I am a Christian, and if anyone doubts what I mean by that, just let me borrow a phrase and state that I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and…well, and you know the rest, and I believe all of it;
I have e-mailed Derb before, challenging him on his treatment of Theism;
…and I’m here to tell you:
His criticism of Berlinski here is spot-on deserved. It is justified.
Look, folks. Defending Theism in general and Christianity in particular DOES NOT require that we defend every slapdash, incomplete, or flawed argument a fellow believer might make on God’s behalf.
We ought to be manly and mature enough to recognize that sometimes we ourselves make stupid arguments exhibiting carelessness or ignorance. When those arguments are defeated, we ought to demonstrate such virtues as honesty and humility and acknowledge it (even if our debating opponents make capital of it).
After all, it’s not as if the truth isn’t on our side! We needn’t exhibit the insecurity of someone who isn’t sure. I can hardly be afraid God doesn’t exist; we conversed just this morning. One of my mother’s friends was miraculously healed of M.S.; a couple of my life-altering decisions were made on divine guidance which I didn’t understand at the time but now do; His tender mercies are new every morning and it ain’t all hallucination.
Our role, conversing with Derb or anyone else, is to demonstrate the fallacies of bad argument — our own or the opposing team’s! — and in so doing to demonstrate the kind of honesty which befits a God-fearing person.
So let us be forthright, gracious, and magnanimous…and let us be more rigorous about eliminating the worse arguments among our own.
Derb is right: A probable majority of the great physicists of recent memory leaned toward atheism, agnosticism, and deism. That intelligent men can hold incorrect views demonstrates (a.) that there is a certain academic culture which favors these views, just as academic culture favors Marxism, and (b.) the truth is, while self-evident, not obvious. (That is to say: Like the truth that “all men are created equal,” theological truth provides evidence for itself when the matter is closely examined, but can go undetected for centuries if not.) This means it is JUST NOT TRUE for Berlinski to suggest that no sane man would choose Impersonal Creation over the Genesis Account. (And what’s more, it’s churlish bad manners.)
Now, Derb himself is not infallible, even when speaking from the Chair of St. Popper. He offers various pagan gods (with their creation stories) as alternatives, and neglects to notice that these “gods” don’t fulfill the Judeo-Christian definition of “God” as Creator in so far as they emerge from (and are thus dependent on) a pre-existing (and therefore unexplained) universe, instead of creating the universe wholesale from nothing: the unique Judeo-Christian idea.
Because of this, “Unkulunkulu” is simply not a God, in the Judeo-Christian sense, at all; he is in a different category of being. What a shame that English uses the same word for both categories, and that we have only the presence of a capital letter (“God” vs. “god”) to distinguish between that which is eternally self-existing and a notion far closer to stories of woodland fauns and leprechauns!
Derb misses this because he’s woefully uninformed and thoroughly uninterested in getting informed; he once commented about his surprise that Americans actually read books to learn more about their religion, a notion apparently foreign to the watery Anglicanism of his upbringing.
But, outside realms where Derb is uninformed, his criticisms are worth consideration. Berlinski’s comment about the Politburo really was asinine. His attempts at witticisms really are sometimes even worse than my “St. Popper” papal reference, above. Constructive criticism really could do him some good.
So don’t get all flustered about Derb using his first-rate mind to say so.
Instead, my brethren, “Always stand ready to give a logical defense (apologeia) for the hope that is in you, yet with grace and reverence.”
