Monthly Archives: September 2010

The hijacking of the Holy Spirit

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I attend an Anglican Church that experienced what, in the 1980s, we called “renewal”. We acknowledged the presence and activity of the third person of the Trinity in worship, practised the gifts of the Holy Spirit and were viewed by the sober apparatchiks of the Diocese of Niagara as loony fundamentalists. We didn’t particularly care, since we ignored the diocese and they ignored us – unless they were running short of cash. All that was to change in 2008 when we joined ANiC – except for the diocese’s voracious appetite for Mammon to pay its lawyers.

But I digress. In the 1980s no respectable Anglican wanted anything to do with the Holy Spirit: his presence brought change, chaos, mayhem and, well, people who knew what they believed and took Christianity seriously – and that will never do in a church that is preoccupied with embracing “uncertainties, our fears, our doubts and the many challenges raised by scientific insights.”

In those halcyon days, any self-respecting bishop was constitutionally incapable of saying “Holy Spirit” – outside of the sterilising setting of liturgy – without having an attack of the vapours. Sadly, those times are gone and now the Canadian bishop does not exist who is not prosecuting some ploddingly dull or extravagantly heretical plan or other at the behest of the “spirit”, using the word as a justifying incantation at every opportunity. That this is a bogus “spirit” goes without saying. After all, the third Person of the Trinity is eternal and of one substance with the Father (come to think of it, Anglican bishops don’t even believe in the Father); the irritatingly ubiquitous phantasma, apparitions, bishops’ familiars are spirits of another kind.

In the worthy missive of the Diocese of New Westminster, we are told that there is only a “Holy Spirit” in order to foster “diversity”. If we could be just a little more diverse of our own accord, this particular spirit – the diversity-coach spirit – would not have been needed and presumably not created (page 2):

Commenting on our life together in the unity of the Spirit, Charleston asked “Why is there a Holy Spirit?” “Because God knew we would never agree and gives us comfort, guidance and wisdom to supply what the human family of God needs in conflict — the ability to live together in our very real diversity.”

The same article tells us that the church has moved from the “Age of Faith” to the “Age of Belief” into the “Age of the Spirit”; indeed it has, but it would be more accurate to say the “Age of the Zeitgeist”.

Pastor promotes “Burn the Koran Day”

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Rev. Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Centre, Gainsville, Florida, is celebrating the ninth anniversary of 9/11 by having a “burn the Koran day”:

An American church has been urged to call off a plan to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks.

Muslim and Christian groups have condemned the protest saying it will only escalate tensions between the two faiths.

But despite death threats to its members, the Florida-based Dove World Outreach Centre has refused to back down.

The controversial church even claims they have received thousands of messages  of support for their stand against what they call an ‘evil religion’.

The church’s pastor Terry Jones has called on other religious groups to join in his ‘International Burn a Koran Day’ on the ninth anniversary of the terror attack on New York city and Washington DC.

‘Islam and Sharia law was responsible for 9/11,’ said Jones.

Unfortunately, even if Rev Jones is correct and Islam is an “evil religion”, his burning of a Koran is more of a political statement – one he has every right to make – than a Christian one: there are no accounts of St. Paul running around burning idols are there? Rev. Jones seems to be at the opposite end of the spectrum to social gospel liberals who concentrate their energy on leftist social programs instead of the Gospel; both have made the Gospel subservient to politics.

Meanwhile, General Petraeus is bleating that Rev. Jones is ruining the war effort – although, since war is usually about killing one’s enemies, I can’t quite see how; perhaps he means the appeasement effort:

KABUL—The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said the planned burning of Qurans on Sept. 11 by a small Florida church could put the lives of American troops in danger and damage the war effort.

Gen. David Petraeus said the Taliban would exploit the demonstration for propaganda purposes, drumming up anger toward the U.S. and making it harder for allied troops to carry out their mission of protecting Afghan civilians.

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Afghans are responding by burning effigies of Rev. Jones. So far, General Petraeus has not warned the Afghans that any more effigy burning and Rev. Jones will be driven to burning more Korans – my guess is he won’t.

After reading something like this, I am left with the conclusion that Rev. Jones, while his methods may be counter-productive, has his fundamental premise correct:

Afghanistan’s dirty little secret

Western forces fighting in southern Afghanistan had a problem. Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy. Their behavior suggested he was not the boy’s father. Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to “touch and fondle them,” military investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli told me. “The soldiers didn’t understand.”

All of this was so disconcerting that the Defense Department hired Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery. Her report, “Pashtun Sexuality,” startled not even one Afghan. But Western forces were shocked – and repulsed.

For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means “boy player.” The men like to boast about it.

So, why are American and NATO forces fighting and dying to defend tens of thousands of proud pedophiles, certainly more per capita than any other place on Earth? And how did Afghanistan become the pedophilia capital of Asia?

Sociologists and anthropologists say the problem results from perverse interpretation of Islamic law. Women are simply unapproachable. Afghan men cannot talk to an unrelated woman until after proposing marriage. Before then, they can’t even look at a woman, except perhaps her feet. Otherwise she is covered, head to ankle.

“How can you fall in love if you can’t see her face,” 29-year-old Mohammed Daud told reporters. “We can see the boys, so we can tell which are beautiful.”

TV evangelist wants to build Christian centre at Ground Zero

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In this case, Rev. Bill Keller isn’t claiming his “Christian Centre” is to foster ecumenical love and harmony, but to “counter the lies of Islam”. While I’m not particularly Add an Imageconvinced that Rev. Bill’s strategy for countering Islam’s lies is going to be at all effective, I am eagerly awaiting the flood of support he will undoubtedly receive from all those who trumpet the mosque developers’ constitutional right to build their mosque anywhere they jolly well want to.

From here:

An evangelical preacher has vowed to build a Christian centre at New York’s ground zero in protest at the mosque proposed to be built there.

Bill Keller said he is raising funds to build a house of worship within a few blocks of where terrorists flew planes into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

As tension mounted ahead of the ninth anniversary of the attack this Saturday, Keller said Muslims were ‘going to hell’ and he had to intervene to counter ‘the lies of Islam’.

Keller, a TV evangelist, has ratcheted up the ill-feeling directed towards Muslims and his inflammatory language sparked renewed fears of Islamophobic responses.

His first sermon was on Sunday at the New York Marriott Downtown Hotel, his temporary headquarters, and he plans to open his Christian centre on January 1 next year.

‘When they decided to build a mosque and decided to preach what I consider a 1,400-year-old lie from Hell, I decided that somebody should be down there preaching the truth of God’s word,’ Keller told the crowd.

‘All these people will die and burn in hell. Islam is not and has never been a religion of peace.

‘How could you build bridges with people who ask their Muslim brothers to fly a plane into the Twin Towers and killed thousands of innocent people?’

How you explain God, then?

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A recent tweet exchange made me think that the common misunderstanding it revealed was worth exploring further. The exchange went something like this:

Me: You can’t explain the universe without God.

Him: How do u explain God then?

Me: You don’t: he explains you.

Him: The greatest cop-out ever…

The misunderstanding – and it’s one that flourishes as much in the Dawkins-Hitchens conglomerate as in the mentally less well endowed specimens that answer my tweets –  is that God is in the category of things that need explaining: he isn’t. He is in a category that has one member: himself – not created, indivisible, beyond nature, omniscient, omnipotent, omni-present. If he could be “explained” he would no longer be God.

So, if an answer can be found to questions like, “who made God” or “how do you explain God” it means the questions have been asked of something that isn’t God. It makes little sense to ask for a cause of something that is the First Cause. If the cause could be found, that god would not be the first cause and, therefore, not be God.

God is the great explainer; he is to be worshipped, loved and enjoyed. Not explained.

Belarus: dissident, Oleg Bebenin found hanged

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From the BBC:

Officials in Belarus say a prominent opposition figure found hanged at his weekend home outside the capital, Minsk, on Friday committed suicide.

Forensic examiners established that, apart from the noose mark on Oleg Bebenin’s neck, there were no other injuries, a local prosecutor said.

Mr Bebenin, 36, founded Charter 97, a leading opposition website critical of President Alexander Lukashenko.

Colleagues said they could not believe the father-of-two had killed himself.

They pointed out that he had left no note and Charter 97’s editor, Natalia Radina, said he had not been having any family or health problems.

He had, she told independent Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy, been absorbed in his work and campaigning for opposition presidential hopeful Andrei Sannikov.

Most independent media in Belarus have closed down and the authorities barely tolerate political dissent, correspondents say.

I was in Belarus a month ago. Our local guide noted that, unlike Russia, the KGB were still operating; consequently, there was no graffiti, no homeless people sleeping on the street, almost no crime. And political dissidents tend to get themselves hanged – somehow.

A rather high price to pay for an antiseptically clean capital city.

John Lennox: Stephen Hawking is wrong. You can't explain the universe without God

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John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science, has written an excellent article explaining why Stephen Hawking has it wrong: you can’t explain the universe without God. The comments by atheists at the end of the article are also interesting in that they reveal the extraordinary shallowness of the average atheist’s thought process.Add an Image

Here is the article in full:

As a scientist I’m certain Stephen Hawking is wrong. You can’t explain the universe without God.

There’s no denying that Stephen Hawking is intellectually bold as well as physically heroic. And in his latest book, the renowned physicist mounts an audacious challenge to the traditional religious belief in the divine creation of the universe.

According to Hawking, the laws of physics, not the will of God, provide the real explanation as to how life on Earth came into being. The Big Bang, he argues, was the inevitable consequence of these laws ‘because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.’

Unfortunately, while Hawking’s argument is being hailed as controversial and ground-breaking, it is hardly new.

For years, other scientists have made similar claims, maintaining that the awesome, sophisticated creativity of the world around us can be interpreted solely by reference to physical laws such as gravity.

It is a simplistic approach, yet in our secular age it is one that seems to have resonance with a sceptical public.

But, as both a scientist and a Christian, I would say that Hawking’s claim is misguided. He asks us to choose between God and the laws of physics, as if they were necessarily in mutual conflict.

But contrary to what Hawking claims, physical laws can never provide a complete explanation of the universe. Laws themselves do not create anything, they are merely a description of what happens under certain conditions.

What Hawking appears to have done is to confuse law with agency. His call on us to choose between God and physics is a bit like someone demanding that we choose between aeronautical engineer Sir Frank Whittle and the laws of physics to explain the jet engine.

That is a confusion of category. The laws of physics can explain how the jet engine works, but someone had to build the thing, put in the fuel and start it up. The jet could not have been created without the laws of physics on their own  –  but the task of development and creation needed the genius of Whittle as its agent.

Similarly, the laws of physics could never have actually built the universe. Some agency must have been involved.

To use a simple analogy, Isaac Newton’s laws of motion in themselves never sent a snooker ball racing across the green baize. That can only be done by people using a snooker cue and the actions of their own arms.

Hawking’s argument appears to me even more illogical when he says the existence of gravity means the creation of the universe was inevitable. But how did gravity exist in the first place? Who put it there? And what was the creative force behind its birth?

Similarly, when Hawking argues, in support of his theory of spontaneous creation, that it was only necessary for ‘the blue touch paper’ to be lit to ‘set the universe going’, the question must be: where did this blue touch paper come from? And who lit it, if not God?

Much of the rationale behind Hawking’s argument lies in the idea that there is a deep-seated conflict between science and religion. But this is not a discord I recognise.

For me, as a Christian believer, the beauty of the scientific laws only reinforces my faith in an intelligent, divine creative force at work. The more I understand science, the more I believe in God because of my wonder at the breadth, sophistication and integrity of his creation.

The very reason science flourished so vigorously in the 16th and 17th centuries was precisely because of the belief that the laws of nature which were then being discovered and defined reflected the influence of a divine law-giver.

One of the fundamental themes of Christianity is that the universe was built according to a rational , intelligent design. Far from being at odds with science, the Christian faith actually makes perfect scientific sense.

Some years ago, the scientist Joseph Needham made an epic study of technological development in China. He wanted to find out why China, for all its early gifts of innovation, had fallen so far behind Europe in the advancement of science.

He reluctantly came to the conclusion that European science had been spurred on by the widespread belief in a rational creative force, known as God, which made all scientific laws comprehensible.

Despite this, Hawking, like so many other critics of religion, wants us to believe we are nothing but a random collection of molecules, the end product of a mindless process.

This, if true, would undermine the very rationality we need to study science. If the brain were really the result of an unguided process, then there is no reason to believe in its capacity to tell us the truth.

We live in an information age. When we see a few letters of the alphabet spelling our name in the sand, our immediate response is to recognise the work of an intelligent agent. How much more likely, then, is an intelligent creator behind the human DNA, the colossal biological database that contains no fewer than 3.5 billion ‘letters’?

It is fascinating that Hawking, in attacking religion, feels compelled to put so much emphasis on the Big Bang theory. Because, even if the non-believers don’t like it, the Big Bang fits in exactly with the Christian narrative of creation.

That is why, before the Big Bang gained currency, so many scientists were keen to dismiss it, since it seemed to support the Bible story. Some clung to Aristotle’s view of the ‘eternal universe’ without beginning or end; but this theory, and later variants of it, are now deeply discredited.

But support for the existence of God moves far beyond the realm of science. Within the Christian faith, there is also the powerful evidence that God revealed himself to mankind through Jesus Christ two millennia ago. This is well-documented not just in the scriptures and other testimony but also in a wealth of archaeological findings.

Moreover, the religious experiences of millions of believers cannot lightly be dismissed. I myself and my own family can testify to the uplifting influence faith has had on our lives, something which defies the idea we are nothing more than a random collection of molecules.

Just as strong is the obvious reality that we are moral beings, capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong. There is no scientific route to such ethics.

Physics cannot inspire our concern for others, or the spirit of altruism that has existed in human societies since the dawn of time.

The existence of a common pool of moral values points to the existence of transcendent force beyond mere scientific laws. Indeed, the message of atheism has always been a curiously depressing one, portraying us as selfish creatures bent on nothing more than survival and self-gratification.

Hawking also thinks that the potential existence of other lifeforms in the universe undermines the traditional religious conviction that we are living on a unique, God-created planet. But there is no proof that other lifeforms are out there, and Hawking certainly does not present any.

It always amuses me that atheists often argue for the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence beyond earth. Yet they are only too eager to denounce the possibility that we already have a vast, intelligent being out there: God.

Hawking’s new fusillade cannot shake the foundations of a faith that is based on evidence.

Bishop Colin Johnson eats Kraft Dinner to help the hungry

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When I was young and didn’t want to eat, my grandmother used chide me with the reproach that “children in India are starving”. Being a smartass even then, I suggested she send my parsnips to them. I remain unconvinced that stuffing myself with food I don’t want will be the solution to the problem of world hunger.

Like my grandmother, Anglicans in the Diocese of Toronto – led by the doughty Bishop Colin Johnson – probably mean well, even if their endeavours suffer from the same ignorance of cause and effect as my grandmother’s. They have come up with what appears to be the obverse of my grandmother’s scheme: help hungry people by making yourself hungry too. It’s a bit like throwing yourself in the water next to a drowning man, pretending to drown with him for a while and then getting out and drying yourself off while he sinks. Why simply help someone when you can embark on a noble campaign of Social JusticeAdd an Image and Advocacy instead?

From here:

A woman flees an abusive situation and is left with nothing, not even a can opener. A disabled couple cannot work, have trouble getting around, and can barely afford to pay their bills. A boy comes to school hungry, because his father cannot afford to give him breakfast.

These are the people Ted Glover, a member of the diocese’s Social Justice and Advocacy Committee and a parishioner at St. George Memorial in Oshawa, will have in mind in October, when he lives for three days on food that would typically be handed out in a food bank hamper. They are all people he has met through his extensive volunteer work with social service organizations and his job as a teacher. The three-day diet is part of the Do the Math Challenge, a campaign that will see Anglicans, along with community leaders and other concerned citizens, calling on the government to bring about an immediate increase of $100 a month in social assistance rates, and in the longer term, revise social assistance rates based on actual local living costs….

Archbishop Colin Johnson, area bishops, and Evangelical Lutheran bishop Michael Pryse will also participate in the poverty diet.

Hawking: God not necessary for the creation of the universe

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Stephen Hawking meanders into questions of philosophy and tries to answer them with answers from science. Brilliant though he undoubtedly is, he uses as his starting point the assumption that “God does not exist” and proceeds to tautologically demonstrate his assumption “scientifically” – a prime example of scientism.Add an Image

The BBC has a good article refuting Hawking’s “necessity” argument:

The Stephen Hawking story is front page news today, with radio shows and news programmes also carrying it. But what is the story? If you trust some press coverage, Hawking claims that modern science forces the conclusion that “God did not create the Universe“. If you read other press coverage, he has concluded that “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.” These are two very different claims. The first claim is as difficult to prove (some would say as impossible to defend) as the claim that God did create the Universe; I suspect Hawking is actually arguing for the latter claim. But notice that the former claim is not logically entailed by the latter.

Let’s consider the claim that God’s existence is not “necessary” to explain the existence of the Universe. Even if Hawking is right — and it is evidentially too soon to say — that M-theory can explain the “spontaneous creation” of the Universe, without any assistance from a divine being, it does not follow from that claim that God’s existence is “unnecessary”. All one could argue is that one can offer a coherent causal explanation for the Universe which does not make reference to God’s existence. But God’s existence may still be considered “necesary” for non-scientific reasons. I’m not suggesting that God’s existence is neccessary even at the level; merely that some could mount a coherent case for the necessity of God as a “personal” or “teleological” explanation regardless of the causal implications of M-theory.

Take what Hawking says about M-theory. He writes: “According to M-theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather, these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law.”

Set aside the question of why a multiple-universes-ex-nihilo explanation would be more acceptable than a single-universe-created-ex-nihilo explanation. Instead, focus on the physical law that spontaneously gave rise, according to Hawking, to multiple universes. Why those laws rather than some others? Who or what determined that our universe is “governed” by these physical laws rather than some others? This, perhaps, is a variant of the classic philosophical question: Why is there something rather than nothing in the universe? Hawking’s answer appears to be a variant of the classic agnostic response: There just is. But people of faith are quite within their epistemic rights in regarding that answer as insufficient. The physical laws which gave rise to the universe (whether a single universe or a muliplicity of universes) are themselves in need of a full and final explanation. Hawking has given no reason at this stage to rule out a religious explanation. That’s not to say that a religious explanation is the best possible explanation for the physical laws at work in the universe, but it does mean that these are still open questions. In an excerpt from his book published in The Times today, Hawking confidently dismisses the entire discipline of philosophy as “dead”. He might usefully reconsider that brash allegation.

One of the problems of multiverses and M-theory is that they are scientifically unverifiable, a fact that makes them rather useless as a scientific theory.

A second problem is that they defy the principle of Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation is the most likely one to be true.

Thirdly, a theory that predicts a probable infinite number of universes in an attempt to escape the necessity of God’s creating this one, has the following flaw:

  • In an infinite number of universes there are an infinite number of possibilities; therefore, at least one universe must have been created by God – a being, whose attributes cannot be exceeded by any other being.
  • Since a God that created all multiverses would be greater than a God that created only one, then God must have created all.
  • God created our universe.

More predictable World Council of Churches anti-Israel bias

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From here:

“Politicians need to act and prevent this human tragedy,” WCC general secretary, the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, told ENInews after a visit to Palestinian families who have been evicted by Israelis from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheik Jarrah.

On the fourth day of his six-day visit to the Holy Land, Tveit noted that meeting with the family members from about 12 families evicted from their homes in the past two years greatly affected his understanding of infringements of Palestinian rights which are taking place.

Notable by its absence is Rev. Tveit’s meeting with Jewish families whose rights have been “infringed’ by the 16000 rockets fired into Israel from Palestinian occupied territories. Perhaps that would have “greatly affected his understanding”, too, although I suspect not since, as all good WCC members know, everything from 9/11 to my next door neighbour’s ingrown toenail is Israel’s fault.

I wonder how many rockets fired into the WCC headquarters in Geneva it would take to “greatly affect” Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit’s understanding?

Meanwhile Tviet has “condemned” the murder of four Israeli civilians while surreptitiously shifting the blame on to them:

The head of the World Council of Churches, who is on a visit to the Middle East, has condemned the killings of four Israelis near Hebron in the West Bank.

“At a time when Palestinian and Israeli leaders are beginning negotiations, the extremists who encourage and legitimize violence must not be allowed to succeed,” said WCC general secretary the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit in a Sept. 1 statement issued from the church grouping’s Geneva headquarters.

“To bring security to both Israelis and Palestinians, the negotiations must stop the occupation and all the injustices that ordinary Palestinians experience each day,” said Tveit in the statement that said he rejected any use of violence to gain peace for this region.

The four Israelis, who were reportedly settlers living on occupied land and included a pregnant woman, were killed on Aug. 31 by gunmen believed to be Palestinians. Tveit had visited Hebron as part of his Aug. 28 to Sept. 2 visit to the region.

Naturally, Hamas, who are entirely blameless, are dancing in the streets with their children to celebrate. All a bit of harmless fun as far as Tviet is concerned:

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