- 6 Dec 2010
- 9 Nov 2010
- 3 Nov 2010
- 30 Sep 2010
Monday, 13 December 2010
More posts on Ekklesia
I have now have had several more articles posted on Ekklesia - see here: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/BobCarling
Friday, 1 October 2010
New column for the Think Tank Ekklesia
I have just started a column for Ekklesia, the first of which is about the threat to science funding. See http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/13230
Friday, 25 September 2009
Discussion about the film "Creation"
I gather from Justin Brierley of Premier Radio that the discussion that followed the screening of the film on Tuesday last is on his programme "Unbelievable" this Saturday:
>You can hear the "unbelievable" show that features the
>discussion we had there this Saturday, or online from
>Saturday afternoon at www.premier.org.uk/unbelievable
I don't kniow how the discussiuon went as I didn't go to the meeting in the end - I was replaced by Nicholas Beale (author with Polkinghorne of "Questions of Truth") as the theistic evolutionist.
Bob Carling
>You can hear the "unbelievable" show that features the
>discussion we had there this Saturday, or online from
>Saturday afternoon at www.premier.org.uk/unbelievable
I don't kniow how the discussiuon went as I didn't go to the meeting in the end - I was replaced by Nicholas Beale (author with Polkinghorne of "Questions of Truth") as the theistic evolutionist.
Bob Carling
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Bob's Journey
I have started a thread on the CiS email discussion list about the screening of the new film "Creation". It has taken me beyond the immediate issue (of whether I can be involved in a discussion between Christians about the "evolution/creation" controversy if I call myself an 'agnostic', or a 'post-evangelical') to what I now actually believe.
"Bob's Journey" is here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/christians_in_science/messages and, if you're interested, follow the thread "Re: Creation Movie" here (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/christians_in_science/message/4466 i.e. meesage 4466 onwards) to see what led up to this.
I was intending the explanation of why I call myself a post-evangelical to be posted here on this blog, but events have overtaken me. Still, for the sake of completeness, and in case you can't access the CiS Yahoo groups discussion, here's what I posted earler (slightly edited):
Bob's Journey
Where to begin…
Perhaps the easiest place to begin is to explain why I [often mention] Alan Jamieson's book "A Churchless Faith".
His book is representative of what has been variously been called `post-evangelicalism' or the `emerging church'.* In his book, he talks about a study of his on why people had left church (and not `liberal' churches, but what he called EPC churches, Evangelical Pentecostal and Charismatic churches). And he came to the rather startling conclusion (or at least it's startling to some, perhaps, at least to begin with) that the majority of people left church not because they had lost their faith but because the church was squashing their faith and that their faith grew as a result of leaving the church. (There's much more to his book than that, as in many things in life, but that's more or less what he found.) And that's what I have found. I am not saying that I am an atheist (a pretty stupid black-and-white position that, in my opinion, no-one can hold with much integrity). And perhaps the word `agnostic' is a bit strong – so that's why I tend to say I am on the believing end of agnosticism. And indeed 'post-evangelical' might better describe what I am.
Here I need to step back to tell you a bit about my personal circumstances, and why I am increasingly of the opinion that evangelicalism - as a Christian movement, if it can be called that - has lost it - and perhaps there is another way of looking at God.
Some years ago, I was forced out of employment in a particularly painful and heartbreaking way. I won't go into the full details, but here's the bare bones. I have spent most of my life working in publishing and love it. I spent a long time working for one particular company but decided to leave it to what I thought was a smart career move - but it was a disastrous mistake of mine. But as soon as I left, the company I had been working for was sold - so there was nothing for me to go back to - and, morever, the colleagues that I left behind had stolen a march on me and were out on the job market snapping up the jobs that I might have got but they got there before me.
So, although not my fault (it was but the fault of the company I had joined who were hopelessly disorganized), I was forced to leave the company and I could not find another similar job probably mainly for the reasons I said above. This was extremely painful to me and one of the results was depression (and that led, ultimately, and very sadly, to the breakdown of my marriage).
When I was forced out of the company, I spent several years looking for an answer to the question of why God doesn't seem to care about my personal prayers – where should I go, what should I do with my life, why was my marriage disintegrating, etc. I said to God at the time that maybe this is the opportunity for me to do something completely different - and I tried a few things, but none of them worked. I was willing to be completely broken before God and open to his will (something that had been drummed into me by countless sermons).
During the first year of my being forced out of publishing, I worked for a Christian charity, which I eventually found difficult as I often disagreed with the leader of the charity, mostly about science and faith (he was/is not a young-earth creationist but he had a tendency to see everything as black and white, as is sadly too ofetn the case with evangelists in my experience). When I left that organization, I spent several years freelancing, getting further and further into debt, while all the time pleading with God to guide my life. And heaven was silent. I don't know why.
So I decided to be honest with myself and increasingly I felt it might be because God either (a) wasn't there or (b) that the God I used to believe in - that I was told repeatedly 'cared for me personally' - wasn't actually true. I started to think that perhaps a different way of looking at God might be more helpful - i.e. that he isn't the chummy personal God of evangelicals who answers personal prayers and guides you in everything that you do and that perhaps I should think of him more like the mystics do.
I therefore made a decision about three years ago to stop asking God anything. And it was then that I landed a job (I now work fulltime for an organization for which I used to freelance). It transformed my life. And shortly thereafter I re-married, which (even more!) has transformed my life.
So that left me with the problem of what I actually believed about God. Which I am working on, with the help of many others in similar spiritual positions... Perhaps the subject of another email.
Bob
* If you can't get hold of the book immediately, see some resources here:
http://www.emergent-uk.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=50&Itemid=2
7
"Bob's Journey" is here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/christians_in_science/messages and, if you're interested, follow the thread "Re: Creation Movie" here (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/christians_in_science/message/4466 i.e. meesage 4466 onwards) to see what led up to this.
I was intending the explanation of why I call myself a post-evangelical to be posted here on this blog, but events have overtaken me. Still, for the sake of completeness, and in case you can't access the CiS Yahoo groups discussion, here's what I posted earler (slightly edited):
Bob's Journey
Where to begin…
Perhaps the easiest place to begin is to explain why I [often mention] Alan Jamieson's book "A Churchless Faith".
His book is representative of what has been variously been called `post-evangelicalism' or the `emerging church'.* In his book, he talks about a study of his on why people had left church (and not `liberal' churches, but what he called EPC churches, Evangelical Pentecostal and Charismatic churches). And he came to the rather startling conclusion (or at least it's startling to some, perhaps, at least to begin with) that the majority of people left church not because they had lost their faith but because the church was squashing their faith and that their faith grew as a result of leaving the church. (There's much more to his book than that, as in many things in life, but that's more or less what he found.) And that's what I have found. I am not saying that I am an atheist (a pretty stupid black-and-white position that, in my opinion, no-one can hold with much integrity). And perhaps the word `agnostic' is a bit strong – so that's why I tend to say I am on the believing end of agnosticism. And indeed 'post-evangelical' might better describe what I am.
Here I need to step back to tell you a bit about my personal circumstances, and why I am increasingly of the opinion that evangelicalism - as a Christian movement, if it can be called that - has lost it - and perhaps there is another way of looking at God.
Some years ago, I was forced out of employment in a particularly painful and heartbreaking way. I won't go into the full details, but here's the bare bones. I have spent most of my life working in publishing and love it. I spent a long time working for one particular company but decided to leave it to what I thought was a smart career move - but it was a disastrous mistake of mine. But as soon as I left, the company I had been working for was sold - so there was nothing for me to go back to - and, morever, the colleagues that I left behind had stolen a march on me and were out on the job market snapping up the jobs that I might have got but they got there before me.
So, although not my fault (it was but the fault of the company I had joined who were hopelessly disorganized), I was forced to leave the company and I could not find another similar job probably mainly for the reasons I said above. This was extremely painful to me and one of the results was depression (and that led, ultimately, and very sadly, to the breakdown of my marriage).
When I was forced out of the company, I spent several years looking for an answer to the question of why God doesn't seem to care about my personal prayers – where should I go, what should I do with my life, why was my marriage disintegrating, etc. I said to God at the time that maybe this is the opportunity for me to do something completely different - and I tried a few things, but none of them worked. I was willing to be completely broken before God and open to his will (something that had been drummed into me by countless sermons).
During the first year of my being forced out of publishing, I worked for a Christian charity, which I eventually found difficult as I often disagreed with the leader of the charity, mostly about science and faith (he was/is not a young-earth creationist but he had a tendency to see everything as black and white, as is sadly too ofetn the case with evangelists in my experience). When I left that organization, I spent several years freelancing, getting further and further into debt, while all the time pleading with God to guide my life. And heaven was silent. I don't know why.
So I decided to be honest with myself and increasingly I felt it might be because God either (a) wasn't there or (b) that the God I used to believe in - that I was told repeatedly 'cared for me personally' - wasn't actually true. I started to think that perhaps a different way of looking at God might be more helpful - i.e. that he isn't the chummy personal God of evangelicals who answers personal prayers and guides you in everything that you do and that perhaps I should think of him more like the mystics do.
I therefore made a decision about three years ago to stop asking God anything. And it was then that I landed a job (I now work fulltime for an organization for which I used to freelance). It transformed my life. And shortly thereafter I re-married, which (even more!) has transformed my life.
So that left me with the problem of what I actually believed about God. Which I am working on, with the help of many others in similar spiritual positions... Perhaps the subject of another email.
Bob
* If you can't get hold of the book immediately, see some resources here:
http://www.emergent-uk.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=50&Itemid=2
7
Sunday, 6 September 2009
Oh my God Charlie Darwin
It's a great CD - beautiful music by a very inventive band. The lyrics to the first track Charlie Darwin strike several chords with me:
(OK, I think that it's deliberate that they mentioned the Mayflower rather the The Beagle... the journey to the promised land of America fits the lyrics better than The Beagle..., but there ya go!)
I set my sails when I became a Christian as a child. I prayed a prayer and committed my life to Christ at a Christian camp - a not uncommon "conversion experience" to many, including my sisters and brother, who all three likewise committed themselves to Christ as about the same time. But, even though I was only 11 at the time, it was very real and powerful for me. And like so many evangelicals, that prayer of commitment then led to a life of dedication to the Christian way, reading the bible every day (was never very good at that, but I tried really hard, using scripture notes from Scripture Union, whuich I found very moving and helpful) and praying that God, whom I now knew as a personal saviour, would guide me in everything that I did.
I loved biology at O and A-level, and so went to University (Reading) to study Zoology (I then thought plants were boring coz they didn't move!), and I really enjoyed the course. Inevitably I came up against the evolution/creation controversy (The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins came out when I was at University) and struggled hard with it. I initially went to Uni as a naive 'creationist' since I had been in touch with the wonderfully querky Evolution Protest Movement (and later the slightly more sensible Biblical Creation Society) but the more I studied the more I realized that 'young earth creationism' just would not do. There was far too much evidence againist their point of view that the earth was only a few thousand years ago and that their veiw that evolutionary change was a lie put about by 'godless' scientists just didn't hold water.
It then with a great sense of relief that in my final year at Uni, I was then in touch with the organization Christians in Science (what used to be called the Research Scientists' Christian Fellowship) which had many professional scientists, many of them biologists, gelologists and palaeontologists, who took a very different view. Indeed I then served on its committee for some 13 years, proving that I was died-in-the-wool evangelical because all members of any UCCF committee has to sign the UCCF declaration of faith - a declaration that, in all honesty, I don't think I could now sign to, for various reasons.
Who's doing the fighting - and what system are they fighting for? It's not clear - but the haunting words/music sometimes make me think I used to 'fight for a system built to fail', i.e. evangelicalism.
The certainty of evangelical Christian faith is now no longer mine - it's been eroded by life circumstances (which I'll explain in further blogs no doubt), and indeed I feel like I used to 'spoon water from a broken vessel', the church, or at least the churches that I used to attend (in the more evangelical tradition). And there was no 'land' to be seen - the land in The Low Anthem's song seems to me to be the certainty of God's presence in everything I used to do - and now that's gone and all that is left is 'water all around'.
Set the sails I feel the winds a'stirring
Toward the bright horizon set the way
Cast your wreckless dreams upon our Mayflower
Haven from the world and her decay
(OK, I think that it's deliberate that they mentioned the Mayflower rather the The Beagle... the journey to the promised land of America fits the lyrics better than The Beagle..., but there ya go!)
I set my sails when I became a Christian as a child. I prayed a prayer and committed my life to Christ at a Christian camp - a not uncommon "conversion experience" to many, including my sisters and brother, who all three likewise committed themselves to Christ as about the same time. But, even though I was only 11 at the time, it was very real and powerful for me. And like so many evangelicals, that prayer of commitment then led to a life of dedication to the Christian way, reading the bible every day (was never very good at that, but I tried really hard, using scripture notes from Scripture Union, whuich I found very moving and helpful) and praying that God, whom I now knew as a personal saviour, would guide me in everything that I did.
I loved biology at O and A-level, and so went to University (Reading) to study Zoology (I then thought plants were boring coz they didn't move!), and I really enjoyed the course. Inevitably I came up against the evolution/creation controversy (The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins came out when I was at University) and struggled hard with it. I initially went to Uni as a naive 'creationist' since I had been in touch with the wonderfully querky Evolution Protest Movement (and later the slightly more sensible Biblical Creation Society) but the more I studied the more I realized that 'young earth creationism' just would not do. There was far too much evidence againist their point of view that the earth was only a few thousand years ago and that their veiw that evolutionary change was a lie put about by 'godless' scientists just didn't hold water.
It then with a great sense of relief that in my final year at Uni, I was then in touch with the organization Christians in Science (what used to be called the Research Scientists' Christian Fellowship) which had many professional scientists, many of them biologists, gelologists and palaeontologists, who took a very different view. Indeed I then served on its committee for some 13 years, proving that I was died-in-the-wool evangelical because all members of any UCCF committee has to sign the UCCF declaration of faith - a declaration that, in all honesty, I don't think I could now sign to, for various reasons.
And who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
Fighting for a system built to fail
Who's doing the fighting - and what system are they fighting for? It's not clear - but the haunting words/music sometimes make me think I used to 'fight for a system built to fail', i.e. evangelicalism.
Spooning water from their broken vessels
As far as I can see there is no land
Oh my god, the water's all around us
Oh my god, it's all around
The certainty of evangelical Christian faith is now no longer mine - it's been eroded by life circumstances (which I'll explain in further blogs no doubt), and indeed I feel like I used to 'spoon water from a broken vessel', the church, or at least the churches that I used to attend (in the more evangelical tradition). And there was no 'land' to be seen - the land in The Low Anthem's song seems to me to be the certainty of God's presence in everything I used to do - and now that's gone and all that is left is 'water all around'.
And who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
The lords of war just profit from decay
And trade their children's promise for the jingle
The way we trade our hard earned time for pay
Oh my god, the water's cold and shapeless
Oh my god, it's all around
Oh my god, life is cold and formless
Oh my god, it's all around
Monday, 24 August 2009
Dawkins' new book
There's an extract in today's The Times - well worth reading.
Creationists, now they’re coming for your children. People who reject the theory of evolution should be placed on a level with Holocaust deniers, argues an author in his controversial new book
Thanks to Michael Roberts for pointing this out on the Christians in Science email discussion list.
Creationists, now they’re coming for your children. People who reject the theory of evolution should be placed on a level with Holocaust deniers, argues an author in his controversial new book
Thanks to Michael Roberts for pointing this out on the Christians in Science email discussion list.
Sunday, 23 August 2009
atheists vs. young earth creationists
I read (skimmed) Third Way yesterday - a great magazine, by the way. There were several mentions of the 'New Atheists' (Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett et al.). (Christians are not obsessed with them - they are just reacting to the fact that it is they that tend get into the news because they court controversy...)
There was a news piece about Dawkins starting an atheist youth camp (rightly pointing out that these camps are nothing new - just that Dawkins has contributed some money to supporting them, and his name of course gets picked up by the media).
And then there was the article by Frank Schaeffer "A literalist's War":
"the atheists say 'Crusades!' and the religious believer says 'Pol Pot!' Are to be stuck trading insults like schoolchildren, or is there a better way to discuss the two eternally unanswerable questions: the quest for ultimate meaning and the search for the origin of everything?"
A clue to an answer to this is two reviews later in the mag – in Caroline Berry's review of Charles Foster's book The Selfless Gene, where I gather the author of the book says 'a plague on both their houses'. Sounds like a really good book.
And then again in another review, this time by Peter Rollins of Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate by Terry Eagleton, with some fantastic quotable bits:
"Reason, Science and Faith is primarily an attack on the critique of religion as espoused by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens (whom he merges as 'Ditchkins'). And yet Eagleton agrees with them in rejecting the Christianity that they find so abhorrent" ... "the expression of Christianity that Ditchkins atacks deserves all the abuse it gets, but just as Mark should not be ignored because of Stalinism so Christ should not be abandoned because of fundamentalism" ... "[Eagleton] ridicules Dennett's claim that the invention of the telescope and microscope spells the end of Christianity by pointing out that this is 'rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekov'."
Great stuff - another book I should read.
There was a news piece about Dawkins starting an atheist youth camp (rightly pointing out that these camps are nothing new - just that Dawkins has contributed some money to supporting them, and his name of course gets picked up by the media).
And then there was the article by Frank Schaeffer "A literalist's War":
"the atheists say 'Crusades!' and the religious believer says 'Pol Pot!' Are to be stuck trading insults like schoolchildren, or is there a better way to discuss the two eternally unanswerable questions: the quest for ultimate meaning and the search for the origin of everything?"
A clue to an answer to this is two reviews later in the mag – in Caroline Berry's review of Charles Foster's book The Selfless Gene, where I gather the author of the book says 'a plague on both their houses'. Sounds like a really good book.
And then again in another review, this time by Peter Rollins of Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate by Terry Eagleton, with some fantastic quotable bits:
"Reason, Science and Faith is primarily an attack on the critique of religion as espoused by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens (whom he merges as 'Ditchkins'). And yet Eagleton agrees with them in rejecting the Christianity that they find so abhorrent" ... "the expression of Christianity that Ditchkins atacks deserves all the abuse it gets, but just as Mark should not be ignored because of Stalinism so Christ should not be abandoned because of fundamentalism" ... "[Eagleton] ridicules Dennett's claim that the invention of the telescope and microscope spells the end of Christianity by pointing out that this is 'rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekov'."
Great stuff - another book I should read.
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