I don’t know Mark Driscoll. Nor, for that matter, do those who make up the disturbingly enthusiastic crowd of stone-bearers who wait in the wings, apparently hoping for his downfall. They’re calling him a thug, alleging that he suffers from mental illness, calling him a slime ball, a heretic, an “ass,” a “jerk,” and worse.

Genuinely committed evangelicals, who in other contexts would actively condemn hatred and vilification (and would probably never think of themselves as taking part in the like) are lining up on social media websites and blogs to insult, ridicule, belittle and attack Mark Driscoll, and to basically give a pat on the back to their friends who do likewise.
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I started the “Nuts and Bolts” series as a way of explaining some of the basic / common concepts in philosophy as well as theology at a fairly introductory level. Sometimes this is prompted by the realisation that online, often people refer to those concepts – even criticising or commending them – without actually having a firm grasp on them. It was an example like this that prompted me to start the series.

This instalment, on “Mere Christianity,” was prompted in a similar way. John Loftus over at Debunking Christianity doesn’t think much of the notion of “Mere Christianity.” In fact he really doesn’t think there is such a thing.
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Yesterday on Saturday the 3rd of September 2011, the Auckland Synod of the Anglican Church in New Zealand passed a motion that people involved in sexual relationships outside of marriage but within committed same-sex relationships would not be impeded from being ordained into ministry.

The mover of the motion was Glynn Cardy, notorious for his parish (St Matthews in the City) displaying billboards openly mocking historic Christian belief (I mentioned this a whole ago). Not terribly surprising I suppose!

Here is the motion:

That this Synod
[1] Holds that sexual orientation should not be an impediment to the discernment, ordination, and licensing of gay and lesbian members to any lay and ordained offices of the Church; and further
[2] persons in committed same-sex relationships likewise should not be excluded from being considered for discernment, ordination, and licensing to any lay and ordained offices of the Church.
[3] commits to an intentional process of listening to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people, organized by the Archdeacons in consultation with the gay and lesbian community.
[4] commits to an ongoing discussion with the ministry units, asks the Archdeacons to facilitate this, and invites responses to those discussions to be submitted to Diocesan Council by 31st March 2012; and
[5] commits to support the process and work of the Commission to be appointed by General Synod Standing Committee, as resolved at its meeting in July 2011.

It’s absolutely crucial to state: Prior to this motion being passed, there was no ban on homosexuals becoming ordained. None whatsoever. This is not about the church’s willingness to include people who identify as homosexual (some popular misrepresentations notwithstanding). This is about whether or not the church is right to refuse to ordain people who are living in a sexual union outside of marriage, something that the Christian faith has always disapproved of, regardless of anyone’s sexual orientation.
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I’m a bit late in noticing this. On the fourth of May 2010, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, preached a sermon at Charterhouse, London (the text of that sermon is here). Charterhouse – now a boarding school – is a former Carthusian monastery in London (the Carthusians were a Catholic order), and that’s why Williams was speaking there. Now, why would the Archbishop of Canterbury speak at a Catholic monastery?

The cynical (and often correct) side of me says this: It’s just another case of feel good, watered down ecumenicalism, right up there with “inter-faith” prayer meetings. But it’s not. Williams spoke there because it was the 475th anniversary of the execution of John Houghton, the prior of the monastery, along with fifteen other monks who lived there. Along with a public acknowledgement of the evil of what was done here, Williams threw in this gem: “If Henry VIII is saved (an open question perhaps) it will be at the prayers of John Houghton.”

That’s right, the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested that perhaps the head of the English Church, the King, might in fact be lost after all.
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Lately I’ve been seeing some pretty unpleasant discussions at blogs where Christians have been positioning themselves in opposition to other Christians because those other Christians didn’t hold some doctrine that was essential to the faith, or else they did hold it, but they didn’t regard it as essential to the Christian faith. The example I have in mind is the rough treatment that William Lane Craig has received for not holding that an Augustinian take on original sin was essential to Christianity (even though he seemed, in that discussion, to think that something like it was still true). Think about that term: “Essential to the Christian faith.” Essential. Necessary. You can’t have Christian faith without it. Required.
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This random thought was prompted by me hearing a radio interview with Dinesh D’Souza today. It seems to me that in the wake of obvious defeats in public debates, some atheists throw their former champions under a bus.

When Bill Cooke debated William Lane Craig on the existence of God, Dr Cooke very clearly lost. This was the assessment of those who observed on the whole, regardless of whether they wrere a religious believer or not. The New Zealand atheists (e.g. folks supportive of the New Zealand Association of Rationalists and Humanists) who were keen to see the debate happen changed their tune and decided that Bill Cooke just wasn’t a good representative of their viewpoint, and that’s why the debate turned out that way.

When John Loftus debated Dinesh D’Souza on the existence of God – and Mr Loftus unambiguously went down in flames, the atheists who were keen to see the debate happen (e.g. those supportive of John’s labours at the Debunking Christianity blog) changed their tune and decided that John Loftus just wasn’t a good representative of their viewpoint, and that’s why the debate turned out that way.

When Raymond Bradley debated Matthew Flannagan on whether or not it’s rational to think that God is the source of morality – and very clearly lost, the atheists who were keen to see the debate happen changed their tune and decided that Raymond Bradley just wasn’t a good representative of their viewpoint, and that’s why the debate turned out that way.

I wonder what those same atheists would have thought had been established if, in any of these cases, they had thought that their man had won. Would the only telling oucome have been if the atheist won? Is there anyone who would be a good representative? It seems they think their spokespeople are just devastating – until they are actually put to the test.

My random thought for the day.

It seems that statistical findings (and the way they are interpreted and reported) have occupied my attention lately.

A little while ago I looked at some unpopular stats: There aren’t as many homosexuals out there as some want us to think (who knows why), and more young Muslims condone suicide bombing than they’d like us to think.

Then I looked at stats on religious people and atheists when it comes to knowledge of religion (and Christianity in particular). There I noted that when they want to limit their group to exclude under-performers, some atheists construed atheism in a very narrow way when it results in them getting better scores (as a group) in tests on religion, but when it comes to comparisons between their knowledge of Christianity with the knowledge that Christians have, while maintaining their own narrow categorisation, they combine high scoring Christian groups with low scoring Christian groups, ensuring that atheists (narrowly defined) score better.

This time I’m prompted by a couple of comments that were made during my discussion with Arif Ahmed on the Unbelievable radio show with Justin Brierly (the recording of this show should be available via the unbelievable podcast any day now I think). We were discussing whether or not there can be moral facts in the absence of God. As a kind of aside, our host Justin asked us what we thought the world would be like if everyone was an atheist – or a Christian, for that matter. My response was that we can’t really gaze into a crystal ball on this one. I did add that anecdotally I knew of plenty of people who were no longer Christians at least partly because they wanted to indulge in a lifestyle that fell outside the moral constraints of Christian ethics. (Incidentally Jim Spiegel’s book, which I reviewed, covers this in a little more depth).

Arif’s reply was that there’s no evidence that Christian belief makes people more moral, and there’s good evidence of an “inverse relationship” between religious belief socially dysfunctional behaviour (from memory, the example he used was crime). He didn’t name the study, but it’s one that is widely cited, although usually very briefly. It’s covered in a paper by Gregory Paul in the Journal of Religion and Society, Volume 7 (2005). In brief – and I don’t dispute the findings of the study – in parts of the world where there is a high degree of religiosity (actually for accuracy’s sake we should say “a high degree of religiosity existing alongside a minority of unbelief”) there also exist a higher level of what many or most of us think of as social ills: “homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion.” Again in the interests of accuracy, it should be noted that the kind of religious belief in question was stipulated to be ant-evolutionary belief in a creator. In looking at the countries (and states) referred to, the reader will correctly deduce that the alternative belief is generally some form of young earth creationism.

But does this really mean that there’s “no evidence” (Arif’s phrase) that Christian belief has a positive moral affect on those who hold it? No, it doesn’t. In fact we know of precisely such evidence.
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The short answer is: No.

You may have noticed a bit of buzz recently about a new survey that (so the buzz is saying) shows that atheists know more about Christianity than Christians do. I’ve seen self professed atheists make this claim online before, and now their bias confirmation tendencies have kicked into overdrive with the release of a recent Pew Forum study.

Let’s do some checking (sorry infidels.org, it’s what some of us do).
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Looking over recent census based statitstics on religion, I note that there are some deniers out there. Those deniers at statistics new Zealand claim that affiliation with Christian demoninations is on the decline, and there is a rise in numbers of those willing to change their identification from “other” to “no religion.” What a pack of deniers. Clearly they are anti-science.

But my say-so isn’t going to cut it I fear. I need… a graph! People believe graphs. But there’s one problem… all this pesky data lying around. What if people find it? They might become diners too, and we can’t have that. Then I struck on a brilliant idea. I gathered up all this data and emailed it off to East Anglia’s Hadley Climatic Research Centre. I hear they’re great at making stuff up number crunching.

Before the final result was produced, there were a number of emails sent around between collaborators who were to produce the final version of the graph. I liked what I heard. Mick Kelly said:

Hmmm, I’m concerned by the possibility that we might be going through a longer – 10 year – period of relatively stable numbers beyond what you might expect from temporary backsliding as people go through University etc. Speculation, but if I see this as a possibility then others might also. Anyway, I’ll maybe cut the last few points off the curve before I give the talk again as that’s trending down as a result of the end effects and the recent “heathen-esqe” years.

Smooth move! I was hoping that some of the others might come to the party to massage the data and make sure that it gives the result that I want people to believe right result. I was not disappointed. Phil Jones had just the thing, right before the final diagram was produced:

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that off to Glenn either later today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s trick of adding in the real number of Christians to each series for the last 10 years (ie from 2000 onwards) to hide the decline. We wouldn’t want anyone to notice the decline. That would be bad.

Bad indeed! Now instead of a decline in the Christian percentage, we have scientific proof that we’re heading for a revival! Oh, I suppose you’ll want to see the graph. After all, there’s no proof without a graph. So here it is:

Where are the deniers now?

A true Scot if er' there were one!

The “no true Scotsman” fallacy (as it is called) is illustrated like this:

William: No Scotsman wears underwear under his kilt
Angus: Not true! I’m a bonnie Scotsman, and I wear underwear under me kilt!
William: Ach! Then yer nee a true Scotsman! Away with ye!

One who uses this fallacy makes their position beyond critique by just throwing in ad hoc modifications (like “true”) to their criteria when somebody comes up with a counter example, so that their position really can’t be falsified. A really bad example would be:

Ben: No scientist is religious.
David: Woah, um, have you actually checked? Because I have this whole list of scientists right here who say that they are Christians!
Ben: Psh, Christians? Then they can’t be real scientists.

That’s worded a little more blatantly than you’re likely to hear anyone actually make a claim like that, I just used a really obvious example. What prompted me to write this blog entry, however, is a type of argument that comes up from time to time. It’s basically like this:

Richard: Christianity is evil!
Alister: Evil? How so?
Richard: Well just read this account of a man who was tortured by fellow Christians because he didn’t belong to their church! They killed his family, burned down his house, then tortured him!
Alister: Richard, anyone who would kill a family, burn the house down and then torture a man because of his beliefs really isn’t much of a Christian.
Richard: Ah HA! You just used the no true Scotsman fallacy!

Notice that this isn’t a case of Christians excusing horrid actions done in the past. On the contrary, it involves Christians today condemning those actions. But they do excuse Christianity of being the culprit, on the grounds that someone who carries out these actions is “not a true Christian,” or “not much of a Christian,” or something worded along those lines. This, it is alleged, is fallacious, being just as ad hoc as the no true Scotsman argument.

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