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A Beginner’s Guide to the Argument from Suffering

by Editor

In one of the first significant conversations I had on the subject of suffering, my Aunt Regina expressed to me how difficult it is to see her son Charles – my cousin – struggle with a serious mental illness. When I started spouting some of my abstract, philosophical ideas about why God might allow suffering, Aunt Regina turned to me and said, “But Vince, that doesn’t speak to me as a mother.”

Suffering is very real and very personal, and since that conversation with my aunt I am always hesitant to address it briefly. Here I will try to provide a few starting points for further thought and prayer, but please forgive me if anything I say comes across as if I am not taking seriously any real life suffering you are dealing with.

Let me begin to sketch four approaches to thinking about the challenge of suffering:

  1. The Limits of Human Knowledge

One of the assumptions smuggled into the thought that suffering disproves the existence of God is this:

If God has good reasons for allowing suffering, we should know what those reasons are.

But why think that?

When parents decide to move their family from one city to another, this can be very difficult for a young child. In the moment, the child might be certain that all happiness is behind him, that his parents hate him, and that for all practical purposes his life is over.

And yet even such outrage on the part of a child does not mean that the child’s parents are wrong to make the move, and it does not mean that they don’t love him. In fact, it’s very likely that it was precisely the good of their children that weighed heavily in the parents’ decision. You can see the analogy: If parents’ reasons are sometimes beyond what a child can fully grasp, why then should we be surprised when some of God’s reasons are beyond what we can fully grasp? This general approach is referred to as ‘Sceptical Theism’ in academic philosophy. But it’s not a new idea:

  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
       neither are your ways my ways,”
       declares the LORD.”

  “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
       so are my ways higher than your ways
       and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)[i]

If God is as great as Christians claim he is, then sometimes not fully grasping the fullness of his reasons is exactly what we should expect. And if it’s exactly what we should expect to find if God does exist, then our finding it can’t be strong evidence that God does not exist.

  1. A Response of Freedom

What kind of world God would have made depends on what God values. According to Christianity, what God values above all is relationship. But for relationship to be meaningful, it must be freely chosen; for relationship to be freely chosen, there must be the possibility of it being rejected; and wherever there is the possibility of rejecting relationship, there is also the possibility of pain and suffering.

The Bible affirms this truth from its very first pages. We find a story the first people who are in intimate relationship with God but then they sin, which starts them down a path. First we’re told that they felt shame, then they hid from God. Next they begin accusing each other. Adam pointed at Eve and said “She did it!” From temptation to doubt to disobedience to shame to hiding to finger-pointing to suffering.

But here’s the most amazing part of the Fall story. The first persons have rejected God. They’ve decided they’d rather be their own gods. And how does God respond? He goes looking for them; he pursues them; he calls out to them: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). Then we’re told that God “made garments of skin for Adam and [Eve].” In an ancient Middle Eastern culture this is the exact opposite of what should have happened. Their clothes should have been torn to symbolize their disgrace. Instead God made garments for them. And not only that, but the text gives this beautiful detail: “and [He] clothed them.” God dressed Adam and Eve himself, so that they would not be ashamed, foreshadowing that one day he would clothe us in Christ (Galatians 3:27), with the best robe (Luke 15:22), with power from on high (Luke 24:49). Right from the very beginning, it is in God’s response to suffering that we see the love of God most clearly, a love that refuses to give up on us even when we use our free will to cause great suffering.

  1. What It Takes To Be You

It’s typical to think of the problem of evil like this: we picture ourselves in this world of suffering; then we picture ourselves in a world with far less suffering. And then we wonder, “Shouldn’t God have created us in the other world – the world with far less suffering?”

That’s a reasonable thought. But I think it’s a thought that relies on a philosophical mistake. It relies on the assumption that it would still be you and me who would exist in that other world. And that is highly controversial. Let me explain.

There was a pivotal moment early on in my parents’ dating relationship. They were standing on the Brooklyn Bridge, overlooking the picturesque New York City skyline, and my dad noticed a ring on my mom’s finger. So he asked about it, and she said, “Oh, that’s just some ring one of my old boyfriends gave me. I just wear it ‘cause I think it looks nice.”

“Oh, yeah, it is nice,” my dad said, “let me see it.”

So mom took it off and handed it to him, and my dad hurled it off the bridge and watched it sink to the bottom of the East River! “You’re with me now,” he said; “you won’t be needing that anymore.”

And my Mom loved it!

But what if she hadn’t? What if she had concluded my dad had lost it and ran off with her old boyfriend instead? What would that have meant for me?

I might be tempted to think I could have been better off. I might have been taller. I might have been better looking. Maybe the other guy was royalty. That would have been cool! I could’ve lived in a castle! But, actually, that’s not right. There’s a problem with wishing my mom wound up with the other guy, and the problem is this: ‘I’ never would have existed.

Maybe some other child would have existed. And maybe he would have been taller and better looking and lived in a castle. But part of what makes me who I am – the individual that I am – is my beginning: the parents I have, the sperm and egg I came from, my unique combination of genes.

Asking “Why didn’t God create me in a world with far less suffering?” is similar to saying “I wish my mom had married the other guy.” I’m sure my mom and her old boyfriend would have had some very nice kids; but ‘I’ would not have been one of them.

Why didn’t God create a very different world? Well, it depends on what God values. And what if one of the things he values – values greatly and unconditionally – is you, and the people you love, and every person you see walking down the street.

When we wish God had made a different sort of world, we unwittingly wish ourselves out of existence. And so the problem of suffering is reframed in the form of a question:

Could God have wronged you by creating a world in which you came to exist and are offered eternal life, rather than creating a different world in which you never would have lived?

My family has had quite a bit of disability in it. Some people would say that, because of the suffering caused by their disabilities, it would have been better if my cousin, Charles, or Uncle John, had never existed. There would have been less suffering overall; the world would be better off.

I adamantly disagree. It’s because I knew Charles and John intimately that their suffering was so frustrating. But I also believe in a God who loved them so deeply, that allowed them to have life and to be offered eternal life. There is a strong analogy here between divine creation and human procreation. We know that intentional human procreation will result in serious suffering, because even the most fortunate of human lives includes serious suffering and will end in death.

Why, then, do we think that having a child is morally okay, and even can be loving and courageous? Because the child who comes to exist would not have existed otherwise. In human procreation we risk great suffering, but in doing so we give to someone the gift of life. What I am suggesting is that in creating and sustaining this world rather than some very different world, God gave each of us the gift of life and the offer of eternal life with him.

Here is the result of this reasoning: if you think it would be in principle evil to bring children into a world that you know will produce serious suffering in their lives, you will not only need to call God evil, you will also need to call evil anyone who decides to have a child. What follows is that if there is good reason to think that human procreation can be an act of love, there is also good reason to think that God’s creation could be an act of love.
 

  1. The God Who Suffers With Us

A fourth response to the objection from suffering I take, somewhat ironically, from Friedrich Nietzsche. He wrote,

“The gods justified human life by living it themselves—the only satisfactory [response to the problem of suffering] ever invented.”[ii]

Nietzsche is actually writing of the ancient Greeks here, and in his bias he doesn’t make the connection to Christianity! But as a Christian, I am very pleased to agree with him and then point emphatically to the cross where Jesus died. At the cross, we see the absolute uniqueness of the Christian response to suffering. In Islam, the idea of God suffering is senseless – it is thought to make God weak. In Buddhism, to reach divinity is precisely to move beyond the possibility of suffering. Only in Christ do we have a God who is loving enough to suffer with us.  And because of that unsurpassable love, we can trust the Bible when it says that one day “[God] will wipe every tear from [our] eyes,” and “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4).

Dr. Vince Vitale was educated at Princeton University and the University of Oxford, and has taught philosophy of religion and served as a faculty member at both universities. It was during his undergraduate studies in philosophy at Princeton that Vince took an unexpected journey from skeptic to evangelist. He has now commended the Christian faith on the campuses of many universities, including UC Berkeley, West Point, Columbia, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, and Oxford. He has also recently had the privilege of speaking at Google Headquarters, Amazon, Brooklyn Tabernacle, and Passion City Church. Vince is married to Jo and the two of them are overjoyed to be new parents to their son, Raphael.

Further Reading:

 “Non-Identity Theodicy” in Philosophia Christi, Volume 19, No. 2 (2017) by Vince Vitale

 Why? by Sharon Dirckx

 The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis

 A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis

 Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff

 Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering by Tim Keller

 Encountering Evil, a New Edition: Live Options in Theodicy by Stephen T. Davis (Editor)

[i] All scriptural quotations are taken from the New International Version, 1984.

[ii] Nietzsche, Friedrich W, and Francis Golffing (translator), The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1956, p. 30. This quotation is taken from The Birth of Tragedy.

 

Can We Find Hope in Life Without God?

by Solas

We live in a world where hope seems in short supply. The Coronavirus pandemic has revealed that so many of the things we placed our hope in (career, health, or our comfortable lifestyles) can let us down. Can we find a hope that carries us through difficult times? In this very personal Short Answers video, Andy Bannister shows why, if there were no God, then there would be, tragically, no hope to be found—but that if the claims of Jesus stand up, there is a hope to be found concrete enough to support us even through turbulent times. The famous atheist, Friedrich Nietzsche said “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Watch this Short Answers video and discover why Christianity offers the answer that Nietzsche was so desperately yearning for.

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Billie Eilish

by Editor

If you still have not heard of Billie Eilish, let me enlighten you.  She is an eighteen year- old from Los Angeles who has been making music with her brother in her bedroom.  About four years ago they put out a song on social media.  About a year ago her first album was released.  Since then she has won five Grammy awards (including Song of the Year; Album of the Year and Best New Artist – the first time anyone has had this haul since 1981) and has released (together with her brother) her latest song – the new James Bond Theme.   Right now, her Youtube channel has 27.3 million subscribers (for comparison, John Piper’s Desiring God channel has under half a million).  So, at the stage most teenagers are wondering what to pack for their first term at University, Billie Eilish is negotiating with designer labels which want to clothe her and magazines which want to feature her.  And, as this is the 21st century, she’s also facing all kinds of trolls who want to attack her.

Teenage stars are nothing new, of course.  Judy Garland was 16 when she starred in The Wizard of Oz and much more recently Taylor Swift (see my article…) was the same age when she became a global name.  What is new, however, is Billie Eilish’s defiant persona.  Wherever it comes from, Eilish seems to approach the world with a gutsy, often cynical, playfulness we might normally associate with older, male musicians.

This posture is saleable and also defensive.  Her choice to wear baggy clothes, putting on cartoonish designer labels, crazy long painted nails and boldly dyed hair sets her apart and protects her; she refuses to be a starlet, but her bolshie anti-style makes her a kind of idol.  At first sight this looks like a very 21st century up-yours to the world of manufactured, sexualised bubble gum pop.  She says, “I never want to have a sound…I don’t want to be one thing.  I want to be everything in one”.

That’s ambitious, and perhaps naïve, because Eilish does have a sound.  It’s been described as ‘anti-pop’.  Her voice is breathy and at points tremulous – she’s certainly not an Adele or Shirley Bassey, whose powerful voices have belted out Bond songs.  Instead, her sound is intimate and often delicate and behind it we most often hear sometimes a carefully produced simple piano, or synth and bass or an occasional acoustic guitar (though the Bond theme differs from her usual output, including some soaring strings, heavy synth as well as piano).   But none of her songs are simply soft or small.  They are successful because enough of them are memorable and danceable, and also because a combination of surprising turns – pauses and swift changes – and witty, ambiguous, frequently dark lyrics makes them interesting and unsettling.   Of the material, her brother Finneas said, “we wrote an album about depression and suicidal thoughts and climate change and being a bad guy, whatever that means”.

That might make parents of teens panic.  There are tracks about tears and unrequited love, boredom, rebellion and self-disgust.  But hasn’t pop music very often been about these things?  And, it has said, that most of Eilish’s lyrics are ambiguous, and often they present a more palatable outlook that of many other sexualised young stars or gloomy heavier rock bands.  Her track ‘Xanny’, for example, is about how the heavily prescribed (and abused) tranquiliser makes her friends boring; and ‘Party Favor’ defiantly tells a (boy?)friend ‘If you don’t stop I’ll call the cops’.

In this way Eilish’s music neatly represents the experience of teens now.  They live in a scary world of financial and ecological uncertainty; there remain few boundaries to rebel against; the vocabulary of mental health and personal rights dominates the media.  This is an anxious and an extremely self-conscious age, with awe and wonder largely absent.  How is the Church to connect?  Perhaps the answer lies in agreeing with them, in part.  They see that world is dark and broken and that humans are very vulnerable.  That much is true.  One next step is to help them see their generation’s complicity in this disorder, but also to shout out for beauty.  The defiant anti-beauty of Eilish’s look and music (though it has an ethereal quality) represent a rejection of materialistic ideas of perfection; Christians must insist that beauty, that glory can be known, that it has entered and still shines in this brokenness. We must be prepared to sing of the beauty of Christ.

Sarah Allen read English at Cambridge and now works part-time as an English Teacher as well as being involved in ministry at Hope Church Huddersfield where her husband, Lewis, is Pastor. She has written a children’s book about Hannah More, and contributes to the FIEC website and EN, as well as speaking at women’s conferences.

Book: A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Short Guide to Einstein, Relativity and the Future of Faith by Alister McGrath

by Editor

The sheer breadth of Alister McGrath’s scholarly output is exhausting. He has written at book length on Luther’s theology of the cross; on the life of John Calvin; on Emil Brunner; on Jim Packer and on C S Lewis. There have been numerous books on science and religion; books on apologetics; a wonderful stand-alone Introduction to Christian Theology; and even a series of children’s books (The Aedyn Chronicles).  McGrath, like Marvin the Android from The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, clearly has a brain the size of a small planet.

Over the last quarter of a century I’ve read about 20 books by McGrath, and have thoroughly enjoyed every one of them. He is an excellent writer with a perennial ability to present sophisticated ideas clearly, while when appropriate, providing the interested reader with lots of scholarly footnotes to follow up on. This latest book on Einstein is no exception.

A Theory of Everything divides naturally into two halves. The first half of the book gives an accessible overview of Einstein’s scientific work in its historical context. Modern physics has two main ‘pillars’. The first is quantum mechanics, the theory of matter at the molecular level and below. Quantum mechanics, which in its fully developed form places probability at the root of atomic behaviour was something that was Einstein was never reconciled to. In a letter to Max Born in 1926 he said that while quantum mechanics was ‘imposing’ he was convinced that God did not ‘play at dice’ with the universe.

Nevertheless, Einstein’s contributions to the early development of quantum theory were at the Nobel Prize level. He won the 1921 prize for his work on the photoelectric effect (how light knocks electrons out of a metal). However, this Nobel prize level contribution to physics pales into insignificance beside his other work. He did not contribute to the other pillar of modern physics: He created it. The Special and General theories of relativity are the theories of the very fast and the very large, and Einstein came up with them, as single-handedly as any break-through in science can be come up with,  in 1905 and 1915.

McGrath describes Einstein’s scientific work smoothly and in layman’s terms while also covering its reception and importance. Einstein’s wider life is woven into the narrative, with matters such as the break-up of his first marriage, the attempts of Nazism to discredit his work, and his subsequent move to America, all being covered. All in all the first 90 pages of the book give a very readable introduction to Professor Albert Einstein.

The second half of the book, where McGrath considers Einstein’s religious views, is no less readable, and no less interesting. As McGrath is at pains to point out, ‘from the outset we need to be clear that Einstein was not religious in the conventional sense of the word’ (p111, emphasis in the original). He was Jewish, but didn’t attend religious ceremonies, and certainly did not believe in a personal God who intervened in the created world. He stated that ‘I believe in Spinoza’s God’ (p112), but this in itself does not necessarily help, as Spinoza has been read by scholars as being a pantheist and an atheist. McGrath, however, states that ‘Einstein’s view of God is not to be identified with that of Spinoza, and in particular not with pantheism’ (p.117), or with atheism.

For Einstein, the wonder, order, and complexity of the universe points beyond itself to ‘Something Other’, or as he said, a ‘superior mind’. But for Einstein, that Other is beyond our grasp. Here, of course, the Christian is going to whole-heartedly agree with Einstein, and in a thoughtful final chapter McGrath engages with Einstein from an explicitly Christian perspective.  Drawing on the metaphor of God’s two books of revelation (nature and scripture) McGrath sees Einstein as a man who rightly reads God’s book of nature, both in terms of his brilliant scientific work, and his realisation that it does indeed point to a ‘superior mind’. The Christian worldview, however, claims to provide a richer, more complete, more complex, more satisfying view of reality.  For the Christian, the book of scripture shows that there is much more to be said, and that God has spoken.

Mark McCartney teaches mathematics at the University of Ulster. His research interests are in the areas of nonlinear systems and the history of mathematics and natural philosophy in the nineteenth century. He is married to a wonderful wife, and has two wonderful children.

A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Short Guide to Einstein, Relativity and the Future of Faith by Alister McGrath (Hodder & Stoughton, 2019, h/b, 178 pages, £14.99) is available online here.

PEP Talk Podcast With Alasdair Macleod

by Solas

For those involved in church leadership, getting evangelism and outreach into the natural life of the church family can sometimes be a challenge. In today’s PEP Talk we hear from Inverness pastor Alasdair Macleod, speaking about the extension of discipleship and preaching into the culture of outreach in his congregation.

With Alasdair Macleod – PEP Talk

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Our Guest

Alasdair Macleod has been the lead pastor at Culduthel Christian Centre in his hometown of Inverness since 2014. He was a fellow student with Andy Bannister at London School of Theology and spent several years pastoring churches around the London area. He has completed training in Christian Counselling and more recently an MLitt in Biblical Studies from St Andrews University. He spends his free time mainly supporting the interests of his teenage children but when there is opportunity Alasdair enjoys 5-a-side football, cycling and golf.

About PEP Talk

The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast aims to equip listeners to share their faith more effectively in a sceptical world. Each episode, Andy Bannister (Solas) and Kristi Mair (Oak Hill College) chat to a guest who has a great story, a useful resource, or some other expertise that helps equip you to talk persuasively, winsomely, and engagingly with your friends, colleagues and neighbours about Jesus.

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A Beginner’s Guide to the Argument from Rationality

by Editor 2 Comments

 

Many atheists are committed to explaining every aspect of life in purely material terms. Thus when it comes to the mind and thought, they seek to reduce this most profound of human experiences to the interaction of chemicals and the firing of synapses. The human brain becomes, quite literally, a “meat computer”.

For example, biologist Susan Blakemore, a committed atheist, writes:

If you think that we humans have some special faculty of creativity or consciousness or sentience then I disagree … We are meme machines … and without any consciousness, free will, or other spooky power that might enable to leap outside the system.[1]

Whilst American philosopher Daniel Dennett is equally forthright in his commitment to atheistic materialism.

There is only one sort of stuff, namely matter—the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology—and the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon. In short, the mind is the brain … we can (in principle!) account for every mental phenomenon using the same basic principles, laws, and raw materials that suffice to explain radioactivity, continental drift, photosynthesis, reproduction, nutrition, and growth.[2]

Did you grasp quite what Dennett said there? All that you are—your hopes and dreams, your beliefs and your values and above all, your thinking and your reasoning—are nothing more than the movement of atoms jostling together, chemicals fizzing, neurons buzzing. Physics can explain your beliefs with the same ease as it can explain earthquakes or plant growth.

But isn’t there a major problem here? Not least of which is that continental drift and photosynthesis are not rational. I don’t know about you, but I have never once thought to enquire of a newly grown leaf’s view of politics or seek the advice of continental plates on the finer points of Shakespearian sonnets. If Dennett is right, something follows: those things are not rational, therefore neither are we.

But let’s stick with Dennett’s line of thought for a moment—because he is grappling with a difficult puzzle for an atheist. What precisely is a thought, if materialism is true? Presumably a thought has to be a material process, but how does that work exactly? In particular, one of the key things about a thought is that thoughts have an “aboutness” quality to them—indeed, a thought, arguably, is the only thing in the known universe that is about something other than itself. How do we account for that with materialism?

The simple answer is that we can’t. If atheistic materialism is true, our brains evolved, evolution selecting over millions of generations not for truth, but for adaptability. Anything that helps us survive, is selected for, that which doesn’t, gets weeded out.

To illustrate the problem here, a little thought experiment.[3] Consider Sid and Eric, two of our ancient cavemen ancestors. One day, Sid and Eric look up and see, pacing toward them, a hungry-looking sabre toothed tiger. Immediately, they both break into a run, escape and live to survive, and enjoy whatever cavemen do during retirement. However, there is a difference between them. Sid runs away from the tiger because he believes it wishes to eat him. Eric runs away because he loves sabre-toothed tigers, and furthermore believes that the best way to make a tiger really happy is to give it a healthy sprint across the Serengeti. One set of beliefs is true, one is false, but evolution doesn’t care what Sid or Eric believe—merely that they each pump their little legs as fast as their cardiovascular systems can support.

In short, evolution selects for adaptive behaviour. It does not select for truth. Listen to atheist Patricia Churchland:

Boiled down to the essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in…. feeding, fleeing, fighting and reproducing … Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.[4]

In short, on naturalism you have absolutely no good reason to trust your thoughts. None whatsoever. There is no good reason to assume that they deliver truth. As atheist Thomas Nagel writes:

An evolutionary explanation of our theorizing faculty would provide absolutely no confirmation of its ability to get at the truth. [5]

So what about Christianity? Why do Christians believe that we trust our thoughts, our thinking, and our beliefs? Quite simply because the Christian story is very different to the naturalist story. As Christians, we believe that we are created in the image of a God who is rational and who has created us with the ability to reason, to think, to discern. In the Christian story, we are not merely survival-directed creatures who have evolved by the blind forces of natural selection, but truth-directed beings created in the image of a God who is Truth.

But crucially, God has not merely made us image bearers, but has placed us into a rational, ordered world in which things like science are even possible. It is because of who we are and whose image we bear that we can trust the veracity of our observations and deductions, and trust that we can know truth.

By contrast, when atheists reject God and reduce of all human experience to physical processes, they often end up with a form of determinism—everything in the world, including all of human experience, is simply physically determined by the movement of atoms and particles. This is a view of the world that has some profound and terrible consequences.

The first consequence is that if determinism is true, there can be no such thing as freedom, at least no genuine freedom. You may think that you have freely chosen to be an atheist, or to be a Christian, but actually you had no choice in the matter. You don’t choose your beliefs because they are true or false; you choose them because of the deterministic movements of atoms and particles.

The second consequence is that the determinism which atheistic materialism implies destroys any possibility of real thinking. This is because thinking requires freedom—it requires you to come to a conclusion not because of a chain of chemical processes, but because you believe the conclusion to be true: logically and rationally. It’s fascinating, isn’t it, that every human society has been concerned with the pursuit of truth—pursuing truth seems to be profoundly and deeply part of what being human means. If this doesn’t make sense on atheism, I would suggest that it’s a strong clue that atheism isn’t true. Thinking and rationality point to the fact that the deepest reality in the universe is not just atoms and particles.

In all of this discussion, I’m reminded as we draw to a close of something that the philosopher Mary Midgley once wrote. Midgley was an atheist, but a thoughtful and reflective one, willing to recognise many of the difficulties of atheism—and what atheists risked losing when they threw God away. Midgeley remarked:

“It is all very well to eliminate God from the intelligible universe but eliminating ourselves from it blocks all sorts of enquiries.”[6]

Because when we reject God, who is the ground of our being, we undercut precious aspects of our own humanity. In contrast, the Christian faith offers a coherent account of our humanity, notably our capacity for rationality: one of the most precious gifts that the creator God has given us and one of the many means through which we can come to know him. As Jesus said: “Love the Lord your God with your heart, soul and mind”.

Dr Andy Bannister is the Director of the Solas Centre for Public Christianity, and the author of The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist.

Further Reading:

Moderate level:  “Am I Just My Brain?” by Sharon Dirckx (available here)

More advanced level: “Where the Conflict Really Lies” by Alvin Plantinga. (available here)

 

[1]        Susan Blackmore, ‘Copy That: A Response’. The New York Times, 3 September 2010 (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/copy-that-a-response/) (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/copy-that-a-response/, accessed 27 July 2011).

[2]        Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston, MA: Little and Brown, 1991) 33.

[3]        Borrowed and adapted from Alvin Plantinga, ‘An Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism’, Be Thinking Website, https://www.bethinking.org/atheism/an-evolutionary-argument-against-naturalism, accessed 20 November 2019.

[4]        Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Bloomsbury, 2007) 548.

[5]        Evgeny Morozov, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011) 79.

[6]        Mary Midgley, ‘Against Humanism’, New Humanist, 25 October 2010 (http://rationalist.org.uk/2419/ against-humanism).

Online Evangelism in Derby

by Editor

Rev Neil Barber writes:

At St Giles’ Church in Derby we have a regular outreach event we call “Reasonable Faith”.  We like tackling the questions unbelievers often ask and Christians may ask too, helping people grasp some of the best in Christian ‘apologetics’, that is reasons for the faith we have.  When all our church activities went on-line during the pandemic, we made a quick decision to include these evenings as a part of our gatherings despite the challenges of making them accessible to visitors and enquirers.

We live in a parish where 38% of the population is from an Asian background. Our building is opposite one mosque and next-door-but-three to another one! So, I contacted Andy Bannister out of the blue, he didn’t know me from Adam, but I’d seen a lot of him on the internet and read some of his stuff on Islam.  I asked if he’d be willing to give a 20 minute talk via Zoom one Sunday evening. We specifically wanted an event that our Muslim friends would want to come to, so we asked Andy to address the subject: Why does a Muslim need the Jesus of the Bible?  How does the true Jesus relate to Islam?

Andy jumped at the chance and in no time at all there he was talking to 70 people including a good number of friends including two 2 Muslims. We’re very much learning how to hold out the word of life to them.

Andy was interviewed and then he gave his talk.  We held our breath as we invited questions through the Zoom ‘chat’.  We needn’t have worried.  The questions came thick and fast – it was exciting!  They were wide-ranging and uncompromising and Andy wasn’t phased by any of them.  His expert insight and gracious manner was very evident and, to those whose hearts were open, he spoke clearly of the gospel of grace.  Andy did a great job at engaging when it’s easy to be fearful and he gave our church a taste for what it might look like to love our Muslim neighbours while telling the truth.  We’re hoping to have Andy back to help some more in future.

Andy Bannister recalls:

It was great to be invited by St Giles Church to participate in their ‘Reasonable Faith’ evening. My talk was about “Jesus in Islam and Christianity”.  Most Christians are unaware that The Qur’an mentions Jesus over ninety times, and includes reports of his virgin birth, affirms his miracles and describes him using some highly elevated titles. The Islamic view of Jesus is problematic however – because his role doesn’t seem to fit his titles. He is variously described as ‘A Word from Allah’, ‘A Spirit from Allah’, and even “The Messiah”; but then doesn’t seem to be given a role which is accordance with these.

I argued that these titles were borrowed from the New Testament gospels, and the only way to really grasp the significance of them is to investigate what they mean there in their original setting.

Of course one of the biggest stumbling blocks to Muslims is that Christians worship Jesus. Jesus is worshipped throughout the New Testament, Christians pray to Him, they call on His name and believe He is the Son of God. All of this is of course, very difficult for Muslims to comprehend.

I argued that Jesus was either the most useless religious figure in history, who didn’t want to be worshipped but failed to communicate that to his followers or he really should be worshipped! So I looked at 5 pieces of evidence that show that Jesus really did make those exalted claims.  Firstly the titles Jesus used for himself which include “Lord of the Sabbath” and “The Son of Man” from Daniel 7. Then he forgave people’s sins, told people to pray in his name and then placed his words alongside scripture. Old Testament prophets would say, ‘Thus says The Lord’; but Jesus said, ‘truly I say to you’! It’s no wonder then when Jesus was questioned about His identity by Caiaphas, the High Priest, Caiaphas tore his robes and cried, “Blasphemy!” at Jesus’ answers.

It’s clear that Jesus identified Himself with God and was telling the truth, or was a liar, or was a lunatic. C.S. Lewis’ famous ‘Trilemma’ comes into sharp focus when you read the words of Jesus.

The vicar, Neil Barber has invited us to go back to Derby and do some more work with them in the future. It’s really good to see a local church who (as unlocking from Covid-19 begins), have their eyes firmly on evangelism. The temptation for churches is to become introspective, and worry more about facilitating their own programmes than about reaching the lost. St Giles’ are setting us all a great example by being intentionally missional.

St Giles Church in Derby is online here

Jesus in Christianity and Islam; Outreach in Derby

by Editor

We were recently approached by St Giles Church, Derby, a parish church in England. They have been running regular “Reasonable Faith” events, looking at some of the biggest questions of life, faith and meaning, from a Christian perspective. In recent months they have done evenings on science, suffering, and the resurrection – for example.

They wanted to do something on Islam, because they have lots of Muslim friends and neighbours, and their church building is right opposite a mosque there in the South of the City. Apparently they found me and Solas, by doing a Google search on Christians with an interest in Islam – they found the Solas website and got in touch!

On the night we had 60 people the Zoom conference – because it took place before the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions were lifted. However, despite that we had a full evening together, with  talk from me – followed by a Q&A with some perceptive, genuine and heartfelt questions.

My talk was about “Jesus in Islam and Christianity”.  Most Christians are unaware that The Qur’an mentions Jesus over ninety times, and includes reports of his virgin birth, affirms his miracles and describes him using some highly elevated titles. The Islamic view of Jesus is problematic however – because his role doesn’t seem to fit his titles. He is variously described as ‘A word from Allah’, ‘A Spirit from Allah’, and even “The Messiah”; but then doesn’t seem to be given a role which is accordance with these.

I argued that these titles were borrowed from the New Testament gospels, and the only way to really grasp the significance of the is to investigate what they mean there in their original setting.

Of course on of the biggest stumbling blocks to Muslims is that Christians worship Jesus. Jesus is worshipped throughout the New Testament, Christians pray to Him, they call on His name and believe He is the Son of God. All of this is of course, very difficult for Muslims to comprehend.

I argued that Jesus was either the most useless religious figure in history, who didn’t want to be worshipped but failed to communicate that to his followers or he really should be worshipped! So I looked at 5 pieces of evidence that show that Jesus really did make those exalted claims.  Firstly the titles Jesus uses for himself which include “Lord of the Sabbath” and “The Son of Man” from Daniel 7. Then he forgave people’s sins, told people to pray in his name and then placed his words alongside scripture. Old Testament prophets would say, ‘thus says The Lord’; but Jesus said, ‘truly I saw to you’! It’s no wonder then when Jesus was questioned about His identity by Ciaphas, the High Priest, Ciaphas tore his robes and cried, “Blasphemy!” at Jesus’ answers. This means that Jesus was was telling the truth, or was a liar, or was a lunatic.

After my talk we did about half an hour of Q&A. It was clear from the nature of the questions that there were a few people there who weren’t Christians, including some asking questions from a Muslim perspective – so it was great to welcome them and engage with them.

Neil Barber, the vicar at St Giles was encouraged especially by the engagement in the Q&A  He’s invited us to go back to Derby and do some more work with them in the future. It’s really good to see a local church who (as unlocking from Covid-19 begins), have their eyes firmly on evangelism. The temptation for churches is to become introspective, and worry more about facilitating our own programmes than the lost. St Giles’ are setting us all a great example by being intentionally missional.

 

Why Do You Christians Force Your Beliefs On Others?

by Solas

Is it wrong to seek to persuade other people that Christianity is true? In this Short Answers film, Solas Director Andy Bannister tackles a number of myths about why Christians love to tell others about Jesus. And as he does, he discovers, with the help an atheist historian, just what an incredible impact Christianity has had on so many things that all of us care deeply about—and with the help of another atheist, why it is vital that Christians share their faith.

For further reading: https://www.solas-cpc.org/a-beginners-guide-to-the-moral-force-of-the-cross-the-social-legacy-of-christian-mission/

Penn Jillette “A Gift of a Bible” video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6md638smQd8

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Please share this video widely with friends or family and for more Short Answers videos, visit solas-cpc.org/shortanswers/, subscribe to our YouTube channel or visit us on Twitter Instagram or Facebook.

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Short Answers is a viewer-supported video series: if you enjoy them, please help us continue to make them by donating to Solas. Visit our Donate page and choose “Digital Media Fund” under the Campaign/Appeal button.

Book: A Brief History of Thought by Luc Ferry

by Editor

“To honestly and sympathetically deal with the best case that any form of unbelief can make and then show the desperate need that still remains and how it can only be met by the true God and His redeeming son – this is the excellent way.” – Ralph Winter

To read Luc Ferry’s “Brief History of Thought” is to pursue Winter’s “excellent way”. For this reader, it is to arrive at the end of Ferry’s excellent survey of over 3 millennia of philosophy feeling great respect for the author in his honest wrestling with the great questions, but simultaneously having become even more convinced of the “desperate need that still remains and how it can only be met by the true God and His redeeming son…”. Ferry’s book ends up bolstering Christian faith by demonstrating that the alternatives, including his own, don’t work.

Ferry’s starting point is the challenge to religion and philosophy of the peril of inevitable death. He rejects religion in favour of the great philosophies which can “be defined as doctrines of salvation (without the help of a God)”. However, in his advocacy of a “transcendent humanism” that rejects any appeal to a transcendent God, Ferry makes two related errors. First, he pits faith against reason: philosophy in contrast to theology, incites us “to turn aside from faith, to exercise reason…”. To Ferry, faith is an anti-rational way of knowing. Yet this is not a definition of “faith” that any competent Christian theologian would accept.

The second and related error is revealed in Ferry’s statement that philosophy “unlike the great religions, promises to help us to ‘save’ ourselves, to conquer our fears, not through an Other, a God, but through our own strength and the use of our reason.” This is a remarkable (and representative) expression of faith in human strength and unaided reason and unmasks the unstated assumption that philosophy does not depend on faith commitments. It would be a good critical reading task for the young Christian to read Ferry’s account and observe his unstated beliefs woven through the book. Of course, it risks a cheap shot to ask how that particular project of dependence on “our own strength and the use of our reason” is turning out. The history of the 20th century has a great deal to say on the matter.

There is so much that is good in Ferry’s journey from early Greek philosophy to his concluding challenge of doing philosophy post-Nietzsche, and there are necessary corrections to common misunderstandings. Nowhere is this more true than in his detailed and sympathetic outline of Nietzsche’s thought, which alone is worth the price of the book. Attention to Ferry at this point may prevent Christians from the failure of love that is the misrepresentation of those with whom they disagree. Similarly Ferry’s critique of materialism is trenchant and convincing, noting “our logical incapacity to put aside the notion…that there is within us something in excess of nature or history”.

His personal investment in the project is what makes the book so engaging, but ultimately for the Christian reader, so bitter sweet. Ferry wraps up the whole book with the assertion that “amongst the available doctrines of salvation, nothing can compete with Christianity…”. Though he does not believe it, he is attracted to Christian faith, confessing that “were it to be true I would certainly be a taker.” It took 263 pages to get to this truth question. Ferry, like so many, does not seriously consider Christianity’s truth claims; he simply does not believe.

This is a pity, not least because Christianity also has the capacity to address Ferry’s argument that a good philosophy should enable us to live in and for the present. Christian theology actually doesn’t do what he accuses religions of doing – robbing us of the present through nostalgia on the one hand and excessive hope on the other. Rather, in Christ, the past is dealt with by the Cross and future hope inaugurated by faith becomes the basis for redeemed living now. By reconciling past, present and future, Christian faith offers the only way to what Ferry calls “the only life available to us”, his definition of the good life – a life lived fully in the present.

Mark Stirling is the Director of The Chalmers Institute in St Andrews. The Chalmers Institute exists for the renewal of Church leadership in Europe by developing Biblically mature leaders who will equip God’s people for lives of discipleship and evangelism.

Luc Ferry’s A Brief History of Thought is available from online bookshops such as here.

PEP Talk Podcast With Ruth Jackson

by Solas

What are the issues and challenges around young people and faith? Whether we’re thinking about peer-to-peer evangelism, parents passing faith to their children, or the impact of growing up in a digital environment, both the opportunities and the pitfalls are immense. Here to offer her insight is Ruth Jackson, speaking with Andy Bannister and stand-in co-host Gavin Matthews.

With Ruth Jackson – PEP Talk

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Our Guest

Ruth Jackson is a producer and youth specialist for Premier Christian Radio’s Unbelievable? programme and podcast, which brings Christians and non-Christians together for dialogue. She was previously editor of Premier Youth and Children’s Work magazine. Ruth studied theology at Oxford University before working at the BBC’s flagship children’s television show Blue Peter.  Ruth is a volunteer youth worker, preacher and worship leader at her local church in Feltham, where she lives with her musician husband Will and puppy Taylor.

About PEP Talk

The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast aims to equip listeners to share their faith more effectively in a sceptical world. Each episode, Andy Bannister (Solas) and Kristi Mair (Oak Hill College) chat to a guest who has a great story, a useful resource, or some other expertise that helps equip you to talk persuasively, winsomely, and engagingly with your friends, colleagues and neighbours about Jesus.

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A Beginner’s Guide to the Argument from Goodness

by Editor

Chilli Rating: ? ? ?

Plainly, humans believe in good and evil. Things like grace, honesty, and fidelity are deeply valued, while things like rape and the torture of infants are condemned. All of us harbour moral intuitions and we all feel the prick of conscience. Perhaps we don’t always agree about just which things are good or evil in a given situation, but there does appear to be universal acknowledgement that some things really are good, and some things really are evil. In other words, humans just are profoundly moral.

Why is this? Where does the phenomenon of morality come from? And why does it seem to be hard-wired into us?

The argument from ‘good’, or the moral argument, claims that the best explanation for morality is the existence of God. Usually the argument takes the following form:

  1. Objective moral facts are real.
  2. God is the best explanation for the existence of objective moral facts.
  3. Therefore, God (probably) exists.

To see how persuasive this argument is let’s take it step by step.

Are there objective moral facts?

It seems obvious that humans operate with an implicit commitment to moral facts being real. They shape our understanding of meaning and purpose: we value human dignity and pursue the good life. They also undergird our justice systems: we hunger for justice. But are they objectively real? Are they real outside of our human imagination?

Some philosophers deny that morality is real at all. Such moral nihilists believe that the whole idea of their being norms about good and evil, and right and wrong is an illusion. On this view, any moral obligations we feel are entirely imagined. For these moral sceptics there simply are no ‘oughts.’ Like all radical scepticism, this view is possible, but is deeply dissatisfying as a worldview.

Others agree that morality is a real phenomenon but disagree that it is objective. Instead, they think   that it is grounded simply in the human experience. Usually these thinkers explain morality in terms of human flourishing. Subjectivism, however, suffers from serious problems. First among them is that virtually no one thinks or talks or lives like it is the case. We don’t, in fact, believe things like ‘rape appears wrong’, or ‘rape is bad because it hinders the human species prospering’ (indeed you could easily make an evolutionary case that for rape benefitting the survival of the fittest!). Instead we intrinsically believe (and think and feel and say) that rape just is wrong.

Another problem is that there’s too many features of morality that subjectivism struggles to explain. So, sometimes we deeply value actions that run counter to the human prospering model. Here’s an example: in 1997 the Australian Navy travelled 2500km into stormy seas to rescue a single stranded British sailor. The operation risked the lives of many to save one – and at a cost $6million dollars. This makes little sense in sheer evolutionary or utilitarian terms; it only makes good sense if every single human life carries profound objective value.

While it is possible in theory for morality to be imagined, the phenomenon doesn’t in fact operate that way. Instead, it is entirely reasonable to think that the best explanation for our intrinsic morality is that objective moral facts are real.

Is God the best explanation?

Next, the moral argument says that God is the best explanation for objective morality. I say best because there are other possibilities.

One explanation offered by some is that morality is a basic reality that needs no supernatural explanation. This view thinks that, like the laws of physics, the universe just is supported by moral laws (and no one knows why). They think that this is a better explanation than theism because theism also rests on an unexplained basic reality – that God is just good (and no one knows why) – and theism is a more complicated explanation than naturalism. This view has significant problems. One is that there seem no obvious reasons for this sort of law to just exist in a foundationally impersonal universe. Moral laws don’t seem to be the same type of law as, say, the mechanical laws of physics. Another is that it’s hard to see how a naturalistic morality can be binding or normative: perhaps we can describe a naturally good life, but on just what authority can we demand the pursuit of it, or censure the abuse of it?

It is also possible to hold to a supernatural case that doesn’t involve God. In theory at least, the universe could have been created moral by super aliens or a multitude of moral gods.

While other explanations are possible, God is the best explanation. Indeed, the Christian conception of God, in particular, is uniquely suited to explain moral facts because morality is essentially personal and social and normative. It describes the intrinsic value of persons as well as the rights and obligations we have toward one another. Among the possible basic moral realities, only the Christian God displays these essential features. Only the Trinitarian God is essentially personal and essentially social and essentially loving.  Also, because the Trinitarian God ‘owns’ His creation, only He has the authority to command good and punish evil. In short, the Trinitarian God best explains the nature and normativity of moral facts.

Does morality prove God’s existence?

The last step in the moral argument claims that God is probably real. This conclusion follows logically, but its force depends upon how convinced its hearers are by the first two premises. Neither the claim that moral facts are objectively real, nor God as the best explanation are indisputably or uncontroversially true, so the moral argument is not inescapable. Despite this, it is eminently reasonable, and very many thoughtful people have found it elegantly and intuitively persuasive. While (perhaps) it lacks the power to coerce belief in God, it remains among the most powerful tools in the case for reasonable Christian faith. It is for this reason it underpinned C.S. Lewis’ classic Mere Christianity and remains powerfully defended by philosophers like William Lane Craig, C. Stephen Evans, Robert Adams and recently by Baggert and Walls in God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning.

Richard Shumack is a philosopher of religion and a part-time Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity. He is also Director of the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology. He teaches critical thinking and speaks regularly on the ethics of religious belief, worldview, Islamic philosophy, and (sometimes) sport. He is the author of The Wisdom of Islam and the Foolishness of Christianity.

Further Resources:

https://www.reasonablefaith.org/podcasts/defenders-podcast-series-1/s1-moral-argument/moral-argument-part-1/ (Introductory)

Baggett & Walls, God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press, 2016.  (Advanced)