Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Hell and Hamnation at Work

Fundamentalism: The Voice of Voris  (See here
  for the video)

Quoting myself in a recent correspondence to James Knight:

The best sense I've made of pathological manifestations of the faith revolve round the common themes of social marginalisation and alienation, social anonymity, tribalism, paranoia, conspiracy theory and above all a desire to have a sure-fire secure epistemology either based on "The word of God" and/or gnostic revelation that can be used to oppose "profane" & "secular" knowledge.

James Knight has recently provided an interesting perspective on pathological religious communities by focusing on the role of leadership. See here. He also links to this article on the sociology of leaders who exploit their position by talking up the fears, scares and threats which draw a close knit community together and which discourage challenges to its leadership.

It is clear that leadership gurus are an important component contributing to the maintenance of the sectarian status quo; in particular, when the sect is embattled there is a need to talk up the paranoia and persecution complexes which help cement the group to its leaders. Ken Ham, who James mentions, is a classic case. Ham’s rhetoric against his detractors is always set at maximum fire power and he never minces his words; in particular Christians who don’t agree with him are one of the main targets of his condemnatory bulls: They are accused of quite extreme sins of compromise, of heresy, of attacking the Cross of Christ and of following another Jesus (I can provide references). In this light Ham’s claim that Young Earthism is not a salvation issue is ungenuine and merely academic. For Ham Biblical literalism is every bit a faith testing shibboleth. He also tells us that Biblical literalism is an authority issue. But with that I certainly agree; after all, in the final analysis it’s about the divine authority of Ham’s opinions. If one identifies one's opinions with divine authority it is no surprise that detractors are perceived to be indulging in the worst of heresies and one will condemn them in the strongest possible terms.

Upping the ante can sometimes, however, result in diminishing returns. The Jehovah’s Witness did this with their rhetoric surrounding 1975 which lead many of their followers to believe that the end of "this system of things" was set for that year. Of course, like many of their other “prophecies” 1975 fell through and for a while membership eased off. But either people have short memories or are stupid, (probably both), because it wasn't long before the membership recovered with the input of a new batch of inexperienced and ignorant recruits. So perhaps the sectarian world''s strategy of living off sensationalist capital actually works. It may pall for a bit, but the supply of fresh faced dupes who are ripe for exploitation seems inexhaustible; they are the sects renewable  resource that keep it running.

See also Micheal Voris who provides us with a fine example of a Catholic fundamentalist guru going forth with all guns blazing. Fundamentalist rhetoric has just two settings: Maximum volume and maximum volume.

Monday, October 21, 2013

AiG a Micky Mouse Outfit Admits Ken Ham!


Face palming faux pas: AiG have a funny idea of promoting the faith!

Recently the Biblical literalists of Answers in Genesis started a bill board campaign. When I saw the cartoon below I was completely convinced that it was a send up by some atheist who wanted to lampoon this campaign.



And then I saw  "c. AiG 2013" printed vertically on the first frame! That's right, this is an AiG conceived and promoted cartoon! I was as gob-smacked as the atheist character in the cartoon: Can anyone be so brazenly naive and not see it? This is a real windfall for those atheists who knew all along that AiG's ministry was about the circular reasoning of self-authentification. But I bet AiG won't see it: Fundamentalists take themselves too seriously to be able to detect irony! 

A similar thing happened to me when I noticed one of Ken Ham's blog posts dated 21st October and entitled "The same quality you expect from Disney world!". My first thought was that this must be Ken complaining about how some atheist has described his creation "museum". You could have knocked me over with a feather when after reading the post it turned out that this was the appropriately inappropriately subliminal remark used by one of Ken's own admirers to describe the Creation Museum. Viz:

The same quality you expect from Disney World can be expected from the Creation Museum

Once again evangelical atheists will be chuffed that Ken Ham has allowed through a statement that compares his Creation "Museum" with Disney Land! This is not really the association that any scientific museum would want to cultivate even if the intent is merely to convey something about the standard of the display.

Ken, you're not supposed to be broadcasting own goals like this; you're supposed to be promoting Christianity, not making it a laughing stock!


Who needs atheists to take the micky when we Christians have got Ken Ham and Co!

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

Christian Apologists Against Fideism

The atheists would agree!

An article appeared in the October edition of Christianity magazine entitled “Let’s be reasonable”. It’s about the presentation of Christian apologetics and debate. Let me just explain here that my own motives for studying and thinking are not primarily apologetic but rather motivated by a desire to unravel selected mysteries. This has a tendency to intensify my focus on very particular issues and away from the broad “jack-of-all-trades” focus required by an apologist because he or she is servicing an audience. However, there is a lot of very good stuff that comes from Christian apologists. In this particular connection what piqued my interest were these quotes from the article:

David Robertson, pastor of St Peter’s Free church, Dundee says:  “People say no one is ever converted through arguing. That is rubbish. Of course people are only converted through the Holy Spirit, but he uses different means”

Alister McGrath, theologian, says: “As an apologist, I occasionally meet some people who are aggressively anti-Christian. What made them like this was somebody taking a very anti-intellectual viewpoint; that faith is all about not  using your head, refusing to think and just trusting. People who say this kind of thing do create a lot of damage

I agree completely: The Holy Spirit is as much immanent in reasoning as he is anything else. Fideism is one of the byproducts of a Christian dualism that sharply separates out the supernatural from natural. Fideists are complete failures in what they may think of as the profane field of apologetics and so make their escape into the esoteric "supernatural" knowledge of those who claim to have the inexpressible inner light of the gnostic. Well, fair enough, perhaps they do have esoteric inner light; who knows how the Holy Spirit works in the inner man. However, the ultra-fideists believe they have a superior epistemic based on their arcane intuitions and they are intolerant of those who might claim that reason is a facet of revelation. Here’s an example of fideism that I picked up from a TV program which showcased a Christian “teacher”. As always with fideism it is ultimately self-contradictory: Unless the fideist shuts up completely (I wish they would) one can observe the amusing spectacle of the fideist justifying fideism with reason!

Fideist Number 1: If you always process salvation through your mind you will never enter the fuller things in your walk. You must move from a place of cognitive reasoning ability to a place where faith and belief flows through your spirit and not your head … God is beyond your logic.

Now, below is another farcical example of a fideist using reasoning to justify his fideism. This example is a particularly unpleasant and nasty specimen betraying a self-centered spiritual egotism: The quote has been taken from the post of an anonymous contributor to the comments section of the Christian web site Network Norwich and Norfolk: I have highlighted (in bold) some parts of this text, in particular those parts showing the use of the extreme anti-superlatives to which this kind of person is readily attracted. I have also highlighted those parts which evidence a resort to his "inner light"; that is, his intuitions and feelings which of course he identifies with Christ's authority. As a consequence notice that he has little respect for Bible study because to him intuitive inner light trumps reason; that’s just another way of raising his opinions and feelings to the level of divine authority!

Fideist Number 2:  Debate, debate, debate, even if you win sometimes you lose! What is the church? I want to tell you that in the heavy load that we carry called "the local church" it is very difficult for us to really slow down long enough to not just study the bible but to eat and drink that which it really speaks of which is the very person of Jesus Christ Himself. To intimately fellowship with Him even romantically as His bride even to eating His flesh and drinking His blood. I mean really doing this not just drinking a cup of grape juice and a piece of cracker and acting all introspective and holy in some ritualistic form. Brethren we have been ignorant of the devices of Satan. We have not known that religion and spiritual thinking in the minds of men is SATANS THROWN! (sic) I have had some conversations with members of the Jehovah’s witness cult and I was instructed at the time by the Holy Spirit not to debate with them from their intellect. The Spirit showed...that is EXACTLY what they want. They want to debate with you the scriptures. The moment you want to disprove their interpretation of the scripture with the scripture...they got you RIGHT WHERE THEY WANT YOU! Even if you outdo them with your wisdom... you lose. Because they will never know anything of what you are talking about because they are forming their argument even to "twisting" your words and guess who wins. Satan. You have just participated in and played his game. You want to tell the truth to someone and really help them to know the truth. Direct them to the teacher inside their spirit. Christ in them. Now if you don’t believe Christ is in them...well your gonna have to keep picking up that sword of the word and fighting it out but hear the echoes of our Saviour in the pressure of His passion....(He who lives by the sword SHALL DIE by the sword) The Carnal mind is DEATH the mind of the Spirit (within even deeper than intellect) is LIFE and PEACE. The letter KILLS but the Spirit gives life. Christ the teacher is in all men. Don’t debate with men direct them to Christ within. John said that which denys (sic) Christ in the flesh is the Spirit of Anti-Christ. That simply means "instead of Christ." Watch out if you get pleasure in debate...and pleasure in your doctrine...your church...your way of believing...watch out what spirit you really are in. Of whose domain really has dominion in that realm? Jesus told Peter Get behind me SATAN you do not know the things of God but THE THINGS OF MEN. Christ IN YOU is the hope of glory and Christ in others also!

I hardly need say that I don’t see eye to eye with the Jehovah’s Witnesses but it is very unfair to accuse them of being Satanic; in fact their methods, customs and epistemic philosophy are very similar to other fundamentalist Christians.

Like other fundamentalists the fideist I have quoted sees the world very much in the black and whites of depraved baddies versus spiritual goodies like himself. Unable to see the world in shades of grey he goes straight for the maximum fire power of the spiritual nuclear option, accusing, with loud shouts, those of whom he is unable to successfully reason of heinous sin and being instruments of Satan. Christians who do engage in reason are written off as falling for Satan’s wiles. In the fractious world of Christian sectarianism abusive accusations like this are as bad as it gets. This conceited spiritual bigot, of course, believes that he is above reason and instead receives direct instruction from God and the Christ within Viz “I wainstructed by the Holy Spirit”. "The Spirit showed [me]". Moreover, notice that he is very ready to rubbish other Christian's experience of communion over his own.

And yet in spite of the pretensions to a having a deep mystical union with Christ it is ironic that this conceited bigot is engaged in a spiritual ego trip that is manifestly all too humanly motivated. McGrath is completely right “People who say this kind of thing do create a lot of damage”. The only people that a testimony of the above sort attracts are fellow egotists who are tempted by thoughts of being part of a spiritual elite from where they can scream down hell and damnation on all who disagree with them.

Some relevant links:
http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/dallas-willard-catches-up-on-gnosticism.html