The Choice To Be Irreligious

Late last year, I saw Matthew Continetti link a study by Gallup showing a decline in American religiosity. I didn't comment on it at the time, because I had other posts planned.

The article just linked refers to a "17-point drop in the percentage of U.S. adults who say religion is an important part of their daily life — from 66% in 2015 to 49% today". And you'd expect many of those 49% to be saying that religion is important to them without living like it, so the situation is even worse in that sense. I've cited many other such statistics over the years that reflect poorly on some large percentage of Americans, often a majority or large majority. See here, for example. The country is as secular and trivial as it is primarily because that's what most Americans want. Don't try to shift the blame.

Majoring On The Minors And Minoring On The Majors

Given how you behave in school, in the workplace, among relatives, on the internet, and in other contexts, how much reason do people have to think you're significantly different than the secular, trivial culture around you? You claim to object to how corrupt the culture is. Should you fit in as well as you do with the mainstream of the culture in school, among your relatives, on Twitter, on Facebook, and in other contexts?

I would not with swift wingèd zeal
On the world's errands go,
And labor up the heav'nly hill
With weary feet and slow.
(Thomas Gill, "Lord, In The Fullness Of My Might")

That God Is So Belittled

"Why is it that people can become emotionally and morally indignant over poverty and exploitation and prejudice and the injustice of man against man and yet feel little or no remorse or indignation that God is so belittled? It's because of sin. That is what sin is. Sin is esteeming and valuing and honoring and enjoying man and his creations above God. So even our man-centered anger at the hurt of sin is part of sin. God is marginal in human life." (John Piper)

The Broader Implications Of 2 Thessalonians 3:10

It's popular to apply the passage to something like a situation in which a man refuses to look for a job and wants to live off of government assistance instead. But the principle in 2 Thessalonians also has a broader application that tells us a lot about why the world is in the state it's in.

Who Martin Luther Was Above All Else

"The first endeavor must be to understand the man. One will not move far in this direction unless one recognizes at the outset that Luther was above all else a man of religion. The great outward crises of his life which bedazzle the eyes of dramatic biographers were to Luther himself trivial in comparison with the inner upheavals of his questing after God." (Roland Bainton, Here I Stand [Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1978], 6)

That's something to keep in mind as so many Christians in our day keep going after the false lead of the media, whatever is prominent in the news at the moment, and giving so much attention to gender issues, the family, politics, and such while doing so little in religious contexts.

Talk About Weird

Since there's been a lot of talk about alleged weirdness in politics lately:

"And we have to fight our way every day through this God-trivializing fog that we live in. We can hardly mention God in polite society. You don't need any reason to talk to a friend about the Atlanta Braves, but you actually have to have a reason to talk about God in a conversation. Think about how wrong that is. Almighty God, who sustains everything every moment of every day, is not front-page news. That's weird. Why? An idol has taken over." (Ray Ortlund, 4:12 in the audio of his April 20, 2003 sermon here)

Filling Their Heads And Hearts With Trifles

"Alas! that Christians should stand at the door of eternity, having more work upon their hands than their time is sufficient for, and yet be filling their heads and hearts with trifles!" (John Flavel, Keeping The Heart [Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications, 2019], 110)

When Religious Content Is Popular In Secular Contexts

I recently saw some people discussing the phenomenon of religious content being well received on a YouTube channel, television show, or some other context that's generally secular. And that raises the question of why religious content is so much less popular when it's placed in a more religious setting (e.g., a religious YouTube channel). I think the situation is multifaceted, and I'm not going to try to explain everything that's going on, but I want to mention a few of the factors that seem likely to be involved.

The Vastness of Space

Last month, the Pentagon released its report on UFOs. Since then, I've been musing a bit on whether or not extraterrestrial life could exist. In itself, this is probably a pointless excursion, given that God can do whatever He wants and He may or may not have made other life out there somewhere without telling us. But something struck me as I thought about the various arguments put forth.

One argument is that there surely must be life out there since there are so many trillions of stars that there must be countless planets just like ours in solar systems far away, and if evolution can have life form here then surely life can form in these other planets too. Setting aside the fact that evolution already presupposes the existence of life in the first place and therefore can't create it, this argument seems to fly in the face of the “anthropic principal” presented by secularists. That is, the anthropic principal is the claim that the necessary fine tuning of all the variables needed in our local solar system for life to exist on Earth is not evidence of design, but rather is simply the result of the vastness of space. Given how big the universe is and how many “rolls of the dice” individual locations were enabled to have, some place had to have the ideal conditions which resulted in our existence.

The reason these two explanations run counter to each other is easily displayed by a simple question. Which is it? Is life so easy to form that the vastness of the universe is why aliens are probably out there, or is life so difficult to form because it needs such precise values that the vastness of the universe is needed for us to exist in our seemingly designed location?

The sad thing is, I don't think most secularists even realize these two views are at odds with each other.

Woke church

CREED:

Bethesda pic.twitter.com/qSgCNk1zi7

— maria viti (@selfdeclaredref) June 2, 2020

EVANGELISM:

I pledge to continue opposing racism & hate. To set aside my implied right to silence, inaction, & comfort, and act to leverage my privilege to make a difference. Join me by nominating 5 others to do the same. @jamesbeck_ATS @JuanCCeledonMD @drtishawang @laxswamy @NitinSeam

— Graham Carlos (@GrahamCarlos) June 4, 2020

TITHING:

Spending my day donating. Join me if you have the means. Any amount counts. Will post links where you can contribute, starting with this one #BLM https://t.co/4af7NG3oNq

— Dylan O'Brien (@dylanobrien) May 31, 2020

WORSHIP:

You weren’t allowed to go to church for the last three months but apparently you could have gotten together for a dance party. Well, as long as you have the right politics of course.

pic.twitter.com/DpO5Cr2w40

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 4, 2020

SAINTS:

TIME's new cover: Say their names https://t.co/nOM5sqwVkS pic.twitter.com/tgzEcLn2ds

— TIME (@TIME) June 4, 2020

ANTI-SCIENCE:

OUT: COVID-19 is so dangerous that you can't even visit your loved one in the hospital even if they're dying.

IN: Hospital staff can go outside and applaud protesters, many of who, are walking with without a mask or social distancing.

It's really hard to reconcile those things. https://t.co/SLqCwRGVdw

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) June 4, 2020

REPENTANCE:

Such an absolute joke pic.twitter.com/J7MQnUZ3YP

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 4, 2020

APOSTASY:

Matt Yglesias getting redpilled will be a 2020 highlight. https://t.co/UYAA4KnzRI

— neontaster (@neontaster) June 4, 2020

Non-conformists

The rituals at these protests closely resemble what you would see at an Evangelical-style religious service. Collective kneeling or sitting in prayer. Hands raised reverentially to the sky. Liturgical chants. This is a new expression of secular, civic religion pic.twitter.com/XZo021AZgp

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 3, 2020

Terminator's dark fate

I haven't seen the newly released Terminator: Dark Fate. I've just been reading some reviews.

1. It seems like the reviews of this movie are mixed. On the one hand, it sounds like this is the best sequel to the first two Terminator movies.

   On the other hand, it sounds like it still falls short of T1 and T2. Apparently there's nothing seriously wrong with the characters and the presentation, per se. Also, the CGI is said to be first-rate (e.g. flawlessly de-aging Ahnuld and Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in an introductory scene). But evidently the story suffers. Indeed, the story seems to be the main problem.

2. If so, I suspect that means there's little left to say that hasn't already been said. T1 and T2 pretty much said it all. What more can a franchise say about the dangers of A.I., killer robots, time travel, and strong female protagonists? At least a secular worldview can't say much more. If so, this illustrates the limitations of a secular worldview.

3. Take a worldview based on naturalism and neo-Darwinism. What's the significant difference between an A.I. cyborg and a human being? Aren't we both essentially meat machines?

   What room is there for supposedly human distinctives like free will and consciousness? Given naturalism and neo-Darwinism, free will is an illusion. Both A.I. cyborgs and human beings are hardwired to do what we do, either by preprogrammed neural circuitry from a computer programmer working in tandem with a robotics engineer or by natural selection and random mutations acting on our species across the eons to give us the genome we have today +/- the social conditioning we've been raised with. Either way, how does free will really exist?

   Furthermore, consciousness is most likely an emergent property of the physical brain. Consciousness is reducible to the physical brain. Likewise, other creatures could have consciousness. Other creatures could evolve to be conscious like we are. Perhaps someday, after Homo sapiens have long died out, the Earth will be ruled by sentient dolphins. That's not necessarily a joke, not if naturalism and neo-Darwinism are true!

4. By contrast, if the Terminator series could have Christian theistic foundations, then there would be far more to work with.

   Given a Christian worldview, even if a robot seemed to be as conscious as a human being presumably due to similar or superior intelligence (i.e. intelligence is more like a "symptom" pointing to an underlying consciousness), that doesn't necessarily mean they are conscious. A.I. could be as intelligent as our supercomputers (e.g. Summit, Sierra), or indeed far more so, and even more intelligent at calculating this or that than Einstein, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are conscious in the same way humans are conscious. I presume humans are conscious because we have a God-breathed spirit. At the very least, a Terminator movie could play with these ideas.

   Likewise, on a Christian worldview, one could write a story based on the debates between free will theists like Arminians vs. Calvinists. There are many directions this could go.

5. Another idea is personal sacrifice. It's moving to see Ahnuld sacrifice himself to save a human being, but if we think more deeply about it, why should we care about a self-sacrificial cyborg? Indeed, on naturalism and neo-Darwinism, why should we care about a self-sacrificial human being? Sure, they took one for the team, but at the end of the day, so what? It's not the individual who counts, but the collective species.

   On Christianity, self-sacrifice would have far more depth of meaning. For one thing, it could point to the fact that there are some things worth dying for. Moreover, this in turn could imply this life isn't all there is. There's something more.

   This stands in stark contrast to secular self-sacrifice where sacrifice is either something we were preprogrammed to do for the greater good of the population as a whole or something we would be foolish to do if we could avoid it since the individual self is everything. It's all about passing on one's genetic material. It's all about living longer and better than the next guy.

2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey has most of the elements I tend to love in science fiction. It attempts scientific and technical realism. It moves at a pensive pace. It has stunning visuals and awe-inspiring music. The story as it unfolds is strong. The villain is fitting and worthy. What's front and center is ideas over action. It doesn't pander to the audience. In fact, quite the opposite, in its challenge to make the audience think, to ponder and wonder. It has a consistent and meaningful overall message. The film sits with you long after leaving the theaters, as it were. It's thoughtful, reflective, meditative. So I'd say I have a high appreciation for the movie as a work of art, as evidence of Stanley Kubrick's mastery as a filmmaker and storyteller.

However, the film's "philosophical statement about man's place in the universe" (Roger Ebert) is precisely why I don't enjoy watching it. It's secular through and through. Humanity evolves, then transcends itself, beyond man. Secular salvation on the silver screen. Although I suppose it reflects the fact that even secularists like Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke know this flesh and these bones aren't all we are, not all we're meant to be; that we're made for something more. In this respect, I think the star child is visionary, but it takes a cue from and riffs off of Christianity. A man of dust transformed into a man of "heaven". A seed is sown, it dies the death, then blooms into a "heavenly" body. Rather than God remaking us, we've remade ourselves, albeit with help from an apparently benevolent if enigmatic and god-like alien species tugging us along the pathway until we reach the next evolutionary stage. Born anew, the perishable clothed with the imperishable, from dust to stardust. Putting away childish ways, childhood's end, becoming true man, which is star man. The beatific vision of the star child depicted on celluloid is alluring indeed - man in wonderment over man, gazing upon the old earth from a perch in the new heavens - but in truth the star child is a gross caricature or twisted parody of the new creation in Christ. If we look past the cinematic mask, through the angelic disguise, then we might consider how the star child is nearer Frankenstein's monster than God's new Adam.

With or without God

So much of #apologetics about the alleged ‘absurdity’ or ‘meaninglessness’ of life without God is nothing more than philosophically elaborate ways of saying ‘I don’t like the idea of life without God.’ #atheism

— Secular Outpost (@SecularOutpost) March 11, 2018

Although this is an example of armchair psychoanalysis, it doesn't refute what I wrote. Now, if I'm wrong, I want to be corrected. Where are the examples of meaning of life apologetics which amount to more than a subjective "I don't like the idea of life without God"? https://t.co/Cx26Y5bJmU

— Secular Outpost (@SecularOutpost) March 22, 2018

Of course, some atheists "don't like the idea of life [with] God". Take Alduous Huxley in Ends and Means:

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning - the Christian meaning, they insisted - of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.

Out of the mouth of babes

The medical ethics involved in the Charlie Gard case are a significant issue. However, the more looming issue is the illicit power of the state. The UK will be taking Charlie Gard off life support at a time it deems best. At the same time the UK has forbidden Charlie Gard's parents from traveling with their baby to our shores to seek potentially life-saving experimental treatment even though it'd all be on the Gards' own dime.

I wonder if one reason UK bureaucrats and other agents of the state are acting so immorally isn't because many of them - and indeed many UK denizens in general (excepting Muslims) - don't have kids and so aren't able to empathize with parents who by definition do? Perhaps for these agents of the state it's essentially an intellectual exercise. An abstraction with a poor footing in reality.

Maybe in their minds it's more akin to putting down a favorite pet animal.

Catholic polemics and the Enlightenment

Catholic apologists sometime allege that the Protestant movement is responsible for the Enlightenment and secularization. Here's a discussion in which it's the other way around: Counter-Reformation polemics were a catalyst for the Enlightenment and secularization:

https://rationalityofaith.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/how-the-17th-c-french-catholic-use-of-pyrrhonian-scepticism-against-calvinism-created-the-french-enlightenment-skeptics/

https://rationalityofaith.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/from-attacking-jansenist-miracles-to-naturalistic-disenchantment-of-history/

Fire extinguishers

Cessationist critics of the charismatic movement draw attention to the heresy, chicanery, and gullibility that's rife in that movement. And there needs to be more scrutiny in that regard. 

Cessationists don't view these as isolated abuses and excesses that are incidental to charismatic theology, but the inevitable outcome of a flawed theological paradigm. And I think there's an element of truth to that. From my reading, charismatic theology fosters unrealistic expectations regarding the frequency with which God will perform miracles or guide individuals. 

That said, does cessationism suffer from a parallel problem? Are cessationists oblivious to what their own theology may cultivate? Consider mainline denominations like the American Baptist–USA, CRC, ECUSA, ELCA, PC-USA, RCA, UMC, UCC.

Historically, I believe these are either officially cessationists or overwhelmingly cessationist in practice. Although "charismatic renewal" has happened in the ECUSA, that occurred late in the history of the denomination. 

Now, these mainline denominations are hotbeds of heterodoxy and heteropraxy. They're the cessationist counterpart to comparable phenomena in the charismatic movement. Why not link that to cessationism? 

Charismatic theology and cessationist theology are liable to opposing errors.  Charismatic theology is inclines to superstition while cessationist theology inclines to secularization. 

Of course, cessationists will object to my comparison with mainline denominations. They will say that's unfair. At best, there's an incidental overlap between cessationism and liberal mainline denominations. But charismatics would say cessationists are guilty of the same thing when they attack the charismatic movement en masse. 

Moreover, I don't think these are isolated cases, incidental to the cessationist paradigm. In my view, a common flaw of charismatic theology and cessationist theology alike is to assume that God is too predicable. The difference is they assume God is predictable in opposite ways. Predictably interventionist or predictably noninterventionist. 

Cessationism operates with a pretty noninterventionist view of God during the course of church history, and their low expectations can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A noninterventionist God becomes difficult to distinguish from a nonexistent God–except, perhaps, as the "ground of being".

If the charismatic tradition produces arsonists, the cessationist tradition produces fire extinguishers. We need to be equally attentive to the consequences of both traditions. 

My own position is that God is fairly unpredictable–at least from a human perspective. When, where, and how God intercedes in history is generally surprising or perplexing. We pray and wait for whatever will happen-or not.  

Fired for pro-life beliefs

"ORTL President Fired from Day Job over Pro-Life Beliefs"

Christians Evangelizing For Secularism

There's a growing list of contexts in which many people think we should say little or nothing about God. Think of the radical redefining of separation of church and state and religious liberty in recent decades and the reaction to the intelligent design movement, for example. It's often considered too divisive, embarrassing, or whatever to bring up religious matters in school, in the workplace, in the media, or at family gatherings. The more that mindset is adopted in some settings, the more it tends to grow in others.

I recently heard somebody commenting on how Christians often use Facebook, Twitter, and other media to do things like post photographs of their children and discuss sporting events, yet say nothing about subjects like God and the Bible. I've been astonished by how many people's Facebook accounts are a form of evangelization for secularism. And that occurs even in nations where the large majority of people claim to be Christian. They have so much to say about their children and grandchildren, friends, music, movies, television, sports, their jobs, politics, travel, food, etc., but so little to say, if anything, about matters like God, theology, and apologetics. When people see something like your Facebook account, blog, or Twitter page, do they see a secular, or nearly secular, lifestyle?

You don't always know who your audience is or how much you're influencing people. If you live well, such as by speaking up about issues you ought to be speaking up about, that will influence other people to do the same. You don't know how much joy or encouragement you might bring some relative, former coworker, or somebody else who comes across your Facebook account or blog and sees you identifying yourself as a Christian or giving some indication of how much you've matured as a Christian. There are people who are looking for that sort of evidence where they want to find it, but aren't seeing it. I doubt that most people realize how damaging it is when so much of their life, including their online presence, is so secular.

"I am constantly astonished at people who say they believe in God but live as though happiness were to be found by giving him 2 percent of their attention." (John Piper, Desiring God [Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Books, 1996], 268)

The Spirit of the Age

A piece well worth reading: "The Spirit of the Age" by Matthew Schultz.