Apologetics
CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS AND COUNTERBLASTS
This is a collection of essays originally published as a Kindle book ‘Three Men in a Hut and Other Essays. I started writing it after being provoked at a dinner party! After I answering a simple question by quietly saying ‘I am a Christian, I believe in Jesus’ I was ranted at in high pitched tones by two angry women for 10 minutes. Good manners forbade me from making a full response to the dozen or so issues they raised at the time, they each clearly had a lot of issues and were in the mood for rage. Any responses I made would have only infuriated them more and I was not going to get the blame for ruining a dinner party. Good tactic Satan! Rage works. But I remembered everything, and wrote two dozen essays with their roots in that event.
Esentially, I wrote these essays in response to what I saw as unfair and incorrect accusations against Christianity. They are incomplete and imperfect, just like me. I’m posting selection of them here for a reason. I argue here and there on the web for the Gospel and to correct common errors and slanders used against it, and particurly as the same ignorant slogans and quips come up again and again, rather than repeat myself endlessly, I wrote what I wanted to say down so I can direct folks here if they are interested. I don’t have time to say the same things over and over at length. And; whatever this sounds like, as C S Lewis wrote ‘Some people aren’t interested in answers. As soon as you answer one question they just change their ground. They only want to wear you out.’
There is no discussion forum here, I don’t have time or energy to maintain one. Just these essays, which the interested reader can take or leave. As the Royal Society motto says ‘take the word of no man.’ Test everything, but be careful to test wisely. Its your eternal destiny we’re talking about here.
The first of these is being posted tonight in response to a discussion on the Archbishop Cranmer blog about Roman Catholicism. It is a limited essay, far from exhaustive, but adds what I feel I need and want to say to this argument from my perspective.
Below is the original introduction to the Kindle ebook.
Three Men in a Hut and other essays
A collection of contemporary Christian counterblasts
Dr Stephen F Hayes
OVERVIEW
These essays are written to argue that the Christian faith is reasonable, true and supported by much better evidence than exists for any competing world view whether religious or secular. I write this as an educated man and a Christian believer in reply to people who say the opposite. I am therefore writing about a disagreement, so it’s bound to be contentious. Sorry, I didn’t start it.
My primary thesis which is set out in the titular essay ‘Three Men in a Hut’ and runs through all the others is the idea that we can be wrong about really important things without knowing it, and that we may resist correction for various reasons. I explore various issues with a mixture of questioning, criticism and comparing alternatives and while not denying my Christian convictions try to persuade primarily with questions, argument, reason and logic rather than primary appeal to Biblical authority, rather like Paul in Athens (Acts of the Apostles chapter 17).
I am influenced by C S Lewis whose work I have read and loved for decades. Like Lewis, I assert that the populist ‘science versus faith’ dilemma is crude, ignorant and bogus, that most of the current attacks on Christianity today as when he was writing are ignorant and unfair misrepresentations at best and often slanderous lies, and also that we can examine faith logically and come to reasonably safe conclusions. I consider problems like violence, falsehood, suffering and sin, and a selection of common arguments used against Christianity. I consider in some depth the mythology, propaganda and disinformation around Darwinian evolution theory (which I rejects as bad science for reasons I set out) and the intelligent design hypothesis (which is being censored in my country in an appalling attack on academic liberty).
I will compare those two noisome troublers of our age, Fred Phelps and Richard Dawkins, whom I argue have much more in common than either man would like to admit-for example, both deny that we have free will but still excoriate opponents for the choices they make. And in the light of the human condition and in the spirit of Lewis’s ‘The Screwtape Letters’ I ask how much explanatory power the idea of a malevolent unseen entity has, an entity such as the one Jesus referred to as Lucifer or Satan, the evil ruler of this present dark age. I was going to provocatively call this book ‘What Would Satan Do?’ until I discovered there were already 2 books and a web site with that name.
The essay, or fable if you prefer, ‘Three Men in a Hut’ (TMIAH) sets out my big idea in a short tale. I imagine three educated and informed men who hold incompatibly opposed views about life, the universe and everything arguing for a couple of days while trapped in a mountain hut by snow, but failing to persuade one another to change their minds on anything. Logically, at least two of them must be wrong but each believes with an equal passion and certainty that he is the one who is right.
How can we know who is wrong, how can we prove it to them, what if we can’t and what if it’s you?
The other essays essentially flow on from those questions and the truly frightening idea (once you understand it) that we can listen to true evidence but remain unmoved by it even when we are dangerously, demonstrably and culpably wrong. It has been my settled opinion for some decades that the worst fault a man can have is the inability to consider that he might be wrong. I do not know if it is possible to remedy this deadly fault, but persuaded as I am of the things I have come to regard as true, I feel that I must try. I am certain that my logic demonstrates that the fault exists, since evidently some men are wrong and cannot listen to arguments that show them why they ought to change their minds. Since all of the evil that men do(rape, murder, theft, war, environmental degradation, unjust trade, etc…) is a consequence of their being wrong, could anything matter more than this? If you disagree with my beliefs and conclusions, you must believe that I too am wrong but can’t see it.
I will consider the nature of evidence and the baggage and bias we humans bring to it which cause us to select, suppress and misinterpret it to arrive at convenient or comfortable but sometimes seriously incorrect conclusions. Wrong conclusions about some matters e.g. using coriander instead of fennel in a curry paste, won’t take much difference, you might even improve the flavour of the curry. Others errors, like misreading a map can make more difference. But getting it wrong about God, rejecting Christ if he is who he said he was, can at least in theory lead to ultimate catastrophe. I end by considering what evidence (if any) we might expect to find for or against the probability of the worst imaginable outcome of basing your life on bad evidence and wrong conclusions in a chapter called ‘Hell’.
I wrote and edited TMIAH over a period of 8 weeks between late November 2011 and late January 2012, commenting occasionally on news events that took place while I was writing like the Leveson enquiry, deaths of some famous people and various outbreaks of religiously motivated violence which happened as I wrote and edited. The writing is a combination of material I have had in my head for a long time and current ‘stream of consciousness’ views and arguments rather like newspaper comment columns. There is some overlap between the essays and some repetition where I tried to make each one free standing. I tend to repeat myself where I think something is really important or needs stressing because it is often misunderstood. I have gone off on a few tangents here and there. I hope this will be forgiven, I have a slightly feverish brain and do a lot of didactic medical writing and lecturing and it’s just my style. The references in (brackets) refer to the bottom of each essay for ease of reading. There is an active table of contents, but I recommend reading the chapters one after another as they are set out.
These essays are personal, biased and asymmetrical. None are comprehensive treatises on any subject (each subject could fill a book in its own right) but reflections committed to text over two months. They are addressed to harassed Christians, genuine agnostics, and the opponents of Christianity.
On causing offense
Some of what I have written will offend. It already has. It is what it is, take it or leave it. The Evangelical Alliance, of which I am a long standing paid up member, refused to carry a paid advert for this book as some of what I had written was in my own words ‘disturbing, shocking or offensive’ as I freely admit. I am genuinely sorry for any offence caused by what I have written, but offence exists, disagreement exists, truth and error exist. The fact that truth offends error, that dissent offends orthodoxy must not dissuade us from seeking truth outside what we are being told to believe, or else enquiry is not free and default position error wins.
Jesus of Nazareth described himself as ‘The Way, the Truth and the Life’ and caused offence wherever he went. He was eventually arrested, tortured and killed for what he had said. His faithful follower, Stephen, was stoned to death for speaking truth to power. Weak as I am, I humbly seek to follow Jesus and the first martyr Stephen, for whom I was named. In order for speech or writing to cause offence, the minimum requirement is one person who doesn’t want to hear it. We are in danger of a shutting down of free speech on certain issues due to what has been described as ‘The tyranny of the most easily offended’. But I do not seek offence. If my primary goal was to be offensive, I would become a follower of either Fred Phelps or his opposite number Richard Dawkins.