Quick Quotes

So I’ve started reading Dr. Richard Dawkin’s book The God Delusion and I thought I would share some of the more interesting quotes from it that I have encountered so far.

From the Preface, Dr. Dawkin’s writes,

“The word ‘delusion’ in my title has disquieted some psychiatrists who regard it as a technical term, not to be banded about. Three of them wrote to me to propose a special technical term for religious delusion: ‘relusion’. Maybe it’ll catch on. But for now I am going to stick with ‘delusion’, and I need to justify my use of it. The Penguin English Dictionary defines delusion as ‘a false belief or impression’…The dictionary supplied with Microsoft Word defines delusion as ‘a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of psychiatric disorder’. The first part captures religious faith perfectly. As to whether it is a symptom of a psychiatric disorder, I am inclined to follow Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, when he said, ‘When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.’” (The God Delusion, p. 5)

In the very next paragraph, he continues,

“If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down. What presumptuous optimism! Of course, dyed-in-the-wool, faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistence built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature (whether by evolution or design).” (ibid., p. 5)

As a further attack on the concept of Christian Faith, Dr. Dawkin’s writes in Chapter One, titled A Deeply Religious Non-Believer, the following:

“The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe ‘religious liberty’.” (ibid., p. 23)

So far, from these three quotes that I have shared (and there are others I could have added, but decided not to just yet), it is apparent to me that Dr. Dawkin’s doesn’t have the first inclination of what Christian Faith actually is. He perceives it to be one thing, and in so doing, sets up a Straw Man, in order to spend portions of his book knocking this Straw Man down.

However, without giving out the entire details of my view, I am curious as to what others think first, about Dr. Dawkin’s characterization of the Christian Faith?; two, what do you think Christian Faith is?; and three, is Dr. Dawkin’s correct in saying that faith does not depend on rational justification?

First Principles of Thought

The First Principles to good thinking are the foundational and fundamental truths that guide and provide borders to human reasoning. In order to think and speak logically, reasonably, and rationally, one must not violate any of these principles. It is upon the foundation of these First Principles that leads us to correctly interpret the world around us and helps guide us to truth. Thankfully, there are only four First Principles to learn and they are very straightforward and simple.

The Principle (Law) of Identity (LID)
Formally Stated: A thing is what it is
Informally Stated: An apple is an apple
Explanation: Existing reality is comprised of individual constituents, and these individuals can be distinguished one from the other. Therefore, if a thing is, then it is not something other than itself. This is helpful because it allows us to say something like an apple is an apple and not a pear. But if we were not able to distinguish between apples and pears, then speaking of either apples or pears becomes meaningless.

The Principle (Law) of Non-Contradiction (LNC)
Formally Stated: X cannot be X and non-X at the same time and in the same state (respect).
Informally Stated: I cannot be a big individual and not a big at the same time, if by big I mean physical stature both times it is used.
Explanation: This is closely related to the LID in that it is a fuller expression of it. For instance, if I were to say that Napoleon was a small man (LID) then the implication is that he was not a large man (LNC). But what if I made the following statements?
a) Napoleon was a small man.
b) Napoleon was a large man.
Both of these statements cannot be true, if, and only if, by “small” and “large” I am speaking of the same thing. I could be true if by small I mean physical stature and by “large” I mean in history. But in no way is it true, if I am speaking of either physical stature or of history in both cases. To do so would violate the LNC. So if we are speaking of physical stature - then either A is true and B is false, or A is false and B is true, or A and B are both false - but in no way can A and B both be true. This is the LNC.

The Principle (Law) of the Excluded Middle (LEM)
Formally Stated: There is no middle ground between Being and Nonbeing.
Informally Stated: Either I exist or I do not exist, but there is no point in the middle in which I partially exist or partially do not exist.
Explanation: Very closes related to LNC in that either something exists or it does not exist. For instance, either the desk I am sitting at exists or it does not exist, there is no middle ground between those two concepts. You might ask, “What if I’m building the desk? Isn’t it in the process of becoming the desk and therefore that is the middle ground?” According to the LEM this is not the case, because while you are in the process of assembling the desk it is not yet a desk, therefore the desk does not exist. After the assembly is completed, then the desk exists and therefore it does not “not exist”. But at not point in that process is there a time when it partially exists or it partially does not exist. The unassembled desk is not becoming the assembled desk; it just becomes. Another, perhaps easier example is this: When I was conceived, then I existed. Before that time, I did not exist. Now, while I may have grown and matured into an adult, that type of “becoming” is relative to my already existing. I still exist. I am not “becoming” a person (Shawn), but I am “becoming” the person (Shawn) a more mature adult. The idea of something becoming is not a movement from nonbeing to being, but rather it is a change to something that already exists.

The Principle (Law) of Causality (LOC)
Formally Stated: Every material cause must have an antecedent
Informally Stated: All material causes must have an effect
Explanation: The idea that all material causes have an effect is really what the sciences are based upon. This is why experiments can be conducted, because what event A happens we expect B to follow. If this wasn’t true we wouldn’t be able to accurately predict a great number of things.

Recommended Reading

Last Updated: Oct. 26, 2006

I decided to move this off the side panel and make it its own post. This way, I can put a permanent link to it from the side panel and update the list as needed. I will not post books in this section that I have not yet read myself. The books that I post are ones that I have found most helpful to me on various topics and I think the authors offer some intriguing insights.

Newest additions are in bold text.

• Basic Christianity by John R.W. Stott
• Being Logical: A Guide To Good Thinking by D.Q. McInerny
• Darwin on Trial by Philip E. Johnson
• Handbook of Christian Apologetics: Hundreds of Answers to Crucial Questions by Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli
• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
• Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity by J.P. Moreland
• The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancy
• The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life by Armand M. Nicholi Jr.
• The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog by James W. Sire
• Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity by Nancy Pearcy
• Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism by Douglas R. Groothuis
• Why I Am A Christian by John R.W. Stott

Adoptionism

A couple of weeks ago I posted a blog on the topic of Docetism. The opposite, extreme view of Docetism is Adoptionism. This is the belief that Jesus was fully human and only after being tested by God and then approved by God through his baptism, that God gave special divine powers to Jesus than enabled him to do God’s work during his ministry. This strips Jesus of any divinity whatsoever. The formal view went something along these lines:

That Jesus’ preexistent nature was denied and therefore his deity was denied. From this, Jesus was tested and approved by God and after his baptism was granted special supernatural powers and then adopted as God’s son, thus the Son of God. As a reward for his accomplishments in his ministry and his perfect character, he was resurrected by God and further adopted into the Godhead.

This view sprang up during the 2nd Century and was quickly squashed, but a form of it came back in the 8th Century which was also put down to heresy by Pope Leo III in 798 A.D.

Why did this heresy occur at all? The most likely reason is that well-meaning followers, attempting to answer the mystery of Jesus being one person yet having two natures (Divine and Human), were unable to reconcile the two ideas. Therefore, they came up with this form of radical explanation in order to make sense of it. But just because we do not understand something fully doesn’t mean that it goes against rationality or logic. It might be beyond those things, but it doesn’t mean that it necessarily violates them. We don’t need to invent all different kinds of explanations for these things, we can believe them knowing that in some way that is beyond our current capability of understanding, these things make sense and are true.

Richard Dawkins on Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report

Stephen Colbert interviewed (briefly) Dr. Richard Dawkins about his new book The God Delusion. While I like Colbert and think he typically does a pretty good job with his interviews by interjecting humor, I think this interview got away from him a little. Dawkins asks him the question, “And who just did God, then?” (meaning who created God) and Colbert, fumbling for a response, went a different direction. I think he tries to do a good job at defending his faith, I don’t think he did such a good job on this particular evening. As a result, Dr. Dawkins challenge comes off looking a little stronger than what I think it actually is.

To watch the video (there is one interview spread split over two videos) of the interview, watch them here:
1. Colbert interviews Dr. Dawkins - Part 1
2. Colbert interviews Dr. Dawkins - Part 2

If you have thoughts either for or against Dr. Dawkins position, please comment.

UPDATE: You can watch the entire video at this link via YouTube.com: Entire Colbert interview with Dr. Dawkins

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