The 'Greening' of Christianity Is Not New

In a segment on All Points West (a regular series on CBC Radio One hosted by Jo-Ann Roberts) earlier this afternoon, Roberts and a select guest discussed the appropriation of environmental concerns by many of today's religions which, if memory serves me, she referred to as "the greening of religion" or the growing spiritual dimensions of socio-ecological issues. She set the tone by opening with the example of the "new sins" described last March by Bishop Gianfranco Girotti [PDF] which include such offences as social and economic inequality; these feed off an "unsustainable form of social injustice and is related to environmental issues," Girotti said, "which currently have much relevant interest."

The following is a letter I wrote to All Points West which describes my mild disagreement because, as I indicate, socio-political concerns is actually not a new arena for the Christian faith.

Dear Jo-Ann Roberts,

This afternoon (21/Apr/2008) on All Points West there was a brief discussion on "the greening of religion." I would include more relevant information, like the name of the guest and the points he raised, but I cannot find a podcast for your show, which restricts me to personal memory.

I wanted to provide a brief response on the relationship between the socio-ecological concerns of our day and at least one particular 'institutional religion'—Christianity. There is always room for continuing education and growth on the individual and community scale, but socio-ecological concerns are not unfamiliar to this religion. As covenant children of God, Christians have a willing and sober obligation to be responsible stewards of God's creation wherever it touches our lives; from the beginning we have been given the ethical mandate of superintending God's creation and are therefore responsible in this capacity before God. Although the Christian community is chiefly concerned with spreading the message of Christ and redemption, it also recognizes manifold social responsibilities and that evangelization is ecologically active, "bringing the message and realities of the kingdom of God into the social affairs of human beings and into responsible stewardship of all creation" (Dr. Grant McClung, "Is Jesus' Proclamation Our Proclamation?" Christian Churches Together in the USA, 7/Feb/2007).

This is addressed implicitly in the Lausanne Covenant (1976), one of the most influential documents in modern evangelical Christianity, written and adopted by 2,430 evangelicals at the International Congress on World Evangelization (ICWE) in Lausanne, Switzerland. This conference was called by a committee headed by Billy Graham of the United States and brought together 150 Christian religious leaders from around the world. In one of the sections it reaffirms the "responsible service to the world" faced by Christian ministry, expressing the belief that "evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty" because both are logical "expressions of our doctrines of God and man, our love for our neighbour and our obedience to Jesus Christ . . . [The gospel and its mission] should be transforming us in the totality of our personal and social responsibilities" (Section V, emphasis mine).

In the Manila Manifesto (1989), the Second ICWE in Manila, Philippines (sometimes called "Lausanne II") elaborated on the Lausanne Covenant, calling explicitly for an integration of words and deeds, including a "continuing commitment to social action" because it is recognized "that the biblical gospel has inescapable social implications." It affirms the belief that authentic evangelization demands "the prophetic denunciation of all that is incompatible with [God's kingdom]. Among the evils we deplore are destructive violence, including institutionalized violence, political corruption, all forms of exploitation of people and of the earth" and so forth (Section IV, emphasis mine).

There is also the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN), which is a non-profit organization "that seeks to educate, inspire, and mobilize Christians in their effort to care for God's creation, to be faithful stewards of God's provision, and to advocate for actions and policies that honor God and protect the environment" (emphasis mine). The EEN "provides theological and spiritual guidance on Christian responsibility in the light of biblical teaching on the care of creation and the reality of modern environmental degradation." This group expresses the conviction that if "the Bible teaches us that Christ has created the universe, gives it life and sustains it, and has reconciled everything to God, then our actions should participate in Christ's creating, sustaining, and reconciling work."

The examples could be multiplied, especially if consideration is given to Christian social and relief initiatives concerned with food security, emergency management initiatives, economic development, health care, basic education and so forth (e.g. Salvation Army, Samaritan's Purse, World Vision, Adventist Development and Relief Agency, etc).

Although further "greening" of Christian evangelical convictions and efforts are desired and commendable, the existence of such international conferences and initiatives underscores the reality that such "greening" is not a 21st century bandwagon being appropriated by the Christian faith among other religions, but has actually been a growing concern for many decades.

Answering the Circularity Charge and Looking at What 'Atheist' Means

From an online discussion I had elsewhere, a young man by the name of Adam responded to me by asserting,

"The transcendental argument for the existence of God does in fact attempt to prove God's existence and, therefore, commits the fallacy of circularity."

No, it does not. It does not 'prove' his existence; it 'assumes' his existence and shows the inescapable necessity of doing so. It does not argue "Objective Morality, therefore God" but rather "God, therefore Objective Morality"; that is, the TAG argues at the level of our presuppositions, speaking on the stuff that comes prior to our 'proof' arguments, in order for us to even have them at all. As an illustrative example, there is a principle operating in all scientific investigations called 'inductive inference'. This principle comes prior to and is necessary for scientific enterprise to take place at all; it cannot be established scientifically, but it is absolutely impossible for science to operate without it. That's the presuppositional level. The TAG establishes the preconditions necessary for the intelligibility of human reasoning, experience, and dignity by taking some feature of each (e.g. logic, or objective morality, or the value of human life) and investigating what has to be true in order for that feature to be possible and intelligible. That's the key feature which rebuttals seem to persistently miss, that his existence is NOT the conclusion.

To help illustrate this point, consider as a loose analogy some argument for the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC). Now, no such argument for the LNC could ever 'prove' the law; it's impossible to prove in that sense, and there is a reason for that. What such an argument does is show that the LNC is true necessarily, not contingently, by assuming its truth and showing the inescapable necessity of doing so. In other words, it works to show that the truth of the LNC is intrinsic, self-evident, and necessary by virtue of "the impossibility of the contrary" (i.e. one uses the LNC in their denial of the LNC); its truth is not established contingently by its relation to some truth more basic than itself (extrinsic). The truth of the LNC is not proven; it's assumed and must be so. The TAG takes a similar form; it does not prove God's existence but, rather, assumes his existence and shows the necessity of doing so. Some feature of human reasoning, experience, or dignity is the conclusion; the existence of God is not the conclusion but, rather, that which is necessary for reaching the conclusion.

Adam also asserted,

"Atheism literally means not believing in god(s)."

False. The term 'atheism' is derived from the Greek root 'theos' prefixed by a negating article. Ergo, atheism/atheist/atheistic literally means "godless" or "ungodly," a sound etymology recognized by Anders Bjørn Drachman in his book Atheism In Pagan Antiquity: "

In Greek they said 'atheos' and 'atheotes'; to these the English words 'ungodly' and 'ungodliness' correspond rather closely.

That is the literal meaning, so a definition of 'atheism' consonant with Greek usage will not deliver up the popular meaning "absence of God-belief." Consider, for example, the curious fact that early Christians were called atheists, despite their God-belief, because they refused to acknowledge the pagan gods of Rome.

Consonant with contemporary thinking, if we accept that the prefix 'a-' is to be understood as "without" or "no" and that 'theos' is supposed to mean "God"—and this is surely the case—then an atheist is someone who is "ungodly" or "without God" or "godless." That is, he will view the world in the context of "no God" and live his life "without God." If something is amoral then it is 'without morality'. If something is asymmetric then it is 'without symmetry'. If something is atypical then it is 'without typicality'. Any appeal to the Greek will only prove that atheist ('a-' + 'theos') means "without God."

Michael Martin, who made an appeal to the original Greek in Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, tried to conclude that "from this standpoint an atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God." It is impossible, however, to miss how Martin fraudulently snuck in the word "belief" when his etymological presentation made zero reference to the Greek root 'pistos'. Too many definitions of atheism, when appealing to the original Greek, try to import the 'belief' feature into the presentation when it is simply not present in the Greek 'atheos'. Every attempt to import this term into an argument from Greek etymology is at once both fraudulent and irresponsible. Atheism as a philosophical creed does address the belief feature, but its etymology does not.

Like many atheists, Antony Flew preferred the 'weak' definition of atheism and expended a good deal of effort making his case, but he had the propriety and intellectual honesty to admit that it was a new interpretation. Atheism defined in this way essentially began with George H. Smith (Atheism: The Case Against God, 1979) and was further popularized by Antony Flew (The Presumption of Atheism, 1984) and others such as Gordon Stein (An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism, 1980), Michael Martin (Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, 1990), and Douglas Krueger (What is Atheism? A Short Introduction, 1998) and so forth. The historically rich and more common definition of atheism, as explained in the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Etymological Dictionary of English Language, Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford Companion to Philosophy, etc. as being the conscious rejection of theism, is a view which considers "absence of theistic belief" to be an illegitimate form of atheism, as noted by such prominent atheists as Ernest Nagel, Paul Edwards and Kai Nielsen. Frederick E. Edwords, Executive Director of the American Humanist Association, also concurs that this is the correct definition and, indeed, the term 'atheist' is used this way by most people. Similarly, in Ernest Nagel's A Defence of Atheism he asserts that

atheism is not to be identified with sheer unbelief . . . Thus, a child who has received no religious instruction and has never heard about God, is not an atheist—for he is not denying any theistic claims.

Such a child would at best be a 'nontheist', a term popularized by atheist and skeptic Michael Shermer, who may likewise be placed within this camp, for he writes (How We Believe, 1999) concerning the term 'nontheist' (emphasis supplied):

If by fiat I had to bet on whether there is a God or not, I would bet that there is not. Indeed, I live my life as if there was not a God. And if the common usage of the term "atheism" was nothing more than "no belief in a God" I might be willing to adopt it. But this is not the common usage, as we saw in the OED . . . Atheism is typically used to mean "disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of a God." But "denial of a God" is an untenable position. It is no more possible to prove God's nonexistence than it is to prove His existence. "There is no god" is no more defensible than "There is a God." The problem with the term agnostic, however, is that most people take it to mean that you are unsure or have yet to make up your mind, so the term nontheist might be more descriptive.

NOTE: Something should be said about the differentiation between 'atheism' and 'agnosticism'. It seems popular to believe that there are three positions with regard to the question of God's existence: that one is either (1) a theist, (2) an atheist, or (3) an agnostic. However, this is not the case; such a view results from either an inability or refusal to appreciate the distinction. Robert T. Carroll, in his The Skeptic's Dictionary, available online, affirms this distinction when he states that "an agnostic could also be a theist or an atheist." Often times 'agnosticism' is used as a synonym for 'weak atheism', but this is ultimately erroneous—'weak atheism', the Wikipedia article on Agnosticism explains, "is not equivalent to but is compatible with agnosticism" (emphasis mine).

Properly understood, agnosticism is a subset of both theism and atheism: one can be an agnostic theist or an agnostic atheist because 'agnosticism' describes the condition of one's knowledge (Gk. 'gnosis'), whereas 'theism' and 'atheism' describe the condition of one's relationship with respect to God. For example, an agnostic atheist is someone who admits he doesn't know whether or not God exists but lives his life as though God doesn't (e.g. naturalism), while an agnostic theist is someone who also admits that he doesn't know whether or not God exists but lives his life as though God does (e.g. fideism). There is a significant difference between 'belief' propositions (doxastic) and 'knowledge' propositions (epistemic), illustrated by the fact that 'belief' is a necessary condition for 'knowledge', e.g. you can believe something you don't know (e.g. intelligent life exists on other planets) but you can't know something you don't believe (e.g. it is sheer nonsense to say "I know the milk is in the fridge but I don't believe it is"). Both atheism and theism speak to the beliefs we confess while agnosticism speaks to the knowledge we confess.

A Metaphysical Consideration

Suppose an atheist is confronted with a theory of existence which runs contrary to the one he currently holds, and is therefore summarily rejected. The question no one ever seems to ask is: "On what basis did he reject the competing theory?" Think about this. Is it because it failed to square with his current theory of existence? That is, did he enter into the evaluation already assuming the truth of his theory, using it as the criteria by which the competing theory was evaluated? That is a textbook case of question-begging (where theories of existence are the very issue, such as here), a particularly dangerous fallacy in this case because it leaves him incapable of determining whether his theory or the competing one is faulty. What if his theory were faulty but the competing one wasn't? How could he know? Well, he can't, when he dismisses all contrary theories with a question-begging wave of his hand.

Quite frankly, it's pointless to talk about the existence of this or that thing if the very criteria which govern the atheist's ontological conclusions are themselves faulty. Ergo, before there is any argument on the existence of 'X' the atheist needs to adequately defend or show how he has established that his theory of 'existence' is not itself faulty. The Christian apologist must not concede at the outset that atheist metaphysics are correct and that Christian arguments must conform themselves to it, if for nor other reason than the fact that atheist metaphysics may very well be faulty (and they certainly are). As noted by Michael R. Butler (Professor of Philosophy and Dean of Faculty at Christ College, Lynchburg, VA) (blog):

"The reason for this failure [of the traditional arguments for the existence of God] is precisely because they do not presuppose the Christian worldview. Rather, the traditional arguments [concede] the concepts of being, causation, purpose, etc., to the non-Christian; they assume that all of these are intelligible on the unbeliever's worldview. This being the case, the apologist has already conceded to the non-Christian that the world is intelligible without reference to God."

The Only Response Possible

Altruist80 wrote: What if it all came to pass? Picture this. You are sitting at the television, watching the news one day. You see headlines erupting about a Russian (or other northern force) launching a surprise attack on Israel, with no real opposition. But somehow they are forced to turn back with major losses due to command confusion, friendly fire, and natural events. The world enters a time of war. Some months later, a second assault is launched from the north. A large naval fleet decimates this force with fierce bombardments from the Mediterranean (ships of Kittim). Again they are forced to turn back. Still, some time later, the southern forces muster a counter-attack. But the northern force smashes this army and overthrows all of Europe and Asia Minor, including Israel. The leader of the prevailing force declares world rule and outlaws Judaism and Christianity, citing them as the cause for the war, and sets up his command headquarters in Israel. People start disappearing. Unnatural events occur, which defy all reason. You are now a subject of a world police power. Would you believe the book of Daniel, or would you cite these events as inevitable and resulting from the demand of a new solution in a volatile world? Don't answer with, "It's not going to happen." Treat it as hypothetical. What if?

themadfiddler wrote: I would realize I was in a horrible alternate reality that was a result of Hal Lindsey's engrams being imprinted on the world, where real biblical scholarship was replaced by gullible idiocy, where the trailer park had become the cultural center of the world, and reality was now, Matrix-like, being run by a horrible super-computer with Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins at the helm, spewing out a cliched mess of hackneyed plagiarized plot.

"I Contend We Are Both Atheists" - Response to Comments 2

Finally, after a few more subsequent comments posted to my original article (despite that blog being 'Closed'), I received a comment that actually has something intelligible to say—ironically, from Stephen Roberts himself! It has been quite a few years so it was a pleasant surprise to hear from him again. It's nice running into you again, Stephen!

Although he posted his comment to a different blog post ("No Theist Is An Atheist"), it nevertheless regarded my critique squarely and, quite refreshingly, had something intelligent to say. Stephen's comment (3/Jan/08) stated:

Hey David, Stephen here! After the quote came up in another forum I read, I ego-surfed across this post and figured I'd drop by and say hi!

Yes, I know the usage of "atheist" in the quote is incorrect since if a person believes in any kind of god they are a theist, not an atheist. But I think it still work because it helps them to think about the fact that they are also non-believers for other gods.

But the real "meat" of the quote is the second part about how if the theist really understood why they don't believe in the other gods they might understand why their god is hard to believe in too.

If I would have been writing a philosophy book, I probably would have come up with better wording or at least better phrasing. But even with its flaws, its kind of nice to see the quote still wander around and mean something to some people :-)

I appreciate his candor, and his concession that the "we are both atheists" clause is untenable. At least someone, finally, possessed enough sense to concede that this feature of the Quote is inherently faulty. Unfortunately, it was the author only. Everyone else that comments still tries to retain it, tenaciously blind to the contradiction. My hat's off to Stephen.

Nevertheless, the real 'meat' of the Quote is still faulty (but not as obviously). I can appreciate the point Stephen is trying to make, but I have to wonder if he is cognizant of the fact that the only people who will agree with him are those who already adhere to an epistemology similar to his. Unless I am mistaken, Stephen subscribes to a form of empiricism, i.e. the degree to which some proposition outside science can be given scientific support or can be reduced to science, to that degree the proposition becomes rationally acceptable. It is for this reason that theistic claims are said to shoulder an empirical burden of proof. (I invite Stephen to correct me if I am wrong.) From my understanding, that is why he rejects all possible gods, including the God of Christianity: because claims of their existence are bereft of empirical evidence to substantiate those claims.

If that is the case, then the question immediately presents itself: Is that the reason why Christians "dismiss all the other possible gods"? Is it because those other god-claims are without empirical evidence substantiating them? No, that is not their reason, because (a) they do not subscribe to any formulation of empiricism, for it is antithetical to orthodox Christian theology, and (b) they know that reasoning this way, for them, commits the Special Pleading fallacy. (This fallacy is committed when you reject all other gods because they lack substantiating empirical evidence, while making an exception, without good reason, for your own God who likewise lacks said evidence.)

Therefore, the only people who will agree with the second clause are necessarily those who already adhere to an epistemology similar to Stephen's. How so? Because he asserts that once "you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." It naturally follows that this clause requires its subject to hold a similar epistemology. Consider: we first discover the reason he dismisses all possible gods, and we then look to see whether or not that is the same reason Christians dismiss all other gods. So then what happens when Stephen encounters Christians, who do not subscribe to an epistemology similar to his? Suddenly this Quote is unsound, collapsing under the fact that it is untrue with respect to the subject it is addressing (Christians). It is true for only a specific segment of the human population: those who already share his epistemic views. With regard to everyone else, it is false.

To summarize in brief: (1) I look at Stephen's reason for dismissing all possible gods and I admit, "That's not my reason for dismissing them"; (2) and if Stephen considered my reason for rejecting all other gods, he would admit, "That's not my reason for dismissing them." In other words, this second clause—

When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

—is false, when regarding all those who adhere to an epistemology different from Stephen's empiricism. The reason he rejects all possible gods and the reason I reject all other gods are, in fact, two very different reasons. Being informed of Stephen's reasoning does not inform anyone of my reasoning, nor vice versa.