Melinda Penner made a thoughtful post on the nature of faith on the Stand to Reason Blog today … I think she's "in rare form, as usual"¹:

It's common these days for people to talk about how their "faith" will get them through a difficult and trying experience. This is said without qualification of what the faith is placed in and of anyone who exhibits faith. It seems as though "faith" is usually treated as a quality which, in and of itself, has the power to endow strength, endurance, and hope.

• Click here to continue reading the full post! (It's really short )

¹ Extremely obscure STR inside joke

Do all religious paths lead to God? Greg Koukl says no, and I agree with him. Here he responds to the idea that all religions are basically the same and in a sense "all roads lead to Rome":

Click to view the streaming video: »» (more…)

Soup to Nutz Comic

One of the reasons that radical relativism (the idea that all "truth" is always relative) is false is that it is self refuting. All truth is relative … except, of course, the truth statement that all truth is relative! If all truth were relative, the sentence "There is no truth." could equally mean "I like cabbage." or "Excuse me sir, do you know the way to Timbuktu?" The comic above is humorous because the boy blatantly changes the rules of the game after the fact. But if radical relativism is true, concepts like fairness, guilt, tolerance, altruism, and shame become meaningless.

Although Greg Koukl and others do a fine job of refuting radical relativism, I don't see this as being a popular philosophy. It's just so ridiculous (on both philosophical and intuitive levels) that it seems unlikely that anyone would seriously hold this view (outside of insane asylums and graduate philosophy departments) and even if they did, that after careful scrutiny they would be forced to admit that they do not live consistently with their view.

Am I wrong? Is this a serious view of truth?

It seems to me the real problem is not relativism, or even postmodernism per se, but instead a particular type of intellectual laziness that can sometimes masquerade as "postmodernism". IMHO people don't gravitate towards relativism because they honestly think it's a valid way of looking at the world; they gravitate toward it because it absolves them of the responsibility to have to think about difficult issues. It's the equivalent of clasping your hands over your ears and going "lah-lah-lah-lah-lah". Of course, Christians can sometimes be guilty of the very same thing, but at least one thing that the atheist and Christian worldviews share is that one or the other, not both, of these worldviews is true, really true.

During the Richard Dawkins / Alister McGrath interview, Dawkins asks McGrath how a person goes from being a deist to being a Christian. (This exchange begins around the 24 minute mark.) Dawkins lists several things Christianity "adds on" to belief in God in general (including atonement, prayer, forgiveness, etc) which Dawkins says "seem to have no substantiating basis at all," and then remarks that he is tempted to say that these things were grafted on "for no better reason than that's the way that you happen to have been brought up".

McGrath begins his reply by saying that the foundation for his belief is in the person of Jesus, and that for Christians their beliefs are not just abstract musings about "a god" but instead Jesus and His resurrection are key to "understand everything". One of the main reasons that Christians believe in God, says McGrath, is Jesus. He notes that the ideas of sin, atonement, etc are not "added on" but rather are core beliefs that have explanatory power. He concludes by saying that "Christianity is not so much about explanation but about salvation".

Here McGrath takes a different stance than I do. First, I would have made reference to Dawkins' last point, that McGrath believes because it's the way he was brought up. Dawkins is aware that McGrath was an atheist early in his life, so that comment does not apply to him. Nor does it apply to me, since I was brought up in an intentionally non-religious environment. Of course, even if McGrath DID believe just because it's the way he was brought up, that says nothing about the truthfulness of those beliefs. (See: Genetic fallacy)

My journey from agnosticism to Christian faith went something like this:

1. Does God exist?
• Yes.
2. What would God be like? What attributes would this God have?
• One God … creative … omniscient … omnipotent … good …
3. Which, if any, of the gods of the world religions comply with these attributes?
• Some: Judaism, Islam, Christianity. (And Christian splinters like Mormonism.)
4. After investigating these faiths, which seems to be worthy of further investigation?
• Christianity, for what have become my "big three" reasons (among others): Historical reliability, the person of Jesus, and salvation by grace. (And by extension, greatest "explanatory power" as McGrath says.)
5. After studying Christianity in more depth, do I have good reason to think it is true?
• Yes.

Of course, as you can read in more detail in my personal story, even after I had come to that point of intellectual acceptance it took awhile for me to take the step of "faith". This faith is not blind … see my post Faith & Evidence.

Again, like the miracles issue, I agree wholeheartedly with what Dr. McGrath is saying. However, I would have attempted to point out what makes Christianity uniquely different from other faiths and naming the reasons why belief in Jesus is warranted in the first place. These things are, I think, the "substantiating basis" that Dawkins is asking for. Christianity must be about both explanation and salvation.