Tag: atheism

Narnia, and the Danger of Becoming an Accidental Christian

“I don’t think I ever really feel in danger of accidentally believing… or stumbling into it.” Laura Miller

kevingdrendel18 Comments

I’m listening to the Unbelievable? podcast replay of the discussion with Holly Ordway & Laura Miller: A convert and skeptic in Narnia. As always, I find the conversation on the Unbelievable! podcast intriguing and thought provoking, as the podcast usually engages people on opposite ends of the thought spectrum.

Holly Ordway and Laura Miller had similar experiences in reading the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis. They read them as young children and loved the books purely for the fantasy. When they were older and discovered that the books had fairly obvious Christian themes and symbolism, they felt betrayed.

Laura Miller explained here sense of betrayal in that the fantasy world as she imagined it turned out not to be what she thought. The discovery left her feeling like she was on the outside looking in.

As I think about it, the allure of the Chronicles of Narnia is exactly the sense of being on the inside, of discovering a world through the back of an ordinary wardrobe that is unknown and unseen by adults. As a child, nothing quite intrigues like a secret adventure found in your own house that is unknown by your parents.

The experience of finding a whole new world quite by accident, and in a wardrobe that has been in your own house all along, is a fantastical and intimate experience for any child. That intimacy, perhaps, is what gave way to the feeling of betrayal.

The discovery of the Christian symbolism, allegory, and themes “hidden” in the Chronicles of Narnia may have seemed like the unveiling a secret behind the secret world she loved for its own sake. The secret that lured her in as an unwitting child was betrayed by a secret behind the secret that left her feeling that she was not as intimate with the fantasy as she thought.

The secret behind the secret turns the story on its head. The secret, the real secret, was hidden from them.

It’s almost like the experience of losing one’s innocence. In a moment, the childlike naivete is forever undone. A person will never be the same. Those books can never be approached the same way again.  The magic is lost.

I am reminded of a series of dreams I had as a child. I had a dream one night in which I held on to Silly Putty, and some combination of the Silly Putty in my hand and my wishing allowed me to fly. It was the most exhilarating dream I ever had. It seemed real, and the realness of it lingered after I woke.

I had the same dream the next night, but I became more aware of the fact that I didn’t know how it worked. I was still able to fly, but the sense of me not knowing the magic behind the flying haunted me.

The next night I had the Silly Putty in my hand, but my wishful thinking didn’t work, try as I might, to make me fly. I could not recreate the magic, and I never had another dream of flying.

I felt in my own dream experience that I had tapped into some magic quite by accident, and I could not reproduce it because I didn’t have the knowledge of the magic. In Laura Miller’s case, the discovery of the hidden secret behind the secret, the Christianity behind the secret entrance at the back of the wardrobe into another world, undid the magic for her.

She says that the world of Narnia was no longer as she imagined it when she first read the Chronicles. that knowledge was the undoing of her own understanding of that world. She could not recreate the magic. Some adult turned the lights on, and it was gone.

She says that the world of Narnia was no longer as she imagined it when she first read the Chronicles. that knowledge was the undoing of her own understanding of that world. She could not recreate the magic. Some adult turned the lights on, and it was gone.

I am putting some words to what she said, but I can feel her sense of loss. It was the same sense of loss I felt when I found that I could no longer fly.

It seems to me, however, that the experience I had is somewhat the opposite of the experience Laura Miller had, though the sense of the loss of the magic is the same. In my case, a lack knowledge about the magic flying was my undoing, or so I felt. In Laura Miller’s case, the knowledge of the Christianity behind the Chronicles of Narnia was her undoing, or so she felt.

She had developed her own image of that fantasy world of Narnia, and discovering Christian themes and allegory in the Narnian world fabric betrayed her own imagining of that world. The imaginary world she created in her own mind vanished in the light of the knowledge that the Narnian world was not quite as she imagined it.

I read the Chronicles of Narnia in college as a very new Christian. The way those Christian themes played out for me in the pages of those books were like technicolor on a black and white screen. The nuance and subtlety in which Lewis wove those themes into a beautiful story was inspiring. Images from those books live in my imagination still today and color my theology.

Laura Miller had a distasteful experience of religion as a child. She didn’t get into much detail, though she says she grew up Catholic, like I did. I don’t want to be unfair to Catholics or Catholicism, but I can relate to her negative feelings.

I have not listed to the whole discussion yet, because of some statements Laura Miller made at about the 24 minute mark inspired me to set off down this rabbit trail. It began with her characterization that “believers” live in a reality that “operates on another plane that, if I am lucky, I can fall in a hole and be in the reality they live in”.

She says, “I just don’t experience it that way”, meaning life, I suppose, though I don’t want to put words in her mouth. I encourage you to go back and listen to the conversation yourself. This statement, however, sets the stage for what said that gave rise to my thinking today, which is this:

“I don’t think I ever really feel in danger of accidentally believing… or stumbling into it.”

She goes onto to explain her interpretation of Lewis’s past: that “he found himself wanting to believe…. and then he was able to find the pathway… towards the thing that he wanted. She goes on to say, “I don’t really feel that desire…, and it’s kind of impossible to accidentally, or sort of inadvertently, to come into a state of a desire to believe”. She concluded, “I have emerged from all kinds of literature from all kinds of faith without feeling [such a desire].”

Her comments about “accidentally believing” or “stumbling into” faith, or “a desire to believe”, as she puts it, is what inspires me to write today. It begs for some thought and comment.

Continue reading “Narnia, and the Danger of Becoming an Accidental Christian” →

Taking the Hand of God, Literally; How We Read the Bible

kevingdrendel2 Comments

Heaven is my throne, and the earth my footstool. What sort of house will you build for me? says the Lord, or what will be my resting place? Did not my hand make all these things?

Acts 7:49‭-‬50 CSB

I have thought and written about the fundamentalists and the atheists of the world who, ironically, approach the Bible in the same way. Both groups of people read the Bible in a wooden, inflexible, literal kind of way. (See Sam Harris Podcast with Bart Ehrman – Part 2 – Wooden Fundamentalism)

This passage above gets me thinking about these things again. The passage quoted above is from Steven’s address to the Jewish leaders who had him stoned after calling them stiff-necked like their ancestors in the desert (among other things).

Steven recited the Jewish history to them, including the Ark of the Covenant that was created for the Ten Commandments and Tent of Meeting that was carried through the desert. The Tabernacle with the Ark of the Covenant became the inner sanctum of the Tent of Meeting. These structures the people carried with them became the place they would meet with God.

David desired to build God a home, a permanent place for the Ark of the Covenant and Tabernacle, and Solomon accomplished David’s dream. David knew, however, that God does not live in a temple made by human hands. Solomon, David’s son who built the Temple, acknowledged this when he dedicated the Temple:

“But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!

1 Kings 8:27

They understood that the Tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, and the Temple were symbolic. These physical structures and the activity organized around them and in them were meant to point to a metaphysical reality of much greater substance.

It’s ironic that David, a man after God’s own heart, knew these things, but the people of God generally often did not. David was a man after God’s own heart, but the Israelites on the whole were often stiff-necked, as Stephen said.

I find it ironic that people who try to interpret and apply the Bible in the most literal way fall on opposite ends of the spectrum. Fundamentalists and atheists both tend to interpret the Bible literally. They are the two sides of the same interpretive coin.

At the end of the passage quoted above, the Lord poses the rhetorical question, “Did not my hand make all of these things?” Does anyone literally believe that God’s hand made the universe? (Only one hand?)

I would venture to guess that nearly everyone understands this phrase to be allegorical. Yet, there are so many things in the Bible that people try to take and apply literally that are, perhaps, not as obviously allegorical.

I’ve heard the counter statement that we cannot pick and choose the things we believe out of the Bible. We must believe every word of it, or reject all of it. This is the literalist approach – all or nothing. Never mind that a verse like the one quoted above is clearly not intended to be taken literally!

Not to pick on “fundamentalists” (whatever that term might mean), but those people we tend to label with that term tend to push a very literal interpretation of Scripture. They, in a sense, double-down on the “facts” stated in the Bible and believe everything. Many atheists dig in on the same literal way of interpreting the Bible, but they believe none of it. They both approach the Bible the same way, but one believes 100% and the other believes 0%.

Continue reading “Taking the Hand of God, Literally; How We Read the Bible” →

A Journey from No Religion, to Christianity, to Atheism and Back Again

Atheism can be built on the power of belief as much as Christian faith is.

kevingdrendel2 Comments

A listener to the Unbelievable! podcast wrote in to Christian Premiere Radio in the UK and shared his faith journey. He was invited in for an interview. His story is a modern tale.

Jim Thring grew up in a non-religious home. He didn’t know much about religion, which is a typical experience for people growing up in the increasingly post-Christian world that characterizes the UK in the 21st Century.

He became a Christian in college. It wasn’t something he set out to do. He didn’t go seeking for truth. Friends of his introduced him to Christianity. They invited him to believe, and he accepted the invitation.

Over the years, though, his faith waned. It became shallow and lifeless. He eventually walked away and became an atheist. He says his atheism become harder core when he came across the New Atheists and began reading their books and attending their lectures.

He was an atheist for almost a decade. He joined the British Humanist Association. He “rode the rhetoric” of people like Christopher Hichens and Richard Dawkins to justify to himself intellectually that he had made a sound decision.

As time went on, though, he began to question the rhetoric. Some of it seemed shallow. Many atheists were putting Christians down as “people who weren’t thinkers or rational at all”. It seemed as if they were simply against whatever Christians said. If Christians believed something, they were against it.

He remembered people he knew from years earlier who were “a lot smarter” than him who were still Christians. He began to soften in his atheism. He began to realize that reason, logic and rational thinking are tools available to more people than atheists, and they don’t inexorably lead to atheism.

He began to realize that a person can dismiss anything. Dogmatic people dismiss things out of hand, and atheists can be as dogmatic as believers.

Darren Brown talks about the “power of belief” as a stimulant. Jim would listen to that and think to himself, “Yeah! That’s what belief is, and now I am free from all that.” As time went on, however, he began to see that his atheism had a powerful stimulant behind it as well.

The maxim that “for everything there is a material explanation” is a very powerful belief. “It means that it doesn’t matter whatever evidence someone puts in front of you, it doesn’t matter what arguments, however well-constructed they might be, or how valid they are, you’ve got a reason to dismiss them.”

He began to be honest about where his atheism lay. Thus, he gradually began going to church again with his wife and spending time with her church friends. He began to take another look at Christian arguments.

At the same time, he sought to address the issues he had with origins, evolution and young earth. He wanted to take a different look at those issues from a different perspective, but he didn’t want a source that was just a “Christian institute”.

He came across John Lennox, the professor of Mathematics at Oxford, and read his book called Gunning for God: How the New Atheists are Missing the Mark. Lennox put those issues in perspective for Jim, but he also addressed the evidence that Jim thought were “knockdown arguments” against the Christian Faith. Lennox turned them around and applied them to atheism.

Jim’s deconstructed faith began to be rebuilt. Jim’s journey is an interesting one. To hear the whole story, I have embedded the interview below:

Many people have journeyed to faith from Atheism. You can listen to more stories of people who have journeyed from faith to atheism here.

Did the Golden Rule Result from the Evolutionary Process?

The truest expression of the Golden Rule is the expression in which there is no self-interest at all

kevingdrendel22 Comments

I have a friend who tells me that the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) is not unique to Christianity or to religion. He believes that the Golden Rule is a result of the evolutionary process and can be seen in nature. His conclusion is that the Golden doesn’t come from God or religion, but from the evolutionary process.

I don’t subscribe to that (obviously), but I haven’t really set out to test the hypothesis. I have done some thinking on the Golden Rule found in religion. I have compared the Golden Rule that was invoked, encouraged and demonstrated by Jesus in his own life to the expressions of a golden-like rule in other religious traditions.

I am not shocked or surprised to find expressions of an ethic like the Golden Rule in all (or nearly all) world religions. Truth is truth, right? Shouldn’t we expect to find it or expressions of it wherever we look?

I wonder, why wouldn’t we expect to find some expression of the Golden Rule in nature too? If the world was created by God, shouldn’t the world exhibit the character of God that is expressed in the Golden Rule?

Ok, does anyone really think that the world expresses God’s love as summarized in the Golden Rule?

I have heard many atheists say they don’t believe in God precisely because the world doesn’t exhibit God’s love. Christians, of course, find reasons for this reality expressed in the Scripture. I don’t intend to address them here, but I think the point is a good one: that the demonstration of the Golden Rule is difficult to find in nature.

In the end, we can see something of the Golden Rule in nature, but the demonstration of it leaves something to be desired. It doesn’t explain why the Golden Rule exists. It doesn’t prove the evolutionary paradigm, and it doesn’t negate the existence of a creator God in whose nature and character the Golden Rule finds its source.

Continue reading “Did the Golden Rule Result from the Evolutionary Process?” →

Commitment to a Worldview

The commitment to atheism can be as dogmatic as any other belief.

kevingdrendelLeave a comment

From the Unbelievable! discussion involving John Lennox vs Peter Atkins – Can science explain everything?

In a recent discussion on theism and atheism with the Oxford professors, John Lennox and Peter Atkins representing both ends of the spectrum, the dialogue stopped, and a time of questions and answers began. One person, a scientist, wrote in saying that he is an atheist, but his commitment as a scientist to follow the evidence suggested to him that God does exist. For him, the issue isn’t the evidence, but his own feelings, instincts and emotions.

When this question was put to the two guests to respond, the answers were very intriguing. John Lennox, the Christian, suggested that the man should continue to question and research and to test the position (that God exists) personally, not from afar. The response of the atheist, Peter Atkins, was simple: stick to your “commitment to rationality” (which to him presupposes atheism).

Think about it. Would you suppose the answer, to stick to your commitment, would more likely come from the Christian or the atheist? I would. I think most people would expect that answer to come from the Christian, but it doesn’t in this case. It’s the atheist sticking dogmatically to a presupposition.

Continue reading “Commitment to a Worldview” →