It never really surprises me when I come across an article in public media that rails against religion (even less so when the article vilifies Christians). It was, therefore, not exactly shocking when I was presented with an article by The Times columnist, Fred Khumalo which does just that. To be fair, it was a bit of a struggle to figure out where he stands at all when he writes both, "those of us who are of the Christian faith ... " and , "Issues of faith or religion, are constructs of the human imagination". I came to the conclusion that the former quotation was crafted to keep the reader in suspense as to where the author stands but Mr Khumalo can hardly be accused of vilifying Christians. His article is entitled, "The Darkness that zaps us from the sky" and assumes the Dennet-like arguments that religion is a construct from our evolutionary past and he complains about the fact that some people still hold on to these myths. His complaint was, I admit, understandable; the MEC for co-operative governance and traditional affairs in KZN told a family, some of whom had been killed by lightning, "We will do an investigation with a view of trying to identify the causes of the recent upsurge of fatal lightning incidents in the province." But the idea that atheism somehow solves the world's problems was too much for me, so I wrote a letter to Mr Khumalo.
As evidenced by the fact that you are reading what I have written, I am part of the generation that blogs. Those who find themselves a part of this generation probably blog thanks to a slightly overinflated ego. One of the most common threads in these blogs is that of criticism because there's always someone who's doing or saying something stupid. They're all a bunch of hypocrites though...
For a few months I have been considering writing something brief on a remarkably popular line of reasoning that is often employed and yet, utterly fallacious. I began thinking about writing this after proofreading an essay for someone at college who made this mistake. I began actually typing stuff out after John MacArthur did it.
A couple of days ago I was in a local bookshop where I picked up "The Surprising Work of God" by Jonathan Edwards really cheaply. Surprised at the price, the lady behind the till checked the publisher and then knowingly nodded; "Whitaker House," she said, and so I asked her why the publisher was relevant. She continued, explaining to me that Whitaker House worked hard to publish books cheaply (the cover threw her off because it looked too fancy to be a Whitaker House book), although they don't use much discretion in what they publish. So, in search of a good deal, I decided to visit the Whitaker House website which is where I discovered this interesting advert.
