Appendix
8 : Facts, Formulas and Freaky Behaviour
In
the Prefaces of The God Delusion, Richard is completely defensive
and seeks to undermine any criticism that might be coming his way
– yet still does all the things he says he won't do. This page picks
up on one of those things.
In
Appendix 5 – Bad Thinking in the Book, I have already considered in
the second part, the failure to distinguish between Principles and
Practice, but so important is it in both The God Delusion
and other similar books by atheists, that I believe it needs a separate
consideration.
1.
Facts
The
God Delusion is remarkably
short on facts or evidences of the Christian faith. Perhaps we may
summarise the essential ingredients for faith as:
- awareness of the records
of God's existence and activity, and why we can be confident in
them,
- awareness of the basic teaching,
as stated in those records, of the way God relates to
humans and how He, as stated, wants us to respond to
Him, and
- awareness of the existence of
God through experiences, checked against the records.
Now
I am trying to be as simple as possible here using non-religious language.
Put
another way, the basic facts or evidences that we have to play with
are:
Although
these three things sound simple, they actually provide an enormous
volume of evidence to be weighed – but they are the factual evidence
and they are not well considered in The God Delusion. It
appears that Richard and his followers are very largely ignorant of
these things.
Note:
It's a good idea if you are a Christian to be knowledgeable of these
things.
2.
Formulas
Now
from the three things above come beliefs.
For
example we may say we believe in the credibility of the Biblical
documents because we have carefully studied what we have in museums
around the world, and what we know from history about how they came
into being.
We
may say we believe they are inspired by God who prompted men
to write, by the evidence of what was written and the nature of it.
(These are simplified statements just to make the point).
We
may say we believe in the existence of God because of the
nature of the documents, and the content of them, perhaps combined
with the life experiences we have that are spoken about in the documents.
We
may say we believe that Jesus was and is the Son of God who
came to earth roughly two thousand years ago because of the nature
of what was written in the New Testament about him, and of the content
of what was said about him, perhaps together with what was said about
him by other historical documents, combined with the life experiences
we have spoken about in those documents that come as a result of believing
in him.
So,
please note that these formulas of belief are what flow out the facts
of evidences of the first part above. If you are ignorant of the first
part above, then naturally your beliefs may be all over the place
and very far from the traditional Biblical Christian Faith. It is
perhaps no wonder that the belief systems of Richard and his followers
are all over the place.
Note:
It is a good idea if you are a Christian to be clear about the basic
beliefs at least, that flow out of the above.
3.
Freaky Behaviour
Now
beliefs are the precursor to behaviour. If we are unclear about the
facts and about the formulas that flow from the facts, then our behaviour
may be what I am lightly calling here, ‘freaky' – and there's a lot
of freaky behaviour in the world, and that includes the Christian
world.
Now
if you will allow me to use ‘freaky' to include any behaviour that
is contrary to the natural outworking of the obvious beliefs that
flow out in the traditional Biblical Christian Faith, then included
under the umbrella of ‘freaky' would be:
- strange goings on of various popes
and other apparent leaders throughout the history of the church,
- a variety of ‘traditions' added
in by the Roman Catholic church,
- any attitudes or behaviours that
run directly contrary to the teaching of Jesus Christ,
- cults that promulgate belief systems
directly contrary to that found in Scripture,
- weird rites practised by church
groups with no foundation in the New Testament.
Why
should such ‘freaky' behaviour exist? Because people still have free
will, may be untaught, badly taught or wrongly taught, or may just
do their own thing.
Remember
this is the outworking of wrong beliefs or absence of right beliefs
that should be based on the facts or evidences in part 1 above.
Note:
It is a good idea if you are a Christian to abstain from freaky behaviour!
And
So…
One
of Richard's techniques, both here and in his TV programmes, is to
lean heavily on freaky behaviour which is simply human misbehaviour.
In
his Preface he objects to the criticism “You go after crude, rabble
rousing chancers like….” and then, “To the vast majority of believers
around the world, religion all too closely resembles what you hear
from the likes of ……”
Now
I'm not going to include the lists of names that he adds in those
quotes because I don't want to be part of character assassination.
He may or may not be right. But essentially what he is saying is that
most religion is portrayed by freaky characters!
EVEN
IF that was true, that doesn't deny the truths about God revealed
by the facts and evidences that I referred to above; it simply says
that human beings are terrible at responding to the truth.
However,
I am convinced that the vast majority of religious believers around
the world DO NOT resemble what you hear from such people. This is
simply Richard displaying his absence of knowledge about the vast
majority of believers.
I
hold no brief to defend other world religions and think they have
to come under their own close scrutiny, and should not be considered
alongside Christianity. Christianity has a number of unique features
and these need to be considered intelligently. Neither this distinction
nor the intelligent consideration of Christianity appears in this
book. That is not a negative about Christianity, but about the author.
In
the past thirty years, the world has become much more doctrinaire
and that is true of nationalism, politics generally, and of religion.
That pedantic outworking of theoretical ideas has meant more violence,
as extremists in whatever area have felt frustrated and vented their
frustration through force.
As
a Christian, I would hope that the Church would increasingly speak
up against such violence, whether it comes as hostile words of disagreement,
taking the law into your own hands, or of bringing violence within
demonstrations against wrong. I believe we need to dissociate ourselves
from the foolish words and foolish acts that are so often used as
examples by the likes of Richard or other atheistic writers.
Such
freaky acts detract from the truth and lead Richard and others to
focus on them rather than on the facts and evidences, as can be clearly
seen in The God Delusion.
Be
clear in your own mind; you don't have to defend freaky people, but
we do defend the truth, the facts and evidences that are clear to
see by anyone who is willing to look.