The Path of Brighteousness.

Richard Dawkins coined the term "bright"
as a noun to describe those people who have
a naturalistic world view; perhaps he was
also alluding to "The Enlightenment" as his
source of inspiration, one which denies the
existence of the spiritual.

Brights reading this blog will have already
concluded that I am a "dull" because I don't
buy into the reductionist interpretation of
life.But before any brights verbally lynch me
let me flesh out where I am coming from, I
don't mind being insulted provided you get
your facts right!

As a Christian (and one who works in a
science based field)I have no need necessarily
to deny the naturalistic description of the
Cosmos. After all, all truth is God's truth.
The bright's worldview may be "the truth and
nothing but the truth" but I don't believe
for one minute that it is "the whole truth"!
Nor do I accept that to explain something is
the same as explaining it away. To allude to
CS Lewis, Richard Dawkins and all the other
brights 'describe a city and think they've
described the world!'

In turn I will, no doubt, be called a Creation-
ist and a Christian Fundamentalist. Guilty as
charged. I do believe God created the cosmos so
that would make me a creationist, wouldn't it?
(Although "creationist" has now acquired
connotations of "Young Earth Creationism"
which I do not buy into!) I do believe
in the fundamental doctrines of the Christian
faith so I must be a fundamentalist; which is
what that phrase originally meant in the early
20th Century. However I'm not altogether happy
with some of the baggage both these appellations
now bring in tow. Even before the word "fundament-
alist" became associated with terrorism I was
already more than a little uneasy about the anti-
intellectual connotations it brought with it.

As if this wasn't bad enough "Fundamentalism"
has also since come to require an acceptance
of a Pre-millennialist interpretation of the
Bible. For what it is worth I, and many like
me, are amillennialist. This will seem an
esoteric quibble until one grasps that upon
this millennial [kingdom] question our under-
standing of the nature of The Kingdom of God
turns. Amillennialism as a term is a misnomer
because those who hold to it believe that the
Kingdom of God was realised by Jesus (realised
in the sense of made a reality, albeit yet to
come in all its fulness when Christ returns).
The premillennialists believe that the Kingdom
has yet to come. To cut to the chase this means
that a significant constituency within this
group called 'dispensationlists' have a
particular interpretation of the "End Times"
[which effectively means an interest in
'conspiracy theories'] and an exalted role for
the modern state of Israel which has major
implications for how they interpret the middle
eastern conflict. 'Dispensationalism' has a
disproportionate influence upon the church in
the USA. I do not share their convictions on
these issues and I do share some of Dawkins
reservations about the role religion plays in
fuelling violence; though I believe the issue
is human nature not religion per se (because
people will always find a host of excuses for
first despising and then seeking to destroy
other people): the secular ideologies have
blood on their hands too! Murder is certainly
nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus, because
The Kingdom Jesus founded cannot be advanced by
the bullet or the bomb, indeed such methods are
fundamentally antithetical to its nature.

To conclude; the tele-evangelist Pat Robertson
describes amillennialism as "the end time
apostasy" no less! So I'm not convinced that
the fundamentalists Dawkins despises would
recognise me as one of their own, even if
Dawkins would!

So am I a fundamentalist or not? And am I a bright or a dull?
And are people that easily pigeonholed anyway?

It's a funny old world isn't it?



tagline: Dawkins. Fundamentalism. Reductionism.
Bright. Naturalism. versus. The Bible. Philosophy.
Religion. Science. Pat Robertson. Calendar of Doom.
Evangelical. Evangelicalism. Tele-evangelism.
Tele-evangelist. Creation. Secularism. Dull. New.
Premillennialism. Amillennialism. Postmillennialism. Realised
Millennialism. Christian Counter Culture. Church. State. Israel.
Morality. Grace. Dispensation. Dispensationalism. Theocracy.
Theonomy. Eschatology. Eschatalogical. End Times. Left Behind.
Richard Dawkins. The God Delusion.


postscript for postmillennialism! This theology
suggests that there is to be a glorious 'church
age' establishing the kingdom of God on Earth
after which Jesus will return. In its brashest
form this is also known as "Dominion" or
"Reconstructionist" theology. In my view, these
have a theocratic political agenda which by its
very nature stresses moralism as its driving
force rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
They also stress raw political power as a means
to bring in the kingdom and I suspect that this
too is antithetical to Jesus' Gospel message.