I don’t propose to spend too long on this part of the question – although I could – because it seems that the following propositions are self-evident:
– the world is in a bit of a mess;
– the answers are not easy; and
– we will have to change our behaviour if we want to get out of the mess.

What I have in mind is all the material I covered in the LUBH sessions, eg Peak Oil, Global Warming, soil erosion, overpopulation, declining water availability, excess pollution, resource wars….

Wisdom, it seems to me, is what enables the change of behaviour to occur. Wisdom is what makes the difference between an alcoholic having just another drink and giving up; what makes a smoker quit; what makes an obese man (like the Mersea Rector) sign up to the gym to become healthier. Wisdom is also what enables communities to function; it provides means of creative conflict resolution; it allows for the full panoply of human flourishing to progress.

So I’m not minded to argue for the virtue of wisdom. What I will argue for, however, is why the humourless atheist is aspect-blind to wisdom and why getting our civilisation out of its present predicament involves abandoning the central tenets of humourless atheism. That is, the commitments made by a humourless atheist (as evidenced in the arguments levelled against Christianity) have the necessary corollary that wisdom is undermined. I think this has two aspects, which are closely interwoven: a lack of respect for narrative and it’s place in human understanding; and an excessively elevated respect for ‘facts’.

MORPHEUS
We are trained in this world to accept only what is rational and logical. Have you ever wondered why?

Neo shakes his head.

MORPHEUS
As children, we do not separate the possible from the impossible which is why the younger a mind is the easier it is to free, while a mind like yours can be very difficult.

NEO
Free from what?

MORPHEUS
From the Matrix.

Neo looks at his eyes but only sees a reflection of himself.

MORPHEUS
Do you want to know what it is, Neo?

Neo swallows and nods his head.

MORPHEUS
It’s that feeling you have had all your life. That feeling that something was wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad, driving you to me. But what is it?

The leather creaks as he leans back.

MORPHEUS
The Matrix is everywhere, it’s all around us, here even in this room. You can see it out your window, or on your television. You feel it when you go to work, or go to church or pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

NEO
What truth?

MORPHEUS
That you are a slave, Neo. That you, like everyone else, was born into bondage… kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch. A prison – for your mind.

I don’t know who said this (it came to me via Matt Kundert on the MoQ list) but I think it is excellent:

“The ‘third rate’ critic attacks the original thinker on the basis of the rhetorical consequences of his thought and defends the status quo against the corrupting effects of the philosopher’s rhetoric. ‘Second rate’ critics defend the same received wisdom by semantic analyses of the thinker which highlight ambiguities and vagueness in his terms and arguments. But ‘first rate’ critics “delight in the originality of those they criticise…; they attack an optimal version of the philosopher’s position–one in which the holes in the argument have been plugged or politely ignored.”

The second one, inevitably, is from Wittgenstein:

“Even to have expressed a false thought boldly and clearly is already to have gained a great deal.”

That’s what I’m aiming for – to express thoughts boldly and clearly, and invite first-rate critical responses.

I want to start a list of common misperceptions that atheists have about Christian language and Christian claims (some of which will be common to other faiths as well). Now I should say right up front that I do not see atheists as culpable for these mistakes, for the most part, simply because they are mistakes that are made by a great number of professed Christians, especially in North America. However, what this means is that most Christians don’t understand their own faith, which is the fault of a) their pastors, and b) the historical development of Modern Protestantism.

When, for example, Davidov comments “Atheism is not trying to provide answers to those questions or indeed any questions. It simply denies that the central proposition of most religiions (God exists) is correct. There are two ways this is put (1) God does not exist; (2) there is no proper evidence that God exists. Only one response is needed – (1) explain the characteristics of the God whose existence you assert; (2) set out the evidence in favour of your assertion that this God exists. You are making a proposition (God exists). It is for you to prove that it is accurate” he is assuming at least two things: a) that it makes sense to attribute existence to God, and b) that this is what Christian thought does. Whereas I want to say that neither are true – it makes no sense to apply the word ‘exist’ to God, and Christian theology does not do so (which means that Christian theology as a whole is not delusional in the sense assumed by that video). I will go into this in more detail in a separate post (I’ve written some material on this elsewhere).

This is why I want to ask of atheists ‘how much theology have you read?’ It’s another way of distinguishing between humourless and sophisticated atheisms. The humourless variety not only hasn’t read much theology, instead taking their understanding of Christianity from popular level publications and TV programmes, but rests content with that level of understanding. Imagine how Richard Dawkins would feel if he ended up in an argument with an atheist who happened to reject the theory of evolution – because he could demonstrate that Lamarckian inheritance was wrong – that would give you an idea of what it regularly feels like to debate with atheists. The assumption is that I am defending something which I don’t actually believe in.

Underlying much of this, however, is a misperception of the grammar of religious faith, in other words, what sort of thing a religious belief is. Too often, the assumption is that religious belief functions in the same way as religious scientific belief, in other words that what is at stake is the existence of something, or some truth about a matter of fact (hence the plea to start out with some agreed facts, which is one way of indicating what counts highest in the hierarchy). Yet religious belief is not at all the same sort of thing as a scientific belief. I’ll say more about this in due course as well.

Anyhow, I’m starting to ramble. What I will do is have a subsection of this series called TM, which is when I’ll point out some of the common errors or misperceptions that get trotted out on a regular basis.