Raw Theology, Blog Action Day, Misc.

I was supposed to write a blog about the environment for Blog Action Day.  I was going to write about the scientific reasons that I am currently not only a global warming skeptic, but a believer in the argument that we should not spend money and legislation trying to curb carbon emissions.  Then I was going to follow it up with a theological argument for why it is important to take good care of the environment, proceeded by a brief run-down of the basic ways this might be able to be done.

Um, yeah.

I also told myself and my cousin that I was going to post on here the other day about why I am struggling with what to do with this blog.

I am very certain of very few truth claims.  But certainty is modal, even if the truth of any given single proposition is binary.

This blog started originally as the convergence of three ideas.  I had this idea to start a home page.  And on that home page I was going to have one section dedicated to a mere systematic theology.  By "mere" I mean that it would outline issues with the boundaries I was relatively certain of.

By "systematic" I mean that I would go over each major topical category in turn.  There are several popular ways to organize a systematic theology.  Mine would be logical.  Thus I would start with the framework of a cumulative argument for the existence of God.  Then I would go over His major attributes, communicable and non-communicable.  I would go over Christology, Pneumatology, Bibliology, Ecclesiology, and on and on.  Each section and its subsections would be brief, outlining, and informational, with links to outside resources.  It would be very orthodox, but as personal and as clear as possible; just a catalogue of personal creeds.

The other idea emerged out of a conversation with _____________, my former youth group leader, current mentor of sorts, and overall good friend.  Our idea was to hold mini-conferences on difficult theological topics.  Some of these would be of the academic category "Biblical Theology", while others would be methodological, topical, political, philosophical, etc.  One of us would propose the question, and then each of us, alongside any others who wanted to join in, would propose possible answers and an apologetic for each.  We would analyze each possible answer and try to seek relevant truths.

Finally, when I first launched it, my friend and cousin Chris, hopped on board.  Chris is agnostic and was willing to dialogue about whether God exists.  Needless to say, this is something that everyone should be wondering about, and it is highly relevant to a blog like this.  I wanted interactivity, and whether God exists is a great first topic.

I wanted this blog to be "raw" in several ways.  I wanted each post to be published in an unpolished fashion.  I wanted the informal peer review process to be a part of the writing and thinking processes.  I wanted to do (a)theology in community, without each of us having to go through multiple drafts of a piece of rhetoric before showing it to each other.

I also wanted posts to be unfinished, in the sense of being incomplete.  Why not?  Why not post partial thoughts?

Finally, my dream was to create an online environment where we could all be somewhat vulnerable, and in this way be emotionally "raw".

Many of these projects and notions have been reflected in what has happened.  And I am cool with the way this blog has evolved.

We have spent the majority of the time on philosophical arguments for the existence of God.  Dualism and other philosophical positions of the medieval and modern era Christians have also found prominent spots in our discussions.

As I look back though a lot of these posts, I am sometimes a little embarrassed.  A lot of this stuff has been unpolished and incomplete, and vulnerable (like I thought I wanted).  And it makes me feel weird.  Now I remain a Christian, but I disagree with many of the things I have published on the internet under my own name.   I also hope to significantly improve my thinking and writing abilities over the next few years (well, continuing to my death, hopefully).  And this being the case, I see my writing on this blog to date as low quality compared to where I want to be.  I am painfully aware of some of my own short-comings.

I suppose it would be neat to continue trying to blog, and morphing each successive post to fit with some of my original or my new objectives.  Having archives of my intellectual journey might be valuable, if not for anyone else but myself.

Having said all this, I just don't think I want to blog on here anymore.  I know this disappoints all four of you readers out there.

I just have to think about which projects will most efficiently advance my medium and long-term goals.

The rest of the contributors to this blog are more than welcome to use it for your own designs.  I am sure we will be in touch.

Blog Action Day

On October 15th, Raw (A)Theology will be participating in Blog Action Day. The only requirement is that we post entries whose subject is the environment. So think about what effort you want to make, start writing and refining, and let your entry loose on October 15th.

A Brief Hiatus

Hey guys, I am going to stay off of Raw Atheology for the semester, as I am taking 23 units so that I can get denied my commencement by the elusive powers that be, so that I can move to Idaho and have my $150,000 piece of paper mailed to me.

When I first get to Idaho I will launch a 3-year reading campaign, in which I intend to read first about how to read. Then I will progress to reading about logic, the classics of interest to me that I haven't yet read, epistemology, philosophy of mind, pyschology, divine and human agency, cosmology (I hope to make this a major focus), arguments for and against the existence of God, arguments for and against Christianity, systematic theology, theology of the Kingdom, theology of mission, early church history, early church theology, the development of the canon,
predestination, and perhaps I will detour through existentialism at some point. I will be blogging about my findings and my musings.

I encourage the extant contributors to Raw Theology to post, and rest assured that I will read it. You can take this opportunity to critique all my crap, stack up posts in contrary to my views, and slander my name. I will be back to take you all down later. Peace.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rejects Creationism, and By The Way I am a Darwinist Too

In my previous post, the full article from which I quoted contained a disturbing comment:

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, made a useful and unequivocal intervention rejecting creationism...

Why the intelligent design lobby thanks God for Richard Dawkins | Columnists | Guardian Unlimited

At first I thought about how sad it is that although there has been ecclesiastical continuity in Augustine's Chair, the men holding positions like the Archbishop of Canterbury have gone quite liberal in order to make Christianity palatable to the mainstream. Personally, I believe in contextualization of Christian truths and ethics. But I do not believe that true propositions ever change. If God created everything, then He did. If He didn't, then He didn't. Let's find out what's true, and believe it! Communicating that truth within different cultural and temporal contexts, and demonstrating its relevance to daily living is something that we have to be constantly reinventing. If we really believe that Christianity is true and valuable, why change it?

That said, I do want to make clear that I believe that there are in fact some details that are up for debate within Christianity. Putting aside the non-negotiables (meaning, propositions that may be debated, but if they are not believed in by person A, then A cannot be called a "Christian" in the traditional sense of the word), we find propositions that are hotly debated among Christians. These include things like whether there will be a rapture, whether Christ will return to set up a Kingdom for the duration of a literal 1,000 years, whether creation was accomplished within six literal 24-hours periods, whether Christ descended into hell while His body was in the grave, whether God's predestination is unconditional, etc.

Anyway, I decided that a half-sentence from a secondary source on a completely different topic wouldn't be enough. I resolved to seek other sources on the matter. So I Googled "archbishop of Canterbury rejects creationism", and found all kinds of articles citing this alleged concession that the man in Anselm's tradition made. Here's the mention of it in the top hit:

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has rightly called [creationism] “a category mistake” within Christian thinking.

Government department rejects creationist infiltration of science teaching

But there are more. Lots more. Knowing what I do now, I am tempted to be upset that everyone is taking what he said out of context and blowing it out of proportion. But to be honest, I now almost find it cute. When I was young and I caught my brilliant older sister absent-mindedly placing a carton of ice cream in the fridge, I berated her for years. I still bring it up. Why? Because it was the only mistake I had ever seen her make. Finally she called me on it and said that she understood that I want to make myself feel good by reliving the one moment of silly thinking she had ever had, but it was now getting a little annoying for her.

The Archbishop's comment wasn't even as bad as absent-mindedly misplacing an ice cream carton. He was selecting his language carefully to make a point. Was he advocating a stance contra Genesis? Let's take a look at the actual transcript of the interview he had with Guardian:

"AR" is Alan Rusbridger, and "ABC" is Rowan Williams, the current Archbishop of Canterbury.

AR: Are you comfortable with teaching creationism?

ABC: Ahh, not very. Not very. I think creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories. Whatever the biblical account of creation is, it's not a theory alongside theories. It's not as if the writer of Genesis or whatever sat down and said well, how am I going to explain all this.... I know ' In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And for most of the history of Christianity, and I think this is fair enough, most of the history of... Christianity there's been an awareness that a belief that everything depends on the creative act of God, is quite compatible with a degree of uncertainty or latitude about how precisely that unfolds in creative time. You find someone like St. Augustine, absolutely clear God created everything, he takes Genesis fairly literally. But he then says well, what is it that provides the potentiality of change in the world? Well, hence, we have to think, he says, of - as when developing structures in the world, the seeds of potential in the world that drive processes of change. And some Christians responding to Darwin in the 19th Century said well, that sounds a bit like what St. Augustine said of the seeds of processes. So if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories, I think there's - there's just been a jar of categories, it's not what it's about. And it - it reinforces the sense that...

AR: So it shouldn't be taught?

ABC: I don't think it should, actually. No, no. And that's different from saying - different from discussing, teaching about what creation means. For that matter, it's not even the same as saying that Darwinism is - is the only thing that ought to be taught. My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it.

Archbishop of Canterbury | Sermons and Speeches

Wow, what a different story! We see the Archbishop saying things like creationism is not a mere "theory among other theories", that "a belief that everything depends on the creative act of God, is quite compatible with a degree of uncertainty or latitude about how precisely that unfolds in creative time", and finally, "creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it".

I think it is firstly very clear that the Archbishop affirms the Genesis account of Divine creation, certainly placing him well within the Intelligent Design camp, and maybe even within the Creationist camp. It is not clear whether he personally believes in literal 24-hour periods, or whether God used a system roughly resembling Darwinian natural selection to produce species or kinds. He does seem to be concerned with upholding the "doctrine of creation", and he does grant the scientific validity of Darwinism. Although he literally says "creationism is, in a sense, a kind of category mistake", he goes on to elaborate on what he means by this, which is that "[it's] not as if the writer of Genesis or whatever sat down and said well, how am I going to explain all this". Well, if the writer of Genesis didn't make the story up, Who did? Let's take a hint from 2,000 years of Christian teaching (not to mention thousands of years of Jewish teaching, for that matter) and presume that the very Archbishop of Canterbury himself might actually be crazy enough to believe in something like the Divine inspiration of the Bible! Now we are getting a much different picture of the concessions he made to the Darwinists!

Personally, I have observed that it is no longer really debated whether Darwinian natural selection is a real process that occurs in nature. In fact, it is a very important part of the Creationist's model for rapid speciation. There are also other forces that affect speciation. But most Creationists deny that it is sufficient to increase genetic information or produce different kinds. This is where they part ways with traditional Darwinists, because they then say that the separate kinds were originally created by God.

I happen to be a Christian, a Creationist, an Intelligent Design theorist - whatever. I think that the ID movement is a better way to frame scientific theistic arguments in a secular society, and I deny that the arguments require Christian premises. Nor is the movement synonymous with Creationism. But am I a Darwinist? Kind of. I don't think that humans evolved from primates, I don't think that speciation increases genetic information, and I reject current atheistic accounts for the origin of the universe. But none of that separates me in any critical way from Darwin himself! Call me what you will.

My only question is why we are alerting Dawkins to the fact that he is so helpful to Intelligent Design?

While Dembski and others celebrate the affect Dawkins is having on the Intelligent Design movement, fellow Darwinians rue the wantonly false and boisterous construels of religion that he thinks are helping to advance science. Consider this excerpt:

William Dembski (one of the leading lights of the US intelligent-design lobby) put it like this in an email to Dawkins: "I know that you personally don't believe in God, but I want to thank you for being such a wonderful foil for theism and for intelligent design more generally. In fact, I regularly tell my colleagues that you and your work are one of God's greatest gifts to the intelligent-design movement. So please, keep at it!"

But while Dembski, Dawkins and Dennett are sipping the champagne for their very different reasons, there is a party pooper. Michael Ruse, a prominent Darwinian philosopher (and an agnostic) based in the US, with a string of books on the subject, is exasperated: "Dawkins and Dennett are really dangerous, both at a moral and a legal level." The nub of Ruse's argument is that Darwinism does not lead ineluctably to atheism, and to claim that it does (as Dawkins does) provides the intelligent-design lobby with a legal loophole: "If Darwinism equals atheism then it can't be taught in US schools because of the constitutional separation of church and state. It gives the creationists a legal case. Dawkins and Dennett are handing these people a major tool."

There's no room for complacency, urged Ruse over lunch in London last week. Last December's court ruling against the teaching of intelligent design in some Pennsylvania schools may have been a blow, but now the strategy of the creationist/intelligent-design lobby is to "chisel away at school-board level" across the US. The National Centre for Science Education believes that as many as 20% of US schools are teaching creationism in some form. Evolution is losing the battle, says Ruse, and it's the fault of Dawkins and Dennett with their aggressive atheism: they are the creationists' best recruiting sergeants.

Ruse has got to a reckless stage of his career. He prefaced the essay he submitted for Dawkins' festschrift with the above quote from Dembski and went on to declare that he "felt intensely irritated with Dawkins ... It's bad enough having to fight the enemy without having to watch my back because of my friends." The editors were horrified and ordered a more deferential rewrite - which Ruse duly provided.

Even more reckless, Ruse put on the net an email exchange between himself and Dennett in which he accused his adversary of being an "absolute disaster" and of refusing to study Christianity seriously: "It is just plain silly and grotesquely immoral to claim that Christianity is simply a force for evil." Dennett's reply was an opaque one line: "I doubt you mean all the things you say."

But Ruse has got a point. Across the US, the battle over evolution in science teaching goes on. Just in the past month there have been bills in state legislatures in New York, Mississippi, Nevada and Arkansas promoting intelligent design. Last November the Kansas education board promulgated a new definition of science that allowed for supernatural explanations of natural phenomena. A school district in Kansas rebelled last month, accusing their board of "an utterly false belief that evolutionary science and the scientific method is based on atheistic philosophy. Promoting this false conflict between science and faith erects unnecessary barriers." At the heart of many of these local controversies is the firmly held belief that Darwinism leads to atheism, indeed that it is atheism. Across the US, a crude and erroneous conflict is being created between science as atheism and religion.

Why the intelligent design lobby thanks God for Richard Dawkins | Columnists | Guardian Unlimited

Atheist Anne Rice of "Interview with the Vampire" Finds Transformation in Life and Writing Because of Christ the Lord

Anne Rice

famous for her vampire series, a couple entries of which were made into the movies Interview with the Vampire, and Queen of the Damned, just popped out an intriguing new book, surprising both her current fans and those with any interest in Christ who also own even a minute appetite for literature.

Anne Rice describes her book as the product of her life, after having grown up Catholic and abandoning her superficial faith for atheism, becoming uncomfortably fascinated with the occult, then truly finding Christ and converting to Christianity upon the culmination of years of studying the Bible and the most respected New Testament criticism and scholarship.

In the original Author's Note, she confesses,

From [the time of my husband's death] on... I have studied the New Testament period, and I continue to study. I read constantly, night and day.

I have covered an enormous amount of skeptical criticism, violent arguments, and I have read voraciously in the primary sources of Philo and Josephus which I deeply enjoy.

Having started with the skeptical critics, those who take their cue from the earliest skeptical New Testament scholars of the Enlightenment, I expected to discover that their arguments would be frighteningly strong, and that Christianity was, at heart, a kind of fraud. I'd have to end up compartmentalizing my mind with faith in one part of it, and truth in another. And what would I write about Jesus? I had no idea. But the prospects were interesting. Surely he was a liberal, married, had children, was a homosexual, and who knew what? But I must do my research before I wrote one word.

These skeptical scholars seemed very sure of themselves. They built their books on certain assertions without even examining these assertions. How could they be wrong? The Jewish scholars presented their case with such care. Certainly Jesus was simply an observant Jew or a Hasid who got crucified. End of story.

I read and I read and I read. Sometimes I thought I was walking through the valley of the shadow of Death, as I read. But I went on, ready to risk everything. I had to know who Jesus was--that is, if anyone knew, I had to know what that person knew.

Now, I couldn't read the ancient languages, but as a scholar I can certainly follow the logic of an argument; I can check the footnotes, and the bibliographical references; I can go to the biblical text in English. I can check all the translations I have and I have every one of which I know from Wycliffe to Lamsa, including the New Annotated Oxford Bible and the old Catholic translation, and every literary translation I can find. I have offbeat translations scholars don't mention, such as that by Barnstone and Schonfield. I acquired every single translation for the light it might shed on an obscure line.

What gradually became clear to me was that many of the skeptical arguments--arguments that insisted most of the Gospels were suspect, for instance, or written too late to be eyewitness accounts--lacked coherence. They were not elegant. Arguments about Jesus himself were full of conjecture. Some books were no more than assumptions piled upon assumptions. Absurd conclusions were reached on the basis of little or no data at all.

In sum, the whole case for the nondivine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified by nobody and had nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and would by horrified by it if he knew about it--that whole picture which had floated in the liberal circles I frequented as an atheist for thirty years--that case was not made. Not only was it not made, I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I'd ever read.

Anne Rice, Christ the Lord, (New York: Ballantine Books, 2006), p. 329-330.

Rice goes on to describe the criticisms and historical scholarship she read--a large body of works on either side of the argument, to be sure. She continues to describe her very own conversion experience, and follows this all up with another note to the paperback edition.

As for the book itself, I am thoroughly enjoying it. She is a very engaging writer, capturing subtle movements of eyes and bodies and social cues, communicating the faint smells and textures of 7-year-old Jesus' experience from his own perspective as he comes to learn about how the prophecies concerning the messiah line up with his own birth and childhood. Little Jesus comedically works a few miracles by accident, weeps into Mary's bosom, perceives John's constant staring at him, holds little Salome's hand, gets excited to visit the temple, and has his little heart broken on a number of occasions. Jesus' full and complete humanity is anti-gnostically affirmed, as the fullness and completeness of his deity glimmers through this veil.

MSNBC reports on the fans of Anne's work during the isolated study that led to her conversion,

After 25 novels in 25 years, Rice, 64, hasn't published a book since 2003's "Blood Chronicle," the tenth volume of her best-selling vampire series. They may have heard she came close to death last year, when she had surgery for an intestinal blockage, and also back in 1998, when she went into a sudden diabetic coma; that same year she returned to the Roman Catholic Church, which she'd left at 18. They surely knew that Stan Rice, her husband of 41 years, died of a brain tumor in 2002. And though she'd moved out of their longtime home in New Orleans more than a year before Hurricane Katrina, she still has property there—and the deep emotional connection that led her to make the city the setting for such novels as "Interview With the Vampire." What's up with her? "For the last six months," she says, "people have been sending e-mails saying, 'What are you doing next?' And I've told them, 'You may not want what I'm doing next'." We'll know soon. In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and—under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encounters, will publish "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. "I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord." It's the most startling public turnaround since Bob Dylan's "Slow Train Coming" announced that he'd been born again.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9785289/site/newsweek/

As for Anne, she continues to study and write, planning two sequels to Christ the Lord, writing both solidly helpful and controversial Amazon book reviews, and enjoying her newfound relationship with God.

Welcome to the new Raw (A)Theology!

Welcome to the new Raw (A)Theology!

We recently switched over from the old Blogger to Blogger Beta, because of the improved user interface for our contributors, and the ability to label our blog posts for the convenience of our readers.

What is Raw (A)Theology? The "raw" description of this blog references the way in which we are approaching the subject. This is no high-end publication and none of the contributors have any post-graduate training on our subject matter (yet). We are just trying to sort through the propaganda and uncover our own biases so as to vulnerably approach such an important issue. We aim to cultivate an environment in which people of all walks of life feel comfortable reading, questioning, and contributing to our discussions.

Why the (a)? Although we want to discuss God, a discourse cannot be called "theology" if an atheist is doing it. We have both atheists and theists on our team, so the "a" gets parenthesis. It's okay to call us "Raw Theology" or "Raw Atheology", too.

If you are a former contributor and have not yet received an invitation to join the new Raw (A)Theology, or if you are interested in becoming a contributor, please feel free to email me at rawtheology@gmail.com.

Introductions

Hi, and welcome to Raw Theology. We are glad to have you here. Come on in, take a look around, leave your shoes at the door, grab a can of root beer, ginger beer, or any kind of beer, and introduce yourself to the group.

L's Doctrinal Statement

[Note: This statement does not necessarily reflect the beliefs of all blog contributors.]

I believe that God is one, and deserves to be loved with all of each man's heart, soul, strength, and mind. God eternally exists as three uncreated persons.

I believe that Jesus is the second member of the Trinity, possessing the exact essence of God yet maintaining a distinction in His personhood from the other two members. Jesus retained the fullness and completeness of His deity while becoming fully and completely human, then He died, bodily rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven to sit at the Father's right hand. He will return again to judge the world and establish His Kingdom.

I believe that God inspired the 66 books of the Bible in different ways and at different times, and so their autographs were inerrant.