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. 

***

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. 

***

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. 

***

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.  

***

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.  

***

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.

***

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.

Theology According to PZ Myers

Avenging Angel:
 "I'll never be nice to (recanting) MAGAts"
 says PZ Myers. But what if the repentance is,
full, deep and genuine?

In this post fundamentalist atheist PZ Myers (*1) criticizes a New York Times article written by Ross Douthat. In his article Douthat grapples with the timeless challenge presented to theism by the problem of suffering and evil. Douthat's article on the subject can be found here: The Best Argument against Having Faith in God.  Douthat is a theist and writes this... 

One interesting point about this argument is that while it’s often folded into the briefs for atheism that claim to rely primarily on hard evidence and science, it isn’t properly speaking an argument that some creating power does not exist. Rather it’s an argument about the nature of that power, a claim that the particular kind of God envisioned by many believers and philosophers — all powerful and all good — would not have made the world in which we find ourselves, and therefore that this kind of God does not exist.

PZ Myers response is...

That is correct. 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.

What I think PZ is saying here is this: "OK if there is a God, it's anything but a Christian God, given the level of evil and suffering we observe"; that's PZ's theology. It follows from this theology that if there really is such a thing as a Christian God there would be no suffering and evil in his creation; or at least not to the extent we observe. However, for me this kind of theology prompts a huge personal dilemma.....

***

An implication of PZ's concept of a Christian God is that, by definition, morally and epistemically flawed persons such as myself would not exist in the world free of suffering & evil which PZ envisages. Let me expand on that theme a little.....

A morally flawed person such as myself (flawed enough to be the person who readily passes by on the other side like the priest and Levite in Luke 10:25ff), is part and parcel of the tainted world I'm in. My character is so intimately bound up with my context that this context is also inevitably going to contain your Hitlers, Putins, Stalins, Maos, Polpots, Assyrians, Trumps, Kim Jong Uns, Musks, Mugabes, Assads and an endless list of other sinners whose aim in life is to get a hormonal high by securing for themselves the glories and status symbols of self-assertion (e.g. power, legacy, reputation, wealth, conquest, top-dog rule, high status, plutocracy, influence etc.) and whose ambitions have priority over the well-being and lives of others; they may jail or even kill those in their way.  J R R Tolkien's great literary metaphor has warned us of the potential evil that lurks behind our social standing and status motivations; namely, the all but irresistible temptations of the One Ring to Rule them all and in the darkness bind them should the opportunity of absolute power fall into our hands. If any of us corruptible sinners should take and wield the One Ring of absolute power there is the potential for corruption on a wide scale. I have trouble enough with those lesser, mean and squalid sins like walking by on the other-side, let alone the irresistible temptations of social ambition. 

So, given that I'm sinner enough to be potential One-Ring-to-Rule-them-All material (just like the characters in that rogues gallery which so often cites Hitler as a prime exemplar) I wonder, as does PZ, that our kind of world would have been reified at all by a Christian God; if it is a Christian God who is responsible for its reification, it must cause untold agony in the Godhead. But given that I now enjoy a highly conscious existence in a cosmos with many beauties, glories, pleasures and consolations should I now wish that my world in spite of all the suffering was never created (along with myself)  in the first place? That's the big dilemma.

***

PZ's theology tells him that given the evidences of evil and suffering he's fairly sure there can be no Christian God (sometimes I feel the same way when reality bites). But let me try turning that on its head... does the evidence which for PZ excludes the existence of a Christian God actually point in the very opposite direction? That is, to the existence of the God of John 3:16....

"Before" the big bang(*3) the history of our highly organized and seemingly arbitrarily contingent cosmos existed in the un-reified platonic realm as a logical possibility; just as does, in fact, any other story that some human author pulls out of the platonic realm, reifies it in book form and who presides over that book as an absolute sovereign. So, in spite of all it's pain and evil, did God so love this world that he decided to reify it and save it? We've heard it said that God has an inordinate fondness for beetles; does he also have an inordinate fondness for human beings in spite of our very human self-orientation which has such a potential as a source of suffering and evil? This is the unmerited unconditional love of God, "Grace" I think it's called.

***

Douthat leaves the question dangling of just what kind of God has reified our cosmos out of the platonic world of logically possibility. Hence PZ sums up Douthat's argument for God thus...

The straw he (Douthat) grasps at is that any god exists, and you can’t explain that, therefore God.

Yes, arguments for God which have form Evidence X  therefore God are subject to all the weaknesses of inductive reasoning. But when it comes to the question of meaning and purpose (if the cosmos has any) I prefer the ultimate abductive explanation: That is, the Christian God is the concept I begin with and then I see if that concept can be used to make the best anthropic sense of the cosmos; In this capacity "God" is the primary epistemic driver which both provides the confidence motivating rational investigation into a knowable ordered cosmos and best of all obviates cosmic absurdity in favour of meaning and purpose. (Gen 1:1, Hebrews 11:1-3, 6). 

However, at this noetic juncture there looks to be no logical obligation, at least one we able to grasp, which obliges either God or no God.  If there is no God then this may mean that we have to simply swallow as is a cosmos absent of meaning and purpose. In this connection consider the reaction of people like physicist Prof Brian Cox who proposes a story of a cosmos that will ultimately end in the black void of thermodynamic death, an absurd story clearly absent of all anthropic meaning & purpose, apart from that which we invent ourselves. That's not to say that I don't respect Cox's position; it's the position Westerners are left with once they discard the abductive explanation of Hebrews 11:1-3,6. 

***

Finally  PZ says this regarding the creation:

Except that we don't need and all powerful supernatural being to explain how the world works.

That sounds like the "Science explains everything, therefore no God", a line of argument with which I'm very familiar. See for example atheist theologian Don Cupitt who also easily caved in to this line of thought. But this thinking only works if one believes that science's descriptive completeness is capable of satiating our appetite for full explanation. The fly in the ointment of descriptive completeness is that it is only possible in a cosmos which has an a priori unexplained brute-fact high organisation. (The antithesis of randomness). Any attempt to upgrade science's descriptive answers (which in the final analysis only provide answers to the question "How?") to answers addressing the question "Why?" inevitably leads to an absurd algorithms-all-the-way down regress. Any deeper sense than providing a descriptive grasp on the cosmos leaves untouched those intuitively compelling questions which revolve around the question of meaning, purpose and the question "Why?"(*2). We have instinct that the cosmos has an a priori organization which means it yields to rational scientific inquiry. Some of us also have an instinct that the cosmos has ultimate meaning and purpose and just as we can search out cosmic organisation we can also seek meaning and purpose (Acts 17:26ff).

Footnotes 

* I would actually rate PZ Myers, by strictly human standards, as a worthy human being. He's a faithful family man and shows no sign of conceit or dishonesty. He gives every appearance of being genuine in his atheism and his case for it is strengthened by the clowning we get from Christian Trumpites and fundamentalists; but he's an insufferable grouch when it comes to criticising Christians of all brands. However, if I get to the Pearly gates before he pops his clogs I'll put a good word in for him. 

*2 One atheist who floats his attempt to address the ultimate "why" is Richard Carrier. He tries to arrive at a generalised logical full-stop beyond which no further endeavor about origins need proceed (apart from filling in details). But this attempt runs aground as a consequence of his misunderstandings surrounding the nature of probability and randomness. For him randomness is the ultimate "god-dynamic". 

*3 There are attempts (unsurprisingly) to imbue the cosmos with an eternal quality using theories such as infinitely recurring inflation. The impersonal, dispassionate, eternal cosmos then stands in the place of God as a kind of Gaia incubator of life, a disinterested creator without love or compassion. It is an attempt to put creation on the testable level of spring-extending and test tube precipitating science, but this line of thought still leaves us with the algorithms-all-the-way-down regress. 

Fred Hoyle is well known for his much earlier attempt the propose an eternal universe with his continuous creation model.   The irony is that in his later years his ideas started to get a mystical religious flavour in what to me looked like a pantheistic philosophy of intelligent design.  That God shaped hole was trying to fill itself!

Religious Popularism vs Academia

The insecurity of the popularist fundamentalist mind shows up
 in this cartoon: In their view if you slip an inch you'll soon be
 slipping a mile! So, in order to anchor themselves in certainty
the fundamentalist resorts to authoritarian group think and
the community pressures of cultism.

The academic establishment has become increasingly disconnected from the religious and mystical yearnings of a large section of the human race and their need for noetic security. There was a time when academia and religious authorities were intertwined and together they provided guidance (and security) on the meaning, purpose and shape of life. There was a price though; this security was bought at the cost of authoritarianism and the persecution of dissenters. ....we only need think of both Catholic and Protestant executions of "heretics".  For example, even in the 18th century a Norwich man was executed for publicly claiming the stories of the Bible to be fables.

In contrast what we are getting from the academic community today is at best non-committal noises about the questions of meaning and at worst contempt, cancellation and even persecution of those who presume to offer challenges to a purely secular world view.  Given the great changes in the cosmic perspective that have occurred since the enlightenment it is really no surprise that most academics either don't have the confidence or don't regard it as their duty to help fill in the "God shaped hole" in the heart of humankind. Western societies have lost their convictions and are inclined to believe that exosecular world views cannot be anything more than mythical.  

The withdrawal of the academic community from thinking itself as a supplier of spiritual guidance and even in some cases treating with contempt popularist & folk expressions of exosecular beliefs has led to a self-reinforcing polarization. As folk religion seeks some kind of firm anchorage for its beliefs by resorting to the vehement certainties and group pressures of fundamentalism, its increasing extremism seems to be a kind of reactionary punk contrarianism, a protest movement against modernity. These reactionary communities have reciprocated the contempt they have received from academia. They will even ferociously attack Christians who they classify as outsiders because they regard them as being on the slippery slope (or the slippery staircase) of unbelief. But who started this vicious circle of mutual antagonism, contempt & increasing extremism? That's sounds like a chicken-and-egg question to me!

It's true that many fundamentalist communities now glory in the anti-establishment mire of cranky anti-science flat-earth-like beliefs, conspiracy theorism, authoritarian leadership regimes, and quasi-racist Christian nationalism, thus inviting ridicule and contempt. Worst of all in the US they have formed a pact with quasi-criminal Trumpism and even in some cases Putinism. Sections of the US evangelical culture have fallen into such outrageous belief and practice that it provides the perfect extenuating circumstances for unbelief. But we can't just blame polarization on fundamentalists. Evangelical atheists like PZ Myers and Richard Carrier are part of the regenerative coupled system of tit-for--tat animosity that borders on mutual hatred. In this connection I was amused to see that Ken Ham's organization wasn't slow in taking PZ Myers to task for publishing false accusations about Ken's AiG organization. I don't think for one moment that PZ knowingly published false information, it's just that given his probable view that AiG are an organization of lying grifters he joined the data dots with the worst possible interpretation, hinting at a story of nefarious goings on behind the scenes. In his original blog post the implication was that AiG are using a private jet to occasionally visit the Cayman Island tax haven to stash away cash, tax free.  AiG picked up on this innuendo as false and defamatory: Read the story from Myers side here: I’m in trouble with AiG and its lawyers

And here's the first part of AiG's letter to Myers: 

RE: False and Defamatory Statements 

Dear Dr. Myers:

We represent Answers in Genesis, Inc. (“AiG”). We are writing to demand you and your blog, FreeThoughtBlogs, cease and desist further publication of your article Why are creationists so pasty pale at Answers in Genesis? posted at https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ 2024/10/17/why-are-creationists-so-pasty-pale-at-answers-in-genesis/ with a October 17, 2024 publication date (the “Article”). The Article contains several false statements and distortions of fact intended to defame our client.

The Article begins with the following statement: “AiG owns a private jet,” which is false. AiG has a lease for the fractional use of a private jet. In other words, AiG does not own a jet. It owns a percentage of an aircraft’s flight hours each year, approximately 25% of the allocated usage. The ministry has no oversight or involvement regarding the other 75% of use. The reasoning for the fractional use of a private plane is not about luxury but practicality, allowing the ministry to reach more people over a shorter period of time.

With that being said, it could very well be true that this jet “frequently darts down to the Cayman Islands for one-day visits.” However, that does not mean that those trips are taken by AiG. In fact, they are not. No AiG personnel have used the jet (or any other aircraft) for trips to the Cayman Islands.

The letter goes on to consolidate the case against Myers.

Obviously, there is no love lost here: PZ Myers genuinely believes that AiG are a gang of lying grifters and on their part AiG are likely to see Myers as a slave to the wickedness of unrighteousness as described by Romans 1:29-32. After all, if Ken Ham can be so spiritually vicious in his attacks on those Christians whose views undermine the rationale for his AiG business interests, he's clearly going to also pull out all the stops with atheists like Myers. 

This highly polarized context is the milieu in which we see US evangelicals (Ken Ham, Michael Brown, Franklin Graham etc) siding with secular leaders who are arguably of a fascist persuasion and prepared to gain and hold onto power by resorting to Machiavellian means. These quasi-criminal Godfathers have made a pact with US evangelicals by promising to defend their values at the price of taking the West back to simpler more cognitively anchored, more authoritarian and but more violent times. If they gain ascendancy in the West, what do you think might happen at the next anti-government protest given the presence of those AR15 armed Trumpite militias?  And what do you think might happen to dissenters in view of D J Trump's firing-squad comments about Liz Cheney?  Was he just joking or was it just an insensitive metaphor? I hope the US doesn't take the risk in order to find out. 

RELEVANT LINKS

1. My Links

Quantum Non-Linearity: Anti-Science or Anti Academic Establishment?

Quantum Non-Linearity: Christian Fundamentalists Embrace Flat Earth.

Quantum Non-Linearity: New Agers and Fundamentalists

Quantum Non-Linearity: The Trump Victory Part 2: Anti-Establishmentarianism

Quantum Non-Linearity: The Trump Victory. Part 1: Folksy Levellers.

Quantum Non-Linearity: Cloistered Academics vs. Christian Punks

Quantum Non-Linearity: The Anti Gravity Road Show.

2. Harrison Ford's Warning

Harrison Ford issues revenge warning as Hollywood legend reveals presidential endorsement

Ford continued: “The truth is this, Kamala Harris will protect your right to disagree with her about policies or ideas.

“The other guy, he demands unquestioning loyalty, says he wants revenge.”

3. George W Bush

Bill Clinton defends George W Bush over his endorsement decision

3. US Democracy's demise?

Trump has vowed to shake some of democracy's pillars

Prosperity Christianity Part IV and Covid-19.

They might be easy to do (Divinely speaking!) but they are not

so easy to find!

The previous parts of this series can be found as follows: Part I, Part II & Part III

I had intended Part IV to be about the tragic case of Bill Johnson's Bethel church's unanswered prayers for a resurrection. But since then there has been this post on PZ Myers' blog which showcases the following Tweet:

Right-wing pastor Rodney Howard-Browne of The River Church in Tampa Bay believes the coronavirus is a “phantom plague” designed to terrify people into receiving vaccines that will kill them.

Here, he asks congregants to turn around and greet each other. pic.twitter.com/yjS1f8lLT9

— Mark Elliott (@markmobility) March 17, 2020

The Tweet reads: 

Right-wing pastor Rodney Howard-Browne of The River Church in Tampa Bay believes the coronavirus is a “phantom plague” designed to terrify people into receiving vaccines that will kill them. Here, he asks congregants to turn around and greet each other.

Howard-Browne, of whom I've been aware for a long time, makes it into my criminally insane abominable Christian category; no two ways about it: He has a CV that few Abominable Christians could rival: Viz: Conspiracy theorist, hardened right-winger, Christian Gnostic elitist, ex-Benny Hinn lieutenant, laughing mania pied piper, father of the Toronto Blessing and finally, it is said that Browne tells Christians who criticise his laughing mania blessing they are going to Hell. More about the antics of this nasty pastor can be found at these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Howard-Browne

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rodney-howard-browne-used-his-sunday-service-to-spread-coronavirus-conspiracy-theories/

The reason why I link Browne to the Bill Johnson affair will become clearer as we proceed. For a start, as we have seen, Bill Johnson traces his blessedness back to Browne's legacy: Namely, the Toronto blessing.

PZ Myers entitles his blog post on Browne Christians are Selfish Awful People. That's just a little bit sweeping and unfair given that many, if not the majority of Christians, would utterly disown Browne; its like using the legacies of Stalin, Mao, Pol-pot, & Marxism to accuse all atheists of being selfish and awful. Moreover, Myers general categorisation is comparable to Browne's declaration that Christians who don't tow his line are Hell bound. It's also on a par with fundagelicals who accuse many otherwise good atheists, gay people and even fellow Christians of heinous sin for just being who they are. For fundamentalists of all flavours there is no middle ground; a miss is as good as a mile. This moral one-upper-ship is just the kind of thing that is readily used as a pretext for the persecution of those you disagree with; no matter what the details of their personality they are regarded as partakers of the same poison and therefore can all be written off as selfish and awful. This lack of discernment, found among both atheists of a "Stalinist" mentality & Christians who lean heavily toward hardened fundamentalism, doesn't take into account that people reinterpret and cherry pick "doctrines" in a way that is a function of their personality and experience and this reveals much about them as people. The "poisoned doctrine" paradigm doesn't make fine distinctions and is dehumanising. To be fair however there is some discussion on Myers' comments thread as to whether it is right to dump all Christians into the same league as Browne. Besides it is quite possible that the grumpy Myers needed to blow off some steam when he wrote his blog; after all, even as a Christian I find myself utterly repelled by Browne's  reprehensible views.

As I have already said, Bill Johnson traces he ministry's success back to the Toronto Blessing and therefore effectively back to Browne's laughing mania phenomena.  But in spite of that, in an official press release from Bethel chirch we can read the following:

As of Monday, March 16, 2020, all ministry gatherings and weekend services at Bethel campuses are postponed until further notice. Instead, Bethel will offer several online opportunities for members, attenders, and students to be a part of, including church online at www.bethel.tv streaming at 8:00 AM, 10:30 AM, 1:00 PM, & 6:00 PM PDT on Sundays moving forward.

Sensible people! I wonder what Browne, effectively a big influence on Johnson, would have to say about that! 

Finally in the same press release  I found the following a little bit ironic:

Changes to Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry: Bethel’s ministry school (BSSM) has decided to transition fully to online school sessions to continue to foster safety and health in the community. All in-person classes and gatherings at all campuses are postponed until further notice.

We have some disappointing news: As of March 10, 2020, Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry (BSSM) has cancelled all student missions and ministry trips between now and graduation, both domestic and international.

The Mouth of God (??)

In a post entitled "Good Morning Christianity"  evangelical atheist PZ Myers publicises an example of the devout badgering he gets:

Click to enlarge

Here's Myers' not entirely surprising response:

This is how some Christians think they’ll win hearts and minds for their religion. It’s pretty much typical for what I wake up to every morning.

There’s a phrase these fanatics like to use: “hardening the heart against God”. I’ve been dealing with this stuff for decades, and they’ve succeeded in turning my heart into a gristley, fibrous lump of black contempt for religion. Thanks, gang, I wouldn’t be the atheist I am today without you!

I would also remind my fellow atheists now that reversing this tactic against them will not persuade them that your intellectual rejection of the supernatural premises of religion is valid, either.

I suppose I ought to allow the possibility that Myers has landed himself a troll here, but I don't think so; It's entirely consistent with some of my experience of the slighted fundagelical and the threatening spiritual abuse (s)he can direct toward outsiders whether atheist or Christian;  (See also here). So, if even I have had more than enough aggravation from fundagelicals you can be sure that Myers would have! The Christian evangelist Myers has picked up sounds more like the proud, cruel, and slandering voice out of hell than the voice of the Father of many prodigals!

Myers would no doubt regard me as an utter nincompoop for being a Christian (which I can hardly blame him for given the state of the above quote). But that's a relatively minor personal slight which, as far as I concerned,  isn't sufficient warrant for him to become fuel in the fires of eternal damnation: Rico Tice can say what he likes. Fundamentalists tend to fall for a spiritual conceit whereby they project their own very considerable offence at being slighted onto the Almighty Himself.

It's no surprise that persons who have little compunction about registering the nominal rejection of Christ as clear evidence justifying the eternal tortures of hell, should have little inhibition in proactively and aggressively accusing those they consider beyond the pale of having committed the most heinous of sins. For myself I would certainly bulk at equating nominal rejection of Christ with an authentic rejection. After all, Christians like "asparagusman" are hardly projecting the authentic Christ of the Samaritans and the God of prodigals. So who knows, if Myers doesn't have that promised heart-attack before I pop off, I'll put a good word in for him when I pass through the pearly gates.