Disobeying The Word of Ham

 

"This Christian Leader cannot be trusted"
..said Ken

Ken Ham, the fundamentalist "Answers in Genesis" theme park supremo, voted Trump in the 2024 US elections (See here). He also appears to have linked his interpretation of the Christian cause with the emerging far-right where, presumably, AiG's supporting and financing community lies. For example in one of his posts where he mentions the persecution of Christians he says:

Will persecution ramp up against Christians/conservatives?

Yes, it may be that persecution will increase, but who are these "conservatives" Ken mentions and why bundle them together with Christians? Can we talk about Christians/liberals? After all, in spite of vociferous tribal squabbling between Christians, Christianity is a very broad church (unless one has a fundamentalist perspective), a church which actually includes people from both the "woke" and the "unwoke" tribes. God is good to quarrelling humankind.

I used to think of myself as a conservative; I still do in fact: I largely support capitalism (intelligently regulated), the democratic status quo, the academic & scientific establishment, and I'm a constitutional monarchist. But somehow I don't think I'm the sort of "conservative" our Ken has in mind!

Among the "conservatives" who Ken does allude to I have an inkling one can find some or all of the following sentiments.... 

1. Aspirations to destroy our argumentative & complex democratic administration on the basis of conspiracy theories about a "deep state". 

2. A highly ideological form of economic libertarianism...such would likely create a political vacuum giving opportunity to plutocratic authoritarians.

3. Seeking to protect cultural Christianity with nationalistic concepts & boundaries.

4. Telling us to shelve the concept of "empathy" because it's too "woke" or "new-age" (See here)

5. Sympathies with the social and market Darwinism of Ayan Rand.

6. There is nothing wrong with raising a question or two over climate science, but many of those "conservatives" are declaring "climate alarmism" as a hoax, a leftist conspiracy, perhaps promoted by China. The result: Climate complacency. 

7. Widespread support for Donald Trump, a pathological liar who appears to have a personality disorder.

There are inconsistencies in this list but in our passionate and polarized culture-war blatant internal contradictions are easily overlooked (*1). Moreover, the far-right are so far-right, that a conservative like myself looks like a "radical woke leftist". But of course Ken isn't thinking of my kind of conservative. In using the term "conservative" ken is sending out a virtue signal to his constituency - namely, to the far-right Christians who think of  their Trump supporting culture as the only true "conservativism" (and. perhaps, a corollate of the only true form of Christianity); consider for example those otherwise conservative Republicans who oppose Trumpism and who are categorized by the radical-right as "Rinos". ("Republican in name only").

Such are the people who  finance Ken's business interests and he can not afford to alienate them because those business interests depend on them.  Moreover, it is in the interests of Ken's business to bring to bear the most spiritually intimidating language when he calls down hell and hamnation on influential Christians who hold views which contradict Ken's young earth literalism, a literalism which is the foundational rationale for the Answers in Genesis organization. See here for another example, but I'm also going to comment on a recent post by Ken where he bad mouths Hugh Ross, an influential Christian who believes in an old earth, and tells us he "cannot be trusted".  

***

Hugh Ross, leader of the Old Earth Reasons to Believe ministry promotes the idea that the Bible and Creation are two books of Revelation. Ken is really riled by Hugh's old Earth views as he is any other influential Christians who hold views contrary to the rationale behind his theme park. I would go along with Hugh's old earth views but I don't accept the two books notion myself. That's because no book written in natural language can be read in a cultural vacuum; the interpretation of natural language necessarily employs huge resources from the rest of  the created context; from the mental, through the cultural to the historical. Thus, in my view the Bible is organically joined to the rest of creation thus forming an integrated body of Revelation; a medium through which signals from the Divine mind are transmitted. But all that's by the by. What I want to do now is critique a paragraph from an article by Ken where he made his accusation that fellow Christian Hugh Ross is untrustworthy.

***

In a blog post titled "Did God give us two books?" Ken asks "Is nature really the 67th book of the Bible?". Ken does not think so because...

SAYS KEN: Nature is cursed. We aren’t looking at the world as God made it. According to biblical history, we’re looking at a creation that was once “very good” but is now cursed with death and suffering (because of sin) and was judged by a global flood. We can’t look at this creation and figure out what happened in the past without the eyewitness revelation of the Creator (given in Genesis 1–11).

MY COMMENT:  Strictly, the Genesis 3:17ff doesn't say nature is cursed, it says the ground and man's working of it is cursed. That's not necessarily the same as saying the whole Earth or the whole Universe is cursed: The ground and man's working of it is the agricultural foundation of all human production and civilization. From Genesis 3:17ff the most we can say is that human production is cursed whether through human sin or through direct Divine declaration.  Fundamentalists like Ken also tend to miss that the serpent of  Gen 3:1 suggests that a created but fallen being existed before the fall of man. So humanity did not find itself in a perfect creation before the human fall. 

Romans 8:20ff, which tells us we are in a less than perfect world is ambiguous; it is ambiguous about the cause of this lack of perfection. Is  8:20 referring to God, Satan or man? But Ken doesn't like ambiguity; being a true fundamentalist and young earth literalist Ken bills himself as being blessed with utter certainty. It is this habit of mind which he believes entitles him to screw down hard on what he considers to be heretics. 

But whatever, imperfect though it may be there so much about the creation which is still very good although man's relationships revolving around the means production is certainly hindered by the curse of sin. 

Ken's intent, if I'm reading him correctly is that he's trying to undermine Hugh Ross's 67th book thesis by suggesting that the information delivered to us via creation which informs about deep-time is Hamstrung by the curse. Well, firstly, as I've said, this doesn't follow from the theology of the genesis fall of man which is not about the creation in toto. Secondly, I myself have no use for the 67th book thesis; that's not how the Bible works; my view is that the Bible and the rest of creation form a unified body of revelation via the Meaning = Text + Context equation. Thirdly, it doesn't follow that because of human sin, light signals, and many other signals mediated via creation, don't testify to long ages. The creation still yields truthful information about its age and this is not Hamstrung by the fall; after all, the messages of creation are likely to mirror God's integrity. 

One other criticism I would like to make of Ken's paragraph above is that it is misleading to say that God was an "eyewitness" to creation because He doesn't have eyes - that is an anthropomorphism. Very likely we see creation in a very different way to how God sees it. 

Hence, in conclusion, using Ken's own words as a template, I think we can say....

Rather than accepting Ken's authoritarian annunciations about the past and forcing them into Scripture, we must always start with Scripture first and allow God’s Word to be our authority.

Footnote

*1. But see this article on Science & Culture which does identify a right-wing split. 

The Shaming of Shawn Bolz of Bethel

 

Investigator Mike Winger is on the left. The subject of his recent exposé, Shawn Bolz of Bethel, is on the right

Mike Winger is a Christian trouble shooter who, when it comes to  exposés dares to go where other Christians are too frightened to go in case they reveal something they don't want to believe. I had a look at Mike's work in relation to Bill Johnson's Bethel fellowship as far back as 2020....see here:

Views, News and Pews: Prosperity Christianity Part V: Soft-cop theologian examines Bethel Biblically.

I was impressed with Mike's work: To me it came over as thorough, dispassionate and fair. I'd naively hoped that since 2020 Bethel had cleaned up its act a bit. But then came Mike's recent revelations about Bethel's prophetic faker Shawn Bolz. Read more about that here...

Bethel Church admits cover-up of prophet Shawn Bolz fraud and abuse allegations | Premier Christianity

....and here....

Why the Church needs to re-think what prophecy really means | Opinion | Premier Christianity

Emilia Fuller, an ex-member of Bethel, wrote the following article in the Christian Magazine Woman Alive ....

Bethel, Shawn Bolz, and the question of accountability | Opinion | Woman Alive

The quote below taken from Emilia's article struck a chord with me:

When the news broke [about Shawn Bolz] through a 6-hour YouTube video by  American evangelical theologian, Christian apologist, and YouTube personality, Mike Winger, my phone erupted with messages sharing the link. I was honestly neither surprised nor affected by the revelations. Having experienced many years of sustained psychological, emotional and spiritual abuse in my time working at Bethel, I was curious to see what response would come from both Bethel and Bolz. If I’m honest, I didn’t expect much – as my own experience had shown me when I tried to bring things into the light, I was either gaslit, stonewalled or silenced by their culture of honour. 

We have seen two very different responses, from Bolz – a letter to his subscribers notifying them he is taking a sabbatical with no admission of guilt or ownership. And then Bethel, who by all accounts have taken full ownership and I would say are in the process of repentance, that I believe is actually genuine. This I was not expecting. 

Well, there's good and bad in there....

The Bad: Ms. Fuller's attempts to shine a light on Bethel's issues were met with stonewalling by Bethel members. That's very much the kind of thing which happens among the cults. It's so drummed in to cult members that they are part of a radically righteous elite Christian community they find it impossible to think there is any need for healthy self-criticism. They simply don't want to believe the victims of abuse because it challenges their rose-colored-spectacled view of the cult and above all it puts a question mark over the huge social investment they have made toward the cult community. Cult members are so taken in by the cult's teaching that they are also unwilling to question what they themselves have become in order to fit in with the cult's ethos. The cult's teaching is usually administered at the inception of the movement by some utterly self-believing, uncompromising charismatic leader (who may well have personality disorders such as narcissism). The resulting community bonding effect which inculcates members with a fierce loyalty was very clear at Noel Stanton's Bugbrooke cult.  Bethel may not classify as a cult in the strongest sense of the word, but the precursors are there. Those precursors helped to make them susceptible to Bolz's teaching. 

The cult isn't all bad: But therein lies the rub: Cults offer real social benefits such as a satisfying cooperative community, a sense of belonging & acceptance, unity & gravitas of purpose and above all a message of ultimate meaning; all much sought after in these modern days of social fragmentation, tension and emptiness. But this is just the bait which ultimately draws the uninitiated into a tight social matrix, disconnected from the outside world and which is very hard to shake off. In order to stay bonded with the cult ethos members may have to live a life of pretense which can take its psychological toll. 

The Good: However, if Emilia is right, it does look as if genuine self-criticism has set in at Bethel. (I wonder if Emilia feels that they didn't listen to her because she was a woman?) Self-criticism does happen sometimes. For example, once Noel Stanton had died and his fierce & intimidating charismatic hold released, the Bugbrooke cult, under outside pressure, self-examined and decided that the community was so blighted, flawed and pathological that it should dissolve itself; and none too soon too. Now, that unfortunately didn't happen at Jones Town; we know what happened there; it's too upsetting to mention.

NOTE:

Shawn Bolz looks uncannily like Mark Driscoll, another controversial figure who I wrote about here:

Views, News and Pews: The Mark Driscoll Affair

Views, News and Pews: The Mark Driscoll Affair. Part II

Views, News and Pews: A Foot Note on The Mark Driscoll Affair.

The theme here seems to be that of dominating Alpha males!!

Mark Driscoll

Trump & Putin vs. China?

 

The potentially diverging & conflicting power interests of ambitious  parties likely means that they readily fall out and end up at logger-heads; That's as much true of individuals as it is nations ruled by ambitious dictators. 

Evidence is stacking up that the Trump administration is on the side of the criminal Kremlin regime currently headed up by Russian mafia leader V. Putin; or at least much more on the side of Putin than Ukraine. Part of the reason may be because Trump appears to connect with strong-arm dictators. He may even admire them and aspire to being one himself. Perhaps also the Kremlin has compromising material on Trump collected when he visited Russia in 1987 and 1996. But more plausible I feel is that Trump & his acolytes are at ease with the Kremlin's traditional authoritarian interpretation of Christian and nationalist values; a throwback to the pre-enlightenment, pre-liberal middle ages. (See Wiki on Steve Bannon & Russia for example) On top of all this it looks as though under Trump America is becoming an enemy of liberal-minded and democratic Europe; that should go down well with the Kremlin. 

Steve Bannon is probably right, however, when he says that Islam is a religion of submission. But when an authoritarian like Bannon gets something right I wonder if it is just a distraction; what is he demanding submission to? (See for example right-wing Christian commentator Sharon James whose observations on erring philosophies distract from the authoritarian version of  Christianity she promotes)

If the US administration is evolving towards an authoritarian nationalist state ruled by strong-arm leaders then the Trump administration has three more years to terminate free elections and ensure a strongly nationalist government rules in perpetuity.  There will be much lying spin making out that Europe and China are the warmongering enemies and that Czar Putin is really a good boy who is fighting for peace and tradition. So yes, the Trump administration is out to get not only Europe but also China. Part of the Trump regime's strategy to this end is to ally with the Gremlin Kremlin mafia, as I have suggested before. See these links and quotes below...

1. Views, News and Pews: Michael Brown still doesn't get the Trumpite threat.

If for the sake of argument we imagine that Trump becomes president in 2024 and a MAGA autocratic dynasty is the result, then my guess is that an alliance with a Putin dynasty would be an outcome, with this alliance setting itself against China. To this end it is likely that Putin is hanging on hoping that Trump gets into power. 

2. Views, News and Pews: Good News from Ken

I  have this notion that if Trump is elected and America becomes a dictatorship, Trump and Putin will then face off against China.

3. Views, News and Pews: The Big Bad Wolf is Dressed as Granny

As I've said before, if a Trump/Bannon like dictatorship emerges in America it will likely form a pact with Putin against China. 

The self-righteous Oliver Cromwell couldn't accept that in a valid parliament argumentative fractiousness and agreeing to disagree (within a constitution) is the status quo of epistemically and morally challenged humans beings. Cromwell abhorred the self-centered rows of parliament and so in his self-righteousness Cromwell became a dictator.

***

I would warn against abusing the Agreement Theorem as a pretext to crush a system where agreeing to disagree is regulated via a constitution. But to do that a humble self-awareness about one's epistemic weaknesses and bondage to sin are prerequisites. Such a self-awareness however is not very noticeable among the Trumps and Putins of this world. 

AumannAndAgreement02.pdf - Google Drive

AumannEpistemologyAndEvolution.pdf - Google Drive

INTERESTING LINKS

1. Trumpian Social Media surveillance?

Trump will force UK tourists to show social media history. America has gone dark

2. Scare Story?

Report: Putin plots to bomb planes, derail trains and poison water

3. Undermining confidence and emboldening conspiracy theorists

The sinister conspiracy theory behind Trump’s blistering attacks on Europe | The Independent

4. Classic games theory alliance formation

Trump may not like this one (and neither do I actually)....

Putin tells Maduro: I’ve got your back

So much for the ideals of communism and libertarianism; they are both pipe dreams opening the way to dictatorships! 

Views, News and Pews: The Marxist, Anarchist and Libertarian Pipe Dream.

5. Is this good news or is it like being told that Hitler was a believer?

Elon Musk admits his long-held views about God have changed

6. Russian Orthodoxy parallels Trumpite Christianity

Church and state blur in Russia as Putin’s rule is called “a miracle of God”

Political Corruption?

In this post I accused Charlie Kirk of being politically corrupt; after all, he stands accused of spreading COVID-19 misinformation,  supporting the white genocide conspiracy theory and promoting false claims of electoral fraud in 2020.... contrast the latter with the 2024 election which was a genuine win for Trump and where there were little in the way of claims of electoral fraud by the losing side; the losing side accepted that the American voting system was basically reliable.  Now, when I saw the quotes below from Kirk I concluded that he was also intellectually corrupt...

At first I wondered if these quotes were mischief making by anti-Kirk commentators, but they are all over the internet with no contradiction I can find.

With no knowledge of the "new age" in the early 1970s I was using the term "empathy" to explain the process by which one center of conscious cognition projects conscious feelings into another first person perspective. That was before the New Age became a noticeable popularist movement. The word "compassion" is not disconnected from "empathy"; compassion makes no sense if we don't have the initial first step of empathy which enables us to identify others as centers of conscious cognition. In the above quotes Kirk is mindlessly playing with words which chime with his supporters. 

Computer game players have no compassion about the simulated foes they shoot-up in their games: That's because no empathetic projection of consciousness need be made toward a simulant no matter how intelligently that simulant acts.  In the quotes above Kirk is virtue signaling to his constituency, a constituency who may well pejoratively label empathetic parties as "snow flakes" and "social justice warriors".  

Here's Hannah Arendt using the term "empathy" well before Kirk was born and well before New Age was a thing. But she would probably be written off by the Trumpite-right as a communist & "social justice warrior".  

Finally, seeing the picture below was no surprise. The irony is that Musk and Kirk only add fuel to the fire of those far-left revolutionary Marxists whose case will look stronger in the dark shadows of Musk and Kirk. Worst of all, Kirk has help corrupt Christian culture from within bringing it into disrepute (In this connection note that the 1st graphic above is from tTGA). 

An enthusiastic supporter of Kirk is fundamentalist theme park manager Ken Ham. Ken is as intellectually compromised as Kirk, But if you disagree with Ken look at the kind of thing he says about Christians who don't swing into line behind his views!

Interesting Links

1. Trump vs MTG

Being an unwoke right-winger doesn't in anyway excise the fundamental problems of power, ambition and divisiveness....

Trump targets ally Marjorie Taylor Greene ahead of Epstein files vote - BBC News

Marjorie Taylor Greene doubles down on calls to release Epstein files - BBC News

QUOTE....

She (MTG) said she's also focused on ending hate and division in politics, which she said is splitting apart American families, friends and neighbours.

"I think America needs to come together and end all the toxic, dangerous rhetoric and divide, and I'm leading the way with my own example, and I hope that President Trump can do the same," she told Bash.

It's a stark messaging shift for Greene, who has previously been accused of stoking political divides by promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories and elevating controversial posts on social media. She liked a post that called for the executions of former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama, and posted a photo of herself holding a gun beside images of three progressive Democratic congresswomen.

When Bash brought up some of these examples, Greene reiterated her past apologies and said a core part of her Christian faith is forgiveness.

Well, I hope she stays true to that new message. Perhaps at last Marj has seen the light. Trouble is, given Marj's track record Donald's accusation of her being "wacky" and a "ranting lunatic" will have some traction.

See also here:

Will Marjorie Taylor Greene turn the Maga movement against Trump?

2. The Christian nationalist's war against empathy

Kirk and musk aren't alone

Religious scholar explains how Christian nationalists use and abuse the Bible

McClellan noted that Christian nationalists are demonizing the word "empathy" and railing against "the sin of empathy." Claiming that "empathy" is inherently bad, according to McClellan, is a distortion of scripture.

McClellan told Letson, "Those are the people who are overwhelmingly trying to defend precisely parochial empathy because they're trying to convince others it's bad for us to empathize with undocumented immigrants. It's bad for us to empathize with people from other nations. It's bad for us to empathize with either conservatives or liberals. I think empathy that is outward looking is good."

Andrew Ollerton's take on Suffering and Evil. Part III

In this three part article I am looking at the response of Andrew Ollerton to Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch's loss of faith. Andrew Ollerton is the author of the Bible Society's successful Bible and Romans courses, courses we have run at our church. Andrew's answer to Kemi Badenoch can be found on the Premier Christianity website here.  The Premier article is divided into three parts: Viz:

Part 1: What Andrew refers to as his Logical Response. I looked at  this in Part I of the series

Part 2: This is about Andrew's Biblical Response. I looked at this in Part II of this series

Part 3: This concerns Andrew's Pastoral Response, and is the subject of this blog post.

Below I interleave Andrew's Pastoral Response with my own comments.

***

 Andrew's  pastoral response

Andrew: Finally, a pastoral response is found at the foot of the cross where God himself entered our world of pain. From the agony of the cross Jesus expressed feelings of abandonment that no doubt resonate with many victims: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Christianity doesn’t sidestep suffering; it centres on it. God’s plan may play out more slowly than we would like. But planted in the centre of it is the cross, where God himself bore the weight of our sin and made it his own.

MY COMMENT: I think I can agree with that: God in Christ has closely identified himself with our painful predicament. Christianity, therefore, does hit the problem of suffering square on. But can it face-off and ultimately out-stare that problem? True, if the very express image of God (Heb 1:3), the Creative Logos (John 1:1ff), and the one who can say "if  you have seen me you have seen the Father" (John 14:8ff) suffers with his Creation, then it feels very plausible that in the deep theology of soteriology an answer to the question of suffering and evil is lurking in there somewhere. But if we are going to accept the existence of God wouldn't PZ Myers "solution" be an easier and more likely solution? i.e. 

PZ Myers: No one uses the problem of evil to disprove a god, but only the idea of a benevolent god, or more specifically, the perfectly good being most Christians promote. When I see it deployed in an argument, it’s usually to make the narrower point that I don’t believe in your god..........But OK, sure, (if) the problem of evil says you should be anything but a traditional Christian, I’ll take it.

See the link at the end of this post for my response to this challenge.

***

Andrew: This doesn’t resolve all the mysteries. We still don’t know the answer to why God allows certain things to happen. But we know what it can’t be. It can’t be that God doesn’t love us. It can’t be that he doesn’t care. What difference does this make to our experience of suffering? A friend recently posted on social media as she neared the end of her battle with cancer: “As we walk through this dark valley, Jesus knows what we’re facing; he has the scars to prove it. And his presence gives us peace.”

MY COMMENT: Too right it doesn't resolve all the mysteries! Andrew is still insisting, nevertheless, that in spite of all the suffering and evil, God is good, loves us, understands our suffering and He will bring us to green pastures in the end; we are asked to have the faith to take consolation in that. But isn't it easier to draw the conclusion that either there is no God, or if He does exist he is a baddie?*

***

Andrew: In her interview, Kemi Badenoch said she rejected the idea of God but still believed in cultural Christianity. However, the Bible does not offer us a set of moral values or a logical argument for God. Neither will suffice when pain and suffering hit. Instead, the Bible invites us to personally trust in Jesus Christ, the sovereign and suffering God, who is with us in the darkness and promises hope beyond it. 

MY COMMENT: Personally I'm glad that Kemi Badenoch is at least a "cultural Christian" (along with Richard Dawkins) because the Bible does offer us a set of moral values we can at least aspire to and hopefully be challenged by: Viz: Compassion, concern for the downtrodden, justice, equality in diversity, selfless service, and humility, values which emerge out of the Spirit of the Law (James 2:8, Rom 13:8). It is these values against which we measure ourselves but find we are wanting; For, above all the crucial Biblical lesson is that whatever our aspirations, our morally flawed & epistemically challenged human nature means that we are never going to be very good at implementing those Biblical moral values - far from it, in fact. This calls for Salvation from our predicament.

Rendering Andrew's pastoral advice in my own words he seems to be saying this: "Trust in Jesus, have faith, set your sights on the future hope and stay calm and carry on". That may or may not be good pastoral advice given the circumstances....I don't know; I'm not a pastor. Pastoring is a tough call. My response to Myer's challenge can be seen here.... 

Views, News and Pews: Theology According to PZ Myers

....but it's no pastoral response.

***

Footnote:

* The idea of a bad God may entail internal contradictions; evil and selfishness may promote such internal chaos that it causes eventual complete self-cancellation in a way not unlike the unstable wave solutions in a cavity resonator, solutions which decay away to a whisper. 

Andrew Ollerton's take on Suffering and Evil. Part II

In this three part article I am looking at the response of Andrew Ollerton to Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch's loss of faith. Andrew Ollerton is the author of the Bible Society's successful Bible and Romans courses, courses we have run at our church. Andrew's answer to Kemi Badenoch can be found on the Premier Christianity website here.  The Premier article is divided into three parts: Viz:

Part I: What Andrew refers to as his Logical Response. I looked at  this in Part 1 of the series

Part II: This is about Andrew's Biblical Response, and is the subject of this blog post. 

Part III:  This concerns Andrew's Pastoral Response, and will be the subject of the next post in this series.

Below I interleave Andrew's Biblical Response with my own comments.

Andrew's BIBLICAL REPONSE

Andrew: Secondly, let’s consider a biblical response. Taken as a whole, the Bible depicts God as the enemy of evil and never the cause of it. In Genesis, God created only what is good.

MY COMMENT: Many Christians (and that includes myself) have trouble getting round the genocidal slaughterings of the Book of Joshua, slaughterings which are depicted as the implementation of God's will. OK, there may be apologetics here that takes into account the mitigating constraints which arise if one is constrained to play humanity at their own game, but it means that God as the enemy of evil and never the cause of it is not an immediately obvious truism*.  The statement In Genesis, God created only what is good, is deeply issue laden: For example, can we equate the "good" of Genesis 1 with perfection? At a lecture in Norwich Cathedral Cambridge University biologist & Faraday institute member Denis Alexander  maintained that in Genesis 1 "good" meant fit for purpose and not perfection. In fact the Bible itself is clear that the creation was far from perfect: Firstly, humanity was given the task of subduing and organizing the chaotic Earth beyond the garden of Eden and this suggests that the Earth was less than perfect and needed more creative work to be done. 

But secondly the real challenge to the notion of a perfect creation is found in the Biblical fact that the two main created players in the cosmic drama, namely humanity and Satan, were given a less than perfect power of choice, a power which allowed them to implement choices which could endanger "project earth" and send it on a near catastrophic course in the space-time continuum. Unfortunately I too have that less than perfect power of choice, so unless I'm a radically renewed animal I'd better be barred from the New Heavens and Earth of Revelation 21. There is only one force in this world that can radically renew my power of choice....

***

ANDREW: At the end of Revelation, [God] promises to restore all things. Now, as we interpret God’s ways ,,,,, we must avoid two dangers. One is to equate God’s silence or hiddenness with indifference. Kemi Badenoch assumes that if God cared for Elisabeth Fritzl, he would prove it by stepping in. However, while God is active in the world, he has given humans free will. He is not a puppet-master continually tweaking reality.

As the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks noted: “We believe God gave us freedom. It is the most fateful decision he made in the entire universe.” God teaches us what is good but does not forcibly prevent us from doing evil. Josef Fritzl is therefore responsible for his actions. To blame God for such malevolence overlooks the serious truth of free will. 

MY COMMENT: I can accept that God's silence or hiddenness doesn't necessarily imply indifference. But if we are expecting God to step in and stop the suffering then why is there any suffering and evil in the first place? ..... Because surely an intervening God would then be obliged to step in from the get-go. Therefore that a morally perfect omni-everything God has allowed suffering and evil to multiply from day one remains a mystery at this stage. However, as I mentioned in part I we now have to face the challenge of atheist PZ Myers who wrote:

No one uses the problem of evil to disprove a god, but only the idea of a benevolent god, or more specifically, the perfectly good being most Christians promote. When I see it deployed in an argument, it’s usually to make the narrower point that I don’t believe in your god..........But OK, sure, (if) the problem of evil says you should be anything but a traditional Christian, I’ll take it.

Well, OK I may not agree with that, but it is a robust & genuine challenge; namely, that the easy explanation for suffering and evil, if one assumes God exists, is that God isn't God as Christians perceive Him and instead a real baddie. But as a response to the question of suffering and evil I find Andrew's talk of "freewill" a cliche that is far from adequate; the general idea behind the "freewill" argument is that if we can source suffering and evil in human and satanic choices then this absolves God of any creative responsibility for the world's problems; the claim is that it is all down to human & satanic "freewill". God is therefore let off the hook. But the bad news is that so-called "freewill" is a minefield of issues....

Firstly one would have to trace all those flawed "freewill" decision making processes back to God's creation of agents who have the propensity to make such morally disastrous decisions. Secondly, as I have made a case for in the past, the debate between so called "freewill" and "determinism" is suspect from the point of view of meaningful intelligibility. The concepts of both "freewill" and "determinism" used by both sides of the debate fall-over on questions of their coherence. Therefore the resort to "freewill" is no answer to Myers' challenge and fails to off-load moral responsibility for the Creation's woes from the Creator to the Creation's acting agents. 

***

 

ANDREW: The opposite danger is to assume God’s current tolerance of evil is permanent. It is not. God has set a day to end injustice and hold evildoers to account, including Fritzl. Moreover, those like Elisabeth who have suffered at the hands of earthly fathers will have their tears wiped away by their heavenly father.

Then and only then, from the vantage point of eternity, will pain and suffering be put into perspective. To feel deep anguish in the face of evil today is absolutely right. But to reject God for this reason is premature. Instead, we need to hold on in hope and echo the cry that concludes the Bible: “Maranatha! Come Lord!”

MY COMMENT: I feel there is some force in the above apologetic: It's true that there is a measure of amelioration if one puts suffering and evil in the context of a much larger divine plan, a plan which includes ultimately putting the world permanently to rights and satisfying justice....the respective theological terms for this are expiation and propitiation.  The idea here is that the New Eternal Heavens & Earth which are metamorphosed from the current creation will be so wonderful as to make all the temporary suffering of this world worth it. The New World will be like waking up from a bad dream, or for what is for some a nightmare.  But there will be no waking up from the bad dream if its choosing agents still have a propensity for selfishness. 

......to be continued

 Footnotes

*  I have heard the view expressed that the apparently God-ordained murderous genocides in the book of Joshua is the Bible's authoritative and candid account informing us of the then erring human understanding of how God works. The same idea could by applied to some of the Psalms

Andrew Ollerton's take on Suffering and Evil. Part I

In this three part article I will be looking at the response of Andrew Ollerton to Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch's loss of faith. Andrew Ollerton is the author of the Bible Society's successful Bible and Romans courses, courses we have run at our church. Andrew's response to Badenoch can be found on the Premier Christianity website here. Below I interleave some of Andrew's content with my own comments. 

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Andrew: In a recent BBC interview, the leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, revealed that her belief in God was destroyed when she put her ear to the monstrous crimes of Josef Fritzl. For Kemi Badenoch, the idea of a God who ignores the cries of victims like Elisabeth, while answering other relatively trivial prayers, is completely untenable.

My Comment: I'm not going to elaborate on the awful crimes of Josef Fritzl toward his daughter Elizabeth; that can be discovered on the internet. Suffice to say here that Kemi Badenoch was quoted as saying that when she heard about these crimes what faith she had was snuffed out like a candle flame. Kemi has my sympathies; so often the challenge of suffering overwhelms any attempt at theodicy. But at this juncture I'm reminded of this post where I considered  atheist PZ Myers' response to suffering and evil. Viz: 

PZ Myers: No one uses the problem of evil to disprove a god, but only the idea of a benevolent god, or more specifically, the perfectly good being most Christians promote. When I see it deployed in an argument, it’s usually to make the narrower point that I don’t believe in your god..........But OK, sure, (if) the problem of evil says you should be anything but a traditional Christian, I’ll take it.

Well, that's a slightly different response to Kemi Badenoch's atheistic reaction to the problem of suffering and it is one, as we shall see in Part II of this two part series, which challenge's Andrew's apologetic. 

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Andrew Ollerton: No doubt we all share Kemi Badenoch’s moral outrage at this horrific crime. But must we also share her atheist conclusions? In the dark of evil and suffering, is belief in God morally justifiable?

My Comment: According to Myers the question has changed to this: Is belief in a Christian God morally justifiable?  But more about that in Part II. What now follows is what Andrew calls his Logical Response to Kemi B. 

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ANDREW'S LOGICAL RESPONSE

Andrew Ollerton: Firstly, some logic. If God does not exist then the universe consists of nothing but motion, matter and blind chance. Moreover, without God moral concepts such as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are arbitrary and carry little weight.

My Comment: Not quite in my view! Without God the universe consists of nothing but a meaningless patchwork of conscious sensations and yet which appear to be coherently organized by an inexplicable set of succinct and elegant laws, the mystery of whose origins is unsolved and in fact is logically unsolvable by mere descriptive science without getting into an "algorithms-all-the-way-down" regress. Moreover, particles, motion, space, chance and matter are not fundamental; rather they are mathematical constructions made conceptually possible by the organization of experience, but the true nature of the "thing-in-itself-ness" associated with these constructions is obscure; these objects are only known through our perceptions and conceptions.*

And yet in spite of that, concepts of right and wrong can be derived from conscious cognition in so far as the compulsions of sentience quickly teaches us what constitutes bad experiences to be avoided and which, in that sense, can be classified as "wrong". It's no doubt a crude gauge as to what is morally right and wrong, but it's a start.... the qualia of conscious cognition naturally categorizes experiences as "bad" or "wrong" whether we believe in a deity or not. In fact we can go a bit further: If we have some idea as to what is "bad" for us, then  given our ability to get into the the minds of others we are able to extrapolate, at least to some extent, as to what is also bad for them. 

However, the foregoing is no complete fix for the questions of morality because the long term ramifications of human action for the conscious cognition of both ourselves and others may be difficult to work out for epistemically challenged human beings. But acknowledging  the existence of the role of pre-existing sentience in defining morality gets the moral ball rolling; it's a pointer that right and wrong are not completely arbitrary constructions carrying little weight.  But this conclusion is based on the assumed existence of sentience, a sentience which touches, feels and thinks.  

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Andrew Ollerton: As C.S. Lewis noted, the assumption that a line is crooked implies the existence of a straight line. To say that someone’s actions are morally ‘wrong’ presupposes a ‘right’ way. Otherwise, all human behaviour is just ‘natural’. 

My Comment:  My guess is that both theists and atheists would identify the origins of morality in the social accommodation & reconciliation of the conscious feelings of themselves with that of other humans; in this connection the Golden Rule is universally understood as the basic heuristic of morality. However, the fair implementation of the Golden Rule in community is not straightforward and Christians would likely appeal to God's omnipotent perception of society for the finer points of such an implementation. But the beginnings of the moral "straight-line" which Andrew speaks of is to be found in the consciences of both atheists and theists. 

What ought to be clear, however, is that moral rights or wrongs don't exist simply because God, apparently for arbitrary reasons, labels them as such. Rather, I would propose that God declares what is right and wrong based on deep social implications which emerge from the Golden Rule, a rule which only makes sense given, a priori, the  existence of conscious cognition, a context where it is meaningful to talk of good and bad experiences. 

Contrast the former with the views of fundamentalist theme park manager Ken Ham, who comes close to defining morality  simply in terms of rules invented by God without acknowledging the deeper "Golden Rule" logic behind these rules.  Poor old Ken seems to have got no further with his concept of morality than something being "right" or "wrong" simply because "God said so". Yes, God lays down the law, but the motivations driving this law are be found in a community of beings who touch and feel and must reconcile the conflicts of interest which inevitably result of living together.  

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Andrew Ollerton: If Kemi Badenoch no longer believes in God, then what grounds her belief in morality and why is she so angered by evil and injustice? Atheism cannot explain our feelings of moral outrage. What Josef Fritzl did to his daughter was not ‘Wrong’ with a capital W unless we believe there is a ‘Right’ way for a father to treat his daughter.

My Comment: Suffering doesn't need to be labelled as wrong by God: It argues for itself as wrong, just as one's experience of say the colour red argues for itself as red and isn't "red" simply because it is called "red".  My guess then is that Ms. Badenoch has strong in-built instincts about the suffering associated with injustice and evil and these remain as the basis of her morality whether she believes in God or not. True, as a Christian I believe these instincts are created and maintained by the God of creation just as is the rising of the Sun. But disbelief in God doesn't mean to say moral urges go away, although like the rest of the cosmos their sheer existence is inexplicable to bland atheism.

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Andrew Ollerton: Equally, Fritzl can only be brought to justice if he was responsible for his actions and not merely subject to genetics, brain chemistry, and primal urges. In short, the reason we have a problem with evil is because we believe in a good God. This still leaves us wrestling with many mysteries. But to reject God because of evil is to saw off the very branch we are sitting on. 

My Comment: Fritzl is responsible for his actions even if they have "causes" in genetics, brain chemistry and primal urges. (One of those primal urges is the ability of most human beings to empathetically extrapolate feelings to other humans). See my series of articles on freewill and predestination for more on this subject (See here, here and here)

I disagree: The reason we have a problem with "evil" is not because we believe in a good God, but because we have strong empathetic instincts about the effect of evil on conscious cognition, and these instincts are common to both theists and atheists. I would agree however that such instincts are sourced & maintained by God and that without God empathetic moral behavior not only appears anomalous but has no apparent absolute anchoring. Its existence is as perplexing as the origins and maintenance of the laws of physics. For in a cosmos where a survival "ethic" is the only constraint on the dynamics of existence, standard "Golden Rule" morality has no logically obliging basis (See The Riddle of the Sphinx)

.....to be continued

Footnote

* The subtle twist here is that we find we can describe the formal structure of our conscious cognition in terms of these mathematical constructions.