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Jon's Deep and Meaningful

A Response to Richard Dawkins, or Who's deluding who?

I've recently finished reading Richard Dawkins' very readable new book "The God Delusion". Nearly all the bookshops in Sydney have it on display and it was interesting reading. Now I have to admit I'm biased, against Dawkins. But even so, the logic in this book is often very much subservient to the rhetoric. I've put together a critique of the book which I hope eventually to publish somewhere, probably too long for this blog site.

But in brief, here are some summary comments:

Dawkins is rarely dull, though he lost me a bit when on the subject of memes.
Dawkins is very biased, as I guess he'd admit in view of the stated purpose of the book, which is to convert us to atheism. So for example, all the usual historical ill effects of religion are enumerated, but little is said about all the good works of Christians or the evil deeds of 20th century atheists like Stalin or Mao.
Dawkins uses all the tricks in the rhetoric book: exaggeration, setting up straw men, ridicule.
But in the process he does serve to rid us of some sillier stories (like aborting Beethoven) and lines of evidence (e.g. the recent prayer experiment) and arguments (e.g. Anselm's ontological "proof" of God) used for Christian beliefs and values.

In the end, however, it all comes down to one thing: which story makes the most sense- gives the most likely explanation of reality as we experience it. Beauty, morality, the universal drive to worship, love, justice, evil (which Dawkins doesn't really tackle) , the existence of the universe as such, humanity, life: are these best explained in Dawkins' neo-Darwinist story of natural selection or in the biblical narrative of God, man, the devil, sin and Jesus Christ, or in some other worldview?

If you want to read my critique of several thousand words, and you promise to comment on it, you can email me at

Random Christmas Ravings aka Miscellaneous Christmas Meditations

Christmas has come and gone again. Much of the world would say, Ho hum! But somehow this festival continues to involve us Aussies.: it's the time to catch up with family, it's the day before Boxing Day when the test cricket and Sydney-Hobart yatch race start, it's also the day before we all go to the coast for beach holidays, it's the let down after all that shopping and credit card excess, it's when we try to be nice to the rels, even when they give us stupid presents, and we kind of give at least token respect to Christianity, provided that it doesn't overshadow Santa or Shane Warne (you may have seen the poster that says, Would you worship Jesus if he scored 10,000 runs?)! Unfortunately it's also the day that family break-ups and other causes of loneliness come into stark relief. And this year it was the day of what some called a miraculous weather change that brought snow to places of raging bush fires.

So now for my experience of Christmas 2006:
For me it started with the Messiah, which I watched at Sydney Town Hall on Dec.17, sung by a huge amateur choir, 4 up and coming soloists from the Conservatorium, with the SBS youth orchestra and the mammoth pipe organ, in a very grand setting! The whole script is Bible: I spent part of the performance looking up the words in my Bible. It makes a very powerful theological statement. When we came to the Hallelujah Chorus (based on Revelation), as everyone stood up ( a great tradition from Victorian times), I felt like I was truly in a worship service! Might join the choir myself next year, you only have to go to 9 rehearsals, no audition and 2 performances, and they always need more tenors.
Just before Christmas we were joined in our "new" town house by 3 of our kids, Sarah, Mat and Ben (3 flights to meet, we are becoming regulars at Sydney airport and paying thro the nose for parking!). And we spent Christmas eve and morning at Nelson Bay with our 2 mothers. That family reunion stuff is very powerful. It's been great to catch up with the kids and soon we expect Mark as well. What a gift they have all been!
On Christmas eve, the 5 of us attended church at our church, Shirelive// in Sutherland. They nearly murdered some carols, but the message was good and during Silent Night (not my favourite carol) I pushed myself to think about it properly and the wonder of the Christmas event, God actually becoming a baby, amazed and thrilled me afresh. The next morning we attended Christmas communion at All Saints Anglican church at Nelson Bay, where I grew up. The minister there also spoke well, comparing the words of the angels in Luke 2 with the claims made about/by Augustus Caesar, a point I have become very aware of in my own studies.
At last the weather started to become "normal" yesterday and I have had 2 swims, at Bondi (yesterday) and Cronulla South today, we also drove around some other beaches south of Bondi that deserve a proper return visit!
On the way back from India I started reading Dostoyevsky's long novel "The Brothers Karamazov", which I bought in Chennai. Just finished today. It's very 19th century in terms of length and slow pace but includes a lot of discussion about God, morality, progress and other important themes. Perhaps an appropriate read for the season. Don't do it unless you have the patience but it was quite rewarding in spite of the non-ending.
Some people want to abolish Christmas, others are quick to condemn the excess (but I read an interesting article, I think in the "Australian", which defended the right to celebrate and reminded me of the OT festivals; I agree there is a time to celebrate even with some excess, provided that you know why you are doing it!). However, Christmas , despite all efforts to drown it out, continues to make a "silent" witness to Christ to our culture. May it continue and grow until most Aussies again know why!

Jon's Deep and Meaningful

Moving House in Sydney
This coming Wednesday we are moving from our rented unit to a renovated townhouse just down the street in Miranda. Wow, what an adventure it has been! Getting the sums to add up and break into the Sydney real estate scene. For comparison, we sold our 3 BR 2 bath courtyard new town house in Carrum Downs for 235,100 and have bought a renovated 30 year old 3 BR 1 bath with almost no outside sitting for 392,000.

However, we like Miranda and I can walk to work, train and shops so it's worth doing and there is a brand new park opposite for outside fun. Of course, going to India while it was all going through was perhaps a mistake, and several important letters went astray in the mail, causing further delays, but in spite of all that settlement is only 1 day late! We have half killed ourselves financially but it seems we will just get over the finishing line intact!!

Lessons I have learned from this:
Don't buy in Sydney until you already have the dough from Melbourne.
Don't go overseas in the middle of a sale.
If you must go os, take yourmobile and keep in touch.
Don't trust anyone, and do nothing without proof.
Don't use a broker who is new to the game.
Try applying to your own bank where they kind of know you.
Don't stay with Optus, who can't organize to transfer DSL for at least a week and can't keep the same phone number even in the same street!
OR
Ignore all the above and trust God anyway!

Memories of India

Well, here we are back in good old Oz, enjoying the luxuries of sandwiches, showers, steak and even moderate traffic (roads in Sydney yesterday morning peak seemed so tame compare to Chennai on Saturday evening). But India was great and we had a blast!

But this is not a report, more a memoir (how's that for a pretentious title!)

India is on the move, in more ways than one. Since my last visit (2002), the highway out of Vizag has become a four lane divided road, albeit with rather dodgy entries so you find vehicles going on the wrong side to get to a u-turn. Traffic is on the increase and people ignore such things as lanes. Vizag is expanding in all directions with nearly 4 million people, before long COTR will be part of a suburb and another 4 lane highway will go right past it, where once was a sleepy rural road. Everywhere is evidence of Progress as the emerging lower middle class drags itself out of poverty.

But alongside this is the old India: primitive village huts, beggars (not as bad as we think, but professional beggars are knocking on the window of your car in Vizag now), slums, smells and people sleeping in the railway stations. The train from Chennai to Vizag is a case in point: electrified all the way (850 km), a modest 14 hour trip, 2nd class airconditioned cars quite acceptable and less bothered by beggars and pedlars compared to last visit. But the new computerized signalling system at Vizag opened the day we arrived and plunged it all into chaos (mind you, Sydney can do tricks like that too!), so we arrived near to Vizag on time and spent 4 and a half hours finishing the last 40 km.

Christianity is on the move in southern India at least. E.g. 400 AOG churches in Chennai (pop 10 million), largest 25,000 and 50 others have over 1,000 people. Offically there are 2.3% Christians in India, seems understated to me. But to get your religion officially changed is quite an undertaking and "conversion" is quite a political issue. So there is lots of persecution too and the govt is getting more nosy. A large team of SDAs from Oz were thrown out while we were there for violating their tourist visas by conducting a high profile campaign of "science proves God" meetings. Police rang COTR to make sure we were doing the right thing.

Well we were! Most of our activities were on site and were no more scandalous than puppet shows, dancing (with scarf waving in Mum's case), prophesying, singing our heads off, etc. Even in the villages all we did was preach, prophesy, pray for people and perform amateurish skits (e.g. Mum as the Canaanite woman begging me to heal her daughter). Mind you Paul Mowen kept telling this gross story about a dog licking the leaking emissions from a dead cow! You'd have to be there to envisage some of the scenes. E.g. me preaching to about 20-30 people sitting on a mat in the middle of a village street, but we all had to move when someone wanted to ride a motor bike up the street. Or Paul Mowen competing with a rowdy bunch of Hindus broadcasting their "worship" while he was preaching. Or Paul and Margaret Warren looking for some "lost" ear rings through the villagers. One night we met Abraham and Sarah and they have 3 sons: Ramesh, Ganesh and Suresh!

My slogan from this visit is "Veg or non veg": this is the choice at every railway stall, hotel dining room, etc. since many Indians are vegetarians.

Some random memories:

St Thomas supposedly died in a suburb of Chennai, we saw the mountain. It has an ugly Portuguese church on top.
Mum trying to get a "normal" cup of tea.
The two of us trying to counsel a girl who wanted to marry for love instead of Dad's choice.
Watching the Aussie movie "look Both Ways" on a plane. Thoroughly recommend it.
Vizag's new coffee shop, where you drink good espresso, while listening to Indian rock and outside is a girl beggar with a monkey in tow.
The "black pyjama brigade". These are men in black pyjamas and bare feet while they go through weeks of ascetic preparation for their annual pilgrimage to see their god in Kerala (far south). Even some from overseas. I'm told this temple takes $US 1m per day! There is also a red pyjama group who go somewhere else. This is the dark side of Indian life.
A student in my M.Div. class challenging me on the Trinity, which proved I was getting through!
Meeting a lecturer I ministered to last time the day after I'd prophesied to his wife at church, not knowing who she was. And prophesying to a faculty member in front of the class, a bit risky but he said "every word was God."
Having a hair cut in one of the small shops next to COTR for the pricely sum of 10 rupees (= 3o cents).
Mum preaching on Shame in COTR chapel.
Anointing 20 students after preaching myself on the Holy Spirit and witness/martyrdom.
Students cheering when the two of us went out the front and modeled dancing for the Lord to a chorus we were teaching.
In depth theology discussions with Paul Mowen.
Mum filling in time one quite Sunday afternoon by inventing a board game for us to play.
Xavier, the young academic dean at COTR, a really great bloke, is doing his Ph.D. on a similar area to mine.

Hope you can absorb all this.

Jon's Deep and Meaningful

Jon and Communism

Since I have been accused by Markk of being a communist, I should define myself in that regard!

I was attracted to socialism as a teenager looking to help create a better world, without injustice and poverty and war. Lots of my generation were marching against Vietnam war. I joined the Socialist Club at Sydney University in 1966, which was largely dominated by Trotskyites (Trotsky was Lenin's henchman in the communist take-over of Russia but was later driven out by the rise of Satlin and eventually murdered while in exile in Mexico) and I took part in some pro-Labor rallies in the 1966 elections, won overwhelming by the Liberals under Harold Holt. I also joined the Sydney University Settlement, which helped poor people in the old slums near Redfern. I was also motivated by a desire to be a good Christian, as God was drawing me but I had a fairly distorted idea of Christianity.

But I came to realize that political action was not the answer to the world's problems. It doesn't address the sinfulness of human beings. I'd experienced enough of that as a boarder at Barker and it was crystallized for me thru the book and movie "Lord of the Flies". And the track record of socialism wasn't very good. Also I started really hearing the gospel for the first time, realizing that peace with God did not come by good works but by faith in Jesus and being born again. A significant conversation took place on the door step of an old poor lady in Chippendale when we were visited by a Moore College student. She was a Catholic but really knew the Lord, and so did he. Then a few weeks later I was led to Christ by a charismatic Baptist at the uni. After that I gradually lost interest in politics as the Answer to the world and instead I was gripped by a new vision of sharing Christ.

It's been interesting to see some Christian Laborites rise up recently: Tony Blair, Kevin Rudd. Maybe that could've been me, but I don't regret my change of priorities.

Ruminations around Sydney

Yesterday (Oct.27) I spent the whole day in and near Sydney CBD. Caught train to St Peters, a station near Newtown, and walked right through Newtown's King St ( a fascinating mix of old and new, raffish and upmarket, lots of coffee shops and restaurants) to Moore (Anglican) College to look up a new book on Revelation that no other library in Sydney seems to have. It's called "Spectacles of Empire: Monsters, Myths and Martyrs" (or something like that) and is a fairly postmodernist approach that compares Revelation with the spectacles put on by the Romans for the entertainment of the masses and also the erotic novels of the day. In my thesis, I also used these novels to draw out the romance plot in Revelation, but this author was doing a much more explicitly sexual thing with them.

After I read enough of that to make sure he hadn't stolen my ideas and glean some good ideas from him, I took the train from Newtown Station (on another line) to Circular Quay, where Mum and I had lunch before she collected our passports from the Indian consulate: less than 3 weeks before we leave for India!! Then after coffee (of course!) Mum caught the train home and I decided to stick around.

During the various train trips, etc I was reading Tim La Haye's book on Revelation (the theory behind the Left Behind novels). It has some good thoughts, but overall his thesis doesn't stand up; his attempts to read the pretrib rapture into Revelation are quite lame, for example. But it's good to read, not only because I want to refute it in my book, but also just to clarify what I do think about Rev. I'm lecturing on it next year at Tabor.

Anyway, after Mum left, I wandered up to St James Church, King St, after which St James station is named. It's the oldest church building still standing in Sydney (1824 I think), designed by Francis Greenway in Georgian style, so it looks like some of the churches we saw in London. You may not realise it, but my parents were married there and I was christened there. Quite "high class" and more "high church" than Sydney generally.

While there, I saw they were having a public lecture that night, so I decided to stay on and attend. It was about how our universities are going, compared to the ideas of a bloke called John Henry Newman, an Anglican minister who eventually became a Catholic in the 19th century. He made some speeches that became a book called "The Idea of a University." Anyway the lecture was no great shakes, but it did raise some interesting ideas about universities which stimulate my thinking on the subject. I have been feeling for years that I should be involved in starting a Christian university in Australia. Possibly I am in a good place for that, as the Tabor campuses are deciding to re-integrate again and possibly become a multi-campus Christian university as they grow to the right size! Meanwhile my task in the short term is to help Sydney Tabor become more credible academically and spiritually. Getting my Ph.D. will help!

I do enjoy exploring Sydney. It has so many interesting nooks and old buildings that mean a lot to me because of the history behind them. Maybe sometime I'll give you a historical tour if you can handle it!