Tag: atheism

Dear Luke,

I was a little disappointed by the way your second letter appeared to indicate that this discourse is already on the verge of devolving into the very sort of debate that you originally proposed avoiding. Fortunately, I think we can avert that by focusing on the question you originally posed to me, namely, why I am a Christian. Evolution has no more to do with why I am a Christian than the ontological argument, and for all that you might like to discuss those things, they are simply not relevant to the subject. Now, as to the six sections of your last letter, the first two can be readily dismissed. Regarding the first, I can only say that when I initiate a public discourse with an established figure whose views are well-known to the audience, I prefer to operate out of as little ignorance as possible. If you happen to feel otherwise, that is certainly your prerogative.

As to the second point, entitled “Creationism and evolution”, I must inform you that you are both off-topic and incorrect. It is not possible for you to have investigated the matter, much less to have discredited what I wrote, as you clearly did not understand what I am talking about in any of the three statements I made. If you do happen to investigate them in the future you will discover, as others have before you, that it isn’t even possible to credibly dispute them. Perhaps if you had read more of my work, you would know that my criticisms are seldom the expected ones, even if they happen to look superficially similar to those that have been articulated before by others. And you would also know that professional, academic, and scientific consensus mean absolutely nothing to me when I have examined the supporting facts and logic and reached contrary conclusions. As it happens, in three weeks my publisher will release a book in which I detail the fatal flaws that render invalid a theory that predates the modern evolutionary synthesis and is equally well-established in its scientific field. But, as I noted previously, precisely none of this is relevant to the topic at hand! You wrote to claim that you can’t let me get away with my answers, but I am afraid you have no other choice. You chose to ask an irrelevant question and I answered it. It is of no concern to me what you might happen to think of the answer as neither my answer nor your opinion is pertinent to the present discussion.

Now onto the third point, which happily is a relevant one. You wrote:

You write as if Christianity is the only worldview that has an account of evil, but this is absurd. All religions have an account of evil. So evil is just as much evidence for their truth as for the truth of Christianity.

There are several problems here. You begin by incorrectly identifying an implication that simply is not there. I have never denied that other religions possess accounts of evil. Every worldview except that of the rational materialist has a more or less coherent account of evil, but the salient point is that those accounts of evil are all very different. Therefore, the question is: of those various accounts of evil, which most closely parallels the evil that we can observe and experience in the material world? For example, if we say that rape is evil, are we saying that it is an illusion, a personally distasteful confluence of atoms, a minor property crime against the father, or a grievous offense against God’s Will involving the desecration of one of His fleshly temples? Clearly your conclusion is incorrect because evil cannot provide the same evidence for the truth of competing accounts of evil. Also incorrect is your description of the Christian concept of evil as “a roaming magical force that hunts us down and seeks to destroy us”. Evil can be external but it is internal as well, because the Christian concept of evil is simply that which violates the Will of God. Satan is merely one of many evils, perhaps the greatest example of it, but far from the only one.

I very much agree with you when you write that “an all-good, all-powerful God doesn’t fit very cleanly with the amount of pointless suffering we see all around the world.” Of course, your statement does little more than confirm your unfamiliarity with both the Bible and Christian theology that I originally suspected, for as I wrote in my previous letter: “[U]nless you can understand why the first book in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy is called Out of the Silent Planet, unless you fully grasp the implications of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, you cannot possibly understand much about Christianity or the degree of difference between it and other religions.” The Christian God does not rule this world. The being that Jesus described as “the prince of this world” in John 14:30 does. To fail to understand this vital point is to completely fail to understand Christianity, since one cannot possibly understand the significance of the Redeemer if one does not understand from what, and from whom, Man must be redeemed. While it is true there are Christians who disagree with me on this point and insist that this world is precisely as God planned it and therefore the best of all possible worlds, that evil is an integral part of God’s perfect plan, and that the whole Redemption of Man is merely some sort of elaborate Kabuki dance where the pre-ordained steps are robotically followed, but my view of omniderigence is well-documented.

Since your understanding of my argument was demonstrably incorrect and your criticism of it verifiably false, it is clear that my belief in Christianity remains rationally justified even if I cannot conclusively prove its truth to anyone else’s satisfaction. I am curious, however, in your interest in seeing me argue for the existence of evil. While I have no objection to doing so given the obvious relevance of the matter, I must first understand something about your definition of evil. Do you believe in the existence of objective evil or do you believe that evil is a purely subjective matter?

I also note that given your obvious failure to correctly grasp some central aspects of Christian theology, the rational basis of your rejection of Christianity is necessarily called into question. As I’m sure you understand, the truth or falsehood of Christianity is not dependent upon your intellectual limitations. Or mine, for that matter.

On the fourth point, you write:

No doubt, Christianity is different. Every religion is different from all the others. But uniqueness is no measure of truth. Raëlism is pretty unique. So are Jedi-ism, Scientology, the John Coltrane Church, and many other things. But that does nothing to increase their probability of being true.

You’re correct, the mere fact of uniqueness does nothing to increase the probability of anything being true. The problem is, that is tangential to the point I actually made when I wrote that Christianity was a better guide to human behavior than those other religions, and than the very best models the social sciences have produced despite having two thousand more years of human experience upon which to draw. That does increase its probability of being true, even from the secular, scientific perspective.

On the fifth point, I am pleased that you find my perspective to be consistent. That you find it terrifying is entirely appropriate, since I think people should be terrified by the idea that the world is ruled by an intelligent, evil, genocidal being. I would find it terrifying too, were it not for the fact that I believe in a greater power that has given men the ability to be free of that rule. Fear, and freedom from it, is an important theme in the Bible as we would not so often be told “do not be afraid” if there was not something to quite reasonably fear. However, I have to point out that it is fundamentally unreasonable to fear my perspective if the Christian worldview is incorrect. The madness that could hypothetically lead me to conclude I am hearing a divine command to commit murder, for example, is not only no more likely to occur than any other form of lethal madness, but possesses an inherent restriction upon it that other forms of madness do not. Since God has not hitherto issued any such direct commands to me or anyone else of whom I am aware in quite some time now, the Biblical directive to test such phenomena would naturally call for some rather strict criteria. And, since Christians have been scientifically demonstrated to be happier and less subject to the sort of mental disease that such a scenario requires than non-Christians, it is obvious that any fear of Christians mistakenly believing they are divinely appointed to commit havoc is neither reasonable nor scientific.

On the sixth point, I have no problem whatsoever admitting that the resurrection of Jesus Christ, even if it were demonstrated to be an incontrovertible historical fact, does not conclusively prove that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that there is an immortal soul, that Heaven exists, or that Jesus is the only way to it. This isn’t in dispute; Jesus not only knew all this himself, but he outright predicted that there would be many men who would refuse to believe despite the wondrous signs they had been shown. Richard Dawkins is only one of numerous atheists who insist that they would not believe in God even if they encountered him directly. Belief is only half of the salvation equation anyhow, and it is the less important half.

The reason Christianity is rationally justified even though the ontological argument, cosmological argument, teleological argument, the magical resurrection of Jesus, and the existence of evil do not entail the complete truth of Christianity – which, according to 1 Corinthians 13:11, every Christian knows we cannot know – but they still suffice to establish the Bible as the most credible authority regarding that which is unknown. This would, in Daniel Dennett’s terms, justify the doxastic division of labor on the part of the Christian, in fact, it would make it a logical necessity. If we accept your hypothetical suggestion that the Bible genuinely confounds our current understanding of science, then obviously the most rational position is to accept the tenets and dictates of Christianity than to cling to the inferior verities of science, to say nothing of those other religions whose claim on observable, experiential reality is even more tenuous. This, of course, has nothing to do with why I believe, much less worship, but I think it should satisfy your desire to assert that various common arguments on behalf of the existence of God don’t actually prove the truth of Christianity.

Belief, like love, is less a state of being than a continuous series of choices. However, it is clear from your consistent misunderstanding of my statements that the choices you and I have made to believe or not believe are different ones, based on fundamentally different concepts. I hope that I have clarified some of those concepts so that you have a better grasp of what those differences actually are. If, in your next letter, you would clarify whether you believe in the existence of evil or not, what you believe its nature to be, and whether that nature is objective or subjective, I can then begin to inquire further as to the foundation of your beliefs.

With regards,
Vox

This was written in response to 2nd Letter to Vox Day.

Luke responds. Read the rest of his letter at Common Sense Atheism.

Vox,

Thanks for your reply. I’ll break this letter into sections for easier reading. I wish we had fewer differences to write about!

1. Research and discussion
You asked me why so many atheists want to discuss religion with you before reading your book on the subject. But that’s not an atheistic tendency. It’s a human tendency. We are all short on time. But I know how you feel. Every week I am barraged with questions about ethics that are answered in my short and well-organized Ethics F.A.Q., which is linked from above the fold on every page of my site!

I have skim read your book, enough to know that you and I agree about much of what the New Atheists have written. But no, I did not read every word. I have not browsed your blog archives. And I wouldn’t expect you to read my book or blog archives, either. I think we can clarify our views for each other well enough as we go along.

This was written in reply to my previous letter.

Dear Luke,

First, I must congratulate you on your tactics. Your approach is not only civil, but clever. The technique of granting your interlocutor the benefit of some initial assumptions can be an extremely effective one, particularly if you are confident of your ability to handle the arguments that follow naturally from them. Since you are an ex-Christian, I would expect you to be at least somewhat familiar with most of the standard arguments and I completely agree that it would not serve either of our purposes to waste time fencing over the usual terrain. However, I don’t think there’s any need for you to to grant me any assumptions, at least not in order to answer the questions you’ve posed.

Before I begin answering those three questions, however, I have a minor one for you. I understand why many atheists wish to discuss religion with me. I have written a book on the subject, after all. What I do not understand is why so many of them wish to discuss religion with me without first reading the relevant book. It would seem to me that reading the book and then asking questions would be the rational way to go about the process, so perhaps you could enlighten me as to why that is often not the case. I know you’ve read at least part of The Irrational Atheist, but had you completed it, you would know that some of your assumptions about certain Christian beliefs don’t apply to me.

For example, in answer to your second question, I am not a Young Earth Creationist. I don’t know how old the Earth or the race of Man is, nor, I contend, does anyone else. I have never been impressed with Bishop Ussher’s reasoning or his chronology. I even did some similar calculations when I was seven or eight and concluded at the time that even if one took the Biblical account seriously, there appeared to be a considerable amount of missing information that rendered the chronology incomplete. On a tangential note, given that evolution assiduously avoids addressing the question of origins, there is no intrinsic conflict between the concept of a Divine Creation followed by an evolutionary mechanism utilized in order to the produce the variety of species we observe today.

Not that I subscribe to that idea, however. To complete my answer to that second question, I am a skeptic who is highly dubious about the theory of evolution by natural selection for three reasons. First, I see it as a dynamic and oftentimes tautological theory of little material value to science. This may change in the future, of course, but since it has been around for 150 years without producing much in the way of practical utility or reliable information, and has even hampered the development of more useful biological science, I see little sign of that changing anytime soon. Second, the predictive models evolutionary theory produces are reliably incorrect and fall well short of the standard set by the hard sciences. In fact, they seldom even rise to the much lower standard of the social sciences. Third, the theory of evolution by natural selection does not rest on a scientific foundation, but a logical one; it is no more inherently scientific than the Summa Theologica. Since our discourse is not intended to be about evolution, but religion proper, I will not go into further detail on the subject in this dialogue except to say that all three of those statements can be verified in substantial detail by anyone who wishes to investigate the matter. So, with that tangent out of the way, I will return to the primary topic and your first question.

Why am I a Christian? Because I believe in evil. I believe in objective, material, tangible evil that insensibly envelops every single one of us sooner or later. I believe in the fallen nature of Man, and I am aware that there is no shortage of evidence, scientific, testimonial, documentary, and archeological, to demonstrate that no individual is perfect or even perfectible by the moral standards described in the Bible. I am a Christian because I believe that Jesus Christ is the only means of freeing Man from the grip of that evil. God may not be falsifiable, but Christianity definitely is, and it has never been falsified. The only philosophical problem of evil that could ever trouble the rational Christian is its absence; to the extent that evil can be said to exist, it proves not only the validity of Christianity but its necessity as well. The fact that we live in a world of pain, suffering, injustice, and cruelty is not evidence of God’s nonexistence or maleficence, it is exactly the worldview that is described in the Bible. In my own experience and observations, I find that worldview to be far more accurate than any other, including the shiny science fiction utopianism of the secular humanists.

I don’t concern myself much, if at all, with the conventional extra-Biblical dogma that you describe and in which many Christians believe. I am dubious about the concept of the Trinity as it is usually described, do not await an eschatological Rapture, have no problem admitting that the moral commandments of God are arbitrary, and readily agree that the distinction between the eternally saved from the eternally damned appears to be more than a little unfair from the human perspective. On the other hand, I know that evil exists. I have seen it, I have experienced it, I have committed it, and I have loved it. I also know the transforming power that Jesus Christ can exercise to free an individual from evils both large and small because I have seen it in the lives of others and I have felt it in my own life. Now, ever since St. Augustine wrote his Confessions, it has been customary for Christians to exaggerate their sinful pasts; Augustine was hardly the Caligula that he portrayed himself to be. I find dramatic personal histories to be tiresome in the extreme, so I won’t say more except to note that as an agnostic, I enjoyed a sufficient amount of the hedonistic best that the world has to offer across a broad range of interesting and pleasurable experiences, only to learn that none of it was ever enough. It may amuse you to learn that one girl who knew me only before I was a Christian happened to learn about The Irrational Atheist and wrote to me to express her shock: “The fact that you wrote this book proves there is a God.”

And one with a sense of humor, no less. Now, there’s no reason this would mean anything to you or anyone else who was not acquainted with me before. But it meant something to that woman, just as an observable transformation in one of my close friend’s lives made a distinct impression on me.

I certainly do not deny the experiences or revelations of those who subscribe to other religions. I merely question the specific interpretation ascribed to them by those who lived through or received them. After all, the Bible informs us that there are other gods and that those gods are capable of providing such things at their discretion. Among other things, I studied East Asia at university and have spent a fair amount of time reading the sacred texts of various religions, including a few fairly obscure ones. I have yet to encounter one expressing a religious perspective that can be legitimately confused with the Christian one, nor, in my opinion, do any of these alternative perspectives describe the observable material world as I have experienced it as well as the Christian one does. I think it is astonishing that an ancient Middle Eastern text is frequently a better guide to predicting human behavior than the very best models that the social sciences have produced despite having an advantage of two thousand more years of human experience upon which to draw.

I suspect that unless you can understand why the first book in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy is called Out of the Silent Planet, unless you fully grasp the implications of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, you cannot possibly understand much about Christianity or the degree of difference between it and other religions. Fortunately for many Christians, intellectual understanding isn’t the metric upon which salvation is based. The Biblical God claims to know everything about the human heart and He would appear to recognize that thinking isn’t for everyone.

In answer to your third question, I will simply note that if a different being had created the world, then a different morality would obviously apply. For more on this, consider reading the second appendix in The Irrational Atheist entitled “Two Dialogues”. I believe logic dictates that the Creator alone has the right to set the standards for His Creation. His game, His rules. In keeping with that principle, God always has the absolute right to do as He sees fit, which just so happens to be precisely the answer He gave to Job and company. The answer to Euthyphro’s so-called dilemma is that the good is good because it is commanded by God, since there is no objective, supra-divine standard of Good by which His commands may be judged. Finally, to demonstrate the flaw in the logic of your example of the artificial baby, I shall merely cite the old joke. First, make your own dirt. Then go ahead and do as thou wilt.

I hope these answers have given you some perspective on why I am a Christian. In the interest of keeping this letter to a reasonable length, I think I should give you the opportunity to ask whatever additional questions have occurred to you before we turn the tables around and address your beliefs.

With regards,
Vox

PS: I would be deeply remiss if I did not take the opportunity to commend you for the eminently sensible conclusions you have expressed regarding the validity of the New Atheists’ arguments.

NB: This was written in response to 1st Letter to Vox Day.

Luke is the atheist blogger at Common Sense Atheism and is interested in a friendly discourse on the topic of Christianity and atheism. At his suggestion, we will attempt to avoid regurgitating all the usual arguments for and against the existence of God. Here is the opening letter of our discussion. I will respond to it within a week.

I’d like to start with a question about why you believe what you believe about God. But I’d like to skip all the usual arguments. In fact, for the sake of argument let’s say all the theistic arguments succeed, and all the atheistic arguments fail. Let’s say the modal ontological argument establishes the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and all-good being. Cosmological arguments establish this God as the creator of the universe. Design arguments establish that he purposely designed the universe to host intelligent life. Historical analysis shows that Jesus rose from the dead.

Read the rest of it at Common Sense Atheism.

Richard Dawkins sees a cloud, smaller than a fist, on the horizon:

The Flea Circus Invites a Newcomer!
The cover of The Irrational Atheist claims to dissect the “Unholy Trinity,” but I think we have to give this one to Sam due to the cover design!

A Dog Named Flea

Assuredly he lacks the spine
To ascertain the big canine.
Should we encounter in debate
He’ll meet a most odorous fate,
For in taking him down a peg
I have merely to lift my leg
And R. Dawkins will slink away,
Wet, and wearing Eau de Day.

From The Irrational Atheist:

“Dawkins is the worst offender, his prickly reaction to criticism is not to address it, not to discuss it, but to disdainfully dismiss it, unread. When Douglas Wilson published his response to Letter to a Christian Nation, Dawkins lost no time in labeling him “Sam’s Flea”. According to Dawkins, arguably the most visible representative of science today, any published criticism of him and his fellow militants can only be driven by the desire for book sales.(14)

Feynman wept.

——————–
(14) “Fleas” and “parasites” are Dawkins’s favored means of referring to his critics. On 4 March, 2007 at richarddawkins.net, Dawkins posted an entry entitled “Was there ever dog that praised his fleas?” in reference to the “three new parasitic books released in response to The God Delusion.”“