So, second week of STEP passed by rather quickly. I am quite amazed that it is almost the end. It feels like it just started. It really should be longer. There is still much to learn.
Hmm, I shall not do a chronological summary. So, disparate points on certain issues will be the format of this reflection.
Lets start with the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries' talk. Before entering the talk I had heard several people fanboy/fangirl over him. So I was like, hmm, it better be good. But I didn’t have high expectations. Generally when people talk about science and religion I have a sense of futileness that overwhelms all. This stems from past experiences.
20 minutes into the talk I was like, ugh, probably going to be the same old thing again. By same old thing I mean a person within this Christian paradigm telling us things that we already know. Like how it is between two entrenched ways of thinking, believers and non-believers. Believers will readily accept whatever is being said, for e.g that chance is way too small, way too impossible, that all the constants are acutely fine-tuned points to a God or creator and the non-believers will just champion their luck and chance and time. And it just develops into a stalemate that is just plain annoying for all parties involved because nobody is listening to anybody.
This problem will be compounded when the whole audience is just believers. And the believers will play devil’s advocate and at the whole end of the answer and discussion everyone will still be at the same idea and arguing for the same thing.
So, I guess I was quite impressed when he didn’t get tangled into the nitty gritty and pulling out specific examples and going into the whole chance argument. I think it can be quite succinctly summarized in the line that ‘God encompasses science, not the other way about hence science can only support the idea of God but not prove God’. And the constant zooming out of scope such that it essentially presents a philosophical argument. Which holds and makes sense. (Why would I want to study philosophy anyway?) It avoids the dogmatic and inane argument of one side claiming God cannot be disproved and the other side claiming that God can never be proved and each egging the other on to do such (disprove or prove). When the answer on both sides is assertively no. A no on the opposing side does not equate to a yes on your side. Just because God cannot be disproven by your current framework does not mean God necessarily exists. Similarly, the fact that God cannot be proven does not mean he does not exist. But yes, I am rambling.
This approach is opposed to the Creation Ministries International (CMI), which I have been quite avidly following for the past few years, but I guess both have their place but the philosophical argument avoids many of the pitfalls a purely simplistic scientific argument would have. In fact, I think the scientific work done by CMI is wonderful but should be used in the right context, that is the larger philosophical context as supporting evidence and not stand-alone proof that it is inherently not. We (including I, or perhaps, especially I) could do well to remember that God’s ways are higher than our ways.
This ties in very well with another point that goes to state that we should assert and not force. I think it treads a very fine line, like what the speaker says, that our faith is not a mere belief. I think that I would do well to not swing the other way and get tired of arguing with people and just claim that I believe this, you believe that then alright, thank you very much, good luck with that (in a dismissive tone and change the topic to the weather or something). We should ensure it does not become an excuse for our laziness in spreading the good news yet we should not be overbearing and all. I think we should assert like how God asserted through the bible. Like in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Just a statement of fact. It is really a holistic thing this good news we believe in. So whole that I definitely cannot put into words within a weekend (or ever).
Nicholas Khaw
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