Christening the Christener
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Townhall.com, with its particular mix of Christian conservatives has proved fertile blogging ground time and time again, so when I am in a hurry and in want of blogging material, I will often stop by there for inspiration, so to speak.
Today, brought me big bang for the buck in the form of the following paragraph of this lengthy bit of self-deception by one Gregory Koukl, who claims, but never quite gets around to indicating a proof, that Christianity is "no leap of faith".
There is nothing unreasonable about the idea of a personal God creating the material universe. A Big Bang needs a "big Banger," it seems to me. A complex set of instructions (as in DNA) needs an author. A blueprint requires an engineer. A moral law needs a moral law giver. This is not a leap. This is a step of intelligent reflection. [bold added]Well, no. Actually it's not just one "step", but the first of an infinite number of steps. Aristotle, whom Koukl cites earlier knew such a series as an "infinite regress". A five year-old could ask in reply, "Well. Who created God?" His age would be no grounds for dismissing such a perceptive question.
And as for Koukl's profound "discovery" that, "Virtually every major thinker in the history of western civilization since Aristotle was a deeply committed Christian theist," all I can do is take note of the chokehold Christianity had over the West for so many centuries after the fall of Rome -- and quote Thomas Sowell, who once remarked upon the complaint that so many Western classics were written by "dead white males": "If we found that the great classics of China were written by Swedes, wouldn't we wonder what the hell was going on?" (Is Reality Optional?, p. 135)
But I digress from the matter at hand. We were contemplating the "Big Banger". For all his willful ignorance, Koukl got on a roll and unwittingly came up with a far more apropos sobriquet for the Almighty than I ever could have, even with my very low opinion of Christianity. After I burst out laughing, I collected myself and, wondering whether it was just me, I polled my wife who was in another room. I asked, "Honey, what does the phrase 'big banger' make you think of?"
Who knew that God's first name was "Richard"?
-- CAV
4 comments:
I've always tried to put that question on a more primacy-of-existence footing, to wit: "Where did God come from?" The child's version is more direct, though, because it uses the primacy-of-consciousness premise against itself.
It blows my mind that in this day and age, people still claim that such an argument is convincing.
Gus,
From now on, I will forever think of God as "The Big Richard." Whatever shred of seriousness I had to consider religion with is gone forever. :)
I indirectly extend my thinks to Mr. Koukl for his erudition.
GB
It is as Mr. Koukl's fingers "banged" the keyboard through divine inspiration, for we know such a moniker couldn't have been what he intended!
The "Big Banger" works in strange and mysterious ways!
Post a Comment