Converting from Atheism

I don't know where to look to get the exact numbers, but there are something like 250 people who have converted from atheism to Christianity and then written a book about it. I wonder what the count is in the other direction (much less I assure you).

Anyway, on one of my favourite blogs I just read about yet another

A.N. Wilson is a leading British intellectual who wrote influential books in the 1990's attacking the Bible and Christianity. However, last year he announced that he now believed that Jesus did rise from the dead. 

And he is now a Christian. Which is wonderful news!. The blog has more links.

 Jesus rising from the dead is what Christianity hangs on, as we know from 1 Cor 15 in particular. And the historical evidence for it is good. In fact, it is so good, that former NSW supreme court judge Ken Handley has said that if the matter of whether the resurrection happened came up in a NSW court today, based on the evidence he thinks it would pass.


This is astonishing. The event happened 2000 years ago, yet the evidence is good enough to hold up in court! This too is wonderful news, and great comfort for christians. It's also terribly sad that people ignore the evidence. I have friends who say "I've got to see to believe", but still don't, based on this sort of thing. On that basis one would also refuse to believe in Napoleon...


I have a copy of the article if anyone wants it. Just email me. It's from the old Matthias Media Kategoria, Spring '99 issue.

The Indifferent Universe

I'm a bit of a naturalist at heart. As I've said earlier in this blog, I'm convinced there's a god (and it's God) mainly because of historical evidence. But naturalism is kind of cool, and in the absence of satisfactory evidence for God, I'd probably be one. Here's a nice quote by Terry Goodkind

To exist in this vast universe for a speck of time is the great gift of life. Our tiny sliver of time is our gift of life. It is our only life. The universe will go on, indifferent to our brief existence, but while we are here we touch not just part of that vastness, but also the lives around us.

I prefer Camus. In The Stranger (or The Outsider), when Mersault is about to be executed, he gets mad (for the first time in the book), and then stops, and says

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

I can identify with this guy a lot. I remember Ally and I having a big argument (discussion?) with someone (my dad? I'm think it was Dad, but I don't want to mis-represent him, so I'm unwilling to commit) about this idea of intrinsic morality. We argued that for someone who is not a Christian (not anything - a naturalist), there is no such thing as intrinsic morality. There's no reason why murder is wrong and generosity is right. And what makes something good or bad is how well it works out for you. In our society, it works well for you to be nice to people, because they'll be nice back, and you can have companionship. And it works well to not kill people, because a bunch of us agree that we ourselves don't want to be killed, so we have mutually agreed to lock killers in rooms for years at a time. And so on. 


This is a common argument, and Atheists don't tend to like it. They think it's barbaric to argue that there is no such thing as morality if there's no God, and that it's good that Christians are Christians because they'd be doing terrible things if they weren't. (True)


I suppose I like Camus because he engages with this. I understand that he did think there was meaning (He says so in Letters to a friend? Something like that). But his understanding of The Absurd is spot-on.


Schaeffer talks about similar things as arguments for God. In, I think, the second? in his trilogy... God.. something. The End of Reason! He presents philosophical arguments for the existence of the personal, triune God. The two that I found quite compelling were these: 


The existence of personality, implies a personal god. We can't have personality unless whatever started the world off also has personality. He says that if one lake fills another lake (seriously, he uses lakes) then the filled lake cannot have a higher water-level than the filling lake. That's pretty obvious. You can't get something from nothing.


Personality may be fake though, right? It's not fool-proof. It may be a consequence of our complexity, the simulation of personality. But anyway, I like it none-the-less. 


The other argument I found quite compelling was the dignity, yet inability of humankind. This basically says that we know what's right, but we're unable to live up to our own standards. And this is an argument for sin, and the worldview that explains sin the best is the Christian worldview. I really like this one. As far as I know it is true, that the Christian worldview is the best explanation for our inability that there is. It's one of the reasons why non-Calvinism annoys me.


When faced with the apparent absurdity of the universe, but unable to accept it, it's a shame that Camus didn't infer the necessity for God. Necessary not because it provides relief, but because it explains our understanding that there is meaning in life (or personality), and that this concept can't spring from a meaningless beginning.


Secondly, when faced with the latter, Camus said 

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

It is a shame that Camus didn't find the Christian worldview to be the best explanation of this universal fact. In fact, I'd be surprised if he was ever presented with it. It's nowhere near as common as I'd like.


Camus won the Nobel Prize for literature. I just learnt that off Wikipedia. It's a shame that someone so brilliant, was so blind.

Differentiability

This is going to be a tad high faluting depending on your background, and for that I apologise. I think this issue is pretty important though.

The big bang:

I know a lot of people don't think the big bang happened, but let me tell you now, it did : )

Now that we've established that. I recently saw an interview with an extremely eminent philosopher. I don't know if he is a Christian or not. But he was saying that a creator causing the big bang is a more 'elegant' origin of the universe than the multi-verse theory.

Quickly, here is my version of multiverse:

The vacuum of space has 'zero' energy (as I'm sure you're aware). So you would imagine that the vacuum doesn't do anything. But this is not true. Actually, the vacuum has an average energy of 'zero'. On a very tiny scale it actually fluctuates. This is in some ways what quantum mechanics is all about - fluctuations, uncertainty. So it fluctuates. So here or there the energy might be positive for a fraction of a second, and somewhere else it might be negative for a fraction of a second. But on average it's zero.

But if you have a big enough box, somewhere or other, sooner or later, you'll get a really big fluctuation. It's inevitable. And eventually, one of these fluctuations will be so huge, that the energy will spontaneously change to matter (think Einstein, E = mc^2. E is energy and m is matter. So energy and matter are the same thing).

So we have a massive fluctuation that turns into matter - we have a big bang.

But of course, it's unlikely that a universe as big as ours would be the only fluctuation. And so there are many universes of various sizes, and ours is the one we live in. Thus there are multi-verses.

Ok, back to the eminent philosopher. He argues that the creator originated big-bang is more elegant than multiverse. I've heard at least one preacher quote this as well - an extremely good preacher who I have immense respect for. But I think this is wrong. Firstly elegance is difficult to define. Secondly I don't feel like it's very satisafactory. And thirdly, multiverse fits my idea of elegance much more precisely.

Think about it. The key ingredients in big bang are space, the laws of physics, and an anomalous BANG. The key ingredients of multiverse are just space and physics. No anomalies needed. It's self consistent. I find that to be more elegant.

But then where is the need for God? Well here's the main point of my post:

God created a differentiable manifold.

Not sure what a manifold is? It's nothing. Literally. It's a mathematical construct. But it's still there - here there and everywhere in fact. And it doesn't need to be there.

God made the world continuous. He made at least three dimensions - up, forwards and left (and there's actually at least one more). He made time. This thing we call space is ridiculously clever, and by no means a necessary property of existence.

So whatever you believe in: Creation Science (please don't), or Big Bang, or Multiverse, or whatever. If anyone takes issue with your theism, instead of arguing that point, I feel like you might as well just go back one step. Go even more fundamental. Who created dimensionality? Who created continuity of space-time (differentiability)? Why is there up, down, left, and at least one more. Why does time go forwards and not backwards? There are fundamental properties that determine the nature of our existence which are by no means innate to existence.

Why believe the Bible?, and Why I think the Circle of Authority is Nonsense...

Ever had one of those incredibly frustrating arguments with a Mormon where, regardless of the obvious content of the Bible, and the lack of supporting content in the history books, they stick to their guns because "The Holy Spirit has revealed to me the truth, and I know it to be true".

This is nonsense.

Not to go around bagging other religions, (actually... that is what I'm doing and intending to do), Jehovah's witnesses believe the reading (of the Bible) of a few (6?) guys despite the world's best scholars' translations from the greek, Islam believes Mohammed and is encouraged (a euphemism at times) to believe blindly and not question "the Prophet", Buddhism is based entirely on one guys experience with no supporting evidence aside from apparently clever arguments, Hinduism is impressively ancient, but is based on mythological stories that should have declined in parallel with Greek mythology, and don't even get me started on how ridiculous catholicism is...

So why be a Christian? Is it any better?

John Dickson has written a nice little book on this: If I were God I'd make myself clearer. Something from this book that stuck with me is that every major religion in the world except two fails to make historically verifiable claims. That means that every major religion in the world except two must be believed based on the personality of its prophets/gurus/scribes/brainchilds/inventors alone. The two exceptions: Mormonism and Christianity. Regarding the former he goes on to say that there is no evidence whatsoever that Jesus visited the U.S., that the tablets and magic glasses exist, or anything else that Mormonism claims. Regarding Christianity there is ample historical evidence regarding many historical claims, I need not go into it.

But at many times people have said the following to me about this: "historical evidence is all well and good, but it's not really relevant to me, I believe because the Holy Spirit has convicted me".

What I say to that is, with respect, I think that's rubbish. There are supporting passages to be sure, but taking the entire biblical corpus into account I simply cannot agree. I mean, what if you thought the HS convicted you of mormonism, or ritual suicide, or terrorism? I wouldn't agree with that. At the end of the day I think it's probably just a lucky coincidence that you are a Christian, and that Christianity is true.

Enter the Circle of Authority:

I'm a Sydney Anglican in almost every way. One way that I am not, is that I cannot agree with the widely taught circle of authority.

The argument goes like this: You should believe the Bible because the Bible says it is true. If you say that you believe the Bible for some other reason, then that thing is your ultimate authority, not the Bible. So if you believe the Bible for historical reasons, then history is your ultimate authority, not the Bible. So in order to get yourself onto this circle of authority, you need an insertion point. BUT the insertion point is not a higher authority, it's merely a tangent.

Here's the thing about the pictorial analogy: It's rubbish. An isertion point is a higher authority. It's a reason to believe the Bible in the first place. I don't care how much geometric analogies you come up with, if you have some initial reason for believing the Bible then that is the authority that had you believe the Bible - a truism if ever I've heard one.

Secondly, I hate to use the word Bibliolatry, because I don't want to be associated with 99% of the people that use that word, but I frankly I do not worship the Bible, I worship God. So I believe the Bible, because God has revealed to me that the Bible is the true way to know God. I don't believe other sources about God as authoritative, just the Bible, because my insertion point to the Bible is God, and God doesn't give me any other authoritative sources, but in fact several other fallible ones (my feelings, my view of creation etc, they're all tainted, and sit in subjection to the Bible).

So how does God reveal to me that the Bible is true? Sinai, Jesus' miracles, the Resurrection. At Sinai (Ex 19 in particular) God says something like : You shall know for all time that this law I'm giving you is authoritative BECAUSE I'm here speaking to you in person today. It's God's personal appearance that's authoritative. How is that authoritative for me? History! The history books. The mixed Biblical and historical and archaelogical accounts have lasted 4000 odd years because they're reliable (along with various other reasons). Jesus' miracles are well attested to, and he says to ... Thomas? A pharisee? I can't remember. Somewhere in John: If you don't believe the words I'm saying then believe on account of the miracles. The resurrection is ridiculously well attested to historically. And so on.

So why do I believe the Bible? Because I have good reasons to believe that God really did say : Believe the Bible. That's it. Being convinced of that, I'm free to believe the Bible absolutely, but not because it says so, but because God says so.

A quick word on the Holy Spirit: I believe that the world is irrationally anti-Christian because they don't have the BIble. The HS is an antidote to sin. We cannot believe the truth without the HSs conviction. Nevertheless, a HS argument alone I believe is a dangerous thing, and is ultimately not in line with the Biblical account. God really did appear in person on several occassions and claimed it was for, in part, verification-al purposes. So why reject those offerings, calling them irrelevant, and claim only the HSs conviction as your ultimate source of authority? The HS comes along side us to attest to the truth of the rest of the Biblical account. We must give him a secondary role to God and Jesus, that's what he wants.

This was much too long for a blog. Sorry about that.

Any thoughts?