Christian faith is like soup*

Mark Vernon

In the Guardian, Mark Vernon comments on new books by Rowan Williams and Francis Spufford, beginning by asking, "What's it like to be a Christian?" He expands this to mean, "...what is faith as experienced?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/aug/19/rowan-williams-francis-spufford-christian

On Spufford's Unapologetic:

A central worry for him is not that the rational justification for belief has been undone. Faith is not about that anyway: as Coleridge noted, the best argument for Christianity is that "it fits the human heart".

As if "fits the human heart" means anything. Don't get me wrong, I'm quite the fan of metaphorical language. But metaphor (along with simile, its more straight-talking cousin) is useful only up to a point. Great for feelings, intuition and opinion, but not much cop at conveying fact. Metaphors and similes are useful for pointing out near equivalencies, but unless one is aware of the inevitable mismatch between the metaphor and the thing for which it is metaphorical, one can be easily misled — or unknowingly uninformed — as to the actual nature of the thing being discussed.

On Williams' The Lion's World:

None of this proves the existence of God in the way a science would demand because its evidence arises from the inner lives of individuals.

Evidence of what? Indigestion? More imprecise mystery-mongering.

It does, though, reflect a strand in the philosophical discussion of God, often forgotten today. Pascal drew attention to the problem God has in revealing himself to creatures he has made to be free, because if God were to offer irrefutable evidence then that would force a relationship of coercion, not love. God's solution, Pascal proposed, is to "appear openly to those who seek him with all their heart, and [to remain] hidden from those who shun him".

How very … convenient.

Williams' book is largely about C. S. Lewis, so the preponderance of what Daniel C. Dennett calls deepities should not be a surprise.

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*You didn't notice your soup bowl is directly under a leaking roof. No wonder it takes you so long to finish it, and no wonder it's so … thin.

In our universe, nothing beyond physics

This is from last month, the final episode in the current series of BBC Radio 4's Beyond Belief, with host Ernie Rea and three studio guests: John Lennox, Usama Hasan and Mark Vernon. The subject they're discussing is the origin of the universe, apparently triggered (the discussion, not the universe) by the success of Lawrence Krauss's new book, A Universe from Nothing. It's a shame they didn't get Krauss himself on the show, as he might have pointed out the elementary error Lennox commits in his very first comments. Here's the blurb from the BBC website:

When asked to defend their belief in a Creator God, people of faith often turn to the argument that there must be a First Cause - you can't create something out of nothing they say, therefore right at the beginning, someone must have been responsible for the first element from which sprang life.

A new book, "A Universe from Nothing", by the American theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, turns this argument on its head. Not only can something arise out of nothing, but something will always arise out of nothing because physics tells us that nothingness is inherently unstable.

The book has made an enormous impact in the States, making the New York Times' best sellers list, and it prompted Richards Dawkins to observe that it was "Potentially the most important scientific book with implications for atheism since Darwin".

So does it knock the argument for God on the head? Are physics and God irreconcilable?

Joining Ernie to discuss whether modern physics leaves any room for God are Dr John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, Dr Usama Hasan, Senior Lecturer at Middlesex University and a part time Imam, and Dr Mark Vernon, Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, London who has degrees in physics, theology and philosophy.

And Lennox's error?

"Having looked at Lawrence Krauss's book, I think the title from the start is very misleading, because the nothing he claims that is a nothing, is not actually a nothing."

Other theists have jumped on this bandwagon, despite Krauss being very clear precisely what kind of nothing he's discussing. The problem with Lennox's objection is that the nothing he thinks Krauss should be addressing — the total absence of anything whatever — is merely a philosophical construct with no possibility of being real in any sense that makes any sense. Lennox presumably believes that God exists, and is not nothing, and is eternal. If God — or indeed anything at all — is eternal, then Lennox's "nothing" is clearly an impossibility. Such being the case, it's disingenuous of him to complain that Krauss is studying some other kind of nothing.

Streaming audio of this episode of Beyond Belief is available here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01gf5w7

Not for the first time Lennox comes across as a barely disguised old-earth creationist, while Mark Vernon's mild atheism is reasonable but diffident (maybe he's being careful to avoid being labelled as "gnu"). Usama Hasan claims atheists cannot say where the laws of physics come from, as if they ought be inscribed on stone tablets somewhere up a mountain. In the middle of the episode Ernie Rae plays an interview with Graham Swinerd, an agnostic astronautics engineer who found Christ as a result of the fine-tuning argument — though as he also credits attending an Alpha Course one might perhaps consider him as already on the brink.

As is usual at the end of an episode Rae asks all three of his guests one question; this time it's whether the universe has a purpose. Hasan claims it's to declare the glory of God and to produce conscious beings able to choose between good and evil. Vernon doubts that the universe has an overall purpose, except as a container for people who have their own purposes. Lennox, however, goes into eccentric preacher-mode:

"The Universe is a temporary home for human beings created in the image of God. He's conveyed on us that immense dignity, and ultimately, for me, the whole purpose of life in the universe is to enjoy the fellowship of the creator that invented the atom."

Templeton's not-so-hidden agenda

What does the Templeton Foundation think it's doing? This year's Templeton prize, worth one million pounds sterling, has been awarded to the UK's Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees. Usually this is an award for saying nice things about religion. This year, it seems, it's for not saying anything particularly unpleasant about religion.

Sir Martin Rees

Martin Rees is not a believer in God, though he does apparently go to church. He says this is because he likes the music and the architecture, but it could also have something to do with his job; in addition to being the Queen's stargazer he's also Master of Trinity College, Cambridge — a post I imagine requires some measure of ceremonial officiation.

I first learned of this year's award from Ian Sample's article at the Guardian, which has a link to the transcript of an interview he conducted with his subject. The transcript is revealing — inasmuch as Rees is careful to reveal as little as possible (though after Sample's opening gambit I'm not surprised his interviewee appears reticent).

So, if someone offers you a prize, no strings attached, for something more or less unspecified that you may or may not have done, should you accept? If it's a bottle of Scotch you might feel a tinge of guilt if you're not quite sure what it is you're supposed to have done to deserve it. But what if the prize is a million quid? That, I think, would require some serious soul-searching. What would concern me most is the acknowledged mission of the organisation awarding the prize, which is for "affirming life's spiritual dimension". Knowing that mission I would feel constrained in my subsequent actions and words. This is likely Templeton's intention. By spreading their money around they are casting a financial net over a number of economically vulnerable voices, ensuring their own agenda is publicised. You only have to look at how much publicity this year's award has already garnered, to see how effective a strategy that is. (And yes, I know I'm contributing to it, if only to a minuscule degree, but the alternative is to ignore the issue and let Templeton have the arena to themselves.)

Lewis Wolpert and Peter Atkins discussed the prize on the Today Programme last Thursday morning. They both consider it to be an insidious distortion of scientific motivation, but I was surprised to hear Atkins say that if offered the prize he would accept it. (This eventuality is, however, even less likely than the prize being awarded to Richard Dawkins, who has in the past referred to Rees as a "compliant Quisling" for allowing the Royal Society to host a Templeton event.) Atkins went on to say he would use the money to set up an organisation to oppose Templeton and promote the separation of religion and science.

Jerry Coyne responded to the award in no uncertain terms — again at the Guardian — only to be followed by Mark Vernon once more cheer-leading for Templeton a day or so later. (This is hardly surprising — Vernon admits to being in receipt of Templeton benefaction.)

This whole affair reminds me of the Writers of the Future Contest, intended to encourage serious young genre authors to enter a fiction-writing competition for generous prizes. These prizes used to include print publication and participation in a residential writing workshop. Year on year this award has nurtured some of genre writing's brightest young talent, and is held to be a Good Thing. Only one problem: the Writers of the Future Contest is funded by Scientology. There's no coercion, no indoctrination, no personality or E-meter tests, and as far as I'm aware Scientology is never even mentioned unless it comes up in connection with the contest's deceased founder, science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.

But, tainted money is tainted money. And scruples are scruples — some people have them and some people don't.