An atheist: ‘Christianity is the answer to Africa’s problems’

Matthew Parris and Jonathan Dimbleby (Photo credit: Pickersgill Reef)

Matthew Parris is an atheist. He’s so much of an atheist that an article he’s written has been published on Richard Dawkins’ own website.

Now, Richard Dawkins, for those who might not know him, is the guy who hates belief in God so much that I once heard him in a debate against Tony Blair, of all people, arguing that the cause of all suffering in this world was a direct result of people’s religious beliefs.

Firstly, clearly that’s not true. But secondly, it’s therefore interesting that on his own website he’s published this article, entitled As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God. Here’s a great quote:

Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding – as you can – the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

But this doesn’t fit the facts. Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

Well, there you go. The article on Dawkins’ site is here, and the original’s here (although you need an account to view it). The place I found out about it all is here.

Related articles

• Breaking news: Richard Dawkins doesn’t like religion or ‘Islamic barbarians’. Well, he kept that one quiet (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
• Book: The God Delusion (jameskennedybeijing.wordpress.com)
• -Richard Dawkins Loses Debate Against Former Archbishop Rowan Williams (answersforthefaith.com)
• Fancy going to the atheist church? (samisaacson.wordpress.com)

Nothing exploded

English: A cross close to the church in Grense Jakobselv, Norway. Suomi: Risti kirkon lähellä Vuoremijoella, Norjassa. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Christians have a lot of faith. They stupidly believe in some guy who lives in the sky, definitely Caucasian, definitely with a white beard, probably holding a staff or a lightning bolt or something like that, who created everything, then sneakily hid proof of evolution in it all so that the cleverest humans would be led astray, leaving the stupid ones to get into heaven because of their faith.

Well, judging by the way the new atheists talk I think that’s what they believe anyway. The fact that I’m a Christian and believe none of that paragraph (except maybe the bit about him creating everything) seems to make no difference; why address real-life Christians when imaginary ones are so much easier to get angry and aggro about!

I’m not convinced that Christians have any more faith than atheists do. Let me tell you what I can see at the moment:

• a whole bunch of electronic stuff
• chocolate biscuits
• furniture
• buildings
• statues
• trees

All of those, with the exception of the last one, have a clear creator or creators; humans. But the last one, according to atheists, needs faith to believe in a creator. Odd.

Ok, so the tree grew ‘naturally’ out of a seed, but where did the seed come from? Another tree? But that doesn’t go back forever…atheists would have us believe that everything came into existence out of nothing on its own.

Is it just me, or is that absolutely ridiculous? In what other situation would we see something and conclude that it came into being when there was nothing there before, not even its various parts?

Atheists: you demonstrate more faith than I feel I can muster up I’m afraid!

Related articles

• Christmas in an Anti-Christian Age (flyoverpress.wordpress.com)
• Room for Debate: Is Atheism a Religion? (nytimes.com)
• Cold-Case Christianity (challies.com)

The heathen manifesto

A symbol for Heathens in Canada. Combining the Canadian Flag and a mjolnir into a shield. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A bit ago an out-of-the-closet atheist submitted his ‘heathen manifesto‘ in an attempt to clarify the atheist position and to dispel the caricature that has been created off the back of Richard Dawkins’ defense of atheism. Here are his headline points:

1. Why we are heathens – we admit that there is a human problem and that we don’t know everything.
2. Heathens are naturalists – we actively believe that there is no such thing as the supernatural
3. Our first commitment is to the truth
4. We respect science, not scientism
5. We value reason as precious but fragile
6. We are convinced, not dogmatic
7. We have no illusions about life as a heathen – sometimes life’s just hard
8. We are secularists – we value a state that doesn’t force people to believe in anything supernatural
9. Heathens can be religious
10. Religion is often our friend
11. We are critical of religion where necessary
12. This manifesto is less concerned with distinguishing heathens from others than forging links between ourselves and others

Ok. Now here’s the thing. I don’t have a problem with this guy because of point 2; he acknowledges that active faith is required in order to be a heathn. But the manifesto I find to be fundamentally flawed.

Although the final point specifically says that this isn’t here to distinguish heathens as ‘different’ from others, that is exactly what it does. Each point is very clearly an attempt to put people into a box: if you’re religious, you belong in the ‘religion’ box, and you’re therefore different to me. But many of the points in the manifesto could very well appear in a Christian manifesto (valuing truth, respecting science, valuing reason, being convinced not dogmatic), with only one difference, which is highlighted in this quote from point 3:

Although we believe many things about what does and does not exist, these are the conclusions we come to, not the basis of our worldview.

Wrong.

Everyone has a worldview, and that informs how you interpret the evidence available to you. If I showed a heathen part of the Bible which said ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,’ he would undoubtedly say, ‘No He didn’t because I don’t believe there’s a God.’ If I said ‘look at this plant, doesn’t it demonstrate God’s creative power?’ he would probably say, ‘No, it simply shows me that the plant came to be.’

So, yes, the heathen comes to his or her conclusions but they are only based on the heathen worldview; that’s what distinguishes the heathen from anyone else.

Heathen: if you value reason, consider the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. It requires more faith to ignore it than it does to believe.

The Reason Rally

The symbol for the American Atheists group ("Permission is hereby granted to all who wish to use the logo for any reason other than to defame.") within the public domain Purple Poly Mobius symbol. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You may have spotted in the news that this weekend a bunch of atheists are gathering in Washington D.C. to celebrate reason. A couple of logical errors with this, if I may.

Number one. By having this ‘Reason Rally’ it would seem that they’re inferring that anyone who has faith in anything supernatural is somehow choosing to be unreasonable. By opposing the thoughts behind this rally I’m clearly disagreeing that reason is a bad idea…but I don’t. And, obviously, no-one does. No-one actively holds a position they consider unreasonable. So these atheists that are rallying clearly feel so little confidence in their beliefs that they feel the need to use straw man arguments. Good starting position.

Number two. David Silverman from American Atheists explained the reasons behind the rally:

The Reason Rally is not about eradicating religion. There is a difference between wanting a secular government and a nontheistic government. A secular government is one that gives no preference to any religion or to non-religion. This allows the government to remain neutral and to protect all religious belief.

Oh, well done, David! Maybe you are being reasonable after all!

Oh, no, actually it seems he’s not. Have a little read of his blog at the Washington Post and you’ll see that his issue is that people in America vote for religious people over atheists regardless of how similar their manifestos may be. So he’s not bothered about atheists not being able to run (he’s obviously not rallying against public policy) but he is bothered about people being informed of how to vote by their faith.

In other words, he’s saying that faith is fine, so long as it only affects your private life rather than being demonstrated in public.

Which is ironic, seeing as this is being communicated through a public demonstration.

Oh, and as a little postscript, the Washington Post has also stuck on a blog post written by a guy who shows the New Atheists’ irrationality a little clearer than I do.

Whatever next?

Religion (Photo credit: Rickydavid)

You may have spotted a news article that appeared a couple of weeks ago; a new religion has been officially recognised in Sweden which holds ‘file sharing is objectively good’ as its central belief. Apparently CTRL+C and CTRL+V are holy symbols. Seriously.

How these guys got formally recognised I have no idea, but let’s not pass judgment. The theory of copyright and intellectual property is quite weird; if I’m having a conversation with you and tell you a fact or a thought I’d just had, how much of that conversation would legally belong to me, and how much could you use, morally speaking? How much could the guy eavesdropping do before it became illegal?

Under the copyright system it’s basically down to the person who can run to the officials’ office and copyright something fastest. I’m sure we all acknowledge the ethical dilemma: if I come up with a unique idea it would be wrong for you to use it for profit without asking me first, but what’s to prove you didn’t come up with the idea on your own? Well, in steps this new religion.

The problem is that their issue is, practically speaking, to do with getting books, music, films and so on for free. And that’s against the law. So actually they’ve just managed to invent a new religion to allow them to break the law by stealing copyrighted material. What would happen if a group of people decided that sex is a human right and founded a new religion on that? Would it mean that they couldn’t be prosecuted for rape?

The push today is more and more moving towards the idea that morality is completely subjective; what’s right and wrong for you is fine, but don’t judge me by your standards! Tolerance is king! What would happen if that were recognised as a true religion? The logical conclusion could only be that prisons and fines would exist for only one crime: suggesting that what someone else believed was wrong. Murder would be fine, everything else would be fine, because whatever I did I could just claim, ‘well, I believe it’s right as part of my personal religion.’

I think we can all agree that this simply doesn’t work. Regardless of what else we know, something we do know is that objective morality must exist. And that can only come from someone perfect: God simply must exist.

Faith improves health in 81% of cases

So a bit ago I posted up an article here which an atheist had given to me, showing that in one study prayer didn’t appear to have an effect on medical patients.

We saw from that study that its results had no bearing on whether or not prayer actually worked in the way the Bible said it would.

And now, I’ve found another study. This one is more comprehensive, and better aligned to biblical expectations. Here are some highlights:

Evidence from over 1,200 studies and 400 reviews has shown an association between faith and a number of positive health benefits, including protection from illness, coping with illness, and faster recovery from it. Of the studies reviewed in the definitive analysis, 81% showed benefit.

The raw data from some large studies show a significant benefit in mortality for those involved in organised religion. For instance, one study followed 21,204 representative American adults over nine years, and correlated death rates with religious activity and a large range of other data. Income and education had surprisingly little impact, but those who attended church regularly had a life expectancy seven years longer than those who did not. For black people the benefit was 14 years.

…the assumption that God can be summoned like a genie in a lamp is closer to magical thinking than an authentically Christian understanding of prayer.

Christians should not promote health benefits as the primary reason for coming to faith in Christ. Jesus came into the world to work a far deeper transformation in human lives than simply curing disease. In fact he promised that his disciples would experience trouble as a result of following him, not health and wealth.

While it is striking that faith appears to be associated with improved health outcomes, the Christian faith is not to be judged by its material benefits, but by whether it is true.

In contrast to the popular myth that Christian faith is bad for health, on balance, and despite its limitations, the published research suggests that faith is associated with longer life and a wide range of health benefits. In particular, faith is associated with improved mental health. At the very least, the burden of proof is on those who claim that faith is bad for health and that all forms of spiritual care should be excluded from modern medicine.

Here’s a link to the actual thing, it’s worth a good read. This link has the same content but is nicer to print out. Results from all the original studies are linked to from that article.

Please, unbelievers, I welcome your comments.

How Christianity’s different: evidence

Here’s a nice summary picture, and it’s actually pretty accurate:

I took it from over here.

Religion: good or bad

There was quite an interesting debate on Radio 4 the other day – it might be on iPlayer. Christopher Hitchens vs. Tony Blair, arguing whether religion is a good idea, or a bad idea (just to clarify, their use of religion encompasses anyone with a belief in a higher power – different to mine, but I’ll run with it). Here’s how it basically went:

CH: Religion’s a bad idea because the Taliban are Muslims, and they’re terrorists.

TB: Religion’s a good idea because churches in the UK united behind Make Poverty History.

CH: Religion’s a bad idea because Catholics in Africa have made the AIDS situation worse.

TB: Atheism’s a bad idea because all the worst dictators in the twentieth century have had atheism as one of their characteristic factors.

It was interesting, but not that clever. Both Hitchens and Blair did the same thing, they pointed to a couple of random examples of what they believed. Neither, in my opinion, gave enough reasoning to actually ‘win’ the debate.

But one thing in particular confirmed what I had thought before ever hearing it. At one point a member of the audience asked the question: ‘Wouldn’t it be better if we could all just accept what one another believe?’ and Hitchens’ response was a classic (I’m paraphrasing again by the way):

I agree with your attitude because it’s a humanistic attitude. Humanists believe that everyone should be free to simply ‘be good’ without the need to believe in one particular god. All religions have one thing in common: they’re elitist. You believe in what we tell you to, or you’re the enemy. Humanists are the opposite.

Sorry Chris, you’re wrong. I know you’re far more intelligent than I am, but on this you seem to be blinded to the obvious. You’re on a debate in which you’re declaring that belief in God is a bad thing…how is that different from anyone of faith believing that unbelief is a bad thing?

Probably more to come on this one.

The God Delusion Debate: atheism undermines science

Here’s a good website to click on. Professor Richard Dawkins debating Dr. John Lennox and (to my mind) having his atheistic worldview shredded before his very eyes. I’ve probably watched about half of it, but here’s a little taster.

Richard Dawkins has explained (of course) that science is the only logical option because it relies solely on evidence and therefore is provable, whereas faith is required to be blind. Here’s where John Lennox steps in. He explains that atheism undermines science. Science assumes the rational intelligibility of the universe, or else you could draw no conclusions. However, there is no evidence for the rational intelligibility of the universe and therefore science requires faith before you’ve even started moving. As with every single argument against Christianity, the assumptions on which you’re building your argument are disproved by the very argument itself.

Here’s another good bit. Dawkins says that you should never really have any level of faith, because it’s always blind. John Lennox’s response: ‘I presume you have faith in your wife. Is there any evidence for that?’ Richard Dawkins: ‘Yes, plenty-’ he then hesitates, receiving a raised eyebrow from Lennox. Dawkins’ ‘evidence’ for his wife’s faithfulness is her tone of voice, a look in her eyes…sounds terribly subjective to me!

You can watch the whole debate for free right here.

Good luck

I sat an exam for work over the summer. The last thing one of my colleagues said to me as I left the office to go home and study was:

Good luck!

Not very creative, I hear you say. But what he said got me thinking. I’m currently working in an office built by the Chinese – it’s very nice, but I’m working on floor 3A, because apparently the number four is unlucky.

Why is four unlucky? Does eating food from a square table make you more prone to getting indigestion? Or why does a black cat crossing your path spell bad news? At the end of the day, what is luck?

One web definition says that luck is ‘an unknown and unpredictable phenomenon that causes an event to result one way rather than another’. In other words, it’s something that influences circumstances which isn’t people’s efforts, and isn’t simply chance – a ‘lucky’ person is more likely to roll a 6 in the chocolate game.

So belief in luck is belief in a higher power which is uncontrollable, unknowable, and unobservable. Luck is the all-powerful god who you can’t ask a favour of. Now the person who said it to me is an atheist. He’s happy to believe in a higher power which secretly changes the course of history so long as that higher power doesn’t have a personality.

Belief in luck sounds pretty depressing to me. ‘Regardless of what you think, say, or do, luck will do exactly what it wants, whether you want it or not.’ I think I’ll stick with Jesus: ‘we know that for those who love God all things work together for good’ (Romans 8:28).

I passed the exam, by the way.