Ed Ames, “Who Will Answer?” c. 1968

From the canyons of the mind,
We wander on and stumble blind;
Wade through the often-tangled maze
Of starless nights and sunless days;
Hoping for some kind of clue,
A road to lead us to the truth.
But who will answer?

As side-by-side two people stand,
Together vowing, hand-in-hand,
That love’s embedded in their hearts;
But soon an empty feeling starts
To overwhelm their hollow lives.
And if they ask the hows and whys,
Who will answer?

Far upon and distant hill,
A young man’s lying very still.
His arms will never hold his child,
Because a bullet running wild
Has struck him down. And now he cries,
“My God, why? O why?”
But who will answer?

As high upon a lonely ledge,
a figure teeters near the edge,
While jeering crowds collect below
To egg him on with, “Go, man, go!”
And none will ask what led him to
His private day of doom.
And who will answer?

As ‘neath the spreading mushroom tree,
The world revolves with apathy;
While overhead, a row of specks
Roars on, drowned out by discotheques.
And if the secret button’s pressed
Because one man has been outguessed,
Who will answer?

Is our hope in walnut shells,
Worn ’round the neck with temple bells?
Or deep within some cloistered walls
Where hooded figures pray in halls?
Or high upon some dusty shelves?
Or in our stars? Or in ourselves?
Who will answer?

If the soul is darkened by a fear it cannot name,
If the mind is baffled when the rules don’t fit the game,
Who will answer?

Arthur Guiterman, c. 1936

First dentistry was painless, then bicycles were chainless, and carriages were horseless, and many laws enforceless. Next cookery was fireless, telegraphy was wireless, cigars were nicotineless, and coffee caffeineless. Soon oranges were seedless, the putting green was weedless, the college boy hatless, the proper diet fatless. Now motor roads are dustless, the latest steel is rustless, our tennis courts are sodless, our new religions godless.

Sorry for the lull in posting. Thought I would post a quick note letting people know that I am working a great deal of overtime at work at the moment, which will continue for the next three or four weeks. I will post when I have the chance, but… for now, it may not be for a week or more yet. My apologies. Back soon. Perhaps Hermiene will post something thought-provoking for your perusal… *cough*hint*cough* (Oh, and no, there has been nothing from more Fluke since.)

Robert Lawrence Kuhn, who is on the board of directors at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) and is the executive producer and host of the PBS television series Closer to Truth, has developed an even more specific documentary currently in post-production called Into God. In this series Kuhn explores fundamental questions at the intersection of science and religion with over 50 leading scholars, scientists, and philosophers from both sides of the issue, believers and non-believers alike.

This is a film I am anticipating with some excitement, not only because the subject matter corresponds to my interests but also because I greatly admire a number of the scholars Kuhn interviews. Here is just a partial list:

• Alvin Plantinga, philosopher;
• Francis Collins, director, Human Genome Project;
• Michael Shermer, publisher, Skeptic Magazine;
• Keith Ward, theologian, philosopher;
• Lawrence Krauss, physicist;
• Paul Davies, physicist, cosmologist;
• Richard Swinburne, philosopher;
• David Shatz, rabbi, religious scholar;
• Marvin Minsky, artificial intelligence pioneer;
• Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate in physics;
• William Lane Craig, philosopher, religious scholar;
• Russell Stannard, physicist;
• Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, philosopher;
• Quentin Smith, philosopher;
• Freeman Dyson, physicist;

What I gather from the trailer is that Kuhn does no business with the answers; rather, he articulates the questions and allows his guests to present their perspectives on them. And given the range of scholarly fields his guests represent, I anticipate the answers will be sophisticated and provocative. This film is not intended as providing definitive answers to the questions but as representing the importance and authenticity of the questions and encouraging the viewers to contemplate them seriously in his or her own life (rather than ignorantly dismissing them out of hand as Dawkins or Hitchens would have it).

Here is the official trailer released for it:

Guy Consolmagno, 14 Aug 2009.

“What I find in many of the proselytizers of atheism is a very naïve understanding of religion. If religion were anything like the rigid brainwashing it’s often caricatured as, I would have no part of it either.”

I have not been a fan of the show American Idol since its fifth season in 2006 when, for no reason that made any kind of sense, Chris Daughtry was eliminated from the show after rising to only fourth-place—a result further confounded by Taylor Hicks somehow taking home the win. Nevertheless, I will forever be grateful to the show for introducing to the world the phenomenon known as Daughtry, whose multi-platinum debut album shattered every expectation in both acclaim and sales (e.g., fastest-selling debut rock album in Soundscan history) to become the number one rock album of 2007 in sales at 4.5 million copies. And, in my opinion, it was well earned. It still ranks among the most-played albums in my collection, and “What About Now” is still one of my favourite songs from 2008.

I was not aware until this evening that their second album, Leave This Town, was finally dropped on 14 July 2009. Thanks to an advertisement in iTunes for that heads up. I had to download that immediately. And, ladies and gentlemen, I am happy to report that this album does not disappoint! At this very moment I am listening to “Open Up Your Eyes” on my iPod Touch and it is… incredible. When your debut album is off the hook, trying to follow up its success can be intimidating, to say the least. But in my opinion (which means something only to people like Vicki, who share my musical tastes), the musical salience of this album exceeds that of the first. They took what was so great about the first album and seemed to perfect it for this one. While I love the album overall, there are five tracks in particular that I just cannot stop playing. They are, in order of playification:

1. No Surprise [see official music video]
2. Open Up Your Eyes
3. September
4. Tennessee Line
5. Learn My Lesson

How the hell did this guy not win? Go, buy the album. Now.

(P.S. Listening to how the song “No Surprise” begins and ends, you can definitely detect Chad Kroeger’s influence on the collaboration.)

In the “Merciful vs. Just” article, I addressed a question from an atheist named Fluke about possible conditions under which God may be deemed more virtuous. Specifically, he wanted to know if God would be more virtuous if he were more merciful. Given that virtuous means conforming to moral and ethical principles or morally excellent, this calls for a theory of ethics (values and morals); and given that the question was framed as a critique of God, it had to be uniquely Christian.

But since a Christian theory of ethics would hold that something is virtuous or morally excellent by the degree to which it conforms to the nature and will of God—as moral order is grounded in the very nature of God and expressed prescriptively by his commands—it seemed unclear to me how the nature and will of God could conform to any greater degree to the nature and will of God. It seemed nonsensical to ask how God could greater than himself.

This, however, struck Fluke as prima facie unsatisfactory because to him that seemed to create a dissonance. If moral order is grounded in the very nature of God, then how is it possible for Fluke to have a moral opinion contrary to God? So he asked me (a) if I believed that “God imbued man with a sense of morality,” and if so, (b) “then how could it be that our own God-given sense of morality is so very ‘out of alignment’ with God’s morality?” The answer is at once both simple and historically known.

If moral order is grounded in the very nature of God and mankind was created in the image of God, then we have an intelligible account for man’s innate intuition of an objective morality. But how is it possible for this God-given moral compass be so very ‘out of alignment’ with God’s morality? The answer is simple and historic: mankind exists in a fallen sinful state. That free agency which manifests the human imago Dei also manifests itself in estrangement from God, as told in the myth* of the Fall in the book of Genesis. According to this myth, mankind in his freedom can choose to deny or repress their spiritual and moral likeness to God—“the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom. 1:18-32).

Which is the very reason how and why Fluke can have a moral opinion contrary to God. Although mankind as imago Dei possesses that innate intuition of an objective moral order, by his sinful condition and rebellion against God that moral compass is broken. It is a compass that is wilfully uncalibrated against true morality, which is found nowhere else but the sovereign and holy God revealed in the sacred Scriptures. The varied attempts to ground moral order anywhere but in God also explains the disparate moralities found throughout the world—although at the most basic moral level there is no real disparity which, once again, makes sense under a human imago Dei created by a God in whom moral order is ultimately grounded.

____________________

* I do not mean “myth” in the pejorative sense common in anti-theist sentiment, viz. an invented or imaginary story. I mean it in the real and classic sense of “a traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society” (as found in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004).

Over at the AtheistForums.org web site there is one particular member who has been claiming rather consistently that God (as described by Christian theism) exhibits several fundamental contradictions. Given the ubiquitous popularity of such a view among the lowing Dawkinsian herd, I thought it might be a worthwhile investment of my time and energies to engage that claim in a formal debate. So I challenged her.

And she accepted.

The debate will take place over the course of the next few weeks (perhaps five or six when allowing for responses to audience questions) but once it is completed I will make an announcement here—and quite probably will make it available as a PDF document from this web site, in the interest of those who might want to print it and read it offline at their leisure. That is subject to my debate partner’s agreement, of course, but since the debate will already be in public domain at AtheistForums.org I cannot foresee why she would refuse.

So, I will announce when the debate is completed.

(P.S. The informal debate with William Brall for the time being is suspended. Not sure what has happened but he has not yet withdrawn, although he may as well have.)

UPDATE: 6 September 2009

First, the gender of my opponent was clarified; pronouns here were corrected. Second, she has given her consent to the completed debate being made available from this site.

Furthermore, the debate has been structured and agreed upon, including the number of rounds and the deadlines for each. We now know that the debate will be concluded the first week of October:

• Opening Statements (11/Sep/09 23:59 hrs. Pacific)
• Response to Opening Statements (18/Sep/09 23:59 hrs. Pacific)
• Rebuttal Against Responses (25/Sep/09 23:59 hrs. Pacific)
• Closing Statements (2/Oct/2009 23:59 hrs. Pacific)

UPDATE: 29 September 2009

Unfortunately, the formal debate was terminated. It was by mutual agreement, but I still say “unfortunately” because we were within one round of finishing the debate. So close. Anyhow, through private correspondence, Saerules had informed me that she wished to end the formal debate, having grown so frustrated with the environment and rules of a formal debate that she had lost nearly all interest in it. As you will likely be able to tell, it was her first experience with the format. Had she known what the constraints were in a formal debate, she probably would have chosen to have an informal one from the start.

At any rate, here is a PDF copy of the debate. Enjoy.

UPDATE: 15 October 2009

I just received official notice from Saerules that she is terminating even the informal debate. And so now with any form of the debate having been terminated by Saerules, plus William Brall likewise having abandoned a similar debate, Christianity is demonstrated as continuing to stand very firm against indefensible allegations of irrationality.

<Meson> Were you once a Christian, Jovian?

<Jovian> I suspect I was once.

<Meson> What changed?

<Jovian> I got educated.

<Meson> Explain

<Jovian> Education taught me to not believe in myths.

<Ryft> When did you stop being a Christian, as it were?

<Jovian> You want a date?

<Ryft> An approximate one.

<Jovian> Probably 20 years ago.

<Ryft> Great, thank you. And you are now how old?

<Jovian> Heheh… forty-something.

<Ryft> Okay, good. This, then, explains a great deal.

<Jovian> Really? A great deal? Like what?

<Ryft> You spent the first half of your life, notably through the most formative years, as an uneducated myth-believing simpleton. It makes abundant sense how you would fall into atheism.

<MrDav> lol

Really, I ought to keep track of my link trails. Although I don’t remember how I ended up reading this particular article, I do remember reaching the Duane’s Mind site from the blogroll at Matthew Hamilton’s web site, Thoughts Out Loud. So Matthew is generating traffic for you, Duane.

At any rate, the article I was reading was called “The ‘Innocent’ Heathen” which Duane had republished on 16 July 2008. [1] It was a fairly decent article exposing the nonsense of thinking that unbelief was somehow the grounds upon which people find themselves condemned before God. As I have likewise argued repeatedly, it is not for unbelief that a man is condemned; rather, it is his sin that condemns him, and in his unbelief (itself a sin) he remains condemned. No man is ever in a neutral state; all mankind exists in a state of condemnation on account of sin. We all come from the same pool of death and darkness, of sin and moral ruin—and through unbelief, itself a sin, man remains there. We exist in death; only in Christ do we move to life. We exist in darkness; only in Christ do we move to light. We exist under God’s wrath; only in Christ is that wrath removed. We exist in condemnation; only in Christ are we justified.

So I agree with the basic argument Duane was putting forward. And it was well written. What caught my attention, however, were the objections being raised in the comments section by an atheist named Fluke. Although he can accept that here God is exhibiting justice, what troubles him is the apparent limits of God’s mercy. “Why does God choose to be merciful to some,” he asks, “yet others receive virtually no mercy?” From the fact that God is discriminating with his mercy, Fluke believes that God is less virtuous than he otherwise could be:

My question is, Why is God not completely merciful? Why is he merciful to some and not to others? … With God we have a judge that shows mercy to some and does not show mercy to others (seemingly randomly). God’s mercy is often trumpeted as one of his great virtues by Christians, so I was wondering what your opinion was on why God’s mercy is limited, and if God would be more virtuous if he was more merciful?

There are two things which must be placed in their proper context before the answers to this question can make sense and be understood. First, when it comes to both the justice and mercy of God, the context is the redemption of mankind—practically by definition, since these concepts presuppose the existence of sin. Second, the significant difference between justice and mercy is important; justice is God delivering what we deserve, while mercy is God withholding what we deserve. With this in mind, let us have a look at the three essential questions that Fluke is asking.

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