Responses to Dawkins Comments – Part 2 of 4

A couple of comments were left on the post Dawkins Part 8: Are All Ideologies Bad. I offer the following responses:

Bad suggests that “One can claim faith beliefs to justify good things, but the method can be equally employed for bad with equal measure: the method is simply capable of anything, assuring nothing.” I would argue that faith beliefs can be used to justify good or bad, but to truly discern whether the motivations are pure or not must be examined from a view of the whole. Christianity is a religion that takes Jesus as its central figure. Thus, living out a life in a way that would be pleasing to Jesus is extremely important. And, if we look at Jesus’ sayings, it is hard to establish that Jesus was about anything other than love. Thus, if one is able to use the Christian worldview to incite violence or hatred, then it would be obvious that the intention was misplaced. If you immerse yourself in the words of Christ himself, it is difficult to find any reason to fault this worldview.

The problem comes when certain texts are taken out of context or when they are adopted in a less than honest manner. I’ve tackled some of the heavy lifting on this topic already in a previous series entitled What Are We Fighting For? In this series, I provide an overview of the “Christian warrior movement” and how the Christian Scriptures have been hijacked to justify violence throughout history. It is disappointing to see how the Bible has been twisted to support events such as the crusades. Check out this series for an in-depth examination of this topic.

If we are to look at Jesus and sincerely ask what he expects of us, we find a clear outline of the sort of moral life that we should live. By contrast, what does science provide in terms of a moral bearing? I’d argue that science is silent on this front. Like I argue late in this series on Dawkins, science is great for providing us with some great tools for surival, science definitely lacks the tools to help us discern how best to use these tools.

So, as Ed asks in his counter to Bad in the comments section of Part 8, “Tell me, what clear side would scientism or evolutionism take on that subject? And on what grounds?”

Todd