The discussion which has been taking place in the Letters section of the Times, as well as in off-the-record e-mails, has raised some very interesting facts about faith. There have been those who find articles on “religion” in the newspaper to be “distasteful”, not simply out of place. Comments have been made that no “religious beliefs can be proven and that a newspaper is not the place to sermonize. We need to keep an open mind and respect the faith and beliefs of others”. Other readers, meanwhile, have been very supportive of this column and see no reason why there should be complaints against it.
Generally speaking, I find that many critics of the series display a lack of acquaintance with the New Testament, and there are a number of objections made which lack any detail or examples. It reminds me that the general public can come to believe as fact something that has no grounds in history or reality, and this seems to be the case with some of the critics.
For example, there are yet many who accept that people used to believe that the world was flat, and that sailors would fall off the edge if they sailed too close. This is often used as an example of the gullibility and lack of sophistication of more “primitive” ages. But it is simply untrue. Whatever about individuals, it was generally known that the world was round, otherwise, fishermen and explorers would not have been so casual about setting out on the ocean. Astronomers and geographers, such as Ptolemy, Hipparcus, and others, were capable of making remarkably exact calculations about the size of the Earth, its relation to the Sun and other astronomical and geographical statistics, given their lack of modern computers and instruments for observing phenomena.
Columbus sailed out on the Atlantic to the west, looking to find India, which he knew was to the east, because he understood the global nature of the planet and expected to circumnavigate to find India and China. It was not his fault that he ran into the American continent instead!
The same sense of superiority over more “ancient” people extends too often to secular thought, as well as religious ones. But these ancient and gullible peoples gave us Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Socrates, Thucydides, Pliny, and so many more intellectuals whose writings and thoughts provided a spark for the Renaissance and Enlightenment when they were rediscovered in the sixteenth century.
The point is that there is a tendency for people who have not actually read the New Testament, to make the same assumptions about it that they make about “primitive” ideas of geography. It is possible to make a long list of these claims and assumptions, all of which give rise to negative presuppositions in the minds of people who accept the mistaken idea that the Bible is not to be taken seriously as history, or as a source of truth. Some of these assumptions are based on the theory that only those things which can be perceived through the senses are real. Scientific theory, however, can simply state that what is perceived is able to be perceived. It cannot, by its nature, prove that there is no other reality. To believe that would be unscientific.
But that assumption means that, very unscientifically, critics of spirituality declare that any account that includes the transcendent can be immediately dismissed. The correspondent cited above, who claims that no “religious beliefs can be proven” is making the same assumption. But is that true? What historical support is there for what Christians, or others, believe about their spiritual beliefs? That is largely the aim of these Fundamentals articles: to present facts in support of faith; to show that faith can be, and should be, intellectually defendable. As I have said many times: if something is true, you can ask any honest question of it and get an honest and genuine answer. There is no fear in faith, and no blindness either.
It has also been argued that the ideas and beliefs of others should also be represented here. Let me say that any such articles are welcome, as long as it is accepted that they can also be discussed in reply. I don’t write about Christianity only because I happen to be a Christian. I write because I happen to believe it is true in a way no other “religion” is, and I am very happy to discuss those ideas openly and honestly.
Is there room in the paper for such discussions? Why should there not be? These are issues which go to the very heart of who and what we are as human beings. If “religion” is a hoax and a crutch, then forget it, no problem. But if, for example, Christianity and Jesus reflect a truth and a reality as claimed, then that becomes the most important thing we need to know. Nothing else comes close.
