Cultural and Countercultural: Negotiating the Tension

In my last blog post (Why I am Obsessed with Change) we discussed how the gospel is at least in part closely tied to culture in that it came to us in a culturally relevant, contextualized package. In other words, the gospel is packaged in a way that culture can relate to, understand, and connect with. It is designed to adapt, in terms of its expression, to various cultures while its message remains unchanged. Likewise the church that is spawned by the gospel is meant to adapt to culture (1 Cor 9.19-23), at least to a degree.

And those are important words: “at least to a degree.” Cultural influence upon the church, while not only unavoidable but actually necessary, should only go so far. For while the gospel message is designed to be expressed culturally, and cultural relevance is vital to the actually integrity of the gospel, the gospel and the church are also countercultural. In many ways, the gospel is the very antithesis of culture.

For example, culture—especially Western culture—values traits such as pride, individualism, self-sufficiency, strength, self-assertiveness, success, power, and even consumerism. Jesus, however, taught his disciples a very different value system. Instead of pride, it is the poor in spirit, the meek, humble, the pure, the peacemakers who are blessed (Mt 5.3-9). In fact, Jesus described himself as “gentle and humble of heart” (Mt 11.28-30). He was “crucified because of weakness” (2 Cor 13.4) and “became poor that we might become rich” (2 Cor 8.9). Paul had to learn that true strength lies in weakness, for when we are weak, then we are strong (2 Cor 12.5-9).

Instead of self-sufficiency, Christ asks us to surrender to and depend completely on him (Jn 15.5).

Instead of self-assertiveness, Jesus calls us to deny the self (Lk 9.23).

Instead of worldly success, it is the poor who are called (1 Cor 1.26-31; Jas 2.5).

Instead of power and authority, it is those who serve who are first in God’s eyes (Mk 10.41-45).

Instead of the individual, it is the community—one another—that is more important (1 Cor 12; Phil 2.3).

Instead of consumerism (the constant drive to obtain more, to receive, to get, to acquire), it is giving that is exalted in God’s eyes (Lk 12.33; 14.33; Acts 2.42-46; 20.35).

The very essence of the gospel message—that we are broken, helpless sinners in need of salvation through God’s grace, powerless to save ourselves—runs counter to the culture of the world. The world teaches us that we are inherently good, that guilt is an illusion, that we can earn our way into God’s favor through our good works, that we can achieve virtually anything by our own power. So while the gospel is foolishness to the world and those who accept it are looked on as weak (1 Cor 1.18f), “the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (vs.25).

And herein lays the tension between culture and the gospel. While the gospel is meant to be packaged in culturally meaningful ways, and the church must (in fact, cannot help but to) adapt some of its forms and styles to the prevailing culture, it must at the same time remain countercultural. Yet we have not always negotiated this tension well. Too often Christians have surrendered to culture in the very areas where we should be countercultural, while simultaneously refusing to adapt to culture where we ought to adapt. Have we remained, for example, as prideful, individualistic, self-sufficient, and consumeristic as the world, while stubbornly holding onto archaic styles, formats, and methods of doing church and teaching the gospel? Have we isolated us ourselves in our “holy huddles” while simultaneously looking little different in our personal lives? Do we emulate culture where we ought to be countercultural, while at the same time being countercultural where ought to be culturally relevant?

I think these are important questions that every church and every Christian needs to answer. I am not suggesting it is easy to negotiate this tension, but if the church is thrive it is imperative that we do so.

Why I am Obsessed with Change

I recently posted a quote on my Facebook page that called for a need for visionary leadership that "drives beyond our headlights" and looks to the future rather than the present or the past to model how we do church and how we express the gospel. This sparked a dialogue in the comments in which the phrase "obsessed with change" was used. I greatly appreciated this comment because it helped me to realize that, in fact, I am obsessed with change. It even kept me awake and so here I am writing this blog post at 3:00 a.m. when I have to get up early to play a hockey game in the morning. But it's true. I am obsessed with change. I own up to it. I confess it. I admit it. And I stand by it. Here are my reasons why.

First, the changes that I believe need to be made in our churches are not merely about a response to changes in culture. Yes, they are somewhat about culture, and culture has been the spark to a call for change. As our culture dramatically changes, the church is called to change in order to stay contextual and "relevant." Dare I use that dirty word “relevant”? Let's just say, in order to stay meaningful. The gospel first came to us in a very culturally meaningful, contextual package or medium. Jesus, for example, came and lived among us as a fellow human being, incarnating (enfleshing) the message within the culture of humanity—making the message relevant to us (Jn 1.14-18). The gospel was first lived, then spoken, then later written down—but in the common, ordinary language of the day, the koine (common) Greek, which was the rough, spoken language of the common people of that culture so that it could be understood. And when the gospel, as it was being lived out, crossed the boundaries of Jewish culture into the foreign Greek or Gentile culture, it adapted it's styles and forms to the culture, as we see with Paul's practice (1 Cor 9.19-23). The gospel was in every sense contextualized into culture. It adapted to culture.

And so today as we witness and experience perhaps the most dramatic cultural change in Western history, a shift from modern to postmodern, from Christian to post-Christian, and even from post-modern to post-postmodern, the church needs to adapt its expression of the timeless and unchangeable message so that it will be understandable and meaningful to new generations—generations that find our way of "doing church" so foreign that it is not only unattractive, but almost unintelligible. We can’t get the message across if we speak a foreign language.

But it’s not simply about forms and culture and models of doing things. It’s about function. It’s about meaning. For example, millenials or postmoderns or new generations or whatever you want to call them desire a less institutionalized, more relational, organic way of living out the gospel in our communities. They call for a less hierarchal and more participatory form of leadership and ministry. They call for a less consumeristic and more active form of faith. These are not mere forms. These have to do with function, with meaning, with the purpose of the gospel and the church. So here’s the irony. The changes that need to be made in order for us to stay “relevant” in a changing world are changes that will actually make us more Biblical. Postmodernism is actually doing a great service to the church by calling us back to a more Biblical form of the gospel itself.

In fact, here is the real issue, and here is the second reason I am obsessed with change. It really is not just about changing the form or the medium of the message. It is about the message itself. It is not merely our forms that need to change to become more Biblical—it is our message. The church has reduced the message of the gospel down to individual salvation, leaving us unconcerned about the issues of the day that impact our communities. We have seen the gospel as simply getting our personal ticket to heaven punched while we sit in our secluded communities (“church”) isolated from and unconcerned about the culture and community around us. We have lost sight of the full mission and message of the gospel. Younger generations recognize that and they want no part of it. They want to hear a message that is not just about ideas and beliefs and doctrine (as important as these are), but one that is lived out in our neighborhoods and cities and in our world. That is, a message that is as relevant to this life as to the next. And this is the very essence of the incarnation, the gospel lived out in the flesh by each one of us. And they are right. And that is why I am obsessed with change. It is because I am obsessed with the gospel. If we don’t present the gospel in a way that is understandable to a changing culture, they won’t understand it. But more importantly, it won’t even be the gospel.

Kirk or Spock?

I grew up watching Star Trek, and I love the most recent series of Star Trek movies, especially Star Trek Into Darkness. The interaction between Captain Kirk and his Vulcan executive officer Mr. Spock is what makes the show so good. It’s a brilliant portrayal of the conflict between logic and emotion, reason and feeling. Spock is all logic and reason, and if not for his human mother, would make all decisions apart from feelings. It’s not that Spock doesn’t have feelings. On the contrary, Vulcan’s feel more deeply than humans ever could. But like a good Vulcan, he suppresses feelings while approaching everything, including relationships, analytically. He knows the rules and regulations and abides by them at all costs (at least until his human side perks up). Kirk, on the other hand, is driven by instinct. He relies on his heart and trusts his gut feeling, even when it defies logic. Star Trek Into Darkness superbly highlights this dichotomy between logic and emotion. The conflict between reason and emotion is not merely the stuff of science fiction, however. It is a constant battle among Christians as well. In fact, it is a battle we all fight within our own selves.

Over the years I have sat in on numerous Bible studies in which the subject of emotions arises (and sometimes the emotions themselves arise). Invariably the discussion tends to downplay, if not denigrate, feelings as unreliable, untrustworthy, short-lived, and shallow, while reason, logic, and knowledge are lifted up as an objective and trustworthy means of knowing. Reason and emotions are always played against each other. But is this dichotomy Biblical? Is it even reasonable?

First, I think it will help to define our terms. What exactly are feelings, anyway? I suggest that the words “feelings” and “emotions” are too broad to be of much use. Perhaps getting specific will change our perspective. When we say we cannot trust feelings, or that feelings are shallow and short-lived, what feelings do we mean? Joy? Anger? Gratitude? Compassion? What about passion, contentment, peace, wonder, assurance, confidence, intrigue, curiosity, hatred, anxiety, distress, frustration, fear,  grief, agony, sympathy, tenderness, affection, or fondness? These are all feelings.

Are you beginning to see the problem? To simply negate feelings as irrelevant to faith is far too simplistic. For example, isn’t the feeling of gratitude at least a partial basis for our faith response (Lk 17.11-19; 1 Jn 4.19)? While gratitude will not give me faith to begin with, certainly it ought to be a driving force behind my faith, as that which moves me to obey for example—which brings me to the word emotion, and to the real issue.

The root word for emotion is “motion,” or “move.” Emotions are what move us. What moves a person to fight for justice, for example? Is it a purely intellectual belief (reason) that sees injustice as harmful? Or is it a feeling that something is unfair? What caused Jesus to turn the tables over in the temple and chase out the money changers? Was it not the anger he felt over the injustices that were being perpetrated on the poor? Was it logic or compassion that caused Jesus to go to the cross?

We make a false dichotomy when we set emotion against reason. Reason is vital to our faith, and that’s why Paul “reasoned from the scriptures” to persuade Jews that Jesus was the Christ (Acts 17.2; 18.19). Not everyone convinced by reason, however, is moved to act. There were those, for example, who had come to intellectually believe that Jesus was the Christ, but who were not moved to obey (Jn 8.30-31; 12.42). Perhaps reason without feeling is like faith without works, being dead (Jas 2.14-26).

Certainly feelings apart from truth and reason can leave us misguided. But that does not negate feelings as essential to our faith. After all, isn’t “the fear of the Lord the beginning of wisdom” (Ps 111.10) and doesn’t it “endure forever” (Ps 19.9)? Aren’t we to grieve over our sin (Mt 5.3), even to hate it like Jesus did (Heb 1.9)?

Jesus, in fact, was often moved by feelings. When he felt compassion for the crowds he was moved to heal them (Mt 14.13). He wept at Lazarus’ tomb (Jn 11.36).  He felt great distress over the pending cross (Lk 12.50) and agonized in the garden to the point of sweating blood (Lk 22.44). Were these feelings shallow and untrustworthy?

On the other hand, is reason more “trustworthy” than emotion? Human reason is intermixed with our human fallenness with all of its pride, selfishness, and mixed motives (cf. Lk 20.5,14). That’s why Paul said “Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies” (1 Cor 8.1).We are not robots. Not even Spock. The truth is that it is impossible for us to separate our reason from our feelings. None of us is perfectly unbiased and objective. And even when we do reason correctly, reason alone will not move us unless it is accompanied with feelings like compassion, gratitude, love, and joy. It was “for the joy set before him Jesus endured the cross” (Heb 12.2). So while reason is vitally important, let’s be careful we don’t make an idol out of reason.

Jesus said you must “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” (Lk 10.27). Love demands that our hearts and minds be equally engaged. Reason and emotion may have different functions, but neither is more important than the other. On the contrary, like Kirk and Spock, they complement and complete each other.

So where does emotional expression come in, especially during worship? I’ll save that for my next blog.

Learning the Secret

For the past four or five weeks a friend and I have been reading together through Paul's letter to the Philippians. We finished it this morning, and we were both equally struck by how much practical value in packed into this short little book and how it speaks into our lives, especially in regard to our mindset. When it comes to positive thinking, Zig Ziglar has nothing on Paul, who writes this letter from a prison cell in Rome and yet the constant theme throughout the letter is rejoice, be content, think on good things. This letter gives new meaning to the trite phrase we often use, "It's all good." For Paul, it truly was "all good."

Whether it was enemies preaching the gospel with ulterior motives (1:12-20), the uncertainty of his immediate future destiny (to live or die, remain in prison or be released, 1.21-26; 2.17), his own past failings or regrets (3.12-14), or experiencing either poverty or abundance (4.10-14), to Paul it was truly "all good." "For," he said, "I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am...the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need" (4.11-12).

Throughout the letter Paul admonishes his readers to rejoice. He speaks of joy or rejoicing no less than ten times in this short letter. He tells his readers to "do all things without grumbling or disputing" (2.18). He urges us to unselfishly consider others as more important than ourselves, just as Christ did (2.1-8), to be anxious about nothing, but be filled with thanksgiving (4.6), and to dwell on the things that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, excellent, and praise-worthy (4.8). If that is not positive thinking, I don't what is.

Yet how often do we find ourselves discontent, grumbling, grouchy, and negative? We complain about the government, we complain about the evil in the world, we complain about how slow the church is to change (I'm looking in the mirror on that one), we complain about upper-level management at work, we complain that the weather is too hot or too cold or too rainy or too dry. The list goes on and on. Not that we should stick our heads in the sand and pretend nothing needs fixing. But the old saying goes, we are either part of the solution or part of the problem.

It really comes down to perspective. The glass is either half empty or half full. To Paul, the glass was not only half full, but actually all the way full and overflowing, even when it appeared nearly empty (4.10-14). How could he be so positive and joyful no matter the circumstance? It was a secret, he said, and he had learned what that secret was (4.12). But he doesn't keep it a secret. The secret is Christ: "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me" (4.13). For Paul, to live was Christ (1.21), and that was the secret. Jesus changes everything. He is the secret to having a joyful, happy life. He is the secret to being positive. He is the secret to seeing the beauty and blessings of life even in the most difficult of circumstances. Jesus makes it "all good" so that in him we can rejoice always.

Do I Live a Christ-Centered Life?

If you were to divide your Christian growth into the following four stages, where do you think you might fall along this spiritual continuum: Exploring Christ -- Growing in Christ -- Close to Christ -- Christ-Centered?

Of course, it might be difficult to answer this question without knowing something about each of those stages--which is where the book Move: What 1,000 Churches Reveal About Spiritual Growth, by Greg L. Hawkins and Cally Parkinson (2011, Willow Creek Assn) comes in. This landmark book is a synopsis of the findings of the REVEAL Spiritual Life Survey first conducted by Willow Creek Community Church on themselves in 2004, then over the next six years on 250,000+ people in more than 1000 churches. The findings and analysis of this in-depth survey offer tremendous insight into how a church can help its people become devoted followers of Christ--surely a main goal of every church, right? Every church leader or ministry leader who wants to help people move along that continuum will find many helpful tools in Move.

Here, however, I simply want to talk about the the final stage of growth the authors identified as "Christ-Centered." Based on the survey, this is the most mature stage of a follower of Jesus. This is the goal, the pinnacle, of the Christian life. One who is Christ-Centered can say with the apostle Paul: "I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me" (Galatians 2.20). A Christ-Centered person can say, "For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21). At this stage we have truly "become conformed to the image of His Son" (Rom 8.29). Paul seemed to have a lot to say about being Christ-Centered. Better yet, he has a lot to say about Christ, period, no doubt as a reflection of his Christ-Centeredness.

In fact, I believe Paul talked more about becoming like Christ and centered on Christ than he did about going to heaven to be with Christ. Certainly the latter is part of the hope of a Christian (Phil 3.20; 2 Cor 5.8). But both Jesus and his apostles had far more to say about this life than the next. Being a Christian is about becoming Christ-Centered and Christ-Like. There was a time--perhaps in those earlier stages of growth--when I would say things like "It's not about the here and now, but the there and then," meaning that the Christian life is really about life in heaven as opposed to life on earth. Now I might tend to reverse that saying. In a sense, it's all about the here and now. Don't get me wrong. I know that this life is a mere breath compared to eternity (2 Cor 4.16-18). But being a Christian is not simply about waiting around for the hereafter while believing our ticket is punched for heaven. On the contrary, it's about what we are doing and becoming right now. If I don't wish to completely center my life on Christ now, why would I want to be with him in eternity? The reason Paul could say "...to die is gain" is because he could say "to live is Christ."

Infinite God or Infinite Regress: Dawkins' Main (or Only) Argument

As I mentioned last time, Richard Dawkins’ main argument in The God Delusion against the “probability of the existence of God” comes in chapter four of his book, which mostly has to do with his rejection of the argument from Intelligent Design. Dawkins bases his rejection on just one argument, which is this: If the complexity of this universe demands an intelligent designer, such a designer would have to be even more complex than the universe he designed, and so would likewise require a designer. To put it simply, “Who created God?” Dawkins asserts that Intelligent Design or theism does not answer the question of what or who caused order, but simply removes it to another place, time, or realm:

“Seen clearly, intelligent design will turn out to be a redoubling of the problem. Once again, this is because the designer himself (/herself/itself) immediately raises the bigger problem of his own origin. Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as highly improbable as a Dutchman’s Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman’s Pipe. Far from terminating the vicious regress, God aggravates it with a vengeance.” (120)

“Indeed, design is not a real alternative at all because it raises an even bigger problem than it solves: who designed the designer?” (121)

This is called the “infinite regression argument,” which refers to the need to regress backward to an infinite number of designers of the designer. In other words, if something as complex as the human brain points to an intelligent Designer, than the Designer must be even more complex, which points to another Designer, ad infinitum. As silly and as unsophisticated as this argument may seem, it is Dawkins’ main, and really only, argument against the existence of God, “indeed the premise of the whole discussion we are having” (143).

Ironically, however, it is Dawkins’ atheism that results in the infinite regression, while theism is the only way out. For example, unable to explain the origin of the universe, Dawkins resorts to multiple universes (“multiverses”). Since he fully admits that there are no laws or principles known in our universe that could account for the origin of order out of disorder or everything out of nothing, he is forced to speculate that our universe sort of inherited the order and design from other universes that came before ours. The problem is, however, that this “oscillating universe” theory has not only been largely abandoned by cosmologists, but any prior universe would have the same problem—where did that original ordering principle (and that universe) come from? You either have to finally stop and say this series of universes had a beginning point, or you are stuck with the infinite regress. 

The very concept of an infinite number of oscillating universes however, is impossible, because the actual existence of an infinite series of anything is impossible. It would be like trying to count to infinity. Similarly, it is impossible to pass through an eternity of time, for “if an infinite number of days existed before today, today would never come because one can never traverse the infinite” (William Lane Craig). Therefore, there cannot be a beginningless series of events. This is precisely why the universe had to have a beginning. But that gets us to the question of what caused it. Where did it come from?

In the end, Dawkins just gives it all over to “luck.” He states that the anthropic principle (“We are here, so we must have got here somehow”) “entitles us to postulate more luck than our limited human intuition is comfortable with.” In other words, “We don’t know how the universe began and cannot even postulate it, but we are here, so maybe it was just luck even though we don’t believe in luck.” Now there’s a scientific statement for you!  Yet he “hopes” that a solution will be found. Sounds an awful lot like faith. But, unlike Biblical faith, his is a faith and hope in the impossible, and with neither evidence nor even a plausible theory.

The Intelligent Design argument, on the other hand, does not rely on an infinite regression. On the contrary, it is the only way out of it. All scientists now agree that the universe is not eternal, but had a beginning. And anything that has a beginning has a cause. So the universe must have had a cause. A “first cause” is necessary, for how could absolute nothingness have created everything? That first cause must transcend the material/physical realm, it must have the ability to create complex order out of disorder and everything out of nothing, and it must be eternal.  Whatever caused time/space/matter/energy cannot be another inanimate, impersonal, materialistic entity, as that would force us back into an infinite regress and thus an impossibility. The only possible explanation for a “First cause” is an eternal, intelligent, transcendent, personal Creator—which is exactly what the Bible teaches: “In the beginning, God….”  And this God is not an infinite regress, he is simply infinite.

Dawkins’ Faith in Blind Luck (or Blind Faith in Dumb Luck)

Richard Dawkins’ strongest argument against the probability of God (as if God’s existence were based on a probability) comes in chapter 4 of his book The God Delusion. He himself states of this chapter that it is the “central argument of my book”  (157) and concludes at the end the chapter “God almost certainly does not exist” (158). So one might expect some strong arguments in Chapter 4. If so, you’d be either disappointed or pleasantly surprised, depending on your point of view. This chapter also reveals that Dawkins’ atheism is really a matter of faith rather than science, and, in fact, that he has a stronger faith and hope than most theists. His, in fact, is a blind faith in luck.

Chance or Natural Selection? Before developing his arguments against God’s existence, Dawkins firsts attempts to refute the Creationist argument that belief in atheistic evolution is a belief in mere chance or luck to explain the complex design we see in the universe. According to Dawkins, Creationist and Intelligent Design proponents see only two alternatives for the origins and development of life: “chance” or “Intelligent Design.” Since theists see it as counterintuitive to attribute highly complex order and design to mere random chance, there must have been a Designer.  Dawkins counters that the two mutually exclusive alternatives, however, are not “chance” and “design,” but rather “Natural Selection” and “design.” Natural Selection (NS), not chance, is the mechanism for creating order out of disorder. Natural Selection is the metaphorical “crane” that directs the process.

But does natural selection remove all random chance from the equation. First, Dawkins himself fully admits that NS is only applicable to living systems. It does not apply to the origin of life to begin with, nor to the order we see in physics and cosmology (e.g., Why is the universe controlled by ordered laws?). I’ll deal with the very important issue of origins and cosmology later. For now, Dawkins’ faith in Natural Selection as the mechanism that makes the improbable occurrence of highly complex systems probable, is something to be admired (he has amazing faith in this “solution of stunning elegance and power” 121). But Dawkins’ argument has at least one major fault. Dawkins believes that NS is the mechanism by which new, complex systems arise.  He states, in essence, that NS is the only solution because NS is a cumulative process, which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces (e.g., improving the vertebrate eye, or perhaps the hand bones being mutated to act more like the prototype of a wing). “Each of the small pieces is slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so. When large numbers of these slightly improbable events are stacked up in a series, the end product of the accumulation is very very improbable indeed, improbable enough to be far beyond the reach of chance.” (121). Natural selection, by breaking the process into tiny bits of evolution at a time, turns the very, very improbable into the probable.

The fault with this solution is that NS does not produce any new material. Dawkins sees it is a mechanism, but NS can only act on material that is produced by some other process. He completely ignores that needed other process, at least in this book—for good reason, I believe. The only proposed source for new genetic material upon which NS can act is genetic mutation. The thing is, mutations are almost exclusively caused by injury (think of radiation exposure) or random copying errors in the DNA duplication process—both of which are negative processes. Has anyone ever observed a beneficial birth defect in humans, for example? Mutations are almost always harmful. But what evolutionists need are beneficial genetic mutations upon which NS can act by favoring the mutated progeny over the already existing populations of a species. Are we to believe that the incredible, well-working complexity we see in the world today was all caused by accidents and random mistakes?

We have to believe that random mutations, not just a few but millions upon millions upon millions, will prove beneficial to a species. This is like believing that randomly changing the inner workings of a supercomputer by closing your eyes and clipping some wires or soldering in some new circuits in a random location will improve the workings of the computer. Or that making continual, small copying errors in copying a short poem like “Roses are red, violets are blue…” will eventually result in writing War and Peace. Where NS would come in is when such a random change actually does prove to be beneficial you keep that computer and base future designs on it—only to randomly change those as well, perhaps by mistakes in the manufacturing process. Now, if you made such random changes enough times, you might get lucky once in a while and produce a better computer. But how many changes will you have to make before you get lucky enough to make one minor improvement? And what happens to the computer while you are making all those bad changes before you get a lucky good mistake? And how many of the lucky good changes will have to occur to turn a 1970’s-era calculator into 21^st century supercomputer that can beat the all-time best players in a game of jeopardy? Of course, in this illustration we started with the calculator already in place. To parallel real life, however, we would have to start with a something even more simple, like an abicus perhaps. No, we’d have to go further back and start instead with a random collection of minerals and elements, but now with no mechanism either for reproducing or selecting better mistakes. Dawkins completely ignores all this. But no matter how he tries to remove chance from the process, he cannot. And Dawkins fully recognizes this. Next week I’ll talk about origins, and we’ll see just how desperate Dawkins gets.