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A matter of faith



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The Rev Dr Robert Anderson (Focus, 12 May) is broadly correct in his assessment of the failures of the Church of Scotland – liberal theology kills churches. However, Christianity's defence against "rational argument" is not fundamentally that human thought is unreliable, but that Christian belief is supported by reason. Also, the Kirk should not be aiming for a "niche market"; Christ's message is for all.
I'm sure other correspondents will explain how the Church needs to reflect modern values if it is to survive, but they will not mention any statistics to support their case, because research on churches underlines the fact that an indistinct, inoffensive, watered-down faith is a factor in decline.

RICHARD LUCAS

Cowan Road

Edinburgh





The full article contains 122 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 12 May 2008 8:17 PM
  • Source: The Scotsman
  • Location: Edinburgh
 
1

Tom in Belmont,

Belmont 13/05/2008 02:24:09
In 1974, an American Methodist minister wrote a little book "Why the Conservative Churches are Growing", in which he identified several factors associated with that growth:
1. A defined body of doctrine articulated and defended through policy.
2. A refusal to let outside forces set those policies or influence them contrary to doctrine.
3. The use of the "power of the gate" to keep out (or at least keep from power within the church) anyone opposed to the doctrine.
Ironically, this fellow called himself a theological liberal, and urged his fellow liberals to adopt these "conservative" tactics. The history of liberal American Protestantism makes clear the consequences of their refusal: near extinction.
Since most of our Protestant churches have British roots it could hardly be different there.
2

StuartAD,

West Lothian 13/05/2008 08:20:54
Having read the above book, I can see what the writer was trying to say. Today it is a fact that the Evangelical wing of the Church is steadily growing, whilst the liberal wing of the Church is in decline.
If there was a separation, by the Evangelical wing, the liberal church would not be able to finance itself. The Church of Scotland has shifted its position in recent years, It is in some places no better than the charity shop in the high street, I have been in churches where the name of Jesus was never mentioned. Academia must take its responsibility for this as Liberal Theology has long watered down the Christian message which held in tension the pros & cons of being & not being a Christian.
That was why the book above was written, that is why the canon of scriptures was put together so that people might learn, that Christ was raised from the dead & in His Name have salvation.
It has long been said: "If only someone could come back". Well, someone did, some are still in a state of disbelieve.
3

Duncan in Edinburgh,

13/05/2008 11:33:23
Richard, Christian belief is not supported by reason. That one can construct a convoluted argument by exclusion for the existence of some indefinable "god" entity does not ennoble such views with the title of reason.

Religion is based on faith. Reason tells us that there is no God.
4

James,,

13/05/2008 12:36:19
#3,

"Reason tells us that there is no God."

Reason tells us no such thing. Perhaps you could explain how, in your opinion, it does?
5

Duncan in Edinburgh,

13/05/2008 13:30:58
#4 It's not hard to understand, though the argument does depend on what sort of God you are trying to disprove the existence of.

Richard's God, for example, is the traditional omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent variety, who created all things and knows exactly what has happened, is happening and will happen, eternally. This is such a ludicrous hypothesis that it is hardly defensible. One argument against is the question of who created the creator? Reason tells us that anything that creates must itself have been created, that the creator of our universe must have been even more complex than our universe, and that therefore the creator's creator must have been more complex still. This is a never-ending paradox.

The counter argument, which is both compelling and unrebutted, is that natural selection provides a mechanism for the development of a more complex thing from a less complex thing. Creationism cannot answer that issue with reason.

There are other God hypotheses though, some slightly less ludicrous, but all unreasonable.
6

James,,

13/05/2008 14:02:49
#5,

You seem to be confusing two different questions - Who created the universe? with Who created life?

You identify a paradox in that anything that creates must itself have been created. That assumes that God is part of the universe. A different view point is that God is outside of the material universe. He is outside of matter, space and time.

Your answer to that paradox does not address the question of who created the universe. How for example, did natural selection lead to the creation of the solar system? How did it bring into existence, matter which previously did not exist?
7

Duncan in Edinburgh,

13/05/2008 14:19:11
#6 No, that is not an alternative viewpoint, that is sophistry. Unless you can explain what it means to be "outside of matter, time and space"? All that says to me is that you want God to exist so much that you are prepared to ignore all logic to give him a foothold. That is not reason.

The question "who created the universe?" is a loaded question leading to a logical fallacy. There is no logical requirement for a creator unless you can show evidence of a time when there was no universe at all.
8

James,,

13/05/2008 15:43:55
The idea that God is outside of matter, time and space is quite straightforward. If I build a house, I do not have to always be inside the house. I am separate from, and can exist outside of, the house.

Maybe I can rephrase the question from "Who created the universe?" to "How was the universe created?" What is so unreasonable about the idea that there was a time before the universe existed?
9

Shrink,

Dundee 13/05/2008 16:51:01
Duncan - let me just check.

You are saying that it is much more reasonable that an insensible universe with all it's associated matter has always existed than that a omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God has always existed.

I do not see how either of these can be called "reasonable" as such - although the God that you consider so ridiculous at least has eternality as an inherent part of the argument. The most convoluted arguements I have heard are those that try to make the available evidence fit with a universe that DIDN'T have a beginning.
10

Duncan in Edinburgh,

13/05/2008 17:33:52
#8 You can indeed exist separately from the house, because you are a collection of atoms within the universe and so is the house. The problem I have with the idea that a God being exists outside of matter, time and space is that there is no evidence to support either the possibility or the actuality of such a theory - whereas it can be very easily proved that you and the house can exist in time, space and matter. As such your analogy is basically flawed.

The rephrased question certainly removes some of the loading from the universe creation issue. There is nothing unreasonable about a theory that there was a time before the universe existed, but given the way you are playing fast and loose with matter, space and time what is the point is honing such a question when your catch-all get-out is that God can change the rules whenever he wants?
11

Duncan in Edinburgh,

13/05/2008 17:36:34
#9 As I understand it, the most coherent theory is that the universe has progressed over its lifetime from an initial event - the Big Bang or whatever you want to call it. I am happy to entertain this theory too.

My point is that the God hypothesis, in all of its forms, has absolutely no convincing angles whatsoever. It is a fairy story, and it's time we grew up.
12

GlenB,

Skye 13/05/2008 18:42:39
So Duncan in Edinburgh I see that from your posts you must be the sole arbiter of what is coherent,reasonable and logical which to me seems to be the most incoherent, unreasonable and illogical conclusion.
13

Hugh V McLachlan,

Elderslie 13/05/2008 19:33:36
#11 Duncan in Edinburgh

'My point is that the God hypothesis, in all of its forms, has absolutely no convincing angles whatsoever. It is a fairy story, and it's time we grew up.'

I do not think that anything you say supports your conclusion. The existence of God cannot be proved but it can no more be disproved. Furthermore, you say, rightly I think, that the idea of God is paradoxical. There is a difference between a paradox and a contradiction. For instance, it is paradoxical but not contradictory that patients are sometimes wakened to receive their sleeping pills.

Bach believed in God as did, for instance, Plato, Kant and Kierkegaard. They might well have been wrong. However, the notion that compared to, say, Richard Dawkins they were insufficiently 'grown up' can hardly be taken seriously.




14

Duncan in Edinburgh,

13/05/2008 19:41:46
#12 Do you have a view about the topic, or are you simply here to play the man instead of the ball?
15

Duncan in Edinburgh,

13/05/2008 19:45:54
#13 I think that the inherent equivalence in your second paragraph is at best misleading and at worst the basis of a worldwide lie. Indeed the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved - many, many thousands of lifetimes have been spent in the attempt. But the balance is not even. There is a huge amount of evidence for theories which explain the majority of the things which in past centuries have been the domain of God. The inexplicably dwindles in the face of scientific discovery and nowhere is any evidence of God to be found. Any rational review of the evidence has to point to the non-existence of God as the overwhelmingly likely conclusion.
16

GlenB,

13/05/2008 20:57:41
Duncan I fear you miss my point.

To quote your own statements
"My point is that the God hypothesis, in all of its forms, has absolutely no convincing angles whatsoever. It is a fairy story, and it's time we grew up."
"There are other God hypotheses though, some slightly less ludicrous, but all unreasonable."

If I am not mistaken this does appear to imply that there is no reasonable view but your own since you have decided what is reasonable.

For me to draw the conclusion that you must be the sole arbiter of reason on the basis of what you say is clearly illogical and unreasonable.
In fact as illogical and unreasonable as your statements in my view. But then of course I could be wrong. Not attacking the man but rather clumsily perhaps tackling the argument.

As to the topic of God no one can argue the case for God's existence or lack of it so one can take up one of three positions.
1 I do not know if God exists.
2 I believe God does not exist.
3 I believe that God exists.

If one espouses positions 1 and 2 one will never have an answer to the question of God's existence.
If one accepts position 3 then it may follow that knowing God may be possible and would suggest a search for that possiblity would be a reasonable pursuit.
If this pursuit proved successful one would know God exists and ones knowledge of God satisfied.It may also be required in this search to consider things that to ones present view is unreasonable.

But failure to take this option will confine oneself to perpetual ignorance.
17

Duncan in Edinburgh,

13/05/2008 21:47:50
#16 What a pompous, wrong-headed and arrogant attitude. Your argument essentially boils down to a lazy version of Pascal's wager.

Of course people can, have and will continue to argue the rational case for or against the existence of God or many Gods. Try as you might to extract such arguments from the rational and plant them in some other-world where logic does not apply, you cannot wish it so.

I have looked, in cold rational daylight, at the evidence. There is only one theory which holds any weight at all, and that is that God is a human construct designed to explain the inexplicable, and we are slowly evolving away from needing it any more.
18

Shrink,

Dundee 13/05/2008 22:39:11
Duncan - are yuo deliberately avoiding a response to my commetns in #9 or are they just not worth a reply?
19

Hugh V McLachlan,

Elderslie 13/05/2008 22:54:12
#15 Duncan in Edinburgh,

'Any rational review of the evidence has to point to the non-existence of God as the overwhelmingly likely conclusion.'

No. This is not true.

Sometimes, lack of evidence in support of a proposition is in itself evidence that the proposition is false. For instance, if there is no evidence that my house was ablaze last night or no evidence that there are pennies in the piggy bank, one might reasonably conclude that my house was not on fire last night and that the piggy bank contains no coins. We know from experience what would count as evidence that my house was on fire and what would count as evidence that the piggy bank contains coins. We know from experience that if my house had been on fire, the blaze would have left evidence and we know from experience that if the piggy bank contained coins, it would make a noise when shaken.
However, we do not know from experience that, if God exists there would be evidence on the planet earth of His existence. We do not know from experience what, if there were evidence of His existence, it would be. Hence we cannot claim that we know that God does not exist on the supposed grounds that there is no manifest evidence of His existence. Perhaps there is evidence of His existence and we fail to recognise it as such. Perhaps God is such that His existence leaves no trace on earth.

#17 Duncan in Edinburgh

'I have looked, in cold rational daylight, at the evidence.'

What evidence? What counts are evidence either way? Theism and atheism are not so much propositions that we test through 'evidence' from experience but philosophical theories that we use to interpret our experience of and evidence from the world.

Whether or not theism is 'probably' false, as Dawkins puts it, is irrelevant. Probability is a forward looking notion. For instance, if you buy a ticket for the lottery, you will probably loose. However, this sort of probability is not evidence, after the draw is made, that any par
20

Hugh V McLachlan,

Elderslie 13/05/2008 22:58:23
#19 (continued)

... that any particular ticket is not the winning ticket. True theories are not more probably true than false ones. Some true theories are very highly improbable. For Popper, for instance, the improbability of a theory - its boldness, as he put it - was a positive virtue in a scientific theory.
21

Hugh V McLachlan,

Elderslie 13/05/2008 23:06:45
#15 Duncan from Edinburgh

'Any rational review of the evidence has to point to the non-existence of God as the overwhelmingly likely conclusion.'

Plato, Kant and Kierkegaard were no less clever than you are. Their rational review of the evidence was different from yours. Hence, you cannot say that yours is the only rational review of the evidence.

Why do you and Dawkins want to make such outrageous claims for your own powers of reasoning?
22

Duncan in Edinburgh,

14/05/2008 08:13:49
#18 I responded to #9 at #11.

#19+ Hugh,

Your straw man does not stand up. I am neither equating myself to Plato, Kant and Kierkegaard nor to Dawkins. What I am saying is that redefining the single issue of the existence of God so that it sits outside rational, empirical observation is a cheap trick which neither answers the question nor helps anyone else to do so.

If something exists, or existed, which is or was capable of creating the universe, and life, then where is the evidence of its existence? Without resorting to changing the rules, how could something so significant be completely untraceable?

We give this God question far too much reverence. A claim has been made for which there has never been a shred of evidence. There is no substantial difference between the God of Abraham and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Both are surreal creations of the human mind. It is monstrous that one of them holds such sway that people are dying around the world every day as a result of what some people say that he thinks.
23

Duncan in Edinburgh,

14/05/2008 08:16:43
#19 Hugh I really don't agree with the way you redefine terms in order to suit your argument. Theism and atheism are not philosophical theories - they are assertions. One says, on the basis of no evidence at all, that an ever-redefinable sky god is responsible for our existence. The other says that the world is as we see it. How can there be any question over which is right?
24

Shrink,

Dundee 14/05/2008 09:17:33
Duncan,

my apologies for missing your earlier reply.

you state in#7 that "There is no logical requirement for a creator unless you can show evidence of a time when there was no universe at all" but then in#11 agree that evidence suggests that "the universe has progressed over its lifetime from an initial event" - so there is evidence of a start to the universe then.....
25

Upbeat,

14/05/2008 18:01:32
This 'can it, can't it ? ' argument can go round and round.

What evidence is there that a reason behind the whole universe has to exist ?

What prompted basic matter to be created ? what prompted matter to behave the way it does ? What process of thought set the rules ?

Those who argue that there is no reason behind the universe, when all the rest of our experience shows us that - although we may not have all the answers yet - there is a reason behind every other aspect of existence, are obviously defining for themselves the ultimate entity.

The reason behind the whole universe can hardly be the one thing that does not exist, can it. ?

If the essential reason is then termed " God," the answer to the conundrum is self evident.
26

Hugh V McLachlan,

Elderslie 14/05/2008 23:50:55
#22 'What I am saying is that redefining the single issue of the existence of God so that it sits outside rational, empirical observation is a cheap trick which neither answers the question nor helps anyone else to do so.'

This is not the only issue that cannot be settled by evidence or by deductive reasoning. Any basic philosophical text book contains several such issues. For instance, the question of whether we have free-will or whether all our actions are determined is not a question that science has settled or, it seems to me, ever could settle. There is no cheap trick involved. It is the way things are. Not all questions are scientific ones. For instance, the question of what counts as a scientific question is a philosophical rather than a scientific question. It is a question to which the answers so far given are far from convincing.
27

Hugh V McLachlan,

Elderslie 14/05/2008 23:58:31
#22 Dave from Edinburgh

Most of the interesting and important questions in life cannot be settled by rational, empirical observation. Such questions include: how ought we to live? What do morally good actions have that distinguish them from morally bad ones? When is it justified to disregard established legal and political authorities and to rebel violently? If Bach was the greatest composer, who was the second greatest one?

 

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