Deeper Waters

My roommate and I are both on staff on a forum where a member sent me a message recently asking if we were brothers. I had to laugh and say “No. We’re not. Just roommates.” It brings me back to when we first moved to this city and went to the bookstore looking for the apologetics study Bible. I went to the counter and asked and they said “Yeah. Your brother was just here asking about it also.”

I sent that reply, but then I began to wonder.

“There is a friend that sticks closer than a brother….”

Friendship is an interesting thing. If you look at your family, chances are, you wouldn’t like them at all if you were not related to them. I could probably list many great traits of my parents, but I am also quite sure that if I was not related to them, I’d probably never get to know them enough to notice those traits and probably would have them just be people I ran into in the world.

Friends are different. Friends have relationships with you because they choose to and you agree to that relationship for the same reason. You want to be a friend with that person. There is something that you two click over. For us, it was Final Fantasy and apologetics and I believe over time, we found a unique knitting of the spirits.

I have heard that Aristotle said “Friendship is one soul in two bodies.” Indeed, my roommate and I do seem like that at times. We make a great team when we’re in ministry together. When we had the Mormons visiting our house, we were so in sync with each other’s personalities that we knew where the other was going so we could go and prepare to head the Mormons off at the pass.

When a time came that we had to tell a friend some hard news, I was unprepared to handle it. That’s my personality type. I just can’t do something like that. My roommate broke the news. When it came though to counseling them through that situation and offering words of solace, that is where I stepped in. That’s my personality.

There are times we’ve had to be blunt with each other, and when it’s happened, we’ve always been the better for it. I’d like to think that we’ve helped each other to grow as stronger Christians. I will say that being in an area with a friend this close has enabled me to grow and do things that before I ever came here I never would have dreamed of doing.

I then think that too often I take this for granted. You expect your family to care for you, and even that can be taken for granted. Think about your friends though. They seem more unique. These people choose to care for you even though they never knew you at all at one point. They came across you and under no obligation, decided to form a friendship.

I know I take it for granted at times. I should go to bed thankful every evening that I’ve got an excellent friend nearby me. I think that I have someone who knows my quirks and so many of my deep dark secrets and such, but likes me anyway. Have you ever considered what it means that someone likes you with all your foibles and problems and such?

Friendship is indeed something special.

So to the person who asked, is he my brother? Genetically? No. However, I often think he might as well be. The best of friendships could probably be considered “Family by choice.”

A reader of my blog sent me a question privately. (Btw, I don’t mind questions being sent privately. Some of you might have a question you don’t want everyone to see on the blog. That’s okay! You can find a way to contact me privately.) As with all readers, I keep his identity secret, but he was asking me a question about lust.

He was wondering if he sees a beautiful girl and thinks “Wow! She’s hot!”, if he’s guilty of lust. Friends. I can really relate to this kind of question because of the way the church has treated us. I grew up in a style that sex just wasn’t talked about and you didn’t speak about it at all, which could be one reason I speak about it so much now. 

What was lust? Who knows! You’d just better not think about sex! I have since dropped that view. For one thing, I think it’s doomed to failure. Let’s face it my single male friends. We’ve mentally played out in our mind our honeymoons countless times. When we see a girl, we are not thinking “I hope she has good moral character” first but instead “Wow! She is hot!”

I don’t think there is anything at all wrong with that.

Too often, we have come with a more gnostic view to Christianity with saying that the body is dirty. Now I do place great emphasis on the soul, but the body is just as necessary to my being fully human as the soul is. This body is important. I do not believe it is accidental that God made me to be a physical as well as a soulish creature.

My body was also made to be attractive to a female, and I hope that I am. The human male body was made partially to be attractive to the human female. (Interesting that you seem to rarely hear talk to girls about controlling lust though. You will never hear a talk about a girl needing to go and take a cold shower. It’s just the guys.)

Also, the human female form is meant to be attractive to the human male, and indeed it is! I am one who has spent some nights pondering, “Lord. Why did you make women like this?” or “What makes X attribute of a lady attractive?” I still ask these questions. There is something in the beauty of the human female that goes beyond the material of the body.

I think if God made the human female to be attractive, there is no sin in giving thanks for that, and personally, there are times I have probably been spellbound just seeing one specimen of the female of the species and thinking “Wow. I didn’t know they made them like that any more.” Does this count as lust? I don’t think so.

So what is lust?

I don’t think lust is desiring sex. I don’t think it’s even desiring sex specifically with another person. I think it’s when you treat that person as an object only for your sexual satisfaction. I also think there could be some truth to the idea that Jesus is speaking specifically of someone else’s wife in the context. Rest assured men, the days before our wedding, we will be thinking about the honeymoon night specifically and I don’t think it’s a sin. In fact, I’d be very concerned if you weren’t thinking about that.

To the church also, let’s do better. We’ve been so hard on the body and on sex that young people are getting confused messages. We speak sermons on abstinence without talking about joy. I have spoken before of being in a sermon on this topic and being bored. If you are in a sermon on sex and you are getting bored, there is something wrong. (There’s also something wrong if you’re in a sermon about God and getting bored.) 

We need to speak of the joy of sex more than anyone else! We need to be of the style that we will show the secular world how it’s done properly. Sexuality is not meant to be strictly a list of “Do not’s.” There are “Do’s” as well. Do rejoice in the wife of the youth! May you ever be captivated by her love! These are commands for a Christian. He is to rejoice! He is to rejoice in the physical pleasure even!

To my friend, I hope this answers your question better. To the church, I hope this shows the need for your answers better.

My roommate is not a Smallville fan.

*Pauses as he imagines people saying “And you haven’t killed him yet for blasphemy?”*

No. No. No plans. Now he’ll come in sometimes though while I’m watching and watch a scene or two, but to watch a full episode, it hasn’t happened yet. However, he recently said something while I was watching an episode that made me ponder the way we view truth about God and how we have an inadequate view of him.

In Season 1, Episode 18, Drone, Clark gets thrown into politics when Pete nominates him for Class president. Upon the encouragement of Lana, he decides to run against three other candidates. One though, wants the position badly and is willing to do anything to get it and turns out, has the power to control bees.

Two opponents have been hit with a swarm. One is in a coma and the other is in the hospital, but not in a coma. Clark is left and he manages to survive an attack. It is then that he calls the other candidate, Sasha, to his barn to talk.

At first, he makes it sound like he’s going to drop out, but then while she’s walking away confidently, he accuses her of putting her opponents in the hospital. 

Clark: I know you’re behind the attacks.

Sasha: So? What are you gonna do, Clark? Even if the police believe you, they can’t stop me. No one can.

Clark: Try me.

It was at this point my roommate was watching with me and said about Sasha, “Yeah. Real smart.”

Now for us, we are prone to think, “Yeah Sasha. Go ahead and try to take down Clark Kent.” However, we forget something. She doesn’t know who Clark Kent really is. Let’s list some things Clark has survived up to this point.

Being hit by a car at 60 MPH.

Hand in a shredder with no damage.

Being electrically supercharged.

Being hit by a swung construction beam.

Being in an explosion of an automobile

Walking through fire.

Thrown and landing on his back on a car.

Being frozen solid.

Having a knife shatter on him as someone tried to stab him.

Being run over by a tractor trailer.

Being hit by a bus and stopping it.

Having a two-ton generator fall on him.

Having a mace shatter upon hitting him in the face.

Being shot with an uzi.

A fist in his insides. (Episode Kinetic. It’s easier to watch than explain.)

Being shot with a shotgun.

Having a life-decaying figure touch him and start to suck the life out of him.

All of these he’d survived unscathed not to mention the constant contact of meteor rocks. (a.k.a. Kryptonite.)

And what he’s done up to this point….

Pulled automobiles and lifted them like they’re nothing.

Pushes in nails with his fingers.

Rips the hood off of a car.

Bending steel pipes

Running posts through granite.

Ripping a safe out of a wall.

Throwing said safe.

Ripping apart a security cage on a priceless artifact.

Breaking bones practically with a handshake.

This is not in neglect of the general super speed, super strength, X-ray visions done in beating up every bad guy in Smallville.

Now let’s go back to that scene.

If Sasha had known those things and who she was dealing with, would she have acted differently?

For those who don’t know, Sasha’s shortly thereafter said:

Sasha: You may be thick-skinned, but what about your mother?

Thus, Clark had to save his Mom from a bee attack. Would it have come though if Sasha had known who Clark was? Doubtful.

Okay. Some of you are thinking this is interesting, but what has this to do with anything?

How would we act if we knew who God really was?

We talk a lot and we can say the creeds and we can defend orthodoxy, but is it doing us good if we do not have acknowledgment of who he is? We speak of him as sovereign. Do we believe it? We speak of him as holy? Do we believe it? We speak of him as loving. Do we believe it? We speak of him as omnipotent. Do we believe it? We speak of him as omniscient. Do we believe it?

You get the picture.

Thus, we will do something we know is wrong in sin against this God and could it be we are making the same mistake Sasha made? We do not see the one we are dealing with as he really is. Perchance if we caught just a glimpse of the splendor and power of God, we might view things a little bit differently and not live our lives as if he wasn’t there often?

Sasha can be justified for not knowing who Clark Kent really was. He hadn’t really revealed himself as God has. Unfortunately, that didn’t help her as she still wound up in the hospital at the end and even later when she makes a reappearance in Season 7, as she dies in that episode. Yes. Sasha’s mistake was still fatal.

Let us hope we are not making a fatal mistake and having a false view of God also.

The End of Faith really shouldn’t be damaging to a Christian’s faith. That some ministers lost their faith as a result of this book shows the sad state a lot of the church is in response to education. If a man is not grounded in biblical theology and is unable to defend a biblical worldview in the face of opposition, he has no business being a pastor, PERIOD!

Yet why is this so? Sam Harris does bring up some information I do consider interesting. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the aspects about memory. It seems that in those areas, Harris might have some skill. It would require more looking into that area to consider, but he did make me think about my own views on the topic.

I also agreed with him on Islam and I appreciated his bringing forth statistics. I do agree with him that Islam is a threat. When Sam Harris talks about the possibility of Muslim nations getting their hands on nuclear weapons and how they wouldn’t hesitate to use them, then I think we all need to wake up and realize that he could very well be right.

I also agree with him on the bankruptcy of moral relativism. I do believe with Harris that many of our moral absolutes are simply known intuitively. If I could not convince you that murder was wrong, I would probably not go out and try to find another argument. Instead, I would find a good bodyguard and find you a good counselor. (Who might prefer long-distance counseling.)

So where did he go wrong?

For one thing, Harris seems to assume a type of Christian and frankly, I can understand the error. He assumes a type of Christian who approaches Christianity differently from everything else with a false notion of faith. If Harris has a problem with a Christianity like that, he’s not alone. I have a problem with it also and I suspect that many of the pastors who abandoned their faith are the ones of that school who will go from being uncritical and unthinking Christians to uncritical and unthinking atheists.

If one reads Harris, they will have no idea that there are intelligent Christians out there who have written on the topics that he has raised up. Harris does not engage his opponents in any way. Indeed, from his work, one would think that his opponents just don’t exist. Instead, there are simply the intelligent atheists and a bunch of morons for Christians out there.

This brings us to his bibliography. The only Christian I could find was Augustine quoted twice and in those, he doesn’t give arguments from Augustine on the existence of God or the truth of Christianity. One who read Harris alone would have a completely wrong view of Augustine who was one of the greatest intellectuals of the medieval period.

Now I’ve said that I liked what Harris said about Islam, but even in his chapter on Islam, you don’t find Muslim sources. In fact, the only time he quotes a Muslim, it’s cited in someone else. One wonders if Harris has ever really read anything that he disagrees with. Now I grant that he quotes the Bible and the Qu’ran, but he could have just gone to the Skeptics Annotated Bible and the Skeptics Annotated Quran for those.

Primary sources would have done Harris a world of good. Instead, I found myself reading page after page of straw man and nothing in this book honestly made me blink. I did not read an argument and think “Geez. I really need to look into that.” All Harris has done is gone and attacked a weak form of Christianity and done so thinking he’s slaying the real thing.

If Harris wants to bring down that weak form, good for him. I’d like to see that form die out also. Who am I interested in as a disciple of Jesus Christ? I’m interested in those who are devoted to their faith, who want to learn the ins and outs of it, and be the ones that Harris will be afraid to write books against. Not because he’s afraid of criticizing a religious worldview, but he’s afraid the minds on that religious worldview would tear his arguments to shreds.

In conclusion, this one is more readable than the God Delusion and not as ranty, but it’s still just as full of misrepresentations. I am more and more inclined to believe the new atheists are just ignorant of what they attack.

Today, we’re going to look at the final part of Sam Harris’s “The End of Faith.”

There is a line at the start that is very saddening to me. Harris talks about the Christian ministers who wrote to him to say they lost their faith. (Thankfully, he says some wrote to say they hadn’t.)

The first part, of course, is what saddens me.

There was a day when Christianity thrived on the intellectual. I believe Christianity still does, but I don’t think Christians do.  We’ve fallen away from that. The ministers should be prepared to handle all manner of objections. B.B. Warfield placed high on his list “Apologetics” as something that a minister should be trained in.

Today, most ministers just say “I’m called to preach!” and leave it at that.

I sit back and think “I wish God had made you a good preacher when he called you.”

Harris indicts us then unintentionally I’m sure on where we have fallen. He’s not wanting us to stand up and realize that we are to be intellectual Christians but for us to abandon the faith because he believes it is unintellectual. Of course, I disagree, but I have a great sorrow for these ministers. What happens to their flocks?

Ministers are supposed to be shepherds. They’re supposed to protect them from the wolves. If you had sheep and you were hiring a shepherd, would you want one that was completely unprepared to defend your sheep from predators? Of course not. So many put pastors and ministers in charge though who have no defense and simply emotion. You don’t want the shepherd who says “Defend them? Nah! I got a good feeling that they’ll all be okay though!” You want the one who can wield the shepherd’s rod well.

Harris goes on to raise an objection to his argument. That’s that many great acts of violence have been done by atheism. What he gives in response I see as an entire cop-out.

Harris seems to say that these weren’t rational. This is what happened when people accepted a belief without giving it critical examination. If they had thought better, they wouldn’t have done such things.

I don’t find that convincing at all and I doubt you do either.

Mr. Harris. There is no reason in atheism to not do the things that have been condemned. It can follow naturally, especially if we live out “Survival of the Fittest.” Are we going to say the great minds that formed Communism did not understand it, or the ones that built Nazism did not understand it? No. They were acting in direct line with their beliefs.

That’s the difference. The teachings of Christ do not logically lead to the events done in the name of Christ often by some Christians. 

Could it be the ones done by Christians were by ones who did not really examine the teachings of their Lord?

The other objections have been addressed before, but the last is worth noting in that atheists condemn his book as a door to new age thought instead of atheism. Harris denies this, but I think it’s valid. There is no place for spirituality if matter is all there is.

Tomorrow, we will look further and see where Harris went wrong.

Tonight, we should have a short blog. We’re looking at the Epilogue to Sam Harris’s “The End of Faith” and it’s only a few pages long. To begin with, he states that religious faith is one species of ignorance, but it is the the one that won’t admit the possibility of correction and is also sheltered from criticism in every corner.

Don’t you love a self-refuting statement like that in the context?

Here, we have a whole book criticizing religious faith and then he says at the end that religious faith is still sheltered from criticism in every corner.

Apparently not the corner he’s writing in….

I don’t ever go through my day thinking my religious faith is sheltered. The idea of introducing religion into something like the public school system is anathema. We are told at some places not to say “Merry Christmas” lest we offend someone. The Ten Commandments are no longer allowed to be displayed at many government buildings. 

But you can’t do anything about religious faith.

You can make all the remarks you want to on network television that insult religious faith. You can write all the books you want to that argue that religious faith is just a brand of ignorance. You can go to a university classroom and have it be the intent of the professor in that classroom to knock religious faith out of you.

What world is Sam Harris living in?

Harris also makes the statement that we don’t need faith. Well, if he wants to define faith as blind belief in something one has no evidence for and no reason to believe, then sure. We don’t need that. However, if he means trust in something that we can’t prove, then we do. A scientist doing his work everyday has to believe that the universe is orderly and rational for instance. Can he prove that with science? No. He believes it though. Hume was correct in saying we can’t prove the sun will rise again tomorrow. If you told me you were skeptical though, I’d think you were crazy.

However, in the epilogue, there is one sentence that sent chills up my spine. On page 226, he says the following:

“We are the final judges of what is good, just as we remain the final judges of what is logical.”

Rest assured, it won’t be humanity in general that are the final judges. It will be some men. Some men will stand up and tell everyone else what is good and what is true. It is a 1984 type situation. The solution for us is to realize what we as Christian theists should believe. Goodness has a standard outside of us. Truth has a standard outside of us. There is no subjective truth and subjective goodness. 

Harris’s statement leads to the kind of evil he thinks religion causes.

Tomorrow, we shall examine his afterword.

Tonight, we look at the last official chapter of Sam Harris’s “The End of Faith.” This is a chapter that got him into a lot of trouble with his own atheistic crowd as they thought he had sold himself out to new age spirituality, and in a sense, he seems to have done so. He wants the spiritual bonuses of eastern thought without the eastern thought to go with it.

Harris has instead pointed to a problem with his worldview. There is a vacuum and this is a gaping hole in his theory. If there is no spiritual out there, why does a man have spiritual needs? If all that there is is the physical, then let us leave it at that. Man only has physical needs. He needs to eat, he needs to drink, he needs to sleep, and he needs shelter.

Harris recognizes this vacuum though and I’m pleased he’s recognized it. He speaks about our search for happiness which makes it clear this physical world is not enough to satisfy us. I believe he also recognizes that it is more than just pleasure and that there are times some pleasures are wrong and they should not be had by us.

Harris also raises the question of what we mean by “I.” The only cells that don’t change in our body from what I understand are our brain stem cells. If someone wants to prove the root of our identity is in our brain stem, good luck. Aside from those, I am not the same person that I was seven years ago. Indeed, some cells have been changed so that I don’t have the same cellular make-up I did when I started writing this post! Does this mean I have changed?

That isn’t the purpose of tonight’s blog and indeed, I don’t have a clear answer for this at this point. This is the question of identity that has been around for a long time. I do believe this is one of the areas where the doctrine of man having a soul is important. If anyone wants a humorous look at the question of identity with an interesting answer to the question, one can try “Superheroes and Philosophy” with a look at the question of if Bruce Banner is the same person as the Hulk. I note that for many, this is probably not seen as brilliantly scholarly, but I believe this is also where philosophy can most take place. We can relate our everyday interests to philosophy and get much more out of both then.

However, he has meditation being the route he chooses. Now in Christianity, there is a benefit to meditation. This is meditation though on God and going outside of yourself. The meditation he has though cannot be focusing on God. It will instead have to be man that is the object of the meditation. There is nothing wrong with learning about yourself, though I think it can be done obsessively to a dangerous extent.

It just keeps striking at me as the problem. Naturalism is incapable of filling this void. I think Harris recognizes that void and what he gives won’t fill it. Augustine is right with his famous quote of “You have made us for yourselves and our hearts are restless until they find rest in thee.”

I really don’t have much more to say on this but simply to point out what I have already. Harris’s view is inadequate to explain reality and this last chapter says it. Tomorrow, we shall take a short look at the epilogue to the book.

Today, we’re going to look at Harris’s Chapter on morality. Now some of you might be surprised to hear that there are many things in this chapter that I agree with. However, I don’t think he has a foundation for the things he says that I agree with. This will be explained further though as we get into the chapter so put it on the backburner.

Harris does admit that once we abandon belief in a rule-making God, the question of why becomes open to debate. I note though that it seems he has snuck in a voluntarist interpretation of morality where X is moral because God decides it’s moral. If God had decided rape was moral, then rape would have been moral. If someone wishes to defend that view, let them. I find that it seems to make God a temporal being though.

For Harris though, right and wrong are questions about the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures, as he himself says. One wonders though if he has defined happiness. Mortimer Adler has noted that one of the mistakes of our time is saying that happiness is the same as “having a good time” whereas for the ancients, it was a life of moral virtue. For now though, let it be noted that he has a utilitarian ethic.

Harris rightly notes also that though people of different times and cultures disagree on morality, we should not be troubled. It says nothing about the status of moral truth. I agree and in fact, disagree that there is this huge divergence in morality. There are arguments that there are basic principles that all people in all times in all places seem to agree on even if the acting out of those principles is different.

Harris also gets into the problem of evil with saying “No perfect God could maintain such incongruities” when he speaks about various “evils” he sees in the world. The problem is though, “How does he know this?” How does he know that a good God is not allowing a certain amount of evil in the world because that is the way to bring about a certain good that wouldn’t be there otherwise?

Harris also says he wonders about those who believe in such a deity and see the end result as Hitler, Stalin, and the H-bomb. To quote him on page 173, “This is a devastating observation and there is no retort to it.” To say it is devastating is one thing. It might be a difficult observation even, but the ridiculous part is to say there is no retort. Here, I think Harris is being dishonest. Even if he doesn’t think the retorts work, he should at least speak of some theodicies. While he does use the term in his book, don’t expect him to actually deal with any of them. My answer is that Harris has not seen the end result. I believe it will be far better on the good scale than what he’s mentioned is on the evil scale.

Harris also says most of our religions haven’t been supportive of moral inquiry just as they haven’t been of scientific inquiry. First off, I as a Christian do want scientific inquiry. I want to see how this world is that God created. Second though, has he never read anything by a Christian on the topic of Christian ethics? This is definitely welcomed in Christian circles and we are constantly debating moral issues. Recently, for instance, someone sent me a message asking about lust. It’s an ethical question and one especially for young Christian men.

Harris also rightly says that we need to be sure what we mean by human beings. He admits that he does not have an answer, which I respect. What will be the criteria for humanness? On the secular viewpoint, I think it would be interesting to see if there could be an underlying human nature shared by all humans to make us all equal in some sense.

Harris also rightly condemns moral relativism saying on on 178 “But most forms of relativism–including moral relativism which seems especially well subscribed–are nonsensical. And dangerously so.” For this, I have to agree. My qualm though is I don’t think on a secularist viewpoint Harris can escape moral relativism.

I also agree with Harris on intuition, which he says seems to play a part in morality. If you had to ask me “Well why is murder evil?” I think I could give an answer. However, if you were thinking “I’m still not sure I’m sold,” well first off, I’d be wanting to get away from you as fast as possible. Second, I’d send some foolhardy messenger to tell you to get counseling now.

I also agree with his stance on pacifism. I am no fan of war and would prefer it wasn’t there, but I believe it is a sad reality and I think there are times that Christians can legitimately take up arms be they in individual battles, such as saving the life of one on the street, or in a war, such as stopping an evil nation in its plans with weaker ones.

I also applaud Harris’s story that he tells in here of how he saved a girl once. Ultimately, there is really a lot of good in this chapter on ethical theory. The problem is that it’s good with no basis. Consider again utilitarianism. Utilitarianism says that it seeks to bring about the greatest good for the most people. In a sense, that should be our goal. However, the question arises “What is good?” It isn’t always pleasure. Consider this example.

Let’s suppose the organization in question is a frat house and there is a beautiful lady in their midst. The guys there could consider their greatest good sexual pleasure and then believe that they should all sleep with the lady as much as they want. Thus, this lady is repeatedly raped by these guys resulting in their pleasure at the cost of her dignity.

We then have to ask “Is this pleasure really the highest good?” No. Even though it makes the most people happy, it isn’t really happiness and I hope none of us would call it good. Even in a utilitarian ethic, you still have to have some idea of good beyond the ethic and there’s even the problem of “You ought to do what brings about the most good for the greatest number of people.” Why? Why not do just what brings about good for me? “Well that isn’t good for the greatest number of people.” Why should I care about them?

In closing, I like a lot of what Harris says in this chapter. I will say when Harris isn’t throwing out straw men and showing his ignorance in areas of religion, there is good that can be gained from many of the things he says. However, I see no ethical theory in his work that has any grounding and I do see a strong one in Christian theism, giving me more reason to believe that it’s true. Physicalism just can’t explain my intuitions. Good and evil are not physical qualities after all. If Harris wants to try to find them in science, good luck. I believe his effort will be in vain though.

In this chapter, Harris looks at civilization today in light of religion. His opinions though still assume a sort of fundamentalist style of Christianity. For instance, he seems to think all Christians are pre-trib, dispensational. Whether I or anyone else is, that is irrelevant. What is relevant is that anyone in the know in Christian thought at least knows there are other ideas out there.

Harris quotes Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on morality and how he believes that the nation of America is a nation of religious people. The nation’s moral authority is rooted in the Christian ethic. Harris seems to think that this should be terrifying to those who think reason should prevail in the West, which is still his straw man that reason is automatically opposed to faith. (Christian philosophers are becoming more and more numerous.)

Funny though. The Founding Fathers weren’t terrified at that….

Harris thinks we should be drawing on sources that show a greater understanding of the human mind and modern society than saint Paul. Question here though. Why modern? What makes our time the main authority? Could it be that maybe we should go and dust off the old philosophical and theological works of the past and see if maybe the cure for what ails us has been buried by us?

Harris also speaks of the barbarous author of Leviticus. We will deal with his moral standard later, but let us remember that this barbarous author is the one who gave us the command that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Harris also speaks of the danger of drug use, to which I agree, and adds that people use drugs to get effects that mirror those of religion, which is why religious people supposedly want to ban drugs. Hmmmm. Sorry Mr. Harris, but I don’t know a drug that makes me grow to be more like Christ or seek to serve my fellow man more. Maybe you can tell me what it is.

Interestingly, on page 161, he says that it can’t be about health effects that we want them banned since cigarettes and alcohol are both allowable. However, on page 163, he notes that Prohibition came about because of an explicitly religious exercise of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the lobbying of Protestant Missionary societies?

And these within two pages of each other….

In speaking about abortion, he states that we are concerned about the fate of a single cell. Harris says whenever the president scratches his nose, cells are dying as well. This is an extreme straw man. It is only with cloning that such happens. The zygote naturally becomes another human being. One wonders at the thinking behind such an objection.

In the next chapter, Harris will finally address the question of morality. We’ll join him again then.

To begin with, let me address the comment from yesterday which I do appreciate. First off, the argument about the Hebrew in Isaiah 7:14 is quite complex in Reymond. I recommended it as the best resource. The word does mean young girl, but the context does show something rather miraculous about it. For a look at an online resource, I recommend going here to the Christian-Thinktank.

http://www.christian-thinktank.com/fabprof2.html

As for the question of a theocracy, I believe that is best saved for when the review is done and I hope my friend will send me a message to remind me to address that question.

Tonight though in Harris’s book, we’re going to be looking at Harris’s chapter on the problem of Islam. This is a chapter I agreed with much in. As a Christian, I do believe Islam is a threat. I also don’t believe that it has the evidence backing it that Christianity does. Nevertheless, as I write this, 9-11 is just around the corner and that is an example of what Islam can do and that is entirely within the tenets of Islam.

It will be noted that Harris says Muslims have learned to ignore most of their canon as most Christians have learned to do. The issue of life in the Ancient Near East in a theocracy will be dealt with later and that might be its own series as well. However, part of this I can understand. A lot of Christians do write off the Old Testament in almost a Marcionite way.

The Old Testament though is just as much God’s Word as the New Testament is. Now it was not written to us, but it was written FOR us. The same applies to Paul’s epistles. Too often, we go to the Bible and try to find personal messages for us in there. They’re not there. There are general messages for all believers, but not something personally for you. Every part of Scripture though has something we can learn from it.

Also, as he argues, Harris says in a hundred years, we will have some scientifically astute things to say about ethics. When we get to the chapter where morality is discussed, I plan to address this more, but I want to bring it out now so that my readers will know that I am aware of the statement and I do intend to not leave it unanswered.

I do think Harris says much in this chapter that is politically interesting and I doubt anyone Christian could read it and not think “Yes. There is some truth in here as to how much of a threat Islam is.” I do believe that we need to keep an eye on the Muslim world and I do think it would behoove us to learn about Islam. Not so we can practice tolerance as so many liberals in America seem to think, but so that we can know our opponents and what they believe.

A major criticism I have of this chapter though and it seems to ring true throughout the book. Aside from the Qu’ran, Harris cites NO Muslim sources I know of. In fact, the one time I see a Muslim saying something, it is cited in another source. From reading Harris’s book, you’d think Christians and Muslims both have no intellectual arguments. They do. Naturally, I think arguments in support of Islam specifically are flawed, though I do acknowledge good arguments for theism did come from Islam in the medieval period. The point is that even if they are flawed, Harris needs to realize they exist and even if he thinks they are flawed, which he obviously does, he needs to let his readers know he knows of them. He is not giving an honest picture of Islam or Christianity in that regards.

Of course, it is for the Muslims to defend themselves. I have no desire to do such. I urge the reader to check the bibliography though and try to find names like “Geisler, Craig, Habermas (There is one cited, but it is not Gary Habermas), Moreland, or Zacharias. They’re not there.

And for me, that is a HUGE problem.