A blast from my past is reasonable - shock!

As I sit here, dying slowly and loudly from a dose of gastro and probably 'flu (Australian male: we don't do sick well), trying to distract myself from the efforts of my lower intestines to escape to Jamaica, I came across a name I recall all too well from my 1970s: Francis Schaeffer. Well, actually his son, also known as Francis (Frank) Schaeffer.

Schaeffer pére was a leading evangelical "intellectual" whose ideas and work in large part helped organise what came to be the religious right in the US, although he lived in Switzerland. He is responsible for getting across to the American audience the notion that all civilisation and science is fundamentally Christian, a view he garnered from Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Dooyeweerd. I was convinced by him and his hangers-on, like Os Guiness. I read their books and was convinced... until I decided to read some actual philosophy, and discovered exactly how dishonestly he and Dooyeweerd had "interpreted" philosophers to make the claim that somehow the modernist ideas were at fault for the failure of western civilisation. To make the case Schaeffer had to ignore the (very Christian) guy who started modern philosophy singlehandedly - Rene Descartes.

Whew. It's scary how easily that all comes back after 40 years. But the son Schaeffer is of the same mind as me, and he writes for the Huffington Post:

Evangelicals have a problem: they want to involve themselves in politics -- for instance by praying that the Obama speech at the Democratic convention is rained out, as James Dobson of Focus On the Family called for. Some evangelicals are embarrassed by such antics. What can they do? Nothing because their theology acknowledges no central authority. Evangelicals don't "do" structure. They don't do government, or bishops or tradition. They just do "me" and "I" never we. So their individualistic and narcissistic village idiots-Dobson, Robertson, Osteen etc.-are in charge by default. ...

Evangelicals can't criticize other Evangelicals' idiocy. After all with a few exceptions, they are all waiting for Spaceship Jesus to take them away, have declared evolution a lie, are anti-culture, art and life, and don't believe in global warming, are still saying that Iraq was behind 9/11, and want to attack Iran with what is left of our overstretched military that their born-again, Evangelical Low IQ frat-boy in the White House systematically has put at risk.

He writes well, with balance and from personal experience. OK, I had similar experiences, but I had to do it on my own, with no book contract to pay off. I'm bitter, of course, because he's making money and I need some, but also because I'm sick dammit.

Anyway, I'd like to read his book.

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Get well soon, John!

Australian male: we don't do sick well

In the same sense that "On Saint Patrick's Day, everybody's Irish", I guess if the above is true, then all of us males are Aussies when sick...

Get well soon!

"He is responsible for getting across to the American audience the notion that all civilisation and science is fundamentally Christian, a view he garnered from Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Dooyeweerd."

I haven't read any Schaeffer, but that does not sound like something that Dooyeweerd would say. Is it possible Schaeffer misread Dooyeweerd?

Oh very possible indeed. Schaeffer thought he was an intellectual, but he routinely allowed prejudices to colour his readings. I have not directly read Dooyeweerd, and mostly remember him being the mediate source of the notion of "presuppositionalism" - the view that all sets of beliefs formed a kind of worldview which had presuppositions that were implied or expressly held. Schaeffer went on at length about that.

John: Thanks for the good word re my Huff Post article. I'd like you to read my book Crazy For God too. So let me know where I may send a copy and I will. Get well.
Very Best, Frak Schaeffer
frankschaeffer.com

By frank schaeffer (not verified) on 14 Aug 2008 #permalink

Clinteas, that's a seriously funny clip.

Yes, it's a stereotype, but sometimes stereotypes evolve from real ancestors.

John, hope the manflu departs your system quickly. I'm just getting over a nasty episode of the same kind of disease, but had to carry on with a deadline over my head. (I work at home, before someone accuses me of infecting co-workers).

Wow. That's so....damned intelligent AND delicious excoriation from FS -- Dobson, Robertson and *Bush* as "village idiots"?

Mr. Schaefer: thank you for brightening this atheist ex-fundy's morning. I assume you need no warning from me to stand by for incoming hate-mail and death threats.

As an Anglo-Australian living in the US, I'm struck instantly by how, umm, American Schaeffer's view of evangelicals is. I've known an awful lot of evangelicals in the rest of the world who aren't quite as self-centred or against the idea of the common good or social concerns in general. Not all evangelicals think there's a black and white line on individual vs hierarchical authority or authenticity, for example (understatement here).

But hey, I'll almost certainly be buying and reading (and enjoying) his book :-). Thanks for the pointer....

John, have a beer. It can't hurt can it?

I came across presuppositionalism recently. It seemed to me to be the ultimate in question begging. Something about the Bible being coherent and therefore true. Induction being justified by God or something as well. Weird shit.

By Brian English (not verified) on 14 Aug 2008 #permalink

Brian, you haven't been reading Circular Sye on Ray Comfort's blog by any chance have you? He's a presupper par excellence.

John, I agree with both you and FS about the pathetic state of evangelicalism, but were you serious when you said the guy "writes well?" I haven't read any of his books, but the blog post is a lame rant, and makes him look like a buffoon who's more like a mirror image of Dobson than anything actually different.

KiwiInOz, this is the site of the presupper http://bnonn.thinkingmatters.org.nz/
Click on the link "Wisdom of God" and read his self-published book if you have a few neurons that you want prune, but can't be bothered letting apoptosis do it for you. :)

By Brian English (not verified) on 14 Aug 2008 #permalink

I went to that site, Brian, thinking that my student years of beer consumption had inured my brain cells to such tangled string theory! I was wrong.

Hope you get better, soon.

Tangential to the topic - can you suggest someone to counter pre-suppositional arguments?

fusilier
James 2:24

Although many claimed they educated, they are still blind. They don't know different between right and wrong. Even if the wicked leaders liar to them go and committed genocides and suicides to themselves in other nations they will go becuse they are stupid and ignorants about wisdom. What is a goodness of being leader if you are criminal for both your nation and international? The foolish people loves evil and stupidity.