Christianity For The Tough Minded, Part One

Christianity For The Tough-Minded notes

"Who cares"

"Religion isn't my bag"

"Live and let live"

"If it makes you feel better fine, I can get along without it"

"What you believe doesn't matter as long as you are sincere"

"All religions lead to the same place in the end"

Religion is everybody's bag, whether one realizes it or not. Every individual without exception has an ultimate concern – a commitment to some value above others. This value is a religious commitment: a God. 

The question is not "should I bother choosing a religion?"

It is rather: "what is my religion at present and doesn't qualify as a proper ultimate concern?"

The religions of this world are mutually exclusive. The basic tenets of one contradict the fundamental convictions of the others, so all of them cannot possibly be correct. 

"A universe in which religions could all be right would be a madhouse" – Boston University philosopher Edgar Scheffield Brightman

The acceptance of one religion over another is of immense practical consequence. Islam w treatment of women, religious practices are not automatically good – or even neutral. Ironically, the leaders who declared that "religion is the opiate of the people", drug themselves with the Marxist worldview. 

Applying skepticism equally is a challenge. To wit:

The Christian faith is a personal commitment (fiducia) thoroughly grounded in factual truth (no titia). The believer, far from being a woolly – minded Mystic, is a man who, unlike most of his fellows, insist on conforming his personal religious predilections to what is religiously the case, rather than making the world a reflection of his own subjective needs. He is dead set against the idolatry; he refuses to remake God in his own image. 

The last thing man wants to give up is his illusory capacity for self salvation, and this basic egocentrism, more than any other single thing, keeps people from God's kingdom. Like the rich young ruler in the Gospels, they turn sorrowfully away from Christ, not because his claims lack sufficient evidence but because were those claims to be accepted, control of one's destiny would no longer rest with one's own resources, but with Christ alone. 

Part One

Philosophy and Scientific Method

"Is Man his own God?"– John Warwick Montgomery

Spinoza said that the universe is a single, all embracing unity and that unity is God. He goes on to say that the universe consist of some thing – he calls it substance – and the substance is in itself and is conceived through itself. Since God is properly defined as "a being absolutely infinite" and substance is infinite and unique, it follows that substance is God. 

C. E. M. Joad in his guide to philosophy said, "if we assume that substance in the original definition means simply all that there is, then the initial definition contains within itself the conclusion. Such a conclusion is not worth reading. It is, indeed, merely a tautology – that is to say, an asserting of the same thing into different ways"

How does the humanist decide among competing value systems? He has no absolute vantage point from which to view the ethical battle in the human arena. He is in the arena himself; or, to use a poet expression is "on the road" – not in a house by the side of the road where he can watch the world go by and arbitrate it. All value systems that arise from with in the human contacts are necessarily conditioned by it and are therefore relative. Out of flux, nothing but flux. As Wittgenstein correctly observed, "if there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case… Ethics is transcendental"

Therefore, the humanist is left to consensus genitum (majority values), culture totalitarianism (The values of one's own society), sheer authoritarianism (my values, not yours). The ethical perspective of an entire society can be cruelly immoral. To establish absolute ethical values for human action is both logically and practically impossible apart from transcendence. 

We need look no further than the morality of the Nazis to recognize what happens when man becomes the measure of all things. The stronger has every right under such conditions to impose his self-centered value system on the weaker – and eliminate him if he does not learn his lessons well.

Agnosticism

The term embraces two very different positions- "I know that I am unable to know that there is a God", and the second is "I am not sure whether knowledge of God is possible". One is hard-pressed to know universe so well that one can assert the nonexistence of God or the nonexistence of compelling evidence for his existence.

In his famous 1948 BBC debate with Bertrand Russell, the great historian of philosophy FC Copleston, succinctly stated the fundamental argument from contingency for Gods existence. 

"First of all, I should say, we know that there are at least some beings in the world which do not contain in themselves the reason for their existence. For example, I depend on my parents, and now on the air, and on food, and so on. Now, secondly, the world is simply the real or imagined totality or aggregate of individual objects, none of which contain in themselves alone the reason for their existence. There isn't any world distinct from the objects which form it, anymore than the human race is something apart from its members. Therefore, I should say, since objects or events exist, and since no object or experience contains within itself the reason of his existence, this reason, the totality of objects, must have a reason external to itself. That reason must be inexistent been. This is been is either itself the reason for his own existence or it is not. If it is well and good. If it is not and we must proceed further. But if we proceed to infinity in that sense, and there is no explanation of existence at all. So I should say, in order to explain existence, we must come to a been which contained within itself the reason for its own existence, that is to say, which cannot not exist"

A simple case for the finiteness of our universe: heat death or entropy. In response to the question "who or what created God?" Alvin Plantinga had a good response from his essay in 1964:

"We should note that the question 'why does God exist?' never does in fact arise. Those who do not believe that God exists will not, of course ask why he  exists. But neither do believers ask that question. Outside of theism, the question is nonsensical, and inside of theism the question is never asked. It becomes clear that it is absurd to ask why God exists. To ask that question is to presuppose that God does exist: but it is a necessary truth that if he does exist, he has no cause. And it is also a necessary truth that if he has no cause, then there is no answer to a question asking for his causal conditions. The question 'why does God exist?'  Is, therefore, and absurdity."

Does Mann transcend his attributes? No matter how complete the list is of your own characteristics you transcend that list. persons are grounded in the clay of the contingent world but at the same time we transcend it: human person hood warrants the designation "semi transcend it". We are not objects. 

We cannot lose sight of the distinction between ourselves and the external objects to be observed. 

The semi transcendent human subject establishes both the possibility of metaphysical assertions and the legitimacy of God language. We cannot meaningfully talk about the universe around us without presupposing our own subjectivity, and the partial transcendence we possess demands an unqualifiedly transcendent integrated subjectivity to make it meaningful.

"Just as 'I' acts as an integrator word for all kinds of scientific and other descriptive assertions about myself, 'I exist' being a sort of conceptual presupposition for them all, so also may 'God' be regarded as a contextual presupposition for the universe"- Ramsey

This perspective sheds considerable light onto fundamental problems raised by theistic believe: 1) the existence of evil and 

2) the question of meaningful God talk 

If subjectivity and it's correlative, free will, must be presupposed on the level of human action, and if God's character as fully transcendent divine subject service to make human volition meaningful, then the existence of free will in itself provides a legitimate explanation of evil.

"God should have created only those beings he would foresee as choosing the right – or that he could certainly eliminate the effects of his creatures evil decisions"

This, of course, is tantamount to not giving free well at all.

The act and the consequences are bound together. 

Genuine human love is simply impossible without free will, without the possibility of acceptance rejection.

Does God's uniqueness make it impossible or irrational to say anything about him at all? Humans likewise are unique and the very meaning of "subject" and individual free will entails this irreducible uniqueness. To render God talk as meaningless is the same to render our talk nonsensical.

A classic parable meant to highlight religious ambiguity And the nonsense of God claims are too vague to be sensible-

Once upon a time to explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "some Gardner must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "there is no gardener." So, they pitch their tents and said I watch. No Gardner is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give a cry. Yet still the believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no sense and makes no sound, a gardener who come secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the skeptic despairs, "but what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"

Acute parable but it has little to do with the Christian affirmation of God. Why? Because sensual to the Christian position is the historically grounded assertion that the gardener entered the garden. 

"What do you think of God?"

"It is rather unimportant what I think about God. The real question is what does God think about me?"

It is sometime argued what if Christ rose from the dead with that prove anything? And what would it mean for us? 

It means life, victory over death. We all recognize the over arching significance of death and a very large proportion of our individual and societal energies are expended in trying to postpone it, indirectly overcome it, ignore it, or kid ourselves about it. Whether we look to anthropological evidence, psychological studies, philosophical treatments, or literary expressions of the human dilemma, the reality of the problem of death for all mankind is displayed with appalling clarity.

Contemplation of the centrality of death and man's quest for immortality via the God question leads us quite naturally to the supernatural and transcendence. Human experiences as hope in the face of death and the conviction that there must be a retribution transcending in adequate human justice for the commission of monsters evil in this life are most sensible explained in terms of God's existence.

Play suspends time in the finite is transcended. 

Why have human beings form the concept of "A being greater then which cannot be conceived"?

A suggested answer is this: "there is the phenomenon of feeling guilt for something that one has done or thought or felt or for a disposition that one has. One wants to be free of this guilt. But sometimes the guilt is felt to be so great that one is sure that nothing one could do oneself, nor any forgiveness by another human being, would remove it. One feels a guilt that is beyond all measure, a guilt greater then which cannot be conceived. Paradoxically it would seem one nevertheless has an intense desire to have this incomparable guilt removed. One requires a forgiveness that is beyond all measure, a forgiveness greater than which cannot be conceived. Out of such a storm in the soul, I am suggesting, their arises the consumption of a forgiving mercy that is limitless, beyond all measure"- Norman Malcom

The experience of death, judgment, order, humor, play, and guilt point beyond themselves as does the very "I" who is conscious of them – and the direction of the signpost is to a cross where the transcendent God offered forgiving mercy that is limitless beyond all measure. 

Man is not his own God because man could never attain such a limitless mercy. The evidence of God's existence and up his gift is more than compelling, but those who insist that they have no need of him will always find ways to discount the offer.