Sony Pictures' - The Da Vinci Code will be out next summer. The trailer is now available online at the film's web site. Justin Taylor has some good links that will help get a grip on the issues involved with this film. If you take your faith seriously, you would do well to orient yourself with the theological issues surrounding this book and film.
Check out Taylor's Entry on The Da Vinci Code - be sure to follow his links.
--------
POC Blog
The random technotheolosophical blogging of Reid S. Monaghan
Religion the Source of All Evil?
An interesting article responding to the belief that "Religion is the source of all Violence and should be done away with" is online at Books and Culture Magazine Books and Culture's Book of the Week: Unbelievable - Books & Culture
Reminds me of a similar debate I had in the Campus Newspaper at Virginia Tech
A little long but perhaps helpful for your friends who say "Religion Bad, Secular Good"
I am writing in response to the September 25th article entitled Organized Religion Cause for many Social Problems by William Marlow. This article is another in the line of blame which has proceeded from the tragic events of September 11th. We have seen the religious blame the attacks on the secularization of America, we have seen the attacks blamed upon the US government, and now we see the attacks blamed on all of organized religion. Human beings are quick to place blame to the group they personally dislike most. The Marxist blames the capitalist bourgeoisie, the religious blame the secular, and the secular blame the religious. It seems this will continue the lumping together of people for blame instead of looking at what the criminals’ motives and reasons for their crime actually was. As far as the article laying all blame on organized religion some factual questions arose for me while reading. I will openly grant that great and heinous crimes have been committed in the name of religion throughout human history. Whether or not these people were acting in harmony with the teaching of their religion or in contradiction to it, will be saved for another discussion. Marlow’s article, however, greatly simplifies our human problems to lay blame on religion for any and every evil in history. Some factual inadequacies in this article must be addressed: First, Marlow claims that religious logic was “applied to the enslaving of African Americans.” This however ignores several important facts in the British and American slave trades. It is a fact that the slave trade in England and our own country was abolished by the tireless work and initiative of some very religious people. In England, William Wilberforce, an evangelical Christian, dedicated his entire life to the abolitionist cause, fighting for over 40 years in the British parliament to eliminate the slave trade. The Slavery Abolition Act was finally passed one month after his death. Many reasons for the deplorable idea of racial superiority were given in our past; both from the religious (gross abuses of the Bible) and nonreligious (Darwin’s theory of evolution was inherently racist in its root form). Simply stating that the enslavement of African Americans was the work of religion does not do justice to the facts, nor does it do justice to the many religious men and women who have led the civil rights movement in our country. Second, Marlow states “The problems caused by organized religion have certainly outdistanced the good that has ever come from it.” This is stated dogmatically without any argument. How can one know this with such certainty? Or perhaps this is simply a statement the author’s own bias. Such a statement certainly overlooks some very verifiable facts. Many of the top humanitarian charities were founded by openly religious people. The United Way, The Red Cross movement, The Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity, Shriner’s Hospitals for Children and Good Will Industries, just to name a few, were all founded by religious people. Religious belief in America has also led to the founding of innumerable orphanages, hospitals, and homeless shelters at home and abroad. If Marlow has some calculus to quantitatively compare all the evil vs. all the good that has come from religious belief, he should share that with his reader, if he does not, he should restrain from making such blanket statements. Third, Marlow gives us a “rule of thumb”, which again is stated dogmatically without argument: “No matter how sure someone is that his or her religion is the one true path to salvation, that person is always wrong.” I suppose we have to just take his word for it that he is right about this? In saying everyone who thinks they may have some religious truth is absolutely wrong, is not the author saying that he actually knows the absolute truth about all such matters? We must look carefully at what we believe and why we believe it, examining such matters carefully and making a decision as to what we will and will not believe. When you hear someone’s “rule of thumb”, is would be wise to pause and ask “Whose thumb is being used?” Finally, one must not forget that the 20th century was the bloodiest recorded in human history, marked by many atrocities committed at the hands of regimes which openly rejected belief in God. The blood from Hitler’s Auschwitz, Stalin’s Gulag, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and the killing fields of Pol Pot still cry out that it is not religion alone that brings evils to this world. Human beings are responsible for the evils perpetrated on their fellow creatures; this is the problem of humanity which needs resolution, the problem of the wickedness that lives in our own hearts. Simply pointing the finger at the group with which you disagree most will not solve our problems; the path of grace, love and forgiveness is what is most needed by the human soul. Reid Monaghan--------
The Intellectual Virtues of Courage and Honesty - Antony Flew
I have been following the interactions in the philosophical community about the imminet atheist thinker Antony Flew. Recently the British analytic philosopher has undergone a sort of conversion - one from atheism to theism. His new view is one he describes as akin to that of Aristotle (belief in a first cause, unmoved move, designer of the universe) or perhaps the deism of American founding Father Thomas Jefferson. A God who is not a god of a revelatory religion (ie Christianity or Islam) but a god who is quite uninvolved with the world after creation.
In is interesting to see the discussions taking place on the internet. I will mention the two following web sites are interesting because they take place in both corners, both camps so to speak involved with this philosopher.
- First, the camp flew is leaving, that of atheism, is responding in a "don't get to worried" - Flew is old and perhaps not looked at all the relevant data...perhaps we can keep him in the fold. An article on the Internet Infidel's web site seems to be aimed at calming the nerves of the "faithful" (or faithless in this case) about one of their top thinker's departure from unbelief. Very interesting read sociologically.
- Second, there is a very revealing interview between Christian philosopher Gary Habermas, who has maintained acquaintance with Flew for many years. The interview is very cordial and the collegiality of the exchange is very compelling. In the debate I witnessed two men who seem very committed to the intellectual virtues of courage (following truth where it leads - not matter who is jeering) and honesty (being internally honest as to where the truth leads).
Although it is certain that Flew is no Christian - it is an encouragement to see this recent development in his life. Makes one want to pray for open eyes for a man who once stood in much firmer in his rebellion to the beautiful, the true, the good, the holy - the only wise God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
It was also very good to see (in the Habermas interview) a western, European, secular, intellectual clearly understand the nature of Islam as an imperialistic, state building, theonomic religion which in my estimation must be refuted with both the sound truth and acts of compassion. And regrettably to all, defensive and forceful action.
Back to a biography of Jonathan Edwards that will probably take me a year to read.
Out...
--------Excellent New Resource
Reading a bit online this morning and ran across a great new resource put together by The Jesus Film Project of Campus Crusade for Christ. The Resource "Jesus - Fact or Fiction" is an interactive DVD with extensive video interviews with scholars across the spectrum of expertise. The DVD contains:
- Over 50 Questions answered about Jesus, The Bible, Spiritual Truth, God, and Life After Death
- Expert Scientists, Philosophers, Historians, Theologians and more address life's toughest questions
- Personal Biography and Life Story of each expert
- Personal Life Stories of people whose lives have been changed by Jesus
- Supporting Articles for further review of a subject via a PC DVD ROM
- Suggested Reading Materials
- The award-winning feature film "JESUS," with new interactive apologetic features
- Full-length Audio Commentary of the film by Paul Eshleman
- Making of the film "JESUS"
- How to Use Journey
- Navigational Map insert
Kind of Ironic
I am beginning to read the Book "Lost Christianities - The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew" by Bart Ehrman Phd (UNC Chapel Hill Religion Professor). The book is a look at the world of the early church, the religious sects existing at the time, and the texts which reflected beliefs which were "suppressed, discarded, and lost" when orthodox teaching was established in the first three centuries of the church. The author, a critical scholar has a tact to his work that is profoundly at odds with church tradition. I expected this and picked the book up for precisely this reason. I wanted to see how he presents the canonization of the New Testament documents in the complex world of the early church. I expect his position to be rather unnerving, but I did not expect to see such sloppy thinking like I ran across in Part 1 - Forgeries and Discoveries
In this section he introduces the discoveries of ancient texts as well as the universal agreement that all the non-canonical materials found are agreed to be forgeries by all scholars "liberal, conservative, fundamentalist, and atheist" -- What he continues with is the familiar claim that these forged (or pseudepigraphal) books are no different than some of the NT writings...in other words, the New Testament contains books which claim to be written by one author but this is not actually the case...2 Peter, and the Pastorals (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus) are claimed to be of this ilk. This is nothing new to "critical biblical scholarship." What is shocking is what he claims next; I quote:
How could forgeries make it into the New Testament? Possibly it is better to reverse the question: Why shouldn't forgeries have made it into the New Testament? Who was collecting the books? When did they do so? And how would they have known whether a book that claims to be written by Peter was actually written by Peter or that a book allegedly written by Paul was actually by Paul? So far as we know, none of these letters was included in a canon of sacred texts until decades after they were written, and the New Testament canon as a whole still had not reached final form for another two centuries after that. How would someone hundreds of years later know who had written these books?
Bart Ehrman, Lost Christianities (New York: NY, Oxford University Press, 2003) 11.
Now the irony of the last sentence was evident to me right away and also to my brilliant, clear thinking wife :). Basically the author's argument is this:
1) The documents were written long before the people who selected the canon were doing their work.
2) This distance of time, some hundreds of years, would have made their knowledge of the authorship of books somewhat impossible.
3) Therefore, they included books which they may have thought to have apostolic authorship, but they really did not know.
The problem with this reasoning is evident. This very same author (see Ehrman, New Testament, 377-79.) makes the claim to know who the author of these books was not. In other words, critical scholars, tell us that Paul did not write the Pastoral epistles and that we should believe them about this "fact". But yet his own argument from long distances of time, which prevented those involved from an earlier era from knowing anything of the sort. Now if we apply this "time rubric" to the authors own claims, what do we find? Somehow "modern critical scholars" - writing close to 2000 years after the events, can know what those 200 years out could not. This seems rather arrogant to me. Especially when the Christians who met in council to recognize the canon, authentic writings which would become the rule of faith for the church, were dealing with their own tradition. In other words, it seems to me, that the early believers, followers of Christ and the apostolic witness were in an infinitely better position to judge such issues of authorship and authority. This unless one writes off these early believers (by theory alone) as ignorant, zealous, propagandists who are not as wise, objective and intelligent as the modern scholars viewing the Christian world through the lens of a few poorly attested, archaeologically unverified, fragmented texts (the so called "lost books") - Texts, mind you, that were thoroughly rejected by the early Christians as being false witnesses to Christ and a scourge to the Christian movement.
It seems to me quite easy to trust God's church to have done the right thing in recognizing the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament and rejecting the erroneous gospels of that day. Any good Pastor would do the same today - protect his flock from the flurries of false teachings abounding in the world. I think we should continue to follow the example set by the early councils and trust the Spirit inspired text.
Let not your hearts be troubled by the axes that "biased critical scholars" seem to continually want to grind with the Word of God.
...
--------