Bully's Blog

(Michael Jensen has published an interesting article:)

Hence are we called atheists. And we confess that we are atheists, so far as gods of this sort are concerned, but not with respect to the most true God, the Father of righteousness and temperance and the other virtues, who is free from all impurity. Justin Martyr (103-165), First Apology VI

I should like to propose a thesis that may seem somewhat unlikely for a Christian theologian: namely, that the atheists are right.

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“Human beings are animals whose preference for group membership is simultaneously the source of their greatest salvation and their ultimate destruction” —Xenocrates

Who has the majority of evidence to support their paradigm? Is it the Young Earth Creationists or the (mostly atheistic) Evolutionists? (Please note that as far as I am concerned, anyone else is just sitting on a very sharp fence trying to hide the pain with clever words.)

The Old Earthers, whatever their stripe (from Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens to certain young Sydney Anglicans I admire and the misguided mob at BioLogos), despite their bluff, rely on hearsay and circular reasoning. Creationist cosmologist Russell Humphreys writes:

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Michael Jensen had a great column published on ABC Unleashed, critical of the religious programme Compass:

Imagine No Religion

If you ever tune in to the ABC’s flagship religious affairs programme Compass after the bonnet drama of a Sunday night, then you could be forgiven for thinking that the group of people labelled ‘the religious’ are those who wear funny hats.

As the opening title sequence of the show scrolls by, viewers are treated to a veritable facebook of curious millinery – along with some impressive facial hair.

To the average ABC viewer, watching as they iron their work clothes, the message is clear: these people are not ‘us’. They are definitely ‘the other’: a group or groups of people to be observed, categorised, wondered at – and sometimes even frightened of. 

But is there such a category as the ‘religious’? Does ‘religion’ even exist? 

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Atheists reduce Religion/Theology to a chapter within anthropology. This, of course, removes any claim to validity for Christianity. It just gets lumped together with other ‘superstitions.’

In response, theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg claims that the Godness of God and not human religious experience must have first place in theology. (Quoted in Michael Jensen’s post Pannenberg on Anthropology at mpjensen.blogspot.com)

‘Theologians will be able to defend the truth precisely of their talk about God only if they first respond to the atheistic critique of religion on the terrain of anthropology. Otherwise all their assertions, however impressive, about the primacy of the Godness of God will remain purely subjective assurances without any serious claim to universal validity.’1

Jensen summarises, ‘He maintains, furthermore, that rejecting this anthropological ground is in fact conceding the ground to anthropological suppositions – by reducing theology to mere subjectivity.’

So, I think Pannenberg says:

1 Anthropology is actually a chapter within theology, not the other way around.

2 Christians must debate the issue on anthropological grounds, or there is no common ground upon which to engage the atheists in debate. In other words, they have won the boxing match by default because we won’t enter the boxing ring.

Jensen asks, ‘Which way are evangelicals going to swing on this?’

To mix metaphors, don’t swing in a boxing ring that doesn’t exist! The foundation of the atheists’ anthropology is fiction.

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