Thanks Derek.

Ward makes the same point in Chapter 8 of ”is religion dangerous?. Nowhere do the new atheists acknowledge the foundations of science in the Christian doctrine of creation and how that shaped the likes of Newton, etc. Dawkins, in particular because he is a scientist, is most culpable in this regard.

I didn’t get to the last four chapters of Ward yesterday - some Sudanese friends having been ejected from one of our churches for reasons largely of their own making, are attempting to re-establish on neutral ground and I preached for them instead - which was a better by far use of the Lord’s Day, taking John 5:24 as my text.

However after engaging with some of the posters on my two threads over on On Line opinion, I intend getting back on the job.

In Chapter 7, Morality and Faith, Ward is giving his response to the argument of people like Dawkins and Hitchens,

that religion is, or should be, irrelevant to morality. They argue that morality does not depend upon religion, and indeed that it is somehow irrational or immoral to try to make it do so. (p128)

Asserting that there is an important connection between religious and moral belief, Ward takes us through his own personal journey to this belief from an earlier view which excluded God.

He puts his initial view (having arrived at University to sit under atheist philosophers) this way,

The crunch question is what will I put in their* place? . It seems to me that the only reasonable basis of action is to satisfy the desires that I have. It takes a lot of reasoning to discover what my desires really are, what desires I have a hope of satisfying, and how to order those desires in the best way. (p129)

He then describes coming to John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian argument but discovering its deficiency

If ‘good’ is the object of rational desire, then pleasure is a good for every sentient being. Now comes the move on which John Stuart Mill’s famously invalid argument for utilitarianism depends. But I will put it in a form that is not invalid. If pleasure is a good for everyone, then if I aim at the good, I will aim at the pleasure of all, not just of myself The move here is from an actual desire that I have (my own pleasure) to a rational policy for which I may have no desire at all (to seek the good of all). An impartial observer — say, for instance, God — would no doubt seek the pleasure of all, for God has no partial desires. But if it is reasonable for me to pursue my desires, and for everyone else to pursue their desires, and if everyone desires pleasure, it does not at all follow that it is reasonable for anyone to pursue the pleasure of everyone (that is the invalid move made by Mill). For they may very well have no desire to do so. (p131)

Indeed.

He says the thing that troubled him about the atheist position was the question of truth (the things we can’t not know as J Budziszewski so helpfully puts it) – should I feel no compunction in discarding the truth if I feel like discarding it?.

My case for founding morality on religion is simply that, at the deepest level, the firmest rational foundation for morality seems to me to be the objective existence of a supreme being who defines what goodness is — a being of wisdom, creativity, sensitivity and bliss. To that understanding, faith adds an insistent moral demand, a responsibility to care for the world that God has created. (p138)

to which he adds two comments:

Believers have no magical route to moral certainty, nothing that undercuts the hard process of moral analysis and reflection. Like everyone else, believers have to get involved in arguments as to what love requires in a very ambiguous world. (p138)

and

....in my view, secular humanism is built on shifting soil, as there is no objective moral demand, no objective remedy for human weakness, no objective hope for the final realisation of virtue and happiness. I have no wish to condemn secular humanist morality, but for me, it lacks the depth and vision and power of a morality based on belief in the objectivity of beauty and goodness, and on the possibility of human lives being brought to fulfilment by sharing in the divine will. (p139)

In Chapter 8, The Enlightenment, liberal thought and religion, the point being addressed is the argument

that the decline in religious belief in Europe since the sixteenth century has in fact been a beneficial liberation from fear and superstition. They see the history of the modern world as one in which the old superstitions of religion were gradually eliminated in favour of the new rational outlook of the European Enlightenment, based on science. This has been a victory for reason over against the reactionary and authoritarian impositions of unquestioning faith. (p140)

Ward has little difficulty in dismantling this particular argument given the barbarism of the French Revolution and subsequent history of Europe.

But I do mean to throw doubt on any claim that in Europe during these five centuries there was a move from religious superstition to enlightened rationality. Barbarism did not decrease. In the twentieth century it reached heights never previously imaginable. Where religion was restricted, as it was in National Socialist Germany, or even abolished, as it was in revolutionary France and Russia, what superseded it was cruel and inhumane to an unprecedented degree. (p141)

In relation to reason

it was religion, not secular thought, that propounded the view that nature is founded on a deep rationality. (p142)

and contrastingly,

i

n a sense, much of the Enlightenment was a rejection of the scope and power of reason — its limitation to the subordinate role of rearranging the data provided by the senses, or to being, as David Hume put it, the ‘slave of the passions’. So when Enlightenment thought turned to consider social and political issues, it often tended to enthrone passion and desire as the fundamental driving forces of society, and to assign to reason the subordinate role of finding some way of finding a workable compromise between conflicting passions. (p143)

Ward next goes on to discuss the rise of liberalism and the notions of negative freedom – freedom from interference and positive freedom, clearly laying the derivation of these concepts with Christianity.

The impetus for liberalism had religious roots in a renewed perception, present in the earliest days of Christianity but resurfacing with great force in sixteenth-century Europe, that freedom to dissent from established and enforced beliefs, and freedom to form and express one’s own beliefs, was essential to a serious concern with truth, in religion as elsewhere (p145)

Many examples come to mind: Scottish covenanting history and the more recent religious vilification case in Victoria.

Ward has some well chosen words concerning reason and authority

God’s words may carry absolute certainty, but the opinions of men that God has said certain things should always be viewed with suspicion, or at the very least with less than absolute credulity.

The reason that beliefs should not be based simply on authority is that justifiable beliefs should have some stronger basis than that, that authorities are more liable than most people to be tempted to corruptions of power and idiosyncrasy, and that in many important matters, the wide diversity of reasonably argued opinions casts doubt on any particular claim to epistemic certainty. (p149)

It is worth quoting his conclusions on religion, the Enlightenment and liberalism in some detail:

Liberalism was not a secular movement that forced religion reluctantly to follow. It was a movement rooted in religious thought, and it is traceable back to the foundational beliefs of the New Testament
It is not true that the Enlightenment in Europe was an anti-religious movement, replacing the authoritarian acceptance of religious beliefs with the clear and dispassionate dictates of reason. Quite to the contrary, it is religion that safeguards reason against its critical destruction by the unrestricted scepticism of the radical Enlightenment. The Enlightenment at its best was a call to allow freedom of expression, to encourage informed critical enquiry in every area, including religion, to encourage the growth of experimental science, and to have the courage to follow the dictates of one’s own conscience. At its worst, however, it led to the undermining of respect for the uniqueness of human personhood, to denial of the objective authority of morality, to scepticism about reason itself, and to an instrumental attitude to nature which sees it as existing only to fulfil human needs.

There are deep religious motivations to enlarge human freedom, to seek truth by the most effective means, to understand more fully the world God has created, and to ensure that scientific advances do not neglect respect for human personhood or despoil the natural environment. In this sense, religion is a safeguard against the most negative consequences of the Enlightenment heritage. It has the power and the possibility to try to make growing technologies the servants of the needs and potentialities of all humans. Whereas some Enlightenment thinkers sought to make reason the slave of the passions, religious belief should seek to make the passions, which are so often disordered, self-interested and unconcerned with others, not slaves but servants of reason —of a truly disinterested and impartial concern for the greatest possible well-being of all creatures in this rationally ordered and beautiful cosmos that God has created and surely cherishes. (p151,152)

Well I must say I liked all of that.

Part 4, Does religion do more harm than good?, has two chapters Does religion do more harm than good in personal life? and What good has religion done?.

I won’t spend much time on this as Ward traces material covered elsewhere, e.g. David Marshall’s The truth behind the new atheism and Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s so great about Christianity? to come.

The chapter, Does religion do more harm than good in personal life?, addresses the question of whether religious belief is harmful in personal life under 5 headings:

1. does religious belief bring more happiness or more misery to individual human beings?
2. does religious belief lead to greater or to less moral commitment and altruism?
3. is religious belief more associated with mental illness or with mental health and sanity?
4. is religious belief merely some form of delusion
5. is religious belief caused by a malfunction of the brain.

Social surveys have shed light on the first two questions and demonstrate that religion is in general beneficial to happiness whilst the surveys also show that religious commitment correlates highly with community service, i.e. altruism. This is not an argument that all religious believers will be more altruistic than unbelievers – it is just that many more believers than unbelievers will be and are altruistic.

Regarding the third question, the answer is a “resounding ‘No!’. The evidence is that most mental illness is physical or neurological in origin and therefore not under the patient’s voluntary control.

Regarding the religious delusional, the fact is most people seem to be odd, in one way or another, though religion provides quite a handy home for paranoid ideas if only because the religious tend to be more tolerant, willing to listen to weird ideas more sympathetically than most people!

The fifth question runs up against the fact that religious belief both in the past and present is an extremely widespread phenomenon, perhaps the boot is on the other foot. (my comment, not Ward’s)

In Chapter 10, What good has religion done?, Ward defends the notion that while there are many dangers in religion, overall it is a force for good.

What follows is an interfaith comparison - Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism to demonstrate how benign and positive forces all are. However he feels called upon to again defend religions from the charge of internecine strife, saying

religion is not the only or main cause of disagreements and conflicts between human beings. There are apparently irreconcilable differences of opinion in almost every area of human life (p193)

and apparently according to the number of threads on this forum featuring Gafcon in their title (for which Robert ian Williams bears large responsibility), most certainly amongst that strange breed, Anglicans.

So is religion dangerous? Sometimes it is. But....

despite superficial appearances, religion can be one of the most positive forces for good in human life. In a world where despair, anger and a loss of any sense of human significance (p199)

are rife, a sense of objective goodness, of human dignity and of cosmic hope is essential for human survival and true well¬being. These are things that the world’s religious traditions have the potential to give.

Now it is easy to find fault with aspects of Ward’s analysis, but overall he tackles many of the key questions and gives measured generally reliable and compelling arguments in rebuttal. He does so quietly, without rancor or rhetorical devices to demean his opponents. He treats his opponents with respect, generally without naming them (only three references to Dawkins, none to Harris and one to Dennett who, reading between the lines, he is not impressed by).

The only place we get to feel some of his annoyance (and annoyance in large dollops has been my reaction to Dawkins et al – their arrogance, sheer stumbling ignorance of the Christian mind and trashing of soft targets in preference to having to engage our best minds), comes in his citing of the treatment handed out by Dawkins in the root of all evil to the American fundamentalist Pastors that he interviews (all hold to YECS views).

The only proper response to such views is to present the evidence and engage in open debate. Dawkins chose to ridicule them instead. Which is the more dangerous: tolerance of and engagement with views you take to be absurd, or the suppression of views that are opposed to what you believe to be certainly true? The latter is the view of the Inquisition. The former is the hard-won consequence of the Reformation acceptance of critical thinking and tolerance of diversity. (p150)

That’s about as hot and strong as he gets.

When I get to doing some writing, I intend making use of a number of his arguments.

Well, to date, I’ve reviewed books by Dawkins, Lennox, David Stove (loved him, drilled Dawkins through the heart), Marshall (plodding, typical evangelical, but ticks all the boxes) Haught and Ward. I still have The Devil’s Delusion - atheism and its Scientific Pretensions by David Berlinski - Berlinski who describes himself as a secular Jew is a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute, the foremost ID think-tank, the Dinesh D’Souza’s book I mentioned earlier - he is from the Hoover Institute which I think is a right wing think tank, Antony Flew’s There is a God - how the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind - this book has caused controversy, the atheists hate (= ignore) it, charging that Flew had lost his marbles with a co-writer writing the book - Flew has himself denied this. The last book I have (together with an ipod nano) is the iPod tutor: the argument against richard dawkin’s the god delusion.

If I don’t come back it is because I’ve buried myself under them no more to be seen, or perhaps been gently tapped by the Moderators to find another home. I also have my reviews of Hitchens, Harris, Dennett and Onfray to post…

Who says I’m obsessional?

However I do check the number of hits on the thread, and the number occurring only encourage me to continue. So it’s your fault.

Cheers

David

I’m not ready to get going on this thread again with reviews of atheist literature but I thought I would like to draw attention to what could be a good read - certainly the first chapter was.

The book is “A Higher Throne” with the subtitle “Evangelicals and Public Authority” edited by Chris Green, published in 2008 by Apollos and appears to be a set of lectures from a School of Theology at Oak Hill College.

The next chapter for me to read is one by Kirsten Birkett apparently summarising the thought of Oliver O’Donovan which from my memory of Theological College might be of assistance to Moore College and other students.

The chapter I have just read is by a Daniel Strange, entitled “Evangelical Public Theology: What on Earth? Why on Earth? How on Earth?”. I would say I have recouped the cost of the book on just this chapter, not least of all for the excellent bibliography he has provided – at least another 6 books and numerous articles to read (sigh).

Strange gives a really good summary contrast between the two kingdom model and the Kuyperian model (or as Strage calls it, the “transformationist” model). Having traversed this terrain a few times I think Strange is fair and illuminating – highly recommended summary with plenty of pointers for further reading.

At one point he quotes two Dutchmen van Til and JH Bavinck which brought to mind the years I spent in Box Hill Reformed Church and my astonishment at the theological acumen of men who you would otherwise regard as ordinary if you were thinking of an intellectual discussion. These men were clerks, gardeners, tradesmen but they were also theologians who expanded my horizons tremendously and I had had a good Sydney Anglican upbringing! Anyway I digress.

At one point Strange discusses the ‘antithesis’ (key Kuyperian word) between followers of God and followers of Satan at all levels of human existence.

But lest we are led astray in our own pride he includes this quote from van Til.

The natural man, ‘sins against’ his own essentially Satanic principle. As the Christian has the incubus of his ‘old man’ weighing him down and therefore keeping him from realizing the ‘life of Christ’ within him, so the natural man has the incubus of the sense of Deity weighing him down and keeping him from realizing the life of Satan within him. The actual situation is therefore always a mix of truth with error. Being `without God in the world’ the natural man yet knows God, and, in spite of himself, to some extent recognizes God. By virtue of their creation in God’s image, by virtue of the ineradicable sense of deity within them and by virtue of God’s restraining general grace, those who hate God, yet in a restricted sense know God, and do good.

Strange goes on to write about how the image of God though defaced yet persists in the unbeliever and includes this quote from Bavinck’s commentary on Roms 1:18-32

Man has repressed the truth of the everlasting power of the divinity of God. It has been exiled to the unconscious, to the crypts of his existence. That does not mean, however, that it has vanished forever. Still active, it reveals itself again and again. But it cannot become openly conscious; it appears in disguise, and it is exchanged for something different. Thus, all kinds of ideas of God are formed; the human mind as the fabrica idolorum (Calvin) makes its own ideas of God and its own myths. This is not intentional deceit — it happens without man knowing it. He cannot get rid of these ideas and myths. So he has religion; he is busy with a god; he serves his god — but he does not see that the god he serves is not God himself. An exchange has taken place, a perilous exchange. An essential quality of God has been blurred because it did not fit in with the human pattern of life, and the image man has of God is no longer true. Divine revelation indeed lies at the root of this image, but man’s thoughts and aspirations cannot receive it and adapt themselves to it. In the image man has of God we can recognize the image of man himself.

So I thought I would share these quotes because they do shed some light on Dawkins et al and how we should understand their deeper motivations and indeed confusion. Dawkins has his idols as surely as any idol flaunting person has (well don’t let’s go too deep into that).

They all seem very angry, even nasty.

Two trenchant conclusions immediately follow:

(1) The claim that atheism has no negative effect on morals collapses, at least in this matter of manners.

(2) In seeking thus vehemently to disprove the existence of God, these tools provide strong evidence of the existence of their puppet-master!