLASS, fashion designer

“I have a firm belief in such things as, you know, the water, the Earth, the trees and sky. And I'm wondering, it is increasingly difficult to find those elements in nature, because it's nature I believe in rather than some spiritual thing.”

MARLON BRANDO, actor

At his son Christian's murder trial a few years ago, Brando refused to take a religious oath, stating that he is an atheist.

GEORGE CARLIN, comedian

“And for those of you who look to The Bible for moral lessons and literary qualities, I might suggest a couple of other stories for you. You might want to look at the Three Little Pigs, that's a good one. Has a nice happy ending, I'm sure you'll like that. Then there's Little Red Riding Hood, although it does have that part where the Big Bad Wolf actually eats the grandmother. And finally, I've always drawn a great deal of moral comfort from Humpty Dumpty. The part I like the best? “All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again.” That's because there is no Humpty Dumpty, and there is no God. None, not one, no God, never was.”

FIDEL CASTRO, Cuban leader

A wire service story writes of his audience with the pope: “Castro was educated by Jesuit priests as a young man, but later shed his religion for revolution, Marxism and atheism. Nonetheless, he bowed slightly when he met the pope and told him it was a 'great honor' to be in the Vatican.”

DICK CAVETT, talk show host

“This is my religious problem: it would be wonderful to believe in the most fundamental way. It would make life easier, it would explain everything, it would give meaning where none is apparent, it would make tragedies bearable. If I went to a revival meeting, I have no doubt I could be one of the first to go down on his knees. It seems as if the only religion worth having is the simplest possible religion. But something about the fact that all it takes to make it so is deciding it IS so puts me off. Knowing it could instantly make me much happier makes it somehow unworthy of having.”

MICKY DOLENZ, Producer and founding member of The Monkees.

Is there a God? Micky Dolenz: “No. God is a verb, not a noun.”

PATRICK DUFFY, Actor & Practicing Buddhist

On Buddhism: “And it deals with the fact, in essence, you know, come right out and say it, that there is no God, that the individual is God. Buddha is a teacher. Which was what Christ was, in my opinion, in terms of historical relevance.”

JODIE FOSTER, actress

“I absolutely believe that there is no direct evidence, so how could you ask me to believe in God when there's absolutely no evidence that I can see? I do believe in the beauty and the awe-inspiring mystery of the science that's out there that we haven't discovered yet, that there are scientific explanations for phenomena that we call mystical because we don't know any better.”

JANEANE GAROFALO, actress/comedian

“God seems very man-made to me. There are so many theories, and not everyone can be right. It's human nature to need a religious crutch, and I don't begrudge anyone that. I just don't need one.”

“The Bible, I've said it before, is a beautifully written work of fiction.”

“Organized religions and their dogmas only serve to indoctrinate the participants into sheeplike common behaviors. This type of blind assimilation promotes the popularity of top-forty count down radio stations and movie sequels. Skepticism towards groups, holy or otherwise, is enriching and makes you a far more entertaining person.”

BILL GATES, Microsoft chairman

“In terms of doing things I take a fairly scientific approach to why things happen and how they happen. I don't know if there's a god or not, but I think religious principles are quite valid.”

“Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.”

BOB GELDOF, recording artist / humanitarian activist

Geldof was interviewed live on the 19 Oct 2001 edition of “The Late Late Show” on RTÉ (Irish national television). When asked if he was an atheist/agnostic (the presenter used both terms) Geldof said yes; he then confirmed that he doesn't believe in an afterlife.

SETH GREEN, actor (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, the Austin Powers movies)

“God is, to me, pretty much an idea. God is, to me, pretty much a myth created over time to deny the idea that we're all responsible for our own actions.”

KATHARINE HEPBURN, actress

In an interview in the October 1991 Ladies' Home Journal that was advertised as her “most candid” ever, Hepburn said, “I'm an atheist, and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for each other.”

PENN JILLETTE, magician/author

Penn is the loud half of Penn & Teller. They perform their irreverent magic act regularly in Las Vegas and major venues around the world. Both are very outspoken about being atheists and skeptics. They use it as part of the act. Penn recounts a 1998 appearance on Donny and Marie Osmond's syndicated talkshow: We were asked to do autographs for Donny and Marie. I wrote, “There is no god,” and Teller wrote, “He's right.”

ANGELINA JOLIE, actor

Is there a God? Angelina Jolie: “Hmm... For some people. I hope so, for them. For the people who believe in it, I hope so. There doesn't need to be a God for me. There's something in people that's spiritual, that's godlike. I don't feel like doing things just because people say things, but I also don't really know if it's better to just not believe in anything, either.”

MARGOT KIDDER, actor

“I went through millions of dollars -- I have no idea how much. I'd buy things for friends, take people to Paris. Once I stayed up for three weeks in a row because I felt like I was called upon to write a new religion for women. I was reading all these books, including the Bible -- and I'm an atheist.”

RICHARD LEAKEY, paleontologist/author/Kenyan politician

“I myself do not believe in a god who has or had a human form and to whom I owe an existence. I believe it is man who created God in his image and not the other away around; also I see no reason to believe in life after death.”

JOHN MALKOVICH, actor

“I also particularly like him (Sigmund Freud) because he was an atheist, and I grew tired of religion some time not long after birth. I believe in people, I believe in humans, I believe in a car, but I don't believe something I can't have absolutely no evidence of for millenniums. And it's funny -- people think analysis or psychiatry is mad, and THEY go to CHURCH...”

BARRY MANILOW, recording artist

Q: Do you believe in God?

A: Yes. His name is Clive Davis, and he's the head of my record company.

Q: How important is your Judaism to you?

A: It isn't. My humanism is.

RANDY NEWMAN, recording artist

“I never had faith,” said Newman. “But I have respect for the idea. There's no joy being an atheist.”

MIKE NICHOLS, FILM DIRECTOR (Silkwood, Catch-22, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate for which he won an Oscar for Best Director).

“I never consider what comes after this life, I have no interest in heaven, hell, god, etc...”

JACK NICHOLSON, actor

“I don't believe in God now,” but he added, “I can still work up an envy for someone who has a faith. I can see how that could be a deeply soothing experience.”

PAULA POUNDSTONE, comedian

“Although raised a conservative Methodist, I am, in fact, a liberal atheist.”

“I'm an atheist, so I don't really know where spirituality fits in for me ... a devout atheist.”

JAMES RANDI, conjurer/investigator/author

“I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition and that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s). Further, devils, demons, angels and saints are myths; there is no life after death, no heaven or hell; the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision. I accuse the Christian god of murder by allowing the Holocaust to take place -- not to mention the 'ethnic cleansing' presently being performed by Christians in our world -- and I condemn and vilify this mythical deity for encouraging racial prejudice and commanding the degradation of women.”

CHRISTOPHER REEVE, director/actor

Q: Do you believe in the Lord?

A: “Even though I don't personally believe in the Lord, I try to behave as though He was watching.”

“Well, believe it or not, I think that, y'know, God is not an entity that you find when you go to church and pray to God almighty, you know, and I always remembered that going to church as a kid, you know, and they talk about the vengeance of His terrible swift sword and His army, I said, “well that's kind of a scary guy.” But I think that -- while I don't believe in God, per se, I believe in spirituality. And I believe that spirituality actually is automatically within ourselves, but we have to learn how to access it, and what that is, is realizing there is a higher power; there is...”

SALMAN RUSHDIE, novelist

“God, Satan, Paradise, and Hell all vanished one day in my fifteenth year, when I quite abruptly lost my faith...and afterwards, to prove my new-found atheism, I bought myself a rather tasteless ham sandwich, and so partook for the first time of the forbidden flesh of the swine. No thunderbolt arrived to strike me down. [...] From that day to this I have thought of myself as a wholly secular person.”

ANNIKA SÖRENSTAM, professional golfer

Question: Religious or atheist?

“I believe in the good message that you can find in religion. But whether there is some ruler up there, above the clouds, I doubt.”

HOWARD STERN, radio personality/author/actor

On April 23, 1999, in the wake of the Colorado school killings, Stern got really frustrated with a caller: “Please with the God talk. Hate to break it to you, but there is no God.”

During the July 23, 1999 show, a caller repeatedly claimed that “Jesus Christ will hold [Howard Stern] responsible for his wickedness.” Howard responded by saying that “man created god” and questioned whether Christ actually ever existed.

DONALD SUTHERLAND, actor

Q. “If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you are at the Pearly Gates?”

Sutherland chuckled and replied: “Oh, you know something? I'm so far away from believing that it exists, and the only thing I know are jokes about it.”

TED TURNER, media mogul

The New Yorker published an interview with Turner in which the 62-year-old media mogul said he and Jane Fonda split up partly because of her decision to become a Christian. “She just came home and said 'I've become a Christian,'" Turner told the magazine. “Before that, she was not a religious person. That's a pretty big change for your wife of many years to tell you. That's a shock.”

Replied Fonda: “My becoming a Christian upset him very much -- for good reason. He's my husband and I chose not to discuss it with him -- because he would have talked me out of it. He's a debating champion.”

Turner -- an atheist who previously questioned whether prohibiting adultery should've been one of the 10 Commandments -- also acknowledged that he had become suicidal after his breakup with Fonda, and after losing of control over Turner Broadcasting when AOL Time Warner was reorganized.

EDDIE VEDDER, recording artist (Pearl Jam)

“The word 'religion' has such bad connotations for me, that it's been responsible for wars, and it shouldn't be that way at all, it's just the way the meaning of the word has evolved to me. I have to wonder what we did on this planet before religion.”

“All I really believe in is this moment, like right now.”

At a July 22, 1998 Pearl Jam concert in Seattle's Memorial Stadium, Vedder said about the unusually beautiful weather, “I would thank God, but I don't believe in it.”

GORE VIDAL, author

“Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever. More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world.”

“I'm a born-again atheist.”

KURT VONNEGUT JR., author

INTERVIEWER asks something about how he was affected by his study of anthropology.

VONNEGUT: Yes, it confirmed my atheism, which was the religion of my fathers anyway.

STEVE WOZNIAK, cofounder of Apple Computer

Q. ”I was reading that Gates, Linus T. and Larry Ellison are all atheist or agnostic. The article made no mention of you or Steve Jobs. My question is, are you a man of faith and do you think that Mr. Jobs believes in God?”

Wozniak: “I am also atheist or agnostic (I don't even know the difference). I've never been to church and prefer to think for myself. I do believe that religions stand for good things, and that if you make irrational sacrifices for a religion, then everyone can tell that your religion is important to you and can trust that your most important inner faiths are strong.”

“Steve Jobs may be an informal fan of Eastern religions but it's never obvious in him and I never heard of him regularly attending a church. That's only a guess."

*

The memorable cover of a news magazine read in bold print, “The Art of the Hoax.”(1) The pages presented everything from crop circles and television psychics to hoaxes involving the events of 9/11. The driving force of the entire storyline was perhaps the question posed in one of the many articles: Are we vulnerable to hoaxes even in the information age? Their response was an obvious and resounding “yes.” Their advice was equally clear: “Distrust and verify.”

Such advice seems almost unnecessary for an age inundated not only with information but also with skeptical thinking. No one wants to be duped. And it is certainly necessary to think critically and verify truth. But may I pose a question lamentably left out of a magazine about verifying truth: Skeptical or not, are you an honest investigator? When you approach an event that seems to defy the laws of nature are you an honest examiner before crying hoax?

Many have deemed the resurrection of Christ a hoax, on the premise alone that miracles are not possible. But this isn't being fair-minded. Without proof of atheism, which is impossible, it is not reasonable to exclude supernatural explanations from your list of possible options. If supernatural explanations have been eliminated from the onset of your investigation, what happens when there is no natural explanation for an event?

Scottish skeptic David Hume is perhaps history's most famous critic of the miraculous. Hume once stated that if historians consistently agreed that the Queen of England died and then reappeared a month later, he would be willing to accept any explanation but a miracle of God. Responding to Hume's thought experiment, philosopher William Lane Craig marks the essential clue in investigating the miraculous. Says Craig, “I would agree that a miracle without context is inherently ambiguous.... The religio-historical context is crucial in understanding miraculous events. This is why... the Queen's return would only perplex us [while] the Resurrection gives us pause.”(2)

Dr. Craig reminds us that Jesus performed miracles in a context brimming with religious significance, and the two cannot be separated. The supernatural acts Jesus performed authenticated his divine authority. He claimed equality with God, and his miracles attest to it. What's more, his resurrection is the crowning end to the unparalleled claims for which he was crucified.

To further investigate, think of the situation the disciples faced following the crucifixion of their leader. Under Jewish law, anyone crucified was literally under the curse of God. Yet, despite having these predispositions to the contrary, the disciples indisputably came to believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. And they remained willing to die for that belief.

It is historical truth that Jesus was crucified. There is more than one testimony that the disciples were with Jesus after his death. All of them, and countless others, went to their deaths proclaiming Jesus' resurrection. The historicity of these events is not in doubt. The question becomes — how will we explain them? A reasonable mind cannot be criticized for deducing the miraculous: that God raised Jesus from the dead that first Easter morning. Yes, hoaxes do abound. But I cannot reasonably conclude that the resurrection is one of them. Can you?

________

1. U.S. News and World Report, Aug. 26, 2002.

2. William Lane Craig as quoted in Lee Strobel's A Case for Faith, 91.

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Copyright © 2005 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

Daniel C. Dennett is at it again. In his new book, BREAKING THE SPELL: RELIGION AS A NATURAL PHENOMENON, Dennett applies his radical vision of Darwinism to belief in God, and the entire question of faith and belief. As you might expect, Dennett doesn't think much of belief in God.

Dennett is famous for his idea that Darwinism functions as a “universal acid” in contemporary thought -- an idea that relativizes all other ideas and reshapes the intellectual culture so that all other ideas must give way or disappear.

Atheism is a central tenet of Dennett's faith, and he has previously argued that the belief in a personal and self-existent God -- any kind of God for that matter -- must simply give way to the inexorable progress of evolution. As he sees it, belief in God is a “meme” that functioned for some time as an evolutionary advantage, but has long since outlived its usefulness and now serves as an impediment to the forward progress of the human species.

Accordingly, the concept of God might continue as an intellectual concept that offers a mythological explanation for wonder and beauty, but not in the form of theism or theological realism. In other words, it's all right to believe in God so long as you do not actually believe that He exists.

In his new book, Dennett calls for what he calls a “common-sense” understanding of religion. For too long, this issue has been avoided out of social politeness, he argues, and now is the time to confront believers with the danger of their belief and the nonsensical nature of their convictions.

The persistence of belief in God does pose something of a difficult question for evolutionists like Daniel Dennett. “According to surveys, most of the people in the world say that religion is very important in their lives. Many would say that without it, their lives would be meaningless,” Dennett concedes. “It's tempting just to take them at their word, to declare that nothing more is to be said -- and to tiptoe away. Who would want to interfere with whatever it is that gives their lives meaning?”

Nevertheless, Dennett argues that to do that is to willfully ignore serious questions. He suggests that some forms of religious belief are more inherently dangerous than others, but wonders whether right-minded (which is to say atheistic) observers should leave believers “to their comforts and illusions” or, in the service of humanity, “blow the whistle?”

Never underestimate Dennett's capacity for condescension. “Dilemmas like that are all too familiar in somewhat different context, of course. Should the sweet old lady in the nursing home be told that her son has just been sent to prison? Should the awkward 12-year-old boy who wasn't cut from the baseball team be told about the arm-twisting that persuaded the coach to keep him on the squad? In spite of ferocious differences of opinion about other moral issues, there seems to be something approaching consensus that it is cruel and malicious to interfere with the life-enhancing illusions of others -- unless those illusions are themselves the cause of even greater ills.”

The diversity of religious beliefs and the persistence of belief itself provides Dennett with evidence that faith in some form must have served as an evolutionary meme that helped the species to perpetuate itself against the fear of death and tragedy. In other words, the experience of death, he argues, provided the need for some mythological projection of an afterlife in order to assist survivors to continue life and productive work. In an interview with THE NEW YORK TIMES, Dennett said: “When a person dies, we can't just turn that off. We go on thinking about that person as if that person were still alive. Our inability to turn off our people-seer and our people-hearer naturally turns into our hallucinations of ghosts, our sense that they are still with us.”

But make no mistake, Dennett does not allow for a moment that the afterlife, or the soul, can possibly be real. “I don't believe in the soul as an enduring entity,” Dennett told the TIMES. “Our brains are made of neurons, and nothing else. Nerve cells are very complicated mechanical systems. You take enough of those, and you put them together, and you get a soul.” Got it?

Dennett's biological reductionism is almost breathtaking in its inflexibility. Throughout BREAKING THE SPELL, Dennett applies biological reductionism to every conceivable aspect of life -- from a parent's commitment to take care of children to the experience of love. Beyond this, he seems even to suggest that parents should provide their children with an adequate sex education in order to give evolution something of a boost.

One of the most interesting aspects of Dennett's new book is his suggestion that belief is a less interesting question than “belief in belief.” Accordingly, he attempts to take something of an intellectual step back from the question of belief (at least at some points) and suggests that many persons who APPEAR to be believers actually do not believe in the tenets of their faith, but only in BELIEF itself.

He enters this issue through the prism of the modern cult of tolerance. He suggests that those who call themselves believers in God but advocate tolerance of other belief systems are either disingenuous or confused. That is to say that those who believe in God but are satisfied to see others accept alternative belief systems either do not understand the importance of the question or they do not actually believe in the God they claim as the object of their worship.

Dennett is on to something here, but not what he thinks. He seems to lack any understanding of religious liberty as a social compact and he avoids the idea that persons can be sincere believers and still accept the right of others to disagree. Christians can never be SATISFIED to know that others reject faith in the one true and living God and resist the gospel of Jesus Christ, but we can accept the fact that we have no power to coerce the soul and we would seek no state coercion, even if available.

A key insight from Dennett's eccentric theory is the fact that “moderates” in matters of belief are truly in a most awkward situation. “There are moderates who revere the tradition they were raised in, simply because it is their tradition, and who are prepared to campaign, tentatively, for the details of their tradition, simply because, in the marketplace of ideas, somebody should stick up for each tradition until we can sort out the good from the better and settle for the best we can find, all things considered.”

A close look at that statement reveals something of genuine importance -- there are persons who believe in the TRADITION simply because it is traditional -- whether or not it is true. To a great extent, this explains the quandary of mainline Protestantism and the inherent weakness of revisionist theologies.

As Dennett looks at the moderates, he sees their faith as something more like “allegiance to a sports team.” Such “belief” can give zest and meaning to life, but is not to be taken seriously as a worldview. He refers to his own allegiance to the Boston Red Sox as “enthusiastic, but cheerfully arbitrary and undeluded.” “The Red Sox aren't my team because they are, in fact, the Best,” he concedes. Instead, “they are the Best (in my eyes) because they are my team.”

Those who hold to such moderated views of theistic belief are actually affirming belief IN BELIEF, rather than the truths themselves. They see religious conviction as something that can provide meaning to life and solace in the midst of sorrow, but not something that is to be understood in terms of a realist conception of truth. In other words, belief in God is helpful and potentially healthy even if untrue.

This is the very formulation Dennett just will not accept. His own self-designated intellectual superiority leads him to look upon moderates with disdain even as he looks upon true believers with pity. Belief in belief is actually no less dangerous than belief itself, if for no other reason than it helps to foster the illusion of widespread faith in God.

As in his previous writings, Dennett straightforwardly suggests that theists should be excluded from all public conversation. Those who base their worldview in theism “should be seen to be making it impossible for the rest of us to take their views seriously,” Dennett argues. Believers are “excusing themselves from the moral conversation, inadvertently acknowledging that their own views are not conscientiously maintained and deserve no further hearing.”

Those who base their worldview on the existence of God and the centrality of that belief are “taking a personally immoral stand,” he asserts.

In an article published in THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, Dennett suggests that those who believe in God are “disabled for moral persuasion, a sort of robotic slave to a meme that you are unable to evaluate.” So, “your declarations of your deeply held views are posturings that are out of place, part of the problem, not part of the solution, and we others will just have to work around you as best we can.”

His conclusion: “It is time for the reasonable adherents of all faiths to find the courage and stamina to reverse the tradition that honors helpless love of God -- in any tradition. Far from being honorable, it is not even excusable. It is shameful. Here is what we should say to people who follow such a tradition: There is only one way to respect the substance of any purportive God-given moral edict. Consider it conscientiously in the full light of reason, using all the evidence at our command. No God pleased by displays of unreasoning love, is worthy of worship.”

All this verbiage amounts to a display of Dennett's own Darwinist fundamentalism. He is at least as unbending and fideistic in his acceptance of the central tenets of Darwinism as any orthodox believer in God.

This point was eloquently made by Leon Wieseltier of THE NEW REPUBLIC in his review of BREAKING THE SPELL in the February 19, 2006 edition of THE NEW YORK TIMES. Wieseltier describes Dennett's book as “a merry anthology of contemporary superstitions.” As Wieseltier explains, Dennett's book is not even based, “in any strict sense,” on scientific research. Instead, Dennett is telling a story and BREAKING THE SPELL “is a fairy tale told by evolutionary biology.” Wieseltier asserts that Dennett provides “no scientific foundation” for the book's basic argument. “I am not at all claiming that this is what science has established about religion .... We don't yet know,” Dennett admits.

Wieseltier's rejoinder is classic: “So all of Dennett's splashy allegiance to evidence and experiment and 'generating further testable hypotheses' not withstanding, what he has written is just an extravagant speculation based upon his hope for what is the case, a pious account of his own atheistic longing.”

Even more important, Wieseltier points to the central flaw in Dennett's argument. “He thinks that an inquiry into belief is made superfluous by an inquiry into the belief in belief. This is a very revealing state. You cannot disprove a belief unless you disprove its content. If you believe that you can disprove it any other way, by describing its origins or by describing its consequences, then you do not believe in reason. In this profound sense, Dennett does not believe in reason,” Wieseltier concludes.

Our contemporary world is a circus of competing worldviews, and Daniel C. Dennett is, along with Oxford professor Richard Dawkins, one of the most radical theorists in the Darwinian camp. Nevertheless, we owe him his due in acknowledging that he (and Dawkins) are simply more willing to say what other evolutionists surely think, for the strident and condescending atheism of Dennett and Dawkins is actually the logical conclusion of the Darwinian project.

In this sense, BREAKING THE SPELL is a truly revealing book, but it doesn't reveal much insight concerning belief in God. Instead, it reveals the hardening contours of the Darwinian worldview.

“Richard Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that. For mainstream Christianity, reason, argument and honest doubt have always played an integral role in belief. (Where, given that he invites us at one point to question everything, is Dawkins’s own critique of science, objectivity, liberalism, atheism and the like?) Reason, to be sure, doesn’t go all the way down for believers, but it doesn’t for most sensitive, civilised non-religious types either. Even Richard Dawkins lives more by faith than by reason. We hold many beliefs that have no unimpeachably rational justification, but are nonetheless reasonable to entertain. Only positivists think that ‘rational’ means ‘scientific’.”

________

Terry Eagleton, literary theorist with The London Review of Books, reviewing Dawkins' "The God Delusion"

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #21367]

[From an atheist website]

YOU MAY BE A FUNDAMENTALIST IF...

10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.

9 - You feel insulted and “dehumanized” when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt.

8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God.

7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the “atrocities” attributed to Allah, but you don’t even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in “Exodus” and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in “Joshua” -- including women, children, and trees! [Holwick: actually, trees were spared - Deut. 20:19]

6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave birth to a man-god who got killed, came back to life and then ascended into the sky.

5 - You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in the scientifically established age of Earth (4+ billion years), but you find nothing wrong with believing dates recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and guessing that Earth is a couple of generations old.

4 - You believe that the entire population of this planet with the exception of those who share your beliefs -- though excluding those in all rival sects -- will spend Eternity in an infinite Hell of Suffering. And yet consider your religion the most “tolerant” and “loving.”

3 - While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in “tongues” may be all the evidence you need to “prove” Christianity.

2 - You define 0.01% as a “high success rate” when it comes to answered prayers. You consider that to be evidence that prayer works. And you think that the remaining 99.99% failure was simply the will of God.

1 - You actually know a lot less than many atheists and agnostics do about the Bible, Christianity, and church history -- but still call yourself a Christian.

I was a good little Baptist boy until leaving home for college and throwing away religion because it seemed so trite. I became an agnostic, which is really the only honest position unless something else happens, which I’ll describe. You cannot prove or disprove God’s existence. You can choose not to believe, but that in itself is belief in a negative, so you wouldn’t be an agnostic, who by definition says we cannot know if there is a God or not.

A couple of years into college, I was at home for the summer. One night I happened upon a note my sister had written about some difficulties she was having. The note simply screamed to the heavens, “God, where are you?” All of a sudden, all the things I had heard as a boy, but that had been so dead to me (aren’t most religious things?) came to life. The Lord Jesus was there in my room not letting me walk away into apostasy. No, I did not see Him.... no visions, no bells and whistles, no tortilla chips. I just knew. When you think about it, how could we find God when He would have to be far above His creation in majesty and power? He has to reveal Himself by giving us faith for us to know and believe. It’s not “This is my belief system,” or “I have faith and you don’t.” It is a certainty that changes your life.

How could we begin to know an eternal, invisible, infinite, holy God? The world and the universe itself show the fingerprints of an all-powerful, incredible genius. Why is physics able to somewhat describe the laws the universe operates under? Why does calculus work? Chance? Talk all you want about evolution, but what about first cause? Where did the logic the universe operates under come from to start with? Where did it all come from? Geniuses from physicist Stephen Hawking to the late biologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard pass that by as unknowable and leave it in the realm of philosophers and theologians.

However, all the arguments of which a few were simplistically mentioned above did nothing to convince me. It was only when God chose to reveal Himself that I knew... knew Jesus was the only way God could reveal Himself to us finite people. The Son of God became one of us and bridged the gap between God and humankind. God’s Word to us would have to be infinitely complex because He is so. His Word is His eternal Son. The Bible tells Who He is and points the way to Him, but we can no more know Him just from that book alone than we could know Abraham Lincoln by reading His writings and biographies.

This Son of God became a man... came into the world not only so we could see God in the flesh, but so He could die for the sins that block us from being able to understand.

It is certainly not a matter of intelligence. Many of you are brilliant people - far more intelligent than I am. However, all the arguments in the world will not convince someone. That is what most so-called Christian evangelicals do not seem to realize. They did not do some good thing by believing in Jesus Christ as Lord. If they believe, it is because God revealed His Son to them. He chose those who truly believe, we didn’t choose Him.

God is so far above me. I could have never known Him if He had not had undeserving mercy on me that night. I would have walked away into eternal night. Therefore, I encourage you to seek Him. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you. If there is the remotest chance that hell is real, do you want to risk your eternal destiny? However, if you do choose to earnestly seek Him, be aware that it is because He is seeking you. I hope He does. He is God. He does what He chooses to do. If you choose not to seek Him and find Him, then sadly, He passed you by.

He is no respecter of persons. I did not deserve to see, so I do not say He might pass you by because of anything better in me. I had sinned so much I was blind. Why He chose me, I cannot say. It was His free choice. He loved one who did not deserve it. I would not trade the eternal life He bestowed upon me for all the wealth, health, and power in the world. I will be dead in a few short years and will have to give an account to Him if He is real. What would all trivialities of life matter then? I have nothing to give Him. The only good thing I can offer Him is His own crucified and resurrected Christ Who died for me -- His own Son Who is forever with Him.

Atheism has been on a roll. The book “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins has been on The New York Times best-seller list for 22 weeks and “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris can be found in virtually every airport bookstore, even in Texas.

So why is the new wave of books on atheism getting such a drubbing? The criticism is not primarily, it should be pointed out, from the pious, which would hardly be noteworthy, but from avowed atheists as well as scientists and philosophers writing in publications like The New Republic and The New York Review of Books, not known as cells in the vast God-fearing conspiracy.

The mother of these reviews was published last October in The London Review of Books, when Terry Eagleton, better known as a Marxist literary scholar than as a defender of faith, took on “The God Delusion.”

“Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds,” Mr. Eagleton wrote, “and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.” That was only the first sentence.

James Wood’s review of “Letter to a Christian Nation” in the Dec. 18, 2006, issue of The New Republic began, “I have not believed in God since I was fifteen.” Mr. Wood, a formidable writer who keeps picking the scab of religion in his criticism and fiction, confessed that his “inner atheist” appreciated the “hygienic function” of Mr. Harris’s and Mr. Dawkins’s ridiculing of religion and enjoyed “the ‘naughtiness’ of this disrespect, even if a little of it goes a long way.”

But, he continued, “there is a limit to how many times one can stub one’s toe on the thick idiocy of some mullah or pastor” or be told that “Leviticus and Deuteronomy are full of really nasty things.”

H. Allen Orr is an evolutionary biologist who once called Mr. Dawkins a “professional atheist.” But now, Mr. Orr wrote in the Jan. 11, 2007, issue of The New York Review of Books, “I’m forced, after reading his new book, to conclude that he’s actually more of an amateur.”

It seems that these critics hold several odd ideas, the first being that anyone attacking theology should actually know some.

“The most disappointing feature of ‘The God Delusion,’” Mr. Orr wrote, “is Dawkins’s failure to engage religious thought in any serious way. You will find no serious examination of Christian or Jewish theology” and “no attempt to follow philosophical debates about the nature of religious propositions.”

Mr. Eagleton surmised that if “card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins” were asked “to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Africa, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could.” He continued, “When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster.”

Naturally, critics so fussy as to imagine that serious thought about religion exists, making esoteric references to Aquinas and Wittgenstein, inevitably gripe about Mr. Harris’s and Mr. Dawkins’s equation of religion with fundamentalism and of all faith with unquestioning faith.

“Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that,” Mr. Eagleton wrote.

In The New Republic last October, Thomas Nagel, a philosopher who calls himself “as much an outsider to religion” as Mr. Dawkins, was much more patient. Extracting a theoretical kernel of argument from the thumb-your-nose-at-religion chaff, Mr. Nagel nonetheless had to point out that what was meant by God was not, as Mr. Dawkins’s argument seemed to assume, “a complex physical inhabitant of the natural world.” (Mr. Eagleton had less politely characterized the Dawkins understanding of God “as some kind of chap, however supersized.”)

Nor was belief in God, Mr. Wood explained two months later, analogous to belief in a Celestial Teapot, the comic example Mr. Dawkins borrowed from Bertrand Russell.

If this insistence on theology beyond the level of Pat Robertson and biblical literalism was not enough, several reviews went on to carp about double standards.

Mr. Orr, for example, noted the contrast between Mr. Dawkins’s skepticism toward traditional proofs for God’s existence and Mr. Dawkins’s confidence that his own “Ultimate Boeing 747” proof demonstrated scientifically that God’s existence was highly improbable.

Mr. Eagleton compared Mr. Dawkins’s volubility about religion’s vast wrongs with his silence “on the horrors that science and technology have wreaked on humanity” and the good that religion has produced.

“In a book of almost 400 pages, he can scarcely bring himself to concede that a single human benefit has flowed from religious faith, a view which is as a priori improbable as it is empirically false,” Mr. Eagleton wrote. “The countless millions who have devoted their lives selflessly to the service of others in the name of Christ or Buddha or Allah are wiped from human history — and this by a self-appointed crusader against bigotry.”

In Mr. Orr’s view, “No decent person can fail to be repulsed by the sins committed in the name of religion,” but atheism has to be held to the same standard: “Dawkins has a difficult time facing up to the dual fact that (1) the 20th century was an experiment in secularism; and (2) the result was secular evil, an evil that, if anything, was more spectacularly virulent than that which came before.”

Finally, these critics stubbornly rejected the idea that rational meant scientific. “The fear of religion leads too many scientifically minded atheists to cling to a defensive, world-flattening reductionism,” Mr. Nagel wrote.

“We have more than one form of understanding,” he continued. “The great achievements of physical science do not make it capable of encompassing everything, from mathematics to ethics to the experiences of a living animal. We have no reason to dismiss moral reasoning, introspection or conceptual analysis as ways of discovering the truth just because they are not physics.”

So what is the beleaguered atheist to do? One possibility: take pride in the fact that this astringent criticism comes from people and places that honor the honest skeptic’s commitment to full-throated questioning.