An Easter Exercise for isolated thinkers during the Corona Virus from the book:

John Dickson: If I Were God, I’d Make myself Clearer: Searching for Clarity in a World Full of Claims, p/b, Kingsford, Matthias Media, 2002

John Dickson is a prolific writer of Ancient History, Theology and Apologetics. This little book seeks to answer the title’s criticism of God’s unclear revelation, a discussion that comes up often in explorations of the many world religions. The book is typically Dickson: brief, to the point, clear and full of accessible ideas and suggestions for moving forward. The following quotes/notes summarise his argument. (I hope accurately):

1. When it comes to faith there appears to be no clarity, just a cacophony of competing claims.(p9)
2. A pluralist approach accepts all perspectives as valid.(p.9)
3. A New Age approach is popular because it does not make onerous demands (p.10)
4. Many people, religious or not, like to think about religion; they sense that there is more to life than the material …a sense which at times requires gratitude for example, or a deeper meaning to ours and the world’s very existence. (p12)
5. Questions of ‘spirituality’ do not go away. They seem to have consistently occupied human minds throughout history and even today in Western atheistic societies. (p12)
6. ‘Religion’ of course does not just cover the big five (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism) but the I-Ching, Confucius, Zoroastrianism, Wicca, Aboriginal spirituality, Satanism and quasi-spiritual activities like the opening of the Olympic Games. (p13)
7. In spite of limited formal worship in the C21st significant numbers of folk in the West believe in “The Almighty” eg in Britain in 2000, 62% with 69% believing in the existence of a human ‘soul’. (p14)
8. Discussion about atheism vs faith is very prominent in the C21st with much energy  being expended in books and discussions both ways. eg Philip Adams, Richard Dawkins et al (p14)

9.   The daughter of renowned C20th atheist Bertrand Russell wrote about her father in strikingly        spiritual terms: “I believe myself that his whole life was a search for God, or, for those who prefer less personal terms, for absolute certainty. (p.15).

10.    Bertrand Russell himself wrote to his daughter after visiting a Byzantine Church in Greece: I realised then that the Christian outlook had a firmer hold upon me than I had imagined …I r ealised with some astonishment that I myself am powerfully affected by this sense in my feelings though not in my beliefs. (p15)

11.  In C1st Athens, the Apostle Paul found an inscription on an altar “to an unknown God”. (p16)

12   Paul goes on to argue in Athens that God has in fact arranged the times and places of human societies with the express intention that they should search for their Source of Life and perhaps “feel their way toward him and find him”. (p.17)  

13.  Every single society about which anthropologists and historians know anything significant has made ‘spirituality’ a key component of their cultural life. Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maories , native Americans, pre-Anglo Celts, nomadic Mongols, and modern Chardonay-yuppies… (p.18)

14:   ..the question of God is one of the few universally shared premises of humanity throughout time. (p.18)

15. But why do we in the Western world talk about these things so rarely. We think about them but we don’t talk about them. (p.18)

16.  In the West, Three out of four of us believe in the existence of God and the reality of the afterlife according to the most recent research, but you would never know it just listening to the media or work conversations. (p. 20)

17. I don’t know anyone who’s not interested in the idea of religion, whether they’re opposed to it or for it. (p.20)

18. In Australia, robbed of a broader meaning to our lives, we appear to have entered an era of mass obsession, usually with ourselves: our appearance, our health and fitness, our work, our sex lives , our children’s development, our personal development. (Source: Apocalypse No! Australia’s Commission for the Future) (p.21)

19. It’s as if we hope that the accumulation of numerous smaller ‘meanings’ will make up for the lack of a grand meaning…(p.22)

20. ‘Covetousness’ (the pursuit of material things) and ‘idolatry’ (the reverencing of material things)  are not so different after all, especially when they are a substitute for honouring the Creator of all things himself. (p.23)

21. We tend to agree there’s more to life than material possessions but settling for them all the same; admitting God’s existence in the world, but refusing his influence on our lives. (p.23)

22. The Apostle Paul brought his address to the Athenians to a close with this quote: The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all peop(le everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness. (p. 24)

23. Despite the sixth sense many of us have that there is probably a larger spiritual reality to be reckoned with, our society appears to prefer experiencing the smaller things of life with the other five senses. (p. 24)

24. How many times do we hear the message: “Life is about the job, the car, the house, the clothes, the investments, the retirement package, and so on.” (p. 25)

25. This question of pluralism is the question I want to confront in the rest of this book. (p26)

26. Some shonky Christian preachers preach a “Christian” “Gospel” of prosperity. That is  rubbish. (p.27)

27. Many people look for a spirituality without demands. (p.28)

28. Others think that religion is simply a matter of style or preference, a projection of our imagination and not a fact of the real world. (p.28)

29. Others suggest that the spiritual traditions of the world in the end point to one unified r reality. (p.29)

30. Australia’s many different cultures and faiths especially in large cities is very culturally enriching. (p. 30)

31. The benefit of a pluralist view is that it promotes tolerance rather than warfare. (p.30)

32. But pluralism’s fatal flaw is that while the various faiths agree in superficial things like they all say prayers, at the more basic level they tend to disagree with each other. (p.31)

33. Hinduism is polytheistic but Guru Nanak, founder of the Sikh faith, insisting instead that there was just one deity, while Buddhism as taught by Siddhartha Gautama, negated theism altogether. (p.31)

34. The people of the Book (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) share many things in common but central to the Christian faith is the conviction that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he died on a cross and rose from the dead. This is non-negotiable for Christians but rejected by both Judaism and Islam. (p32)

35. Australian journalists have written articles purporting to show that Jesus really is shared by both faiths (Islam and Christianity) ..but a Jesus who was not the Son of God and who did not die on a cross is quite simply not the Jesus of Christian devotion. (p.34)

36. The faith traditions of the world are in no sense one. Perhaps one or other is true, perhaps none is true, but it is simply not possible that all, or even a few, are true. (p.34)

37. it is sometimes argued that to believe that a particular religion is true (and therefore that others are untrue) is arrogant since, in doing so you are consigning error to a huge portion of the rest of the world…the argument is valid to a point—lets face it, some Christians are arrogant, but all opinions, by their very nature, consign others to error.  Ironically, though, the views most open to the charge of arrogance are not the ancient monolithic ones such as Islam or Christianity, but the more recent ones like atheism and pluralism. (p.35)

38. Let’s start with atheism, the belief that there is no God or spirituality in the universe. This conviction is held by a tiny minority of the world’s population: according to the latest figures, just 2.5% [Source: Encyclopedia Brittanica,]

39.  Pluralism…is likewise arrogant since it claims to know something about all the faiths that none of the individual faiths is able to achieve…that there is an overarching faith which they all share. (p.36)

40. I do not personally believe that strongly held views—even those that negate the views of others —are in themselves presumptuous or bigoted. They can certainly lead to arrogance, but they do not in themselves constitute an arrogant claim. (p.36)

41. There is a legitimate fear that religious conviction will lead to religious intolerance and, as a consequence, to discrimination and violence. History is full of examples…(p.37)

42. But is an acceptance of all religious truth-claims the best way to respond to such dangers?…a better way forward, I believe, is to promote true ‘tolerance’, that is, not just to accept the validity of another person’s point of view but the more admirable ability to treat with respect a person with whom I deeply disagree. (p.38) 

43. By contrast, our common insistence upon mere ‘agreement’ is intellectually suspect and culturally insensitive. (p.39)

44. In short, I am suggesting that our society’s keenness to affirm all religious viewpoints stems, in part, from an aversion to think too hard about any of them. (p.41)

45. ..the result of all this is rather sad. Whether by an aversion to religious intolerance or a tendency to take the easy option, this acceptance of all faiths has the potential to leave us with no faith at all. God, whoever he or she is, remains for us a mystery. (p42)

46. Would not the Almighty—if indeed he exists—have made things decidedly clearer? The Apostle Paul….answered with a resounding yes, which moves the discussion to the idea of verifiability. (p42)

47. In all religious claims, how can the truth or falsehood of one’s claim be tested? (p.44)

48. If the Creator of the universe were the least bit interested in our devotion, he or she would surely do something ‘concrete’ to grab our attention, something we could all assess for ourselves and from which we could draw our own conclusions. Surely, he would have made himself clearer! (p49)

49. Mormonism provides a an example of a verifiable claim which, in my opinion, can be found (with a high degree of confidence) to be unwarranted. (p.50)

50. The claims of Judaism regarding the exodus from Egypt, while they cannot be proven, has enough evidence of verifiable claims that, when scrutinised…arouse not suspicion but a degree of confidence. (p.53)

51. Whereas Buddhism and Sikhism originated as offshoots and rejections from Hinduism, and Islam was a counter- movement to Christianity and Baha’i to Shiite Islam, Christianity began with a collection of devout Jews. (p.54)

52. In no sense was the early movement surrounding Jesus a rejection of Judaism. It was proclaimed thorughout the Mediterranean as the very fulfilment of the Jewish Scriptures. (p54)

53. The later Jewish leadership eventually rejected Jesus as Messiah, demanding that the followers of Jesus be excommunicated from the synagogues and regarded as blasphemers (this was shortly before A.D. 100) (p54)

54. This rejection centred on Jesus failing to fulfil the hope of a military Messianic leader who would free the Jewish nation from its Roman overlords. (p.55)

55. The Christian claim that Jesus is God begins with Philip’s question Lord, Show us the Father and Jesus’ reply: Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me Philip?  Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. (p.57)

56. The news of Christ—his life, death and resurrection —is not mythical narrative revealed in the head of a prophet and transcribed in books called Gospels. It was a phenomenon of time and space; it was an event of history. At its heart, Christianity concerns the public, verifiable life story of the man Jesus, the man who claimed personally to reveal God and of whom God has ‘given assurance’ to use Paul’s words , by raising him from the dead. (p.59)

57. Christianity is potentially vulnerable to critical enquiry precisely because its main claims are verifiable. (p.61)

58. The fact that Christianity is so potentially vulnerable to scholarship and yet is still believed by so many professional scholars is not without significance. The openness of Christianity to rigorous scrutiny is in my opinion, one of the most exciting things about it. I want a faith that can be tested. (p.62)

59. …my aim here is not to ‘prove’ the Christian claim at all. …Rather it is intended to demonstrate that of all the great religious claims in the world the Christian one is the most easily and widely testable. (p.63)

60. First the language of these documents is not some strange tongue which on one understands any more. It is called Koine Greek and it is a very simple and widely understood language. (p. 64)

61. Secondly, the age of the documentary evidence is impressive..the earliest manuscript copies of the Gospels are dated around 200 A.D. , only 120 years or so after they were written.  (p.64)

62. Thirdly the volume of copies we possess is overwhelming…for the Gospels alone historians have over 2000 manuscript copies with which to work. (p.65)

63. Fourthly the stability of the copying process is very clear. Comparing copies of the Gospels produced in 600 A.D. with those copied in 200 A.D. we are able to confirm the high accuracy of the copying process. (p.65)

64. The broad outline of Jesus’ life is confirmed by several passing references to him in non- Christian writings …three from Roman authors (Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny) and four from Jewish pens (twice each in Josephus and the Talmud). (p.65)

65. ..equally impressive is the fact that the original time of writing was very close to the events themselves. The first Gospel was probably written in the mid-60’s A.D., just 30 or so years after Jesus’ death. (p.66)

66. Most New Testament scholars discern behind the Gospels at least five different sources, each composed prior to the Gospels themselves…the picture which emerges is strikingly similar across the sources. (p.67)

67. The incidental historical accuracy of the Gospels is also important. Much of what the Gospels say in passing about eg architecture or politics can be quite often confirmed by modern archaeological and literary analysis eg the recent discovery of the Pontius Pilate inscription.

68. The claim of the resurrection itself must be admitted provisionally as evidence. (p.69)

69.  The veracity of the empty tomb is generally conceded. The body of Jesus was never produced to counter the claim.  (p.69)

70. The first witnesses to the resurrection were women. Highly unlikely to be made up given t that in this period a woman’s testimony was regarded as spurious and carried little legal weight. (p.70)

71. The few small divergences between the four gospels tell you the witnesses have not simply copied each other’s stories. (p.70)

72. ..the most compelling line of verification for the resurrection of Jesus is the transformation of Jesus’ followers…it is one thing to die for an ideology you simply believe to be true…but it is another thing tod die for a claim ..you know to be a lie. (p.70)

73. If the historical evidence points decisively in the direction of Jesus’ resurrection, our belief in a the existence of a powerful Creator gets us philosophically ‘over the line’ or ‘into the back of the net’ as it were! (p.72)

74. The intention here is not to ‘prove’ the Christian faith…but to set our briefly a number of significant lines of verification open to anyone who wants to explore the truthfulness of Christianity.  (p.72)