Atheist Superbowl Commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0ZqQznblZo&sns=fb

A former student alerted me to this Superbowl commercial that was sponsored by an atheist group. She wanted me to write a post about it, so I am.

A disclaimer comes first. No self-respecting atheist thinks you should consult a commercial to find representation for the atheist position, but since obviously several atheists put this thing together, it might be amusing to respond to it, with approximately equal brevity.

The way I will do this is to address a few of the assertions in the ad because clearly there are no arguments in it. Syllogisms make for uninteresting commercials.

The ad begins with a series of statements addressing the elite that are in the family of the skeptics, atheists, agnostics, etc. The ad called them "non-conformists" and "free thinkers." Let us begin there.

Why on earth should anyone think that an atheist is anything other than a conformist? The broader culture seems to be nominally religious, usually possessing some vague belief in a mystical "other" out there. But what if one considers the decidedly anti-Christian liberal college environment, and the decidedly anti-Christian pop culture environment? If it is true that such places are aligning rather nicely with atheism, then please tell me how becoming an atheist is some bold departure from cultural norms. As a resident of California, it sure looks the other way round to me--that it is far more non-conformist to be a Christian than to be a proud college grad, armed with a degree in something terribly fashionable from someplace even more fashionable, whining about how Christians and Christianity are ruining everything, especially all the liberal goals.

I think the typical atheist/"non-conformist" should ask himself or herself this simple question: Have I ever had a relationship of any substance with an intelligent, informed Christian, or have I ever read a substantive book written by a Christian? If the answer is no, then probably they should abandon the notion of being a persecuted cultural loner striving fruitlessly against a massive tide of ignorant cultural opposition. These are the clone wars, and the modern university is the assembly line.

And another thing, the ad praised "free thinking," which I take to be utterly meaningless in the lips of an atheist. In the context of the ad it seems to advocate asserting one's own ideas. But what if my idea is to kill a bunch of people? Isn't that non-conformist, free thinking and the like? I guess I don't have much to say here except that ads are poor places to promote philosophy since there is no ground for understanding what on earth the atheist can mean by "free thinking." As soon as he starts defining it, we realize that there are a lot things he wants to do to restrict us. Think Stalin, Mao, Hitler and the gaggle of other advocates of atheistic "free thinking."

We are assured that the fuel of the passion of the atheist is "not belief in magic," but the quest for knowledge. What I want to know here is why the atheist believes the unitive act of knowledge is at all meaningful in a universe thrown together by chance and destined for material particularization? Crane, an atheist himself, is a stout enough critic of such an idea:

A man said to the universe: 
"Sir I exist!" 
"However," replied the universe, 
"The fact has not created in me 
A sense of obligation." 

A last thought and then I leave the subject: Note the two terms so celebrated by atheists, logic and truth. Atheists love logic and truth and hate magic and the Easter bunny. So if you want logic, you had better become an atheist and if you want to protect the habitat of the Easter bunny, then remain a simpleton Christian. See how simple these choices can be.

But surely any logical reductio analysis of atheism will demonstrate that logic makes absolutely no sense in a godless, mindless, purposeless universe in which we are merely adrift amid universal debris; in which we ourselves are nothing more than universal debris. Many atheists themselves want to know if logic is merely a human adaptation and was not itself intended and is not therefore necessarily universal or objective. If that is the case, then one cannot proclaim that logic is the "one truth." Many atheists have become postmoderns, and if one is to be consistent with their systems, then logic is nothing more than a "western notion." How are we to claim that our western notions are better than African tribal notions, where logic may play a far less significant role?

In the end, the commercial is ironically amusing but not particularly coherent.

Grad Speech

Recently I was given the honor of sharing the keynote speech at our graduation ceremony. Here is the transcript:

What I’d like to do today is to offer a simple message of encouragement and challenge to our graduates. As I was thinking about the many things that can be said at an event like this, and the many things that have been said and forgotten, I decided to describe what I hope every eagle will be that we graduate from this place. What do we want the characteristics of a BCHS Eagle to be?

We want our Eagles to have keen vision.

Your parents and your teachers here have tried to give you insight into the philosophical issues of our day and training that will prepare you for the intellectual challenges you will face. We have also tried to help you see your culture for what it is, in contrast to the culture of Christ. Many of you, perhaps even most of you, have accepted this training and have prepared well. I commend you.

Some of you have worked the system. Sorry to be so blunt here, but some of you have only jumped through the minimalist hoops we have designed for you to jump through and you are not in the least prepared to face thoughtful representatives of other worldviews and stand your ground.

One of three things could happen to you, and to any who are not prepared to face cultural and intellectual challenges to the Christian faith.

One, you could be overwhelmed and assimilated. You will perhaps sit in a lecture hall and hear compelling words artfully denouncing your beliefs, and you will not know what to say or even what to think. Perhaps you will conclude, “if I can’t beat them, why not join them.” And you will drift away.

Perhaps you will sit in your dorm hall and see glamorous, outrageous and fun people boldly and colorfully flouting God’s moral standards, and apparently getting away with it. And without an ability to articulate the emptiness of it all, you will end up living exactly as they do.

A second result may follow from a lack of preparation. Perhaps instead of joining them, you will separate wholly from them. You will descend from the evil of the culture and the dangers of intellectual challenges into the safe confines of the Christian subculture. Here you will surround yourselves with Christians, buy Christian music, Christian books, and Christian products of all kinds. Perhaps here you will remain a Christian, but you will be an impotent one, unable to meet thinking people on their ground and bring the truth of the Christian worldview into the marketplace of ideas.

But there is a final possibility. Perhaps if you haven’t prepared, on facing these challenges firsthand, you will wake up from your intellectual slumber and begin your training. This would be my prayer for any Eagles leaving this place today unprepared.

We also want our Eagles to mature rapidly.

The challenges of nature are urgent and that is why actual Eagles must mature so rapidly, but perhaps it is no different for our Eagles.

The writer of Hebrews similarly charges Christians to mature more rapidly than they were. He says to them, “by now you should be teachers, but you need someone again to teach you the elementary principles of God’s word.”

What is a mature Christian? According to Scripture, it is one who has learned in order to be a teacher. It is one thing to learn in order to navigate a test or dupe a teacher into thinking you read a book. It is quite another thing to learn so well that you become a resource for the next generation. And so I ask each of you solemnly: Have you learned well enough to be a teacher? Can you articulate the faith once for all handed down to the saints? Can you model it well? The time is coming when you will encounter people who will need more than Mr. Martin’s notes… as good as they are. They will need you to be a living witness to the reality of God in the world, both in word and in deed. I know by God’s grace you will be that for people.

We like our Eagles to be Aggressive.

You may remember the words of Dr. Bahnsen: “We set for the absolute necessity of Christianity in order to make sense of human reason, moral law, human dignity, love and every other intelligible human experience.”

That’s an aggressive statement. We see nothing here of the possibility or the probability of Christianity. We see no hedging or hemming and hawing. We see a gauntlet thrown down in the midst of all available worldviews. “Let Jesus be true and all else shown to be liars.”

But as you have learned here, this aggressiveness requires confidence in one’s understanding of one’s own faith and the deficiencies within other worldviews, and also grace in communicating both.

I challenge you to go forward from this place confidently proclaiming that education, morality, human reason, science, unity and diversity, and therefore love—are all our intellectual property as Christians.

It is time to play offense, to assert the superiority of Christ in the world loudly, and to insist that burden of proof is a shared burden when it comes to worldviews. We must insist that the atheist or pantheist, Muslim or postmodernist, demonstrate to us how their worldview makes sense of human reason, love, individual dignity, moral law, science and the like.

In the end, we need to be able to address the gaping philosophical emptiness of other worldviews, and demonstrate that Christianity is the only philosophical position that can suffuse the human experience with beauty and meaning.

We want our Eagles to Soar.

You are probably familiar with the parable of the eagle and the chickens… It goes something like this:

An eagle egg falls from its nest into a chicken coop, where it hatches. The eaglet is then raised by chickens and learns to behave like a chicken, scratching and pecking at the ground. And as I recall there are two interesting endings to the story; one in which the chicken sees an eagle in flight and after a certain length of time mounts to the skies to live among the clouds as nature designed him to live. The other, and less happy ending, has the eagle content to live the remainder of his days on the ground among the chickens though he was made for so much more.

My prayer is that you will soar higher than your culture.

That you will, in the words of Dr. Horner, “out-think and out-live your culture.”

My prayer is that you will lead in the arts, in science, and that our culture will be deeply affected by your various contributions in it.

In closing, let me say this: We love you! You are ours. You are our “living epistles, written on human hearts.” We have a vested interest in you. If you need us, you know where to find us.

Lady Blah Blah

I know... really clever title to this blog, right? What I'm interested in discussing today is the argument in Lady Gaga's new song, "You Were Born This Way."

The key line is, "... you're on the right track, baby, you were born this way..." And it goes on to talk about gays, bisexuals, transvestites, etc. Real shocker that she has this kind of message and agenda.

But here is the latent argument within the song:

Premise 1: If you are born to do ... X , then it is acceptable for you to do X.
Premise 2: You were born to do ... X.
Conclusion: It is acceptable (morally) for you to do X.

My response here is a simple question regarding premise 1: Why should we believe it is obvious that if we are born a certain way that it must be morally acceptable for us to be that way? Does it really follow?

Let's play with a few examples:

Premise 1: If you are born to be a pedophile, then it is acceptable to be a pedophile.
Premise 2: Some people are born to be pedophiles.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is acceptable to be a pedophile.

Or...

Premise 1: If you are born to be a sociopath, then it is acceptable to be a sociopath.
Premise 2: Some people are born to be sociopaths.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is acceptable to be a sociopath.

Or...

Premise 1: If you are born to be homophobic, then it is acceptable to be homophobic.
Premise 2: Some are born to be homophobic.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is acceptable to be homophobic.

Now, of course Lady Gaga is no professional philosopher, but that doesn't mean we should accept muddle headed nonsense simply because it is accompanied by a driving beat.

Polytheism

This poem was inspired by the court case in which the phrase, "under God," was deemed unconstitutional. It speaks to the expectation from many evangelicals that the state conduct its business according to God's revelation in Scripture.

One Nation Under Gods

They say polytheism is dead,
but I am too American to believe it.

We call it diversity, pluralism,
the eclectic spirit—an enlightened land
where disagreement is our only agreement.

But this is the land of many gods,
each dutifully worshipped in congress
by those too clever to worship any one
exclusively.

Deferential homage is paid to our
celebrities, politicians, religious leaders and their gods,
like Lincoln in his majestic Parthenon.
And each in his proper turn.

We Americans look back on prior civilizations
with haughty eyes,
in the manner a modern physician looks
upon the barbarism of bloodletting.

Who can compete with the sophistication
of the American Pantheon?
We offer no Messiah!
We offer a thousand Messiahs—each
dancing for our amusement, and,
more importantly, each subject to our approval.

The American spirit abhors the
Theocratic tyranny of a single Deity!
No solitary god will enjoy a monopoly here!
In America, the best Jesus can hope
for is to be one of our many representatives,
like Ted Kennedy.

Americans demand their options!
Our options define us. Without them we
are controlled, but this freedom must
extend to our gods as well.
Our gods must be subject to fluctuating
market conditions and the complex
variety of our appetites.

We must be free to find the god that suits us!

And the prophet says,
“Perhaps it is we who must be transformed to suit God.”

November, 2001

Pearls

A poem written after my 3rd or 4th year of teaching.

“Do not cast pearls before swine”
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl of great price”
~The Words of Jesus

Pearls

While the teacher stood and expounded the ancient truths of God
heaven opened,

and a shower of pearls rained down upon the students,
clacking and dancing upon the tile floor,
bouncing off petrified hearts
like hail on concrete.

The sound was deafening, but no one heard,
no one reacted, grasped the priceless pearls,
no one noticed their presence.

Seeing they could not see and hearing they could not hear.

Stillness settled over the room. The dance of the pearls was over.
An insolent student asked,
“When does this class end?”

Whereupon the bell rang
and the students herded for the door
like suffocating desperate animals pressing for air,
trampling and kicking the pearls
now scattered aimlessly about the antiseptic tile.

A few tripped over them and cursed them,
incensed that they had impeded progress to the exit.

But at last they were free of the classroom.

Later that evening,
the night janitor was puzzled to see that thousands of pearls were left behind.
He assumed they were worthless, having been so abandoned.

And so, these pearls,
the sublime treasure of God,
the fruit of God’s mind,
offered freely in order to be treasured as ornaments of the human mind,
were both regarded as trash and discarded as trash.

May, 2005