godblog

The best book defending atheism isn’t great

The best book defending atheism isn’t great.

I keep looking for a good book defending atheism. It’s not easy. Jon Mills’ Inventing God: Psychology of Belief and the Rise of Secular Spirituality is better than Grayling’s book, about which I posted a while back, but it’s not great.

Mills tries to do three things. First, to demonstrate that God does not exist. In this he joins a long line of aggressive atheists, such as Christopher Hitchens (2007), Sam Harris (2004), and Richard Dawkins (2006). Mills says he is not a “vociferous atheist,” but he could have fooled me with his remarks about “the believing masses [who] cannot accept the fact that we are ultimately alone.” (p 104)

The third thing Mills tries to do is construct a defense of a humanistic spirituality. He says a lot of good things about finding “intrinsic worth and meaning in living our lives for the present” (p 228), but the foundation of this claim was laid down by Camus and Sartre, and I don’t see where Mills adds a great deal to this argument. In Mills’ defense, it should be pointed out that this is not a book aimed at an academic audience, but to an educated public. Or at least that’s the way I read it.

The second thing Mills tries to do is construct a psychoanalytic argument explaining the need for God. He begins with Freud (1930), who argued that God is an infantile delusion of an enormously powerful father figure. I turn to another psychoanalyst to find a different way of thinking about God. I’ve posted about D. W. Winnicott before.

Continue reading The best book defending atheism isn’t great

Two stories about the natural law

Two stories about the natural law.

This post consists of two stories about the natural law. The first is about an experience of mine, the second is a thought experiment. What connects them is my belief that most of us assume the natural law exists; we just don’t know we know it. A previous post on Thomas Aquinas, deals with the foundations of the natural law. This post is more about practice than theory.

The county school board ethics committee, or “keep your body parts to yourself”

A number of years ago, I was invited to serve on the ethics curriculum advisory panel of a local county school board. The goal was to develop an ethics curriculum for the lower grades. Our advisory panel had representatives of all the good people in the community: ministers, rabbis, a couple of concerned parents, a couple of concerned teachers, and me, a university professor of ancient Greek ethics. What should an ideal ethics curriculum teach?

We never got anywhere. We got stuck at the very beginning. Should we teach students that they shouldn’t hit each other?

“How can we teach that?” said one committee member, echoing several more. “Some cultures value the physical expression of difference, and who are we to say otherwise?”

That’s where we got stuck, at the very beginning. The odd thing about this committee was that nobody thought that students should hit each other, and nobody knew of any culture anywhere that valued students hitting each other. It was just the very possibility that some culture somewhere valued “the physical expression of difference” that caused the committee members to lose confidence in their own beliefs. Continue reading Two stories about the natural law

What in the world is the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit (pneuma, πνεύμα) is part of the Trinity, and asserted in the Nicene Creed. “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” But I think the Holy Spirit gets short shrift, and almost always comes last in the trio: God the father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I think I know (as far as an ordinary human can) what God is, and who Christ is. I’m just not sure about the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit seems to be an inspirational force that took the place of Christ after his death. It explains how a bunch of cowardly and disorganized apostles who fled the scene after Christ’s execution could, fifty days after his crucifixion, become the highly motivated and organized group who created Christianity. The Holy Spirit remains with us today; it’s part of believing in God and Jesus. If you believe in Jesus, then you believe in the Holy Spirit, so it’s worthwhile figuring out what it might be.

Continue reading What in the world is the Holy Spirit?

Political theory of the Bible

Political theory of the Bible.

I taught both ancient and modern political theory for forty years, and it is widely held among experts in my field that the Bible contains no political theory. Political theory is a Greek invention. Only when God withdraws from this world is there room for human politics (Walzer, p 202). I disagree. There’s a lot of politics in the Bible, and while politics in the Old Testament differs from the New, the difference is one of degree.

Covenant and righteousness

The idea of covenant is the central political concept in the Old Testament. “God was thought to be a covenant-making, covenant-restoring, and covenant-fulfilling being.” (Ramsey, p 258) Conversely, human righteousness means sticking to the covenant. Period.

Though covenant plays a more central role in the Old Testament, both Old and New Testaments teach the same lesson about righteousness.

Biased in favor of the helpless, “justice” means care for the poor, the orphans, the widows, and aliens resident in the land. Why? Because the Bible measures what is required of man against the perfect righteousness of an utterly faithful, savior-God. (Ramsey, p 278)

Unlike ancient Greek thought, which so influences our own, justice or righteousness (both translations of the same Greek term, dikaiosynē) is neither corrective nor distributive. Justice neither punishes the thief nor restores what has been taken. Justice is redemptive, with a special bias in favor of the poor. This is as true of the Old Testament as the New.

Continue reading Political theory of the Bible

Navigating this website

The posts on this website scroll down in reverse chronological order. The most recent post comes first, the oldest post (Why I pray) comes last.

In the top left margin of the page (the black part) is a list of posts by category. These are:

Psychology and God
On some books of the Bible, from ones I like to ones that puzzle or thrill me
About me and this site
Topics, from grace to forgiveness to atheism to a whole lot more
Theologians (click arrow to get full list; it’s pretty long)
Natural Law

Or you can just start reading. Each post can stand alone.

Grace is not free

Grace is not free.

The Christian concept of grace (charis, Χάρις) has puzzled me for years. Its definition seems a good place to begin. Still, I hate to start with a definition, so I’ll start with a story.

During a British conference on comparative religions, the participants were heatedly discussing what’s unique about Christianity. C. S. Lewis wandered into the room. “What’s the rumpus about?” he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions. Lewis responded, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.” (Yancy, p 45) *

It’s a good point, but not strictly true. Hindus and Muslims believe in Grace, understood as God reaching out to humanity with love. Jews believe in chen (חֵן), a version of grace. Nevertheless, it is Christianity that has developed the concept most fully.

The standard definition

In Christianity, grace is the love and mercy given to us by God as a free gift. It is nothing we have earned.

Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become . . . partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life. (Catechism of the Catholic Church)

This definition leads some to see grace as part of a faith over works teaching. It leads others to think that if grace is free then it must be easy. Both conclusions are wrong. Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls this “cheap grace.”

Continue reading Grace is not free

Does natural law exist? What is it?

Natural law isn’t something talked about very much these days, except in Catholic theology, which has kept the teaching alive. In this post I write about Saint Thomas Aquinas, the founder of modern natural law theory. By the way, Aquinas is often just called Thomas, so when I refer to Thomas I’m not being overly familiar.

Not only is natural law not talked about these days, but it runs against the cultural current of the age: that you can’t judge other people’s values. You can’t judge because, for many people, no culture is intrinsically better than another. The same goes for values. I taught natural law to undergraduates for several years, and I’m sure this affects my view of the cultural current. The post that reflects on my teaching experience is on this site.

Natural law doesn’t accept this relativity. Some things are good for all people, and other things are bad for all people. Not just good or bad just for others, but for yourself.

Continue reading Does natural law exist? What is it?

Atheism or God as other

Atheism or God as other. My original idea for this post was to review a book defending atheism and promoting humanism. As I said in a previous post, on some days I think I’m an agnostic, and I’m open to a good argument against theism.

The book I chose, after looking at several, is The God Argument, by A. C. Grayling. It is so bad it’s hardly worth reviewing. Still, I’ll briefly summarize it before going on to explain the position shared by a number of theologians: that God is completely other. This isn’t the term used by most theologians, but I think it captures their position.

The reason the “God is other” argument is important is because most critics of religion criticize a version of Biblical literalism, showing almost no awareness of theology.

Grayling,The God Argument

The justifications offered by religious people for their beliefs very often turn out to be . . . rationalisations for something that is in its deepest depths is non-rational. (p 4)

Well of course religious people don’t base their arguments on reason; they base their arguments on faith. If you don’t understand this, then you don’t understand religion. Elsewhere Graying argues that religion hasn’t “passed the test of reason.” (pp 49-50) But of course that’s the wrong test.

Continue reading Atheism or God as other