Y Safle

In Richard Dawkin’s new book, “the God Delusion”, he alludes to the mantra of fundamentalist atheism that all wars are caused by religion, and that we would be better off without religion as then wars would cease. This tired argument from an eminent scientist demonstrates that when Dawkins speaks about religion and history, he is speaking well beyond his competence.

In Dakins’ Wikipedia article, there is mention that in 2004, a self selecting and unscientific poll by Prospect magazine had selected Dawkins as the leading intellectual in the world today (last year Noam Chomsky polled over twice as many votes as Dawkins on the same poll). As useless as such polls really are, it did lead me to a review of Dawkin’s book by a non religious writer in the same magazine. He said of Dawkin’s argument:

Yet under Stalin almost the entire Orthodox priesthood was exterminated simply for being priests, as were the clergy of other religions and hundreds of thousands of Baptists. The claim that Stalin’s atheism had nothing to do with his actions may be the most disingenuous in the book, but it has competition from a later question, “Why would anyone go to war for the sake of an absence of belief [atheism]?”—as if the armies of the French revolution had marched under icons of the Virgin, or as if a common justification offered for China’s invasion of Tibet had not been the awful priest-ridden backwardness of the Dalai Lama’s regime.

Indeed, the same review starts off with this summary:

It has been obvious for years that Richard Dawkins had a fat book on religion in him, but who would have thought him capable of writing one this bad? Incurious, dogmatic, rambling and self-contradictory, it has none of the style or verve of his earlier works.

Is Dawkins speaking beyond his competence? McGrath points out (with clear examples) that Dawkins is embarrassingly ignorant of Christian theology. The writer of this review says: “One might argue that a professor of the public understanding of science has no need to concern himself with trivialities outside his field like the French revolution, the Spanish civil war or Stalin’s purges when he knows that history is on his side”.

This is a man who has fallen into the same trap that we all fall into sometimes - of failing to properly research and critically evaluate the evidence - particularly when the evidence seems to support his thesis. If he is not researching and evaluating evidence, he is indeed speaking well beyond his competence.

A straw man argument is an argument where someone characterises the position of another as being something slightly different (and weaker) than the actual position of the other person. Such arguments are often deceptive, making it look as if someone has proven their case - when in fact all they have done is demolish the straw man - the weaker argument that is not actually held by anyone!

An example. Richard Dawkins says:

“Faith means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence.”

He then takes issue with this faith for not being based on evidence. To many his argument seems convincing, but Christians do not believe his definition. A A Hodge wrote:

“Faith must have adequate evidence, else it is mere superstition.”

And that is the faith of Christians everywhere. There is no blind trust. Christian faith is based on evidence, experience and the knowledge of God. Thus Dawkins demolishes a straw man.

When asked for his opinion of Alister McGrath, author of “The Dawkins Delusion”, Richard Dawkins said:

Alister McGrath has now written two books with my name in the title. The poet W B Yeats, when asked to say something about bad poets who made a living by parasitizing him, wrote the splendid line: “Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?”

I note that Dawkins has written at least two books with God in the title (and nearly all his work mentions God somewhere).

Parasitizing eh?

You can download some excellent MP3s of McGrath lectures on Dawkins and other subjects.

Most work calendars these days start a week on Monday, and shuffle Staurday and Sunday to the weekend. As pragmatic solution as this may be, I find it annoying in that it does not recognise that the first day of any week is Sunday.

The UK moved to the Gregorian calendar in 1752, which involved changes to the current day of the month, but the week days were left unaffected. Thursday, September 14th followed Wednesday, September 2nd in 1752.

It is therefore probably best to consider the week days as divorced from the calendar itself. They do not fit neatly into a 365.24 day year. They are a more granular measure of the passing of time, but not truly calendar markers.

So the question is, which day of the week comes first?

Businesses group Saturday and Sunday together on a calendar for convenience, because then you can group working week and weekend quite easily in two locations on a calendar, but they are strictly speaking incorrect to do so.

You see, the seven day week is of Persian/Chaldean and Judeo/Christian origin. In all these cultures, a seven day week was observed, and the week days were named for the seven visible heavenly bodies, starting with the most dominant: the Sun.

Thus we have (in English and Welsh, but other languages show the same pattern):

The day of the Sun (Dydd Sul - Sunday) The day of the Moon (Dydd Llun - Monday) The day of Mars (Dydd Mawrth) (Tuesday is named for the Norse God) The day of Mercury (Dydd Mercher) (Wodan is Norse) The day of Jupiter (Dydd Iau) (Thor is Norse) The day of Venus (Dydd Gwener) (Frida is Norse) The day of Saturn (Dydd Sadwrn - Saturday)

In the Biblical account of creation, it can be shown that each stanza of the creation hymn takes up the astrological significance of the gods associated with the days, and shows that the God who is one God created the realms considered to be the domains of these other gods. Thus the creation hymn can be seen as being in direct opposition to Chaldean (and later Babylonian) belief. The message of the hymn is that the almighty God is ruler high above all others.

In the first century AD, the seven day week was introduced in Rome, under the influence of Persian astrologers. When Rome became Christian, the Christian view of the seven days was conflated with the Persian influence, but both had the same common root.

Thus the week began on the day of the Sun, and ended on the day of Saturn (the day God rested). Saturday was the true week end.

However, the Resurrection took place on a Sunday morning, and in honour of this fact, the “Lord’s day” was taken to be Sunday. Christians thus began the practise of meeting together to worship on the Lord’s day - the first day of the week.

Thus the weekend as we now have it conflates the Jewish Sabbath (or a day off at the end of the week) with the Christian Lord’s day (or a day off at the start of the week).

Secularists want to regularise the whole thing and call both days the week end, but they might as well try and rename Monday to something less pagan, or choose a five day week instead of seven! The fact of the matter is that weeks start on Sunday - they always have. It is only the working week that starts on Monday.

However, if you want to arrange your calendar to start on the first day of the working week, then feel free to do so. As I have said - weeks do not strictly fit into the calendar in any case.

Regarding the government’s new morality:

This completely fails to take into account the views and beliefs of all those involved. The idea that new Labour — which has got every second thing wrong and is back-tracking on extended drinking hours, is in a mess over this cash-for-peerages business, cannot keep all its prisons under control — the idea that new Labour can come up with a new morality which it forces on the Catholic Church after 2,000 years; I am sorry, this is amazing arrogance on the part of the Government.

Dr Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham.

Tony Blair’s Labour Party today has refused to allow exemptions to Catholic adoption agencies regarding placing of children with homosexual couples. Instead they have given the agencies 21 months to comply with the law (which at least makes it no longer Tony Blair’s problem).

On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor said:

“There is legislation and legislation and some legislation, however well intended, in fact does create a new kind of morality, a new kind of norm - as this does.” “The legislation about the adoption by homosexual people of children, it does seem to me we are having a new norm for what marriage is, because I think normally children should be brought up by a father and a mother and I think that we hold that that is extremely important. “The government has a right to legislate and homosexual couples are also able to adopt in other agencies but we want to hold onto this principle.”

It seems that we are heading down the French secular model - where religious expression and morality is to be outlawed for the sake of inclusiveness - without realising that the inclusivity is sacrificed in the process.

Notice what the Catholic adoption agencies are not saying. They are not saying that adoption to gay couples should be outlawed. They are not saying that it should be illegal for gay people to adopt children. If they were, then we could say that they are not being inclusive. But rather, the government is saying that a Christian body may not act to improve the common good in the British state, unless they are forced to act against their own moral values - in a way that they honestly believe to be to the detyriment of the state.

That is a new morality which outlaws the old. (and Labour knows all about outlawing things. They have outalwed more things and destroyed more civil liberties than any peace time administration).

The sooner this bunch of crooks (Tony cash-for-honours Bliar), liars, warmongers and career politicians (voted in by a mere 36% of voters - the lowest share of the vote ever received by a governing party) gets out of office, the better.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, have written to Tony Blair to argue that “rights of conscience cannot be made subject to legislation, however well-meaning”.

What is the issue? That government legislation supposed to protect gay people against discrimination may see the end of the Catholic adoption agency, as the church is forced to close its offices rather than be forced to place children with gay couples.

Now Labour’s position on the role of the family is trendy and confused. Claire Short (an ex Labour minister, although in the cabinet at the time she voted for war in Iraq) came out strongly on family issues when she was in office - making clear her view, shared by many of her colleagues, that traditional families are no more ideal for raising children than non traditional families.

The argument (against all the evidence) is that single parent households, cohabiting relationships, and - of course - gay relationships are just as good for children than the traditional nuclear family.

The evidence actually says the opposite. The ideal and most stable family structures are found where couples are married. Clearly not on every occasion, but the statistical evidence is quite certain.

Add to this the very clear moral view of the church - which in the sloppy relativism of the Labour party must surely carry equal authority with their own dogma: That whilst sexual orientation is itself not sinful, that homosexual acts are also not right (the Anglicans are more circumspect and say something like “less than ideal”). Now you have a quite clear moral dilemma - in attempting to avoid discrimination, should an adoption agency be forced to place children in circumstances they believe to be less than ideal?

This is wrong. Plain and simple.

I have said elsewhere that I don’t think anyone chooses their sexuality, and we should never hold that against them. Discrimination against gay people is clearly quite wrong. But are we to show our non discrimination at the expense of some of the most vulnerable people in our society being sacrificed on the rock of inclusivity?

Children are not property to which we gain an entitlement. They are people. And these people need the support of our society. If the considered, consistent and thoroughly compassionate view of an organisation mitigates against placement of these children with one group or another, then society (in which there is clearly no consensus) has no right to intervene. It is wrong to intervene.

Ganymede and the Eagle. The story in which the Olympian god, Zeus, steals a young boy to be his consort. A story that legitimised such practices in the classical world

There is a trend for reviving old religions by various groups. The latest one to hit the headlines is a group claiming to have revived the ancient Greek worship of the olympian deities. But like all groups that claim to be reviving ancient religions, they appear to be reviving an image of their misconceptions rather than the historical reality.

After successfully staging a landmark ceremony at the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, their leader pledged to fight for the right to conduct baptisms, marriages, and funerals according to the rites of the ancient religion.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6285397.stm

Baptisms?

What Olympian tradition was that then?

Now if they had argued for the right to ritually disembowel animals, and to sell the meat in the marketplace, or to prostitute their women and children to “worshippers”, then there might be some degree of authenticity here (although we would rightly object to their practices on legal, moral and ethical grounds).

But what they want is to act in a “christianised” religious manner, but to call their rituals something else.

22 years after the famine in Ethiopia that inspired Bob Geldof et al., to sing “Feed the World” at Christmastime, Africa continues to suffer from famine, war, trade injustice, AIDS, poor corporate governance, mountains of debt and yet more injustice.

Africa is a continent in flames and deep down if we really accepted that africans were equal to us we would do more to put the fire out. We are standing around with watering cans when what we need is the fire brigade.

Bono

As we enjoy the celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace, spare a thought - give consideration, discuss with your families and most of all decide what we can do in 2007 to change our watering cans for the fire brigade.

In a discussion, an atheist friend mentioned George Bush, whom we both believe to be responsible for thousands of deaths in Iraq. I made the point that it is not Bush’s works that save him, and if his faith is genuine and his repentance sincere, then of course God can save him (although his works will be consumed).

My friend answered:

See, I find all of that a rather warped logic. What, for example, happens to those who were never given the chance to discover Christ? By your system they are condemned for not having the faith.

I do not think so, but do not have any certain answers here. C.S.Lewis deals with this problem in a few places - most memorably in “The Last Battle” where he tells a soldier who never had a chance to know Aslan that deeds done in faith to Tash were counted as having been done to Aslan. I don’t have any biblical evidence that C.S. Lewis is right here, but neither do I pretend to understand God’s mind on this issue. Instead I trust that He is both just and merciful, and whatever our doctrine tells us here on earth, it will be He who decides in the end.

I have said that one need not believe in justification by faith alone to be justified by their faith alone (indeed I stole that from Richard Hooker, a divine from Kidderminster).

But to me, the salvation to eternal life is a side effect of salvation in any case. Knowing Christ is worth it for the here and now, because in knowing Him we can know our true purpose, and fulfill our goal in life, as well as have our spiritual needs fulfilled. We are here to glorify God and enjoy his presence forever. And that begins on Earth.

So I would tell anyone of the risen Lord Jesus, because I would argue that knowing Christ is the best thing that could happen to them now, and we will leave God to sort out the hereafter. (Although one thing I do know - all who trust in the Lord will be saved).