back to basics

A couple of weeks ago the Imperial College Christian Union had their annual outreach week. After much thought and deliberation I decided to give them a chance - I went to one of their meetings. I guess what caught my interest was that they were hosting the meetings in collaboration with All Souls, an evangelical church I'd heard good things about. Although I didn't go back, I never regretted going to their first meeting, it was actually really interesting.

The talk was titled Dawkins vs Jesus, is God a delusion?, which is hardly a very original title or topic, yet it was made somewhat original due to its setting. There we were, fifty or so university students, not students from any old university either - from Imperial College, the university of science geeks. It was therefore fitting that the speaker recently graduated from the sciences. His approach was to a large extent dictated by the audience - scientific, speaking about anthropic reasons for accepting God's existence, along lines similar to the likes of John Polkinghorne.

One of the points mentioned was that an atheist has no moral foot hold, nothing to base his morality on. Naturally this sort of remark provokes most reasonable people. One of the guys at my table pointed out that few people take atheistic claims to their extreme, also pointing out that most christians don't actually base their morality on solid ground either. What he said really made me think, because it is so true. One of the reasons for the multitude of christian denominations we have today, is the fact that you can make the Bible say almost anything you want. "so you base your morality on the Bible? the whole Bible?" he asked. The Christians at my table then began pointing out that society changes, and that one must consider the different genres of the Bible, thereby not placing much faith in the histicity of the book of Genesis etc...

His polite, yet still slightly mocking tone of voice when expressing his doubts about christians acutally basing their morality on the Bible has stuck with me - perhaps because what he said is so true. In fact, I'm sure his morals are in fact quite similar to mine - why then highlight our differences. C.S. Lewis does the exact opposite in Mere Christianity, arguing that it is through the universality of morals that God's existence becomes apparent. Where could this moralty, inherant to humanity across generations and civilizations, have come from, if not from the designer of the human machine himself?

I find myself tired of the intrigues and intricacies of religion, it is in mere christianity that beauty and power lies; may I never forget.