I live in nominally Christian country, the USA. I work in a community overtly hostile to Christianity.
How can this be?
"Easy, that's how."
The great southern writer, Flannery O'Connor described the SE USA as being, “...while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.”
And on another occasion, "“Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological."
So, the "freakishness" of the American University, is that those who get to study man and nature full time, seem to draw the weakest inferences.
The Apostle Paul said in the Introduction to his letter to the Romans that there are two testimonies to G^d, the written Scriptures (what we humorously call the "OLD" Testament), and nature itself. How ironic that those in the best viewing position mostly have their view totally obscured. And, perhaps more interesting, they go to lengths to challenge the testimony of those who CAN see what the view portrays.
Why is that?
As a scientist, my job is to ask questions, and so I have asked myself the question, Why are so few academics Christians?, and think I have an answer.
Why do you think that is?
How can this be?
"Easy, that's how."
The great southern writer, Flannery O'Connor described the SE USA as being, “...while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted.”
And on another occasion, "“Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological."
So, the "freakishness" of the American University, is that those who get to study man and nature full time, seem to draw the weakest inferences.
The Apostle Paul said in the Introduction to his letter to the Romans that there are two testimonies to G^d, the written Scriptures (what we humorously call the "OLD" Testament), and nature itself. How ironic that those in the best viewing position mostly have their view totally obscured. And, perhaps more interesting, they go to lengths to challenge the testimony of those who CAN see what the view portrays.
Why is that?
As a scientist, my job is to ask questions, and so I have asked myself the question, Why are so few academics Christians?, and think I have an answer.
Why do you think that is?
I am glad you kept the blog going even after returning from Sweden.
ReplyDeleteI recently read Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton. (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/130) While it's not my favorite book, my two favorite quotes from it seem to speak directly to what you are talking about
In one section he talks about the circular logic that many scientific types use to disqualify faith:
"He may say that there has been in many miraculous stories a notion of spiritual preparation and acceptance: in short, that the miracle could only come to him who believed in it. It may be so, and if it is so how are we to test it? If we are inquiring whether certain results follow faith, it is useless to repeat wearily that (if they happen) they do follow faith. If faith is one of the conditions, those without faith have a most healthy right to laugh. But they have no right to judge. Being a believer may be, if you like, as bad as being drunk; still if we were extracting psychological facts from drunkards, it would be absurd to be always taunting them with having been drunk. Suppose we were investigating whether angry men really saw a red mist before their eyes. Suppose sixty excellent householders swore that when angry they had seen this crimson cloud: surely it would be absurd to answer "Oh, but you admit you were angry at the time." They might reasonably rejoin (in a stentorian chorus), "How the blazes could we discover, without being angry, whether angry people see red?" So the saints and ascetics might rationally reply, "Suppose that the question is whether believers can see visions—even then, if you are interested in visions it is no point to object to believers." You are still arguing in a circle—in that old mad circle with which this book began."
In another section he talks about the effects of the lingering effects of Christianity in a "post-Christian world" such as ours, which is an interesting concept in a book that was written in 1908:
"The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful."
Chesterton was a GREAT man. They say even his debate opponents loved him, he was so well spoken, humble and clever.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing Keith!!