Corona Diaries- The Last Word.

In Good Faith

As lockdown is easing, I thought I’d bring my corona diaries to a conclusion; or rather a question. I’ll continue to write of course but without so much reference to the current crisis, which is set to continue and have an impact in ways we cannot know.

None of us really noticed when the lockdown ended; I think that the government knew that whatever they asked us to do apart from stay at home, people would see it as a green light to do whatever they wanted. Human beings will interpret any information according to their worldview and personality. They are often very selfish too.

it was the famous psychologist, Carl Jung, who said, “My own psyche transforms and even falsifies reality and it does this to such a degree that I must resort to artificial means to determine what things are real apart from myself. Then I discover that a sound is a vibration of air of such and such a frequency, or that colour is a wave of light at such and such a length.’

If a man who studied the mind all his life cannot know it, I wonder what hope there is for the rest of us. He does however make an important point about the nature of reality, as perceived by the human mind; It cannot be tamed. The search for precision in defining our mental experience, he observes, robs it of much that belongs to it. I would like us to bear this in mind before we move on.

I recently, rather foolishly, got myself into a Facebook debate, when a friend, who described himself as a lifelong militant atheist, said that he had started to read that perennial bestseller, the Bible. 

The usual pile-on ensued and, as anticipated, I was outnumbered. 

The bit that piqued my interest and prompted my response was that my friend, who has a scientific background, had described it as ‘a long fight against reason and logic’ but was reading it ‘with an open mind.’ 

I felt that I needed to address this apparently contradictory statement and the false assumptions within it. 

Unfortunately, the majority of contributors had closed their minds to the usual atheist dogmas. 

Following a lengthy exchange, I decided to back off as conclusions were being drawn before we even had time to think about the question. They had jumped the gun.

Even Socrates recognised that it is important to frame the question for discussion properly and spend some time doing that before any debate can be had. 

Jumping to hasty conclusions does no service to our topic and alas, no one was prepared to listen. 

They preferred instead to assert their atheist dogma on what they thought the Christian God to be, rather than who Christianity thinks him to be; or indeed, who he claimed to be. 

“You can find no sin against me,” said Jesus to the Jewish teachers of the law. 

They certainly tried as they despised him and thought his words blasphemy; the very crime of which they were guilty. The hand of hypocrisy is usually in there somewhere. 

The governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, who presided over Jesus trial agreed that he had committed no crime but nevertheless, reluctantly ordered the crucifixion in response to the baying crowd. The thief Barabbus was released in his stead.

The science of textual criticism affirms and concords with the biblical accounts, if you’d care to devote years of study to that science alone.

But who was this man, Jesus? That is the question. 

“Before Abraham was, I Am” he said.

It’s an odd statement at first glance but it tells us that God is somehow, unconstrained by space, time and matter; as that is precisely who he was claiming to be.

Although physical, as a man nailed to a cross, he claimed to be the eternal, uncreated creator. 

This is important to understand the first dogma of the atheist creed:

“If God, created the universe, who created your silly God, and who created him, and so on, ad-infinitum.”

The Christian God claims to be eternal, not created by the minds of men.

As I always say to my kids, “first things first,” and that is precisely where they belong in any discussion of importance.

Today a very good workman has just completed a path and patio in my garden. I was going to do the work myself and now I’m glad I didn’t. It took the best part of three days to move three tonnes of earth and carry up twice the weight of foundations and cement, before laying a single slab. Foundations are important if they are not to move with time or withstand the weight that comes to bear upon them.

The atheist will usually affirm their belief that what science cannot tell us, we cannot know, and that they will only accept what science has proven to be true. But this doesn’t tell the whole story as I will attempt to show.

Belief in God, so they say, is against science and reason. This could not be further from the truth. 

“What is truth?” asked Pilate to the accused, Jesus. It might have been a rhetorical question as it infers his belief. Jesus had already given an answer, “I AM.”

Professor emeritus of mathematics at Oxford University and professor of the philosophy of science, John Lennox, warns us about a common myth and misconception about science: 

“The statement ‘science is the only way to truth ‘ is not a statement of science, it’s a statement about science; so if it is true it is false.” He says. (That is, if you take it as true it cannot be true because it’s not given to us by science)

Logic! 

Did you know that It was as late as the 1960’s, that science finally accorded with the Biblical account that the Universe had a beginning and was not eternal?

 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1)

Many atheists resisted breaking the news and conceding that Christianity had been right all along. 

And I ask them the question they cannot answer: who created your creator? For even science knows that you cannot get something from nothing. (And even a quantum vacuum isn’t nothing; close but no cigar!) 

As I outline above, the Bible got there 2-3000 years before you on that one. It tells us he is uncreated and eternal; outside space, time and matter.

The belief of atheism or naturalism is that everything that’s in the universe can be explained only by the things in it. That is, time, space, matter, physics and chemistry.

It does not explain how the physical came to be.

But what if there is good reason to believe that there are immaterial causes that cannot be explained by the stuff that’s in the room, as it were?

We cannot conjure-up something from nothing after all. 

This could only be explained if the first cause of the universe was therefore, non spacial, non temporal and non material; like God. 

We experience the immaterial through consciousness.

Consciousness itself is either an illusion created by the brain- which is itself the product of blind, unguided processes – or it tells us something about a deeper reality that cannot be explained by the physical realm. Since, in reality, we know so little about ourselves and our universe, it would be foolish to discount this possibility. We would be vain to consider ourselves, like God in the same ways that the tadpoles in my pond might consider themselves to be like me.

As described in the Genesis account, we have already bitten into the apple of immaterial causes and immaterial experiences of consciousness, so the next question is, are those personal or impersonal forces?

The great CS Lewis would at this point ask the naturalist to act like a jury and to suspend their biases and beliefs about the defendant in coming to any verdict. We all have biases and it is possible to colour our view of their guilt or innocence. 

Our initial emotions and instincts may be right of course, but when they are wrong they may have disastrous consequences to the cause of justice.

It is then that the argument usually turns and goes in for the ad-hominem attacks: 

“I don’t believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden (implying that belief in God abandons reason and sanity). I don’t believe in Rah, or Odin or all those Roman gods and I just go one God further and don’t believe in yours.”

Well, clearly feeling a bit silly about the first question, they lead with the emotive one to try to get some points on the board. Any will do, I suppose.

Unfortunately it is as ignorant an assumption as the first.

Christians do not believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden or any other of those gods you care to mention. Just one, for whom there is evidence for his existence. The bible points to the person of Jesus, a historical figure, who said he was God, but did not behave like a delusional lunatic at all. He did no wrong, he healed the sick, he confounded the scholars with his brilliance and told simple stories; parables, that helped people to understand who he was and how to live our lives in sync with a loving God.

(Jung has some interesting things to say about illnesses of the mind that are not physical and have no organic cause, but cause physical symptoms like paralysis, blindness or a headache. I once encountered a lady who told me that had gone blind through the grief of a broken relationship)

If you read the Sermon on the Mount, it sums up very well how the Christian God thinks we should lead our lives. It seems like very wise and sane advice indeed.

I doubt you could criticise any of these teachings as they are enshrined in our law, our human rights and best values even today in the west. And they came from the east! From a Jewish man, from whom time began: Even the year 2020 comes from the event of Christ’s death: when BC, before Christ, became AD, Anno Domini- after death. A significant date in our calendar. (You May notice that secularists have changed it to CE and BCE to try to eliminate all traces of this inheritance but that doesn’t make it disappear).

This leads us to another important question:

Is there any such thing as justice and objective morality? 

Whatever culture or background we come from, do we feel cheated when people cheat us; wronged when they beat us; hurt when they make up lies against us? 

Don’t we want justice? Don’t we feel wronged? Don’t we know the right thing to do when we wrong others?

Where does this idea of justice and right conduct come from?

Can one be a moral atheist? Of course you can, but not I’m afraid, a logical one.

Remember your atheist belief here; that our minds are the product of mindless unguided processes. In the words of Richard Dawkins: ‘DNA neither knows nor cares; we just dance to its music.” There can be no right or wrong, just survival of the fittest.

It’s food for thought at least.

Another thing you will find in the bible is metaphor, and you will find that people often draw silly literal conclusions from metaphorical and mythological statements within it. It is a compendium of 66 books of different literary styles that must be considered in the original language and culture of the people who wrote it down. Many have made it the study of a lifetime so I prefer to read their conclusions in light of the book itself and see if it makes sense.

We all use metaphor all the time and neither the bible nor science is an exception to this fact. It helps us to understand difficult concepts that cannot be grasped by plain words. 

Jesus said “I am the door.” He didn’t mean it literally, of course. 

Science describes light as travelling in particles and waves. It uses metaphor to allow our minds to picture otherwise difficult concepts. 

Nobel prize winning scientist and committed Christian, Bill Phillips, won his prize in Physics, for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light. He’s a clever chap.

If you believe that Christian belief is incompatible with science, a study revealed that 60% of Nobel prize winning scientists over the last 100 years (1900-2000) had a Christian faith. It seems to suggest that intellect and reason is not the barrier that atheism claims it to be. 

So when the bible says ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’ and ‘the skies proclaim the works of his hands,’ it doesn’t mean they ‘speak’ like a human voice, but that they are intelligible to the human mind. The intelligibility of the universe is yet another strong argument against Dawkins idiotic and random creation.

The other thing about metaphor is that although the thing described isn’t real, the metaphor stands for something that is very real indeed. 

For example by studying those speaking heavens that I just mentioned, we were able by mathematics, physics and astronomy, and a good many other scientific disciplines to see and measure the microwave background radiation of the Big Bang. 

Jesus’ ‘door’ metaphor is an opening to a path or a way into life that many will not find. Not because it is hard to find, but that we refuse to open our eyes to see it. 

I can imagine surfing those waves of light through a mass of brilliant shining particles, like the tiny droplets of water that fizz of the crest, suspended in time in a photograph. 

The same moment will never be again, but it happened and is locked in the history of time. 

In fact, I used to have pictures of waves plastered on my bedroom wall and surfed them myself, so it’s easy for me to picture. 

If atheists, like Richard Dawkins have decided that the Christian God doesn’t exist and that life is meaningless; “an idiotic smile on the face of humanity” as 

he puts it, why bother to write a whole book about it? 

Surely that too is meaningless, distasteful tripe, on the plate of the intellectually stunted pauper? 

If our minds, the product of a “blind watchmaker,” why bother to ask him for the time?

Why are atheists so keen to promote their flawed logic? To tell Christianity it is wrong and deluded and that it believes in the fairy king?

Why would you want to undo all that good? All those loving actions, inspired by the words of God; It seems a bit sad and mean-spirited to me. 

For undoubtedly, Christian believers have brought great good to our world under the orders of their good teacher.

Christians cared for slaves and lepers and the outcasts of society. Hospitals were born to tend the sick. 

Universities were founded (just look at the mottos of many of our great universities) and the fathers of modern science: Copernicus, Galileo, Clerk Maxwell, Newton and more, all believed in the Christian God and gave us the science that we study today. They all had open, inquiring minds, believing they would unlock the law of nature because they believed in the God who gave the law out of love and gave us minds to comprehend.

Laws to guide us and give us freedom to live together in peace; laws to restrain our harmful animal impulses; laws born of love not petty minded vanity. 

Real love is often hard, inconvenient and costly; but true happiness only comes to those who care about others at some cost to themselves.

Another common atheist misnomer is that they will only believe what science has proven to be true by empirical measures. 

No wonder they can’t form a coherent argument if they don’t believe their own minds.  As I have attempted to begin to explain, we do not know what the human mind is. (I have had to be very concise, for the subject is eternal and vast).

We must not forget that atheism, naturalism and secularism are the dominant dogmas of the current age, trying to erode by stealth, the good work begun when the Christian God prevailed. 

When I was young we said the Lord’s Prayer and sang hymns in school. Now our children practice mindfulness, which is really mindlessness in disguise. Surely we need to teach them how to think, not to abandon thought. There is a crisis in mental health and in the ability to reason and debate. Our student unions in our greatest universities have even tried to shut down that debate as I have outlined in previous posts. Our social media platforms are doing the same. 

I’m not advocating theocracy here as that would surely be worse still; in the hands of zealous men who forget where they’ve put their faith and have turned it into a ‘religion’. 

Christianity is not about that. It is about our relationship to God and one another.

The Pharisees invented a whole bunch of new laws that were really about exempting themselves from them and making them easier to obey. They didn’t even recognise God when he turned up and pointed it out in person. They closed their minds as God was not the person they thought him to be. He didn’t confirm to their pre-conceived ideas and misconceptions. 

Jesus claimed was that he had not come to abolish the original law, laid down by Moses but to fulfil it. 

He knew the hearts of men alright. 

Even seeing the proof before their very eyes, they didn’t believe it. They were arrogant and proud. After all, they had studied and kept the law and added to it so it was to their liking; they weren’t about to give all that up easily. 

So what does science tell us? Very little that God has not already told us in his word, the bible. 

It can certainly tell us how many things work, but not how they were made. It cannot tell us how to live or provide meaning. Surely a content and meaningful life, guided by truth and love is a life well lived.

Professor Lennox gives some insight when he demonstrates that there is more than one kind of explanation:

If we ask “why is the kettle boiling?” we might say it is because the element is transferring energy to the water, which agitates the water molecules; and once those molecules reach 100 degrees Celsius they turn into a vapour and the kettle boils.
Another explanation is that I would like a cup of tea!

We can’t create life from scratch although that is believed by many. It’s much more difficult than you might think. We can clone existing life and we can begin with the building blocks and chemicals that already exist but any synthetic chemist will tell you that creating simple life is proving very difficult and complex life is another ball game altogether. 

After thirty years as a police officer, and fifty-three years as a human, I have seen more than most in terms of the vagaries of human behaviour and the deception of self and others. I began to lose faith in humanity. But despite all, I still believe in the good of which we are all capable, no matter how far we have fallen. 

I believe in the moral law of which we are all aware through our conscious and unconscious conscience. I believe in justice too, though we may not all find it in this life.

I believe in truth and love and in the God who made us in his image: the physical and the immaterial and eternal God.

And if I believe that there are transcendent moral truths and moral obligations between people, it is not unreasonable to believe in a transcendent moral person from whom they are derived and in whose image we were made.

You might instead reasonably believe that life is an illusion of the mindless physical brain and that there is no objective moral obligation to one another. But that’s not my experience of life.

If we believe that we’re in trouble and everything written by everyone is all nonsense and irrelevant; It’s dog eat dog.

My long suffering wife,Michelle, in a moment of brilliant elucidation this week said, “we’re all bloody mad!” which is also a strong possibility. 

But then amongst the mad, the bad, the wrong, the plain evil, I see so much promise in us to be selfless, self-giving and loving. Capable of receiving redemption and radical change from one state to another. It works both ways.

As I said earlier, you can be a moral atheist of course (as one might expect for a creature made in this moral being’s image), but you can’t be a logical one.

The first and last word:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  It says in John 1:1.

These were the words read out in church to a packed congregation at my mother’s funeral last September. 

In fact, the words we speak aren’t really anything physical. They are a kind of code that comes from our minds to convey meaning. It is by our words that we can begin to understand one another.

Another such code is DNA, the code for life; the 3 and a half billion, four letter sequences of the human G-nome that codes for a human being and for all life.

(Incidentally, the human G-nome project that mapped every letter of this, the longest of words, was led by the ex-atheist, now Christian, Frances Collins. He is the current leader of the National Institute for Health in the US).

I did say that it is a good idea to put first things first as they can tell us an awful lot that we might otherwise miss in our haste.

How on earth did the writers of the bible know this way back then? A lucky guess maybe.

We must always follow the evidence where it leads us, but what if our problem is that we simply don’t want to follow it and have closed our eyes and ears to it?

We must choose to open them. 

And the reason we have freedom to choose is that love, if we believe in it, cannot exist without it. Robots have no freewill or consciousness like us, they are merely programmed for certain responses, however closely they may resemble a human. That’s the reason they are incapable of love. 

Now at this point you will still have many many questions, I hope. 

I can’t possibly cover them all here. My aim is to open a door. 

It is an ancient door and one that has been in the minds of men since the Genesis of our consciousness; perhaps before time and space and matter came to be.

One thing the lockdown has done for a good many people is to slow down our busy lives. It had forced us to think about the the things in life that have importance and what we should do about it in the future. The lockdown has forced us to think about our relationships with our wives, husbands, partners and children and has likely put them to the test. Or if we live alone, it has forced us to get to know ourselves a little better and to be comfortable in our own company. 

If we have been paying attention, it has shown us that meaning is found in relationship, whether that is with people, God, or both.

We have all experienced the emotional highs and lows of lockdown, that’s for sure and for many of us there are more questions than answers.

My final hope in writing these words, is that I have began to open the door to an answer that can help us to live life to its fullest; or at the very least, to raise the question of it.

Postscript:

I have poured into these diaries, my thoughts, feelings and faith. 

I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I have enjoyed writing them. 
Jim.