The Rise and Fall of Christianity

About three weeks ago I had a meeting with one of the officially recognized campus Chaplain's at the University of Maryland College Park where we caught-up with each, discussed some official business, and shared a little about the current state of Christianity.  In the United States, churches are generally getting smaller - especially the more traditional main-line Christian churches.  There was a major Pew Research report on religion release last year documenting the decline of religion and specifically Christianity.  (Interestingly, in the data, there is no growth nor decline in Churches of Christ - but this includes both the historically a-capella congregations and the independent Christian church (instrumental Churches of Christ).  I add this because if you don't know me, you may not know that this is my current Christian heritage - but this really has nothing to do with my topic!)

This trend generally means that the United States is becoming more and more secular.  There are currently small but well organized groups or organizations that promote pure secularism.  One such group held an event at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on June 4th called the Reasons Rally. This event is a celebration of the attendees "...secular, atheist, agnostic, humanist, freethinking, and nonreligious identities" and to show their "power at the voting box to bring good sense back to government". Thus, it was, in essence, a political statement.

However, most people in the United States still believe in some type of supernatural or metaphysical reality - much to the chagrin of men like Dr. Michael Shermer, the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine, who wrote a very interesting book a number of years ago entitled, "Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time".  And for the record, in my assessment, this book is an excellent tool for learning how to debunk the wild and crazy claims of dangerous religions, non-orthodox religious movements, and faith-based practices and beliefs that should probably be avoided... but back to the point.

I have mixed feelings about this trend.  On the one hand, I am concerned that lot's of people no longer want to consider the ultimate truth when it comes to faith and religion.  Starting with a purely secular and naturalistic framework for reality eliminates the the possibility of the existence of an undetectable realm - the realm of angels, demons and of course, God.  If such a spiritual realm really does exists (which of course, I am convinced it does) then we can not use our scientific tools to detect or measure it except for when something from that ream interact's in our 3-dimensional universe of time and space.  This MUST be true, a given, by definition if the spiritual realm is real.

The implications are tremendous.  History speaks out against a world without a transcendent antecedent for societies ethical and moral standards.  Even if this spiritual foundation for defining good and evil is based on myth, it will provide guidance on defining good and evil within that culture.  Of course, my purely naturalistic friends embrace this fact as evidence that there is no God and mankind's religions are simply evolved myth and superstitions that are left overs from our prehistoric ancestors that aided in natural selection.  The problem with this conclusion is it ignores or even worse, prevents the honest analysis of historical claims of any of the modern religious systems embraced by very large numbers of people on earth.  Even so, as Americans we may continue to jettison the moral and ethical foundation that philosophically permitted the belief in God, we will build a society that removes reasonable restrictions on behavior.  The impact could be devastating to society if taken to it's logical extreme.

Yet, if the broader society does embrace pure naturalism and secularism and those that believe in God are marginalized intellectually and academically, then it will require authentic faith to hold on to the faith.  If it's not considered wholesome or good to be a devout Christian that take certain ideas as absolutely right and wrong, factoring in the brokenness of life and creation, then you really have to have courage to be a Christian or to hold on to any other faith.  Yet, it seems that Christianity in the United States is the faith system most challenged; this makes perfectly good sense because some form of Christianity has been the predominate faith system of Americans since the formation of the republic.  The principles of freedom and of checks-and-balances embedded in Deceleration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights all protest against the abuse of the minority.  (Regarding this point, I would hope that the hypocrisy of the many of the founders occasionally kept them up at night in sleepless torture - especially since I am an African American!). Thus, it is possible, as this trend continues, that it won't be "The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition" of 1440 torturing heretics and forcing Jews and Muslims to convert or leave Spain! Instead, it will be atheistic and secular leaders calling Christians to abandon their faith or be ostracized.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist so I don't foresee such a dystopian society that would torture and completely marginalize believers. As I said, history cries out against the success of such a society. Instead, I have great hope.  In fact, one of the primary tenants of Christianity, is that we are made in the image of God, and thus values such as compassion, mercy, grace, love, empathy and many other principles that feed into the secular side of social justice will always be present.  How else, as the scriptures plainly state, would men be "without excuse" for rejecting the truth? Creation and existence itself, the existential realities of a functional, healthy, growing, peaceful culture and society is powerful evidence for a theistic stance.  Such values are not some deterministic result of natural selection, embedded in our DNA to aid in helping society to thrive.

So, as the trends continue, I am confident that cool heads in both religious and secular circles will continue to guide cultures and societies.  We must continue to debate, discuss and permit differences of life-styles, values, beliefs and practices.  As it is written, "No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God’s approval." (1 Cor 11:19).  Differences help us decide how to believe and how to live our lives.  The purity of the faith must ultimately be filtered by God from within the believer based on indelible truths that come from God.  Thus, there is no need to worry about these trends if, indeed, God is ultimately in control.

The Reason Rally 2016

I missed a very interesting event in Washington DC last weekend called, “The Reason Rally 2016”.  It was downtown and I really wanted to go, but life, teenagers, and other responsibilities prevented me from attending.  Unfortunately, Richard Dawkins could not attend either, due to his heath.  But he did send a video.  You can see it on YouTube – look up G8NGf3L7foM on YouTube.  The transcript can be found at the Patheos web site.

According to Dawkins, we all have, wired into our DNA, "The God Temptation”.    Dawkins is clear saying, "the temptation [to believe in a divine creator] is overwhelming".  He says that if you say "God did it" regarding any aspect of creation or life, that would be "sheer intellectual cowardice."  He says you have to exercise great discipline to not fall into this temptation.  He explains that, "you have to smack yourself and say, 'No' However largely [your] senses and [your] instincts are screaming 'miracle,' it really isn’t."  He sees the invoking of a designer as a temptation that should be avoided.  He says we are avoiding – because of this “the temptation to evade, by invoking a designer - the responsibility to explain”.  Furthermore, he states that “the God temptation is an evasion of responsibility because it invokes the very kind of thing it’s supposed to be explaining.”.

This position is an obvious logical fallacy in that it declares or accepts the absolute non-existence of God as a proven fact. But non-existence logically cannot be proven.  The idea that the burden of proof is on the theist from a logical perspective is not only more honest, but logically sound and I wish he would have at least started with such a premise.

As a theist myself – the Christian verity – I accept the logical requirement that the burden of proof for existence is on the theist.  I also accept the evidence I have for the existence of God and the truth of Christianity.  The evidence is just as sound as what lawyers argue in court.  To be fair, many court cases allow the innocent to pay for crimes they didn't commit and the guilty to go free; thus, I could be wrong.  However, I happened to be convinced by the evidence that support theism and Christianity specifically.

Thus, it is NOT a "God Temptation" that drives me to believe but the evidence. My faith is solidly based in the historical claims of Judaism and Christianity as well as some of the very things Dawkins admits.  He says, “The fact that you exist should brim you over with astonishment”.  It does!  He says that we are “machines of ineffable complexity”.  This too is evidence.  He speaks of the fine-tuning of many physical, chemical and universal constants, and hints at the theistic evolutionary idea that these constants allowed, “eyes and peacocks, humans and brains” to come into existence.  I am NOT a theistic evolutionist, but his statement actually exposes his belief in the miracle of evolution by natural selection.  You see, Dawkins is convinced that these fundamental constants of nature DID, in the fullness of time, create “the eyes and peacocks, humans and brains”.

I am also a theistic skeptic – that is, the normative play of space, time, and the physical universe as ordered by a divine creator does not require nor regularly display legitimate miracles – the breaking of the entropic laws of nature. When the supernatural intersects with our realm, it is rare and totally initiated by entities in the other realm.  Yet, Dawkins miracle does go against the entropic stream, giving extreme creative power to gravity.  You see, according to pure naturalism, the universe sprang into existence in a few pico-seconds (The Big Bang), and gravity, over billions of years, created massive stars that created the elements via nuclear fusion, that delivered and ejected these heaver elements into space through repeated super nova’s, allowing gravity to continue to work and form planets and moons, yellow main-sequence stars (like ours) to be are born, including earth and you and I.  I question the amount of time needed to achieve such complexity as we currently observe.

Dawkins uses a large part of his speech to mock theology, theologians and God.  Yet, his mocking is nonsensical because by definition, It would be impossible for us to comprehend or detect a being that is outside of space and time using any scientific instruments we could create no matter how sophisticated.  Such a being is, by definition, outside of our physical universe; it/he/she exist beyond the event horizon of black holes; is able to create general relatively, special relativity, the Higgs Boson and dark matter. Dawkins mocking admits that “[God] cannot be, if He’s even minimally to meet His job description, is ‘all-simple.’”, and I agree!  God indeed is exceeding complex in order to create “the nuclear force 1039 times stronger than gravity…” or “…calculate with similar exactitude the requisite values of half a dozen critical numbers — the fundamental constants of physics”.

To accept that such a being is beyond our ability to measure or comprehend is not “evading the responsibility to explain”.  It is actually admitting our limitations – that we are restricted to our own realm, our own sphere of influence and limited to the universe in which we live with all of its beauty, wonder, amazement and complexity.  We should be able - with solid scientific and intellectual discipline and rigor, to conquer the universe, including creating synthetic life, achieving interstellar space travel, developing exceedingly excellent health care and creating powerful robotic and computing tools and technologies that make life better.  Appropriately invoking the divine is not “evading the responsibility to explain”.  Instead, it is appropriate humility, something Dawkins seems to not have.

I know my atheist and non-believing friends see the “non-authentic Christian” argument as a cop-out.  However, if the “God Temptation” has any validity in sociological, anthropological, or psychological studies – and I think it does – then pseudo-science, conspiracy theorist, and false-religious fervor all fall into the same genetic predisposition.   Michael Shermer’s book, “Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time” humorously, sadly, but accurately describes this trait, played out in the daily lives of so many.  Dawkins mocks this trait in humanity explaining how people default to being “Christian” or “Muslim” simply based on demography. He calls it “a temptation to laziness when we define our allegiances” simply based on where we were born, and speaks of “religiosity” as “a form of obstinate backwardness”.  In general, I agree - we really need to use our intellect, not just our emotions when determining truth.

In fact and in conclusion, I’m glad such events as the Reason Rally occur, so that thinking people can review for themselves the evidence as well as the existential implications of an idea.  The reason someone should ultimately believe or not believe is because the evidence of the claims of the faith system is assessed to be true or false.  Feelings are a good indicator to begin research but ultimately the truthfulness of something should be the primary basis for whatever position we hold when it comes to atheism, theism, a faith system and a world view.  This is why I am a Christian - the evidence points to the truthfulness of the entire system of faith from Adam to Jesus and the early church as described in the writing's of Apostles and earliest Christians.  Christianity both (1) has a historical and foundation that can be validated as well as any other historical claims; and (2) existentially accurately reflects our behavior and the emotional, psychological and social elements that hold society together and fit reasonably in a coherent livable framework that, if taken to it's logical extreme, actually fits reality as we experience it.