From Delusion to Decision

I am re-reading Richard Dawkins, “The God Delusion” this week; this second go round only confirms what I felt after reading the lengthy introduction to his premise.

I am really thankful to for the professor’s honest missional tome on how this atheist views God in any form as immaterial. Unlike many theocentric writers, Dawkins was honest about his desire to convert you over to his side based upon his research and personal experience. I cannot tell you how many times I role my eyes when I pick up a book on a subject like leadership penned by a Christian compatriots who claims in his introduction that he uses Christian principles throughout the book but has no intention to sway the readers to his viewpoint. Sceptical you may say, but I tire of the subsequent use of the what I would call “Christianese” to the point that I feel like I am sitting through a sales pitch for condos in Florida while on a “free vacation.” If you want to sell me something come right out and say it, and Dawkins did.

He goes head to head with some of the more traditional tenants of apologetics and I have to say that I found myself agreeing with him more often than not. After I shared laughs with his take on what I could only see as misguided or outdated attempts to prove God is really with us, I also felt a twinge of shame. This book could another public nail in the coffin of the rational evangelical movement of Christendom that a large portion of the body is determined to resuscitate. Somehow Christianity went from a community with a purpose, to an institution, to a well guarded rationale that is deemed untouchable. Is belief so fragile that we feel the need to exempt it from testing and reshaping of our perspective? Weren’t the Bereans commended for testing the scriptures in order to get at the truth?

Many believers celebrate when science proves itself erroneous, but doesn’t that make us a bit hypocritical? After all believers endorsed crusades, slavery, the flat earth theory and much more in the name of God’s providence and gladly excommunicated, killed or silenced anyone bold enough to stand against those beliefs. Many of those traditions or schools of thought have proven false and yet there are many heels are dug firmly in the ground. Dawkins' book reminds me that we are living in a time when absolute ideas are being shattered and to speak with certainty regarding a matter of belief may be irresponsible. Faith is believing in what one cannot see or prove, so should we be so fearful of being challenged? Can’t we just say we do not know, when that is simply the case, they way that science does when she cannot find the proof for a well thought out theory?

He also addresses children, stating that until a person is of an age of critical thinking and rationale one cannot use the label Muslim, Christian, or Jewish children so easily. They can be children of Jewish parents, but in the matters of faith, they have not really chosen. I have to agree with this premise as well. Faith is not something you are born with, it is something you choose on a continual basis. It only makes sense to me that one cannot really make a choice without understanding what they are choosing to embrace and what they are letting go of. I know that it may not be possible to grasp every consequence of a decision at the time it is made, but an informed decision is made based on some sort of assessment.

Faith as I understand it is living and dynamic and should not be taken lightly nor is it for the faint-hearted. It is something other, that I am not sure I can quite explain. Even though I am making a second pass at this book, I have to say that I chose to believe, even after Mr. Dawkins’ valiant attempt to sway me otherwise. But I can say that reading his book has changed the way I believe and the way I view people who do not share those beliefs. It also affirmed my faith, yes I said affirmed, because it challenged what I accepted as truth while also giving me the words to back some things I believed to be rubbish. Even though we are still approaching life from different perspectives and disagree about some things, I did see “The God Delusion” as an invitation to re-examine faith, enter into a dialogue and an opportunity to dispense of some dead wood. It also gave me a chance to challenge my faith and decide to hold onto to it, in spite of how others might view my decisions. That is something that Dawkins’ may not have perceived, but it is the effect it had on this foolish follower.

Think a bit

Last Saturday, I was not feeling well and I decide to take it easy. I spent most of the day sitting on my couch reading. I reread The DaVinci Code for a teaching I had the following week and I also read Freakanomics by Stephen D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I liked Freakanomics so much that I included a portion of it in one of my teachings.

Levitt, an economist by profession, has a way of approaching life without pretence or supposition; the results are exciting and terrifying at the same time. He has a way of lifting up the curtain and revealing the Wizard of Oz for the fraud we see before us. The wizards he tackles in the book are the media, conventional wisdom, and assumption. Some people spend their lives trying to ignore the problems going on in the world, while others focus so much on personal crusades that they ignore and often bend information to support their beliefs. Levitt's background in economy empowered him to take a glaring look at crime reductions, drug-dealer's supposed wealth, cheating teachings, parenting and how the names we choose for our children effect status. In each case he shows what the numbers reveal, which usually proves that conventional wisdom and the media's spin are often under-researched and littered with well-meaning but misguided information assumed by most to be common knowledge. I guess Levitt encourages me to become a sceptic of what I hear, read and watch without becoming sceptical about reality.

It is for these reasons I included a portion of the book's introduction a teaching on how to read the newspaper and engage with media. I want students to seek out information but also realize that what they see is not always the "truth" or even though it may contain substantiated facts. In class, I posed the question, "What is the difference between morality and reality?" It kicked of debate and questions. Ultimately, we landed at Levitt's conclusions that morality is how we want the world to be, where reality is how the world really is. It does not take an expert to see there is often a vast gulf between reality and morality whether from a political, religious or social perspective.

When we take information in its various forms, we often hear someone's "moralized" viewpoint or the presenter is trying to make us aware of the perils in the world because we are not maintaining a certain moral viewpoint. It is very easy to lose sight of the facts carefully woven into the minutiae and solicitations to see them from "Our" viewpoint. Reality can be a hard find when we ascribe to listening to only one side of the story. One has to fight hard to find reality while understanding the motivation behind the presentation of facts within a publication or watching the news.

It is good to take in information from different perspectives with discrimination. That is what the Berean's did in the bible when people shared with them about Christ because they were seeking truth. I want my students to continually to sift through the information they take in, not just swallow it whole and regurgitate it to others. I want them to wrestle with what they experience until they get a peek behind the curtain and glimpse reality.