I am still waiting on the massive news campaign about Antony Flew’s announcement. I’m sure at least pastors are going to make the most of the news that the world’s most prominent atheist is no longer an atheist. I noticed Robert Schuller had two film clips of Flew in this morning’s sermon. Kind of like a before and after picture. Before, not believing in God because believing in God is like a “married bachelor.” God is a contradiction. After believing in God “almost entirely because of the DNA investigations.” Flew uses words like extraordinary and unbelievable when considering design.

So, be prepared to hear much about this in churches around the country for some time. Christmas Eve will have a lot of Flew illustrations. At the same time recognize that you will not hear much more about this from anywhere else.

Now, if the pope had said he no longer believes in Jesus… Oh, I suppose there would be a Nightline, 20/20, or at least a brief report on the Discover channel. We’ll have to wait and see on Professor Flew.

Every year at Christmas and Easter, it seems Time and Newsweek always have a Jesus cover story. This year is no exception. What they know is Jesus sells. What they don’t know, it usually appears, is Jesus. There is a standard formula that goes like this.

1. Have a non-theologically educated, non-historically educated journalist cast doubt on many aspects of the life of Jesus.
   
2. Find obscure out-of- the mainstream biblical scholars or historians to support some of your hypotheses.
   
3. Rehash the same questions that have been asked for the last 250 years since the Age of “Enlightenment”
   
4. Conclude with nothing startling and no new evidence to refute the basic truths of scripture
   
5. Try again next year

Here is this year’s Newsweek article. Here is one of many respected scholarly responses. So, what does this all mean? For Christmas, it always comes down to a couple of basics.

1. The Christmas story is told differently by gospel writers Matthew and Luke
   
   This is no surprise. All basic Bible students are taught this. What is so astounding are the similarities of the stories between two independent authors.
   
   
2. The wise men weren’t there when Jesus was born.
   
   Christians just combined the later visit of the Magi with Christmas Eve for poetic reasons. The Bible never says they were there.
   
   
3. Christmas was not in December.
   
   The Bible never said it was. Christians just started celebrating it then because the surrounding culture already had celebrations at this time and they borrowed the culture’s emphasis and “Christianized” it. Like Jesus did when he connected Holy Communion out of Passover or like Christian rock music of today.
   
   
4. The Virgin birth.
   
   This is a strange and unusual claim. Miracles always are. Examine the evidence and the response by the earliest Christians. And remember this: After resurrection, all the other miracles are a piece of cake. Our faith rises and falls on the resurrection of Jesus, and nothing more or less than that event.

Well, enough on this topic. I imagine I’ll have more to say around Easter time.

I have posted about Antony Flew’s “conversion” from atheism to theism. It is not that unusual for this to happen with the scholastically minded (at least honest, seeking scholars), as the origin of life question is not being satisfactorily answered by Darwinian evolution. Getting something out of nothing and getting life from non-life is becoming more difficult to explain in any other way but a super-intelligent creative agent.

But what makes Flew’s conversion newsworthy is, of course, his stature. I have explained it this way, it is like Michael Moore becoming campaign manager for George W. Bush. Don’t take the analogy too far, however, as Flew has had a gracious relationship with the theist’s he has debated over the years. An exclusive interview of Flew by prominent Christian philosopher Dr. Gary Habermas is available online. This is the first major piece since Flew’s announcement, to be published in “Philisophia Christi.” Take a look.

“Famous Atheist Now Believes in God.” This is the headline from an AP article last Thursday. I have been writing on atheism the past couple of days and wouldn’t you know it, one of the world’s foremost atheists has second thoughts. Antony Flew, a British philosophy professor, has had a change of mind at 81 years old. Here is an excerpt of a recent interview.

A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature.



That sounds vaguely familiar. This is big enough news that it has caused an instant rebuttal, of sort, but I believe the damage has already been done on this one. Because of the prominence of Flew, his work is frequently cited by atheists attempting to make their case. Time will tell how long that lasts.

In the meantime, remember I mentioned it is up to the theist to make the case for a personal God, for me, the God of the Bible? Sure enough, Flew hasn’t gone that far.

“I’m thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins,” he said. “It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose.”



Oh well, it’s a start.

Complete intellectual honesty requires a serious consideration of there being a God of some sort. It goes back to that critical question that must be answered in a rational fashion: How do you get something from nothing? This question is so foundational and obvious that it puts the ball in the atheist’s court.

Until you can make a principled, reasonable case for something to be created from nothing, you must always rely on technique rather than logic. Examples of technique used by atheists might be aggressively questioning the God-believer (theist) and taking the offensive, defaulting to an emotional appeal, or falling into logical fallacies.

Now, when it comes to a specific God, then it is the theist’s turn to make the case in the same principled, reasonable way. A “creative agent” does not automatically turn into the God of the Bible.

So, I would argue the atheist is required to provide the evidence there is no God and the theist is required to make the case for a specific God.

Why don’t those who are following Jesus have the same despair as atheists and agnostics? After all, Christ followers disappoint themselves. Christ followers doubt their own abilities to handle life. What’s the difference? It’s all about the Other.

Those who follow Jesus (disciples) can look outside of themselves for help. If there really is a God then this God can actually intervene and provide guidance. In the Christian worldview, this God can forgive and disciples realize this and can bounce back from any disaster they bring upon themselves. If there is a God then this God’s power must be amazing (universe creator, after all). Therefore, to follow this God will bring hope and assurance rather than despair and hopelessness, because the results of faith are immersed in reality.

Have you ever disappointed yourself? Have you ever doubted your own abilities? Now, add to the mix that there is no God. No spiritual realm. So what do you do?

Learn from your mistakes? How do you know you won’t just mess up again? How would you learn in the first place? If there is no God then you are just the circuitry in your brain and that has already disappointed you before. Are you going to try to tell your brain to fire in some different synapses next time so you get the correct decision? How do you know you are thinking correctly in the first place to be able to do even that?

Now you can see how unbelievably difficult it is to fathom there not being a God. I would argue that these kinds of questions are not generally examined by an agnostic or atheist. How could they? Despair is not a sustainable condition. Eventually it will drive one to madness or some psychological or chemical dependence to attempt to mask the hopelessness. In the meantime, how would any decision be made other than what your body and emotions influence you to do? Unless of course, you are not an atheist or agnostic at all.

Maybe, just maybe, you are holding out for something more. He is holding out for you. Tomorrow we’ll look at another way.

I hung out with our soon-to-be 16 year old daughter and her friends the other day. We went to the mall for a quick look and then off to the volleyball banquet at the local soul food restaurant. As I am eating fried okra and hot links watching the young women sing karaoke, it dawns on me what a strange world I have entered. Girls do just want to have fun.

You never saw a group of people so enjoying the company of each other, no posturing, and no one was left out of the mix. I don’t know if it was the fact that they played sports together (has to help), or these young women simply have their act together. Now I am not naïve. I have worked with youth for over 20 years. I coach middle school girl’s basketball; I have seen Bring It On and Mean Girls for crying out loud! But I dare say there is something we can learn from teenage young women.

Pay attention to everyone in the room. Encouragement and affirmation are pretty powerful tools. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Smile a lot. Laugh a lot. Thanks for the lesson 2004 Reseda High School Girl’s Volleyball team. You rock!

I have spent several days now reviewing the debate concerning Darwinian evolution. Those of you who may have glossed-over eyes, you can breathe a sigh of relief, I am done for a while on this topic. Please know that this is an important issue. For example, it is a good entry point for discussion with your atheist or agnostic friends. The debate is not over by a long shot. As evidence for “something else” continues to mount, we will see science adapt. Now I will make some final observations before moving to different topics.

Darwinian evolution is not a crackpot theory. There is much in this theory that has solid evidence behind it. Most scientists wouldn’t call themselves classic Darwinians anyway. In fact, it is said that if he knew the new evidence today, Darwin himself would not be a Darwinist! Most scientists have adapted from this position and have modified their views. The late Stephen Jay Gould is probably the most prominent (he was featured on the Simpson’s after all!) scientist in this camp. Neo-Darwinism, or whatever term is in vogue, questioning some of the aspects of the Darwinian model, is what science is all about. Examine the evidence.

I think it is important to put your cards on the table and examine the evidence. In a proper education environment, the weaknesses of an argument are always clearly stated. Those few “pure” Darwinians left out there will not be able to hold on to a monopoly (intended or not) on public information in government and education much longer. The search will continue.

As far as a Christian view of all of this, I don’t consider the Bible a science book. I don’t base my validating of the biblical texts according to their accuracy with the scientific traditions. At the same time, I find it interesting that there are so many allusions in scripture which “coincide” with the evidence of the latest scientific theories. I address this in detail on my website.

Saying all of this, examining the evidence is what Christian faith is all about. It’s not just good theology; it’s good science.

Another challenge to the idea of Darwinian evolution is how common you would expect it to be to find advanced life on other planets, if he Darwinian model were so easy. Even life as advanced or greater than human. But that isn’t proving to be the case at all. In fact, just the opposite evidence is surfacing. We continue to search for the most primitive life forms on any other planet. We are not having a lot of luck! When it comes to advanced life, the odds are unbelievable. It has been worked out to 1 to 10282 odds of there being even one life-supporting body in the universe.

All the work that is being done to show life on other planets in interesting. As I have stated before, part of the problem is that we don’t have a real clue about the origin of life here on earth and so we are going to other planets for the source. It appears miraculous that we have a planet that would support life in the way it does. In fact, here is a use of the word (in quotes, of course) in a paper published by Stanford and MIT physicists that says just that.

“Therefore, livable universes are almost always created by fluctuations into the “miraculous”states discussed above.”

Indeed.