I went out and bought the Everything Is Spiritual Tour DVD by Rob Bell after having it highly recommended on several podcasts that I frequently listen to.  Rob Bell, the teaching pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, never seems to disappoint.  What I really love about listening to or watching Rob is the different angle and view of presentation that he takes when presenting the Bible and the gospel.  Rob’s preaching always has very strong backing in historical Jewish tradition and the Hebrew scriptures.  This adds a whole new dimension when Rob preaches on both the Old and New Testament biblical text.  The Everything Is Spiritual Tour left me thinking for hours and what will probably be days after the end of the short 1 1/2 hour DVD.  In this message, Rob looks into the first chapter of Genesis.  This study is documented throughout the film on the biggest white board that the world has ever seen.  Through this message Rob breaks down the initial word for God in Genesis 1:1 which is Elohim by showing the picture of a God living together in community in the trinity.  He makes an obvious point from the beginning of the discussion to view the text from Genesis as a piece of Hebrew poetry.  This is important to note because as is clear from the nature of the message he is intending on pulling all people in the room whether they consider themselves to be spiritual people or not into this message.  Then there is an argument from the existence of God painted by Rob showing the ideal position and design of earth in order to maintain human life.  Rob then goes on to break down the complexities and oddness of the functioning of the universe from the huge things such as stars and galaxies to the small things like an atom. This discussion then leads back to his core argument in Genesis 1.  He uses an extended comparison between the physical creation of the world and animals seen in Genesis 1 and the detailed creation of man in the end of Genesis 1 and more closely focused on in Genesis 2 where man is seen as being not only physical but spiritual.  Rob argues from the context of Genesis 1 and 2 that man is the only part of creation where there is not only a physical aspect to man but a spiritual one.  As he points out, this has huge implications on the lives of humans.  We are all at our core spiritual beings, but some people just decide not to recognize that fact.  It is like they are living in a two dimensional world when the world is really three dimensional.  Rob points out that dividing the physical and spiritual leads to several problems that we see in American Christianity.  When we see God and spirituality as being only existent at a single location or day and time of the week, we disconnect ourselves from who Jesus Christ has called us to be.  Rob pointed out a view of the church which is a picture of people living in community trying to encourage and learn from each other about what it looks like to follow Jesus and then looking outward to see how they can most effectively be Jesus’s hands and feet to the world around them.  He ends with a picture of the gospel and Jesus Christ who makes the whole world fit together and has handcrafted each person with a spiritual longing for Him.  This is an excellent and thought provoking message that I highly recommend.  For more information about the Everything Is Spiritual Tour, check out the tour’s website.

 

Last weekend, I finally rented the movie Amazing Grace.  I rented it after hearing rave reviews from everyone that had seen it.  This movie to my surprise ended up being a great film.  It seemed to deal with the horrors of the slave trade and had a desire to draw you as a viewer not only into the story but to draw you into action.  I really liked seeing how the producers choose to depict certain historical characters such as Equino and John Newton.  The movie did an good job of bringing these people and their stories to life in an interesting way.  The only downside of the movie, however, was the length.  The storyline seemed to drag in the middle of the film.  It seemed like the producers were fluffing the story with unnecessary subplots in order to lengthen the film.  I do feel like this was worth watching and contained several themes that required further thought and exploration.  There were two major themes that became apparent in the portrayals of two of the main characters which I will explore further over the next few days. 

Even after reading through another religious critique from someone who has no expertise in religion through my reading of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, I feel like I am at an even stronger place in my faith which is founded in Jesus Christ which is based on evidence and reason which has led me to the truth.  The question is whether Richard Dawkins will put down his overarching presupposition about the absolute power and control of natural selection to objectively and clearly weigh the evidence to discover the truth!

Dawkins then goes to the heart of his argument against religion presented in The God Delusion  when he makes the claim that children should not be taught any religion at all but should be able to search for truth and make a decision when they are older.  One of the main points that he makes is by defining faith as something that is believed to be true without any evidence.  He is proposing that belief in God is a blind faith without regards to reason and evidence.  I would fundamentally disagree with him on this definition and view of faith.  I would argue that Dawkins seeks to define faith in such terms as a blind faith so that he can further support the dichotomy that he constantly presents with faith being on the side of religion and reason being on the side of science.  This is the fundamental flaw of Dawkins argument and The God Delusion as a whole.  I do think that people should search for the truth and have a faith in whatever they discover to be the truth, whether that be religion or the evolutionary process of natural selection, founded on reason, evidence, and facts.  This however should not stop the teaching of religion to children until they are of age.  From my personal experience growing up in a Christian home and school, I have seen myself and my friends seek to determine if what we have been taught our entire lives is actually true. 

The next main argument that Dawkins presents is the argument that religion is a bad thing due to the responses of religious people and the hostile things that have been done in the name of religion.  This sounds very similar to the argument presented by one of Dawkins favorite sources Bertrand Russell in his article “Why I Am Not a Christian.”  These arguments are heartbreaking for me to read due to the fact that individuals scar and shame the name of Jesus Christ by making statements and responding in a way that is clearly not glorifying to him.  This whole argument echoes the statement of Brennan Manning when he said that “the leading cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny him with their lifestyles.  This is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”  In response to the atrocities committed in the name of God, all I can say is that humanity is fallen and Christians are not exempt from this status.  The things that are done as atrocities in the name of God are clearly sins that have negative consequences, but this still bears no point in the argument against the existence of God. 

Dawkins then goes on to present that morality cannot be derived from the Bible.  He presents the atrocities in the Old Testament that God approved such as the slaughter of entire cities and people groups and then goes on to state that we would not want to derive our religion from them.  One very interesting and valid point presented by Dawkins is in regard to Biblical interpretation.  He states that one must accept the entire Bible as factual, or real events happening in a real world, or that it is all an allegory.  Dawkins points out that if you attempt to see the Bible as at times factual and at time allegorical where would you draw the line between fact and fiction.  It is easy to dismiss the passages of scripture that are hard to explain or seem to contradict who we want God to be.  This is a totally illogical way to look at Biblical interpretation.  This is one argument that Dawkins clearly sees the hole in.  He also presents an argument that Jesus is not a good source for morality in that he made statements that his followers should leave everything and follow him.  Dawkins does not see this as a moral act or a person to base morality off of.  He also presents a very interesting argument that all scripture is directed at an in group of people.  He says that Jesus’ statement to love your neighbors only applied to Jews and that Paul was the one who brought Christianity to the Gentiles.  It is true that Paul was in charge of bringing the gospel to the Gentiles, but Jesus never promoted exclusivity.  Jesus was the one who lived a life reaching out to people who others looked over no matter whether they were Jew or Gentile.  Dawkins likes to quote “religious scholars” to support his own presuppositions without any real evidence or definition of who “religious scholars” really are.  Dawkins suggests that morality comes from a society as a whole deciding that something is morally wrong or right and then adapting to embrace their newly defined morality.  An example that he gives of this is the ending of racism in recent years in the United States and Britain. 

The God Delusion then goes on to discuss the roots of religion which Dawkins claims come from a defective gene which has somehow survived the evolutionary process of natural selection.  The argument states that religion is a defective and harmful gene such as the common cold that though harmful and useless to the species itself has somehow by chance survived from one generation to the next.  This is Dawkins proof to why we see some form of religious belief in every culture and people group of the world.  In my opinion, this seems like a very far stretched argument for the presence of religion globally. 

Dawkins then proceeds to the core of his argument presented in The God Delusion.  Dawkins seeks to prove that natural selection is the force that creates and sustains life as we know it.  He never shows specific examples of how natural selection and evolution function at this moment in the real world.  He continually refers to his proof that God does not exist from countering all of the bogus arguments that he proposed earlier in the book.  He states that the main reason that God cannot be the creator of all life is that someone must have made God.  Dawkins talks about the specific details and complexities of creation and then states that they can only be attributed to natural selection.  He seems to really enjoy making statements that are not proven with evidence and arguments but rather are believed by many “leading scientists.”  Dawkins also tends to do this in the following segment of his book in which he goes back into the religious realm where he once again becomes clearly not an expert.  Even in the segment of the book where Dawkins is the expert, he likes to make statements that are not supported either by argumentation or evidence.  I was horrified by the lack of academic scholarship and research presented by a professor at such a distinguished institution as Oxford. 

The best-selling book, The God Delusion, then goes on to present what Dawkins deems as common arguments for the existence of God.  What was most interesting to me about the arguments presented were that the arguments presented were presented in a way that they would be easy for Dawkins to refute.  I felt like I was back in my Philosophy 101 class when Dawkins presented classic arguments for the existence of God such as St. Thomas Acquinas’s 5 Arguments for the Existence of God, the Ontological Argument, and Pascal’s Wager.  He then poked the exact same holes in these arguments that have been noted for years such as Guanilo’s response to St. Anselem’s Ontoglogical Argument.  Dawkins conveniently uses classical arguments which have already been refuted in a simple way.  This seems really convenient for Dawkins in proving his point, but he does not stop here but goes on to make it easier by making insanely pointless arguments for the existence of God and then refuting them.  The first “new” argument is what Dawkins claims is the argument from beauty. This argument states that since artists such as Shakespeare and Michelangelo believed in the existence of God and that God influenced their works that therefore God must exists.  This is a horrible argument in that the fact that someone believes personally that something exists does not prove that their belief is based on truth.  Dawkins’ refute of this argument is to prove that the artists he listed really did not have a belief in God or doubted their belief in God.  Even in his refute of this argument, Dawkins seems to miss the absurdity of the argument itself.  This seems to once again prove that Dawkins lack of expertise in the field of religion and philosophy leads to faulty conclusions and missing the obvious.  Another such argument presented by Dawkins is a twist on the argument from personal experience.  This argument traditionally points to individuals who have experienced a life change such as giving up cold turkey an addiction to a drug of an addictive nature.  There are many accounts of individuals having dramatically changed lives in light of experiences with God.  Dawkins, due to the fact that the traditional view of this argument is harder to refute, takes this argument and turns it into an argument of personal experience being experiences of seeing visions of religious figures or hearing voices of the devil.  He then uses psychological views on hallucinations in order to disprove these experiences.  This is once again a case of Dawkins taking the easy way out in terms of an easy refutation.  Another such argument that he makes which I will not go into is the argument from religious scientists which closely parallels the argument from beauty in both is presentation and refutation. 

From the start of The God Delusion, Dawkins sets out from the start of his book to convince his readers that a belief in God is irrational and that any thinking individual should embrace atheism.  One of Dawkins’ claims is that people who study religion such as theologians should not make statements and claims regarding science due to the fact that science is not their field of expertise.  Dawkins then in turn contradicts himself by writing a book as a scientist making claims regarding religion and religious belief.  He is claiming to be an expert in a field where he is clearly not an expert.  The God Delusion begins by presenting an argument that religion should not necessitate respect.  Dawkins argues this point by stating a many number of cases and the fact that it is a cultural expectation for a person to have respect for what someone believes just due to the fact that they believe it.  This is something that should be granted no matter how absurd the belief in itself may be.  He goes on to say that this respect also implies the fact that you cannot question someone’s belief or ask for evidence to be presented to support the belief.  Dawkins claims that this extreme level of respect is absurd and should not be grated to religious individuals.  I would have to agree with Dawkins conclusion that a belief in something needs to be justified by factual evidence and a reason to which a person believes.