Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Dawkins on Hell (and Children)

And, surprise surprise, that’s pretty much what Dawkins goes on to say. I’m a step ahead of him here! First of all:

“The extreme horribleness of hell … is inflated to compensate for its implausibility. If hell were plausible, it would only have to be moderately so in order to deter. Given that it is unlikely to be true, it has to be advertised as very very scarey indeed, to balance its implausibility and retain some deterrence value” (p.321).

Dawkins then describes an interview with the American comic actor Julia Sweeney:

“ ‘If you were to compare the abuse of bringing a child up really to believe in hell … how do you think that would compare in trauma terms with sexual abuse?’ She replied: ‘That’s a very difficult question … I think there are lots of similarities actually, because it is about an abuse of trust; it is about denying the child the right to feel free and open and relate to the world in the normal way … it’s a form of denigration; it’s a form of denial of the true self in both cases” (p.325).

- pause for thought -

As I have blogged earlier, I am currently working on a project for the Yorkshire Baptist Association on how to connect the Christian faith with children …

… and it has just occurred to me … there’s a lot said in our churches and denominations about Child Protection, about Criminal Records Checks, about safeguards and proper procedures for dealing with children who want to ‘disclose’ physical or sexual abuse they may be enduring …

… but how much of what we teach in church, or Sunday School … about (heaven and) hell … about God seeing and knowing all the bad things you do … how much of that is actually abusive?

Dawkins again: “If children were taught to question and think through their beliefs, instead of being taught the superior virtue of faith without question, it is a good bet there would be no suicide bombers …” (p.308).

Hmmmm …..

How can Christians say and do such horrible things

If Richard Dawkins exposure to religion has been primarily like this, then he has every right to hold the angry opinions he does:

“Pastor Keenan Roberts … particular form of nuttiness takes the form of what he calls Hell Houses. A Hell House is a place where children are brought, by their parents or their Christian schools, to be scared witless over what might happen to them after they die. Actors play out fearsome tableaux of particular ‘sins’ like abortion and homosexuality, with a scarlet-clad devil in gloating attendance. These are a prelude to the piece de resistance, Hell Itself, complete realistic sulphurous smell of burning brimstone and the agonized screams of the forever damned” (pp.319-20).

And here’s what Pastor Roberts has to say about it:

“I would rather for them to understand that Hell is a place that they absolutely do not want to go. I would rather reach them with that message at twelve than not to reach them with that message and have them live a life of sin and to never find the Lord Jesus Christ. And if they end up having nightmares, as a result of experiencing this, I think there’s a higher good that would ultimately be achieved and accomplished in their life than simply having nightmares” (p.320).

Does anyone else feel sick? Forget allegations of priests fondling small children. Surely Pastor Robert’s form of child abuse is worse?

Dawkins’ ‘Delusion’

So why is Richard Dawkins so hostile toward religion?

In his own words, he is hostile to fundamentalist religion: “because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect” (p. 284). It is “hell bent on ruining the scientific education of countless thousands of innocent, well-meaning, eager young minds” (p.286).

And “non-fundamentalist, ‘sensible’ religion” is to be pilloried in just the same way because “it is making the world safe for fundamentalism by teaching children, from their earliest years, that unquestioning faith is a virtue” (p.286).

When I consider that almost all of the evidence Dawkins cites to support this conclusion concerns Suicide Bombers and American Creationists, I am almost inclined to agree with him! In fact, as I have read The God Delusion, I have found myself agreeing with much of what Richard Dawkins has to say about religion. I’ve not got much time for religion myself.

But, in a phrase borrowed from one of the characters in Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian: religion isn’t the saviour; church is not the saviour; Christianity is not the saviour. Jesus is.

The ‘Street Evangelist’ Story

It was a few years back now. I was studying at Spurgeon’s College, and Claire and I had gone into London for the evening. We walked across Leicester Square, and saw that a large crowd had gathered around one particular ‘entertainer’. As we got closer , we realised that the crowd was mostly Asian, and that the ‘entertainer’ was attempting to tell them about Jesus in King James’ language!

However, as we walked past – Claire with her head down and her hands over her ears (she knows what I’m like) I hear this preacher speak the amazing line: “Verily, Jesus said, many who call themselves Muslims and Hindus will not be entering the kingdom of heaven!”

I’m afraid that I couldn’t let that go. Claire disappeared to the other side of the Square, totally embarrassed, while I asked the man to show me, in his Bible, exactly where Jesus had uttered that line. The crowd started cheering me, and the ‘Street Evangelist’ was left with no option but to pack up and go home.

And I still think that was a job well done!

Dawkins’ ‘Delusion’

I love this quote from the beginning of Chapter 8 (“What’s wrong with religion? Why be so hostile?”) of Dawkin’s book:

Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man – living in the sky – who watched everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ‘til the end of time … But He loves you! (GEORGE CARLIN)

It reminds me a bit of the google video I managed to download a while ago (can’t find or remember the link, but if anyone out there can please let me know). Two evangelists dressed in black knock at a third man’s door. In an effort to convert him, the two evangelists tell him something like: “Kiss Hanks *** and he’ll give you $1000 when you leave town. Don’t kiss Hank’s *** and he’ll kick the **** out of you!”

How can anyone think that the Carlin quote or Hank’s pals are offering Good News? They so obviously are not. So why do Christians persist in ‘sharing the Gospel’ in ways that are so very, very similar to the parodies above?

Something inside me wants to curl up and die every time I pass a ‘street evangelist’, because I really truly believe they are doing more damage to the Christian cause that good. There was, of course, the time that I argued with a preacher in Leicester Square, but that’s another story …

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Charitable Status?

Here's another off-the-wall thought ...

So many of our churches and denominations are bending over themselves backwards to comply with the new charity law - appointing Trustees, etc. But for what purpose?

I suspect the main reason is that if we lose charitable status we can no longer claim back the tax on our giving. But is it not true that a large number of churches (possible the majority) spend the money they receive on maintaining their own buildings and paying their own clergy. In other words, our efforts and finances are directed entirely toward our own benefit. How can that be called charitable?

Community?

A bit of an off-the-wall one this - but it's something I've been wondering for a little while ...

Where is the Christian community in our churches? Where, specifically, is the fellowship when we worship? Our worship gatherings seem to be about something else other than fellowship. And that's why so many churches tag the 'fellowship' bit on the end: "Come and have fellowship over a cup of coffee".

I fought for nearly four years to persuade my church that it would be good to have coffee after every service - for a long time we only had it once a month. And it strikes me that what goes on over coffee after the service is at least as important as what has happened for the previous sixty minutes. But why do we need to tag it onto the end?

How can we make our worship gatherings - the sixty minutes in the sanctuary AS WELL AS the thirty minutes over coffee - true fellowship and community?

Friday, January 19, 2007

Connecting the Faith with Children

I have done a couple of days reading on my Commissioned Ministry project - and I'm just mulling over some stuff to see where I get. I think there are some massive challenges to the way churches currently work with children:

1. There is a challenge from the whole witness of Scripture - time and time again it is children who provide the turning point for God's people, the Bible affirms childhood, and the biblical festivals (e.g. Passover) assume the presence of children. Sending them away so that we adults can listen to a sermon (which none of us will remember or apply) seems contrary to the way children are treated in the Old and New Testaments. I think the children (and their Sunday School teacher - generally their mothers) are seriously undervalued, neglected, sidelined in our worship practices. "Children are created to praise God; they have a special role in silencing e enemies of God; they are at the heart of God's kingdom; they give unique insights into the natire of the kingdom of heaven; they are signs of God's future reign" (Keith White). How can we include and affirm children more effectively?

2. There is a challenge from the field of Child Theology - which reminds us that, in the context of a discussion of greatness in the kingdom of God, Jesus took a child, placed him/her in the centre of the gathering, and challenged His followers to become like the child. In our churches, we seem more concerned with the children growing up to be like us! How can we turn that round?

3. I have been fascinated by some of the work done on children's spirituality, and I wonder how much of the children's sunday school materials out there take it seriously. What would happen, for instance, if we all analysed our children's work according to how far it fulfils the spiritual categories of God-consciousness, people-consciousness, world-consciousness, and self-consciousness (Hay & Nye's categories). Or what about the child's need for significance, boundaries, community, and creativity (Keith White). How well do you think we do?

4. There are many challenges from the emerging churches, who are doing very bodld, creative things that are inclusive of children. "Messy Church" is one example. Do you know any others?

The God Delusion ... again

... and again I find myself agreeing with Richard Dawkins:
"... If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed ... If you agree that, in the absence of God, you would 'commit robbery, rape and murder', you reveal yourself as an immoral person ..." (The God Delusion, pp.226-7).

Dawkins goes on to summarise the Old Testament, and asks what moral messages can possibly be found in the tales to be found there of (e.g.) God drowning all of humanity apart from one family, God turning Lot's wife into salt, God asking Abraham to sacrice Isaac, God demanding the slaughter of all Israel's enemies ...

Then he turns his attention to the New Testament and, after acknowledging that Jesus' moral teaching was rather more palatable than that of His ancestors, Dawkins lambasts the masochism and injustice of such doctrines as Original Sin and Penal Substitution.

So far so good. But the Christianity he describes is almost medieval. I know very few Christians who behave or believe as Dawkins has stereotyped us.

I think maybe one of the differences is that I am reading Dawkins because I want to understand him, and others like him. I am interested in his opinions, and I find them stimulating, even challenging. I might even learn something from them. But Dawkin's own 'religion' - Darwinism - seems to lead him to believe that he because he is right, therefore anyone who disagrees with him must be wrong. (Some fundamentalism Christians - the very ones criticised by Dawkins -are just like that!)

Friday, January 12, 2007

... and more ...

I'm struggling a bit with Dawkin's explanation of the 'Anthropic Principle' (The God Delusion, pp.134ff). The appearance of the first hereditary molecule is extremely improbable, as is the origin of the eucaryotic cell with a nucleus and mitochondria. But since these things do exist, their appearance and origin obviously did happen, and we must live on one of the intensely rare planets where such things are possible. It seems like a circular argument to me, and not a convincing argument against the possibility that our cosmos has a Designer.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

And More Delusions!

Dawkins is "continually astonished by those theists who ... rejoice in natural selection as 'God's way of achieving his creation'. They note that evolution by natural selection would be a very easy and neat way to achieve a world full of life. God wouldn't need to do anything at all ... Peter Atkins postulates a hypothetically lazy God who tries to get away with as little as possible in order to make a universe containing life ... literally God at leisure, unoccupied, unemployed, superfluous, useless." (p.118)

Reading those words almost made me feel some fleeting sympathy with the creationist position!

But then I remembered something Brian McClaren put in the mouth of one of the characters in 'The Story We Find Ourselves In:
"There’s a popular story that says the universe came into being by itself, and that everything that has happened since has happened by accident. In this particular story, which arose most forcefully in modern Western civilisation, there is no God, no Being beyond our beings, no Creator. In this story we can be at the top of the food chain and every other chain; no one else is around – as far as we know – to challenge our claim to be the Supreme Beings. There is much in this story to flatter our pride, and it’s the story that has fuelled technological advances more than any other. It seems to explain so much. In fact, you could say that this story explains everything about everything … except ... human experience – joy, sorrow, outrage, grief, hope, longing, wonder, love – the awareness that you’re alive and that you’re going to die and that both of those facts matter to you and mean something to you. And, certainly, you’d have to include overtly spiritual human experiences as well.
So, even though it explains so much, this secular story marginalizes so much of human experience, and in the end, I think that this secular version can become a dangerous perversion of the true story. But, again, it does take seriously how … how real creation is. And as a result, people who follow this story have excelled in seeking to understand creation, to learn its language and discover its deep structures and potentials for development.
There’s another story that says this universe is all an illusion, that Being didn’t actually create beings, but that Being simply dreams or imagines beings. In this version of the story, when beings realise their true situation – they aren’t beings at all, but dreams or emanations of Being; they don’t actually exist outside God’s mind at all, but rather are illusions or thoughts inside the mind of Being – they achieve enlightenment by releasing their distinctiveness as beings into the fullness of Being.
There’s a lot about this ancient Eastern story that we need to hear. These days, it often serves as a corrective to the previous modern Western story, I think, by saying the very opposite. The previous story says there is no God or spirit, and this one says there is nothing but God and spirit. And if I was going to be mistaken, I would rather make the latter mistake than the former, because the former story, that God does not exist, was never true, but the latter story, that nothing but God exists, at least used to be true. In other words, according to the ancient Jewish story, it was true before God created anything. This Eastern version reminds us that we beings cannot exist apart from Being, that we are ultimately connected to God and to all that exists in profound ways, ways that are easy to forget in our modern Western world, where the first story often predominates. This Eastern version of the story is, I believe, one of humanity’s most lofty creations.
For me, the ancient Jewish story lies in between the other two, or maybe it arches over both, you know? The ancient Jewish story embraces both the modern Western story and the ancient Eastern story. It acknowledges the modern Western assertion that the universe is real. The ground we are standing on really exists; it’s not just an illusion or a dream, and nor are we. It acknowledge the modern Western belief that the universe operates on many levels according to patterns we call ‘laws of nature’ – a better metaphor that ‘laws’ would perhaps be ‘language’ or ‘music’ of creation. It treats the stuff of the universe as real stuff, and encourages us to study it, to analyse it scientifically, and to do amazing things with it.
And the ancient Jewish story also acknowledges the ancient Eastern assertion that this universe is not independent, that it depends on the Creator so it can come into existence and stay in existence. It also acknowledges that because of our common connection to the Creator, all that exists is interconnected, related, interwoven. It agrees with the Eastern belief that the universe pulsates with meaning, as one would expect of any universe that was spoken by Being into being. And it sees the universe as an expression of the mind and heart of God, in which God’s breath breathes, and God’s language sings, and God’s fingerprints are detected and felt, and God’s signature is read.

More Delusions!

In just six pages (pp. 92-97) Richard Dawkins manages to completely dismiss 'The Argument From Scripture'. He does point out some significant differences (difficulties) with, for instance, Matthew's and Luke's versions of Jesus birth. He points out that the census under Governor Quirinius was a local one (not for the whole empire) and that it took place long after Herod was already dead and gone.

He sets out some questions to ask when interpreting the Bible with which I think I agree (many Christians would not, but then perhaps they are the literalists with whom Dawkins has such a problem):
"Who wrote it, and when? How did they know what to write? Did they, in their time, really mean what we, in out time, understand them to be saying? Were they unbiased observers, or did they have an agenda that coloured their writing?" (p.92)

But, to me, Dawkin's argument falls apart when he asserts that the biblical text was "copied and recopied, through many different 'Chinese Whispers generations' by fallible scribes who, in any case, had their own religious agenda." Modern textual criticism (which informs all modern translations of the Bible) takes the copyists' errors very seriously and does its best to identify what is most likely to be the original version. It's true, some small errors have crept into the biblical texts over the years. But what is remarkable is just how few!

Saturday, January 06, 2007

The God Delusion

I got Richard Dawkins' 'The God Delusion' for Christmas. Started reading it last night and I'm really enjoying it! The quality of the writing is superb, and he really knows how to engage a reader.
I've read a variety of Christian 'rebuttals' of Dawkins' hypothesis, but thought I'd like to read it for myself and perhaps blog comments on some of the specifics. But I'm part way through chapter 3 and struggling to find anything I really disagree with. The religious activities Dawkins describes I find equally abhorrent! And I agree that many of the ways we present and promote our religion leave us open to criticism and ridicule. This quotation from early in chapter one struck quite a chord with me:
"How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, 'This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophet said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?' Instead they say, 'No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.' A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths." (Carl Sagan, in Pale Blue Dot, quoted by Dawkins on p.12)
Just an observation. When Sagan writes 'god' the first letter is lower case. But he capitalises 'Universe'. Dawkins claims to have no respect for 'religion'; he asks whether 'theology' can even be considered a legitimate subject. Yet he always writes 'God' with a capital 'G'!

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Connecting the Faith with Children


The numbers of children in UK Baptist churches are falling at a dramatic rate. Recent analysis of the contact with under-12s revealed that we have lost contact with about a third of the number we were in touch with in 2000 (about 36,000) in the space of five years. 30,000 children have left in the last two years! On Sunday 11th June 2006, Baptist Churches were encouraged to take part in a national day of prayer and awareness, to get on our knees in search for God's guidance to address this worrying problem.

In response, the Yorkshire Baptist Association have commissioned a research project: ‘Connecting the Christian Faith with Children’. For the next two years, I will be working for three days a month on the project: conducting a survey of the Yorkshire Baptist Churches, meeting key practitioners, doing background reading and trying to establish some biblical and theological principles for our work with children. I hope perhaps to share some of my thoughts and conclusions via this blog, and welcome your comments!

As I start this significant piece of work, I find myself more and more convinced that the answer is NOT simply to do Sunday School better. Nor do I have much sympathy with the ‘convert them before they’re eight’ approach. Rather, we need to focus on nurturing a sense of spirituality and numinousness (great word!) in the children AND adults in our churches. I’ve no idea how to do that, but I‘ve got two years to find out!
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