In the last five years alone, the [religiously] unaffiliated have increased from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. Their ranks now include more than 13 million self-described atheists and agnostics (nearly 6% of the U.S. public), as well as nearly 33 million people who say they have no particular religious affiliation (14%)….

However… many of the country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults are religious or spiritual in some way. Two-thirds of them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say the often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious (37%) and one-in-five (21%) say they pray every day. In addition, most religiously unaffiliated Americans think that churches and other religious institutions benefit society by strengthening community bonds and aiding the poor.

With few exceptions, though, the unaffiliated say they are not looking for a religion that would be right for them. Overwhelmingly, they think that religious organizations are too concerned with money and power, too focused on rules and too involved in politics.

No comment for now, except to say that God is at work regardless, and this is another good reminder to pray for our neighbors.

Now Professor Negy has blogged on the email-gone-viral. He opens the article,

 Last Spring semester at the university I teach at, an incident occurred in my cross-cultural psychology class related to my discussion of religious bigotry in society. The incident prompted me to send an email to my students later that evening that ended up “going viral” and initially was posted on Reddit and more recently (August 16) was posted on the Huffington Post. My message to students in that email addressed various issues — issues that I will be blogging on in the upcoming weeks. For now, I want to comment on the issue that was addressed pertaining to the purpose of a university because so many professors nationwide have emailed me indicating that they plan on reading my email to their students on the first day of classes in order to orient them to the role of a university and their roles as students.

“So many professors” are planning to read his email to their students. The mere fact is amazing. It’s bad enough that Professor Negy missed seeing his own multiple contradictions and ironies, but for “so many professors” also to have overlooked them speaks poorly for higher education.

Professor Negy’s blog post settles one question, though. Mr. Knippenberg had wondered what kind of behavior it was that provoked the email. One has to question whether one is getting enough of the story from a message like that. Now it appears we have an authoritative answer to that question. The professor gives every indication in this blog post that he approves of other faculty members reading it to their classes sans context. If that’s the case, that means he believes the email stands on its own. It is what it is.

And its message is clear. Professor Negy’s chief complaint seems to have been with Christians “arguing that Christianity is the most valid religion.” Though he himself seems not to consider context very important, it’s worth noting that the words “most valid” seem to fit better with (at least an attempt toward) reasoned discussion than a lecture-disrupting rant. Have you ever heard anyone ranting,  ”My view is the most valid!”?

“So many professors” across the country, then, are echoing Professor Negy’s instruction these first days of school: Feel free to examine ideas and think critically, but for you who are Christians, don’t even think of arguing in favor of your beliefs.

It bodes very ill for higher education.

Corrections abound. Why then do errors persist? (Why is there always somebody wrong on the Internet?)

That question has been bothering me especially this week, as David Barton’s errors have been brought into more public light. My experience blogging has taught me that if I don’t know what I’m talking about I’d better not talk about it. Someone will challenge me and I’ll have to yield. It has its value as a learning experience but it doesn’t do much for my credibility.

From the other side, the Internet is overrun with writers saying that Christians who accept the injunctions in Leviticus against homosexuality should stone their daughter if she’s not a virgin on her wedding night. Here’s a sample search for you. This misinformation persists even Christians (also appearing on that same Google search) show its purveyors that they don’t understand the Bible as well as they think they do. I could share a thousand more examples like this one.

Confirmation bias is a well established psychological phenomenon. We tend to see that which we agree with more clearly and more openly than that which we disagree with. Atheists, believers, and everyone in between are all subject to it. I find that when I’m reading complex material, if I agree with where the author is taking it I can understand it much more easily than if it’s something I disagree with—even if the two are equally challenging, on a neutral, objective standard. I’m pretty sure that contributes to bias.

Sometimes we pursue “facts” that we want to be true, whether they are indeed factual or not. Many Christians, especially politically conservative Christians, have done this with David Barton. Presumably, though, most of us would much rather pursue what’s actually true. I commend to you a simple three step plan for topic areas on which you may need to form an opinion:

1. If you know what you’re talking about—if you have expertise in the subject area—then go for it.
2. If not, then use caution. Do some research. Don’t jump to conclusions. Find out who disagrees with whom, and why.
3. Having done that research, speak according to what you know.

(For topics on which you don’t really need to form an opinion, “I don’t know” works just as well.)

Someone asked me a couple months ago what I thought about David Barton. I said, “I’ve heard him speak, I know pretty much what his themes are, I’ve heard others raise concerns about his accuracy, I haven’t studied it enough to know what to make of those concerns, so I’m taking a cautious stance.” Now, with a lot more information available, I’m more convinced he’s been guilty of stretching facts (to put it charitably).

The same principle would ease tensions in the young earth-old earth debate. Whatever the topic, it would have the virtue of preventing a lot of us from speaking more than we know.

Meanwhile errors will persist on the Internet and beyond, because too many of us think we know more than we actually know, and we’re not listening to the other side. To suppose there could be any other outcome would be foolishly idealistic.

But there is a question in here somewhere that calls for consideration: If secular reasons against SSM are any good at all, why is it that religious people so much more likely to oppose SSM than non-religious people? Could it be that our secular reasoning is a kind of game, a smokescreen behind which to hide the essential religiosity of our purpose?

If that were true, then it would be best that we admitted it and got out of the debate, or else shifted over to the constitutional side of it instead. But it’s not. For one thing, good secular reasoning against SSM is good secular reasoning, regardless of who puts it forth or why. For another thing, there are other explanations for the religious divide. On my Thinking Christian blog I’m offering two such explanations, the first of which is that religious people are far more likely than non-religious people to accept that there is something that marriage essentially is, and which is not up to us to decide. What follows is an adapted version.

First I want to clarify who I am talking about here and who I am not. On both sides of this issue there are some who have taken their stance only because “that’s what my kind of people think about this.” Make no mistake: support for gay “marriage” has a lot to do with aligning with one’s social group. So does opposition to it. I’m not talking about that kind of support or opposition, but about that which is well informed and thought through.

President Obama declared his affirmation of same-sex “marriage” last week. His opinion changes nothing except the legal and political environment. More specifically, it has no effect on what marriage actually is, because the meaning of marriage is not up to anyone to decide—not even the President. It’s above his pay grade.

What I mean is that marriage has its own enduring nature or essence. Many will disagree with me on that. Where you stand on that question, though, will largely determine where you stand on SSM. The question comes to this: Is there, or is there not, something—some nature or essence, that makes marriage what it is? Or is “marriage” up for grabs? If the former, then the SSM advocate carries an exceptionally strong burden of proof, to show that the great majority of cultures through history have gotten marriage wrong by making it about male and female. If the latter, then marriage can be whatever it is at the moment, and there’s no good reason to oppose SSM.

The best secular arguments in favor of man-woman marriage lean heavily on there being something that marriage is, and that its nature, its essence, isn’t up for a vote. Girgis, George, and Anderson, for example, have developed a strong case for the enduring identity of marriage on natural, not religious, grounds. That view is no longer widely shared. Many of us take it that we can mold the meaning of marriage to suit the temper of the age.

Many of us, in fact, take it that we can mold the meaning of almost anything to suit ourselves. Is there an enduring essence of maleness and femaleness, or (as some now maintain) does each person have the option to choose (pardon me, but I can’t avoid saying it this way) his or her own gender? Is there an enduring essence of humanness, or are we (as again some hold to be true) of pretty much the same sort of thing as the animals? Are we on our evolutionary way toward becoming something else? Questions like these can be multiplied. (Interestingly, answers to all of them seem to line up along a religious divide.)

I suspect this is one major factor separating believers from non-believers on this issue: believers in God are far more likely than non-believers to hold that certain things have their own enduring nature, essence, or definition. Thus we are far more likely to hold that marriage, gender, and human nature have stable and lasting meanings.

That’s my theory. Supposing I am correct, why might that be so? I can think of at least three reasons.

1. Pride of progress, or, chronological chauvinism. Non-believers are more likely than believers to think that every new generation is wiser than every earlier one. This is, unfortunately, a silly conceit associated with the fallacy of thinking that all knowledge is scientific knowledge. Obviously scientific knowledge is increasing day by day. Does that mean wisdom is, too? Or literary expertise, or musical creativity and virtuosity? Obviously not. These have virtually nothing to do with science. Neither does marriage. Why would we assume we are any smarter than the ancients (read: anyone born before 1960) concerning the nature of marriage?

Believers are more likely than non-believers to recognize that fallacy for what it is. We are therefore less likely to fall for the fallacies of scientism (“science is all there is of knowledge”) and chronological snobbery (“our age knows more about everything”).

2. The sexual revolution. The children of the 60s—and their children—are running the country. The enduring message of the 60s has been that whatever consenting adults decide to do is just fine. Though there are both biblically- and non-biblically based arguments against this foolishness, Bible-believers have been more motivated than non-believers to give them proper respect—in theory at least, if not always in practice.

3. Evolutionary theories of origins. Darwinian evolution is an all-encompassing theory, covering every aspect of organisms’ physical and behavioral characteristics. It is furthermore—and crucially—a theory of change, of things that are always on their way to becoming something else. Of course evolution can accommodate and explain stasis in populations, but still for all that it remains a theory of change. Today’s humanness is a snapshot along the ever-new, ever-different road of history, so why shouldn’t today’s marriage be the same?

If I’m right, then a theory of marriage such as Girgis, George, and Anderson’s, arguing as it does on the basis of what marriage is, faces uphill sledding among non-believers. Why believe that anything is what it is, or at least that it is essentially so?

Though opinions may line up along a religious divide, these are not religious questions. Differences of opinion pre-date Christianity by hundreds of years. Can a man step in the same river twice? Is he still the same man if he does? Was Heraclitus correct to think change is the only reality? Or was Plato closer to the mark with his eternal forms?

There’s more that could be said about this, but I’m exploring and proposing ideas here, not trying to work out a final disquisition, so I’ll leave it at this. What do you think?

A couple nights ago I was listening to Saint-Säens’ Third Symphony, the Organ Symphony. As a trombonist I fell in love with this music in college: it’s loud and brassy in all the right places, but it also calls on the trombone for one of the sweetest soft melodies in all classical music. I’ve heard this symphony often. I know what’s coming next, all the way through it. There will be no surprises in it for me ever again, except (I hope) the kind of new discovery that comes from catching some inner part I’ve never noticed before.

What’s your favorite song or composition? I’m hoping you can think of something longer and stronger than the typical rock, pop, or country songs, because the longer and better the piece is, the more likely it will illustrate what I’m saying here. Pat Metheny’s First Circle is a great jazz example.

Whatever your favorites might be,

• Have you ever noticed how time stops during great music—even as it flows onward?
• Have you ever felt the conflict, dissonance, even discord in it?
• Have you ever felt the anticipation of your favorite part coming up soon? There’s desire there, isn’t there? You feel a strong sort of wanting, yet you know it’s right that it take its time coming. Even the wanting is good.
• Have you ever felt the satisfaction of the music reaching its goal in the end?

Such things are part of the universal experience of music—and they happen while everything is exactly the way it should be. Amazing, isn’t it: perfection can include discord, anticipation, conflict, and resolution! These are the very things that keep interest alive in the life that’s familiar to us.

Further, we might wonder whether there will be any challenge and any personal growth in heaven. I think there will be. The Bible says there will be no more sin there, and no more crying. It does not say there will be no more trying. I’m speculating of course, but I won’t be at all surprised if musicians make mistakes there. To have trouble with a difficult passage is not sin. Some of my favorite hours on earth have been spent struggling my way through a tough passage to play it better than before. These struggles have been good, not bad.

Not all of those struggles, by the way, have been about getting the notes right. I’ve tried many times to play Bach’s Cello Suite in D Minor. It lays fairly well on the trombone (not like it does on the cello, but close enough for a trombonist’s purposes). The notes are not the problem. I can get through them easily enough (or I could when I was practicing more often). But there’s music in there to which I’ve never attained. Bach’s genius is beyond me. It might just take forever to get to it. Nevertheless, trying to reach it has always been terribly satisfying. It’s always been a labor of love and delight, even as far as I have been from the goal. I think I could be that way for a long, long, long time.

What will heaven be like? I still don’t know. But the lesson of music assures me that perfection really can include conflict, anticipation, dissonance, resolution, challenge, even failure, and continuing growth. Knowing that such things are possible in the midst of perfection, I am pretty sure the way they will manifest in heaven will be deeper, richer, more involving and interesting than we can imagine. It won’t be boring there.

Also at Thinking Christian

Charles Colson has gone home to be with the Lord. The Prison Fellowship ministry family invites you to join in celebrating his life.

My son, Jonathan, and I bumped into him at his BreakPoint ministry office a few years ago. It was my first visit there, just dropping in on Travis McSherley, the editor who had published some of my work on BreakPoint’s website. I had no idea then how unusual it was to see Chuck there—he traveled widely and was rarely in the office. He spent several minutes with us, graciously including Jonathan in the conversation, not seeming to be in a hurry, and making for me a solid impression of being a gracious and caring person.

I did not know then that within a few years I would be sitting with him in his office, explaining why I wanted to spend a year or two helping him and his team build a network of worldview ministries and foster a movement of Kingdom discipleship through them. My favorable five-minute impression from a few years ago was more than confirmed then, and in the several subsequent meetings I was privileged to be in with him. One of my more unforgettable moments was at the 2010 National Conference on Christian Apologetics, where he greeted me with a hug.

Someone once asked me, “Don’t you know he’s a convicted felon?” The question made me laugh. Yes, I knew that. I was a senior in high school when Watergate happened. We watched the proceedings on TV in my Government class. I read his autobiography, Born Again, not long after it was released, and I heard him speak about it at the Governor’s Prayer Breakfast in Lansing, Michigan; I think it was in 1976.

Chuck Colson himself never lost sight of the fact that he was a convicted felon. He also never lost sight of God’s gracious forgiveness through Jesus Christ. He founded Prison Fellowship Ministries, and led it to become a powerful force for spiritual, educational, and social change in prisons throughout American and around the world. But that is not the ministry or the realm in which I came to know and appreciate him. Rather it was in his leadership in Christian worldview thinking. In his Lansdowne, Virginia office, carefully protected in a glass case, there is one of C.S. Lewis’s pipes. I believe history will recognize Chuck’s place in a very small group of men including Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer, and of course Lewis, as leaders most responsible for framing evangelical Christians’ thinking about our faith in relation to the world.

He helped us understand How Now Shall We Live?, what Loving God really means, and how to be The Body [of Christ]. Traveling and speaking indefatigably, he sowed the message that Christianity is the explanation for everything. He built a core of worldview-equipped, Kingdom-seeking lay leaders, called Centurions. He advanced the value of Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission, the crucial importance of life, marriage, and liberty, and in his most recent major release, Doing the Right Thing. He was a father who, as his daughter Emily has shown us (though he was not the main subject of this book), truly cared about the hurting. His BreakPoint radio commentaries helped millions to think more Christianly about current events.

I don’t know of anyone in our generation who has so effectively coupled Christian compassion with Christian intellectual leadership.

Over the last couple years he was much concerned about the legacy he would leave. Some of us might think what he had done would have been plenty, and if it had been for the sake of his own name, he might have thought so, too. It wasn’t about his name, though. For him it was about taking the opportunity his unique public platform afforded him to bring Christian leaders together in unity. What he prayed and worked for most over the past few years was to see a movement of Christian churches, ministries, and individuals working together for the purposes of Christ’s kingdom, to bring about renewal, awakening, and transformation in our culture. He was at it until the end. He was speaking on “Breaking the Spiral of Silence” when he fell ill and was taken to the hospital a few weeks ago. I’m told that he was talking about it with BreakPoint leaders who visited him in the hospital late last week.

I think we’re on track toward seeing this movement develop; at least, I pray that we are. There is much to be done.

There is opposition. The spiritual and cultural transformation Colson sought, and which we continue to pursue in Christ’s name, is not welcomed by all. I have been grieved to see the rank cruelty some commenters have expressed in discussions attached to reports on his poor health recently. (I will delete any such comments left here. He was a friend to me and to many of us, and this is not the time and place for that unkindness.) Many of those who applaud immorality have also cheered for his desperate illness. The connection is sickening but unmistakable. It stands in stark contrast to his own reaction to opposition: grief, yes; intense concern, yes to that, too; but never hatred, always grace and hope for the opposing person instead.

Along the way to prison, Chuck Colson discovered how desperately he needed the grace and life of Jesus Christ. I’ve never been behind bars except to visit, but my need is no less. Neither is yours. Chuck’s purpose in all his ministry was to lift up the powerful and saving name and life and ethics and truths and glory of Jesus Christ. Now he is raised up with Christ.

Some of the lecture was cut out, so I will not hold Tyson responsible for the error I’m about to describe. If I did, I would be guilty of the same error that I’m about to describe (drawing a conclusion on incomplete evidence). I will instead direct my comments toward the person who uploaded the video, who apparently intended us to conclude from it that religion hinders science. By extension, what I have to say here applies also to everyone else who has made the same mistake in any comparable way. And that includes a lot of people.

What I want to say is that this message about religion hindering science is completely unscientific; and the more it gets propagated, the more science is hindered.

Here’s why I say that. The error of which I speak is very painfully clear in this video, and it is quite specifically a scientific error. What the video does is to propose, on the basis of one snippet of history, that belief in God is harmful to the progress of science.

This is a statement that belongs in the field of social psychology and/or sociology. The claim goes like this: If a person (society) believes in God, the result in that person (society) will be deleterious to the progress of science.

I want to know where that has been scientifically measured and assessed.

The test could be run. The study could be done, though it would be difficult. It would require a good-sized representative sampling, measurement of their religiosity, and a correlative measurement of their attitudes toward, knowledge of, and contribution to science.

I want to know where that study has been conducted.

It would be a difficult study, because religiosity is a varied phenomenon, and it’s likely that a global measure of religiosity would obscure important detailed variables that would affect the outcome. Or in other words, it’s naive to assume that variances in Buddhist religiosity would have the same effect on scientific attitudes as variances in Muslim religiosity; and the same for all other religions. So the study would have to operationalize the relevant dimensions of religiosity and determine which of them correlate with attitudes toward science.

I want to know where that operationalizing work has been done.

“Science” is also a multi-dimensional term, and to claim that there is some correlation between religiosity and attitudes toward science calls for the question, which science? Is this a matter of attitudes toward science globally? Does it differ for different branches of science? Does it have something to do with scientific method, scientific assumptions, etc? These things need operational definitions for the sake of good correlational research.

I want to know where that operationalizing work has been done.

Every scientist knows that correlation does not prove causation; yet in the social sciences, where correlational findings support robust theory, it’s possible to draw at least tentative conclusions. Absent such theory, correlation absolutely cannot show causation. In the case of religiosity and science, a truly robust theory would have to depend on the above-mentioned operationalizing work in both religion and science.

I want to know where to find that robust theory in any scientifically responsible stage of development.

Every scientist knows that small and unrepresentative samples lead to erroneous conclusions. Most of the claims I’ve seen of science hindering religion are based on anecdotes or minor snippets from deep history; or from a single class of religious objection to one minority branch of the sciences (theories relating to evolution and the age of the universe).

I want to know where a truly representative study has been conducted.

The video presented above makes every one of these scientific mistakes. The conclusion it presents, while claiming to support science, is profoundly unscientific. It draws a conclusion that belief in God is bad for science, without operationalizing that belief, without parsing out the relevant sub-variables in belief, and on the basis of one single snippet of history, a tiny and unrepresentative sample, to which no scientifically responsible theory has been applied.

Every scientist worth his or her salt (I am no longer claiming “every scientist”) knows that making unscientific claims, while speaking in the role of a scientist, undermines science. It misrepresents the way in which scientific knowledge is generated. Because the information for such claims comes from unscientific carelessness, there is a very large chance the claims are completely wrong; and science is not in the business of generating and propagating falsehoods.

The video above undermines science in exactly that way.

And until the proper studies have been run, every single person who claims, “religion hinders science,” is hindering science by making scientifically unsubstantiated, theory-free and evidence-free claims.

In conclusion: the mantra of today’s scientistic atheism is that all knowledge properly comes from properly conducted science. They also claim that religious belief interferes with science. Let’s all get in the habit of asking them, Where is the science to support that claim?

Also at Thinking Christian

The contrasts are clear: atheists claim that religion is the main barrier to reason. Christians believe our capacity to reason comes from being created in the image of an all-knowing God, and the active use of reason is an important way to honor him. Atheists brand themselves as a community united by reason. Christians marvel at how this group rallies together even as their most prominent leader, Richard Dawkins, argues that evolution favors the selfish gene, not the reasonable group. Atheists work hard to eradicate religion for the sake of a brighter future. Christians are amazed that atheists so blissfully ignore the scientific fact that, if religion is a false consolation, the future always ends in death.

Every scientist knows it’s unprofessional to draw conclusions from a non-representative sample, and that it will lead to false results every time. In a word, it is both unscientific and unreasonable.

Now we have news that a vice-president of the National Atheist Party has invited the inflammatory fringe “church,” Westboro Baptist, to the rally. Notably no such invitation has been sent to the True Reason group that’s planning to bring a non-disruptive, reasoning Christian presence there. (Full disclosure: I’m involved in leadership of that initiative.)

So what will the Reason Rally representatives do with the Westboro Church’s shouts, picket signs, and expressions of hatred? The scientifically responsible, reasoning thing for them to do would be to say, “Okay, folks, draw no conclusions about Christianity or religion from this group! They are a non-representative sample! There’s no reason for us to think Christianity is at all like that!”

I’m sure that’s why they invited them there–so they could do exactly that. Right?

He is an actor—a famous one. I have known aspiring actors who have thought a TV role would mean that they had really arrived. It does not seem to have been so for him. He was invited to a White House dinner. Many of us would consider that all we could ever need to boast about. But apparently for David Cross, that wasn’t quite enough, either. He needed to score one more point: to be able to add to his being a famous TV star, and his having been to dinner at the White House, “I did cocaine in the same room as the president.”

And what does it feel like to be able to make that boast? “I’m not proud of it, nor am I ashamed of it,” he said. If I’m reading him right, it didn’t mean all that much after all. It was nothing to get excited about, just one more thing he had done. That’s not so surprising, for why should it mean more than that? Still the emptiness makes my heart ache.

It hurts in part because of how very human it is, and how close it hits to home. I look back on my aspirations year by year throughout my career so far, and I see how getting what I’ve wanted has always left me wanting something more. I started out as a trombonist in a Christian band, part of a major missions organization. I thought it would be great to lead a band like that, and I had the opportunity, but then I thought it would be great to be involved more with higher-level leadership in the organization. For a few years I was on a mid-level national leadership team, where I discovered that there were other leaders I’d like to be associated with, and others doing work I thought I’d like to do, too. I got promoted, and then—you guessed it—I discovered there was another level yet to reach.

I don’t want to misrepresent the organization or the leaders I have worked with, whom I consider among the most humble and godly men and women in all the world. I’m not talking about them but about myself, and how I see in David Cross’s empty quest an image of myself.

C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength is, among other things, an insightful portrayal of one man’s deathly drive to enter the “Inner Ring.” It is an ambition made hideous by the fact that its fulfillment is forever out of reach; for there is always another ring further in. (Not “further up and further in,” for those who have read The Last Battle; just further in.) There is no arriving at the inner ring. Not for musicians or missionaries; not for TV stars or White House dinner guests. There is only the empty discovery that each level of achievement leaves one in touch with others who can boast about a bit more than you can.

This constant hunger and thirst for more is a very human thing. Its successes lead inevitably to failure; for it is a nearly universal principle that there is always more to be had, and more to want, than what one has, whether that be position, prestige, money, popularity, or whatever one might seek.

How astonishing it is in light of that that there is an exception. There is something for which fulfillment is assured, precisely because of desire. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” The Psalms (16, for example), the Prophets (Jeremiah 29:12-13), and the Lord (Luke 11:9) promise satisfaction in God for those who seek it in him. Is there anything else of which we can say, “The more you want, the happier you’ll be?” Is there anything more surprising than a promise like that?

It is a human thing to want more. In humanness there is always the trace of the image of God; so in fact it can be good to want, when one wants what is good, what is right, and what is promised. Thankfully I have also seen this confirmed in my experience. It is possible to find satisfaction—whatever position I am in—if I seek it in what is sure to fulfill.

Also at Thinking Christian

The claim that religion scars children for life is symptomatic of the tendency of New Atheists to express themselves through the language of victimhood and therapeutic culture. Time and again, they use the idiom of therapy to pathologise religion. Their use of terms such as ‘toxic faith’ and ‘religious virus’ are symptomatic of their medicalisation of strong religious commitment….

The New Atheism is very selective about who it targets. So although it claims to challenge irrationalism and anti-scientific prejudice, it tends to confine its anger to the dogma of the three Abrahamic religions. So it rightly criticises creationism and ‘intelligent design’, yet it rarely challenges the mystifications of deep environmentalist thinking, such as Gaia theory, or the numerous varieties of Eastern mysticism that are so fashionable in Hollywood. Since the New Atheism is culturally wedded to the contemporary therapeutic imagination, it is not surprising that it has adopted a double standard towards spiritualism.

[From How atheism became a religion in all but name | Frank Furedi | spiked]

The translation does a fine job of capturing the passage’s propositional content. I can imagine how much it might help a student reading Shakespeare for the first time. What’s a fardel? or a bare bodkin? The modern rendition clarifies such things nicely. It is, one might say, perfectly not wrong.

It is a good thing to be not wrong. If this page had translated “fardels” as long and burdensome journeys, or “contumely” as fancy, foppish fashion, it would have been misleading, useless, even dangerous in a way.

Still it is possible to be not wrong and at the same time be perfectly dry and colorless, practically dead. This translation page illustrates the point magnificently. Read the translation; then read the original. On one level they mean quite the same thing, yet they could hardly be more different. There is a rightness to Shakespeare’s original that far transcends the not-wrongness of its propositional content as conveyed in the translation.

I think many Christians work hard at translating the Gospel’s propositional content into modern language. We can recognize error a mile away, and we’re quick to correct it. We make it our business, one might say, to be perfectly not wrong.

It is important that we be true in this way. To be wrong is, well, wrong.

Still there is a rightness that transcends not-wrongness. It is the artistry of living a full-color life: a life of creativity, a life of exploration rather than of self-protection, a life of abandonment to God and to others. It is not only not wrong: it is right.

The story is told—I don’t remember where I heard it—of two young women sitting in the front row of a concert hall, holding the score for the music the orchestra was about to play. The conductor saw them and stepped off the podium. He leaned over and whispered to them, “You will not find it in there.”

I was a professional musician earlier in my career, and in the course of my studies I learned enough music theory to be able to describe music mathematically. I’ve studied some acoustics, and I understand how to describe music in terms of pressure oscillations in the air. But there is something to music—the “it” of which that conductor was speaking—that is not to be found in vibrations, in mathematics, or even in the score.

Listen to Chopin. Listen to Coltrane. Listen to Crosby, Stills & Nash. In it you will hear reductionism’s rebuttal.

I sat in the front row for his debate with Dinesh D’Souza in Charlotte, NC last year (or was it in 2009?). Hitchens spoke first. It may have been the only time he had D’Souza completely flat-footed and unable to disagree with him. The reason was the debate topic: Is radical Islam a threat to America? It wasn’t a point they held in dispute.

D’Souza began his first speech essentially by saying, “I agree with Christopher, and since that doesn’t make for much of a debate, and since he already expressed my own opinion so well, I’m just going to go ahead and change the subject.”

Hitchens smiled and rolled with it. He was always quick on his feet that way. I don’t know of anyone who was more effective with the use of rhetoric. It was in many ways his undoing, I’m afraid, at least as far as most of the world could see.

In debate he relied heavily on rhetoric in the form of emotionally loaded language. Religion bothered him. God bothered him. I don’t know how well he was able to separate one from the other.

I can understand his feelings, at least to some extent. Religion bothers me: too much of it is shallow, sterile, and false, even within Christianity. Religion outside of Christianity is just wrong and (I am convinced) deadly.

God bothers me, too, though in a different way altogether. God places demands on me. The worst demands are not the moral ones, as you might think. The hardest demand he places on me is that I accept his love while acknowledging it is entirely his own initiative. I want to be the kind of person who can earn his love, but God loves me even though I am not. His love is very good—and it is also thoroughly humbling.

Though I’ve read Hitchens’ book God Is Not Great, I have no way of knowing what bothered him more: God or religion. He regarded God as religion’s invention, but from the way I understand reality to be, he had encounters with God, whether he accepted or rejected the reality of the experience. God was present in all the Christians he interacted with, including the believers he debated, and his own believing brother, Peter.

Tragically, he chose against God.

I will miss his brilliant repartee. I will miss the strong challenge he kept raising against religion, for we who believe need corrective criticism. I will miss his sense of humor. I grieve for the life he has lost.