Virtuous vs. Vicious Circular Reasoning?

I recently read a comment by a Christian friend of mine in which he urged his liberal friends to reveal their 'objective standard for truth.' He was referring to the Christian claim to objective, absolute truth, and challenging liberals to produce anything similar.

I wrote him to ask if he had an objective standard for truth that he did not subjectively determine, which I think is fundamentally absurd and a tacit admission of ignorance on the subject of basic psychology and/or philosophy. All objectivity is subjectively experienced, defined, and expressed. There is no object without subject, as there is no subject without object. In the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (of all people), "Subject and object marry and mutually transform each other in the act of knowledge." Pretending to be able to separate out subject an object is a fool's errand. We may get as close as we can to setting general boundaries on what we best understand as the categories of "me" and "not me", but any dogmatism on the subject is complete nonsense.

My friend answered back by somewhat dodging the question which, to be fair, he probably only barely understood because he has not trained himself to think outside of the Bible and Christian doctrine. He ended up quoting New Testament verses in the Bible stating that we can "know" God, and he interpolated the bracketed word "[objectively]" in each passage before the word "know". I tried learning the meaning of his terms "know" "believe" and "faith", but he hedged by referring back to objectivity in knowing God. When asked what he meant by subjectivity, he responded that he believed subjectivity dealt with those things which couldn't be "proven beyond doubt" like dreams, intuitions, feelings, and opinions on non-essential matters of doctrine. I asked him if he intended to say that objective knowledge, then, is impersonal without human emotions and intuitions, is the way in which we are meant, as human beings, to know God. He said 'no', because even demons believe in God, but they aren't saved by it. He said that 'knowing' is more like a relationship in the sense that Adam and Eve "knew" each other...in the Biblical sense.

Now, other than the fact that he flat-out contradicted himself here (personal vs. impersonal "knowing"), it's clear that he is not thinking through these matters logically, but rather Scripturally with the tools and terms someone else had indoctrinated him with. I realized he had no concept of the differentiation between subjectivity and objectivity other than his understanding that subjectivity is human and therefore cannot be trusted a priori.  I finally gave up and asked him how he knew this. He referred to God making it known to us, and confirming it in the Bible. I, of course, asked him about his understanding of circular reasoning.

"So truth supports our rationality, God supports truth, and... how do you know this? "The Bible says"? That just pushes this back another level, so the pyramid of how we are certain of anything would be: 1) Bible, 2) God, 3) Truth, 4) Rationality...and then things like intuition/feelings/dreams/opinions. Right? So how do you know the Bible is true? God makes it known? And how do you know this? Because the Bible says so? And how do you know the Bible is true? God makes it known? And how do you know? The Bible says?

And this doesn't sound like circular reasoning to you?"

He responded by saying that this is indeed circular reasoning, which he said all religions are. But here's the real kicker...he referenced the difference between circular reasoning that is 'virtuous' and circular reasoning that is 'vicious' ('question-begging'). He linked me here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scriptorium/2007/07/running-in-virtuous-circles-the-truth-of-the-bible/. 

If you've read this far, please complete your jedi training by reading that article. It is very informative, though fairly condemning for the fundamentalist religion positions. Basically, it says that Christians sometime make the mistake of believing the Bible without having a theology 'of'' the Bible...or in other words... some people just believe it on the surface without trying to understand why they believe it. This is 'vicious' circular reasoning and question-begging (from Latin "petitio principia”, “assuming the initial point”, where the conclusion that one is attempting to prove is included in the initial premises of an argument); whereas virtuous circular reasoning is legitimate.

Basically, non-question-begging circular reasoning is something you and your debate partner are allowed to assume is true (for a better treatment of this principle, see http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~morourke/404-phil/Summer-99/Handouts/Philosophical/Circularity-and-Begging-the-Question.htm). These 'things people assume' are something like what Aristotle referred to as First Principles, though not exactly the same thing as the author of the first article mentioned above illustrates. Principles of intuitive logic and religious ideas aren’t necessarily both First Principles.

My friend and the author of the first article mentioned above both assume, SUBJECTIVELY, that the truth of the Bible is a First Principle, although they would probably both admit that a knowledge of ‘Jesus saving us from our sins so we can go to Heaven’ is not anything at all like a First Principle. The author maintains that Christians can avoid vicious circular reasoning because most people have to start with something, but Christians aren’t just starting with something; they are starting with something that they feel disproves all the other somethings of other people’s religions, and contrary to many First Principles to boot! Not only do many people believe in a priori convictions that are fundamentally different from Christians, but many, many people have started with this idea of the Bible being true as a First Principle, and have later changed their mind. Where does that put this 'foundational truth' now that it has become not so foundational?

It doesn’t really help matters to adduce that God tells us what is true, therefore the Bible is absolute Truth. Why doesn’t that help? Because it is obviously still a vicious cycle!! Acknowledging vicious circular reasoning does not transform your reasoning into virtuous circular reasoning! Some dedicated Christian is pretending to care about philosophy and is now just playing with people’s brains!

BUT, even if this were a way out of ‘vicious circular reasoning’ (more commonly referred to simply as ‘circular reasoning’), this doesn’t get my friend out of his troubles. The idea of First Principles and a theology of Scripture is subjective through and through. Even if you could establish a distinction between subject and object, objective truth can’t force itself into a subject’s brain and set itself up as absolute truth without subjective cognitive-emotive processing. By appealing to circular reasoning of any kind, my friend has capitulated to the idea that we cannot know anything purely objectively, which is to say that our appeal to Truth is always tainted by our imperfect (finite) humanity. No getting out of this situation we’ve found ourselves in. We must admit it, deal with it the best we can, and love ourselves the best we can. No amount of self-loathing in all its myriad forms excuses us from the fact that I am stuck with me, and you are stuck with you. For better or for worse. Till death do us part.

Lunatic, Liar, Lord, or....just a regular guy.

Time for me to take a bite out of the abysmally flawed and presumptuous argument titled “Lunatic, Liar, or Lord” that has been popularized by the Christian authors C.S. Lewis (originator) and Josh McDowell. These are authors I used to read consistently, and I bought everything they said, hook, line, and stinker. Lewis is amazing, and I will never be finished with him. I love his imagination, honesty, introspection, intellect, and bravery. McDowell I am finished with, but that’s not to say he doesn’t do a great job at what he does. Apologetics is nice as a comforting reinforcement of peace, which I am not keen on attacking in itself; but when one’s peace becomes another’s danger, it’s time to interrupt the siege-against-self that Christians are in the habit of erecting. If you build your faith’s walls too high, you risk starving people inside your walls. What was meant to protect, now suffocates. I write for the spiritually emaciated who can no longer subsist on shadows, and for the sake of a widening of spiritual communities to include others just outside the walls who are lonely and ready to share insight and resources.

There is no need for me to go all heady and uber-academic on you. Others have done it that way (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_perry/trilemma.html), but I’m going to break it down very simply so a fourth grader could understand. Well, sort of.

The first thing I want you to know is that the “lunatic, liar, Lord” argument is entirely specious (only sounds good on the surface). The ‘trilemma’ as McDowell calls it (not sure he’s using that word right), is from beginning to end a coercion of terms and options. Lewis was certainly creative when he named and limited these alternatives, but they were concocted specifically for the Christ-question, specifically by a Christian. Many apologists I’ve witnessed who use this so-called ‘test of divinity’ are muscling the debate and rushing the listener into accepting that this is a valid experiment. It’s like saying, “For an apple to be real it must be red, juicy, and tasty. Now, quick, look at the apple in my hand. Is it red, juicy, and tasty? Yes. Then it’s a real apple! Now, quick, look at the apple in your hand. Is it red, juicy, and tasty? No? Then it isn’t a real apple!” Genius. Except, it’s not.

We need to slow down, and think about it without feeling pressure to allow a mysterious third party to dictate and rush the terms. When someone speaks, and we are trying to ascertain the reliability of their words, what are the possible outcomes of our test? Lunatic, Liar, or Lord? Or, in other words, do we have only the three simple and discrete categories of 1) completely and intentionally false in all ways at all times, 2) eratic and completely inconsistent at all times and in all ways, or 3) the infinite God himself as revealed in Jesus Christ the son of God as revealed by evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity? I don’t think so. I have never yet used any categories of the sort, irrespective of whether or not I’m speaking about the claims of Jesus, Napoleon, Napoleon Dynamite, or Muhammad Ali, to name a bizarrely randomized few. Please don’t psychoanalyze me based on that list. ;)

Now then, what categories might actually come to mind when I am trying to determine accuracy of a statement or reliability of a speaker? Consider these 20 suggestions which may emerge as possibilities; 1) mostly right, 2) mostly wrong, 3) in denial, 4) confused, 5) incorrect in premise, 6) correct in premise, 7) misled, 8) mistaken, 9) forgetful, 10) accidentally correct, 11) biased, 12) provincial, 13) illiterate, 14) uneducated, 15) malicious, 16) overcommitted, 17)misinformed, 18) misunderstood, 19) overstated, or 20) exaggerated; all of which are results with spectrums, ambiguities, overlap, and cultural/personal connotations with nuances that may change in meaning and boundaries from person to person and time to time.

As most human beings experience and observe, truth and falsehood come mostly in mixed bags. Who would deny that? But when it comes to Jesus and his claims, it’s apparent that the ‘tests’ of his divinity are absurdly specialized. But why would we do that? If he’s divine, he needs no help from us to prove it. Or maybe he does? Maybe apologists are just looking for a fast win against the argumentative onslaught of unbelievers? Or maybe, as I believe is often the case, many are simply trying to stabilize their ideas and emotions by rushing to easy answers that don’t require a constant questioning of the truth of everything they’ve been taught. Perhaps people don’t like to be shaken to their very foundation by every doubt that surfaces internally or externally. Can you blame them? “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” But then again, as one smart man said before, we need to be careful not to build our lives on a foundation of sand. Make sure you’re ladder is against the right wall when you’re climbing. We can’t be questioning ourselves all the time, but we have to question ourselves sometimes, or we risk putting a lot of work into something that won’t ultimately satisfy.

So, abbreviated soul-searching is developed to give ourselves the impression that we’ve done our homework and we’re on the right path. Apologists come up with only three alternatives for the veracity of Christ’s teaching, and since it appears clear to most people that Jesus doesn’t neatly fit into “liar” or “lunatic” category, then they are left with only one option: “Lord.” But are there other options here?

As stated above, there are always thousands of other possible NORMAL alternatives left. For those who still can’t see, let me apply a few possible alternatives to the case of Jesus in particular.

1.       First and foremost, the carriers of the Jesus traditions would have to be sent through a barrage of tests. If the apologists are right about their test for reliability, then the story-tellers, transcribers, translators, and paraphrasers of the Jesus traditions would have to be submitted to the “lunatic”, “liar”or “Lord [inerrant demi-gods]” evaluation. For some reason, many apologists simply assume their test is being applied directly to the words of Jesus without thousands of years intervening.

Assuming the carriers of the Jesus-traditions didn’t have to be tested because their veracity has been established by some method for determining the inerrancy of errant beings (huh?), then we start with the possibility of results concerning the ‘direct’ words of Jesus as we have them in most Bibles.

2.       Jesus may have been partly misled. It is no secret that Jesus was born into a culture of traditions and prophesies about the coming Messiah and the Messianic Kingdom. Jesus may have assumed, like many others, that the Messiah was indeed coming, and he may have been convinced that he fulfilled, at least in part, the prophesies. Maybe he began to buy his own hype, and allowed himself to have a title foisted on him. We all have doting family, friends, co-workers or acquaintances who at times think that we’re going to revolutionize the world (or is that just me?). Would a precocious 12-year-old Jesus, wow-ing the Temple leaders, have been able to be mature and level-headed enough to separate fact from fiction and reject an archetype that others said he was evidently fitting? Maybe, as he grew older, he didn’t necessarily believe he fulfilled ALL of the prophesies, and only partly viewed himself as the Messiah. He did make clear many times that he wasn’t the kind of Messiah that everyone was expecting, and there’s reason to believe that Jesus was not convinced all the prophesies would be fulfilled by him in his lifetime. Why would he have started to talk about a Second Coming if he fully accomplished everything the Messiah was supposed to?

3.       Jesus may have been simply mistaken about being the Messiah. He could very well have been sincere and sane, and tried, as many others did, to don a mantle, or borrowed a title, to substantiate his internal conviction and support his claim as a leader. Does that make him a liar if he honestly believed that he fit the Messiah role? The Messiah title was more descriptive of a responsibility than an ontology, and only later in New Testament times, and possibly after, was the idea of the God-man really developed apart from a few nebulous passages in the Torah. If ‘Messiah’ was more of a label for “the Jewish hero”, then many people could have attempted to assume this role, and they did, with good intentions. Whether or not they succeeded as hero would be beside the point.

Or, Jesus may have sincerely believed he was a unique kind of being sharing God’s own spirit and power. That doesn’t make him necessarily a liar or a lunatic, especially in a culture where God’s manifestations in and through people were common expectations if not realities. Even if Jesus view of himself as one-with-God was a contradiction to his ordinary human experience, many people learn to live with contradictions in practice and thought that don’t necessarily sabotage a life of good works. Believing in some nonsense is the order of the day for all people. If all he was doing was running around screaming that he was God (which he didn’t), then we might say he suffering from a delusion; but if he was still competent in most other areas and capable as a revolutionary and civil rights activist, then he was very functional in his delusion. Not exactly lunatic material in my mind.

4.       Jesus may have been confused about his own identity. He may have been back-and-forth regarding his spiritual participation in divinity and his mortal physicality. Aren’t we all? And that would explain many of the discrepancies and obscurities in his teaching, especially in anything regarding the nature of the soul, the afterlife of the soul, or metaphysics in general. Biblical theology, much less the metaphysics of Jesus, is anything but systematic. If apologists try too hard to constitute a systematized theology, they risk denying the supra-rationale basis the Bible they are working so hard to protect.

5.       Jesus may have purposely adumbrated, or obscured the truth in such a way that allowed people who needed him to be the Messiah to think he was the Messiah. People very often need an authority figure to give them an excuse to do what they know they should be doing. Every pastor knows this truth intimately. We know Jesus spoke in parables to the crowds, but often revealed hidden meanings to his disciples in private. He mentioned in the book of St. John that he spoke in earthly terms so that people could understand the other-worldly meanings they weren’t ready for. He told his own disciples that there were things he wanted to tell them but they weren’t ready to hear. What if he allowed people to believe some false things about him, and even perpetuated some of those beliefs by ambiguous statements, so that they would have ‘permission’ to throw off the religious oppression of their leaders? For severely manipulated and brainwashed people, there may often be a ‘reverse brainwashing’ in order.  One author said, “If one does not know how to lie, one does not know what the truth is…’not lying’ and ‘telling the truth’ are not the same thing.” How many people in the Holocaust were rescued because someone lied to save a life? On some level, we all ‘lie’ everyday when we change our language and behavior around different people who speak in different ways. We tell our children that the sun rises, love is in the heart, and that grandpa is up in heaven looking down. Are we lying, or borrowing their conceptual framework and elementary linguistic tools to communicate ideas that are beyond their experience and powers of cognition?

6.       Could Jesus have overcommitted to his ideology and felt compelled to start contributed more into a sociopolitical myth than he originally had planned? Could he have found himself amid exaggeration, sensationalism and eventually deception that he felt was for a good cause, but which he deeply regretted and planned to modify? If he was a liar, and conscious of it, was it something he felt was for the common good? Was he now committed to doing whatever was necessary to break the yoke of religious/political oppression, even to the point of regularly deceiving ‘the sheep’, and encouraging a revolution that was powered by a beneficent deception? If it helped more people eat, feel peace, think more kindly on others, and develop a better sense of well-being and love, was it so bad? Maybe he took it ‘too far’ by some people’s standards. Was he a liar, or a secret agent of light cloaked in shadows and deep deceptions to invade the nightmarish darkness and free its prisoners?

This is just the beginning. As I said before, the test of reliability and intention for any person despite their claims could yield results with spectrums, ambiguities, overlap, and cultural/personal connotations with nuances that may change in meaning and boundaries from person to person and time to time. The idea that the results of reliability/intention analysis could produce results that are as simplistic and distinct as “lunatic, liar, or lord” is tremendously oversimplified and over-zealous to achieve an easy confirmation of one’s beliefs.

There’s no easy magic in this life; no waving a magic wand, declaring something ‘safe’, and proceeding without caution because now our way is infallible. There is no sphere of human existence, no experiential scenario, in which this has ever played out as beneficial in the long run, and it has been running long enough. Inerrancy is a metaphysical dream quite unlikely, ipso facto, to be realized in an imperfect world.

So, try it for yourself. Try applying the touchstone of “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” to any person you know. See if it is helpful as a tool for anything but a specialized case in which all factors are controlled to bring a very specific and consistently irresistible result: Jesus is God. The results probably won’t surprise you.

Matt Chandler rages against analogy of Blind Men and Elephant

Matt Chandler is the pastor of Village Church in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex (several sites). This guy is young and fresh, and an obvious leader of the pack. He’s also, unfortunately, another exclusivist taking shots at anyone who claims there are good reasons not be a Christian. Here’s one of his videos I recently came across (thanks Dave) which attempts to break down the analogy about the blind men and the elephant that is used to support the validity of diverse perspectives. Watch him do his best to maul this well-meaning parable that he simply finds no use for in his fundamentalism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTJso930yKQ&feature=youtu.be

First of all, it’s a real shame that he felt the need to guard believers against this parable. It’s really rather simple and harmless on the most basic level as a story about how different perspectives may appear to be antithetical to each other, but may in fact be different perspectives of the same thing. On a more complexly pluralistic level, which I don’t think Chandler understands might be differentiated by some, it’s brilliant as a possible explanation of why some religions seem to describe a higher being or transcendent reality in different ways, even ways that sound hostile to each other’s perspective, but how they may all be seeing truth, while not seeing all truth. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Of course, it doesn’t sound nice to Christian apologists. It sounds like bad business.

So, what about Chandler’s denial of the logic of the blind men/elephant analogy? Here are my responses to his specious attempts to dislodge the premise.

1.       First, Chandler actually gave the primary reason why he has a problem with this analogy. He says,  "surprise," he is a believer in Christ. So, he’s a believer in Christ first, and a free thinker second, or I’m left that to assume because he says about his faith, “I won’t even address that part.” I think he would honestly admit that he does not base his faith in Christ on reason, but it certainly is convenient and encouraging for him (for some reason) when it sounds reasonable. So, basically, reason didn’t bring him to Christ, and reason won’t take him away.

2.       As far as Chandler’s inimical handling of this beautiful analogy, his interpretation depends on who is giving this analogy, and what they’re using it for. Chandler obviously thinks people are using it to prove that they know what ultimate reality is. He says that the narrator telling the story is himself assuming to know ultimate reality, or he is claiming that it is knowable, to substantiate the claims of the individual blind men. While this is somewhat insightful, he’s just simply pointing out what many of us know, that one critic has no right to tell another not to criticize, and if you say there is no ultimate meaning, they you shouldn’t set up an analogy where someone, the narrator being God, a guru, or humanity in general, claims to know what ultimate meaning is (the elephant) and therefore can confirm or deny that the different parts described by the blind men are, or are not, accurate.

While I see what he is getting at, what he is really doing is the same thing the creators of the analogy were doing. He is exposing the pride of someone who says that only they can be right, and all other less right, or completely wrong. Now, he may be perfectly comfortable with God being the narrator, or one of his blessed saints, but he will not put up with a mere mortal having a wider perspective or an infinite one, especially if that mortal claimed there is no infinite perspective. In other words, how dare someone say that no one person can have all the truth, when the only way you can hypothesize this is if someone was theoretically able to see that no one person can have all the truth?

It is true that making any kind of absolutist claims can be tricky, especially if your absolutist claim is that no one can make absolute claims, but this is exactly what Chandler accuses the makers of the parable of: smoke and mirrors. You see, Chandler typifies users of this analogy as types that posit that no one can be more right or more wrong than anyone else. But, in fact, some users of this analogy would be fine with God, a higher being, a higher reality, Mind, Spirit, combined humanity, or…Something… being the narrator and overseer. On the other hand, some people who say there is no Something as narrator may be merely speculating that there is a bigger picture than we all can see right now. They’re not saying who is confirming this, because it is…HYPOTHETICAL! This is what is called…drumroll please…induction. Has Chandler not heard about this? I think it’s an idea a few millennia old. Plus, we’re not talking about a real elephant, or blind people really petting an elephant. It’s an analogy, and Chandler is trying to find a hiccup with it.

Chandler says the only way this story makes sense is if the narrator sees the whole elephant. Not true. Someone, the narrator or whoever, may review the different descriptions of the blind men and suddenly glimpse what they think is the emerging picture of an elephant. You don’t have to be absolutist about this. We can claim to know be able to know anything 100% with our finite and mortal minds, and still have a high level of confidence about something. Depends here on who is telling the story, but it doesn’t have to about a narrator’s claim to absolute knowledge of ‘ultimate reality’, though that gives Chandler something to yell about (see point 5).

3.       Yes, this is a story used to promote tolerance, but not JUST tolerance. Many of us know already that tolerance just helps us play better in the sandbox together, and we ultimately need to move beyond tolerance to ‘engaging diversity’ (see Diane Eck’s excellent article on a healthy notion of pluralism that all religious peoples should embrace at: http://pluralism.org/encounter/challenges. Chandler, you mad bro? Because people want you to be more tolerant? First world problem son. Please don’t add this to the list of how you think you’re being persecuted. K?

4.       Is Chandler honestly implying that Christians “know” the fullness of spiritual truth? Aren’t they supposed to be content with God knowing all Truth, and them trusting him? Evangelicals are so circuitous with their use of the word ‘know’. The best of their saints often claimed to only know what is real as if through a cloudy window (“we know in part, we prophesy in part”), and yet they appeal to other verses in the New Testament in which the saints claim to be “enriched with all knowledge.” We have here either a bad case of mixed messages or a case of poor interpretation (probably both). I remember the words of Kierkegaard, “Any attempt to know in a realm where only faith is possible, is itself unbelief.” It’s sad to me that Chandler honestly thinks that attributing all knowledge to God means that Christians have some kind of perfect ability to know any one thing perfectly and absolutely. Doesn’t he know that to know any one thing in the universe so perfectly and completely in all its individual qualities and in its relation to everything else in the universe that contributes to its nature and is in turn affected by it so that there is nothing left to learn is to ipso facto know everything about everything in the universe since every atom is coextensive with the next and interrelated in myriad ways? He’s allergic to the word know when it comes out of someone else’s mouth, but he strains at a gnat and swallows a camel. I just made that phrase up. How you like me now?!!

5.       Chandler yells in the video when he mimics how others may use the analogy. He yells. He totally missed the point. The sad thing is, analogies and stories like are meant for us to contrast understanding and reason against dogmatism. No wonder Chandler doesn’t get it. He’s the avatar for dogmatism. He speaks with such a commanding tone. As if he were yelling at sheep.

6.       His claim that people who share this story are actually religious with “affirmations, denials, and absolute truths” is nonsense. Who made up that definition of religion by the way? “Baker’s Dictionary Of Theology and Religion and Anything Else You Need It To Be a Dictionary Of”? And just because some believe something to the highest degree, doesn’t make their commitment or confidence in ‘truth’ or data a claim to absolute truths. What? What are you even making up right now? That is, in your own words, “comical on a philosophical level.”

7.       He keeps on repeating what he claims people are saying, but he’s just mixing up a bag of random lines that he thinks represents his opponents.  “You can’t know absolute truth”, “All religions lead to God”, “No one can know God in its [sic] fullness”, “It doesn’t matter what you believe but how you live.” Besides the fact that these can be different people saying different things for different reasons, they also may not be dogmatic developing rigid doctrines in the sense that they are thoughtlessly prejudiced and obstinate in unexamined conviction that they will have to be pried from after death. Maybe they are religious in your evangelically made-up definition of religion, but they don’t have to be dogmatic like you. Oh, excuse me…like you ‘seam’ to be. Yes, yes, I remember that I don’t think we can know absolutes absolutely. Please don’t yell at me.

8.       He says he’s not speaking ‘religiously’, he’s speaking ‘intellectually.’ But he’s preaching. But. He’s. Preaching.

9.       And finally, he ends his sermon by saying that the ‘irony of ironies’ is that there is a relativist inside of him that is claiming “the same thing at different points of emphasis.” Nice Chandler.

I understand that this is a clip out of a larger sermon posted elsewhere, but I sincerely don’t believe (observe, I’m NOT stating this as an absolute!!) the context will shed much light on the words that I hear coming out of his mouth.

Remember in the movie “The Village” when (spoiler alert…if you haven’t seen the movie yet, watch the whole thing on youtube for free at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4NFdLBnD0g) the young people discovered the older generation of adults had been lying to them to keep them in a false state of innocence and purity away from the evil of the outside world and all the ideas and freedom that had so obviously made a mess of things, even though they all ended up finding out that their own privatized civilization was corrupted too because they were, after all, human? Remember that? I know this is a cheap shot, but there’s a reason Chandler’s church is called Village Church.

Bye.

A theist’s response to Ravi Zacharias’ “6 Questions To Ask An Atheist.”

Thank you Kelly for sending my first article to address. It is Ravi Zacharias’ “6 Questions To Ask An Athiest.” It has apparently been answered by some atheists online, but I would like to provide a theist’s response to his thoughts. You can find the article at the bottom of: http://www.rzim.org/media/questions-answers/. 

First, though, let me remind you that Ravi Zacharias is no fool. He knows enough about philosophy and logic to make a convincing argument for…anything. He could probably argue both sides of the God debate equally well. That’s important to keep in mind because it’s an indicator that his skill in argumentation is doing more conversion work for Christianity than what may be called ‘Truth’. Don’t forget Kant’s caution that thinking is not being, but it presupposes being. In other words, logical relations are not real relations, and it is possible for a person to convince you of something that is NOT true. Ravi Zacharias is a professional, and it comes as no surprise that he is an expert in polemics and public debate. Don’t weigh the worth of your ideas in a conversation with him. This angel of light has years of experience on you, and he is trained to eat you alive. He is the champion of Christian fundamentalism, and he is paid to do one thing, win debates. We cannot forget this. Yes, he is a basic Bible believer, a traditional Christian in most respects and is committed more to Christ more than his reason; but he is a warrior. Watch out.

But, as I have said, that doesn’t make him or anyone else right. Shakespeare had it right half a millennium ago: “The truth will out.” We may now see gaps in Zacharias’ arguments, but the rifts will tear wider as the years go along. I don’t begrudge him making a living while strengthening his own faith and others with him, but his absolutism and exclusive view that anyone who does not believe like he does is condemned by God and destined for eternal torment is medieval.

With that in mind, I’d like to provide one theist’s response (my own) to Zacharias’ specious six-point put-down of atheistic faith/non-faith. Do be fair, he does provide a short preface which states, “These questions, then, are meant to be a part of a conversation.  They are not, in and of themselves, arguments or "proofs" for God.” But this is, very clearly, misleading in that he is certainly using them as a prelude to ‘proofs’, and his own answers are patently inserted into the questions themselves (eg., “If there is no God, the big questions remain unanswered…” and “If we reject the existence of God, we are left with a crisis of meaning…”). So we can go ahead and bump fists if that’s what he wants (why not?), and move right to defending against his very obvious attacks.

1. If there is no God, “the big questions” remain unanswered, so how do we answer the following questions: Why is there something rather than nothing?  This question was asked by Aristotle and Leibniz alike – albeit with differing answers.  But it is an historic concern.  Why is there conscious, intelligent life on this planet, and is there any meaning to this life?  If there is meaning, what kind of meaning and how is it found?  Does human history lead anywhere, or is it all in vain since death is merely the end?  How do you come to understand good and evil, right and wrong without a transcendent signifier?  If these concepts are merely social constructions, or human opinions, whose opinion does one trust in determining what is good or bad, right or wrong?  If you are content within atheism, what circumstances would serve to make you open to other answers?

First of all, Ravi, SLOW THE *&%! DOWN! Keep flailing like that and you’re going to kill us all! Why does he remind me here of the dude in the book ‘Unbroken’ that freaked out in the life raft, ate the whole store of chocolate, and just sat there with chocolate smeared on his face, empty candy wrappers on his lap, and a guilty look on his face. He died first by the way. So why do I mention this? Because Ravi has his brain and tongue in high gear, and it’s hard for me to think that it’s ever been anything but. He rushes to conclusions, a very common cognitive distortion, and expects everyone else to as well. You’ve got to keep your head brother, or we’ll all die. I know we all want quick, simple, just-add-water solutions, but in my experience, life isn’t simple. Math isn’t simple. Science isn’t simple. Love isn’t simple. Why do you want to simplify all the ultimate answers of Life, The Universe, and Everything? Because he’s scared. Yeah, well we all are bro. He wants to apply a quick-salve to the panic of his own and others, and frankly, it certainly seems that Christianity can do that. It’s been doing it for 2,000 years. But simple answers answer simple problems, mostly problems of immediate survival. How to thrive, well that is a question that the Bible hasn’t solved so well for modern unbelievers and believers alike. I know this is just an abstract that is concentrated for believers to print on a card and keep in their pocket, but let’s not pretend this doesn’t represent the type of overgeneralization, labeling, disqualifying of the positive, and other such things that characterizes a Christian’s evangelical techniques. It’s completely characteristic.

A few other problems he rushed to conclusions about: the big questions remain unanswered, death is the end, these concepts are merely social constructions, and that there is opinion we can hold that is not a human opinion.  It’s so funny how Christians say that we cannot know anything except what God tells us. But is that knowledge still human? Yes, they say, but it is given by God. Yes, I say, but is it still held by an imperfect human? Yes, but it is given by God, so it is perfect. And….does no one else see that this is nonsense?

There are big questions which have everyone scratching their heads, but Christianity doesn’t solve all of those, it just pushes them back ad infinitum. If their answer to ‘why us’, is ‘God’; then what is the answer to ‘why God’? There is none. They’ve just pushed their questions back further, but what they have done is lost interest in the question after a point. They’ve gained enough of an answer to satisfy them and help them lead a ‘meaningful’ life, even if all meaning is not made clear to them. Yet they push and push and push others to feel beholden to answer what they themselves don’t feel the need to answer. I think this understanding is enough to unhinge the hubristic undercurrent and ‘zing’ of the above questions.

2.    If we reject the existence of God, we are left with a crisis of meaning, so why don’t we see more atheists like Jean Paul Sartre, or Friedrich Nietzsche, or Michel Foucault?  These three philosophers, who also embraced atheism, recognized that in the absence of God, there was no transcendent meaning beyond one’s own self-interests, pleasures, or tastes.  The crisis of atheistic meaninglessness is depicted in Sartre’s book Nausea.  Without God, there is a crisis of meaning, and these three thinkers, among others, show us a world of just stuff, thrown out into space and time, going nowhere, meaning nothing.

Paul Tillich’s work is relevant in understanding the courage of existentialism and writers like Nietzsche, Sartre and others. These writers faced the unknown, tackled cultural ignorance and taboos that most Christians, if they really and genuinely read these works to learn and not to gloat, would appreciate and hail as valiant. Sartre’ Nausea was a testament to the failure of many answers provided by secularism AND religiosity. Christian belief isn’t exempt here. Anyone with a claim to knowledge or understanding as a source of joy and meaning is arraigned, and the Christian Apologist movement would be the first be adjudicated. You’re not quite out of the crosshairs Ravi! And if Sartre is truly, as a person and not a persona, afraid that the universe and we in it are going nowhere, and mean nothing, then you ought to see some light in the fact that this man is standing in the dark of nothingness and facing his greatest fear. Is that not noble to you? Would you rather a man cast himself into the abyss as soon as stare into it? Wouldn’t that fact that he still chose to be alive reveal itself as an affirmation of self in spite of the supposed meaninglessness all around self? You see nothing valuable in this? I’m left to assume that Ravi, if he didn’t have someone whispering in his ear all the time that he was worth something, would cease to believe it immediately, and would cast himself into the pit and cease to be.

3.    When people have embraced atheism, the historical results can be horrific, as in the regimes of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot who saw religion as the problem and worked to eradicate it?  In other words, what set of actions are consistent with particular belief commitments?  It could be argued, that these behaviors – of the regimes in question - are more consistent with the implications of atheism.  Though, I'm thankful that many of the atheists I know do not live the implications of these beliefs out for themselves like others did!  It could be argued that the socio-political ideologies could very well be the outworking of a particular set of beliefs – beliefs that posited the ideal state as an atheistic one.

You know better Ravi. Are you stereotyping, even while admitting that you’re stereotyping? Ha ha! Maybe dude is just not very introspective or something. Remember the mote, remember the mote!! Stated simply, I don’t blame all Christians for the Inquisition or expect them all do such things. C’mon.

4.    If there is no God, the problems of evil and suffering are in no way solved, so where is the hope of redemption, or meaning for those who suffer?  Suffering is just as tragic, if not more so, without God because there is no hope of ultimate justice, or of the suffering being rendered meaningful or transcendent, redemptive or redeemable.  It might be true that there is no God to blame now, but neither is there a God to reach out to for strength, transcendent meaning, or comfort.  Why would we seek the alleviation of suffering without objective morality grounded in a God of justice?

Again, this questions starts with two assumptions. One, that evil and suffering are in ‘no way’ solved, and two, that there is a complete solution anywhere evident. First, I think feeding people is a solution, isn’t it? Evil might be solved in part by people not killing each other so much, right? So…what are you even talking about? If Ravi is interested in a complete solution for all time, that’s nice. We all are. The burden of proof is certainly on him since he hasn’t quite brought anything that solved the world’s problems, not even close since Christianity has actually been responsible for a lot of the evil in the world. Ravi may even be perpetuating evil as we speak for refusing to validate others and only propagating his own exclusivist views. That doesn’t seem like a good solution.

5.    If there is no God, we lose the very standard by which we critique religions and religious people, so whose opinion matters most?  Whose voice will be heard?  Whose tastes or preferences will be honored?  In the long run, human tastes and opinions have no more weight than we give them, and who are we to give them meaning anyway?  Who is to say that lying, or cheating or adultery or child molestation are wrong –really wrong?  Where do those standards come from?  Sure, our societies might make these things “illegal” and impose penalties or consequences for things that are not socially acceptable, but human cultures have at various times legally or socially disapproved of everything from believing in God to believing the world revolves around the sun; from slavery, to interracial marriage, from polygamy to monogamy.  Human taste, opinion law and culture are hardly dependable arbiters of Truth.

Assumption again. We don’t lose standards. They may be flexible as Ravi seems to not fully understand, but they are standards none-the-less. Again, does Ravi have anything better? I’m guessing he hasn’t exactly claimed to have coffee with God on a daily basis, so he’s hoping that we revere the very human ‘voices’ of the saints of old as equivalent to divine afflatus. The burden is again on Ravi to show that these men’s voices weren’t men’s voices or ‘human tastes and opinions’ at all, which, for all the ecclesiastical hullaballoo about it being true, is still absurd. Even if an inhuman God was to speak, it is still human ears, minds, hearts that would have to receive it to tell their human brothers and sisters that it is an inhuman command not made or fully understood with human minds. What? Seriously?

If there has ever been negation of human worth and a complete depreciation and even abjuration of human possibility, it is in these notions. “Despisers  of the flesh” is what Nietzsche called them. They loathe their blood and their brain, and regret coming to life. They are affront to God, but worse, they are an insult to themselves. They stink in their own nostrils. All of their years is a running from life, a seeking of the ‘thing-after-this-life’ which will take it all away like a bad memory. They say that nothing here is sure, or good, or trustworthy, or fully controllable, or manipulatable. They aren’t kings, they aren’t gods, so they want nothing to do with it. Death makes them hate life. This desire of these true ‘nihilists’ for it all to be over is nothing short than revealing their desire to have all things dependent upon and subservient to them. They can’t wait to be in heaven where nothing can hurt them, or inconvenience them, or thwart them in any way. God’s joys will be their joys, God’s victory their victory, God’s power their power, God’s sleep their sleep. They are very proof of what Sartre adduced, that all humanity want to be gods.

6.    If there is no God, we don’t make sense, so how do we explain human longings and desire for the transcendent?  How do we even explain human questions for meaning and purpose, or inner thoughts like, why do I feel unfulfilled or empty?  Why do we hunger for the spiritual, and how do we explain these longings if nothing can exist beyond the material world?

Assumption again. If there is no God we don’t make sense? Didn’t we or anything make sense before we met God? Then what is our frame of reference for making sense of God? Would God make any sense without some sense of a sense of sense? Complete and utter sophistry to substantiate the claims of orthodox Christianity. Brother, if you can’t trust your self in any way, then you can’t trust your choice of God or your reason that seems suddenly trustworthy and remarkably astute in its vindication of him. You have hated your arms, legs, circulation, bowels, liver, eyeballs, neocortex, and senses for so long, your forget what you owe to them. Without them you couldn’t be confused or disoriented, or convinced. Meaning, or that lack of meaning, would hold no meaning. Stop hating yourself so much. You’re not lovable because God doesn’t want to torture you any more, and others aren’t pathetic fetid, carnal-garbage-piles because they don’t seem to want to love a God who tortures those who don’t love him.

As far as the questions above, nobody has perfect answers to anything, because we don’t hold all knowledge in the universe. Logical contrarieties might in fact be the effect of the world we understand not being a closed system. There’s more. Most of us know that and believe it. You seem to want to get to the “infinite with a single leap”, or what Nietzsche calls a ‘death leap’, but I don’t think it’s working better for you than what some others are doing is working for them. I don’t exactly see that you’ve been bailed out of anything.

Stop pretending that your answers are better than everyone else’s. Maybe they’re better than some, but that might seem that way for a variety of reasons. You’re so-called ‘answers’ sound more like cop-outs since you consistently admit that you don’t trust yourself. You’d rather trust people who lived 2,000 years ago to tell you what is true and what is not. And oddly enough you think they’re not subject to the same limitations of human opinions as all us other poor suckers.

Not buying it Ravi. Keep playing.

Send more questions!

Taking On Pop-Apologists

This page is dedicated to thinkers of all kinds, including non-theists, illuminating Christian  apologists’ volitional belief in traditional Christian concepts that were not decided upon by reason, and won’t be budged by reason. To expose the basic fundamentalist prejudice of apologists like William Lane Craig, Ravi Zacharias, Dinesh D'Souza, and many others. While their defense of the Christian faith may be viewed as honorable in staving off malicious attacks on simple believers, their reactionary attack on sincere unbelievers and honest scientific inquiry and belief is often rash, dishonest, manipulative of those who can't understand the motives and mechanics of the profitable market of popular Christian apologetics.

Sound like a lot to take on? I'm from a rich history of Christian fundamentalism. I know it from the inside-out. I was a dedicated believer and practitioner of Christian apologetics for 25 years, and now I see it was a shame. I went to a Christian liberal arts college, and attended seminary. I graduated with my degree, but not before having a faith/existential crisis. I got to the bottom of it all, and felt like the layers of reality was peeled back, and I saw things for what they were. It was a cult. A hoax. I don't for a second think that every traditional Christian is a bad person, not at all. I do believe there is a lot of good in Christianity, but there is also a lot of fear, confusion, anger, dishonesty, manipulation, and some hostility. 

I have since delved into studies in history, psychology, science, and philosophy. I've put a lot of work into 'working out my salvation', and as Sarte once said, my learning is not a 'talent, it is my salvation.' I learn to love and live, and thus I have learned well because I have assimilated and put to use the new information I have gleaned to test its mettle. If I have found something that holds meaning, it is because I have found where it matters; and for those ideas which I have found do not matter in the real world, I discard as having no meaning. There is no real but what I live; and I have endeavored to live what I can, and only tentatively believe what I can't.

With that in mind, I am saddened and frustrated when I hear about celebrities like Ravi Zacharias and William Lang Craig misleading people into a false confidence, and more perniciously, attacking the faith or sincere doubt of people who are intelligent and may perhaps be on the right track but do not agree to the terms of conscientiousness and logic set forth by authoritative apologists. 

I encourage anyone who reads an article, or hears an argument, on Christian apologetics to contact me, submit them to me, and allow me to comment on them on this site. I hope to help you and others who wonder about the purity of the author's motive, and the veracity of his/her observations and argument.

Please send me your questions and related articles/arguments. Let's make this fun!

-Chris