Todd H Dow

Article discussed in this entry: The Celestial Teapot

James Wood provides an excellent critique of the current crop of atheistic writers currently clogging the best seller lists. Wood hits the target with his philosophical dismissals of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris (referred to collectively as DDH). Far from being a solid defense of Christianity, but helpful nonetheless, Wood adequately brushes aside the feeble attempts made by these three atheistic opportunists to condemn religious practice. And, Wood also, to a lesser extent, makes ineffectual some of the stronger anti-religion claims of such famed philosophers as Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Some statements that I found particularly interesting:

“Wittgenstein’s little phrase, from a different context, comes to mind: ‘a nothing will serve just as well as a something about which nothing can be said.’”

Clever little quote showing the language games that some philosophers use. While not meaningful in itself, it is clever nonetheless.

“The genre tends to proceed thus: the atheist must first remove all possible respect from religious belief.”

Excellent quote. Wood highlights a key strategy used by DDH to dehumanize and desensitize the reader to the truth claims of religious belief.

Wood responding to Harris’ and Dawkins’ arguments pertaining to “insufficient evidence”: “Yet he surely knows that we believe all kinds of things on insufficient evidence. Or rather, what might be sufficient evidence to him could well be insufficient to someone else and vice versa. Hume was right, says the French philosopher Alain, ‘to mock the King of Siam who believed that ice was impossible because he had never seen it.’”

Sufficient evidence is difficult to define. Religious experience can be argued to be both objective and subjective depending on who you talk to. And, More importantly, as science will well agree, evidence does not in itself reality prove. Even though religion can explain things does not mean that science is necessarily correct. And, there is plenty that science is unable to explain. Does that mean that science is useless? No. Similarly, belief in God can be valuable as well.

A couple of items that I found troubling in this article though:

Wood argues that the Free Will defense (evil exists because we have free will to do good or evil at our discretion) explains evil, yet runs contrary to the concept of heaven, which, if evil does not exist in heaven, would have been a more perfect world than we live in now, thus saying that our current existence is neither a) the best of all possible worlds (Leibniz) or b) a fair world to live in when it requires tolerance for suffering.

Wood is generally quite solid with his philosophy, but this is a major point on which I disagree. Wood argues that we could not exist in heaven without evil through our own free will. I beg to differ. Isn’t heaven when we’ve been absolved of our sins and been deemed worthy to enter heaven? I would think that one of the pre-requisites to entering the kingdom of God would be the proper motivation and moral attitude towards good and evil. Entry to heaven would be based on heavenly judgment which would adequately isolate evil thoughts from entering through the pearly gates. Thus, all who enter would be free to commit evil acts, but entry would require good intentions, which this world would be the training ground for. Note: I haven’t been there yet, so this is speculation, but… it certainly does offer another, equally sound option, which is a counterpoint to Wood’s Free Will argument.

“A silence beckons to a silence.”

The critique here is that God’s silence demands no response. Thus, this statement argues that worship is misguided. Wood does little to defend Christianity from this statement. In response, I ask: Didn’t Christ speak loud and clear?

While I feel that Wood ultimately fails by not taking a final step in justifying religious belief, he does a great job of dismissing the shallow and weak claims being made by these “pop-culture atheists”. And, I especially enjoyed the way that Wood showed Harris to be a hypocrite through his practice of Eastern meditative techniques. All in all, a great read. Take a half hour and give it a shot. Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.

Todd Dow

The National has a series called “Seven”, which documents Mark Kelley’s experiences in a “week in the life of” sort of format. Yesterday’s Seven broadcast highlighted Mark’s time spent with evangelical Christians. You can view yesterday’s broadcast at CBC.ca:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/media/seven.html

I wasn’t pleased with the way the show portrayed evangelical Christianity. So… I wrote to the editor. Below is a copy of my comments. I wonder if I’ll hear back from them. Time will tell…

BEGIN LETTER
Folks,

I was disappointed by last night’s “Seven” report on evangelical Christianity. I don’t feel that it offered fair treatment towards evangelical Christianity. Specifically:
1. As a Canadian show, I was surprised that the visits were mainly based in the US. There are plenty of relevant, articulate and meaningful Christian examples in Canada;
2. The portions of the interviews that were aired were disappointing as they portrayed the interviewees as inarticulate or unable to explain their position in a positive manner. Fairness would suggest that you provide room for articulate and secular-friendly speakers, which last night’s episode seemed to lack; and
3. Mark appeared to be condescending and mocking at times, which is disrespectful, especially considering the fact that his interview subjects didn’t necessarily offer the most positive impressions towards an unchurched audience;

Three possibilities that I have considered are:
1. Maybe this is the way that most of secular society views Christians. If this is the case, then I think that this episode played to those stereotypes and didn’t adequately represent positive role models within the evangelical community;
2. Perhaps the interviews were edited in such a way that it left the impression that the interviewees were unable to articulate their positions adequately; or
3. Maybe the CBC team wasn’t able to secure sufficient positive Christian role models and was left with these examples;

Whatever the case, I don’t think that this episode was indicative of the Christian community as a whole, nor was it tasteful in the way that Mark appeared to condescendingly dismiss the evangelical Christian community as a group of “scared” social outcasts.

I would like to think that I provide a positive evangelical Christian role model to other Christians. And, I also feel that I have been able to portray my lifestyle to people of other faiths without leaving them thinking that I am afraid or isolated from the rest of society.

Feel free to contact me should you wish to do further reporting on the Christian community, especially within the GTA. I am a current Master of Divinity student at McMaster University, I am currently working as a student pastor at my local church in the Niagara region and I work full time in a secular career as an IT project manager. As well, I am a graduate of a philosophy and religious studies undergrad program at U of T. I think I am well positioned to speak on this subject matter.

Thank you for your time,

Todd Dow

END LETTER

You’ve gotta be kidding me… I read a commentary piece from David Warren the other day, in which Warren tried to explain the “right way” of winning in Iraq. Warren likened the war in Iraq to fighting the Nazis in WWII. I’m confused that people still think that this is a simple fight delineated on political lines, rather than ideological ones.

And it’s more than just Warren that sees the current Middle East conflict in such a division of black and white. The NATO mission in Afghanistan and the US war in Iraq are charging ahead with their missions to “colonize” the Middle East, in spite of the vigorous opposition from the local militants.

The obvious problem here is that for the locals, political boundaries don’t seem to matter. In fact, the lines appear to be blurred along cultural and religious boundaries instead. Warren and other traditional military strategists appear, at least to me (an ignorant non-combatant), to be fighting a traditional war against a non-traditional enemy. And what’s worse, I don’t feel confident that current military strategies, at least the way they are conveyed through the media, are showing much of an understanding of this non-traditional enemy either.

The NATO mission in Afghanistan seems to understand this dynamic, as their current offensive, dubbed Operation Baaz Tsuka is attempting to peacefully convince the enemy to reconsider their plans. Dealing with Afghanistan’s tribal problems is long overdue and no easy, peaceful solutions currently exist, but it’s good to see that NATO is attempting to curb the damage being inflicted by the Taliban through less confrontational military means (as much as possible).

The US in Iraq, on the other hand, faces a much more severe challenge. It has been documented time and again that the US led mission in Iraq has been shown to “‘not be in conformity with the [UN] Charter’ and many legal experts now describe the US-UK attack as an act of aggression, violating international law.” It’s no wonder the Middle East is hostile towards the US, considering the arrogance and bullying attitude that the US has been showing towards the Iraq situation.

According to the BBC, “many of the insurgent attacks attributed to foreign jihadis have a sectarian element in that they have targeted Shias with the aim of provoking wider violence between Iraq’s religious communities.”

A recent article in the December 2006 issue of Christianity Today further outlines the sectarian conflict playing out in the Middle East. The article, entitled “Garlic, Dracula and Al Qaeda”, outlines the problem of religious extremism which is currently fueling this international conflict between the East and the West. I don’t mean to diminish the complexities of global politics, but it is quite clear that without extremism, it would be possible to have rational religious discourse without the fear of offending people and sparking riots, protests and worldwide violence (Remember the Muhammad cartoon fiasco of earlier this year? Or, how about the fatwa against Salman Rushdie).

Religious extremism is attempting to subvert our individual freedoms through violent censorship and intimidation. This abuse is so abhorrent that it is difficult, if not impossible, to rationally defend the faith for which these individuals are fighting. I think it would be fair to say that if the only method of coercion available to religious extremists is violence, then that side has already lost the argument. Violence is a failure of an individual to rationally articulate reasons to support one’s opinions. Thus, it is shamefully obvious that those on the side of fanaticism are fighting a self-defeating battle with themselves when violently imposing their views on others.

Although I don’t explicitly support the current military efforts going on in the Middle East, I have to say that I am at least a little impressed with the ideological recognition and strategic adaptations that the NATO led forces are applying to the Afghanistan mission. At the very least, it’ll prove to be a better template of striving for peace than the hammer that the US is applying to Iraq.

Unfortunately, this still leaves plenty of global hostility towards the West that currently exists in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. I think that it is important to peacefully right past wrongs, offer forgiveness on both sides and work towards lasting rational dialogue and relationship building. This requires all sides to be more understanding and respectful of one another.

And for goodness sake, let’s hope that the US administration will soon learn to be a little more respectful of human rights and freedoms when attempting to impose their values on people in other lands.

Todd Dow