A few years ago, Ricky Gervais wrote a pleasant and personal Holiday Message – partly explaining his atheism – in the Wall Street Journal (here). In it, he respectfully argues that his atheism stems from childhood when he couldn’t help but feel that his belief in God was a lie. And that he had been lied to. It’s interesting that he abandoned his faith because of an experience. When his faith was challenged, he didn’t seek proof or evidence, but gave up hope in the possibility of a god.
In the same article, Gervais also says this: Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence – ‐ evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along… I’m not saying faith doesn’t exist… But believing in something doesn’t make it true. Hoping that something is true doesn’t make it true. The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts. This is a popular and widespread view – that science is definitive and factual and that religion is purely sensory and imaginary. This may be true of some faiths and spiritualities which make no claim to have any factual or scientific basis. But it puzzles me that many people still make this charge against Christianity, which claims to be sensory, but also factual. A few years ago, I ended up writing a play on this very subject, called The God Particle. (You can now get it as a DVD.) Christmas is an excellent time to consider this questions since this is the very thing we celebrate at Christmas – Jesus as God Incarnate. He is also called ‘Emmanuel’ which means ‘God with us’. Christianity does not worship a distant, silent God who is unknown and unknowable. Christianity is based around the Christ of Christmas. in which we celebrate God himself born on earth as a baby, who grew up to be a man of flesh and bone. Unless we’ve been thoroughly beguiled by some silly Dan Brown theories that have no credence within academia, no-one is seriously contesting the existence of the man, Jesus of Nazareth, who lived for 30-odd years before dying on a cross. If this Jesus had lived a dull, uneventful life and died at the age of 70 and was buried, the claim that Jesus was God would surely have less credence? His short life was far from uneventful. He performed miracles to a sceptical crowd. He taught strangers how to live in ways which astonished them. Without writing a single book, composing a single song or holding a single position of earthly authority, he became the most notorious, intriguing man in all human history. If we’re being open-mindedly scientific, surely we need to take a look at the facts again? To assume they are invented is to prejudge them. To insist that his miracles can’t have happened is to discriminate against them. Followers of Jesus Christ aren’t suggesting for a moment that anyone can heal the sick, walk on water or raise the dead. But they are insisting that one man can. And did. Christians don’t have faith in the God-Man behind these miracles because they are trying to convince themselves it’s true in spite of the facts. They are saying that Jesus’s claim to be God himself are the best fit for the facts. Maybe, this Christmas, we could be more like the good scientists who take one more look at the facts. The results may be surprising. Comments are closed.
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James CaryComedy Writer. Christian. Father. Husband. Fan of CS Lewis, GK Chesterton and PG Wodehouse. Lives in Somerset. ArchivesCategories |