Tony Watkins » Belief

What does Easter mean to you?

Tony Watkins — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 10:17:53 +0000

We asked people one simple question: what does Easter mean to you? We filmed outside Above Bar Church, Southampton, in April 2011. Most interviewees are from the church, and some were passers-by. The video also includes Steve Clifford from Evangelical Alliance, who was visiting the church that morning.

This was filmed in association with Damaris Trust and was filmed by Becci Jones.

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Dawkins and Hitchens are wrong: Religious people are actually much nicer than atheists, according to new study – Telegraph Blogs

Tony Watkins — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 10:19:33 +0000

There’s an interesting article in USA Today by David Campbell and Robert Putman, two political scientists who’ve just completed a magisterial, five-year study of the way in which religion affects American society. They try and present their findings in an even-handed, politically neutral way, but there’s no escaping the fact that religion and religious people emerge vey well. Their new book, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us All, sounds like a definitive rebuttal to Christopher Hitchens’s assertion that “religion poisons everything”.

One of Campbell and Putman’s main discoveries is that religious people are “better neighbours” than their non-religious counterparts. By this, they mean that they’re more likely to volunteer to help out those less fortunate than themselves, as well as give to charity:

Forty percent of worship-attending Americans volunteer regularly to help the poor and elderly, compared with 15% of Americans who never attend services. Frequent-attenders are also more likely than the never-attenders to volunteer for school and youth programs (36% vs. 15%), a neighborhood or civic group (26% vs. 13%), and for health care (21% vs. 13%). The same is true for philanthropic giving; religious Americans give more money to secular causes than do secular Americans. And the list goes on, as it is true for good deeds such as helping someone find a job, donating blood, and spending time with someone who is feeling blue.

via blogs.telegraph.co.uk

Posted via email from Tony Watkins

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What should we make of the Atheist (non-bus) campaign?

Tony Watkins — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:06:58 +0000

The Atheist ‘Bus Campaign’ is now back on our streets, although this time it’s not actually taking place on buses, nor is it particularly atheistic.

The new poster features two children with the faded words ‘Catholic Child’, ‘Atheist Child’, ‘Humanist Child’ and ‘Anarchist Child’ amongst others behind them. In bigger, bolder lettering, are the words ‘Please don’t label me. Let me grow up and choose for myself.’

The advert appeals to our love of autonomy and the right to choose. Children are children. They shouldn’t be labelled according to a particular philosophy. They should be able to choose their beliefs for themselves when they are old enough to do so. Who could argue against that?

The poster, then, is superficially appealing, but largely on an emotional level. How often have you heard the word ‘label’ used positively about anybody? On a more rational level, however, is it is based on some seriously flawed ideas.

Read the rest of this article on theosthinktank.co.uk

Posted via web from Tony Watkins

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Are Right and Wrong Just Feelings?

Tony Watkins — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 22:21:38 +0000

Tom Price posted this thought-provoking piece on his blog.

If right and wrong are real things, then this could be a clue to help us answer the quesion of whether or not God exists. Since a real standard of right and wrong which hangs above culture and life, might raise the question: Where did the law of right and wrong come from? Was there a moral law maker in the same way that we have civil law makers? I wonder where you stand on these questions? [read the rest]

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Pollard on Film: Creation and changing your mind

Tony Watkins — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:43:48 +0000

via damaris.org

Nick Pollard explores Charles Darwin’s changing belief in God, with clips from the film ‘Creation’.

Two crucial questions are posed – Why is it that you believe what you do? and What would it take to make you change your mind?

Posted via web from Tony Watkins

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Do we just believe things we can’t explain? | via @thechurchmouse

Tony Watkins — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:34:42 +0000

It has been a central plank of ‘new atheism’ that religion exists to fill a void in people’s understanding. Where no rational explanation seems to fit, so the argument goes, people create a new belief to explain something. So, for example, people did not know where the world came from, so they invented the creation story and a God to act as creator of it to fill that void.

This is flawed for a number of reasons, not least because it is perfectly possible to hold both the scientific rational explanation of how events occur whilst also holding a religious belief about the meaning and purpose of those events.

However, it also seems false to Mouse for a more basic reason. People believe all sorts of things. Some of the time we are sceptical to our bones. For example, yesterday Derren Brown successfully predicted all six winning lottery numbers before they were drawn. We’ll have to wait until Friday to find out how he did it, but as yet, Mouse has not heard anyone calling for him to be burned as a witch. Nor has Mouse heard of anyone falling prostrate before him in adoration of a deity. In other words, we don’t leap to a manifestly irrational belief simply because we can’t explain something.

In other instances, we do just that. Conspiracy theories abound about just about every notable event. Following on from the death of Michael Jackson, there have already been numerous ‘sightings’ of the King of Pop alive and well in various places around the world. Theories that he faked his death to escape debt and the burden of his upcoming tour are widespread and believed by a surprising number of people. It is said that 9 out of 10 people in America believe that John F Kennedy’s death was a conspiracy.

So what does all this prove. Mouse’s view is that it proves absolutely nothing. Whether people believe something or not does not make the slightest difference to whether that thing is true or not. The ‘new atheists’ need to move on from their simplistic and clearly flawed view. Christians, in turn, need to be better at explaining why they believe the existence of God and the divinity of Jesus Christ as the incarnate Son of God are objective truths.

H/T to David Keen for the Derren Brown story

H/T Church Mouse Blog

Posted via email from Tony Watkins

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Attitudes to creation/evolution in the UK

Tony Watkins — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:24:34 +0000

The findings of the biggest research project ever carried out into UK public opinion on evolution and the origins of living things was published back in March by the religious think tank Theos. The full findings of the research, conducted by polling company ComRes, are published in report entitled Faith and Darwin. There are some interesting results:

Just 37% of respondents agree that Darwinian evolution is a theory so well established it is beyond reasonable doubt
19%) believe it has little or no supporting evidence
36% state that the theory is still waiting to be proved or disproved

People were asked to choose between four possible positions: Young Earth Creationism (YEC), Intelligent Design (ID), Theistic Evolution (TE) and Atheistic Evolution (AE). When asked which position they considered most likely, 17% chose the YEC position,11% chose ID, 28% chose TE and 37% chose AE.

14% of people think that human beings are just another species of animal and have no unique value or significance.
43% believe that human beings are like other animals but are particularly complex and this complexity gives humans value and significance.
40% believe that human beings are uniquely different from other living things and so have a unique values and significance.

An overwhelming majority of people (75%) believe that science can explain many things, but not everything.

Only 10% consider science and religious belief to be completely incompatible.

Posted via email from Tony Watkins

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Can Atheism Save Europe?

Tony Watkins — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:12:55 +0000

Christopher Hitchens and John Lennox debated at the 2008 Edinburgh International Festival on the subject of ‘Can Atheism Save Europe?’ You can buy the DVD from The Fixed Point Foundation. When I posted this earlier today, it was available on YouTube, but it’s been removed.

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AC Grayling equates Dawkins with Jesus

Tony Watkins — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:17:52 +0000

British philosopher AC Grayling was interviewed in The Observer on Sunday (5 July 2009). It’s a series of soundbites rather than anything detailed. This one caught my eye:

I would imagine Jesus was a kind of Jewish reformer. If you were looking for an equivalent to the figure you dimly perceive through the gospels it would probably be a Richard Dawkins.

What? The first sentence suggests Grayling knows very little about Jesus and yet is prepared to idly speculate on what he might be, without engaging with the evidence. Second, how on earth does he make the link to Dawkins? Is Dawkins a moral reformer in any sense at all? He may be an outspoken defender of a particular position but it hardly makes for an equivalence with Jesus, even if you do reject Jesus’s divinity. Grayling is a very bright man, and I always enjoy listening to him on Radio 4 discussions, but this quote betrays his blind spot and bias.

I was also struck by this comment:

I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton’s head.

I wonder what Grayling means by this. The Bible is God’s self-revelation and the account of his dealings with human beings. What story could start with the apple falling on Newton (a historically dubious event anyway)? The story of the growth of modern science and the way it has replaced religion with hard-nosed rationalism? The growth of modern science is a great story, but it doesn’t start with Newton and it has not supplanted religion. There are very many people who have see no conflict between the two, but rather synergy. Is it to be a bible in the sense of a handbook of essential knowledge about a particular subject? If so, I still don’t see why he’s starting with Newton. Is he wanting to imply that Newton’s insights about gravity are a significant moment of enlightenment, when human beings first realise that things don’t fall as a result of God’s direct and immediate action?

I know this is one of those infuriatingly brief and shallow interviews which are so popular these days, but surely a philosopher of Grayling’s ability is able to be speak concisely without these dubious connections.

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Five minutes with Richard Dawkins

Tony Watkins — Tue, 19 May 2009 09:40:45 +0000

One of a series of five-minute interviews on the BBC website conducted by Matthew Stadlen. Dawkins gives quick summary answers to a number of quick-fire questions about his atheism. As in his debate with John Lennox in Oxford, he doesn’t entirely dismiss the possibility of God, but clearly doesn’t think there is any evidence worth paying attention to. Dawkins is rightly insistent on the importance of evidence. He says, ‘there’s no reason to believe anything for which there isn’t any evidence.’ Absolutely. The problem is what kinds of evidence Dawkins considers to be legitimate. In A Devil’s Chaplain (p. 248) he writes:

Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: ‘Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority or revelation?’ And next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: ‘What kind of evidence is there for that?’ And if they can’t give you a good answer, I hope you’ll think very carefully before you believe a word they say.

I agree with this completely. My quibble is with his underlying assumptions that the only valid evidence is empirical and that only scientific knowledge is valid. The trouble with these assumptions is that they are self-defeating. You cannot scientifically prove, or have empirical evidence for, the idea that only scientific knowledge is valid and that you need empirical evidence for everything.

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