Interview with Roger of Faith Interface

I recently interviewed Brian of Apologetics 315 (here and here) and enjoyed hearing the insights of a fellow apologist and blogger.  Today, I talk with Roger of the very fine apologetics blog Faith Interface and get the scoop on his blog, background, and advice on doing apologetics.

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Please tell us a little about yourself.

My name is Roger and I live in Queensland, Australia. I have a day job as a health professional, but my real passion is the interface between science, philosophy and the Christian faith. This interest is quite broad, incorporating Christian theology, Christian apologetics, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion and classical philosophy. I’m also interested in comparative religions, church history, historical theology, history of philosophy and the psychology of belief. The discipline that I find seems to link all of these wide-ranging interests together is Christian apologetics.

How did you become interested in apologetics?

After being raised in the Uniting Church in Australia (a merger of Methodist, Presbyterian and congregational denominations), I recommitted myself to Christ at university. I struggled in the early days under the misconception that as a Christian, I somehow had to bypass my rational mind to experience Christ fully. I truly felt that to be a powerful Spirit-led Christian I needed to switch off my rational mind and ‘just believe’. I had been told that my rational mind was an impediment to “true spirituality” and that I needed to convert head knowledge to heart knowledge. After a while, I wondered why God would have created me with a rational, inquisitive mind if he only wanted me to throw it aside and pursue blind, unthinking faith. I gradually realised that my mind was not the impediment to faith that I had been told, and in fact was essential for my Christian faith to mature into one that was robust, defensible and satisfying. So I got to reading anything I could get my hands on, and then a few years ago got an iPod and started listening to a wide range of MP3 lectures available on the Net.

Like most Christians, I have contact with non-believers on a daily basis. Australia is quite a secular and rationalistic culture, so evangelical Christians are definitely in the minority. I must say though, that most non-believing Australians are of the “apathetic agnostic” type, rather than the aggressive and outspoken atheist species, so most non-Christians in Australia are quite content as long as your faith is a private, personal thing that you don’t try to exercise in the public domain. I accepted that for a while and it seemed to work for me – the quite, private, almost apologetic Christian (in the colloquial sense of the word ‘apologetic’!). This was epitomised by the “I’m a Christian, but please don’t hate me” approach. The problem with the private faith option is that non-believing associates then assume you are “one of them” and don’t quite understand when you don’t participate in common non-believer activities with the same amount of ease as they do. Soon however, I realised that the privatised Christian faith was insipid, impotent, compromised and dishonest. So I started to speak out, especially with work colleagues who tend to be more the intellectually-arrogant, university-graduate type of atheist. I realised after ongoing discussions that I really enjoyed apologetic discussions and came to realise that defending the Christian faith against straw man arguments, caricatures, wildly simplistic and inaccurate critiques and charges of “blind faith” and “irrationality” was not only enjoyable, but absolutely essential. I love defending the Christian faith!

What was your purpose in creating the Faith Interface site?  What kinds of feedback are you getting from both believers and unbelievers?

I decided to set up the blog in April of this year. I realised that all this reading, all this listening to lectures and all the knowledge gained through these enjoyable pursuits needed an outlet. I needed to put this to use for the glory of God and His Kingdom. My background in the sciences (particularly the biological sciences) and my other interests in Christian theology and philosophy gave me the idea to start a blog where the interface of science, philosophy and Christianity could be showcased and discussed. Hence “Faith Interface” was born. I think symbols are important, and I put quite some thought into the blog’s logo. The Faith Interface “triquetra” is an early Christian symbol (adopted from earlier pre-Christian symbols) made up of three overlapping “vesica pisci” (a type of ancient fish symbol) and represents the Holy Trinity – Father, Son & Holy Spirit. It sits within a triangle, representing God’s sovereignty over science, philosophy & theology. I think it turned out pretty cool and seemed to summarise what I was trying to achieve. At the advice of my blog designer, I started promoting the blog on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and, more recently, Circle Builder.

The interest in the blog internationally and the feedback has been very encouraging. I have interacted with a large number of other Christians through the blog and discussions have been stimulating. They have been very supportive and encouraging. The blog has a good following from non-believers as well and I have a number of regulars who post frequently on the blog and the networking pages. Most of the time, these non-believers are polite and respectful and we have had some excellent and stimulating exchanges. I’m fairly thick-skinned and so the occasional “ad hominem” attacks don’t worry me too much. I figure that if they bother to post and argue, that at least is better than being irrelevant and therefore ignored. I am amazed, though, how simplistic and fallacious some of the arguments put up against Christianity have been. I am not formally trained in apologetics, but there is rarely an argument that stumps me. If I have a particularly challenging question, I utilise a number of professional Christian scholars and apologists that I have met through networking sites. They are always happy to help out, time permitting.

What are the big apologetics-oriented questions people are asking about Christianity today?

I think questions come from two main quarters. Obviously the first type of person is the honest seeker who feels drawn to Christ but has some concerns, some intellectual barriers and/or some ethical questions that are preventing them from making a commitment. They a possibly hearing lots of things in the world about how belief in God and Christian faith in the 21st Century is absurd, irrational, puerile and immature. They may also be hearing that religion is dangerous and that Christianity has only brought misery to the world and should therefore be shunned. They may have heard that to become a Christian, they need to leave their intellect – their inquiring mind – at the front porch and enter the house of Christianity by “just having faith”. They may have met people who professed to be Christians, or at least regular church attenders, who have been rude, manipulative, self-centred and pretty much no different (or possibly worse) than non-believers they know. These honest seekers may need to hear about the rationality of belief in God, the historical reliability of Christian Scriptures, an accurate portrayal of Christian history, or maybe just correct Christian doctrine and that may answer their nagging questions, overcome barriers to faith and open the way for them to come to Christ in faith.

The other type of person is the committed Christian who has doubts in certain areas, feels set upon by non-believers to justify their faith, or are concerned about conspiracy theories commonly circulated in the popular media. They may have been raised or discipled in Christian traditions that shunned the intellect and therefore feel inadequate or unprepared to defend their faith in the face of opposition or criticism. These people probably have the same questions as the first group, but may just need confirmation of what they already know, more detail or a more accurate idea about the major issues.

In particular, in the face of postmodernist attacks on the concept of truth and epistemology, political correctness, religious pluralism and universalism, contemporary Christians may be finding themselves more commonly under fire if they confess to their belief in the exclusivity claims of Jesus and the historic Christian faith. I know that this is a common discussion point on Faith Interface.

In your view, what role does apologetics play in evangelism?  What advice do you have about using apologetics in sharing the gospel?

To me apologetics and evangelism are distinct, but closely interrelated disciplines. Sometimes the boundaries are blurred and the flow from apologetics to evangelism is often a smooth continuum. Personally, I’ve never seen myself as having an evangelistic gift, preferring the apologetic approach of defending the Christian faith, correcting misconceptions and highlighting the deficiencies of non-Christian worldviews. In many ways though, evangelism is part of apologetics and vice versa. It just depends on one’s personal emphasis and gifting, and therefore which end of the continuum one decides to jump into. I guess at the end of the day, all mature disciples of Christ are called to be evangelists in some way – be it small or large. It is the thrust of the Great Commission of Matthew 28:16-20.

What is the apologetics “scene” like in Australia?  Do you think it’s much different than in the U.S.?

Well, in general I would say that, compared to the US, Christian apologetics in Australia is more of a decentralised cottage industry. We don’t have an academy of nationally or internationally renowned Christian Apologists as such. I think apologetics happens mainly at the grass roots level – in the lives of individual Christians, in local churches, in Bible colleges and occasionally in secular University campuses. But we don’t have the big-budget, big-name apologetics ministries of the US and Britain – I guess Australia is a numerically smaller country, a proudly secular nation and a different culture in many ways to the US.

Having said that, there are some excellent Australian apologetics ministries gaining international recognition – a shining example would be the Centre For Public Christianity (http://www.publicchristianity.com/index.html) – John Dickson and Greg Clarke from Sydney provide a fantastic multimedia apologetic ministry across a broad range of topics. Their multimedia resources are top class and I often utilise their material on Faith Interface.

The internet and the blogosphere make international apologetics possible for anyone, regardless of geographic origin. So it no longer matters if you live on a continent that sits on the underside of the globe. Hopefully “Faith Interface” will develop into a useful international apologetic resource, originating from down under, and contributing to the glory of God and His Kingdom.

What are your future plans for Faith Interface?  Are there any new directions or developments you can share?

I’m still in networking and “build readership phase” currently. The initial thoughts for the blog were to provide a forum for discussion of the interface of science, philosophy and the Christian faith. As time has worn on, the scope of the blog has widened to broader Christian apologetics discussion topics, discipleship, spiritual formation, ecclesiology – anything really. That’s the beauty of a blog really – you can post anything that comes to mind that might be of relevance and general interest. I’d like to work further on networking with other bloggers and increasing visitors to the blog (aren’t we all!).

After being inspired by the late Robert E. Webber’s book “Ancient-Future Time”, I’m soon embarking on a personal experimental pilgrimage into personal observance of the traditional Christian festivals of Advent, Epiphany and Lent (in addition to the usual Christmas and Easter). I have been finding myself getting frustrated by the lack of ceremony, lack of reverence and the directionless approach to discipleship and spiritual formation in the modern western expressions of evangelicalism (particularly in my Australian context). I’m going to experiment with following the historical Christian calendar a little more closely in 2009/2010 and allow the traditional progression of the Christian festivals to guide my devotion times and spiritual formation disciplines. I’m going to use the blog as a kind of diary of my experiences. Watch this space.

Philosophy Word of the Day – Knowledge and Science

“Science systematically corrects the errors of common sense.  Thus, from science we learned that, contrary to first appearances, the sun does not go round the earth each day.  But what happens when science seems to undermine not particular beliefs, but whole tracts of experience?  Can science really tell us that, say, the world is not in itself coloured or that the famous solid, unmoving table of Eddington’s physicist is mostly empty space thinly populated with rapidly moving particles?

Too radical a correction of common sense by science runs the danger of depriving scientific theories of the ultimately commonsensical evidential basis on which they depend.  It would be safer to regard the theories of science as a whole as offering highly generalized and effective abstractions from the richness of what there is, rather than as the only or the whole truth.”

Anthony O’Hear in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (1995)

Bestsellers in the History of Science

Library Journal lists the top 20 bestsellers in this category.  The number 2 book, Galileo Goes to Jail: And Other Myths About Science and Religion, looks especially interesting.

1) Eating the Sun: How Plants Power the Planet
Morton, Oliver
HarperCollins
2008. ISBN 0007163649 [9780007163649]. $28.95

2) Galileo Goes to Jail: And Other Myths About Science and Religion
Numbers, Ronald L.
Harvard University Press
2009. ISBN 0674033272 [9780674033276]. $27.95

3) Sand: The Never-Ending Story
Welland, Michael
University of California Press
2009. ISBN 0520254376 [9780520254374]. $24.95

4) Paradise Found: Nature in America at the Time of Discovery
Nicholls, Steve
University of Chicago Press
2009. ISBN 0226583406 [9780226583402]. $30

5) Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking
Seife, Charles
Viking
2008. ISBN 0670020338 [9780670020331]. $25.95

6) American Therapy: The Rise of Psychotherapy in the United States
Engle, Jonathan
Gotham: Penguin Group (USA)
2008. ISBN 1592403808 [9781592403806]. $27.50

7) What Is a Number? Mathematical Concepts and Their Origins
Tubbs, Robert
Johns Hopkins University Press
2009. ISBN 0801890179 [9780801890178]. $60

8) The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America
Johnson, Steven
Riverhead: Penguin Group (USA)
2008. ISBN 1594488525 [9781594488528]. $25.95

9) Truth Machine: The Contentious History of DNA Fingerprinting
Lynch, Michael
University of Chicago Press
2008. ISBN 0226498069 [9780226498065]. $37.50

10) Mathematics of the Heavens and the Earth: The Early History of Trigonometry
Van Brummelen, Glen
Princeton University Press
2009. ISBN 0691129738 [9780691129730]. $39.50

(Continue)

Review of “God’s Philosophers”

The Thinking Christian blog reviews this interesting book on the Medieval contributions to modern science.

[Author James] Hannam speaks of the myth that “there was no science worth mentioning in the Middle Ages,” and “the Church held back what meager advances were made.” These beliefs took flower as late as the 19th century with Thomas Henry Huxley, John William Draper, and Andrew Dickson White, who tried to paint religion as the enemy of science. Their story has been told often; Hannam himself has blogged on it.

A.D. White’s part is particularly unfortunate, in that he produced a highly influential, heavily footnoted, apparently scholarly tome on the historic warfare between science and religion. Hannam assesses his work this way:

Anyone who checks his references will wonder how he could have maintained his opinions if he had read as much as he claimed to have done.

Others have treated White less gently than that.

Hannam situates these myths in historical context:

The denigration of the Middle Ages began as long ago as the sixteenth century, when humanists, the intellectual trendsetters of the time, started to champion classical Greek and Roman literature. They cast aside medieval scholarship on the grounds that it was convoluted and written in ‘barbaric’ Latin. So people stopped reading and studying it…. The waters were muddied further by … Protestant writers not to give an ounce of credit to Catholics. It suited them to maintain that nothing of value had been taught at universities before the Reformation. (Continue)

God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science

The College Student’s Guide to Intelligent Design (PDF)

Speaking of ID (see next post), the Discovery Institute is making available a PDF written especially for college students educating them on Intelligent Design and addressing common misunderstandings of it.

The guide contains suggestions for helpful pro-ID books, articles, and websites for students to read when investigating the issue. Additionally, it contains “Answers to Your Professor’s Most Common Misinformed Objections to Intelligent Design.” Nine answers are given to common but false arguments against ID like “Intelligent Design Proponents Don’t Conduct or Publish Scientific Research” or “Intelligent Design Is a Science Stopper” or “Intelligent Design Has Been Refuted by the Overwhelming Evidence for Neo-Darwinian Evolution.”

The Darwinian educational establishment doesn’t make it easy to become objectively informed on the topic of evolution and ID. The way around the typical one-sided evolution curriculum is to investigate the issue for yourself. Yes, study and learn about the pro-evolution evolution viewpoint being taught. But also read material from credible Darwin skeptics to learn about other viewpoints. Only then can you truly make up your mind in an informed fashion.

This student’s guide will help you to do that—and will help you open up the minds of uninformed critics and skeptics about the facts regarding intelligent design.

(Via Evolution News & Views)

Atheists Against Darwinism

Some fascinating work here on Intelligent Design by Peter Williams, from the EPS blog.

Allow me to draw attention to this paper recently published on the EPS website:

‘Atheists Against Darwinism: Johnsons’ “Wedge” Breaks Through‘

Abstract

Intelligent design theory claims that 1) empirical evidence warrants 2) a scientific design inference using 3) reliable design detection criteria. Philosophia Christi published my paper “The Design Inference from Specified Complexity Defended by Scholars Outside the Intelligent Design Movement: A Critical Review” (Philosophia Christi, Vol 9, Number 2), which defended the third of these claims by reviewing the work atheists and theistic evolutionists. This paper defends the second of these claims, likewise by reviewing work by agnostics and atheists.

Hence this paper rounds off a two-part defence of the philosophical elements of Intelligent Design Theory (claims 2 & 3), and does so in two phases. Phase one focuses upon the growing acceptance of Phillip E. Johnsons’ analysis of the role played by methodological naturalism in buttressing Darwinism, while phase two focuses upon Thomas Nagel’s positive interaction with Michael J. Behe’s argument in The Edge of Evolution (Free Press, 2008). I argue that Nagel’s reticence about embracing ID is philosophically inconsistent.

Philosophy Word of the Day – Voltaire (1694–1778)

Image via Wikipedia

François-Marie d’Arouet (1694–1778), better known by his pen name Voltaire, was a French writer and public activist who played a singular role in defining the eighteenth-century movement called the Enlightenment. At the center of his work was a new conception of philosophy and the philosopher that in several crucial respects influenced the modern concept of each. Yet in other ways Voltaire was not a philosopher at all in the modern sense of the term. He wrote as many plays, stories, and poems as patently philosophical tracts, and he in fact directed many of his critical writings against the philosophical pretensions of recognized philosophers such as Leibniz, Malebranche, and Descartes.

He was, however, a vigorous defender of a conception of natural science that served in his mind as the antidote to vain and fruitless philosophical investigation. In clarifying this new distinction between science and philosophy, and especially in fighting vigorously for it in public campaigns directed against the perceived enemies of fanaticism and superstition, Voltaire pointed modern philosophy down several paths that it subsequently followed.

(Via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

“If God did not exist, He would have to be invented.” But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.

• Voltaire quoting himself in his Letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia (1770-11-28), translated by S.G. Tallentyre, Voltaire in His Letters, 1919.

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.

• Examen important de milord Bolingbroke (1736): Conclusion

(Via Wikiquote)

“Jedi” 10th Most Popular Religion on Facebook

Paul Asay comments on a fascinating Washington Post article on how people struggle to answer the Religious Views question when creating a Facebook profile.

[William] Wan says the box gives us insight how the religious landscape has changed in the Internet age. “Christian” — or a Christian denomination or sect — is still by far the most popular way to fill in the box, followed by “Islam” and “atheist.” But, as Wan points out, people describe themselves  in a myriad of ways: “Jedi” is actually the 10th most popular “denomination” on Facebook. More than 2,000 people list “Heavy Metal” in the box. Many typed in “beer.”

And then there are the cryptic or witty one-liners, including my favorite: “Agnostic, but accepting offers.”

All of this makes these Facebook theologians sound rather light and trite. But for many, wrestling with how to fill in the box was a very serious matter. Some, according to Wan, wrestled with the question for days or weeks. For a few, considering “the box” led them to a line of thought they’d long ignored. Some eventually type in favorite Bible verses or an obscure line of poetry. Others gave up and simply wrote, “it’s complicated.” Religious descriptors on Facebook are almost as numerous and varied as the faithful themselves. (Continue)

It’s good to see that Facebook is acting as the catalyst for some soul searching.

Short Review of Tim Keller’s new book “Counterfeit Gods”

by Publishers Weekly:

Timothy Keller. Dutton, $19.95 (240p) ISBN 978-0-525-95136-0
Author of The Reason for God and senior pastor of New York’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Keller asserts that the chaos of the global financial crisis offers a rare opportunity, as individuals and as a society, to discern the “glittering gods” that enslave us. “The only way to free ourselves from the destructive influence of counterfeit gods is to turn back to the true one,” writes Keller, mercilessly dissecting the things he believes keep men and women from acknowledging their sin and God’s love, grace and centrality.

Shadowed by the pastor’s austere Reformed vision of the depth and shape-shifting forms of human depravity, this sometimes bleak series of linked meditations weaves the spiritual journeys of biblical figures like the Old Testament soldier Naaman with insights from more modern figures, including 19th-century industrialist Andrew Carnegie, contemporary author Malcolm Gladwell and retired tennis star Chris Evert. A work of recession spirituality and cultural criticism, this volume will appeal to those who share Keller’s conviction that the journey away from idolatry and toward God can sometimes take a lifetime. (Oct. 20)

Two Reviews of Richard Dawkins’s new book “The Greatest Show on Earth”

The Telegraph gives an overwhelmingly positive review, and the reviewer is happy with how Dawkins

gives the fact-rejecters their just deserts. He sets out to polish off their flummery. Dawkins compares creationists to Holocaust deniers and spoons, with relish, an acid sauce of mockery onto that absurd confection of half-baked ideas.

Interestingly, the review by New Scientist is mostly negative, and for the same reasons.

Another “argument for evolution” book could only be justified by a great new angle on how to reach the unconverted masses.

Implying that your audience is stupid does not qualify as a great new angle. Yet this is precisely what Dawkins does. He opens the book by mentioning his two previous books about evolution, and then, with a nearly audible scoff, adds that back when he wrote those books (when people, apparently, were smarter?) he didn’t have to argue that evolution actually happened. “That didn’t seem to be necessary,” he says.

By the first chapter he is comparing his predicament to a history professor forced to teach “a baying pack of ignoramuses” and dealing with a “rearguard defence”. Today, he proclaims, “all but the woefully uninformed are forced to accept the fact of evolution”.

It’s really kind of comical. If “spot the condescensions” is a new drinking game, then bottoms up! There’s one in just about every chapter. Though Dawkins says from the outset, “This is not an anti-religious book”, he can’t help but knock religion throughout, For instance, he writes: “God, to repeat this point, which ought to be obvious, but isn’t, never made a tiny wing in his eternal life.” Young Earth creationists are, he writes, “deluded to the point of perversity”. You get the sense that Dawkins just can’t control it. It’s as if he suffers from an anti-religious form of Tourette’s syndrome.

Any thoughts or observations on this new book?