Closing your mind to theism…

Seeing people turn away from God to the nothing is heartbreaking, if for no other reason, than for the one Lewis portrays here.

When the great moment came and the beast spoke, [uncle Andrew] missed the whole point for a rather interesting reason. When the lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song. And he had disliked the song very much. It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel.

Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion (“only a lion,” as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make himself believe that it wasn’t singing and never had been singing—only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world.

“Of course it can’t really have been singing,” he thought, “I must have imagined it. I’ve been letting my nerves get out of order. Who ever heard of a lion singing?” And the longer and more beautifully the lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe that he could hear nothing but roaring.

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed [emphasis added]. Uncle Andrew did. He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song. Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the lion spoke and said, “Narnia awake,” he didn’t hear any words: he heard only a snarl. And when the beasts spoke in answer, he heard only barkings, growlings, bayings, and howlings. — C. S. Lewis in The Magician’s Nephew (Collier Books, 1970), pp.125-126.

Does Religion always cause Wars?

If you read some bloggers and their comments, you might begin to think that religions are the sole cause of war. Miec Pearse, in The Gods of War addresses this issue thoroughly and intelligently. I don’t know that I’ve ever read one more acquainted with world history than Pearse.  He begins chapter three with these words:

Although much of the history of Christian churches is disgraceful in that their creeds have been stained by bloodshed and spread by violence, the churches did not begin that way. For the first three centuries of its life, the faith of the Prince of Peace was spread entirely by pacific means, usually in the face of violent persecution.
~Meic Pearse in The Gods of War, Intervarsity Press, 2007. p. 58.

Get the book and take a read. You’ll find it refreshingly enlightening — especially if you’ve spent any time reading some of the anti-religious web sites or watching some of the pop-corn cable news.

The Saddest Part of Ben Stein’s Expelled…

Before you get too excited about Ben Stein’s movie, Expelled, take a read of the most popular news article on Yahoo! today.

It’s a good read, but for the theist, it’s pretty depressing. It points out that there are many in academia who are antagonistic toward the movie — or better said, toward a Designer. And the author, Bozell, makes it clear that abandoning the idea of the existence of the Divine has contributed to horrendous atrocities as recently as the last century.

But the saddest part, to me, was not in the text of the article. No — the sad part, in my mind, is that with over 500 people voting on whether to recommend this well-written pro-creation article, it only gets three of five stars. This rating doesn’t come from Yahoo! France. Or from Yahoo! China. It comes from the American version of Yahoo! News.

It would seem that Americans don’t really believe in the free exchange of ideas. Worse yet, it seems that Americans don’t want to hear that there may be a Creator and he may have an interest in their lives.

That, in my opinion, is the saddest part of Ben Stein’s Expelled.