The ineffable is thoroughly effed — on Unbelievable?

Premier's Unbelievable? radio show continues to be a "curate's egg" experience. Some episodes are engaging and thought-provoking, but often they can be frustrating, and listening to them can be quite fascinating in a "Can this possibly get any worse?" kind of way. Today's show was like that. Justin Brierley's guests were Chris Sinkinson and John Hick. Here's Justin's introduction from the Unbelievable? website:

In an age of religious pluralism it can seem arrogant for Christians to claim they have "the truth" or the only means to salvation. So when Jesus said "no-one comes to the Father except through me" what did he mean? And what about those who have not heard the Gospel? John Hick is a noted philosopher and theologian who is a proponent of a pluralist view of religion - that there is one light (God) but many lampshades (religious expressions). Chris Sinkinson is a pastor and Bible tutor who has critiqued Hick's work. He says that pluralism empties Christianity of any content and in its own way disrespects other religions more than his own exclusivist stance.

I grant that this might be of interest to theologians, but I wonder how it would have gone down with the average Premier Radio listener. (No doubt we'll discover next week, when Justin reads some of his email — but I don't know how typical the respondents to Unbelievable? are.)

The show is available as mp3 audio here:
http://media.premier.org.uk/unbelievable/780e0b5d-0808-44f6-b9ac-063c3a2fdd31.mp3

In many ways I felt John Hick had the right idea. He was challenging all religions that claim to know the truth, much as an atheist might challenge, but seemed to take the lowest common denominator and opt for the kind of apophatic deity so beloved of the likes of Karen Armstrong and Terry Eagleton: God is a mystery; God is unknowable. So how can these people claim to know anything at all about such a God? John Hick almost, but not quite, went as far as to say that one couldn't know if God actually existed. In the face of such lack of knowledge he seemed to take that last bit on faith; he chose to believe in something called the "Ultimate Real" — presumably given such a name so that it needn't be defined in any substantial manner. Bear in mind that this Ultimate Real isn't a personal God. It has no personality, and it certainly doesn't answer prayers. There is, in fact, no way at all of knowing that it exists.

It's all very cosy, and presumably John Hick finds it reassuring that this Ultimate Real is there somewhere, in some sense. Maybe. Reassuring or not, personally I care whether my beliefs are true, and I'd like to believe something because it's true, rather than for any other reason.

Why Dawkins gets a bad rap for his books

Anyone who has actually read a book by Richard Dawkins knows that he writes with transparent clarity. And that's his undoing, as far as his detractors are concerned. If a book has a provocative title — The God Delusion, for instance — persons of a certain predisposition will be predisposed not to read the book itself, and will rely on others to tell them what the book contains. TGD was even described by one detractor as a "barely literate diatribe" — which is so far from the truth one can only wonder if this person read even a single sentence of it.

Dawkins is an educator. His books are written mostly for a lay audience, and he takes care to be precise. This is particularly noticeable in his latest, The Greatest Show On Earth, where he elucidates, in detail, the overwhelming evidence for the fact of evolution. After reading TGSOE, no-one of moderate education or intelligence can fail to have an understanding of why evolution explains how we came to be here.

That his sentences only need to be read once in order to glean the meaning therein, unfortunately counts against Dawkins when he is read by someone used to grappling with the obfuscations of theology. Dawkins' writing is so clear by comparison it can be dismissed as simplistic, superficial or shallow — when it is nothing of the kind. Clarity is the enemy — indeed the antithesis — of theology. That's why the likes of Terry Eagleton and Karen Armstrong dislike it so much.

Clarity is often, as Dawkins himself has noted, mistaken for stridency, militancy and shrillness. If people accuse Dawkins of being strident, militant or shrill, you can be sure they've not read his books or heard him speak. His message is clear — and if his detractors understand it (as they must, if they understand English), they have only one way to attack it — by attacking him. They interpret his clear message as an assault on the intricate convolutions of theological navel-gazing. In the face of Dawkins' exemplary clarity those who resort to such ad hominem attacks can be justly labelled shrill, militant or strident.