Richard Dawkins' Atheist Summer Camp

When Christian parents bring their children to Christian summer camps, it is considered brainwashing, cruel and abusive. Yet, when Atheists bring kids to Atheist summer camps, it's A-OK...

...am I the only person who smells the double standard here?

There’ll be no tent for God at Camp Dawkins
Britain’s most prominent non-believer is backing its first atheist summer camp for children.
by Lois Rogers

WHEN schoolchildren break up for their summer holidays at the end of next month, India Jago, aged 12, and her brother Peter, 11, will be taking a vacation with a twist.

While their friends jet off to Spain or the Greek islands, the siblings will be hunting for imaginary unicorns in Somerset, while learning about moral philosophy. The Jagos, from Basingstoke, Hampshire, are among 24 children who will be taking part in Britain’s first summer camp for atheists.

The five-day retreat is being subsidised by Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion, and is intended to provide an alternative to faith-based summer camps normally run by the Scouts and Christian groups.

Crispian Jago, an IT consultant, is hoping the experience will enrich his two children.

“I’m very keen on not indoctrinating them with religion or creeds,” he said this weekend. “I would rather equip them with the tools to learn how to think, not what to think.”

While afternoons at the camp will involve familiar activities such as canoeing and swimming, the youngsters’ mornings will be spent debunking supernatural phenomena such as the formation of crop circles and telepathy. Even Uri Geller’s apparent ability to bend spoons with his mind will come under scrutiny.

The emphasis on critical thinking is epitomised by a test called the Invisible Unicorn Challenge. Children will be told by camp leaders that the area around their tents is inhabited by two unicorns. The activities of these creatures, of which there will be no physical evidence, will be regularly discussed by organisers, yet the children will be asked to prove that the unicorns do not exist. Anyone who manages to prove this will win a £10 note - which features an image of Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary theory - signed by Dawkins, a former professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford University.

“The unicorns are not necessarily a metaphor for God, they are to show kids that you can’t prove a negative,” said Saman-tha Stein, who is leading next month’s camp at the Mill on the Brue outdoor activity centre close to Bruton, Somerset.

“We are not trying to bash religion, but it encourages people to believe in a lot of things for which there is no evidence.”

Stein, 23, a postgraduate psychology student from London, was inspired to work at an atheist summer camp in America after reading The God Delusion, the bestselling book that sealed Dawkins’s reputation as Britain’s most prominent non-believer. Stein is now helping to bring the US concept, called Camp Quest, to Britain as an alternative to faith-based children’s retreats.

The Scout Association, which has 500,000 members who collectively spend 2m nights camping out each year, is Britain’s biggest organiser of children’s camps. All new Scouts - whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or from another religious background - are required to pledge to do their “duty” to their god or faith. Atheism, however, is not accounted for in this induction oath.

Christian organisations that run summer camps include the Church Pastoral Aid Society, an evangelical group, which operates 100 schemes attended by about 9,000 children.

Camp Quest was founded in America, where Bible classes and Christian retreats are widespread, by Edwin Kagin, an atheist lawyer from Kentucky.

Since launching in 1996, Camp Quest operates at six different US sites, with a new camp due to open in Florida at Christmas.

Amanda Metskas is currently supervising 71 children at a Camp Quest project in Clarkesville, Ohio. Her classes include a session called Socrates Cafe, which debates issues such as definitions of knowledge, art and justice. “We teach them that even people like Sir David Attenborough are religious sceptics,” said Metskas.

Kagin, 68, the son of a church minister, will be visiting the camp in Somerset next month.“Richard Dawkins has made a contribution towards the setting up of the camp in England, but I think now the idea has a momentum of its own,” he said.

A week-long stay at the Mill on the Brue Activity Centre normally costs more than £500, but parents who have booked their children on the Camp Quest package are paying £275. Next year Stein hopes to run atheist camps at Easter and during school half-term breaks.

Additional reporting: Philip Connolly

Thoughts on the Ongoing "Pride Week"

"Pride Week" started downtown Toronto just yesterday. The event had been advertised on the news throughout the whole week prior to that, and had been given extensive coverage last night when the "Pride parade" took off with all its flamboyancy.

What really makes me wonder about these pride parades is this: Why do those in the gay and lesbian community want to flaunt themselves so much? They already have the rights and the privileges that they want here, and nobody is persecuting them or spreading hate and homophobia. For some reason, they just have to make a big deal out of their sexuality and flaunt it in public for the whole world to see. It just seems so excessive.

Oh well. I guess the natural man is simply inclined to this kind of behaviour. I'm not trying to advocate taking away the rights of gays and lesbians, but I certainly would not condone this kind of superfluous and unnecessary display being made in public. I would prefer it if these kinds of displays didn't take place, but as long as we are in this world , we will just have to deal with its sinful tendencies and strive not to conform ourselves to its pattern. (Romans 12:2).

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
(Romans 8:6-8)

On the James White vs. Shamsi Ali Debate

Yesterday, Alpha & Omega Ministries aired a live broadcast of the debate between Dr. James White and Imam Shamsi Ali on the Bible and the Qur'an. Listening to Imam Shamsi Ali repeat many of the generic Islamic arguments against the Bible, I realized that he wasn't really offering much that was new on the table. Half of the time, I find that he pulls out quite a bit of smokescreens and misconceptions on the Bible.

It is also telling that he apparently lacks knowledge on textual criticism, and confuses translations with texts; a common misconception repeated by many Muslims including, notably, the late Ahmed Deedat. Plus there is the repetition of old and tired arguments such as the Qur'an containing "scientific miracles," and the Trinity being based off of Pagan copycat myths.

However, lest anybody think that I am merely giving a biased observation of the debate, here is a video of the Q&A and Closing Statements of the debate. Did James White really demolish the Islamic position regarding the Bible and the Qur'an, or did Shamsi Ali prove that the Biblical texts are unreliable? You be the judge.

Oh, and before I forget, Dr. James White appeared on the broadcast of Iron Sharpens Iron today, and gave his observation and opinion on yesterday's debate as well. For anybody who is interested, here is the audio of the interview. Also, see Wired 4 Truth on yet another take on the debate by another brother in Christ.

One last thing: I noticed towards the end of the debate that Shamsi Ali gave Dr. White a book entitled What Does Jesus Really Say? I did a Google search on that book and found an online copy of the book. The book appears to be compendium of all the standard fare arguments used by Muslims. I would like to note that Answering Islam already has a rebuttal to the aforementioned book. Nevertheless, anybody who is interested in Islamic apologetics ought to check it out, as it does seem quite interesting.

UPDATE (July 01, 2009)
Alpha and Omega ministries has put up the opening statements from the debate as well. Click here to view them. You can see the great disparity between the presentation of James White and that of Shamsi Ali.

Six New Books

• Nelson's NKJV Study Bible
  
• John MacArthur - A Tale of Two Sons
  
• Josh McDowell - Evidence for Christianity
  
• Josh and Sean McDowell - Evidence for the Resurrection
• John Piper - What Jesus Demands from the World
  
• Lee Strobel - The Case for the Real Jesus
  

Excerpts from Jaroslav Pelikan

Yesterday, I got my hands on a library copy of Jaroslav Pelikan's The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600). Though I'm only up to page 116 of the book at the time this blog post has been written, I already found some really interesting insights on ante-Nicene history from this book, which I would like to share in this blog post.

On the Eucharist:

...one of the most widespread calumnies against the Christians was the charge, “most impious and barbarous of all, that we eat human flesh” or “loaves steeped with blood.” The basis of this accusation was the language used by Christians about the Eucharist, for they seem to have spoken about the presence of the body and blood of Christ so realistically as to suggest a literal cannibalism. In the midst of rather meager and ambiguous evidence about the doctrine of the real presence in the second and third centuries and well beyond that period, these slanders would seem to be an important source of information in support of the existence of such a doctrine; but it is also important to note that the fathers, in defending themselves, did not elaborate a doctrine of the real presence. [p. 28]

On the antiquity of orthodoxy and heresy:

Some heresies seem to have retained the conceptual framework and the language of an earlier period, after the development of doctrine had rendered these obsolete; the term “fullness [πλήρωμα],” which came as close as any word to being a technical Christological term in the epistles of the New Testament bearing the name of Paul, was vitiated by its association with the Gnosticism of Valentinus, whose use of it, Irenaeus charged, “strives…to adapt the good terms of revelation to [its] own wicked inventions” and managed to discredit the term despite its prominence in the New Testament. Yet the same Irenaeus, unswervingly orthodox though he was, had, at another point, failed to anticipate the direction that the development of doctrine would take. For him, a millennial understanding of the kingdom of god was a hallmark of orthodoxy, but such an understanding soon became an aberration from the soundness of “apostolic tradition”.

Nevertheless, this discovery that heresy may be a result of poor timing has come only as a consequence of modern historical research: the primitive church was not characterized by an explicit unity of doctrine; therefore heresy could sometimes claim greater antiquity than orthodoxy. [p. 70]

On Charismatic gifts:

It would be useful to investigate how long visions, dreams, and apocalypses continued in the church, along with the claim to speak on behalf of the Holy Spirit, and how all of this died out among the laity but continued among the clergy, and especially among the monks. Celsus attested to the presence of “prophets” in Palestine and Phoenicia. Justin Martyr based his case against Judaism partly on the claim that “among us until now there are prophetic charismata,” while they had died out among the Jews; and Irenaeus described the many brethren in the church of his day who had these charismata, speaking in tongues by the Spirit, bringing out the secretes of men’s hearts and the mysteries of God. [p. 99]

More critical than Montanism’s theory of the role of the Spirit in the Trinity was its conception of the role of the Spirit in the church, and it was at this point that the principal doctrinal battle was joined. Montanism laid claim to supernatural inspiration by the Holy Spirit as the source of its prophecy, and it pointed to the moral decline of the church as the main reason for its having lost this power of the Spirit. Most orthodox writers in the second and even in the third century maintained that such inspiration by the Holy Spirit was not only possible, but present and active in the church. In meeting the challenge of Montanism, they could not, for the most part, take the approach that the age of supernatural inspiration had passed. Among the earliest critics of Montanism, there was no effort to discredit the supernatural character of the new prophecy. Instead, these critics affirmed that the ecstatic seizures of the Montanists were indeed supernatural in origin, but claimed that the supernatural involved was not the Holy Spirit of God but demonic spirits. Yet the decline of genuine prophecy and of the extraordinary functioning of the Spirit among the ranks of the catholic church tended to reduce the effectiveness of this charge that the prophecy of the Montanists was a pseudoprophecy because its supernatural source was demonic.

There was another way to meet the doctrinal implications of the Montanist challenge, and in the long run that was the way orthodoxy took. The first articulate spokesman of this viewpoint of whom there is record was Hippolytus of Rome, a contemporary of Tertullian. Apparently he recognized that the weakness which Montanism had discovered in the church lay in the church’s concept of a continuing prophecy. This concept was of a piece with a vivid eschatology; for apocalyptic has always, as suggested by its very name, which means “revelatory,” brought with it the notion of supplementary revelation, by which, among other things, the apocalypticist is convinced that the end has truly come. More consistently than most of the anti-Montanist writers were willing to do, Hippolytus subjected to question the very foundations of the Montanist movement. He was franker than most of his contemporaries in admitting that the church was not necessarily living in the last times, and in opposition to Montanism he defended the process by which the church was beginning to reconcile itself to the delay of the Lord’s second coming. As he pushed the time of the second coming into the future, so he pushed the time of the prophecy into the past. It had ended with the apostle John, whose Apocalypse Hippolytus maintained was the last valid prophecy to have come from the Holy Spirit. And though John was entitled to claim the inspiration of the Spirit for his prophetic work, later so-called prophets had no such right. [p. 105-106]

On Apostolic tradition:

Clearly it is an anachronism to superimpose upon the discussion of the second and third centuries categories derived from the controversies over the relation of Scripture and tradition in the sixteenth century, for “in the ante-Nicene Church…there was no notion of sola Scriptura, but neither was there a doctrine of traditio sola.” At the same time, it is essential to note that doctrinal, liturgical, and exegetical material of quite different sorts was all lumped under the term “tradition,” from the Christological interpretation of specific passages in the Old Testament to a chiliastic interpretation of the apocalyptic vision; and the process of accretion continued far beyond the ante-Nicene era. Some of the most important issues in the theological interpretation of doctrinal development have been raised by disputes over the content and the authority of apostolic tradition as a source of Christian doctrine and over the relation of this tradition to other norms of apostolicity. [p. 115]

(Note: Citations from patristic sources have been omitted.)

Oecumenius - Justification by Faith

Sometime earlier this week, I ran across a couple of quotes on the Puritan Board by a post-Nicene father by the name of Oecumenius. I'm not familiar with this particular figure, but according to the person who originally posted the quotes, Oecumenius was a 6th century Greek layman who wrote commentaries on Acts, the epistles, and on Revelation.

The following two quotes are interesting as they seen to have a bearing on the historical development of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. This first quote is a commentary on Romans 3:24-26. Here, Oecumenius writes:

Wherefore all that believe in Christ are freely justified, bringing their faith only with them. [1]

Greek text: Διὸ πάντες πιστεύσαντες εἰς Χριστὸν δωρεὰν δικαιοῦνται, τὸ πιστεύειν μόνον συνεισάγοντες [2]

This second quote presented here from Oecumenius is a commentary on James 2:23, wherein he writes:

Abraham is the image of someone who is justified by faith alone, since what he believed was credited to him as righteousness. But he is also approved because of his works, since he offered up his son Isaac on the altar. Of course he did not do this work by itself; in doing it, he remained firmly anchored in his faith, believing that through Isaac his seed would be multiplied until it was as numerous as the stars. [3]

Greek text: Της μὲν ἐκ μόνης πίστεως δικαιώσεως εἰκὼν ἦν Ἀβραὰμ, ὅτε πιστεύσας ἐλογίσθη αὐτοῦ εἷς δικαιοσύνην, τῆς δὲ ἔξ ἔργων, ὅτε τὸν υἱον ἀνενέγκας ἐπὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον. Καὶ γὰρ οὐ μόνον τὸ ἔργον ἐποίει, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς πίστεως οὐκ ἀπέστη, ὅτι ἐν Ἰσαὰκ μέλλει τὸ σπέρμα αὐτοῦ πληθύνειν ὡς τὰ ἄστρα [4]

There seems to be that one little caveat where he says "But he is also approved because of his works, since he offered up his son Isaac on the altar," though this can quite easily be explained by the proceeding sentence which explain that his works are the result of his faith.

In any case, since I'm not well acquainted with this particular church father and his writings, I don't have much else to add to this. I would like to see the rest of what Oecumenius has written, so that I may be able to gain a better idea of this person's beliefs and how they shape the doctrine of Justification by faith.

End Notes
1. Beveridge, William. Ecclesia Anglicana Ecclesia Catholica, 3rd edition. Oxford: University Press, 1847. p. 297.
2. Oecumenius. Pauli Epistola Ad Romanos. Caput V, PG 118:383.
3. Bray, Gerald. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament, Vol. XI, James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000. p. 33.
4. Oecumenius. Jacobi Apostoli Epistola Catholica. Caput IV, PG 119:481.

Bibleworks 8

Ca.vini.st has recently announced that they're giving away 2 copies of Bibleworks 8 as a prize. Of course, the chances are pretty slim that I'm gonna win this thing (lol), but hey, it can't hurt to try, right?

Anyway, if anybody is interested, the giveaway contest may be viewed here. If you feel like joining, then good luck too.