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Apologia Report 14:37
October 9, 2009
Subject: Armstrong vs. Dawkins: Readers lose
In this issue:
APOLOGETICS - Alister McGrath presents the history of heresy
ATHEISM - "God" for Karen Armstrong: Not personal, and for Richard
Dawkins: Not an intelligence
ORIGINS - evolutionary biologist marvels at the scientific accuracy of Genesis
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APOLOGETICS
Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth, by Alister E. McGrath [1] --
reviewer Brian T. Sullivan reports that McGrath "has written a
scholarly synthesis of recent studies on the history of heresy in the
Christian church, incorporating social, cultural, and theological
aspects. Although he individually examines numerous heresies (mostly
from the patristic period), it is primarily to use them as case
studies to illustrate salient points about heresy in general. This
work is not intended to be a comprehensive history of heresies but a
history of the development of the concept of heresy, including its
implications for the church today. Throughout, McGrath contrasts his
findings with various other perspectives from church history,
including the currently fashionable view of heresy as the heroic
suppressed victim of history's arbitrary winners, found in many newer
works about noncanonical gospels, Gnosticism, or the historical Jesus.
VERDICT: Although there are sections in which McGrath seems to wander
away from the book's principal focus, this is still a useful
contribution to the dialog on the nature of heresy from an orthodox
Protestant perspective." Library Journal, Aug '09, p88. [6] McGrath
seems to be a book-writing machine disguised as human being!
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ATHEISM
"Man vs. God" -- presents a combination of two essays, curious for the
lack of any introduction or explanation for their selection: the first
is by Karen Armstrong, the second by Richard Dawkins. Ever notice how
often arguments are presented by turning around received wisdom so
that it's stood on its head? Both writers do this with aplomb.
Writes Armstrong: "Darwin may have done religion - and God - a favor
by revealing a flaw in modern Western faith. [He "showed that there
could be no proof for God's existence."] Despite our scientific and
technological brilliance, our understanding of God is often remarkably
undeveloped - even primitive. In the past, many of the most
influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers understood that what
we call 'God' is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an
indescribable transcendence, whose existence cannot be proved but is
only intuited by means of spiritual exercises and a compassionate
lifestyle that enable us to cultivate new capacities of mind and
heart.
"But by the end of the 17th century, instead of looking through the
symbol to 'the God beyond God,' Christians were transforming it into
hard fact. ... Enthralled by the prospect of such cast-iron certainty,
churchmen started to develop a scientifically-based theology that
eventually made Newton's Mechanick and, later, William Paley's
Intelligent Designer essential to Western Christianity.
"But the Great Mechanick was little more than an idol, the kind of
human projection that theology, at its best, was supposed to avoid.
...
"St Augustine (354-430), a major authority for both Catholics and
Protestants, insisted that if a biblical text contradicted reputable
science, it must be interpreted allegorically. This remained standard
practice in the West until the 17th century, when in an effort to
emulate the exact scientific method, Christians began to read
scripture with a literalness that is without parallel in religious
history. ...
"Darwin made it clear ... we cannot regard God simply as a divine
personality, who single-handedly created the world. This could direct
our attention away from the idols of certainty and back to the 'God
beyond God.'" While not stating the obvious, Armstrong likely
submitted this essay to promote her new book, The Case for God [2].
In his companion essay Dawkins touches a related theme, but takes it
in a new (if predictable) direction: "Making the universe is the one
thing no intelligence, however superhuman, could do, because an
intelligence is complex - statistically improbable - and therefore had
to emerge, by gradual degrees, from simpler beginnings: from a
lifeless universe - the miracle-free zone that is physics. ...
"Evolution is God's redundancy notice, his pink slip. But we have to
go further. A complex creative intelligence with nothing to do is not
just redundant. A divine designer is all but ruled out by the
consideration that he must [be] at least as complex as the entities he
was wheeled out to explain. God is not dead. He was never alive in the
first place."
Another declaration by Dawkins leaves the impression that he too is
promoting his most recent book: "Evolution, to quote a T-shirt sent me
by an anonymous well-wisher, is the greatest show on earth [3], the
only game in town. ...
"The argument in favor of alien life's existing at all is weaker
than the argument that - if it exists at all - it will be Darwinian
life. But it is also possible that we really are alone in the
universe, in which case Earth, with its greatest show, is the most
remarkable planet in the universe." Wall Street Journal, Sep 12 '09,
ppW1, W2. <www.tinyurl.com/l4n2ar >
By the way, Armstrong's latest literary contribution is appraised
by Russ Douthat in the New York Times Book Review, Oct 4 '09, p19
<www. tinyurl.com/yk7m3sv>. He observes that "The casual reader [of
Armstrong's book] would be forgiven for thinking that the leading
lights of premodern Christianity were essentially liberal
Episcopalians avant la lettre."
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ORIGINS
The Genesis Enigma: Why the Bible Is Scientifically Accurate, by
Andrew Parker [4] -- an unnamed reviewer summarizes: "An introduction
to natural history with a hint of Genesis thrown in. Oxford
evolutionary biologist Parker does not profess to be a particularly
religious man, but he is intrigued by a simple question. How did the
writer of the first chapter of Genesis - the biblical creation story -
basically get it scientifically correct? Never mind the seven-day
part, which the author easily dismisses. Parker is astounded that the
order of creation described in Genesis follows the order of geologic
and life evolution as science understands it. 'Either the writer of
the creation account of Genesis 1 was directed by divine
intervention,' he writes, 'or he made a lucky guess.' This mystery is
the Genesis enigma. Parker believes a lucky guess to be all but out of
the question, and he views the accuracy of the creation account to be
a proof of the existence of God, or at least a higher being of some
kind. The author takes the reader step by step through the creation
story, explaining how each segment aligns with an era in the evolution
of the earth and the life inhabiting it. The creation of the sun is
followed by the creation of the earth, with its oceans and land
masses, followed by the earliest life forms, etc. Eventually Genesis
tells us that lights divide day and night, a step which Parker ties to
the development of eyesight in life forms and the evolutionary
revolution that ensued. Aquatic life came before land life, though the
writer of Genesis had no scientific way of knowing this; birds have
their own special mention in the story, and they are indeed
evolutionarily distinct. Parker raises plenty of interesting
questions, but he focuses almost exclusively on natural history,
barely scratching the surface of the background of the text he is
highlighting. Only in an appendix does he begin to delve into the rich
textual and historical research about the creation story in Genesis.
Intriguing concept, incomplete execution." Kirkus Reviews, Sep '09 #2,
n.p. [5]
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Sources, Monographs:
1 - Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth, by Alister E. McGrath,
(HarperOne, 2009, hardcover, 288 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/ydm5ckn>
2 - The Case for God, by Karen Armstrong (Knopf, 2009, hardcover, 432
pages) <www.tinyurl.com/yaahw5l>
3 - The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, by Richard
Dawkins (Free Press, September 2009, hardcover, 352 pages)
4 - The Genesis Enigma: Why the Bible Is Scientifically Accurate, by
Andrew Parker (Dutton, 2009, hardcover, 304 pages)
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