Tentpegs

This one came into tentpegsquestion@yahoo.com yesterday morning. I wish I’d had the time to answer it then, as this is obviously a source of great pain for the one who sent it in. So, let’s get right to it:

I have read some of your tentpegs blog posts and have a question.  I have been pretty distraught lately because in a moment of anger I blasphemed the Holy Spirit.  I got angry at the Holy Spirit for convicting me of something and in a rash moment in my mind yelled out f*** you, visualizing myself shaking the Holy Spirit.  I feel so awful and have cried and cried about that and feel almost sure I am damned.  I feel tempted to say I have been under enormous stress lately and I just lost it; but there is no excuse for such a sin.  I feel absolutely horrible, and have begged God to remember that sin no more.  I don’t want to lose God; not so much as a fear of going to Hell but of the fact that I really do love God, and my heart breaks at the idea of being separated from Him here or for eternity.  I grieve and cringe over what I did.  I know what the Scripture says though about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.  The Scripture seems pretty clear.  I do not want to lie to myself, and think there could be a possibility of me going to Heaven if there isn’t.  I don’t want to be away from God, and I cannot imagine living a life where I “live it up” with no thought of Him.  Actually, I think I will probably ruminate on this sin until my death.  Do you have any insight that you could share on this situation?  I know you cannot authoritatively speak where the Scripture does not speak, so I am not asking you to do so.  I guess I am just looking for some shred of hope that I won’t be damned or separated from God or annihilated.  I really do want to be with God.

Let’s look at the passage in question.

Matt. 12:22-32 says, “Then there was brought to Him a demon-possessed man who was blind and dumb, and He healed him, so that the dumb man spoke and saw. ²³And all the multitudes were amazed, and began to say, “This man cannot be the Son of David, can he?” ²⁴But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, “This man casts out demons only by Beelzebub the ruler of the demons.” ²⁵And knowing their thoughts He said to them, “Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself shall not stand. ²⁶“And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand? ²⁷“And if I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Consequently they shall be your judges. ²⁸“But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. ²⁹“Or how can anyone enter the strong man’s house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house. ³⁰“He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters. ³¹“Therefore I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. ³²“And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the age to come,” (All Scripture quotes are from the NASB).

I’ve seen people try to answer this question by doing a study of the word “blasphemy” or by talking about how this affects the “once saved always saved” doctrine of most Calvinists but, to be honest, I’ve generally just seen this passage avoided. And no wonder – it is terrifying.

Let me assure the person who wrote this question: you did not commit blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. I know this because Jesus defines it here. In the passage, it wasn’t anger or pain or disbelief that caused Jesus’ reaction; it was attributing to the devil the work of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit was working in the life of Jesus, giving him his power and the words he was to speak. To attribute the life and teachings of Jesus to the devil would mean that those who did so would never have a path to salvation. Ever. As Jesus is THE way, THE truth, and THE life and no one comes to the Father except through him, any person who believes that Jesus was demon possessed and did the work of the devil has no way to get to the Father.

I have heard a few people come close to this. Most were pagans (their own word. Most would call them witches or earth spirit worshippers) who believed that Jesus and God were representatives of spirits who did not have our best interests at heart. While they didn’t believe in the devil (witches believe that is a Christian myth), they were skating the edge of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Another was a Satanist who quoted some old Freemason myths (not believed by 99% of masons, by the way) that Lucifer was Jesus’ older, wiser, more loving brother who wanted us to be happy, but Jesus stole the show and displaced him, dooming us to gloomy churches and guilt. Again, not the same but pretty close.

What the questioner did was not what Jesus was talking about. They are still a believer (and none of those addressed by Jesus were) and want to please God and follow Jesus (again, unlike any of those in attendance in Matthew 12). So, dear friend, you are not doomed. You made a mistake and you realized it. As one of God’s children you went to Him in sincere repentance and He forgave you. I know that because I know Him and have read His book.

But those who deny Jesus and refuse to listen to him are lost whether or not they commit “the” blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

Remember that if you want me to answer a question, it needs to come into tentpegsquestion@yahoo.com. Some have been sending them to my Facebook page and it is just too easy to lose them there. I have a lot to do since I just got back in town and have another trip scheduled in 6 days so let’s get to this one…

I am teaching crime and deviant behavior this semester and today we’re discussing the possible biological roots of crime (Cesare Lombroso specifically). The concept of atavism keeps being discussed. I am having a hard time understanding that these are leftover traits of an earlier evolutionary time. I’ve seen pictures of supposed “atavisms” in the form of arms on snakes – but they always turn out to have been lunch for the snake in the form of a lizard or other tasty small mammal. Can you shed any light on this? Are atavisms in humans legitimate – such as tails? Thanks for any input and have a great day.

All right, for those who don’t read this kind of stuff for a living, let me do a very stripped down version of this for you so you’ll have some background. Evolution is not just limited to biology. For well over a century it has also been used to explain our behavior as humans — our psychology. I can remember being an 11th grader and reading Desmond Morris’ “The Naked Ape” where he used primate behavior in the wild to explain our behavior. Of course, that was back in 1972 and we were still really in the 60s so he might have had a point… Go from there to more modern versions such as Edward O. Wilson’s “On Human Nature” and you see that there exists a large number of scientists who believe that we are just animals who have evolved to where we are and that, as we evolve, we have to account for the fact that some parts of our brain are still triggered by ancient stimuli that was critical to us when we were less than human.

Psychology has long had a hand in this idea. Carl Jung believed that racial memory and atavistic memory lived within all of us and was the reason why we behaved in certain ways or used symbols and language in the ways we do. Joseph Campbell took that and ran with it in his “The Power of Myth.”

So… what is the evidence? If this were a court we would have to say that all existing evidence for atavistic memory or racial memory is circumstantial at best. The evidence we have for this whole concept is anecdotal for it consists entirely of our ideas, opinions, and observations of ourselves and others. There is, in other words, no hard evidence. We cannot go to a place in the brain and say “See? This bit is a monkey bit. We needed it when we were monkeys but we don’t need it now.” That isn’t for lack of trying, by the way. Wilson, in particular, even claimed that he could show us the junk DNA in our system and how it used to be relevant when we were smaller and furrier but not today. However, that idea is running headlong into what evidence we DO have, summarized in a concise and accessible way by Jonathan Wells in his book “The Myth of Junk DNA.” (mythofjunkdna.com) It amuses me — and saddens me — when I hear people who should know better expound to a room of students that “there are thousands of errors in our DNA, relics of old blueprints, broken links of old programs we no longer need” when Wells and others have shown that what was once thought of as junk is, in fact, demonstrably useful stuff.

This is a parallel situation to that of the AMA back in the 1920s and 1930s. The AMA was just gaining prominence at that time. Before then, bonesetters, herbalists, homeopaths, etc. were as popular as MDs. In fact, there were more homeopathic hospitals than there were allopathic ones (“allopath” being the name given the system used by MDs. It is sometimes considered not a descriptive term but a perjorative) until just after the turn of that century. The AMA wanted to present itself as at the forefront of all science (and, by so doing, relegate the other systems to the dust bin of myth of quackery) so it quickly embraced evolution. By the way, the osteopaths did not follow that same trajectory for quite a long time. Today the two systems (MD and DO) are considered equivalent except in very minor ways. Anyway, back to the story. The AMA published a booklet to give to patients in order to gin up a lot more business for itself. It explained that we didn’t need tonsils and our appendix or twenty other organs (!) because they were vestigial — used once back when we were less evolved than we are now. Shortly after the brochure was printed, whole families would come in to get their tonsils out as a group. They weren’t ill, they just wanted that old, useless stuff removed. Of course, now we know that the organs we used to think were vestigial have (or might have) a very real purpose. Tonsils are a vital part of the immune system. They are the canaries in the mine, if you will. When they become so infected that they have to be removed, it is because they have taken the infection out of the rest of the body and, well, taken one for the team. The appendix is involved in the digestion of starch but it’s main purpose (just discovered in the last five years) is as a safe repository of good, healthful, necessary bacteria. When those necessary bacteria are wiped out by antibiotics, cancer treatment, or disease the appendix can then effectively re-boot the gut (see The Independent (UK), October, 2007). Out of the list of unnecessary, vestigial organs, almost all have now been found to be very important. Had anyone been foolish enough to believe the AMA’s brochure and had all of them removed, they would have died on the table.

And yet… about 13 years ago I had a doctor explain to me why I kept getting sinus infections. He said it was because our sinuses evolved to drain well back when we walked on all fours. Now that we walked upright, they didn’t drain well, he said. I talked to him about the incredible amount of changes the body has to go through to go from four feet to two footed locomotion and asked why the sinuses made no adjustments during that time, or why we continued to become more and more erect while our sinuses tried to get us back on all fours. He had no answer. He was just repeating what he’d been told… and never really thought about. (by the way, when we got better antihistamines, my sinus infections stopped even though I continued to walk upright)

So… we can explain some of our behavior by referencing our culture, our physical environment, etc. but we have no reason to appeal to atavism. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here and forget the very real nature of DNA. As shown by countless studies (most notably the Minnesota study of twins), our DNA has a huge influence on our behavior including our choices and reactions. We do not have complete free will because our genes act as boundaries, blueprints, and road signs. We can overcome some of it but not all of it (as Jesus said, “which of you can grow taller just because you want to?”). As troubling as this is for some Christians to deal with, some criminal behaviors have been shown to flow through some families even when the kids are adopted out and raised elsewhere. Think of the young 15 year old boy who just strangled the two people who adopted him 10 years ago (because they told him he was spending too much time at Occupy Oakland). While this hasn’t made it to the papers, he comes from a family that has a history of violence; especially against its own members. So are we doomed by our DNA? I would say no. I believe in the Holy Spirit and in characteriological transformation. But your DNA is still your DNA so, like Paul, you might have to deal with a thorn in the flesh your whole life. Or thorns.

But atavism says the source for all of this comes from the bulk of humanity and our larger tribe. DNA shows us that it runs in families and that it usually self corrects (DNA is not static. It adjusts and can be damaged or fix its own programming in part). We are not victims of an ancient story. Our reality is far more complex than that.

From time to time the people running a youth rally at which I am speaking ask me to take an hour answering written questions from the kids on anything that is bothering them. At the youth rally in Jennings, Louisiana last week there were so many questions that we cancelled one of my talks to add a second hour of questions and answers. I didn’t save the first stack of questions – my bad – but I held on to the second stack. I thought you might want to see what they are asking. I love doing this because it gives me a snapshot into the heads of our youth.

1. I’m thinking about being a theologian. Any tips?
2. How do you feel about science and religion?
3. What’s the best version of the Bible to study from?
4. How do your colleagues in science feel about science and religion? Do they think science negates the need for God?
5. Since the devil is able to get away with about anything on this planet, how can we feel safe?
6. Do children have to love their parents?
7. I want to be a doctor and a writer. How do I make my stories more Christian but still interesting so they sell?
8. I go to a Catholic school but the kids don’t act like Christians. How am I supposed to take a stand with my peers?
9. I’m often depressed and I pray to God but it feels like He doesn’t hear me. Can I get some reassurance?
10. My friends are Roman Catholics. Should I be worrying about them since they pray to Mary and the saints?
11. Why did God allow us to be born in America with freedom but others were born in countries where they cannot worship?
12. Whose counsel does God seek? And why?
13. Many people have told me in the Bible it says gay people go to hell. I’m not gay but I’m wondering if that is true and if so, where in the Bible does it say that?
14. Is it a sin to cut your hair?
15. Were you raised in a church?
16. Why do people pick on people with red hair and call them gingers and say they have no soul?
17. Why did Jesus choose to die for us?
18. Is there life after death?
19. If you are a Christian and you make lots of mistakes how do you know if God will really forgive you if you do something wrong?
20. Have you ever been made fun of for believing in God?
21. Why does God allow us to hurt so bad when we lose a loved one?
22. Why does God let the devil hurt people? Why doesn’t He stop it?
23. Do you like religion?
24. What’s up with the platypus?
25. If someone makes a decision to be baptized but dies on their way, what happens to them?
26. My mom always tells me to be an example to the other kids in my middle school but sometimes I get caught up in the crowd. Can you help me?
27. If your best friend is really mad at you and you believe in one thing and they really don’t know Christ how can you reach out to them?
28. I really want to be an example to other people about God but sometimes I say stuff and people get offended. Can you help me stop that?
29. Can God call you to a certain profession or do you think He leaves that up to us?
30. How do I know that I’m completely saved?

This area is heavily Roman Catholic with a strong Church of God presence as well. But most people don’t go to any church and the Mardi Gras influence lasts all year long. Alcoholism, gambling, and poverty mark the entire coast. These kids are caught in it. Three kids were recently baptized in a nearby town and we were asked to pray for them several times as they have been harassed, threatened, and persecuted by fellow students who found out about that. It isn’t easy being a kid of faith in most places – and it might be a little harder here than most.

It would be good to take some time to survey a local school and your teens. Set up a box and put a card on it that says “if you only had one question you could ask God, what would it be?” See what shows up. And then adjust your ministries, sermons, and programs to deal with the needs of the community. It might make a difference.

I wish I’d saved the other 20-30 questions but these give you a taste. I’ll be back in Colorado soon and I’ll try to do another Tentpegs in the next few days. Before you ask, I am not sure that these were recorded. And, besides, I gave them my answers. You will need to give them yours.

It was ironic that when I first found your site the most recent post up on your blog was your answer to the question “When are We Saved.” At the time I was involved in some good and thought provoking discussions with a friend on our differing views of baptism. He believed that once you come to belief in Christ you are baptized by the Holy Spirit and are saved. Baptism then is the first command you complete as a saved person. The primary verse he pointed to in explaining his rationale is Ephesians 2:8-9 where Paul says you are not saved by ‘works’ but by grace through faith. His conclusion was that baptism should be considered a ‘work’ and therefore, is not essential in receiving salvation. Although I believe if God so chooses He can save someone who is unbaptized, I still believe in scripture it is clear that baptism is meant to be a part of the process of accepting salvation. I have had difficulty explaining to him why I do not see this verse in Ephesians as proof that baptism is not a part of the salvation process. Because of this, I was wondering what relationship, if any, do you think baptism has in regards to this verse? What did Paul really mean when he was talking about works? Any words of wisdom you might have on this topic would be greatly appreciated!

Every attempt to make baptism a “work” has, to my mind, failed. We don’t even do anything during baptism – it is done to us! Think of it this way: if I gave you a gift but you had to open your hand to receive it, is that a work that earns that gift? Of course not. How about if you had to unwrap it? Does that qualify as a work that earns you the gift? Again – of course not. And to respond to God’s love and command by stepping into the water and allowing yourself to be lowered and then raised is no more a work than unwrapping a present is.

And our salvation is still a gift given by grace even though we are to obey Jesus in baptism, for baptism in and of itself – and even our obedience! – is not enough to wash away our sins. That washing – that wonderful promise – is by grace which we access by faith. That faith, by the way, is shown by doing what he told us to do. He told us to be baptized and, therefore, we are baptized. That is not a work in any meaningful sense of the term.

I have gone a long time without needing help, but here I am again. A minister friend has decided to unfriend any FB friends who use “coarse” language in posts. Who would Jesus unfriend? I am afraid that I will be unfriended and afraid that I will not be unfriended. The minister says that we sometimes confuse tolerance with love. Didn’t the bad guys accuse Jesus of being too tolerant? Back in the day, if you walked with Jesus you were around a pretty “coarse” crowd.

I have to unfriend at least one person a week on my Facebook page. Usually it is because that person has decided to use my page as a loudspeaker for their sermonizing or their politics or to attack other friends of mine. It is an act of love to stop that before it hurts others and defeats the purpose of a Facebook page – fun communication with people who are your friends.

I see no issue in unfriending them. I think that if a person were not a public individual and had a minimum of friends it could be handled via email and messages, asking the person to consider their language and change how they post. However, I speak for Jesus all over the US and Canada – and sometimes even further afield. And like it or not there exists a large majority of the population who believe that if it is on your page and if it came from a friend (and, perhaps, even if it didn’t) you are endorsing it.

So I have to take off posts that people think are funny or important. Some of them have harsh, nasty things to say about our president and even though I am no fan of this administration, that is just out of line. Others think this or that song is important but it isn’t what I use my page for so… it goes.

I also use my Facebook page as a place to make people laugh. I use humor extensively on that page and there are always some humor-deficient people out there who are outraged and who then respond by sermonizing and attacking. They are unfriended because they are being unfriendly to me and my friends.

Jesus did indeed hang out with some coarse individuals, but he never placed them in a position where it appeared they were speaking for him and it would be hard to jump from his example to the idea that it is unchristian to unfriend… Now, if your minister friend is just calling anything and everything “coarse” and being judgmental, that is another issue. But we are called to be discerning and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world so there IS some weighing and decision making involved in what we present to the public. I have no problem visiting with addicts, hanging out with the homeless, or speaking to gang members about the Lord but I would not allow them to say just anything from the pulpit I use on Sunday or from the electronic billboard called Facebook. If, after warnings, they are not willing to change their behavior, you need to protect the rest of your friends from their harsh words or vitriol. I use the same reasoning when I tell someone that I would defend my family against an attacker. When someone asks “How can you fight or kill that man when you are called to love him?” my response is “I am not called to love ONLY him. I am also called to love those behind me whom it is my duty to protect.”

Last one on this question and then we’ll move on. If you are following my personal/historical blog, you might want to know that I began a new series there today – www.patrickmead.net. Now, back to Hawking.

Hawking could use a good philosophy course to help him not make several mistakes in his book, The Grand Design, including, of course, the idea that philosophy is dead. He deals with epistemology, the study of how we know what we know, but he fails to account for what his theory would do to that field. Physicists I’ve quoted in the last two blogs such as Davies and Polkinghorne have excoriated him on this for if our brains and if consciousness itself were merely the random arrangement of molecules due to a pre-existent law of gravity there would be no reason at all to believe what they come up with is true.

But there are other problems with the book: an ignorance of history caused by arrogance. Hawking says that the only reason people believed in miracles in Jesus’ time (or the time of scripture generally) was because they lived in an ignorant, pre-scientific, myth filled world. He is not the first to make this argument. While Dawkins makes it as well they both took it from the late Carl Sagan’s book “The Demon Haunted World.” In that book, Sagan paints the people of the Bible and, indeed, all people up to the time of Darwin as so foolish they thought everything was caused by demons or angels and that miracles were all around them. Only when science came along, Sagan says, were we given freedom from those atavistic fears of our forefathers. This is, of course, rubbish.

Before I get into why it is rubbish, let me remind you of something. Sagan wrote a fiction book called Contact where a plucky scientist played by Jodie Foster notices that a pattern of a few tones/letters appears again and again. Knowing that the odds that a pattern like that could form spontaneously and repeat again and again are so high as to be impossible, she uses that to prove that there is an alien intelligence “out there” trying to make contact with us. But Sagan ignored the largest “word” known to man – our DNA. There in every cell in our body is a 3.5 billion letter “word” that has the most intricate set of architectural drawings, chemical equations, and structural instructions known to exist in the entire universe. He couldn’t see it because he was waiting for a few tones/letters to hit from “out there.” Sigh.

Back to the historical myth touted by Sagan, Dawkins and, now, Hawking. If the people of Jesus’ day expected miracles and saw angels and demons behind the events of every day life, then why were the miracles done by Jesus of any interest to them at all? Why did the resurrection literally change the course of world history? As Professor Lennox said “A moment’s thought will show us that, in order to recognize some event as a miracle, there must be some perceived regularity to which that event is an apparent exception! You cannot recognize something as abnormal if you do not know what is normal.”

Luke was a historian as well as a physician. He noted some objections to the resurrection story, but they came from the high priests who saw that their power would disappear if this story were true. In other words, religious people of the day did NOT automatically believe in miracles even when they occurred. Like most people – remember Thomas? – they would not believe unless they saw it with their own eyes and touched him with their own hands. And resurrection was such an anomaly! Pagan myths did, indeed, exist everywhere but the idea of a resurrection from the dead was so rare that even Mohammed, when he wrote the story of Islam, rewrote the Jesus story to take the resurrection out.

The fact is that the people of Jesus’ day studied science and understood when the laws of nature had been broken. They did not look at such events as normal but as extremely rare. People even flocked around Jesus just in case he did something extraordinary… for they had never seen miracles before. The idea that people of that age just believed any old story is a slander to the intelligence of the people who gave us our first lessons in science, language, alphabets, and numerals.

Hawking then says there is no place for a God when you have laws of nature. What could He possibly do? Hawking asks. Seriously? My car runs by the laws of science and nature, but a large group of individuals intervened when they put those materials together and arranged them into a functioning vehicle. To say that since natural laws exist, God can’t intervene to arrange substances and materials into people and rivers is nonsensical. Again, quoting Lennox, “He is simply assuming what he wants to prove. He is expressing a belief based on his atheistic worldview, not on his science.”

Yes, miracles are unique and rare and improbable. And the resurrection story is something that we can all agree is so rare and improbable that it is fine to question it and look to see what evidence exists that it did, in fact, occur. But is this story any more unique, rare, or improbable than that a law of nature (gravity) created itself and then, without any action or agency, it created all other things? Hawking never sees how odd his choices are. He believes in the multiverse but not miracles, even though the whole point of the theory of multiverses is that everything that can happen is happening or did happen in one of them… including miracles. Every theory of multiverses includes universes in which the laws of nature are missing or changed. In his other papers, Hawking admits that. In his book to push atheism, he never brings it up. If Hawking doesn’t want to meet God, he should avoid the multiverse.

Remember that Hawking is telling us – with great confidence – that there is now a known scientific pathway to get from nothing to something. He saw that mechanism is the law of gravity. However, he is going in circles here. He has failed to answer the simple question “why is there something rather than nothing?” When he says that the existence of the law of gravity makes creation of the universe not only possible but inevitable he makes at least two huge errors.

First – if you have a law of gravity in existence, you most certainly do not have “nothing.” You have something. You have failed to answer how that something came to be. It did not create itself as that is as impossible as pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. We won’t even go into the details of the law of gravity that require other objects before gravity manifests itself… let’s just say his cosmic cart is well ahead of his cosmic horse. Hawking says that all that was necessary was for “the blue touch paper to be lit to set the universe going” and you can almost hear the jaws of scientists drop all over the world. What blue touch paper? The law of gravity? Who put its properties and potentials into place? Who put the blue touch paper there? Who lit it?

The second error is to say that the existence of the law of gravity makes the creation of the universe inevitable. Of course, he offers no formula or experiment to show us this cosmic inevitability and that is understandable for none such exists. Someone who actually knows a great deal about this is Allan Sandage. He is considered the father of modern astronomy and has won astronomy’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the Crafoord Prize. He says (quoted by Lennox), “I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence – why there is something rather than nothing.”

Hawking builds several straw men in his book and then triumphantly knocks them down. One of them is the old Bishop Ussher chronology. He presents it as if all who believe in God believe that Ussher had it right when he declared that the universe was created on October 27, 4004 BC. He also leaves the impression that the Bible backs up Ussher and that timeline. While there are some groups that hold to Ussher (and other who believe we didn’t make it to the moon, others who believe the earth is flat, etc.) the vast majority of believers in God are quite elastic when it comes to timelines and dates for creation. And the Bible certainly doesn’t give us that answer. Trying to count backwards from lists of ancestors and sons is against the purpose of the list and ignores the rules of such lists. Remember… Jesus was the Son of David but there were a few generations in between.

When confronted with the massive collection of evidence that indicates this universe was fine tuned for life, Hawking agrees that it looks that way. He says “The discovery relatively recently of the extreme fine tuning of so many of the laws of nature could lead at least some of us back to the old idea that this grand design is the world of some grand designer…That is not the answer of modern science… our universe seems to be one of many, each with different laws.” So… let’s toss aside all the of evidence we can see, measure, and use in experiments and replace it with the unproven theory of the multiverse? And how does the existence of multiple universes – if they, indeed, exist – negate the order and fine tuning in our universe? And why would it be necessary to assume that the other universes are NOT fine-tuned? One of the top theoretical physicists of all times is John Polkinghorne said this of the concept of multiverses: “Let us recognize these speculations for what they are. They are not physics, but in the purely scientific sense, metaphysics. There is no purely scientific reason to believe in an ensemble of universes…A possible explanation of equal intellectual respectability…would be that this one world is the way it is, because it is the creation of the will of a Creator who purposes that it should be so.”

Surprised that so many top astronomers and physicists are believers? Don’t be. While belief is less common among scientists of all stripes than it is in the general public, it is rather common among physicists and astronomers, mathematicians, and several other disciplines. It is much rarer in disciplines such as paleontology, geology, and evolutionary biology. Faith is very common among medical practitioners and researchers. Just saying this – don’t think Hawking represents all scientists. He represents the ones that get on TV and in the popular press.

This would be a good time to insert something a bit off topic. I was recently approached by a member of my church whose friend at work “doesn’t believe in God. He believes in science.” His stated reason for this was the large number of divisions among believers which showed him it was all nonsense. Faith wasn’t united like science was, he said. I nearly swallowed my tongue. I know of no denominational fight that comes up to the scale of the infighting in scientific circles. One example will suffice here but more can be given upon request. When dinosaur fossils and fossilized tropical vegetation was found in Antarctica, the scientific world started a fight it shows no sign of settling. Geologists said that Antarctica separated from a landmass further north too long ago to support the existence of dinosaurs there. Biologists and paleontologists nearly came to blows with each other and with geologists about the timing, possibility, and how those bones got there. Those who study the formation of petroleum say all of the others are nuts. Climate scientists believe their idea is right and the others are idiots. Fact is, I have never been to a medical or scientific forum where “denominations” didn’t break out and harsh divisions form. In contrast, 95% of believers in Christ on this planet would accept the Nicean and or the Apostles Creed in some form or the other.

Hawking makes up a theory he calls M-theory to explain how the law of gravity formed by itself, set itself off, and created planets, pandas, and posies out of nothing. His assumptions are such a reach that Don Page, a theoretical physicist who authored eight papers with Hawking and who helped him do research for years and years wrote this in a letter to his colleagues at Oxford and Cambridge: “I would certainly agree that even if M-theory were a fully formulated theory (which it isn’t yet) and were correct (which of course we do not know), that would not imply that God did not create the universe.” M-theory is an abstract theory with no power to create or to solve the issue of our fine-tuned universe. Hawking says it is sufficient to explain the existence of 10⁵⁰⁰ universes but his peers and those who are Nobel Prize winners in his field say it is not sufficient to explain the one in which we live. Guess who got his view on TV and in our kids’ textbooks?

Tim Radford wrote a review of Hawking’s book in The Guardian, a left leaning newspaper for the well-educated Englishman. I love his phrasing. “In this very brief history of modern cosmological physics, the laws of quantum and relativistic physics represent things to be wondered at but widely accepted: just like biblical miracles. M-theory invokes something different: a prime mover, a begetter, a creative force that is everywhere and nowhere. This force cannot be identified by instruments or examined by comprehensible mathematical prediction, and yet it contains all possibilities. It incorporates omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence, and it’s a big mystery. Remind you of Anybody?” (Guardian, 18 September 2010)

Other physicists came out against Hawking’s book and against M-theory in particular. Jim Al-Khalili said “M-theory is not even a proper scientific theory…and in fact [it is] only one of a number of candidate TOEs [theories of everything].” Paul Davies said “It is not testable, not even in any foreseeable future.” Frank Close says that the M might as well stand for Myth and adds “I don’t see that M-theory adds one iota to the God debate, either pro or con.” One of the top men at the Hadron Collider in Switzerland, John Butterworth, says it is “highly speculative and certainly not in the zone of science that we have got any evidence for.” And this type of quotes could go on for dozens of top physicists in top universities and labs all over the world. The only people Hawking can convince with his book are TV presenters, our kids in school (who don’t hear the opposing arguments), and the simple, unscientifically trained. Sadly, that latter group is rather large and vocal.

I love Lennox’s quote here in “God and Stephen Hawking.” He says “A move to advance the cause of atheism by means of a highly speculative, untestable theory that is not within the zone of evidence-based science, and which, even if it were true, could not dislodge God in any case, is not exactly calculated to impress those of us whose faith in God is not speculative, but testable and well within the zone of evidence based rational thought.” Amen.

One more on this later…

More questions are coming into tentpegsquestion@yahoo.com than I can answer but keep them coming! This one has come in a couple of times so I blended two emails and distilled them into this question:

I haven’t seen you address Stephen Hawking’s latest book, The Grand Design. Several of our kids have read it (or say they did) and that it gave them all they needed to discard belief in God. If you’ve read it, what do you think about it and how can we answer those who think science has now disproven the existence of God?

It seems that every new book is said to have proven there is no god. And then that book is forgotten and we move along, churches still in business, Bibles still being sold and read, and charities still run as if there were a God. It’s best to keep that in mind and to remind people of that when they run to this or that book as if the author has come up with some argument that has eluded everyone else in the history of our planet.

Stephen Hawking brushed up against atheistic statements in his classic book “A Brief History of Time” but he comes right out and says that science has done away with any reason to believe in any kind of god in his latest book… and the media loves him for it. They gave him an hour long special program that ran on Discovery Channel and was reshown on a couple of other networks. They also had him or his surrogates (he can only speak through a complicated computer so he rarely does straight interviews) on at least a dozen shows I heard about or saw. The problem is… his book is quite a disappointment.

I’ll explain. I keep waiting for good arguments to arise that would free me from this whole “love thy neighbor” and “give to the poor” stuff I find myself in but no one has made them. Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, was so poorly researched and written and so poorly reasoned that although the media treated it as if it were brilliant, his friends and co-scientists and professors at Oxford excoriated it as childish and error filled. He confused the testaments, attributed quotes to the Bible that were never there, misunderstood several basic scientific concepts (to be fair, they weren’t in his own field of evolutionary biology but, if you are going to use them, you need to use them correctly and he did not), and his arguments would have given him an F in a freshman logic course. It was, in a word, sad. I expected better of him. (yes, if you need examples of this I can provide those in a future blog. But his book is nearly forgotten already)

And when I read Hawking’s new book I was once again stunned at how shallow and poor the arguments are that are slung against faith in God. He starts his book with the big questions. “How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a Creator?” He continues with questions along this line and then makes this rather stunning statement: “Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead…As a result scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”

Seriously? Philosophy is dead? And how does one determine that unless one engages in philosophy? And, in fact, Hawkings spends most of his book engaging in philosophy without, evidently, being aware of the fact. That is shocking. Perhaps it wasn’t that philosophy didn’t keep up (as he states) with science so much as he didn’t keep up with philosophy. His statement is ludicrous. It is also logically incoherent because it is a metaphysical, philosophical statement made to the effect that philosophy is useless and dead. Note – he didn’t make (nor does he in the rest of his book) a scientific statement to the effect that philosophy is dead. No, he made a philosophical statement. For there is no evidence upon which he can make a scientific statement.

Scientism – the idea that science is the only way to truth – is discarded as nonsense by most scientists, even those who are his peers at Cambridge. One of them is the world’s premier mathematician, John C. Lennox. Professor Lennox holds three doctorates (!) and has destroyed Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins in debates for he is also a devout Christian… and he doesn’t let them get away with the sloppy thinking. (read his books “God’s Undertaker” and “God and Stephen Hawking”).

In this he is joined by Nobel Prize Winner Sir Peter Medawar in “Advice to a Young Scientist”) “There is no quicker way for a scientist to bring discredit upon himself and upon his profession than to roundly declare… that science knows, or soon will know, the answers to all questions worth asking.” Einstein and Richard Feynman also wrote and spoke extensively against the very kind of hubris and over-statements that make up Hawking’s book.

The main thrust of Hawking’s book is that something can come from nothing. He even calls it “spontaneous generation” even though that term and the idea it describes has been thrown in the trash bin since Pasteur found out that life does not spontaneously generate itself from non-life. He writes “because there is a law of gravity, the universe can and will create itself out of nothing.” I am stunned that he or his editor did not catch this statement – which he repeats several different ways throughout his book – and note that it is inherently contradictory. If you have a law of gravity you most certainly do NOT have nothing. You have a law that follows certain rules of behavior and result. It is a something.

And, besides, laws don’t create anything. Laws merely describe what exists; they do not make those things happen. A universe such as described by Hawking’s only exists in Lewis Carroll books, not in reality. Professor Lennox puts it this way: “It is seldom that one finds in a single statement two distinct levels of contradiction, but Hawking appears to have constructed such a statement. He says the universe comes from a nothing that turns out to be a something (self contradiction number one), and then he says the universe creates itself (self contradiction number two). But that is not all. His notion that a law of nature (gravity) explains the existence of the universe is also self-contradictory since a law of nature, by definition, surely depends for its own existence on the prior existence of the nature it purports to describe.” And this type of self contradiction flows throughout Hawking’s book. It is a fairy tale that goes against all known rules of science, physics, and logic… but most people don’t know those rules and haven’t been trained in any of them and, therefore, they are easily impressed by people like Hawking when they make pronouncements and act like they are facts.

Professor Lennox put it this way – “…nonsense remains nonsense, even when talked by world famous scientists.” Hawking has proven that great degrees and great standing in your field does not keep you from making elementary mistakes over and over again.

Hawking not only ascribes creative power to a law that existed before anything existed (???), he dismisses the possibility of any agency which would be involved in creation. Lennox uses Sir Frank Whittle as a way to explain how this is foolishness. Sir Frank invented the jet engine. The materials used in jet engines already existed as did all of the laws of nature that make it work. However, the jet engine did not exist until an outside intelligent agency (Sir Frank) worked within the laws with the materials at hand and created the jet engine. In Hawking’s world, the laws of nature would have to bear the burden of bringing all the materials into existence — out of nothing but laws — and then arrange them into the exact form of a jet engine. Preposterous. The laws of physics cannot create a jet engine. Ask any scientist and they will tell you so. However, we are supposed to believe — merely because he said so — that the laws of physics created the universe, tadpoles, people, and mountain ranges? Even if laws could create, it has always taken intelligence, imagination, and scientific creativity to arrange created materials into useful forms. Why, if this is true in all of recorded history and in every experiment ever devised, are we to believe that it was otherwise “once upon a time”? Lennox, again, says “Matter may be humble stuff, but laws cannot create it.”

Science is designed to answer the question “how” very well but it isn’t very well placed to answer “why” questions, especially when those questions are of a philosophical, metaphysical, or religious kind. And science has never done anything or discovered anything that disproves the existence of God. No — atheistic assumptions exclude God from creation, not science.

Not only can laws not bring anything into existence, laws cannot CAUSE anything to happen. Newton’s laws of motion are very well understood but they don’t cause me to fall down, a plane to take off, or a tire to lose grip under harsh cornering. No, some other agency must exist that starts the process that the laws then act upon. C.S. Lewis, though no scientist, understood this a lot better than Hawking does (which is bizarre since most scientists absolutely understand it) and wrote about it in his classic book “Miracles.” He describes the laws of mathematics and how we understand the rules of bookkeeping. Yet, “Book-keeping, continued to all eternity, could never produce one farthing.” In other words, play with the rules for the next million years and you will still not produce a penny. The great philosopher Wittenstein was quoted later by one of the greatest physicists of modern times, Richard Feynman when he warned against his “deception of modernism.” The deception of modernism is the idea that the laws of nature explain the world to us when all they do is describe structural regularities.

[more soon]

I could probably unite these in one question but I won’t. Not every person who reads this blog does so to learn something about the Bible. Some read it in order to attack. Their numbers are small and getting smaller but none of us should expect their voices to get quieter any time soon.

I read your blogs and I’ve heard you speak a few times. It is clear that you hate the church of Christ and you don’t respect the Bible. Why don’t you just leave the Church of Christ and go somewhere you’d be happier? Instead of troubling us and telling us we’re all wrong and making fun of us, why don’t you just leave?

This questioner went on a bit more but you’ve got the gist of it here. And I don’t mind answering this.

In the last month I’ve read Leroy Garrett’s wonderful little book “What the Church of Christ Has to do to be Saved.” Some would be appalled at the title but I hope that they have the nerve to read his book. Leroy has been calling us to more love and honesty for over 60 years. He had a cadre of others join him early on and they wrote the Restoration Review. Some of those eventually were forced out of the CoC such as Robert Meyer who died recently. Meyer edited a series of essays called “Voices of Concern: critical studies in church of Christism” that got him pilloried and verbally crucified everywhere he went. Both of those books are still available to all who have e-readers. I reread that book last month, too. I also read Mike Allen’s “Growing Up Church of Christ” which I found very uneven and not all that helpful; though it was a kind of fun walk down memory lane. My point is that that there are quite a few books out there by former and current Church of Christ members explaining why they left, why they’ve stayed, or what needs to be done to make our church more like Jesus’ intent. Rubel Shelly, a good friend and brother, wrote a book recently with the provocative title “I Knew Jesus Before He Was A Christian and I Liked Him Better Then.” One of my elders back in Michigan — a great man with an open mind and warm heart — didn’t like the title and hadn’t read the book because of it. Sigh.

Leroy Garrett goes on at great length in his book mentioned above on why he would not leave the Church of Christ. I don’t think I can say it any better than him but here is my brief take on an answer. I love the Church of Christ. I love preaching without the strictures of a written creed (and I will not bow to an unwritten one) or the dictates of a central headquarters. I LOVE the freedom in Christ that we have in our church if we will only rise up and take it (Galatians 5:1ff). I love the fact that none of our churches can fire the minister of another church and that each congregation is free to hire their own minister, appoint their own elders, etc. I love the fact that each congregation can set its own pace and decide which traditions it wants to hold and which it wants to jettison. I love it that each of us is free to work out our own salvation (a collective working, by the way. The word “you” was a plural one in this passage) so that we can decide what our worship will look and sound like. Yes, we have allowed bullies to force us into conformity but those bullies’ day is over and they know it. Churches are feeling free to engage with churches from other tribes to do good works. Other churches are using instruments in worship or bringing women into a much more prominent, equal role in worship and administration. Some stay traditional but continue to fellowship those who have changed. I can preach what I think the Bible says and I can lead in the direction I believe the Spirit is leading without fear of being brought up in front of a panel at our denomination’s next Convention and Assembly… for we don’t have one of those. I might not be invited to speak at this or that event or I might not be allowed to teach on this or that campus, but that is a good thing as well for it neatly illustrates our diversity and freedom: no one HAS to listen to me.

Ronald Reagan was once asked why he left the Democratic Party. He responded “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. They left me.” And he was right. Parties change and that includes the Republican party by the way so don’t send in any snippy political jibes here. The reason I bring up Reagan’s quote is that it reminds me that I have not left the Church of Christ — nor will I ever — for I am really just returning to the grace filled, irenic, open Church of Christ that came out of the Restoration Movement and grew in influence and strength until Daniel Sommer and his crew jettisoned the unity we strove for and demanded a strict conformity to his own conclusions. Others joined him in spirit and our church became more and more narrow, more and more irrelevant. A new generation has arisen that is returning to the Spirit, to scripture, and to our roots as a unity movement. While I am part of that movement I didn’t start it. In the mid 80s I knew my faith was in trouble because I could see that what we taught in the CoC was not what was taught in scripture and that our churches seemed to be made up of equal parts fear and arrogance. At that time I was led to read the works of Leroy Garrett (whose website is a wealth of materials he’s written through his life, all given freely — www.leroygarrett.org), Cecil Hook (“Free in Christ” and all the follow up books — www.freedomsring.org), Carl Ketcherside (one of the harshest, most conservative minsters until he had his own epiphany — www.unity-in-diversity.org), Rubel Shelly and many others. I found out that others felt that same hunger… and that the Church of Christ was the perfect place for us. It was originally set up for freedom, free inquiry, and freedom in thought.

There is no better place for me. And I love this church. I love its stories. I love its history, even the sad bits. I love the people I have met in this church all over the world. They are my family. And I’m not going anywhere.

Not sure if this is a tentpeg question or not. I am struggling with this one, and can’t seem to get to an answer that I don’t change the next day. What should I do if I hear a brother speaking in public condemn another. Specifically he named a couple of well know preachers in the Church of Christ and called them false teachers and apostate. The men that were named are ones that I look up to, just as I look up to you, and I am sure that you know them personally. They are being condemned for being open minded and honest about the scripture at the cost of our traditions. Am I to try to approach the one who spoke badly of them, or am I to look away and not judge? It does not help that I think many of the congregation agree with him.

I find hundreds of websites up attacking people as false teachers in the Church of Christ. I am mentioned at several of them but of the 30+ times I’ve been written up as a false teacher or some preacher has mentioned me as such at a lectureship, I can count the number of times one of these men had the nerve to come to me (and the love and grace to do so) on the fingers of one hand and have enough fingers left over to play my guitar. Because it has happened once. Exactly once. I have gone to THEM a few times but they don’t come to me, thus violating the scripture they say they love. Sigh. Such is life.

The Bible tells us who false teachers are, especially in places such as 2 Peter 2. And they are never described as people who do not hold our traditions or who might have a doctrine here or there wrong. No… “false” teachers in scripture are those who are immoral, in it for the money, and who go around seducing women and splitting churches. In the scripture, false teachers are people who are false in their hearts and souls. They are evil people, not mistaken people.

If someone disagrees with me on the role of women in the church, that does not make him or me “false.” We are “false” if we are preaching what we preach not because we believe it but because we can get money, power, and sex through teaching it. So when one of these men call another teacher a false teacher, that doesn’t make HIM a false teacher, either. It just makes him wrong. And the whole episode very sad.

As for approaching them, I’m not sure it would help. Instead, offer to pray for them and then do so.

Here is one that is hard to answer without a couple of days in the room with several wise friends. I am making a feeble attempt at it here and invite loving comments to sharpen the answer. Send your questions to tentpegsquestion@yahoo.com.

I have a question about conversion.  I have been a member of the restoration churches for about 16 years.  I became a christian in the churches of Christ that preach (or at least mine did) that you are saved at the point of baptism and i was taught all the reasons why.  About 5 or 6 years ago I began to question how biblical some of the things we were doing actually were verses them just being a part our our traditions.  I began to start studying churches both inside and outside of our brotherhood to see what was actually making them tick.  This topic became a little trouble some for me.  I have a long drive to and from work so I listen to a number of sermons every week.  I listen to you, Rick Atchley, Andy Stanley, Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, Craig Groeschel, Perry Noble, and Mark Driscoll.  I usually cant get to them all (depends on traffic) but I try.  Naturally all most all of these guys all say the bible says something different salvation.

But I also realize this view brings up a host of other problems.  I just want to know if I am on the right track. And I am not looking to cause problems or get myself in anymore trouble, if you know what i mean, but I am trying to understand.

There is no easy way to answer this question, but Peter gave it a shot. When he was asked what the people had to do to be saved he replied “Repent and be baptized every one of you…” I don’t listen to all of the same ministers you do but I read quite a lot and I listen as other ministers speak at conventions and seminars. I know that this is a hot topic right now. All I can do is give you my take. I trust that some of the wise commenters who frequent this page will fill in the (perhaps considerable) gaps.

I have gone to scripture to see if there was a way I could lay baptism aside. It seemed like that would be an easy thing to do as so many religious tribes treat it as an add-on; nice but unnecessary. However, I just can’t make it work. In my opinion, baptism was a very important part of the salvation process. Is that the same as saying that all of those who were not baptized (or not baptized in exactly the way my tribe baptizes) are lost? I do not have authority to say that. All I can do is say that the early Christians were told to be baptized and they were – sometimes en masse.

Alexander Campbell got into trouble with his answer to this question. A lady from Lunenburg, Virginia wrote him asking if unbaptized people were lost. Later researchers have traced this letter back and tell us that it was written by the wife of the founder of the Christadelphians; a group that broke off from the Stone-Campbell Movement (aka the Restoration Movement). They believe the letter was written to stir up trouble and break off more of Campbell’s followers in the hope that they would join the Christadelphians. Regardless, Campbell’s first article included these words that did, indeed, send shock waves throughout his followers and their congregations.

“But who is a Christian? I answer, Every one that believes in his heart that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God; repents of his sins, and obeys him in all things according to his measure of knowledge of his will. I cannot, therefore, make any one duty the standard of Christian state or character, not even immersion into the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and in my heart regard all that have been sprinkled in infancy without their own knowledge and consent, as aliens from Christ and the well-grounded hope of heaven. There is no occasion, then, for making immersion, on a profession of the faith, absolutely essential to a Christian—though it may be greatly essential to his sanctification and comfort. . . But he that thence infers that none are Christians but the immersed, as greatly errs as he who affirms that none are alive but those of clear and full vision.”

The uproar against him was so loud that he wrote two more articles on the letter. In the second, he stressed that he was talking about those who innocently didn’t understand the need for baptism, NOT those who were rebelling against the teaching of scripture. By his third article, he stated pretty much what I did in the first paragraph –“ Now, in our judgment, there is not on earth a person who can have as full an assurance of justification or of remission of sins, as the person who has believed, confessed his faith, and been intelligently buried and raised with the Lord.”

Some writers have accused Campbell of backtracking on this but I disagree. I think he was trying to be honest. The scripture absolutely elevates baptism and makes it an incredibly important step in salvation. However, it is NOT the ultimate, singularly necessary step that some have made it. The Bible also tells us that belief and repentance are important steps but I know of a great many unrepentant baptized people; those who were baptized because they lost the argument, because it was expected, because other friends were being baptized, etc. but NOT because they had a “come to Jesus” moment and wanted to be free of their sins. Should we say these people are lost? I wouldn’t.

I trust Jesus to do the right thing. I trust God when He says He is love. I trust Jesus when he tells us that we will be known by love. To state that we know the only way to be saved and that we know the exact moment of salvation is to state too much. We should say what we know – and that includes Acts 2:38 – but no more.

Why? Remember that most Christians had no access to Acts 2:38 for 1700 years. For the first few hundred years of the church a congregation would count itself quite fortunate to have one or two books of our present Bible read to them. Some might even have all of the Old Testament and three or four of the New, but a great many of the people would not be able to read them. When we blithely say “the Bible says” and flip back and forth among half a dozen or more books to prove our point are we even slightly aware of how few humans in history have been privileged to hold that book, much less read it? Are we then to assume that all of those centuries full of sincere believers who – many of them – loved the Lord more than we do, sacrificed all for Him, and even were martyred for their faith were lost because no one had gotten all the books to them yet? (and let’s remind ourselves that many were martyred for WANTING to read the Bible)

Jesus didn’t treat others as if they were enemies. He told his apostles not to forbid others to teach in his name even though they weren’t of the disciples. Apollos was not treated as an enemy or non-Christian because his teaching wasn’t correct. He was taken aside and taught, but there was no animosity there.

You might respond “Well, the people have the Bible now!” and you would be partially right. Don’t forget that a large number of people do not have one and will not have one due to our failure to do the mission work our riches allow us to do and due to their own repressive governments. And those who do have it but still believe that baptism is merely “an outward expression of an inward grace”? They got the Bible, but only after their religious traditions were firmly in place. They read the Bible through the lenses of their tradition and history… as do we. As does everyone.

I am still trying to find a way to answer the question “is salvation a process?” I believe that it is an event, just as conception and birth are events. However, sanctification is a lifelong process if we do it right. While I have not always been closer to God each year of my life, I can look back and see that we were getting somewhere together. I want to be better than I am now before I die, not in order to be saved but because I AM saved and I want to please my Lord in return.

Martin Luther was often tempted and had his own besetting sins. When he caught himself in time he would say aloud “But I have been baptized!” as a way to shock himself into correct behavior. I have copied his strategy. Because I’ve been baptized. And I think that is very, very important.

Weigh in to help me fill in the gaps, to clarify any of this, or to correct me. As long as it is in love, I’ll listen.