The Reason Rally and Generosity

By Carson Weitnauer

The Reason Rally, hosted by “many of the country’s largest and most influential secular organizations, will feature “music, comedy, speakers, and so much more.” As “the largest secular event in world history” the goal is “to advance secularism” and focus “on all non-theists have achieved in the past several years.”

As you look at it, The Reason Rally, in its structure, actually seems to have a surprising amount in common with a megachurch service or a Christian festival. You have celebrity speakers, famous bands, comedians, poets, authors, and and activists. Overall, it looks like it will be a fun gathering.

It has obviously taken a lot of hard work, planning, and careful reflection to put this together. So, what do the organizers hope to achieve? The plan is “to unify, energize, and embolden secular people nationwide, while dispelling the negative opinions held by so much of American society… and having a damn good time doing it!”

For The Reason Rally to be effective, it needs to be asked: What are some of the negative opinions regarding atheists? According to The Atheist Revolution, a website committed “to improving the position of atheists in a world dominated by religious belief,” the atheist stereotype is quite a long list. To be fair, I’ll avoid repeating such negative views! The relevant parts of “the atheist stereotype” for this post are points number 5, 6, and 13. Those points, summarized, are that atheists are often seen as ‘immoral, moral relativists, who are stingy.’

Here’s the question: is this an unfair stereotype? Perhaps surprisingly, this item is actually supported by some sociological research. According to Bradley Wright, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, when you compare generosity between the most and least religious in America:

•The most religious 20% of Americans give an average of more than $3,000 a year to charity, the least religious 20% give about $1,000.
•In terms of percentage income, the most religious Americans are four times as generous as the least religious, giving about 7.5% of their income compared to about 1.5%.
•The most religious Americans give more money to religious causes (obviously) and to secular causes. In particular, they favor organizations that benefit the needy and young people.
•The most religious volunteer more often, to both religious and non-religious causes.
In other words, there’s a very significant generosity gap between the most and the least religious in America.

Richard Dawkins, a central leader of The Reason Rally (an organized gathering for secular people), has recently stated that he is looking forward to witnessing the “complete death of organized religion.” He’s also said, “Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.” As it stands, these two goals are contradictory.

To read on, click here:

Is Reason Reasonable?

By Patrick Collins, Director of Ratio Christi at University of Alabama

In a few weeks, atheists will be gathering in Washington, DC to celebrate reason (www.ReasonRally.com). They believe they have a corner on the market – that any reasonable and honest person will hold their position that God does not exist.

I would like to point out what I see as the elephant in the room. While atheists purport to champion reason, reason contradicts the foundational principal of their worldview.

Let me elaborate.

Reason is “a statement presented in justification or explanation of a belief or action… the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences.” (Dictionary.com) This includes thinking through concepts using logic. However, under an atheistic view of the world, only space, matter, and energy physically exist. Everything can be reduced down to chemistry and physics. This is known as materialism.

Where does “logic” fit into this paradigm?* Is logic a collection of cells, bumping against each other in a chemical process? Can it be reduced to some sort of physical process?

Not at all! To try to do so would be what’s known in logical fallacies as a category error.

The laws of logic, of which reason is completely dependent, are transcendent. We simply discovered and described them.

While it has been argued that the laws of logic are merely thoughts that only exist physically in the brain (which neurologists can scan the brain as activity is taking place), the laws of logic would still exist even if thoughts never existed. So the laws of logic can’t be merely thoughts since they do not depend on the existence of thoughts. It’s the difference between an objective reality and ‘a thought about’ an objective reality.

For example, if there was a time before sentient persons existing, the law of non-contradiction would have still existed. Two things could not be opposite at the same time and the same way and be true. There are no square circles in nature.

Therefore, the laws of logic are laws of being, not laws of thought.** They “govern” reality, yet they are immaterial. This doesn’t fit in the paradigm of atheism – atheists simply overlook the problem of the existence of logic and reason. However, reason and the laws of logic fit perfectly within Christianity.

Not only does Christianity allow for the non-material to exist, the Bible tells us the source of all reason and truth: God Himself.(John 1:1, 14:6) Christians are also instructed to use logic and reason in showing that Christianity is reasonable, rational, and true. (1 Peter 3:15) The existence of reason and the use of reason are both on the Christian’s side.

As the Reason Rally takes place, there will be Christians present to share the truth that using reason really does lead us to God and away from materialism. TrueReason.org is coordinating this effort of sharing the truth in love – including giving away water and booklets that respond to the Rally in a kind and loving way.

So, under atheism, is reason reasonable? Well, it’s certainly ironic that a group who does not believe in immaterial things is celebrating an immaterial thing.

Thomas Nagel on The God Hypothesis

“The reason we are led to the hypothesis of a designer by considering both the watch and the eye is that these are complex physical structures that carry out a complex function, and we cannot see how they could have come into existence out of unorganized matter purely on the basis of the purposeless laws of physics. For the elements of which they are composed to have come together in just this finely tuned way purely as a result of physical and chemical laws would have been such an improbable fluke that we can regard it in effect as impossible: The hypothesis of chance can be ruled out. But God, whatever he may be, is not a complex physical inhabitant of the natural world. The explanation of his existence as a chance concatenation of atoms is not a possibility to which we must find an alternative, because that is not what anybody means by God. If the God hypothesis makes sense at all, it offers a different kind of explanation from those of physical science: explanation by the purpose or intention of a mind without a body, capable nevertheless of creating and forming the entire physical world. The point of the hypothesis is to claim that not all explanation is physical, and that there is a mental, purposive, or intentional explanation more fundamental even than the basic laws of physics, because it explains even them.” – Thomas Nagel

Christian Apologetics Student Group Gains Ground at Universities

The popularity of a college student group primarily focused on defending their faith in Jesus on university campuses throughout the U.S. and world has increased dramatically in the last year.

While operating in the mostly secular environment of college academia, including students and professors, a Christian apologetics alliance known as Ratio Christi (Latin for “reason of Christ” or the “rationality of Christ”) is aggressively seeking and placing apologists on campuses to lead student chapters.

This movement comes at a time when Christian leaders such as prominent evangelical Chuck Colson say atheist – or nontheist – groups are on the rise on college campuses. Colson recently praised Ratio Christi in a column he wrote, expressing his joy at knowing the group is “working to reclaim the intellectual battleground on college campuses.”

“Colson is well aware that the battle for the mind is centered around the university,” Ratio Christi President Rick Schenker told The Christian Post. “Secular thought dominates most educational institutions. Christian students are ridiculed and openly humiliated by fellow students, and sometimes even faculty, for believing in God, the Bible and Jesus Christ.”

Schenker said his group went from 12 to 65 chapters within less than a year. The biggest challenge the organization faces is funding the rapid growth and expressed interest of other “supported missionaries” or chapter leaders.

“We tried to slow it down, but the inquiries keep coming … mostly from apologists who want to open a chapter,” he said. “This became overwhelming after we started a ‘supported missionary’ program that seeks to place apologists on campus as full time missionaries.”

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“We have an extensive vetting process … especially if the apologist wants to become a full-time missionary,” he added. “Beyond the 65 chapters that are either fully functional, or in the process of forming, we must have well over 50 leads for new chapters in the pipeline.”

Schenker was recently asked in an interview for thebestschools.org to give his thoughts on the subject of Christian apologetics.

“Apologetics is the branch of Christian theology that seeks to address the intellectual obstacles that keep people from taking faith seriously,” he answered. “I think it is so important that the church is heading into a new age – the age of the apologist. The modern church is under intellectual attack.”

A typical Ratio Christi campus group is made up of students who want to go deeper into the study of the intellectual framework of the Christian faith, said Schenker. In addition to hosting weekly meetings, Ratio Christi offers training for other student ministries and Christian faculty members. The group also works to support other Christian ministries.

This school year has been a busy one for the group – holding interfaith dialogues, lectures, and debates at major universities.

“Each fully accredited chapter is required to do at least one public event each year,” Schenker said. “Some do one each semester.”

The organization started three and a half years ago as a student-run ministry of Southern Evangelical Seminary. While looking for work in 2010, Schenker found the group’s website. Because he felt “it was a mass movement waiting to happen,” he asked to join as its leader. The ministry became a certified nonprofit group one year ago and has steadily gained more attention ever since.

“We unashamedly defend the veracity of God, the Bible, and Christ’s resurrection and engage in the battle for the mind right on the university campuses,” Schenker explained. “We believe, like Colson, that the Christian world offers the best explanation for all of the issues of life. And that we can equip university students and faculty to give historical, philosophical, and scientific reasons for following Jesus Christ.”

Why Jesus Instead of the Buddha?

Written by Harold Netland

In considering a Christian response to challenges from Eastern religions, two questions are especially significant: Does God exist? Who is Jesus Christ? Although we cannot pursue either question here, we will proceed by pointing out several respects in which Jesus is different from the Buddha.

1. The relation between Jesus and history in Christianity is different from the relation between history and Gautama in Buddhism. In 1960 the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich visited Japan, and in conversation with Buddhist scholars in Kyoto, he asked the following question: “If some historian should make it probable that a man of the name Gautama never lived, what would be the consequence for Buddhism?” The Buddhist scholars responded by saying that the question of the historicity of Gautama Buddha had never been an issue for Buddhism. “According to the doctrine of Buddhism, the dharma kaya [the body of truth] is eternal, and so it does not depend upon the historicity of Gautama.”{1} Whether Gautama actually said and did what is ascribed to him does not affect the truth of Buddhist teaching, which transcends historical events.

The same cannot be said about Jesus Christ. Christian faith is inextricably rooted in the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. The apostle Paul unambiguously states that if in fact Jesus was not raised from the dead, then our faith is futile and useless, and we are still in our sins (1 Cor 15:14–19). Christianity is not merely a collection of religious teachings. At the center of Christian faith is God’s active intervention in history, revealing His purposes for the redemption of sinful humanity and then the provision of the means for our redemption through the incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth. What Jesus did on the cross and through the resurrection, and not simply what He taught, makes reconciliation with God possible.

Moreover, we have much greater access to the historical Jesus and the early Christian community than we do to Gautama and the early Buddhist community. Although we cannot treat here the issue of the historical Jesus, we should note that the gap in time between the death of Jesus and the earliest New Testament writings is much smaller than the time between the death of Gautama and the earliest written Buddhist texts.{2} Jesus was crucified in either AD 30 or 33. The earliest New Testament writings were written about AD 50 or 51, leaving a gap of only seventeen to twenty-one years from the time of His death to the first writings. Furthermore, we can be confident that the text of the New Testament today is the same text the early Christians accepted. New Testament scholar Paul Barnett states, “There still exist more than five thousand early manuscript copies of part or all of the New Testament in Greek. In addition, there are numerous early translations into Coptic, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, etc.”{3}

By contrast, although there is little question that Gautama actually existed, there is considerable uncertainty about his life. Scholars are not certain even about the century in which he lived. The dates for his life are given as either 566–486 BC or 448–368 BC. The earliest Buddhist scriptures, which were primarily concerned with monastic practice, were not put into writing until sometime near the end of the first century BC.{4} Extant versions of the life of the Buddha did not appear until much later; the influential Buddhacarita (The Acts of the Buddha) was written around the second century AD. So, depending on the dates of Gautama’s death, there is a gap of roughly three or four hundred years between the Buddha’s death and the first Buddhist scriptures being written, with the versions of the Buddha’s life coming even later.

2. Jesus and the Buddha disagree on the question of God’s existence. The teaching of the Buddha is usually understood as ruling out the possibility of God’s existence. The Buddhist scholar Jayatilleke observes that if by “God” we mean a Supreme Being and Creator, then “the Buddha is an atheist and Buddhism in both its Theravada and Mahayana forms is atheistic. . . . In denying that the universe is a product of a Personal God, who creates it in time and plans a consummation at the end of time, Buddhism is a form of atheism.”{5} The Buddha made no claim to special inspiration or revelation from any divine source. If he was concerned about the question of the existence of God, this was a matter on which the Buddha remained silent.

By contrast, Jesus Christ was a strict monotheist who accepted the Old Testament understanding of Yahweh as the one eternal God, Creator of all that exists. Not only that, but Jesus identified Himself in a unique manner with the one eternal Creator God, resulting in the Christian understanding of the divine incarnation.{6}

3. Jesus and the Buddha disagree on what is the root problem plaguing humankind. The Buddha diagnosed the root problem as ignorance—ignorance about the true nature of reality and the impermanence of all things, which results in craving and attachment and thus the suffering of rebirth. Although he has much to say about the importance of doing what is right and avoiding evil, nothing in his teaching resembles the biblical understanding of sin. Nor is this surprising. For sin, according to Christian Scripture, is always an offense against a holy and righteous God, something conspicuously absent in Buddhism.

The difference here with Jesus is striking. According to Jesus our root problem is not ignorance but rather sin, the deliberate rejection of God’s righteous ways (Mark 7:1–22). Furthermore, although Jesus consistently called others to repentance, He never repented for any sin. He challenged others to point out any sin in His own life and claimed to have the authority to forgive sin (John 8:46; Mark 2:1–12).

4. Early Buddhism teaches that we are each responsible for attaining our own liberation, whereas the New Testament teaches that we cannot save ourselves. There is within the early teachings attributed to the Buddha a strong sense of the human individual being responsible for his or her own liberation. The Buddha proclaimed the dharma (true teaching) which results in liberation, and in this way he can be said to assist all sentient beings. But it is up to the individual to grasp the truth, to appropriate it, and thereby attain nirvana. Although later Buddhism did develop the idea of the bodhisattva who assists others on the way to nirvana, the Buddha himself seems to have regarded each person as responsible for his own destiny. The Buddhist scholar Walpola Rahula puts it this way: “If the Buddha is to be called a ‘saviour’ at all, it is only in the sense that he discovered and showed the Path to Liberation, Nirvana. But we must tread the Path ourselves.”{7}

The difference here with Jesus is unmistakable. According to the Bible, human beings cannot save themselves; we are utterly helpless and hopeless apart from the grace of God and the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross for us. What we cannot do for ourselves, God in Christ has done for us (Eph 2:1–10). Jesus thus called on others to believe in Him and to find salvation only in Him. Jesus does not merely teach the way; He claims to be the way (John 14:6). It is not simply that Jesus has discovered the way and the truth and that if we follow His teachings we too can find the way for ourselves. The Buddha, in effect, says, “Follow me and my teachings, and you too can experience the way leading to enlightenment.” But Jesus says more than that He has discovered the way to the Father and that if we follow Him and His teachings we too can find the way. Jesus makes the much stronger claim that in Himself He embodies the way, the truth, and the life. The truth of Jesus’ teachings cannot be separated from the grounding of this truth in the person of Christ as the incarnate Word of God. It is because of who He is and what He has done for us on the cross that He is Himself the way, the one Savior for all people in all cultures.

5. The Buddha, like Jesus and other great religious leaders, died, but there is no reliable historical record of any others—apart from Jesus—being resurrected after death. With the resurrection we come to the foundation of the Christian faith. Death—the ultimate symbol of sin, evil, and suffering—has been conquered through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because of Christ’s resurrection, “death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54 NIV). Both Jesus and Gautama were concerned with the causes of suffering. Gautama pointed to eliminating the causes of suffering by breaking the causal chain resulting in rebirth through eliminating desire (tanha). Jesus, by contrast, accepted upon Himself the causes of suffering, namely the effects and penalty of sin, in His death on the cross on behalf of sinful humanity. And in His victorious resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ broke the power of sin and death, providing hope for our own resurrection (1 Cor 15:20–22). While Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is central to Christian faith, it is not something that is to be blindly accepted apart from corroborating evidence. Significantly, the apostle Paul reminded King Agrippa that Jesus’ death and resurrection was publicly accessible, for “it was not done in a corner” (Acts 26:26 NIV). A recurring theme in early Christian preaching is the fact that the apostles and other Christians were witnesses to Christ’s being raised from the dead (cf. Acts 2:22–24,32; 1 Cor 15:3–8). The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth sets Jesus Christ apart from Gautama and puts the Christian faith in a different category from Eastern religions.

Many have sought to emphasize the similarities between Jesus and Buddha in an attempt to affirm all religions as equally true. But in contrasting the actual teaching of Jesus and Buddha about the nature of God and reality, the root problem of humanity and its solution, and their own personal identities, the gulf is as wide as the east is from the west.

——————————————————————————–

1. See “Tillich Encounters Japan,” ed. Robert W. Wood, Japanese Religions 2 (May 1961): 48–71.

2. There is much discussion over questions about the historical Jesus. Helpful introductions to the issues can be found in Ben Witherington III, The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1997); C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incarnational Narrative as History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Paul Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable? 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2003). On historical issues concerning Gautama the Buddha, see Donald W. Mitchell, Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Hajime Nakamura, Gotama Buddha: A Biography Based on the Most Reliable Texts, vol. 1, trans. Gaynor Sekimori (Tokyo: Kosei, 2000); and David Edward Shaner, “Biographies of the Buddha,” Philosophy East and West 37 (1987): 306–22.

3. Paul Barnett, Is The New Testament Reliable? 44.

4. See Donald Mitchell, Buddhism, 65.

5. K. N. Jayatilleke, The Message of the Buddha, ed. Ninian Smart (New York: Free Press, 1974), 105. On Buddhist critiques of the idea of God, see Paul Williams, “Aquinas Meets the Buddhists,” in Aquinas in Dialogue: Thomas for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Jim Fodor and Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 87–117.

6. On the New Testament understanding of Jesus and Jesus’ own self-understanding, see James R. Edwards, Is Jesus the Only Savior? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).

7. Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 2nd ed. (New York: Grove, 1974), 1–2.

© 2008 LifeWay Christian Resources

The Reason Rally

By Carson Weitnauer at Reasons for God

On March 24th, Richard Dawkins and other atheists plan to host a “Reason Rally” in Washington, D.C. As their website explains, “The Reason Rally is an event sponsored by many of the country’s largest and most influential secular organizations.” The list of speakers includes P.Z. Myers, Dan Barker, Lawrence Krauss, David Silverman, and U.S. House Representative Pete Stark.

As “the largest secular event in world history”, they hope to deliver a unique message of “good news,” namely, “We’re huge, we’re everywhere, and we’re growing.” As part of this theme, they’ve promised to keep the experience positive, celebrate secular values, and avoid trashing religion.

As the event itself unfolds, we will see how well the organizers and participants keep to these promises.

How to respond?

First, at Reasons For God, we are convinced that the atheistic worldview is unable to sustain the conceptual framework necessary for the existence and use of reason. When you start to view people as “neuronal weather patterns,” as a strictly naturalistic worldview does, the idea of rational and moral deliberation becomes quite belabored.

To make this case at length, the first and major component of our response to the Reason Rally will be a book-length project. This ebook brings together thoughtful contributors from around the world to clearly explain that Christianity, not atheism, is the appropriate framework for the celebration of reason. Check back here for information on where to purchase it. To make this information accessible, we are planning to keep the price quite low.

Second, we are partnering with other thoughtful Christians to establish an intelligent and loving presence at the Reason Rally itself. You can find information on this person-to-person initiative at True Reason. The purpose of this gathering is to provide clarity for participants at the Reason Rally, and for interested media, that the secular claims to rationality are unwarranted and unsustainable.

Together, we hope that the book and person-to-person dialogue will be useful in providing thoughtful and intelligent reasons for open-minded people to reject the secular thesis and adopt the Christian worldview.

To read on, click here:

Dr. Daniel Wallace: Earliest Manuscript of the New Testament Discovered

By Dr. Daniel Wallace

On 1 February 2012, I debated Bart Ehrman at UNC Chapel Hill on whether we have the wording of the original New Testament today. This was our third such debate, and it was before a crowd of more than 1000 people. I mentioned that seven New Testament papyri had recently been discovered—six of them probably from the second century and one of them probably from the first. These fragments will be published in about a year.

These fragments now increase our holdings as follows: we have as many as eighteen New Testament manuscripts from the second century and one from the first. Altogether, more than 43% of all New Testament verses are found in these manuscripts. But the most interesting thing is the first-century fragment.

It was dated by one of the world’s leading paleographers. He said he was ‘certain’ that it was from the first century. If this is true, it would be the oldest fragment of the New Testament known to exist. Up until now, no one has discovered any first-century manuscripts of the New Testament. The oldest manuscript of the New Testament has been P52, a small fragment from John’s Gospel, dated to the first half of the second century. It was discovered in 1934.

Not only this, but the first-century fragment is from Mark’s Gospel. Before the discovery of this fragment, the oldest manuscript that had Mark in it was P45, from the early third century (c. AD 200–250). This new fragment would predate that by 100 to 150 years.

How do these manuscripts change what we believe the original New Testament to say? We will have to wait until they are published next year, but for now we can most likely say this: As with all the previously published New Testament papyri (127 of them, published in the last 116 years), not a single new reading has commended itself as authentic. Instead, the papyri function to confirm what New Testament scholars have already thought was the original wording or, in some cases, to confirm an alternate reading—but one that is already found in the manuscripts. As an illustration: Suppose a papyrus had the word “the Lord” in one verse while all other manuscripts had the word “Jesus.” New Testament scholars would not adopt, and have not adopted, such a reading as authentic, precisely because we have such abundant evidence for the original wording in other manuscripts. But if an early papyrus had in another place “Simon” instead of “Peter,” and “Simon” was also found in other early and reliable manuscripts, it might persuade scholars that “Simon” is the authentic reading. In other words, the papyri have confirmed various readings as authentic in the past 116 years, but have not introduced new authentic readings. The original New Testament text is found somewhere in the manuscripts that have been known for quite some time.

These new papyri will no doubt continue that trend. But, if this Mark fragment is confirmed as from the first century, what a thrill it will be to have a manuscript that is dated within the lifetime of many of the eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection!

Did Paul think Jesus was God?

Reason Rally 2012: Dr. Glenn Peoples

Dr. Glenn Peoples

There have been rallies in the past of people who would have been happy to see this or that (or all) religions purged from society. Such gatherings, thankfully, have seen a change in tone and tactic over the years. What is being billed as “the largest secular event in world history,” the “Reason Rally” will be held in Washington DC on 24 March this year.

In spite of how often I have been assured by atheists (those denying God’s existence) and agnostics (those simply not affirming God’s existence or nonexistence) that nonbelievers (and atheists in particular) are not a monolith, not part of a movement, not followers of a religion etc, this huge rally, the largest of its kind ever, has been organised with “the intent to unify, energize, and embolden secular people nationwide” and to “give secular Americans an opportunity to unite under a banner of reason and community at a level of impact that has never been seen before.” For those who want to convince the world that atheists don’t belong to anything, the job just got harder!

The list of headline speakers includes comedians, lobbyists, singers, TV show hosts and renowned zoologist (and above all, outspoken atheist) Richard Dawkins, among others.
What strikes me – in fact something that strikes me frequently and never gets any easier to explain – is the way that the rally’s organisers so gratuitously co-opt the term “reason” as though just by describing their movement in terms of reason or rationality the listener will understand that they must be referring to people who don’t believe in God. There’s such a thing as engaging an issue in good faith, and then there’s the alternative, and this, quite frankly, is the alternative.

Or at least, if this is not the alternative to good faith, it’s an example of absolutely stunning insularity, the phenomenon of being simply incapable of seeing over one’s own garden fence, so to speak. Imagine a few scenarios that I think most normal people will see a problem with.

Scenario one: Four biblical scholars are on a panel of experts, explaining why they think the Gospel of John was written at a given date. The first three stand up one after the other and show pictures of old manuscripts, the discuss historical references to John’s Gospel and to John himself, they look at the style of John’s Greek writing and so on, and one by one, they sit down again. The last stands up with a burst of confidence and struts to the middle of the stage. He declares, “ladies and gentlemen, unlike everyone you’ve heard so far, I shall actually use evidence!” By evidence, he means evidence that he thinks supports his view.

Scenario two: Two historians are guests on a television show discussing whether or not Beowulf was based on an actual historical figure or not. The first discusses a whole list of different writings from the time Beowulf was said to live, some fiction and some non-fiction, as well as some authors since that time who held various views on the subject, in an effort to argue that Beowulf was based on a historical person. The second author butts in and blurts out “Booooring! Why don’t you do some actual history, like me?” By history, he means the kind of historical arguments that support his view that Beowulf was not actually based on an historical person.

Scenario three: Two philosophers are engaged in a debate about whether or not God exists. The first lays out some common arguments that have been used over the centuries and explains why he thinks they are very plausible. He then explains why he thinks that some considerations from the physical sciences lend credibility to belief in a creator, and he explains why he thinks the historical writings produced in the early Christian movement support belief in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The second philosopher just responds by laughing, chortling, “Why don’t you use reason? Come on, be rational!”

The phenomenon is the same in each case. It is gratuitous to think that since people reach conclusions that we ourselves do not share, it must be the case that they just aren’t thinking – they have switched off their reasoning and they’re being irrational (because after all, it is impossible for any reasonable person to disagree with me and be serious about it). This rally, like so many other rallies, is not committed to reason. It is committed to conclusions – to positions that people promote, try to persuade people of, get excited about (if the fact that they are holding a rally about it is anything to go by), paste all over the internet and print on T-shirts. It doesn’t matter how they got to that conclusion, the conclusion itself – that belief in God should be rejected – is what the rally is about, rather than the reasons people hold that belief. People who hold that belief are the ones the rally is being organised to unify, energize, and embolden. Being “secular people” is what matters here, not being fair-minded, rational or reasonable.

Any fair-minded person who has invested a modicum of time delving into the great Christian writers – and plenty of contemporary writers as well – will know that “reason” is certainly not the patented territory of unbelievers. How intriguing the vast bulk of the great intellectual writings in the Western world were written by people who (according to the Reason Rally’s organisers) have taken leave of reason! Of course this does not show that unbelief is ipso facto unreasonable – not at all. But it is both churlish and naïve in the extreme to organise huge public rallies on the premise that everyone who stands with reason and rationality will, of course, stand with you. It is like a magnified version of just the sort of cartoonish intellectual hubris that gave the “New Atheists” such a bad name to begin with.

But there will be a bright spark in all of this (not in the sense of being the only intelligent people, just in the sense of standing out against the aforementioned attitude). A number of Christians have decided to attend the rally simply to make the point that there is nothing at all about “reason” or “rationality” that belongs inherently to those who reject religion. Read about the effort at True Reason, where the stated goal is:

•Together, we represent Christians from the United States and around the world who believe that Christianity is a reasonable worldview. Our goal is to demonstrate a humble, loving and thoughtful response to the Reason Rally. We’ll be equipped there with:
•Gifts of kindness to give away–free bottled water, for example
•Mini-book (32-page) summarized versions of Reason Really, an exciting soon-to-be-published ebook written especially for this purpose.
•Flyers advertising that ebook.
•A limited number of copies of a currently published book on Christianity and atheism.
I’d love to attend, but Washington DC is a bit out of the way. Kudos to those who are going to be there to stand out from the crowd, and to bear witness to the fact that the enlightenment figures admired by so many unbelievers were right all along: Reason is the “candle of the Lord.” Maybe you’d like to join them! Head on over to True Reason to learn more.

“Does Reason Know What It Is Missing?”

By Thinking Christian

Stanley Fish has published a New York Times opinion piece on recent work by Jürgen Habermas titled Does Reason Know What It Is Missing? Habermas is a German philosopher, an atheist, who in Fish’s words, has long been recognized as the most persistent and influential defender of an Enlightenment rationality that has been attacked both by postmodernism, which derides formal reason’s claims of internal coherence and neutrality, and by various fundamentalisms, which subordinate reason to religious imperatives that sweep everything before them.

What Habermas has come to recognize, according to Fish, is where secular reason cannot go and what it cannot do.

What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments….

Postmodernism announces (loudly and often) that a supposedly neutral, objective rationality is always a construct informed by interests it neither acknowledges nor knows nor can know. Meanwhile science goes its merry way endlessly inventing and proliferating technological marvels without having the slightest idea of why. The “naive faith” Habermas criticizes is not a faith in what science can do — it can do anything — but a faith in science’s ability to provide reasons, aside from the reason of its own keeping on going, for doing it and for declining to do it in a particular direction because to do so would be wrong.

The counterpart of science in the political world is the modern Liberal state, which, Habermas reminds us, maintains “a neutrality . . . towards world views,” that is, toward comprehensive visions (like religious visions) of what life means, where it is going and what we should be doing to help it get there. The problem is that a political structure that welcomes all worldviews into the marketplace of ideas, but holds itself aloof from any and all of them, will have no basis for judging the outcomes its procedures yield.

Although in his solution there is still “something missing,” Habermas’s analysis of the problem (as summarized by Fish) is by far the best I’ve seen from any secularist.