This section of posting has been culled from the larger discussion on the Moral Argument. That original context can be located above this post or at:
http://thepeakcommunity.blogspot.com/2009/01/moral-argument.html
The section of dialogue attached here is essentially about why Christians seek to live out their faith. It is part of an ongoing conversation that I have had the honor of participating in as a friend of an atheist.
Thank you for participating.
-CL
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EL,
ReplyDeleteSee the [response below] as a reply to your [earlier] email about good and evil.
I know you don't believe in it, but I am praying for you anyway.
-CL
To give you some idea of how irritating I find it to continually have flung at me incantations from a religious belief system I don’t subscribe to, please imagine that I have looked up the spell for wealth and power from the Satanic Bible, and in the future, when you bless or pray for me, I will reciprocate by casting such spell upon you.
ReplyDeleteMy beliefs do not require you to esteem the efficacy of prayer. But wow, “continually have incantations flung at you”? Are you confusing me with someone else? Have I said that I am praying for you in this discussion before? Thus far, have I tried to proof-text you with any verses by appealing to the Bible? I think it might be you who are protesting a bit too loudly this time (yes, I believe in a higher order of fairness). As I recall, you have recently sent (flung?) me a book and video about gods and have offered to send more. I even took a look (or listen) to some of this stuff. I don’t mind. I’m not threatened by it at all. It’s really more of an issue of free time. But for a guy who claims not to be concerned with religion, you sure seem intent on studying it, although I suggest you are looking in all the wrong places and only listening to voices and “scholars” at one end of the faith-spectrum. Remember that this is a two-way street, and given your own sending, you haven’t really demonstrated a willing or reciprocal receivership.
ReplyDeleteA good place to start is “The Jesus Legend” by Paul R. Eddy and Gregory Boyd. Let me know if you are willing to read this book cover to cover, and I’ll send it to you. It’s 400+ pages, so it may take you awhile, but I think you might find it a challenging response to some of the other authors you have been reading like Bart Ehrman.
As a final note about prayer, you should be aware that prayer is an inherent move to change the supplicant as much as it is to petition the Almighty. So any prayer for God’s love for you is inextricably connected to my own responsibility in loving you as well. Prayer is a partnership conversation. Nonetheless, if you prefer, I will no longer notify you of my prayers for you.
I suppose at least you’re not as bad as the girl I once met who, upon discovering that I was an atheist, grabbed hold of her cruicifix necklace and thrust it out toward me, to ward me off as if I were a vampire, and then slowly backed away in fear.
ReplyDeleteE,
ReplyDeleteThat sounds hilarious. I’m sorry I missed that episode.
Earlier, you said that,
“Even most people who often seem to be acting benevolently out of religious faith, such as nuns and volunteers at homeless shelters and so forth, are really doing so because they want to get to heaven and/or not go to hell.”
This sounds harsh, which is not my intention, but your ignorance of Christianity here needs to be addressed. If for no other reason than to improve your own criticisms of the Xian faith, you’ve really got to get past the idea that Christians serve their fellow humans “because they want to get to heaven and/or not go to hell.”
Excuse me, but I do find your “ignorance” remark insulting. I speak from two decades of intimate personal experience. In 20+ years of participation in the Christian faith, heaven/and or hell was the only consistent rationale I ever heard offered as justification for becoming Christian. It was the only major motivation of any of the Christians I talked to, the issue harped on weekly in Sunday school, the common theme in the great Renaissance era christian paintings I saw in Germany, etc etc etc. It was most certainly the only thing on the mind of our mother and the major factor in my own adoption of Christianity. This was not merely at Glendale Christian Church, but at numerous other denominations, Protestant and Catholic, which I subsequently attended before rejecting Christianity entirely. The redemption of sinners by the blood of Jesus Christ and his shedding his own life so that they might be able to go to heaven is the central tenant of the Christian belief system. I don’t know what they’re teaching you up there in seminary, and perhaps in that rarefied company of learned scholars you are amongst peers who truly believe in Christianity because of the beauty of its written verses or the purpose it gives their lives or some other motivation, but go to any church out here in the hinterland and I assure you it’s mostly hellfire and damnation vs. sunshine and eternal life. Some of it is quite upsetting; I was utterly appalled when I went to a small country Baptist church a few times with my ex-girlfriend Regina, and the pastor terrorized his flock by threatening them individually by name with hell and demanding that they confess their sins in that open forum as penitence. There was much weeping and confessing. He kept eyeing me supiciously, but I think he sensed that it would be a bad idea to call me out. He was correct… I was girding myself to loudly “confess” that I had just engaged in homosexual congress with the pastor himself in the rectory immediately before the service.
ReplyDeleteHere in Dallas, we are infamous for having the church which started the first “Hell House,” an alternative to Halloween Haunted Houses, in which they depict scenes such as women having abortions, gay people doing gay things, drug users using drugs, etc., and then they all die and are taken to Hell by Satan. Trinity Church in Dallas claims, in 8 years of such macabre theater, to have “converted” (I would say “terrified”) over 13,000 people into becoming Christians. There’s an excellent documentary movie about it available on Netflix, titled aptly enough, “Hell House.” I’d encourage you to watch it to get in touch with what your coreligionists believe and are up to. Another good film in a similar vein is “Jesus Camp,” in which preteens at an Evangelical church camp are encouraged to writhe and speak in tounges in order to cast out the evil from within, among other disturbing incidents of child abuse which will surely cast a pall over those children’s psyches for years to come.
You’ve spent a lot of time on your examples, and I appreciate it, but there is a disconnect here. I don’t mean “ignorance” as an insult (but I can see how it is perceived as one. -apologies-), but rather as a statement that corresponds with reality. You don’t understand Christianity, therefore you are ignorant about it. I am “ignorant” of biochemistry and your nuanced atheism, but I am learning more and more about it. This is different than calling you a “moron” which assuredly you are not. I’m sorry if that’s how it came across.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, some Christians really miss the main message and turn 10% of the Xian paradigm into the 90% and thereby (seem to) undermine all of it. Your criticisms of this is fully justified. Does it help to know that I hate these misguided efforts too?
Do you happen to remember the sermon you heard me preach when you accepted my invitation to come to The Peak in 2006? It had nothing to do with hellfire and brimstone (or eternal sunshine and lollipops for that matter either). Do you know that I am training to be a Christian pastor of some type? Have I ever told you that “you should turn or burn?” Just as you have said about atheists, neither are all Christians exactly alike. Maybe we should both avoid lumping each other in together with the worst representatives from counter philosophies.
But even if churches do only harp on heaven and hell (and yes, I fully recognize that some of them do), it doesn’t mean that they’re altogether mistaken. It just means that they’ve confused the peripheral situation for the main message. This is truly unfortunate. It’s condemnation is just.
If you truly believe that heaven/hell are not the major factors for most Christians, consider the following hypothetical: God appears tonight individually in an unmistakable vision to every single Christian, and advises them that while they’ve gotten almost everything right, there was one big slip up with the first transliteration of the bible, and he needs to set something straight. God is in fact a masochist; only by worshipping him and holding true his commandments will the truly deserving get admitted to the delectable torments of hell; by following Lucifer or becoming an atheist, you’ll instead fall into the graceful torture-free abyss of Heaven. Do you really honestly believe that 99% of Christians wouldn’t quit going to church the next day? Come on. The small number who would find some contorted rationale to go on as Christians would be akin to the pathetic misfits who currently represent themselves as Satanists and go around talking about pentagrams and witchcraft and whatnot.
ReplyDeleteYou’ve mixed translation for “transliteration.” They are similar, but transliteration is like a linguistic onomatopoeia, taking an ancient word’s sound and spelling it out with English letters. Translation has nothing to do with the sound, but everything to do with the word’s meaning.
ReplyDeleteBut your example of new revelation doesn’t work. Indeed there have been many new, so-called “revelations” (Muhammed, D. Koresh, Jim Jones and Joseph Smith qualify, just to name a few), but Christianity as a whole has not been taken in by the deceit. This is because of the power of the Holy Spirit and his partnering with believers and their use of the faculties that God has given them, not the least of which is curiosity and reason.
In addition to these facets, Christians rely on the biblical stories, church traditions and personal experience as the guiding forces in their faith. Even with the most volatile of these 3 categories (experience), they have been remarkably consistent since the aftermath of Jesus’ resurrection. There have been aberrations from the get go (reference those who first required gentiles to become Jewish before they could become Christians), but this in no way undermines the validity of the Christian faith.
Today, since the canon has been closed, once a person decides to follow Christ, the text has preeminent authority, then tradition and then personal experience. But if one of these is seriously out of whack with the other two, then there are legitimate grounds for that feature’s adaptation or evisceration. This is why theology has changed over the millennia. Your example would surely fail the coherence test. Some might be taken in by the deceit, but not all.
You have alluded to what “most Christians believe” and then judged the entire faith community by them. While I disagree with the modifier “most,” I do concede that “some” Christians believe as your understanding implies. Nevertheless, truth itself does not necessarily correspond with how we vote about it, and it does not follow that we can judge the God of the Bible by what “his people” do and say. Humans miss the mark, regardless of their faith professions.
Regarding this Christian, heaven and hell are not what motivate me. That is kiddy Christian stuff, where it starts for a lot of people, but it definitely shouldn’t be where the Xian faith journey stops. I think this is one of the many reasons you keep getting it a bit off: Your understanding of Christianity is stuck in the immature faith you had /encountered as a youth. You ceased learning within the faith. So the way you saw it in general (then) is the way you see it (now). You were treated poorly by Christians, and your understanding of God did not match your real-world experiences. Honestly, I do not blame you from being disgusted and walking away from it. But what I am trying to tell you is that your understanding of Christianity was incomplete, and it still is. Since then, being convinced that Christianity was a fool’s errand, you’ve read and learned a lot of things that reinforce your conclusions about that religion and (others).
-CL
Now that I have stated my case on this issue, I’d like you to in some way back up your appalling (and insultingly phrased) assertion that the whole punishment/reward schemata is not utterly core and essential to your belief system. In fact, if you truly believe that this is unimportant, I will make you the following challenge: It has been my impression that the only reason you were engaging in this conversation with me was because you believe I’m going to hell, and this makes you feel bad, and you would prefer me to go to heaven. Conversely, the only reason I’m engaging in this tedious discussion with you is because I know that your beliefs play upon your affection for your [friend] and cruelly cause you to lose sleep over the misguided belief that I’m going to hell; rather than bringing you peace and tranquility, these beliefs upset you about my fate. However, if you’re truly untroubled by the heaven/hell equation in my case, then I say hooray, I have been needlessly feeling bad for you that you’re so worked up over a fictitious matter for my benefit, and we can let the whole conversation drop here and now. So if you truly believe heaven/hell are of no import, let us end this and all future conversations on religion once and for all. What do you say?
ReplyDeleteEL, this is a false dichotomy. It’s not a matter of my either “getting all worked up” about your eternal destiny or being able to let it go etc. I’ve already told you that I can’t force you to do anything. You can cease transmission at any time, but I remain VERY thankful that you have continued to dialog with me about it. I can’t tell you how hard it would be for me to think that if you disengaged it would be a silent admission that you had nothing further to say against Christianity.
ReplyDeleteBy that token, it’s a matter of testing what I have faith in and what you have faith in. They are mutually exclusive philosophies/ religions. They can’t both be right in the same way at the same time. Yes, I think you have much to lose if you are wrong. Yes, I think I am wasting my life if I am wrong. This is an essential feature of my life and I want to test the waters of counter philosophies to see if they hold up better than Christianity. So don’t think this is just about “saving your soul.” Maybe it’s also about “saving my time.” I would hope that you care about me enough to prevent me from wasting my time and energy on such “fictitious matters.” I care about you enough to test your faith in what I think is a deficient and inconsistent philosophy.
Don’t take this the wrong way. I love you and nothing will ever change that, but I’m not responsible for you any more than your mom and dad are. Whether you were a Xian or not, I would still be heartbroken at your funeral. You make your own decisions on who to follow and what to think etc. I lose about as much sleep as you do over your eternal destiny. You have options on what to look into and what to shut out. I can’t force anything, but I am still glad that you have had the patience or whatever (?) to type with me about this stuff.
Nevertheless, you are still missing the critique. I affirm the wrongness of your experiences with some well-intentioned, but misguided Christians. In fact, I can’t fully express how much I agree with your offense at what you think Xianity is. But you’ve gotten this part wrong, and you are responding to an argument I did not make. You said that people only do good things “because they want to go to heaven/ avoid hell.” Therein lies your lack of accuracy concerning Xianity (note that I did not say “ignorance”). Christians do not earn salvation through their works. Period. You have the paradigm upside down. We serve humanity out of our thankfulness for God’s salvation, not so that we will be worthy of it. Your misunderstanding is a critique of Islam and works-salvation Christian heresies. Works salvation has never been a central feature of Christian soteriology, and this has been officially settled for more than 1600 years (since the 4th century debate between Pelagius and Augustine). Sometimes the church has lost sight of this, but every major Christian reformer, theologian and main-line denomination, from Augustine, to Aquinas, to Luther, to Calvin, to Wesley, to McLaren has sought to remind Christians that grace is the GIFT of God, not something that he owes us.
The “goal” of heaven (or avoidance of hell) is not necessarily wrong, but the path you are insisting that Christians “take” to get there doesn’t exist. Furthermore, a heaven/ hell motivation only focuses on the minority of the biblical message at the expense of the majority of Jesus’ message. That is one of the reasons I think that I have something to offer the church: a better focus than what you (and many others) got as a kid. Salvation has nothing to do with our behavior other than accepting it.
I am hesitant to quote Bible verses to you, so I do so only as a sampling of texts that support what I have been telling you. The entire biblical text should be considered, rather than just favoring the ones that we like, so if you are so inclined, I invite you to ask about Bible verses that would seem to undermine my position. In the meantime, consider Ephesians 2:8,9:
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.”
I also can tell you that I know that “works” has nothing to do with salvation, but if you are not convinced of what this Xian thinks, then please go check out some of the writings of the faith tradition’s best known theologians (Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin etc.).
Listening to Chris Hitchens, I can see where you might get this idea [that Xians have to earn their way to heaven], but it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity. He’s a great opinion writer, by the way, but an inept philosopher.
Don’t patronize me. I form my own opinions and I no more am a philosophical slave to atheist writers than to theist ones. Hitchens makes a few interesting points, but he has too great a taste for the vicious verbal repartee and too little an affinity for rationale and studied argument. For what ever it’s worth, I find Richard Dawkin’s book to be exponentially better written and more enlightening than Hitchens. But neither of them are controlling my thoughts. (This seems to be a common tendency of Christians and Muslims, to ascribe anything that confronts or disagrees with them as a facet of an all-powerful, unitary Satanic plot. In truth, atheists are an extremely individualistic and disorganized lot. It kind of goes with the territory; people who easily fall in line behind monolithic, orthodox thinking are generally unable to escape the social pressures to be a theist.)
ReplyDeleteHitchens amuses me with his barbs and anecdotes; Dawkins on the other hand has answered many of my layman’s questions about evolution and cosmology, and has parlayed them into – pardon the expression – damning arguments against organized religion. I am not the stooge of either man. Stop being so condesdending.
Point taken. Apologies for having offended you. I actually intended the “Hitchens” remark to be an out for you. Then it would only be him who has grossly misunderstood and misrepresented Christianity. I can’t dialogue with him, but I can with you. As for “damning arguments against organized religion,” I probably agree with most of them, but try as he (or you) might, it is a poor move to lump all “organized religions” together, especially if we allow that some forms of atheism would also fall into such a category. Atheism certainly has its own unquestioned dogma. If we lump all these beliefs and ideas together, it won’t take long to see that they are not offering different descriptions of the same reality but quite distinct versions of reality altogether. If these are our only options, then they cannot all be right. Indeed, all of them must be wrong where they depart from the one that is correct. Atheism is inextricably included here.
ReplyDeleteBut I am glad to hear that atheists don’t all believe the same things. Sounds remarkably similar to Christians. Can you extend the same courtesy to me and my faith? I’ll try and do better. Despite what you may suspect, it’s not my intention to make you angry. I’ll back off, but I’ve been trying to match pace with you. You have previously used your own condescending notions such as that Christians need the crutch of Christ to get by and that we only fall in line to tote our own dogma without ever thinking twice about it. See some of your own comments in other places if you need a reference point. But unless you are truly adding something unique, you’re following, even if you are synthesizing many different perspectives to do so. But it’s ok; there’s nothing wrong with following per se. I just happen to be following someone else. Don’t be offended by it. Embrace the truth of it. If you are adding something that’s never been done before, then that is awesome and I’d be glad to hear it. I don’t think I have enough confidence or creativity to take on such a task.
Have you yet to encounter Dawkins’ magical “memes”? This is a real hoot. He tries to explain away religious sentiments on the grounds of yet-to-be-completed evolutionary tasks aimed at eliminating these memes (magical religious DNA imprints that have no scientific support).
The lion’s share of Jesus’ gospel is not about pie in the sky when we die, but rather how we can live as outposts of the kingdom that is already “in our midst.” This idea has been around since the early days of Xianity, but it has recently found new traction with authors like Brian McLaren and Erwin McManus. Being “kingdom” people here and now, is the mission of the church, and remember, this is not to earn heaven, but as a response to God, partially because we have already been given heaven. You could take heaven out of the equation, and it would not change how I live my life. I seek to align my life, its purpose and mission with the values of my creator, to live in fulfillment of the way I was created to live. Heaven [as it is often popularly conceived] is a completely secondary issue.
Ok, I grant you that the biblical descriptions of heaven fall kind of flat. (Although the imagery of hell is somewhat lengthier and more vivid.) But it’s kind of like when you’re trying to win a football game, you mostly talk about plays and yards and runs and throwing balls. You don’t so much talk about what kind of victory dance you’ll be doing in the end zone and where you’ll have the victory parade. Still and all, everyone knows that the goal is to get to the freakin’ end zone. If you really believe that heaven and hell are not a core part of your belief system, you are talking about some other strain of Christianity than any I have ever come into contact with. I’d like you to explain what you mean by “living as outposts of the kingdom in our midst.” That sounds like Sara Palin saying she’s going to govern as a “maverick.” I.e., it sounds nice, but what does it really mean? Please give me some concrete examples, taking care to ensure that they do not require the presence of a heaven or a hell.
ReplyDeleteWell, thank you for allowing me the opportunity. You are right in saying that Christians have often sought heaven as their ultimate goal and even the only thing that mattered at times. We have often been accused of “being so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good.” That is a trap that we have fallen into before. I know that you did not make that comment per se, but I dare suggest that if you had, it would miss something essential about Xianity. Since Xians are called to be engaged in the kingdom in their midst, to be “heavenly minded” is to be working for love and peace here on earth.
ReplyDeleteWe’ve already covered some of that, so please let me summarize my side of the discussion on heaven and hell:
Thus far, you have mistaken existence for motivation, for surely I affirm the prospect of heaven (God's eternal, obvious presence) and the “hell” that has often been portrayed as its opposite (eternal, obvious separation from God), but neither one of these final destinations are what motivate me to do good or avoid evil. The fact is that we have all done evil and are thus destined for eternal separation God. Furthermore, we are unable to extricate ourselves from this situation no matter how hard we try. No matter how many "good" works I do, their cumulative weight can never be enough to overcome the fatal influence of even one act of evil. For God is absolutely perfect and simply cannot partake with anything that is less than perfect. As such, it is only through his self-sacrificing grace that HE provides US with a way back to perfect restoration, even exceeding humanity's original, created state. This is a free gift, and all we have to do is accept it. Salvation cannot be earned; it is not a wage that can be collected. God doesn't owe us anything. This has been officially settled in Christianity for 1600 years if not longer. And just so we're clear, salvation / union with God starts long before we die and THAT is the prize, not the popular conception of heaven with harps and wings and gold and all that. I regret that you thought that Christians must earn their way, but now you can cast that misunderstanding aside. I hope you will.
your friend,
-CL
E,
ReplyDeleteI almost forgot. To answer your request for a concrete example of what the “Kingdom in our midst” looks like, we should look to Jesus himself. He kept talking about what “the kingdom is like,” and most of these parables deal with earthly situations (conflict resolution, love, searching for purpose etc.). Furthermore, the “greatest commandment” is for us to love God and to love our neighbors. Once we are in heaven, there will be no more opportunities for us to love our neighbors in the pattern that Christ showed us (defending and loving the defenseless, hurt, hurting, weak and poor etc.). We might even say that a broken earth is the only way we have the opportunity to make a difference. Once we die or enter heaven, our race is run and we have lost our influence and ability to ease someone else’s skinned knees. On earth, we get to help fulfill the mission of Jesus here and now, and that is a precious and unique opportunity. The kingdom of God is working in that mission, even if not perfectly, to bring about the end of all suffering here and now. Contrary to what you (and some Christians too) have thought, our faith is about serving God first, others second, and ourselves third if at all. And the icing on the cake is that “serving God” is the same thing as “serving others.” Two birds, one stone, and not because we earn heaven, but because serving God and others is what we were created for.
Right now, the Kingdom of Heaven is in the midst of the earthly kingdom. They are both operating, indeed competing, for the hearts and minds of humanity. This is not dualism. The ultimate victory of good over evil is a foregone conclusion, but because God is a respecter of free-will, he allows us to choose freely in this season, rather than forcing us to “love” him (true love cannot be forced after all). As you said, heaven is the after party, but the celebration is meaningless without the “game” itself. A new heaven and new earth only has meaning in light of the present earth and all its ills. One of the core texts for my earlier assertion is
Luke 17:20-21 :
“Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, 21 nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”
Loving people in the present has little to do with heaven after death, because the kingdom of God is here and now, and we can participate in it this very moment. From that perspective, heaven is merely the perfect continuation of what has already begun in part.
-CL
I would like to note that the entirety of the above conversation did not originally spool out this way, but rather that all of the comments have been cut out of their original context in a much larger back-and-forth email dialouge. Therefore, while I recognize most of the words attributed to me as my own, I am not especially happy with the way they have been re-ordered and re-assembled here. I'm sure the re-editing was well intentioned, but with my words taken out of context and/or placed in response to a paragraph that they originally weren't intended to respond to, too many times it seems that I'm dropping your arguments, throwing random red-herrings into the mix inappropriately, etc. For example, some of the editing has clearly conflated a somewhat sarcastic and flippant dustup over John Mccain vs. Barack Obama with a totally separate and more serious thread on whether evil exists. I'm not going to worry about this too much, but I'm inserting this comment as a sort of virtual bookmark, separating the portions above which were edited retroactively and without my authorization, and which may not accurately reflect my intended response to a given comment, and the portions below, which will hopefully reflect a more linear conversation.
ReplyDeleteEL,
ReplyDeleteI can certainly understand some of your frustration with the way this post has been ordered. This was my chief complaint to you in our original email conversation, but you insisted on committing the same sort of moves that you now decry above. Contrary to what you may think, I've reconnected much of BOTH of our original statements and comments into complete thoughts (which was often how they were written prior innumerable interleaved interjections to begin with) all in the sincere effort to have an on-going conversation that is readable and trackable by US, never mind anyone else who might stumble upon our windy wanderings.
I'm glad that we can go from here in a one for one format. I think that will help the pace and ease of typing to one another.
Sincerely,
-CL
Corbin,
ReplyDeleteYou said that "it is a poor move to lump all 'organized religions' together, especially if we allow that some forms of atheism would also fall into such a category.
Actually, I'll go you one better, and lump organized religions in along with loosely organized cults, disorganized shamanistic tribal beliefs, and individual superstitions and paranoias. All exist on faith and none present any evidence that I find remotely compelling. The only difference seems to be the number of people taken in by each school of thought, ranging from a single disturbed individual to millions of adherents, largely as a function of (A) how long the religion has been around and (B) how focused its message is on conveying a reward/punishment schemata and attracting converts.
On the other hand, I wholeheartedly disagree with your contention that atheism (or stated more literally, disbelief in the supernatural,) is similar to and of a similar footing with all the various forms of theistic belief in the supernatural. Atheism by its very nature is the *opposite* of theism; and until one makes a convincing case for some particular brand of theism, it is the default position. If a Moonie comes along and argues that Sun Myung Moon is the light of the Universe, or a North Korean comes along and argues that Kim Il Sung is the divine leader, or for that matter that a shady character shows up at my house and claims to be the former King of Nigeria with a hidden bank account of millions of dollars and just needs me to lend him $10,000 to help him with some legal expenses so that we may gain untold riches together, that does not mean that the likelihood of their assertions being right are instantly on an equal footing with the likelihood of their assertions being wrong. Disbelief in unproven notions is the default position, not an alternative on equal footing with the unproven notion.
You went on to make many eloquent descriptions about the beauty of your faith and its various details, such as "Once we are in heaven, there will be no more opportunities for us to love our neighbors in the pattern that Christ showed us (defending and loving the defenseless, hurt, hurting, weak and poor etc.). We might even say that a broken earth is the only way we have the opportunity to make a difference. Once we die or enter heaven, our race is run and we have lost our influence and ability to ease someone else’s skinned knees...", etc.
Like Homeric poetry, your words sound nice and paint a pretty (or, at least, starkly motivational) picture, but I don't find them tangibly different or more believable than what the aforementioned Moonie, North Korean, Nigerian Con Artist, or whomever might say about their own beliefs.
Rather than comparing your particular theological orientation to the entire universe of competing theologies, though, I think it might be helpful to pick a single one and challenge you to differentiate why yours is any more credible than that other (presumably false, in your view,) religion. For this purpose, I expect Mormonism is probably the best comparison religion, because for all intents and purposes, from my perspective it's a virtually identical and extremely slight mutation from your own beliefs, yet from your perspective you have commented that you find it repugnant and "creepy", so I take it that you think that its adherents are just as misguided and hell-bound as I am. (Catholicism or those would be an even better comparison point since it's even MORE like your own Protestantism, but you've been pretty silent about Catholics despite my repeated probes on that topic, so I'm not sure whether you think they're sufficiently misguided to be disqualified from being Christians or not.)
And please don't beg off the discussion with the "Well, it is not my place to judge the Mormons" business. I'm not asking you to judge them; I'm asking you to tell me your honest opinion, based on your theology, of whether they qualify as proper Christians or not, and I'm pretty sure I know the answer (please correct me if I'm wrong, and if so we'll drop Mormonism and move to a religion which you think is suitably heathenistic, such as Judaism or Islam.)
That said, if your religion is the 'true' or 'correct' one and Mormonism is one of many false ones, there ought to be some key characteristic of your religion which sets it objectively apart, shouldn't there? And I'm not talking about some unverifiable claim of questionable relevance like "Well, Jesus did/did not actually walk around and perform miracles in Israel but did/did not actually walk around in Central America and perform miracles," or "Jesus is better because he was the son of Yahweh" or "Mohammed is better because he ascended directly to heaven," but rather I'm talking about you being able to say something quantitatively superior for your whole paradigm and cosmological view that someone from another religion doesn't have a ready alternative for. When you start in with the "Once we are in heaven, there will be no more opportunities for us to love our neighbors..." that's something a Mormon could easily say, and a Bhuddist could articulate the same general principle by substituting out a couple of words here and there ("kharma" or "reincarnation" for "heaven", or whatever.)
So... the bar I would like to set, (again assuming that you accept the premise, as do I, that Mormonism is a false belief based on the ravings of a half-mad con artist and the subsequent gullibility of millions of people,) is that even if we somehow get past the question of whether there is or is not one or more deities who created us and take an ongoing interest in our existence, but in addition, for your religion to be accepted as true, you have to have at least one major verifiable claim to which Mormonism does not have a ready answer or alternative. Can you name any?
Let us assume for the purposes of argument that I agree that there is one or more supernatural deities out there, and I am desperately trying to figure out which explanation of that diety/dieties is correct. My Mormon neighbor has proposed some pretty good explanations that I'm leaning toward accepting. What is it that you would say to convince me otherwise? What was it, really, that was your "aha!" moment in your studies of Mormonism and other faiths, that made you say "Those other faiths are incorrect and Protestant Christianity is better!"? Again, I submit to you that it just randomly happens to have been the faith that you were born with and indoctrinated with at a young age. No more and no less.
I do thank you for recognizing the futility of quoting scripture. I keenly remember being about 13 years old in Sunday school and asking my teacher several times how we really knew that the Bible was true, and she kept referring me to different verses in the Bible that said, more or less, "The Bible is true." I finally asked if I wrote down on a piece of paper something to the effect that "Eric is awesome" and asked her to accept the premise because it was written down if she would accept that. That went over about as well as you might expect, but my point is that even a precocious child can see the pointlessness of self-referential evidence.
Editorial correction: The sentence in the above post that begins with "Catholicism or those..." was intended to say "Catholicism or those Assemblies of God Protestants who believe in the funny business what with the speaking in tounges and snake dancing and so on...."
ReplyDeleteEric,
ReplyDeleteYes. I would love to respond to these questions. Good stuff, here. But let me insert this place-holder post until I can devote a bit more time than I have at the moment. Thanks,
-Corb
Eric,
ReplyDeleteI maintain my previous statement about the error of lumping all religions together. You keep repeating the same logical error, something to the effect of, “Other religions are false, therefore all are false.” Can you please acknowledge that, on its own, this doesn’t add up and that it never will? Your conclusion is simply not supported by the premise.
For you to say that the “only difference seems to be the number of people taken in be each school of thought...” is a gross miscalculation. More often than not these faith systems are not describing different aspects of the same reality, but different realities altogether. Atheism is inextricably connected to this paradigm, and surely you recognize that the number of adherents and period of time a faith system has existed has nothing to do with its truth-value.
I believe we made progress earlier in our discussion when you acknowledged that, at its most fundamental level, even science relies upon a faith proposition or two, namely, the assumption that our senses yield reliable data (How can we prove the reliability of our senses in a way that itself does not rely upon those exact same senses?). But lest I be misunderstood again, I must reiterate that (in general) faith in our senses is usually the best place to start (if not the only place), and that I am thoroughly pro-science when it is used for good. I should also reiterate that there is nothing wrong or inherently weak in leaning upon faith at various points. Given the situation of science as just mentioned, I’m not sure how you could disagree. Since we’ve already been down that path, I hope that we won’t get mired in it again.
But the real issue is not with science at all, for it does not lead to atheism on its own, at least not in any way that you have identified thus far. You continue trying to make special accommodations to keep atheism out of the realm of faith, but you have yet to say or do anything that would accomplish this. How can you move it out of the philosophical sphere and into the epistemic paradigm that you so regularly esteem, namely, the modern, rational, Enlightenment mindset of empiricism?
It might be helpful if we make a clear distinction between atheism and science, for one does not necessarily lead to the other. There are many Christians who are also scientists after all. If you want to disagree and continue following Hitchens and Dawkins here, I am open to what you have to say, but can you please link atheism with the scientific method or empiricism? Can you connect the dots for me and demonstrate how any scientific discovery or procedure connects with any conclusion about the God of the Bible? Can you show me how any tests or even a few pieces of evidence unequivocally lead to atheism as the logical conclusion?
But you are somewhat correct, atheism is not on equal footing with belief in Jesus Christ. For unlike atheism, Christianity does not deny any evidence just because it challenges its worldview. Atheism on the other hand, limits what it will accept as “evidence” from the get go. It imposes the same limits on what is accepted as “proof” too. Any event or observation that is inexplicable via Western reason or the scientific method is rejected instantly by atheism. And I’m not talking about creation, for evolutionary data is completely ambiguous when it comes to God. I am talking about things like a man executed via Roman crucifixion rising from the dead. Because this event is inaccessible to the scientific method, atheists reject it out of hand. Just as science operates on faith that our senses are reliable, it also assumes (by faith?) that the universe operates according to the principle of uniformity. Indeed, it must do so, and I affirm that this is usually a good way to go about things, but the assumption is merely a conclusion from what has been observed by some. It is their witness to events if you will. On its own, it does not make any claim about what can or cannot be witnessed to begin with and hence, science is disconnected from atheism. Your most recent critique of Christianity relies upon your a-priori faith commitment that there is no such thing as the “supernatural.” This isn’t exactly indicative of objectivity or an open mind, and scientists aren’t supposed to make these kinds of mistakes. What subject is it that Dawkins teaches at Oxford? :)
I’ll grant you that not all atheists regard their faith system (or absence of certain kinds of faith systems, system) as a religion, much less an organized one. Nevertheless, religious-like dogma is almost always snuck in the door, and at the very least we might say that atheists are organized around one or two foundational claims, both of which still require various degrees of faith.
For example, so-called “strong” atheism actually makes a claim: “God does not exist.” Some even characterize it as “faith in the absence of God.” As we have rightly recognized, proving a negative is a practical impossibility for us, so the faith required for “strong” atheism is dissatisfying to those who like to tell themselves that they have no faith whatsoever. Thus enters so-called “weak” atheists, who perhaps recognize that the faith-game is up if they try to assert the same conclusion that strong-atheism does. In an effort to pull atheism from the fire, they are merely content to say that they have an absence of faith in God (as opposed to faith in his absence). To the uninitiated, this difference may seem like nothing more than semantics, but “weak” atheists would argue that it’s significant nonetheless.
While I can recognize that a person may not have faith in God (I suspect that some alleged Xians also suffer from this), I find it somewhat implausible that a person doesn’t take anything on faith, especially for those who try and marry their atheism with the scientific method. But that is somewhat of a secondary issue. The truth of the matter is that “weak” atheism does not exist in a vacuum, but rather in the midst of competing truth claims, so while it may exclude faith in God, faith in alternate paradigms or philosophical systems is requisite. At the very least, and short of irrefutable proof, weak atheism in this discussion requires faith that Christians have somehow gotten it wrong and misplaced their own beliefs. Given that situation, “weak atheism” is sort of a misnomer, for the most those who identify with that label can say regarding the God of the Bible is that they “don’t know” whether he exists or not, and this is far closer to agnosticism than the traditional definitions for atheism. I’m not sure which brand you tend to favor, but agnosticism seems to be the most honest and defensible position.
Finally, what you said next was even more perplexing to me:
“Disbelief in unproven notions is the default position, not an alternative on equal footing with the unproven notion.”
As somewhat of a skeptic myself, I was tempted to agree with your notion, but then I realized that it relies upon the very faith commitment that we should not believe in something until it has been “proven.” So I have to ask: Can you please prove (scientifically, if you don’t mind) your notion as you phrased it above?
I look forward to your response.
-CL
Eric,
ReplyDeleteGiven the elapsed time between this and the previous posts, I am going to conclude that you are either thinking or waiting for an additional response to your Mormon contender question. Rather than muddle this thread any further ( I do want to leave you space to respond to my above rebuttals), I am going to move the Mormon question to the thread singularly devoted to that religion:
http://thepeakcommunity.blogspot.com/2007/12/how-do-i-respond-to-mormons-lds.html
May the quest for truth continue.
-CL