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SIGNPOSTS(2010), Vol I, Issue I

3 President’s Welcome

4 Michaelmas 2009: The Talks

5 Critical Response‘Doing God’: The Language of Public Faith• Joel Harrison

8 InterviewDan Darg: ‘God vs. the Multiverse’ • with Jessica Whittle

10 OpinionDawkins Rex• Daniel Cojocaru

13 Book ReviewCommunication FAIL: Apologetics Edition• Elizabeth Kay

Editor: Joel HarrisonMagazine Design: Jared HoneycuttCover Design: Michelle BaizeContributors: Daniel Cojocaru, Joel Harrison, Elizabeth Kays, Jessica Whittle, and Dan Darg

Signposts is produced by the University of Oxford Graduate Christian Union. The GCU Committee and Editor welcome any comments or suggestions and, in the case of GCU members, contributions. All rights remain with the authors and designers. Do not re-publish without express consent. Contact joel.harrison@magd.ox.ac.uk

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Kays introduces readers to Alister McGrath’s Intellectuals Don’t Need God and Other Modern Myths. The opinion piece will serve a variety of roles, reflecting the various interests of GCU members. Future opinion pieces may be reflective writings on the place of a Christian student in the university (whether Oxford or another), or within a student’s particular discipline. What are the challenges, for a Christian, within that discipline? Does this discipline offer insights for Christian discipleship? Or, more generally, what are some of the relational issues, difficulties, challenges, and opportunities faced by Christian students in the university? This space is flexible. It may also be treated as a space for exploring a particular angle of a theme or public debate – one that has possibly been neglected. This is the approach I have taken in the first opinion piece, where I draw a sketch of how the ‘God-Debate’ looks to a student of literature.

As graduate students we are particularly aware that ‘our knowledge is incomplete’, as St Paul has put it. The pieces making up this issue are therefore not fully formed academic journal articles. They are rather postcards sent by graduate students on their journey with God and their disciplines. To quote Bishop Wright: ‘We must remind ourselves yet once more that all Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist. … [B]ut that doesn’t mean that they aren’t pointing in the right direction.’ We hope that this issue points into the right direction and is the first of many Signposts to come. At this point I would like to thank Joel Harrison for his editorial work. Without his persistent effort and visionary passion for the project, it just wouldn’t have happened. I would also like to thank our designers, Michelle Baize and Jared Honeycutt, who created the aesthetically pleasing outward ‘clothing’ of the magazine. We are also grateful to those contributing to this issue and everyone at GCU for participating in and supporting this project. If this magazine excites something within you, do consider contributing your own thoughts – contact us, we welcome your ideas. All that remains for me to say is that I hope you enjoy reading Signposts!

President’s Welcome

Welcome to the first issue of Signposts, the new e-zine of the GCU! For some time now we’ve been

thinking about ways of expanding our termly newsletter into something more than just a chronicle of what happens during the GCU year, spiced up with some fancy pictures of our social activities. Ideas of how to do this ranged from a fully peer-reviewed journal (which would have been madness), a more modest student journal with academic articles, to just expanding the newsletter to include more detailed information about our activities. Signposts is situated somewhere in the middle. One central idea that we want to reflect with this glossy electronic magazine is that we as graduate students are on a journey – a journey of growth in our Christian faith but also a journey of learning in our various academic disciplines. Our weekly Monday night meetings form a central part of GCU life. It is mainly on Monday nights that our engagement with speakers from various disciplines and professions fosters the development of a Christian mind. While we still offer an overview of our termly activities, we thought it would be much more fruitful if we had someone engaging further with the ideas presented in one or more of the talks. This aspect is covered in our ‘Critical Response’ section. Featured in this issue is Joel Harrison’s response to Paul Woolley’s and Dr Judith Maltby’s talks from Michaelmas.

Another way of exploring more actively the nexus of our disciplines and our faith is our termly student presentation. Rather than having exclusively experienced scholars and practitioners speaking to us, we would like to offer someone from within our midst a platform to share a particular aspect of their discipline and to relate it to their faith. It is an opportunity to test ideas in the critical but friendly surrounding of the Mitre Pub setting and a chance to get valuable feedback from peers and experienced scholars. The current issue features an interview with our Michaelmas student presenter, Dan Darg, on his talk ‘God vs Multiverse.’

Completing this first issue are an opinion piece and a book review. The latter allows graduates to share with their fellow students insights on a particular gem they have discovered in the vast ocean of (Christian) books and which they think would prove helpful to students. In this issue, Elizabeth

Daniel CojocaruGCU President, 2009-10

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The Mitre: Michaelmas 2009 Talks

The GCU had the privilege of hosting the following speakers in Michaelmas term, 2009. A selection of the talks can be accessed online at www.oxfordgcu.org.uk/talks.html.

Meetings are held on Mondays at 7pm for 7:30pm in the upper room of the Mitre Pub, High Street, Oxford.

Week 1 Charles Foster, ‘The Selfless Gene – Living with God and Darwin’

Week 2 Dr Judith Maltby, ‘’The Church of England 101: an Introduction to Church and State (or, “Why will Parliament vote on women bishops?”)’

Week 3 Dan Darg, ‘God vs Multiverse: what can we infer from the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life?

Week 4 Professor Steve Bevans, ‘John Oman’s Doctrine of a Personal God: Implications for Mission Today’

Week 5 Professor Lionel Tarrassenko, ‘Beyond Artificial Intelligence: Artificial Consciousness’

Week 6 Social night

Week 7 Paul Woolley, ‘Doing God: The Future of Faith in the Public Square’

Thanksgiving Dinner, hosted by the Oxford American Mission

Week 8 Powerpoint Karaoke

St John’s College Auditorium, Week 1, Charles Foster

Week 6, Social Night

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In Michaelmas term, the GCU was pleased to welcome two speakers who waded into difficult questions of church,

state, and the public square. Canon Dr Judith Maltby, Chaplain and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford spoke on ‘The Church of England 101: an Introduction to Church and State (or, “Why will Parliament vote on women bishops?”)’. Paul Woolley, Director of Theos: The Public Theology Thinktank, based in London, discussed ‘“Doing God”: The Future of Faith in the Public Square’. Both talks were extremely well received as exemplary both for the clarity of the presentation and the depth of knowledge displayed by the speakers. In this comment, I intend to use these talks as a backdrop to highlight what I perceive to be a couple of key issues and fault-lines, for Christian thinking, when thinking about faith and the public square. Religious freedom will be my central focus, but my intention is to point towards a significant question: whether the language of public deliberation, in particular, human rights, should be the language of our public faith.

Woolley’s talk extended upon Theos’ inaugural report of the same name (authored by Nick Spencer). He took up the argument that ‘[n]ot only is “faith” back in the public square, but it is somewhere near the centre.’ He identified five potential, non-exhaustive factors for the ‘return’ of religion in the public square: the increasing visibility and need for civil society against the withdrawal of state welfare; the re-orientation of public policy towards the goal of well-being; the rise of identity politics as a means of public engagement; increasing migration to the United Kingdom of the devoutly – and publicly – religious; and, drawing upon the controversial arguments of Lord Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, the contention that ‘atheism doesn’t reproduce’. Much could be said about these factors. However, I intend to focus on the challenge posed by engaging in civil society and, through this, draw out a number of tensions.

The Church Life Profile 2001 reported that members of the Church of England engage in 23.2 million hours of voluntary service each month in their local communities (see page 42 of the Theos report). Religious groups, to be sure, significantly contribute to social capital and are increasingly called upon to partner with government in various ways for social service delivery. This is not without pitfalls. As the Theos report states, ‘Put simply, the more strings that tie [religious charitable groups]

to the state’s purse, the less independent, voluntary and overtly religious they have the freedom to be.’ In religious freedom commentary, the ‘strings’ are often characterised as raising a liberty-equality dialectic. Freedom of religious association, which may, it is claimed, entail discriminatory practices based on church teaching, can conflict with the claim of equality. Non-discrimination in the provision of goods and services and employment practices has been a flashpoint of tension in recent years. A recent example is the controversy over Catholic adoption agencies. At the end of 2008, Catholic adoption agencies, like any other

agency, were required to equally consider gay and lesbian couples as potential adoptive parents. In June of 2009, the Catholic Agency for the Diocese of Leeds was found to be in violation of the law, raising questions over the continued viability of explicitly Catholic agencies. ‘Strings’ to the state’s purse and public service are not, however, the only catalysts to tension, as Dr Maltby’s talk intimated. Dr Maltby provided an exceptionally lucid explanation of the interaction and relationship between the Church of England General Synod and the United Kingdom Parliament, focusing on the ordination of women as priests and as bishops. Of particular interest was the discussion of the unwillingness, or at least reservation, exhibited by some Members of Parliament when faced with the prospect of passing Measures that would provide an unequal status for women priests or bishops. (Measures – in effect legislation originating from within General Synod – only become law once they are approved by Parliament.) To my mind each of these conflicts raises a fundamental question of what I would call ‘governing norms’.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s response to the very similar (at least for some) controversy over the ordination of clergy living in a same-sex union in the Episcopal Church is illuminating. The Archbishop stated that ‘the question is not a simple one of human rights or human dignity’, but rather concerns also ‘painstaking biblical exegesis’ and being ‘in tune with the Holy Spirit’. In the minds of undoubtedly many Christians the dichotomy is

‘Doing God’: The Language of Public Faith

‘ … when we unthinkingly align Christianity with human rights … we capitulate on what should be our governing norm …’

CRITICAL RESPONSE by JOEL HARRISON

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problematic. Indeed, this was Dr Maltby’s suggestion when I asked her what she thought of the statement. To pose or at least imply an opposition between human rights norms and Christian tradition potentially discounted, in her view, the Christian character of human rights norms. Many writers, both legal and theological, adopt this perspective. For example, Michael Perry recently produced Towards a Theory of Human Rights: Religion, Law, Courts (2007). In it, Perry argues that there is a ‘morality of human rights’, namely the conviction ‘that every human being has inherent dignity and that we should live our lives accordingly’. He contends that this is a religious conception, and that a secular grounding is unlikely. In particular, he points to Christianity, which grounds itself in the concept of the imago dei (each person being made in the image of God) and focuses through the Gospel writings on other-centredness, and argues this is a persuasive account of the morality of human rights. Others have justified liberal human rights (and, in particular, taking my area of interest, religious freedom) from a theological conception of the partialness of the Gospel, requiring we hold our beliefs with a certain lightness, or from a view of the individual as the locus of conscience and relationship with God.

I am, however, not so sure. I do not doubt, indeed I thoroughly believe in, for example, the dignity of the person – such is affirmed in the doctrine of the incarnation. Indeed, I could even be persuaded that ‘human rights’ could be constructed – that is, given content intentionally – from a Christian perspective. My concern, however, is that the appeal to human rights cannot be divorced from the particular political-legal tradition of liberalism that underpins the adjudication of these rights, such that when we unthinkingly align Christianity with human rights (as I think we tend to do, both popularly and in academic circles), we capitulate on what should be our governing norm – the Christian tradition. I admit, this is a controversial and difficult proposition. This is not the place to attempt a full account of these arguments. Instead, I will sketch the outlines of part of an argument that highlights some of the bases for my doubt. Much more could and should be said.

My particular field of research is religious freedom jurisprudence, that is, the right to freedom of belief and freedom to manifest belief as articulated in bills of rights and interpreted by courts. Two of the central themes of religious rights adjudication are neutrality as between different conceptions of the good (or worldviews) and the attempt to appeal to a common standard when determining

the boundaries of permissible religious expression. Justice Sachs, formerly of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, considered that ‘how far [a] democracy can and must go in allowing members of religious communities to define for themselves which laws they will obey and which not’ is determined by ‘all its participants accept[ing] that certain basic norms and standards are binding.’ These ‘basic norms and standards’ were contrasted with ‘putting religion on trial’ – that is, the impermissible determination of the truth or otherwise of religious belief. He was considering a case of private Christian schools that, with the support of parents, wished to engage in corporal punishment contrary to a recent ban passed by the Government. In holding the ban to be a justifiable limit upon the religious freedom of the schools and parents, Justice Sachs appealed to the dignity of the child and his or her protection against harm as binding basic norms and standards acceptable to society’s participants. Of course, the problem with this is that the parents would deeply contest the characterisation of their practice as contrary to dignity or a no-harm principle. Dignity and harm, for them, is determined from within a particular tradition or worldview. It is, for them, precisely consistent with the child’s dignity to chastise him or her because to do otherwise would result in harm. The point I am making is not to disagree with the substantive result in a case like this – I find the argument for corporal punishment unappealing – but rather to point to an interesting dynamic. First, it is noted that there are different conceptions of the good which the court (as part of the state) should not and indeed cannot determine the truth or falsity of – what would it appeal to? Second, despite this inability, the court ends by declaring a common ground, a standard – dignity or harm – that is, it claims, independent of the competing conceptions of the good. Third, the parties to this litigation – the schools and parents – are expected to understand this as a neutral basis for determining their claim, despite their competing understanding of the common standard. In other words, one form of orthodoxy (in this case, a conception of dignity and harm) is elevated at the expense of another, which, by process of litigation, is determined to be a view incapable of being held by participants in society – it is unreasonable and against basic standards or norms. It might be objected that this dynamic – which results in determining what is and is not permissible – is inevitable. I would accept that determinations have to be made, and I would contend that such determinations make a claim as to what is true and what is not true. However, the interesting issue for human rights adjudication is the ground upon which these determinations are made: if there are competing

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conceptions of the good, and no way of adjudicating between their truth or otherwise, then what is the court appealing to in a case like this?

I am particularly interested in the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, and, following after him, writers broadly falling under the Radical Orthodoxy label. For these writers, liberalism – with its focus on the individual, abstracted from particular traditions – generates the equivalent of a perpetual high school debating club. MacIntyre writes that within this system ‘we have to fall back upon the deliverances of prephilosophical opinion … a way of clarifying issues and alternatives but not providing grounds for conviction on matters of any substance.’ For MacIntyre, rational action requires membership in a community sharing a conception of the common good. Liberalism attempts to formulate action in the absence of a specific conception of

the common good. Appeals to the rhetoric of rights will, accordingly, in Tracey Rowlands’ phrase, ‘be nothing more than ideological shadow-boxing’. Similarly, John Milbank considers that the liberal state engages in what he calls ‘an empty circle’ of deliberation. Lacking any connection to an extra-human or extra-natural norm underpinning the common good (for such a norm is ruled out at the outset of the deliberation), appeals to human rights, Milbank contends, are recognised only when this coincides with the desires, power, or needs of the state. The difficulty with human rights, on this account, is that they can become a tool for subduing and regulating alternative spheres or claims of power (such as the church). This can occur in multiple ways, but, briefly, let me signal two. First, there is the dynamic on display in Justice Sachs’ decision and reasoning, above. An alternative source of meaning, in difference from the state (the church, the school, the family), is brought into the adjudicative setting (the court), claiming religious freedom and told that such a claim must give way to the perfectly reasonable needs of the state. Again, it is the potential in this dynamic that I am interested in. The end result is, I would suggest, a re-alignment of the dissenting group to the norms of the liberal state. Second, there is also something, I would argue, in the individualisation of human rights that is arguably central in the discourse. A

dominant definition and attendant rationale offered by courts for religious freedom, to keep with the focus of this piece, is the protection of personal spiritual convictions related to self-fulfilment. Individuals, on this view, are spiritual consumers in the marketplace, sceptical of, and therefore examined separately from, religious authority and even community. The phrase ‘divide and conquer’ comes to mind.

Admittedly this has been a rough Cook’s tour into some of the issues and questions that arise from an engagement in civil society. Religion is indeed ‘near the centre’ of public life, but this raises, I would suggest, competing ways of conceiving of civil engagement. On the one hand, Christian engagement in civil society operates within the language of what, depending on your view, is either a secular discourse or a ‘common ground’. Shaping the church in accordance with human rights norms, either through legal processes or, preferably, through the influence of such norms, is, on this view, arguably part and parcel of the church’s unfolding mission. The church should voice the values that are regnant in the political discourse (and form a kind of critical rebuke when the state strays) and work as just another group within civil society, while the state should speak to the church. On the other hand, others question whether the ascendency of human rights is tied to arbitrary state power, and whether uncritical adoption of its norms will result in the loss of our own story, language of faith, lived tradition, and, ultimately, politics. To quote Daniel Bell Jr, the church is a ‘distinct witness … to Christ’s redemption of politics as the renewal of the friendship/communion of humanity in God.’ This might not always change where we come down on substantive issues. The welcomed ordination of women need not be framed in terms of human rights (see, for example, this brief piece by Bishop NT Wright). Nor would a rejection of the rhetoric of human rights mean an open door to torture (indeed, some would argue that the rhetoric has not done all that much preventive work). However, fundamentally, I increasingly believe that there are, within our Christian body today, radically different ways of conceiving of state power, the politics of the church and its authoritative norms, and, consequently, the language of public faith. ▪

Joel is a DPhil Candidate in Law at Magdalen College, Oxford. His research examines religious freedom jurisprudence from the perspective of Radical Orthodoxy.

‘The difficulty with human rights … is that they can become a tool for subduing and regulating alternative spheres or claims of power (such as the church)’

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Jessica Whittle ( JW): Dan, first of all, tell us a little bit about yourself. How long have you been at Oxford? What are you studying?

Dan Darg (DD): This is my fifth year at Oxford. Before starting my DPhil in Astrophysics, I took two years out of physics to pursue interests in theology and ancient history which brought me to Oxford where I ended up doing an MSt in Jewish Studies. That gave me some time to think about what area of physics I would focus on for a doctorate and beyond. During that time I got very interested in cosmology and the theological repercussions that are raised by contemporary philosophical issues therein.

JW: How long have you been involved with the GCU and why do you think it is important?

DD: This is my 4th year of being involved with GCU. I think it’s important because we believe that Christianity is true and, frankly, it would be pretty lame if there were an Oxford Graduate Society for just about everything except the one true religion. So we, as Christians, should be out there representing our points of view for all interested. I don’t see how you can be a Christian student at Oxford and not want to get together with other Christians to grapple about the big and interesting questions of life, and this is why I personally invest in the GCU.

JW: What were some of the major themes of your talk last term?

DD: The question ‘Why is the Universe the way it is?’ to a lot of people seems like something that only an astrophysicist is equipped to answer. However, I tried to get across the message that this exact same sort of question was being asked since Greek times: how do you infer the existence of a non-observable entity from something observable? And then, supposing you can figure reliable principles from which to do this in a very general case, what result follows when you apply these principles to the case of the Universe? Well, in my opinion, we can’t even get off the ground because no one knows or agrees on what those principles are! In other words, I don’t think the answer to the question can be addressed without regard to first principles of epistemology. Some might think the origin of the Universe is something only astrophysicists are qualified to answer, but, to a certain extent, it all boils down to one’s intuitions which vary widely amongst scientists and therefore makes them little more qualified to answer these metaphysical matters than people outside the field.

JW: In a few sentences, can you answer the question posed in your talk title – ‘what can we infer from the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life?’

DD: Some Greek guy once said something like, ‘Give me a lever and fulcrum big enough, and I’ll move the world.’ Well, somewhat analogously, give me a metaphysical principle (such as a clear and unambiguous principle of simplicity dictating what does and does not exist) grand enough, and I’ll answer the question. My point is that the whole issue comes down to metaphysics and thus, intuitions. My intuitions make me think God designed the Universe, but I know people who don’t share this view and there is no test or experiment that can rule out either (logical) possibility.

JW: What particular challenges does your research pose to your faith and, in turn, how does your faith affect your research?

DD: When I first got interested in this subject area, I thought the ‘Fine-Tuning’ was a very strong argument for the existence of God and was surprised at the popular uprising of, what seemed to me, the metaphysically extravagant belief in a Multiverse as the counter-interpretation of the Fine-Tuning. While the Multiverse has always seemed anti-intuitive to me, one has to take it seriously since there are plenty of things in the world that are anti-intuitive but we nevertheless come to believe. That set me on a Cartesian path to approach the problem from first principles of epistemology which led to my deep interest in consciousness as the most fundamental ‘fact’ of the Universe. To cut a long story short, though I think the Fine-Tuning is a fascinating observation and readily fits into a theistic worldview, I now see the existence of consciousness as the most compelling reason for why I believe in God.

Dan Darg, DPhil Candidate in Astrophysics, New College, Oxford, gave the student presentation, ‘God vs Multiverse: what can we infer from the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life?’ last Michaelmas term. Dan is a long-standing GCU committee member and kindly agreed to answer a few questions for Jessica Whittle, DPhil Candidate in Engineering Science, New College, Oxford. His talk is accessible online.

Dan Darg, ‘God vs Multiverse’INTERVIEW with JESSICA WHITTLE

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Dan Darg, ‘God vs Multiverse’

JW: Now, some trivia: What’s your favourite film?

DD: Rocky IV.

JW: Best place to spend an afternoon in Oxford?

DD: Commonwealth House.

JW: How many languages do you speak?

DD: I dabble in Russian, French, German, and reading Latin and Koine Greek. I find languages really interesting and so they’re a hobby of mine.

JW: Your most random or absurd GCU memory?

DD: We were thinking of ways to raise funds and Steve Burhman suggested we make a GCU Men’s Calendar. ▪

������Be on the lookout for the Veritas Forum on Wednesday, 12th of May (the fourth week of Trinity term 2010) at 8pm.

Does secularism provide a good foundation for human rights and liberties, and other public values and ideals? Is it more tolerant than religious worldviews? Is it even possible to have a secular public square? Would that be the fairest or only neutral way to go?

This year’s Veritas Forum at the Sheldonian Theatre will bring noted atheist and author Christopher Hitchens together with philosopher John Haldane to discuss these questions and more.

visit us: www.oxfordgcu.org.uk

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‘I received two complimentary tickets for the Dawkins – Lennox debate tomorrow night,’ Reverend Keith Ward said, ‘but unfortunately I can’t make it. Do you want them?’ My fellow GCU-committee member Roselyn and I were somewhat perplexed at the sudden and very attractive offer. The debate in the Natural History Museum of Oxford had been sold out weeks ago and here we were being offered free tickets by an eminent philosopher and veteran participant in the ‘God Debate’. We had invited Professor Ward to one of our Monday meetings at the Mitre, and Ward, Roselyn, and I had arrived early for his talk and ended up chatting about the upcoming debate. We couldn’t believe our luck and gladly accepted Ward’s offer. So on 21 October 2008 Roselyn and I were in the audience at the place that had famously hosted the debate between Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’, Thomas Henry Huxley, on Evolution in 1860. The choice of this symbolically loaded venue points to the embeddedness of the debate in a specific cultural context. Two worldviews clash: a militant, materialist atheism, apparently the voice of reason, and Christian theism, defending itself against the accusation of being unreasonable. As a Christian student of Literature, I want to begin to explore in this piece whether my view of the world is even represented in this debate and what I can contribute to it from my very specific disciplinary background.

I became interested in the God debate in October 2007, when I arrived at Oxford to read for my DPhil in English Literature. Before that, while still in my home country Switzerland, I hadn’t heard much about The God Delusion, “New Atheism” or Alister McGrath’s response in The Dawkins Delusion. While this might reveal my ignorance on the subject prior to coming to Oxford,

I also think it shows that the debate originated in a specifically Anglo-American context and only gradually trickled down to engulf most of the westernised world, including continental Europe.

As I began to delve into the arguments on each side of the debate, reading The God Delusion, McGrath’s response in The Dawkins Delusion, Keith Ward’s Why There Almost Certainly Is a God and Lennox’s God’s Undertaker, I realised that I was a stranger in a strange land in a double sense. Not only was this a debate taking place in a very specific cultural context which I was yet unfamiliar with – one could even say that the God debate is limited to a couple of square miles in the north of Oxford, with all of the major participants being affiliated to the University of Oxford at the time – but this was also a debate taking place in the disciplinary realms of theology, science, and philosophy. As a student of literary criticism I realised that my disciplinary angle wasn’t represented in the debate.

In order to understand why this is important, let me first summarise the debate as I see it. In The God Delusion Dawkins claims in very reductive terms that belief in God is irrational and unreasonable, whereas belief in science and progress is rational and reasonable. Consequently, Dawkins denies theology its place as an academic discipline, since the latter is premised on the existence of God. And if, as Dawkins believes, God does not exist, then theology is robbed of its raison d’être. In response, theologians and philosophers very rightly point out that knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is based on a worldview. In a nutshell, knowledge is always produced within a specific paradigm. If one is adopting a materialistic paradigm, the

Dawkins RexOPINION by DANIEL COJOCARU

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divine is excluded on a priori grounds. The validity of a paradigm is measured according to how well it can account for phenomena in the world, scientific or otherwise. If scientific results no longer fit the paradigm, the search for a new paradigm that explains the data better begins. The shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric worldview is a good example for such a paradigm shift. Thomas S Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is still highly relevant in this respect. He explains how during a paradigm shift, the new paradigm is accepted by faith until enough data is available that confirms the new paradigm.

The theistic worldview is of course not a scientific paradigm in the strict sense, but the response to the challenge of the New Atheists has largely been to point out that if we adopt a theistic worldview, we can coherently explain the phenomena we find in the world. The theistic position is therefore, and according to this response, a reasonable one to adopt. In The God Delusion, Dawkins draws on Bertrand Russell’s ‘Tea Pot’ parable to discredit theism. If one postulates that there is a tea pot somewhere between the Earth and Mars revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes, one will never be able to disprove this hypothesis, but it seems obvious that it is unreasonable to make such a claim. The ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’ is a recent, very popular version of Russell’s teapot. But the orthodox Christian position at least since Aquinas has been nothing like the tea pot example. God is not somewhere out there in the Universe, potentially verifiable, but rather, the Universe consists of signposts pointing to God. In this model the theist and the atheist see the same material Universe. For the atheist, the Universe points to nothing, whereas for the theist the Universe points to God. Both are positions based on an a priori faith, either in the existence or non-existence of God. Both fit scientific and other evidence into a narrative paradigm to make sense of the world. That is why an atheist and a theist can do essentially the same science.

The theistic response to New Atheism, as I see it, is thus to point out that belief in God is reasonable and that believers do not accept faith in God blindly but because it offers a coherent framework for understanding the world. But what about New Atheism itself? Is Dawkins’ position reasonable? McGrath points to the many inadequacies in The God Delusion. Dawkins dismisses religion and the belief in God by focusing on religion at its worst, basing his arguments on examples of religious fundamentalism. The dismissal of Christianity does not rest on a Christian definition of faith, but on one that Dawkins has invented to suit his own polemical purposes. It is the definition of religion as teapot or Spaghetti Monster. Dawkins smuggles in the idea that God could be potentially positively verified within a scientific paradigm. It is a strategic attempt to subject everything to the paradigm of natural science. McGrath is again insightful: ‘However, it needs to be pointed out here that the holy grail of the natural sciences is the quest for the “grand unified theory” – the theory of everything. Why is such a theory regarded as

being so important? Because it can explain everything, without itself requiring an explanation.’

This brings me to my point that my discipline, literature, is not represented in the discussion. Dawkins is attempting to elevate the natural sciences – and biology in particular – to the position of ‘The Queen of the Sciences’. This claim to supremacy over other academic disciplines is nothing new. Theology has claimed this position, only to be rivalled by philosophy. Structural anthropology and linguistics were next in claiming this position in the mid-twentieth century linguistic turn. This is also in my opinion the reason why Dawkins cannot accept theology’s rivalling claim to explain everything that exists. When a discipline claims for itself the position of the Queen of the Sciences, it takes a paradigm that is successful at explaining things within its own disciplinary boundaries and tries to export it to other disciplines.

One such attempt made by Dawkins is the invention of the meme, which can be roughly defined as the cultural version of the gene. Dawkins exports the Darwinian paradigm of evolution through mutation and selection into the realm of culture, into the humanities. Memes are units of cultural imitation which behave as true replicators, like genes. Cultural development is reduced to competitive interaction of memes from a memepool. In The God Delusion Dawkins uses examples from crafts rather than art to explain the workings of the meme. Culture is reduced to a set of skills being instrumental to survival. In a talk at GCU in Trinity Term 2008, Valentine Cunningham, a professor of literature, pointed out how this argument does not work so well when applied to the writing of novels, poems, or plays: ‘You [so the argument goes] want to read novels because reading novels prepares you for the hard evolutionary struggle.’ But is that really why we read novels? Cunningham emphasised that he could think of a thousand poems that do not prepare him for anything at all. The art for art’s sake argument comes to mind. Do we not enjoy a painting just because it is beautiful? And is that not as legitimate a reason for its existence?

With the meme, culture is hacked to pieces into discrete items that are passed down the generations. The struggle of the literary genius, for example, is reduced to a simple imitation and recombination of memes. But that is just not a good enough explanation of, for example, a masterpiece such as James Joyce’s Ulysses. It is not simply an imitation of the canon of English and Classic literature, the memepool out which Joyce mindlessly picks elements at random for the survival of the species, but a complete reworking of the canon through Joyce’s personal engagement and struggle with that canon. The tyranny of the meme, like the tyranny of the gene, fails to take into account anything like human interaction, in the case of Joyce, with the canon. Dawkins uses George Orwell’s terminology of Nineteen Eighty-Four when, in ‘The Dark Side of Absolutism’ of The God Delusion he discusses the case of Abdul Rahman, who was sentenced to death in Afghanistan for converting from Islam to Christianity. He

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very perceptively compares that type of religious absolutism with Orwellian thought crime and I strongly agree with his reasoning in this case. However, in the case of the meme, it is Dawkins who is the Orwellian tyrant. In the novel the totalitarian state of Oceania has instituted a Fiction Department, where employees mechanically put novels together on novel-writing machines and thus reduce the writing of novels to a mindless activity of recombination of literary elements.

Conceiving of culture in terms of the meme is the grossest form of disciplinary colonialism. My suggestion here is that Dawkins not only attacks God and theology but is imposing his materialist paradigm onto disciplines that follow their own logic. Does that make them unreasonable? If I as a literary critic refuse to accept Dawkins’ and his followers’ reductive idea of what culture is for, does that make me unreasonable? Or does it simply mean that I refuse to bow to the disciplinary supremacy of science over the tradition of my own discipline – which I think is a very reasonable thing to do? Just like every worldview sees the world according to its own paradigm, so do academic disciplines have their own interpretive logic. This is not a question of theism or atheism but one of unveiling Dawkins’ attempt to reduce every other academic discipline outside of his field to a mere pawn of the biological, evolutionary paradigm.

This raises the question of interdisciplinarity. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t engage in interdisciplinary activities, I’m only suggesting that the starting point should be one of mutual respect for one another’s disciplines and the acceptance that disciplines access truth in different ways. It also raises the question how, as Christians, we engage with the particular paradigms of our disciplines. Both questions are beyond the confines of this article. But the challenge is, as it was expressed in a lecture of the Christian Mind Course in 2009, to become bilinguals: to learn the language of our disciplines and the language of our Christian faith and to start to engage in acts of translations.

To close, let me just sketch how Dawkins’ ideas look through the lens of a literary critic. Literary critics do not study literature for aesthetic reasons alone, but also because novelists, poets and playwrights actually have something useful to say about the world. Academic disciplines are generally uneasy with the notion of ambiguity, of not being able to fit the world into neat categories. Great literature on the other hand teaches us that such neat categorisations are problematic and often involve some kind

of violence. And just to digress, it is interesting that the Greek root of ‘category’, kataegoros actually translates as ‘accuser’. In a sense, we’re ‘accusing’ the world all the time to be something so that it fits into our categories.

Dawkins too, in his quest to reduce culture, language, and meaning, is a friend of easy categorisation. As I understand Dawkins, violence is a problem of religion and as soon as we get rid of religion, we will enter an age of peaceful bliss and reasonable utopia. I remember Dawkins saying at the debate in the Museum of Natural History that the nineteenth century was the last time that one could reasonably believe in God. But the

nineteenth century was also the last time that one could unreservedly believe in science. When Dawkins places his blind faith in science and reason, he forgets that science has a dark, unreasonable, side too. It is scientific progress that has brought us the mechanised horrors of the First World War, the harrowing efficiency of the annihilation of six million Jews, and the threat of nuclear holocaust and environmental Apocalypse.

I was glad to find that Terry Eagleton, regarded as one of the most eminent literary and cultural critics alive, had entered the debate with his book Reflections on the God Debate. Finally my discipline was represented. Eagleton unmasks Dawkins’ trust in science as a specifically Victorian, nineteenth century trust. Just as the Victorians were ignorant towards what Slavoj Žižek has called the obscene underside of Victorian culture, so is Dawkins ignorant towards the obscene, unreasonable underside of science. His flaw is what Greek tragedy knows as hubris. In the myth of Oedipus, the Sphinx is at the gates of Thebes and poses the following riddle to travellers, killing everyone who cannot answer it: ‘What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?’ Oedipus solves the riddle and replies: ‘A man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age.’ In Sophocles’ version of the myth, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus subsequently becomes King of Thebes, but as we know, his rise is just a preparatory step for his fall. Science may well have solved the biological riddle of man through Darwin’s evolutionary theory. But we have to face the dark side of science and ask ourselves: why is it that science produces progress and tragedy at the same time? The solution to the riddle is still, in all his poetic and messy ambiguity, man. ▪

Daniel is a DPhil Candidate in English Literature at St Peter’s College, Oxford. His research focuses on modern dystopian fiction.

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Alister McGrath’s Intellectuals Don’t Need God and Other Modern Myths (1993) advocates sharing the gospel in a manner that addresses the needs of our friends, neighbours, and colleagues without watering down the message. Elizabeth Kays, fourth year chemist at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, examines his approach in this inaugural book discussion.

Effective communication is a serious challenge in today’s world. With more ways to talk than ever before, we are

able to communicate all the time on every topic imaginable. But with this increase in communication has come an overwhelming amount of less-than-stellar speech, from YouTube comments to pointless twitter posts to random television commentary, and finding something worth listening to can prove nearly impossible.

In response to this challenge, many Christians have fallen into various communication traps that are rendering our message ineffective and unappealing. Some Christians believe that any talking is better than no talking at all, because we’re sharing truth – surely it’s bound to impact somebody if we just repeat it often enough! But in a world drowning in messages claiming to be true, such attempts are ignored as yet another advert for a product nobody wants.

Some Christians turn to a second rhetorical tactic to make Christianity stand out: unleashing a barrage of intellectual apologetics weapons on anyone who will listen. But to borrow a quote from John Lennox, ‘like Peter in the garden of Gethsemane, when we take up arms for the Gospel, we usually end up cutting off peoples’ ears.’

So is there any way to share our faith in the modern world that won’t get us completely ignored or charged by a mob with bleeding ears? Last year, I came across a book written in 1993 by Alister McGrath – Intellectuals Don’t Need God and Other Modern Myths – that proposes an excellent middle ground for Christian communicators. While the title is provocative, McGrath’s approach is better explained by the phrase “bridge-building” apologetics, a process which starts by listening to the people we’re trying to communicate with rather than talking.

Responsible apologetics is based upon a knowledge both of the gospel and its audience. People have different reasons for not being Christians. They offer different points of contact for the gospel. An apologetics which is insensitive

to human individuality and the variety of situations in which people find themselves is going to get nowhere – fast.

The first half of the book focuses on establishing that this people-centred approach is biblical and fits within the framework of the Christian apologetics tradition. By examining theologians and authors as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and CS Lewis, McGrath builds a solid case for an audience-centred approach to communicating the Gospel. The approach is an academic but very readable overview for people without the time to read and analyse all the original authors themselves.

McGrath is quick to highlight that building bridges does not mean we change our message to fit our audience – rather, we adjust our communication of the message. Instead of beginning with a standardised summary of the Gospel, McGrath encourages apologists to engage with the complexity of the story. If we recognise that the Gospel has many different elements and that the story can be told many different ways, we should start all our conversations by understanding the needs of our audience, be it next-door neighbours, colleagues, or a packed out debating chamber. Then we can carefully choose biblical resources that show how Christianity applies to those specific needs, and can successfully establish mutual points of agreement.

In the second half of the book, McGrath does a thorough job highlighting points of connection with a variety of modern subcultures including postmodernists, feminists, secularists, and pluralists and gives Christians the tools to bridge a variety of theological gaps. He also explains how to build a bridge starting from the audience’s side of the gap, using points of connection including song lyrics, philosophy, and quotes by people the audience respects to draw them to explicitly Christian truth.

It is important to recognise that this bridge-building approach can also be distorted or made ineffective. In an attempt to appeal to culture, many Christians water down the message of the Gospel or try to add flashing lights and rock music to make it more appealing. But this is not what McGrath is advocating. A targeted, personal, point-of-contact approach can preserve the Gospel whilst also

Communication fail: apologetics edition BOOK REVIEW by ELIZABETH KAY

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keeping our audience’s ears intact, and in many ways reflects the very nature of God: rather than simply writing down truth and submitting it from on high, he gave the Truth flesh in the incarnation and sacrificed himself to communicate the depth of his love for humanity. Why shouldn’t we do the same thing when we talk about it?

‘Too often, traditional apologetics has sought to commend Christianity without asking why it is that so many people are not Christians. It seems relatively pointless to extol the attractiveness of the Christian faith, if this is not accompanied by a deadly serious effort to discover why it is so obviously unattractive to so many people. There is a reluctance to listen to those outside the community of faith, in order to learn why they are outside that community.’

Many Christians also distrust this approach because they struggle with the idea of actively exploring non-Christian ideas to find points of connection; researching other belief systems even with the best intentions can lead us away from biblical truth. But if Christ really is God, then his message should answer the questions of other belief systems effectively. We don’t need to accept everything our audience believes to make a connection, but we do need to show how Christianity answers their questions, not just ours.

For me, this book came at a time when I was struggling to explain my faith in a way that made sense to someone from a scientific background. So many expressions of the gospel that I had read included words or ideas that made no sense to a person not raised in a religious context, and I wanted to know whether my faith could make sense outside of the community I was accustomed to. This book showed me that Christianity can and should appeal to people from all backgrounds – cultural, philosophical, or religious – and that we should not be afraid to learn the language of those around us. I realised that I could use my background as a scientist to find ways of sharing the gospel that made sense to people following a naturalistic philosophy. I think this book challenges all believers to use their experiences and backgrounds to speak to the people around us in a way that is culturally appropriate and still expresses the deep love of Christ for humanity. ▪