At my place of employment, we are looking at the business uses of Second Life. I have written briefly regarding Second Life previously, but I had never used the technology. Yesterday, during the day, I spent some time looking at the business use, but at night I investigated how Christians were using it (that’s my current avatar to the right, by the way).
After having some difficulty using the search function within Second Life to find a Christian church, I turned to Google, which led me to the ALM CyberChurch. I found that the people who were hanging out in this area (no service was going on) were very helpful. I had a few questions regarding how to use some of the features within Second Life and how to get some of the freebies (a Bible quoting system and some clothing) that the church provided for visitors and one person was very helpful, going out of his way to allow me to follow him through a building while showing me what I needed to do step-by-step.
This helpful person was a member of the Soli Deo Gloria Christian Fellowship on Second Life. I knew this because group names are displayed above your avatar within the virtual world. When I asked him about it, he sent me a text document that contained their statement of faith and provided me the URL to their Web site. On the site, I found a more detailed statement of faith, called “What We Hold As Essential.
One thing in the statement really stood out to me and it is within the text below:
We will not tolerate bad doctrine, though we will answer those who propose such with patience and love. We will not tolerate those who come merely to spread derision and strife. We will not support groups in SL who promote bad doctrine, such as anthropocentric teachings;health, wealth and prosperity doctrines; easy-believism, modalism, pelagianism, or idolatry.
I have emphasized the word that caught my attention. I had never before seen a statement of faith that referenced Pelagius (or modalism, for that matter), and I have read a lot of them. It’s usually the first thing I do when entering a church that I have never visited before. Impressed with the early church reference, I wanted to see if all of the members of this group really understood their statement, but I only had one in front of me so I asked him. The question I asked was:
What was the difference between Augustine and Pelagius?
He didn’t know the answer, so I answered the question for him. It led me to wonder if there are many other people out there who do not understand their church’s (or group’s) statement of faith. Although after I explained it, the person on Second Life agreed with it, I think this is dangerous because what if he didn’t agree? What if he was representing a group with beliefs he would think were wrong once he understood them?
Have you read your church’s statement of faith? Is there anything you don’t understand? If so, ask your pastor about it. Doing this will benefit you in two ways: 1. you will learn more, and 2. you will find out if your theology matches the one of your church. Imagine if this group had agreed with the heretic Pelagius?
An article refuting many of the claims made by Sam Harris in his books The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason
and Letter to a Christian Nation
can be found in the latest edition of Biola Connections, the alumni magazine of Biola University. The article, with contributions by Christian scholars Douglas Geivett and William Lane Craig, can be found online here. A pdf of the entire issue can be found here.
It is interesting to note that most of the arguments against intelligent design presented to the general public are not arguments against the data, but appeals to the consensus among scientists. Instead of being presented with refutations of the findings, the masses are only presented with quotes such as “The majority of scientists believe in evolution and not in intelligent design,” or “The only people who believe in intelligent design are Bible-toting Christians.” Notice, though, that neither of these arguments addresses the real issues. Even if the statements are true, the “majority of scientists” can be wrong and, and just because someone is a “Bible-toting Christian” does not mean that he cannot be right. The public is only given filtered information. Why should the slothful scholar worry about researching the data for himself in an attempt to come to the real truth when the “majority of scientists” have already done so and have come to the same conclusions? The slothful scholar takes the path of least resistance and, in a rather vain attempt to be associated with those classified as the intellectual elite, adopts their beliefs. This is nothing more than brainwashing perpetuated by irresponsible journalists.
Because science has introduced the world to a great number of achievements in medicine, technology, and numerous other factors, people have grown to place a high value on the teachings of science. This is a good thing. No one can make a coherent argument against the value of the great number of lives that have been saved due to the scientific advances in medicine. The great problem arises, though, when science becomes not just one of the many ways that we acquire knowledge, but the only way; that if we cannot test something scientifically, it cannot be true. This is exactly the belief that sways people to abandon any information that leads to supernatural beliefs. I must point out here, though, that the core belief (that only things that can be tested and proven by scientific means) cannot itself be tested by science. Even though one might attempt to prove the statement philosophically, philosophy is outside of the realm of science so, by definition, the philosophical defense cannot be accepted.
But just because the belief cannot pass its own test does not mean that it will not be widely accepted. Science has become the only reliable source of information, but what happens when the findings of different scientists conflict with each other? When two different groups of scientists look at the same data and come up with different information, which conclusions are the correct ones? The answer depends on what is being tested. The intelligent design movement has proven to be a worthy adversary to the widely-accepted scientific theory of Darwinian evolution. Work by Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, William Dembski and numerous others have offered a viable scientific alternative to the popular theory, but their work has been dismissed as “unscientific” not because it does not follow established scientific procedures or accurately report its findings, but because its findings are compatible with the creation account found in the Biblical book of Genesis.
Although intelligent design never claims that the Genesis account is true (aliens or even a machine created by aliens or a past generation of human beings more intelligent than us) could have created the universe, the elite scientists see that it also leaves room for the Judeo-Christian God as well. To risk stating the obvious, scientists are not stupid. They know that culture has defined them as holding the key to knowledge and do not want anyone else to get a copy. If religion is allowed to open the door, then they lose their power; knowledge can be found elsewhere, in the pages of the Bible for example.
