I am exploring the mystery of why people leave faith for my upcoming book, and am also doing some great research by reading the following:
- Walking Away from Faith: Unraveling the Mystery of Belief and Unbelief
- Quitting Church: Why the Faithful are Fleeing and What to Do about It
- unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters
- They Like Jesus but Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations
However, in response to a pretty good atheist podcast at Reasonable Doubts (Explicit), I was asked to consider this question: “When a Christian becomes an ‘apostate,’ (unbeliever), how do Christians explain it?”
Interestingly, the very last possible reason we would list is the FIRST one that most atheists might choose. Are we being honest with our evaluation, or just re-inforcing our belief that they are wrong? Are they re-inforcing their doubt by telling themselves that they are being rational, or do they consider the other non-rational factors that contribute to such decisions? My list of reasons follows.
How do Christians explain apostasy?
- You were never a believer in the first place.
- You made an emotional decision based on hurts in your family or church.
- You had a superficial or weak faith that was not based on intellect and heart – either it was all emotion, or all cold memorization of facts.
- You never had a chance to honestly question your faith, and will come back.
- You reasoned that faith was unreasonable.
One could certainly find people who consider themselves atheists who are atheist for any of those reasons, but I think one could make a similar list for Christians (and other religious persons):
1. You were "Christian in the first place". (ie. raised that way, either explicitly or implicitly)
2. You made an emotional decision to become Christian during a dark time in your life.
3. You had a superficial or weak commitment to another religion or to skepticism that was not based on intellect and heart. (for example, you hadn't really thought very hard about it and someone came along with a seemingly impressive argument, or you didn't have much in the way of emotional ties to your current viewpoint then went to a church service and fell in love with the ritual and music)
4. You never had a chance to honestly question your faith in your prior religion, or your commitment to skepticism, and you will come back to your original view eventually after the novelty of Christianity has worn off.
5. You reasoned that Christian faith was reasonable.
I'm sure most Christians would preferentially cite the last item (even in cases where some of the others might also apply), while skeptics would probably point to the first four as being more common. In my opinion both of these views are somewhat correct.
It seems to me that any major conversion experience, whether it's religious to skeptic or vice versa, is likely to involve two things: a triggering event or discovery which causes a shift in perspective, and a slower process of reevaluation of one's reasoning about the world in light of that shift in perspective. Any thoughtful person who confidently holds a particular opinion about the nature of the world will have spent quite a bit of time reasoning in order to convince him or herself that that opinion is reasonable, even if he or she may have initially been set on the path of that reasoning by an event which on its own would not be sufficient to prove the truth of the opinion. So while the initial conversion "event" might be one of the first four items on the list, for a thoughtful person the effects of that event will persist because of the last item.
If one is solely interested in converting people, then it is probably very helpful to try to understand what generates those shifts in perspective, in order to learn how to facilitate them in others so as to give those others an opportunity to develop a reasoned commitment to the viewpoint you want them to adopt. However, if one is instead trying to decide which perspective is a more reliable guide to developing a "correct" view of the universe (ie. a view more likely to result in true predictions about future events), then the only real recourse is to compare the best reasoning available on both sides, with the understanding that the reasoning of the average Christian or the average skeptic might not pass this test. (And of course one should really not be comparing Christianity to only skepticism, but also to all the uncountably many other religions that are out there as well.) As a random drive-by commenter I don't know which of these two angles you're more interested in investigating at the moment, but good luck to you either way.
Anna,
Those are good. I would rephrase them this way. "You are a Christian because:"
1. You were raised that way, and have never seriously considered any other viewpoint, nor seriously questioned your faith.
2. You made an emotional decision to become Christian during a dark time in your life (no change – said perfectly!)
3. Your conversion was based on the first good argument you heard, and you came from a position of weak ideological commitment – again, you may have never seriously considered any other viewpoint.
4. You are caught up in the novelty of your new Christian world view mostly because it is different, and will leave it when the novelty wears off (is that correct?)
5. Reason and experience have led you to your conclusion that Christianity is true.
Did I get those right? i will comment on the rest of your comment in my next comment :D
In my opinion, many (most?) are atheists because of a combination of #2 and #5 – that is, due to the abuses of religion, they have retreated from anything that is not empirical, seeing empiricism as the only sure and safe way to explore reality.
Being unable to empirically PROVE God's existence, they prefer to live without faith because they don't trust any of their other faculties to help them know the truth (conscience, communion, intuition).
Rather than engaging in a relationship of trust with the wisdom and presence of another (God or the Bible), they prefer to live within the limits of their own intellect and ability to confirm truth.
I know that is a little pejorative, but I don't exactly mean it to be. I am trying to express the idea that I think that intellectual materialism and atheism are safe but limited ways of living. Faith (trust) allows you to live beyond your ability to understand or immediately validate, and benefit form the wisdom of others, including God.
>> Anne: Any thoughtful person who confidently holds a particular opinion about the nature of the world will have spent quite a bit of time reasoning in order to convince him or herself that that opinion is reasonable, even if he or she may have initially been set on the path of that reasoning by an event which on its own would not be sufficient to prove the truth of the opinion.
Sorry, I spelled your name incorrectly last time. The difference here, I think, is that, with Christianity, while intellectual arguments may clear the way for faith, most people make a faith commitment NOT upon initial intellectual conviction, but upon a heart conviction (intuition, conscience) and an experience of the Divine upon the heart.
Intellectual development usually FOLLOWS Christian conversion, and what is foundational is not an intellectual decision, but an experience of a heart-conviction of truth and experienced relationship/peace that begins the journey.
Such emotional foundations and beginnings can certainly be misleading and gone back upon when reason comes to bear, and I understand why an atheist/unbeliever would be skeptical of this order of operations, so to speak.
But Christianity is first and primarily a faith of the heart, of personal conviction of guilt and truth, and of God's love. As the scriptures say, it is 'the goodness of God that leads you to repentance,' (Romans 2:4) – that is, it is not first a head thing, but a heart thing.
Yeah, your rephrasings are of course better than my originals. I just worded them the way I did to connect them to your initial list.
In any case, I'm a little startled to see you claim that as a point of pride the fact that Christianity goes beyond what can be intellectually justified. Would you find it respectable, much less admirable, if I went beyond what can be intellectually justified in order to benefit from what I believed to be the "wisdom" of Allah, Buddha, Athena, aliens, fairies, or Santa Claus, and to engage in a relationship of trust with their presence? People have in the past and continue in the present to believe they have deeply meaningful relationships with all of these entities and more, yet adult Christians will for the most part think it's anywhere from simply wrong to totally silly to make the leap from finding these beliefs satisfying and meaningful to considering them to be true. It seems to me that there's kind of a double standard here — religious people are willing to suspend disbelief for their own god myth, but only for that myth and no other. One would think that such a discrepancy might demand, you know, intellectual justification.
I think an apt comparison here might be to the act of falling in love with another human being. I love my partner, and allowing myself to fall in love with him was an act of the heart, an act of trust, although I did of course weigh carefully whether the emotional attachment I felt towards him was worth having to deal with certain difficulties I knew would inevitably arise. And despite the fact that we have indeed had to deal with those difficulties and many others, I believe that it's been more than worthwhile to have made that leap.
Of course, it would be near-impossible for me to construct a completely logical explanation for *why* I find our relationship so satisfying and valuable, or to explain what about my partner made me willing to commit myself to him. I can point to individual characteristics of his that I like, but if someone asked me to explain his total value in purely empirical terms I might be hard pressed, not to mention that I'd feel that they were kind of missing the point. So on that level, it makes sense to me to argue in favor of a willingness to make emotional commitments even in the absence of solid empirical justification.
On the other hand, the commitment I have made to my partner is, I think, different from a commitment to a deity in several important ways, not the least of which is that I have pretty good empirical reason to believe that my partner actually does exist, even though it's more challenging to justify precisely why committing to him was the right thing to do. Moreover, I understand that the rightness of this commitment is not a universal thing — even though I think he's a very good person, I don't claim that everyone else could or should love him and commit to him the same way I do and have. I don't even claim that everyone else should like or respect him, or that they should consider it reasonable for me to love him, provided they leave us alone to live our lives the way we see fit (within reason).
The point of this comparison is that the reason atheists think religion needs intellectual justification is not that we're unwilling to make emotional commitments without complete intellectual justification. It's that we're unwilling to make factual claims about the nature of the universe without intellectual justification, and we're unwilling to make universal claims about what emotional commitments other people should engage in without intellectual justification. Moreover, we're also unwilling to let public policy be guided by ideas that don't have solid intellectual justification. In other words, people are welcome to believe whatever kooky made-up things they want if it makes them happy, but they shouldn't expect the rest of us to have much respect for their kooky beliefs, they shouldn't expect the rest of us to be willing to follow them down the rabbit hole, and they *should* accept that the kooky, made-up parts of their beliefs ought to have no role in determining public policy.
So if you proudly admit that Christianity is not completely intellectually justifiable, you're of course welcome to go ahead and believe in it anyway. But you have to recognize that things that aren't completely intellectually justifiable can't reasonably be advanced as obligatory for others to adopt or even respect. You also have to accept that you can't argue somebody into falling in love with your religion, and that falling in love with it is the only way you can expect them to become committed to it. And you need to see that when other people don't convert to your religion it's not because they don't have the courage to fall in love, it's because your religion just really isn't their type.
>> ANNE: I'm a little startled to see you claim that as a point of pride the fact that Christianity goes beyond what can be intellectually justified.
I think that perhaps this is startling to someone who distrusts their spiritual faculties for the safety of intellect alone – it's like a person who has never used their ears and is startled to think that someone would think something is real when they hear it but don't see it.
When you say 'beyond what can be intellectually justified,' I hear two things. If you mean 'beyond what intellect and reason can grasp or evaluate,' I would agree – just as cosmic rays were at one time unmeasurable and unsensable, yet real, I am saying that the reality of God and spiritual things are currently that way UNLESS you find new ways to asses them.
Emmanuel Kant made an excellent argument about this, discussing the LIMITS of reason, and the logical limit that reason can not justify it's own verity because that would be circular (I may be misunderstanding, but I think that's it).
The point is, living by one's limited logic and reason alone is safe, but limited. If we take a principled approach to also using conscience, intuition, and communion when researching spiritual things (morality and God), we can reduce the risk of error and learn more than mere empiricism can teach us. We do not reject empiricism, we merely use it as a primary (but not solitary) tool in our arsenal of truth seeking.
>> ANNE: Would you find it respectable, much less admirable, if I went beyond what can be intellectually justified in order to benefit from what I believed to be the "wisdom" of Allah, Buddha, Athena, aliens, fairies, or Santa Claus, and to engage in a relationship of trust with their presence?….One would think that such a discrepancy might demand, you know, intellectual justification.
If you failed to use reason to discriminate between these sources, I would find is less than admirable. As I discussed in Pascal's Wager – Part II: debunking the 'all religions are equally improbable' ruse, not all claims at divine truth are equal.
In that post, plus Pascal's Wager – Part III: Evaluating the gods, I believe that I made an intellectual argument for my special pleading for Christianity, and to a lesser extent, Buddhism. BTW, Buddhists don't really believe that they have a relationship w/ Buddha.
>> ANNE: I think an apt comparison here might be to the act of falling in love with another human being.
That is the perfect analogy, which is why the Bible stresses that a *relationship* with God is true spirituality – or as Jesus said
And this is why I discussed that for most Christians, they believe not primarly because their intellect told them so (though intellectual arguments may have led them to stop disbelieving), but because they quite literally fall in love after realizing that they ARE loved and are missing out on the most important relationship they could have.
>> ANNE: On the other hand, the commitment I have made to my partner is, I think, different from a commitment to a deity in several important ways, not the least of which is that I have pretty good empirical reason to believe that my partner actually does exist,
I think that this is the difference between having faith and having direct empirical evidence. Faith in God is not asking you to believe *despite* evidence, but *in leiu of* direct empirical evidence. While there are a slew of secondary reasons to believe in the God of the Bible (wisdom, ethics, historical, archeaological, and perhaps most importantly, philosophical), faith in God certainly IS different from a relationship w/ a flesh and blood mortal.
>> ANNE: The point of this comparison is that the reason atheists think religion needs intellectual justification is not that we're unwilling to make emotional commitments without complete intellectual justification.
I would say that there IS intellectual justification (good philosophical arguments), but no EMPIRICAL evidence outside of the historical and archeaological support for the Bible.
>> ANNE: In other words, people are welcome to believe whatever kooky made-up things they want if it makes them happy, but they shouldn't expect the rest of us to have much respect for their kooky beliefs,
I kind of disagree. As in wrote in my Pascal's Wager articles, if some spiritual systems are harmful (like those that denigrate women or violate human rights), we have a duty to confront them, even if they make some people 'happy.' Some religions ARE kookier than others.
>> ANNE: they *should* accept that the kooky, made-up parts of their beliefs ought to have no role in determining public policy.
This is a little ambiguous, and again, could mean two things, but I think I largely agree. As I have long argued, appeals to religious authority may be used in swaying public opinion (such as MLK did), but in public policy debates, we need to appeal to common ethics.
So for example, in the abortion debate, I would not say "because the bible says so," but rather, I would appeal to the constitutional "right to life," and argue that life and personhood begin at some scientifically reasonable point (like heartbeat) (cf. c-ral.org
However, since all legislation is in some part ethical and moral in nature, it is perfectly legitimate for me to want to have the law support what I think to be moral – things such as do not kill, do not steal, do not lie. And of course, religious laws have no place in public policy (like wearing head-coverings, for instance). So if you mean that I should not bring my ethical and moral convictions to bear upon public policy, I would say that's not true – as long as my moral convictions have to do with the ethics of being humane, not religious observance.
>> ANNE: So if you proudly admit that Christianity is not completely intellectually justifiable, you're of course welcome to go ahead and believe in it anyway.
I am not saying that. I am saying that, as much as spiritual things can be determined by logic and reason, Christianity stands head and shoulders above the others. However, if you mean that reason and logic alone can lead you to the knowledge and experience of God, I would say that you are living within your own vast limits.
>> ANNE: But you have to recognize that things that aren't completely intellectually justifiable can't reasonably be advanced as obligatory for others to adopt or even respect.
I admit that, which is why I must also respect people's right to NOT beleive, even though they have no way to empirically prove God's non-existence.
>> ANNE: You also have to accept that you can't argue somebody into falling in love with your religion, and that falling in love with it is the only way you can expect them to become committed to it.
I agree, although I would add that making intellectual arguments for faith CAN ELIMINATE erroneous barriers to faith that people have. This is the thrust of Paul's instruction to use logical argument (rather than force) as part of spreading the faith:
It is also important that we develop our intellect as people of faith – here's just a couple relevant scriptures:
Proverbs 4:7
Wisdom is the principal thing; Therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.
Proverbs 16:16
How much better to get wisdom than gold! And to get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver.
>> ANNE: And you need to see that when other people don't convert to your religion it's not because they don't have the courage to fall in love, it's because your religion just really isn't their type.
I am not endeavoring to convert people to religion, but to truth. If I am correct, than those that disbelieve are actually rejecting TRUTH, not religion. However, if my practice is not one of truth, but of mere outward observances, I would expect that others would reject it as 'not for them.'
Thanks for commenting!
One more thing about the empirical reality of a human partner and a relationship w/ God.
See this definitive passage on faith, and how FAITH (not blind faith, see The Atheist's Caricature of Faith) replaces direct evidence in the divine relationship:
Regarding blind faith, please also see
What is a Fundamentalist Christian?
I'm sorry it's taken me so long to respond, but I feel like you've done a bit of a Gish Gallop on me here, saying so many things that are so wrong that it takes longer to refute them than it does to state them in the first place. So I think I'm going to skip the details and simply hit on the four big points where you seem to be confused.
The first point is in regard to the supposed "evidence" in favor of Christian religious beliefs. You seem to believe that atheists just wave their hands and say, "Oh, all religions are equally stupid," without having examined them individually, and that we have therefore missed the special unique rightness of Christianity. In fact, it is precisely by examining different systems of mythology individually, carefully, and sympathetically that one becomes aware of how similar Christianity is to all the rest, in terms of its historical development, the ways in which it is defended by believers, the quality of the "evidence" in its favor, and so forth. Christians have difficulty recognizing these similarities because Christians are immersed every day in Christian assumptions, and it is very difficult to see from such a perspective that one is accepting truth claims on behalf of one's own religion that one would find absurd and unsubstantiated if they were made on behalf of another.
It would be aside from the point to go into the details of the telling similarities between Christianity and other religions just now. The writings of Joseph Campbell might be a reasonable starting point if you want to learn more about this. But the bottom line is that any demonstration that Christianity is actually uniquely superior needs to be based on an informed and sympathetic analysis of other religions, and on a clear-eyed reading of history, not just a cutesy Pascal's Wager chart. And absent absolutely compelling arguments in favor of Christianity (which Christianity exactly, by the way?) there's no real reason that an atheist should bother to give it any particular notice in the midst of the vast mob of other silly, poorly-substantiated things that people have shown themselves perfectly willing to devote their lives to throught human history. Christianity needs to *earn* the standing required for anything more than off-handed dismissal as just as silly as all the rest; it has no right to demand such standing a priori. And in the opinion of many atheists, Christianity just hasn't distinguished itself well enough to demonstrate that it's anything special, which is why we feel perfectly satisfied to leave it in the, "They're all equally stupid," pile.
The second point is in regard to "spiritual faculties" and the evidence of things unseen. I would really like to know what in the world a spiritual faculty is, and how you justify comparing such things to real senses like sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and proprioception. You talk about someone who has never used their ears being startled that someone would think something is real when they hear it but don't see it, yet the person who hears could hook up a microphone to an acoustic analysis program on a computer and demonstrate to the person who doesn't that things that aren't visible can affect the readouts on the computer. Someone who thinks invisible particles called cosmic rays exist can build a bubble chamber and show the rest of the world that something is definitely coming from the sky and affecting the vapors in the chamber. What demonstration can you make to me that the things you "sense" with these supposed "spiritual faculties" have any effects whatsoever on the real world?
Moreover, typically people who do have a particular sense will be able to agree reasonably well on what that sense tells them. If I see a chair standing across the room from me, I can turn to another sighted friend and expect that that friend will agree with me (unless one or both of us have recently used hallucinogenic drugs). I could also turn to a blind friend and ask that friend to go over and touch the object and again, that friend would agree that it is a chair. But with their supposed "spiritual faculties", different people experience vastly different and contradictory religious sensations. Some "sense" the presence of the Christian god, while others find Allah, or benevolent aliens, or the oneness of all things. And people are told by their supposed "moral sense" to do things that my "moral sense" tells me are abhorrent, like flying airplanes into buildings and preventing gay people from gaining legal recognition for their families. So this whole "spiritual faculties" thing seems to me more like a bogus way for religious people to try to elevate their personal intuitions about how the universe should work to some kind of universal laws than it does like a genuine sense. I'm just not buying it.
The third point is related to this issue of faith. If Christianity was truly thoroughly intellectually justified it wouldn't require any kind of special "faith" to believe in it, such that "faith" would be touted as a Christian virtue. Nobody goes around being proud of their "faith" that the Earth is a roughly spherical world orbiting the sun which orbits the center of the Milky Way and so on. Nobody touts their "faith" in the existence of electrons, or the fact of evolution. Nobody talks about the importance of their "faith" in the existence of George Washington. We have giant heaping stacks of evidence which is accessible to anyone who wants to examine it and which is most consistent with a universe in which these propositions are true, such that to refuse to accept them as the best explanation of that evidence would be rather perverse. The evidence for Christianity is nowhere near this quality. If it was, the stories in the Bible would be studied as history and archaeology, the hows and whys of miracles would be studied as science, and believing in their truth would just be a matter of confidence in the workings of the scientific and historical processes. Instead reputable academics study Christian stories and miracles as mythology, and belief in the Christian story is (proudly) an act of faith. How is this consistent with something which is, as you say, not mere religion, but Capital-T-Truth?
The fourth and final point is the silliness of your assertion that people choose atheism because it's "safe". When I finally realized that my religious faith wasn't tenable any more and that I had no honest choice but to become an atheist it scared the crap out of me. I felt like I was jumping off a cliff and hoping to sprout wings on the way down. Fortunately it seems to have worked out okay for me, but let me assure you that if safety was my primary concern this is *not* the way I would've gone. Safety would have been sticking with what I knew, with a system that told me the "right" way to act and assured me that I would be rewarded if I obeyed the rules. Safety was definitely not consistent with striking out into the unknown, having to figure out everything for myself, and having no way of knowing whether it would turn out all right in the end. In a society where the vast majority of people are religious and despise atheism, and where there is little or no guidance on how to live successfully as an atheist, choosing atheism is anything but safe.
1. Similarity and uniqueness of Xianity to other religions
>> ANNE: You seem to believe that atheists just wave their hands and say, "Oh, all religions are equally stupid," without having examined them individually, and that we have therefore missed the special unique rightness of Christianity. In fact, it is precisely by examining different systems of mythology individually, carefully, and sympathetically that one becomes aware of how similar Christianity is to all the rest
Well, I think it is telling that, while you deny that atheists engage in uncritical group dismissal of religions, you continue on to do just that, discussing xianity's similarity to other religions.
While you are correct that many Christians fail to do this analysis regarding historical development of religions, that does not address the contention that Christianity (and to a lesser extent Buddhism) is still quantitatively and qualitatively superior to other faiths in historical accuracy, amount of historical data, not to mention it's unequaled positive and huge impact in the formation of Western culture. The fact that xianity is the primary source of hospitals, Universities, support for and birth of modern science, and abolition and the general valuing of human life is more than significant.
>> The writings of Joseph Campbell might be a reasonable starting point if you want to learn more about this.
I enjoyed the Power of Myth very much, and liked his writing on these items. However, despite the universal appeal and similarities of myth across ideological and religious systems, Christianity goes beyond myth and makes historical claims. These are what makes Christianity unique and powerful – it demands the belief in REAL historical events, not just religious concepts or meaning-making myths, even if it also functions that way.
>> not just a cutesy Pascal's Wager chart.
As I stated, that was just a mockup, an example that I stated could be questioned, and examined, and proven if someone took the time. But the actual point I was making was that such an analysis COULD be done, and that some religions and ideologies can be rejected prima facie because they are patently inferior. Again, the point is that such an evaluation can not PROVE the truth of religious claims, but it can ELIMINATE pretenders.
The atheist tactic to compare the Biblical Jesus to the FSM is the type of idiocy I was addressing. The FSM can easily be dismissed as relatively false and worthless, while other ideologies can not.
>> Christianity needs to *earn* the standing required for anything more than off-handed dismissal as just as silly as all the rest; it has no right to demand such standing a priori.
I agree, and many authors have undertaken that task. See:
How Christianity changed the world by Alvin Schmidt
The biblical origins of science
2. What are spiritual faculties?
>> ANNE: . I would really like to know what in the world a spiritual faculty is, and how you justify comparing such things to real senses like sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and proprioception.
You are right, I did not elaborate on that, and I should – I meant to get to that as part of my series The Tripartite Makeup of Man.
But simply, the three proposed functions of the Spirit are
a. Conscience – the 'organ' (metaphorically speaking) of moral perception, including our sense of right/wrong, and guilt
b. Intution – the organ of truth perception, sometimes called "our gut." There is a sense in which we recognize truth, even if emotionally or intellectually, we have initial barriers to certain ideas. It is a type of 'knowing' that goes beyond mere understanding. It is the means by which we recognize moral and ethical truths before we even think about them consicously.
c. Communion – this is the organ of spiritual fellowship – it is a deeper communion with people and God than physical or emotional ties. It is place at our core where we commune with the Divine or people beyond understanding. It is a type of joining that goes beyond the physical and emotional.
Most of us are relative newbies at using these faculties, having been bound by empiricalism or turned away from such by people who don't temper the use of these faculties with their other faculties of intellect and sense experience. The subjective nature of these makes them easier to abuse and misunderstand, but that does not make them unreal. Along these lines, you might also enjoy The Wesleyan Quadrangle, which discusses the relationships between Faith and Scripture, Reason, and Experience. Not exactly related, but engages the principle that neither faith nor reason are dependable on their own.
>> ANNE: You talk about someone who has never used their ears being startled that someone would think something is real when they hear it but don't see it, yet the person who hears could hook up a microphone to an acoustic analysis program on a computer and demonstrate to the person who doesn't that things that aren't visible can affect the readouts on the computer.
It was an analogy, and as you know, all analogies are imperfect. I understand your point, there is a difference between two empirically verifiable senses and spiritual 'senses.' Nevertheless, I hope that my analogy helps you understand my point.
Again, years ago, no one would have been able to measure or believe that cosmic rays were real. Now we CAN indirectly measure them (with instruments). Relativity opened up a whole new world to us beyond our previous perception. Quantum physics is revealing a whole NEW realm which may have new rules. Who is to say that my proposed 'spiritual' faculties might one day be measurable. ;)
>> ANNE: Moreover, typically people who do have a particular sense will be able to agree reasonably well on what that sense tells them.
The problem with ethical, moral, and spiritual realities is that, though objective morals may exist, people will disagree on even the most foundational of them (for example, all men are created equal). These types of truths are harder to pin down, and yet, as the founders suggested, people of sound judgement and good will would see the 'self-evident' nature of certain things.
The Bible teaches that we are corrupted by self-interest, sin, and a world system that teaches us values in contradiction to the spritual kingdom – i.e., we are 'blind' until we 'see'.
But again, matters of faith require the use of spiritual senses, not just empiricism. I'm not sure why, but it works that way. You can use empiricism to examine the historicity, the internal consistency, and the value of scripture. But reason must eventually give way to faith if you want to please God, for "without faith, it is impossible to please God."
Or as I like to say:
3. If we need faith, we are not intellectually justified
>> ANNE: If Christianity was truly thoroughly intellectually justified it wouldn't require any kind of special "faith" to believe in it, such that "faith" would be touted as a Christian virtue.
As I said, there are limits to reason, as Emmanuel Kant discusses in his great work on the topic. Just because our limited understanding and science can not fully grasp or understand the infinite does not make it untenable or unreal.
>> Nobody talks about the importance of their "faith" in the existence of George Washington.
Actually, that is all you have regarding historical figures – you can't empirically confirm that GW existed, you have to trust someone else's testimony. That's what the Bible asks.
Except it asks for a different kind of faith – one that involves not just belief that God IS, but one that involves PLACING your trust, that is, your life, in His hands. As scriptures say, "even the demons believe that God is real, but that does not save them from the judgement to come!" (my paraphrase).
The importance of faith in Christ is that it SAVES you from something now and later. It transforms your soul. It goes beyond mere intellect and engages you in a living relationship with God. Faith in GW could do no such thing.
>> ANNE: The evidence for Christianity is nowhere near this quality.
Most who say that have not looked at the evidence, but have merely sat at the feet of the Richard Dawkins of this world and taken their word for it. Many, many people who have actually set out to examine the evidence, even in order to debunk xianity, have converted because the evidence is overwhelming. But salvation still requires faith that goes beyond the paltry intellect.
>> ANNE: If it was, the stories in the Bible would be studied as history and archaeology…Instead reputable academics study Christian stories and miracles as mythology
Anne, I think you are WAAAAY out of your depth here. The amount of Biblical Archaeology is tremendous, and overwhelmingly confirms the breadth and depth of the Bible, down to minute details. If you are truly interested, just google Biblical Archaeology. Then spend a few weeks pouring over the gobs of information.
4. Is atheism merely a safety mechanism to protect people from the vagaries of faith?
>> ANNE: The fourth and final point is the silliness of your assertion that people choose atheism because it's "safe". When I finally realized that my religious faith wasn't tenable any more and that I had no honest choice but to become an atheist it scared the crap out of me.
I did not mean to say that leaving faith is easy, nor becoming an atheist is easy, nor is dealing with people's negative perceptions of atheists. But STAYING an atheist is by all means 'safe' in my view because it hunkers down in the limited, safe world of empiricism, and fails to venture out into the spiritual world, for many reasons. It may be convenient to not go out where abuses and subjectivism can make fools of you (like in love), but the reality of God is worth the risk as is the reality of human love.
>> ANNE: Safety was definitely not consistent with striking out into the unknown, having to figure out everything for myself, and having no way of knowing whether it would turn out all right in the end.
Having left my faith and returned to faith many years later, I understand the fear and trauma of such a journey of 'trusting no one, save my own perception.' However, faith is about learning whom you CAN trust, and then trusting again.
This is the topic of my first book, which your input is helpful for. Again, thank you for taking time to post, please do as much as you care to (or not). If you can stand it, I'd love to have somone like you review my manuscript when it is ready. I'll announce it in about 8 months. Thanks.
you forgot the reason i most often encounter – people deconvert from Christianity because they want to sin and so they have to get rid of God so they don't feel guilty about sinning all the time.
there is no such thing as sincere unbelief. all unbelief is intentional self-deception arising from rebellion.
i think this is a very good one for apologetics reasons. it makes God seem very just in condemning unbelief. it makes people afraid to question or doubt (because they would only do that if they were evil). and it reinforces ingroup bias (non-Christians are willful, evil and rebellious and Christians are humble, obedient and good).
oh yeah… and it also keeps Christians from looking at alternative viewpoints, because it insists that there are no respectable alternative viewpoints, only pathetic justifications for evil.
> Christianity (and to a lesser extent Buddhism) is still quantitatively and qualitatively superior to other faiths in…
Buddhism isn't the major point of contention here, so I'm going to ignore it for the moment, but other than that let me go point by point…
> historical accuracy, amount of historical data
No. See, for example, Robert Price, Hector Avalos, Rene Salm, and an infinitude of others.
> not to mention it's unequaled positive and huge impact in the formation of Western culture.
Oh, you mean the parts where dissenters got excommunicated and burned and dissenting views were blacklisted? The great parts of Western culture are due to the people who realized that we need to use *secular* reasoning to avoid tricking ourselves into thinking something is true because it matches what we already believe, and to have *secular* government so that no one religious group can stomp on everyone else. Yes, many of these people were nominally or actually one form of Christian or another, but only because *everybody* was Christian, and typically the ones who genuinely advanced the cause of civilization were far from the Christian mainstream.
> The fact that xianity is the primary source of hospitals
Only 13% of community hospitals in the US, comprising 18% of hospital beds, have some religious affiliation. I can't speak too much to other countries, but I'd note that those countries with better medical care than the US (Canada and Western Europe) are even more overwhelmingly secular, and indeed often have the government as the primary administrator of healthcare. In some less developed countries it may be true that religious institutions (not necessarily Christian) are more dominant in the health care market, but that's more a sign that the secular institutions in those countries have failed than a sign that religion is great.
> Universities
Almost none of the great universities are explicitly sectarian these days, and those which do maintain a sectarian affiliation strongly downplay it. Conversely, those schools that are strongly sectarian tend to be very low-ranked indeed and unbalanced in their curriculum. If you want an excellent and balanced education, you go to a secular university, not to Bob Jones. Many universities did *begin* as sectarian organizations, but only because they were intended for educating priests and ministers, who needed to know at least a little bit more about their religion than their congregations did. As the purpose of the universities expanded into realms that were actually useful, the religious elements tended to wither away.
> support for and birth of modern science,
Only to the degree that the Catholic Church, back in the day, was the only institution that had the money and the wherewithal to educate anybody enough that they could become a scientist. Well, them and the wealthy nobility (like the Medicis). When the conclusions of those scientists ran contrary to religious dogma, problems quickly arose. The growth of technological and scientific knowledge only really began to accelerate when the secular world became capable of supporting scientific studies and technological development. Surely you recall the Industrial Revolution? Also, if you want to be crediting Christianity for science, where's the love for Islam? They pretty much invented math over there, and for quite a while all European Christians did was translate Islamic works and go, "Golly, I wish we'd thought of that." And then there were the ancient (pagan) Greeks, upon whom early Christian scientists also leaned heavily.
> and abolition
"Slaves, obey your masters." Remember that one? They spent an awful lot of time reading that verse in Southern churches. Christianity was used to justify both sides of the slavery debate (including the "we're saving their benighted souls, who cares what happens to their bodies" line of reasoning), and those Christians who opposed slavery were definitely not members of the Christian mainstream; some abolitionists were barely Christian, or even religious, at all. See Susan Jacoby's book "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism". In that book, she also discusses the religious context of the 20th century black civil rights movement, which you mentioned in an earlier post, and debunks the notion that Christianity was necessary to the movement.
> and the general valuing of human life is more than significant.
Actually, there is a strong thread throughout the history of Christianity of valuing the "salvation" of "souls" more strongly than the salvation of lives. One modern example of this is the Catholic Church's strong anti-condom stand in Africa. Actual living human women could be saved from contracting AIDS, a deadly disease for those who can't afford the treatments, by the use of condoms during marital sex. But the Church prefers protecting those women's "souls" from the "sin" of condom use to encouraging them and their husbands to take a fairly simple and straightforward measure which would significantly reduce chances of transmission. (The ABC programs have worked remarkably well in places that have tried them, but the C has been well established as an essential component.)
The Catholic Church also excommunicated all of the adults involved in obtaining an abortion for a 9-year-old girl who was pregnant with twins due to rape by her stepfather, even though she would have been gravely endangered by continuing the pregnancy. In this case potential future lives were valued above the actual existing life of a young and vulnerable child. And the list goes on.
> I enjoyed the Power of Myth very much, and liked his writing on these items. However, despite the universal appeal and similarities of myth across ideological and religious systems, Christianity goes beyond myth and makes historical claims.
Well, yes, but the thing that you're missing is that those historical claims themselves seem to have strong ties to religious and historical claims made by other religions which developed in the same geographic area around the same time. the story of Mithras is the one most commonly cited, but there are others. The ideas that were synthesized to become Christianity seem to have just been part of the zeitgeist in that place, and were not unique to Christianity or the Christian story.
> These are what makes Christianity unique and powerful – it demands the belief in REAL historical events, not just religious concepts or meaning-making myths, even if it also functions that way.
The demand for belief in "real" historical events whose reality is in actuality very poorly substantiated is precisely one of the major weaknesses of Christianity. Besides, Islam makes the same demand for belief in "real" historical events, as do Judaism, Mormonism, and many others, so this is not even a unique thing about Christianity. (Well, actually, Judaism is less into the belief aspect, and is more concerned about practice, but the belief is used to justify the practice.)
> some religions and ideologies can be rejected prima facie because they are patently inferior
My point is that the grounds on which you chose to evaluate religions, the beliefs you chose to evaluate, and the facts on which you based your evaluation are nonsensical. Superman? Seriously? Mormonism is a much better comparison. Just like Christianity, it's based on a series of writings which are essentially fanfic for an earlier existing religion, written by somebody who didn't really know the details of the earlier religion or of other related history all that well. The difference is that the origins of Mormonism were recent enough that we actually still have a decent amount of very clear historical data available about the times in which it was formed, so it's easy for anyone with a lick of sense to see the gaping holes in the story. And yet millions of people all over the world are completely committed to it.
The only reason Christianity gets away with hiding its head in the sand about its own lack of historical justification is that its origins are sufficiently ancient that any historical analysis is necessarily subtle and involves a great deal of inference across gaps in knowledge. So it's very easy for a Christian to say, "Look, we've got these four superficially similar [but actually mutally contradictory when you pay attention] versions of the Jesus story, a passing reference to our story in some Roman chronicle [which textual analysis suggests was inserted by a later writer], and some modern places [which were renamed or otherwise messed with by the Crusaders] with the same names as places in our holy book. It must be true!"
> I agree, and many authors have undertaken that task. See:
> How Christianity changed the world by Alvin Schmidt
As I've said before, very little if any of the credit for the state of the modern world, and a lot of the discredit, goes to Christianity. (Consider James Carroll's book _Constantine's Sword_ for another example of discredit.) But I'll also note here that even if Christianity *could* be credited with certain positive effects, that doesn't mean that the beliefs it's based on are *true*. It just means they were useful in the particular time and place they arose in. For example, the traditional farming systems in Papua New Guinea worked *incredibly* well (to the degree that the introduction of modern techniques was disastrous), because the traditional techniques had been evolved over the ages to be perfectly adapted to the climate there. But the belief system used to justify these techniques was nevertheless completely bogus.
> The biblical origins of science
Any book that rounds pi to three and acts as if the earth is a flat disc with a dome of sky over it and a load of water trapped above the sky is not a book I'm going to turn to looking for scientific insight. The authors of the book were a bunch of nomadic goatherders, and I bet they knew a lot about goatherding (not that the book has much in the way of insights about *that* either), and apparently they knew something about poetry. But science, not so much.
> It was an analogy, and as you know, all analogies are imperfect. I understand your point, there is a difference between two empirically verifiable senses and spiritual 'senses.' Nevertheless, I hope that my analogy helps you understand my point.
Only in the sense that it's convinced me that you really don't know what you're talking about here. Look, if somebody came up to you and said, "I think that there are invisible particles streaming down from the sky upon us all the time. I have no evidence for this and no intention of trying to figure out how to gather this evidence, but you should believe me anyway. Oh, also, your immortal soul is on the line here," would you believe them or would you think they were a nutter? You've got no evidence for these supposed spiritual faculties and no research program dedicated to figuring out how to gather evidence for them, yet you want everybody else to believe they exist and can give us meaningful information about the universe. Why shouldn't I think you're a nutter?
> The Bible teaches that we are corrupted by self-interest, sin, and a world system that teaches us values in contradiction to the spritual kingdom – i.e., we are 'blind' until we 'see'.
I take it that you're proposing that this corruption by self-interest, sin, and so forth is the reason that not everybody's moral senses agree. So, great. You've proposed a mechanism to explain the disagreement, now tell me how I can figure out whose moral sense is wack and whose is sound. If we go back to my chair analogy, and my friend and I disagree on the presence of the chair, I could propose that this disagreement is caused by the fact that one of us has dropped acid, and we could go get blood and urine tests to see if that was the case. Or, alternately, we could wait a couple days until we're sure we're both clean and go back and look again and see if we agree this time. Or we could walk around the chair a little bit and see if one of us was just confused by a perspective issue. And so on and so forth. So I've got a pretty solid process to test for a corrupted visual sense. What analogous test can one do to detect a corrupted moral sense?
> But reason must eventually give way to faith if you want to please God, for "without faith, it is impossible to please God."
I do not think your god exists. Why should I be concerned about pleasing an entity I do not think exists? Are you worried about pleasing Athena?
> As I said, there are limits to reason, as Emmanuel Kant discusses in his great work on the topic. Just because our limited understanding and science can not fully grasp or understand the infinite does not make it untenable or unreal.
Conversely, the limits of reason do not justify just making stuff up to fill the giant empty realms where you don't/can't know what's going on. All the limits of reason justify doing is saying, "Gee, I don't know. Oh well, I'll go worry about the stuff I *can* know instead."
> Actually, that is all you have regarding historical figures – you can't empirically confirm that GW existed, you have to trust someone else's testimony.
Actually, for Washington we have zillions of mutually confirming sets of historical artifacts (including writings in his own hand and writings directed to him by others, his corpse, paintings of him by contemporaries, archaeological evidence from battles he was reputed to have led, etc.), and zillions of mutually confirming historical testimonies from contemporary authors from many countries whose own existence is also well-confirmed. For Jesus we have a few sketchy texts of uncertain provenance whose authors were almost certainly pseudonymous, wrote well after his supposed death, probably had no direct connection to the supposed events described in their texts, and may have been historicizing a legend (as probably also happened in the case of King Arthur). In addition, we have a forged reference in a Roman chronicle and a bunch of supposed relics that were almost certainly forged around the Crusader area by people looking to make a quick buck. Sorry, Washington wins by a long shot.
> Except it asks for a different kind of faith – one that involves not just belief that God IS, but one that involves PLACING your trust, that is, your life, in His hands. As scriptures say, "even the demons believe that God is real, but that does not save them from the judgement to come!" (my paraphrase).
Except I *don't* think this god of yours is real. That makes it challenging to place my trust in it. I'm also not terribly worried about being judged by something I don't think exists. Do you live in fear of what Ma'at will find when she weighs your heart against a feather?
> Most who say that have not looked at the evidence, but have merely sat at the feet of the Richard Dawkins of this world and taken their word for it. Many, many people who have actually set out to examine the evidence, even in order to debunk xianity, have converted because the evidence is overwhelming. But salvation still requires faith that goes beyond the paltry intellect.
Okay, well, that's fine for most people. One could say the same for most Christians — they haven't looked at they evidence, but have merely sat at the feet of their priests and ministers and taken their word for it. And many, many people who have actually set out to examine the evidence, even in order to confirm Christianity, have lost their faith because the evidence against it is overwhelming. After all, true rationality still requires evidence and arguments that go beyond paltry faith.
The point of this is not what "most people" believe. The point is what views are actually well enough supported by evidence and argumentation to make them a reasonable basis for predictions about future events. And Christianity just ain't.
> Anne, I think you are WAAAAY out of your depth here. The amount of Biblical Archaeology is tremendous, and overwhelmingly confirms the breadth and depth of the Bible, down to minute details. If you are truly interested, just google Biblical Archaeology. Then spend a few weeks pouring over the gobs of information.
Speaking of people being WAAAAY out of their depth… If you go out into the desert looking for Jesus, you'll find him. I've read closely several of the cases in which archaeology supposedly proves minute details of the Bible, and in each case it turns out that the archaeologists were committed Christians before they began and as a result ignored perfectly reasonable alternative explanations of the data in favor of "confirmatory" explanations. One example I recently encountered is the study of the history of Nazareth. Rene Salm's careful reanalysis of the archaelogical data from that city in his book _The Myth Of Nazareth: The Invented Town Of Jesus_ shows that the town almost certainly did not arise until significantly after the era in which Jesus was supposed to have inhabited it. And that's just scratching the surface. Reputable modern archaeologists do not, in general, believe in the historicity of the Christian Bible.
> But STAYING an atheist is by all means 'safe' in my view because it hunkers down in the limited, safe world of empiricism, and fails to venture out into the spiritual world, for many reasons. It may be convenient to not go out where abuses and subjectivism can make fools of you (like in love), but the reality of God is worth the risk as is the reality of human love.
What I'm not interested in doing is going out into the world of believing in completely made up stuff. In addition to not venturing out into the world of Christianity, I'm also not venturing out into the worlds of crystal healing and fairies and Islam and Mormonism and homeopathy. On the other hand, I do speculate and imagine things all the time. Imagining and investigating new possibilities beyond current knowledge is *essential* to the process of science, and it's *far* from safe, because you can end up wasting a lot of time going down a dead end with your imaginings. The difference is, I know better than to actually *believe* my speculations until I've got some evidence or reasoning to back them up. There is a distinction between having an open mind and having a hole in your head, and in my opinion, Christianity is on the "hole in your head" side of the divide.
> However, faith is about learning whom you CAN trust, and then trusting again.
I have always known who to trust, and the answer is, "People who actually exist and who reciprocate kindness and faithfulness with kindness and faithfulness." That doesn't mean that somebody else, no matter how kind and faithful, can write my code of ethics for me or tell me what makes my life worth living. Everybody, no matter how trusting they may be, has to figure these things out for themselves. The only thing that changed for me when religion went away is that I became aware of that for the first time. Before I had let the religion provide the answers for me, and afterwards I had to discover my own answers, and to live for a time without answers until I'd figured it out. Living without knowing how or why was what was frightening. But even then I had people I could trust, and I did.
> If you can stand it, I'd love to have somone like you review my manuscript when it is ready. I'll announce it in about 8 months. Thanks.
I can't promise what I'll be able to do in 8 months, but if I am available then I'll certainly consider it. Good luck.
PART I
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>> ANNE: Only 13% of community hospitals in the US, comprising 18% of hospital beds
I am not referring to the current, sad state of our medical and university systems. I am saying that the *historical impact* of Christianity includes the creation of hospitals and universities.
While the history of the hospital is not entirely Christian in origin, it is primarily so, esp. in the west. See
From Monastery to Hospital
The Judaic-Christian Origin of Nursing Homes (JAMA)
Hospitals (Catholic Encyclopedia)
I can't find the stats on it yet, but I also believe that Catholic Charities and Protestant missions still provide the majority of free health care around the globe.
>> ANNE: Almost none of the great universities are explicitly sectarian these days,
Again, I am talking about origins.
As a case in point, all but two of the first 108 Universities in the US were founded as Christian seminaries or Christian universities, including most if not all of the Ivy League Schools.
As another case in point, see Religion, innovation and economic progress, which documents the spread of literacy around the world, not as technologies advanced, but as Protestantism advanced.
>> ANNE: As the purpose of the universities expanded into realms that were actually useful, the religious elements tended to wither away.
That is an interesting assumption, but the debate over the reason for the secuarization and liberalization of the nations' Universities is much more than the 'usefulness' of non-religious information.
The fact remains that our intellectual foundations rest upon the works of the people of faith who forged our initial systems of learning. If you ignore that, you are being biased.
>> ANNE: When the conclusions of those scientists ran contrary to religious dogma, problems quickly arose.
Actually, that is a modern anti-Catholic myth, esp. if you are referring to Galileo. See:
The biblical origins of science
The Galileo Legend
Debunking the Galileo Myth
>> ANNE: Also, if you want to be crediting Christianity for science, where's the love for Islam? They pretty much invented math
Not really true. No love for Islam here. See Europe's Dark Ages and Islam's Golden Age – two historic fictions?
>> ANNE: "Slaves, obey your masters." Remember that one?
Regardless of what you think the Bible means when it says that (note: the same author condemned kidnapping, so perhaps you should consider that the slavery of the Bible, esp. the NT, is not what you think it is), HISTORICALLY, neither greeks nor secularists brought about abolition, while CHRISTIANS did.
Just because that conflicts with your understanding of scripture does not make it untrue. That is yet another contribution of Christianity which you ignore – why?
>> ANNE: those Christians who opposed slavery were definitely not members of the Christian mainstream
Possibly so, but your consistent ignorance of distincly Chrisitian contributions to western greatness is so biased it's not funny. I will read Jacoby's book, though, thank you.
>> ANNE: Actually, there is a strong thread throughout the history of Christianity of valuing the "salvation" of "souls" more strongly than the salvation of lives. One modern example of this is the Catholic Church's strong anti-condom stand in Africa.
You really do need to read and evaluate Alvin Schmidt's How Christianity Changed the World, I think you are steeped in anti-religious thought rather than more objective historical thought.
And the condom thing is a red herring – it's a disagreement about method, not goals, and about balancing short term v. long term solutions.
>> ANNE: The Catholic Church also excommunicated all of the adults involved in obtaining an abortion for a 9-year-old girl who was pregnant with twins due to rape by her stepfather,
No one is denying that the Catholic church made eggregious and evil mistakes. Heck, I'm a Protestant, they did lots of things wrong if you ask me.
But that does not erase the HUGE positive impact of Christianity on western culture.
PART II
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>> ANNE: Well, yes, but the thing that you're missing is that those historical claims themselves seem to have strong ties to religious and historical claims made by other religions which developed in the same geographic area around the same time.
I am not missing that at all. The Mithras 'myth' is an amalgomation of various stories, and historically, a really poor argument.
1. Christianity probably did NOT borrow from the mystery and other religions. See
Christianity and the Mystery Religions
Did Christianity Borrow from the Mystery Religions?
2. The fact that many describe similar historical events such as a universal flood actually SUPPORTS the contention that these were real historical events and NOT mythical. Further, these various reports CAN be compared, and some can be shown to have been more or less embellished, more or less detailed, and more or less archaeologically accurate.
>> ANNE: The demand for belief in "real" historical events whose reality is in actuality very poorly substantiated is precisely one of the major weaknesses of Christianity.
I'll read the books you mentioned, but I suspect that such books are merely skeptical screeds, not real history. Anyone who says that the Bible is poorly supported by history is, in my mind, some sort of fanatic, not a true intellectual or historian. It's like the people who suppose that evolution is 'overwhelmingly supported by science.' They're just brainwashed ideologues. Really, the facts are that obvious.
>> ANNE: Besides, Islam makes the same demand for belief in "real" historical events, as do Judaism, Mormonism, and many others, so this is not even a unique thing about Christianity.
Absolutely, and both Judaism and Christianity stand up very well under scrutiny, while Mormonism has been thoroughly debunked. In addition, I'm not sure that Islam makes very many claims to history that are controversial (miracles aside), and the history we do see is heinous – Mohamed was an insane warlord pedophile according to the historical documents. I find that entirely believable, but of course, I won't therefore put my faith in what such a crazy man had to say – his example was abominable, and Islamic soteriology is so inferior to Christianity, why would anyone want to believe it? (See )
>> ANNE: The only reason Christianity gets away with hiding its head in the sand about its own lack of historical justification is that its origins are sufficiently ancient that any historical analysis is necessarily subtle and involves a great deal of inference across gaps in knowledge.
Anne, that is patently false. I won't spend time arguing this point, you seem committed to that view. I think you are in biased error here, and you seem very bitter against Xianity. See:
Are the Biblical Documents Reliable?
Q & A on the Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to a Series
Can We Trust the New Testament as a Historical Document?
>> ANNE: But I'll also note here that even if Christianity *could* be credited with certain positive effects, that doesn't mean that the beliefs it's based on are *true*.
I do not make that argument. I only take issue with the one-sided and terribly slanted "Christianity has done so much evil in the world" schlock.
PART III
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>> ANNE: Any book that rounds pi to three and acts as if the earth is a flat disc with a dome of sky over it and a load of water trapped above the sky is not a book I'm going to turn to looking for scientific insight.
This is a typical materialists error. The Bible is largely written as a *historical* document, not a scientific one. That does not make its observations regarding scientific items incorrect, it only means that we must interpret them within their literary type.
The bible is assumed to be historically true, but it's reporting is phenomenological, not literal. For example, saying 'the sun rises' is not literally true, but the phenomenon it is describing most certainly did happen.
Is pi about 3? Yep. Empiricists (who are, ironically, being overly literal in their biblical interpretation when it suits them) wouldn't even be happy with 22/7ths, I'd imagine.
Regarding your 'flat disc' or flat earth theory, this is a typical misrepresentation of both the Church's doctrine and history. Never happened. See the link above about Galileo for a brief debunking of such hyperliteralist readings of scripture by unbelievers which were never done by the church.
BTW, regarding heliocentrism, even terracentrism was not initiated by Christian doctrine, but by the secular Ptolemaic sceintists of the day – the error the church made was to ACCEPT that view as true, followed by their misreading that BACK into the scriptures.
>> ANNE: The authors of the book were a bunch of nomadic goatherders,
That is typical atheist non-sequitur schlock. Appeal to modernity. Stop embarassing yourself. I guess Moses was an idiot for saying "do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal." Moral intelligence is not the sole domain of the intelligent – see Nazi Germany or American eugenics as an example.
>> ANNE: Only in the sense that it's convinced me that you really don't know what you're talking about here.
Obviously, you didn't or are unwilling to understand my imperfect analogy. I proved that I understood your objection, yet you stoop to ad hominems. Your problem, as I see it, is the materialist's problem – if you can't prove it empirically, it' aint real.
I can see that you have a bias against faith. Your loss. But don't kid yourself that people of faith do not engage or benefit from their intellects, or that you are somehow superior. You are limiting yourself to your own intellect. "Trust no one" would be good motto.
PART IV
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>> ANNE: I take it that you're proposing that this corruption by self-interest, sin, and so forth is the reason that not everybody's moral senses agree.
Not entirely. But that is a contributing factor – men suppress the truth because their own hearts are evil (cf. Romans 1).
>> ANNE: You've proposed a mechanism to explain the disagreement, now tell me how I can figure out whose moral sense is wack and whose is sound.
1. See which values lead to human flourishing and prosperity, and lower morbidity.
2. Observe what the exclusion of certain values creates (for example, look at the world's atheist regimes that crushed relgion – see how they all end up being murderous? Guess why?)
3. Personally and with an open mind read the supposed words of Jesus and decide if HE was a 'nutter' – or as C.S. Lewis argued, a lunatic, liar, or lord (See Lewis's trilemma)
>> ANNE: What analogous test can one do to detect a corrupted moral sense?
Beyond what is above, moral sense, again, is not merely an empirical endeavor. This is why, for instance, the US founders made this statement:
We hold these truths to be *self-evident*
It is precisely because such truths are not mere empiricisms that an appeal to CONSCIENCE and INTUITION is made. Because such things can't be 'proven,' they MUST be assumed. And while assumptions may be evaluated as to their soundness, they can not be proven by definition. You need to get that our you will be forever crippled by your narrow, self-limiting hyper-materialism.
PART V
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>> ANNE: I do not think your god exists. Why should I be concerned about pleasing an entity I do not think exists? Are you worried about pleasing Athena?
I explained in the articles on Pascal's wager why it is reasonable to ignore Athena and the FSM, but not Christ. You seem to be engaging in the 'all religions are equally ridiculous' ruse which is anti-intellectual and self-reinforcing for atheists, but poor logic.
It's your choice if that's how you approach reality and God. I think you are in error, eggregiously so. Forewarned is forearmed.
>> ANNE: Conversely, the limits of reason do not justify just making stuff up to fill the giant empty realms where you don't/can't know what's going on.
I am not doing that at all, nor am I engaged in God in the gaps reasoning. I have good reasons to (1) trust the bible, (2) trust Christ, and (3) employ more than just my reason in my epistemology.
>> ANNE: Actually, for Washington we have zillions of mutually confirming sets of historical artifacts
But again, they are artificacts. They are historical evidence, but not empirical – you can't see him or witness him. This is such an important distinction, and one that is lost on most atheists because they are duped into such lack of ability to discriminate by evolutionary thinking, among others.
What would make Washington a more sure thing is eyewitness testimony, and many good, early copies of it. Guess what? The Bible has more of that than ANY other historical documentation, and by orders of magnitude.
That is my point. You are taking it on faith that those historical documents and artifacts are being correctly interpreted, are free from embellishment, copying errors, etc. What makes you so sure these are more reliable than the NT documents, their relative modernity aside?
That is my point. YOU are exercising faith in someone else (and reasonably so), but your LACK of faith in the historicity of the Bible is not reasoned, it's emotional, in my estimation.
>> ANNE: Except I *don't* think this god of yours is real. That makes it challenging to place my trust in it.
Absolutely. You can't MAKE yourself believe – you are helpless to do so. However, you CAN honestly examine your biases, your motives, and your mental constructs to see if they are wrongly keeping you FROM believing.
>> ANNE: One could say the same for most Christians — they haven't looked at they evidence, but have merely sat at the feet of their priests and ministers and taken their word for it.
That is true. I am not one of those. I left faith, and many years later, after much conscious exploration, returned to a more mature faith.
>> ANNE: And many, many people who have actually set out to examine the evidence, even in order to confirm Christianity, have lost their faith because the evidence against it is overwhelming.
The vast majority of vocal atheist ex-Christians I have heard (like John Loftus, for example) have made partly or largely emotional decisions, make many of the same specious arguments you've made, and use intellect to buttress their unbelief.
Sure, they may have been led to unebelief by their examination of the data. That doesn't make them right.
But I am saying that many of your arguments are false, specious, or misinformed.
I have given you many references, and will check out yours.
PART VI
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>> ANNE: The point of this is not what "most people" believe. The point is what views are actually well enough supported by evidence and argumentation to make them a reasonable basis for predictions about future events. And Christianity just ain't.
I agree, what's true is true despite what the majority may or may not believe. However, your mention of predictive value shows again that you are looking at faith as some scientific model that needs to predict scientific discovery, and that's really not how one approaches such matters.
The reason to examine how well Christianity does or does not incorporate history is to determine it's reliability, not to examine it as a scientific model. BAsed on it's reliability in historical matters, you can then begin to examine it's existential claims, something which 'predictive value' does not really cover. You must use other skills to examine these claims, which include not only logic and reason, but spiritual faculties, which you seem loathe to use.
>> ANNE: The Myth Of Nazareth: The Invented Town Of Jesus_ shows that the town almost certainly did not arise until significantly after the era in which Jesus was supposed to have inhabited it. And that's just scratching the surface. Reputable modern archaeologists do not, in general, believe in the historicity of the Christian Bible.
I'll check it out but I betcha she had as much of an axe to grind as those whom you think assumed Christianity before setting out. Believe whom you will, I think you're being foolish.
>> ANNE: What I'm not interested in doing is going out into the world of believing in completely made up stuff.
I don't think you've shown any ability to trust or act in faith, and to you, 'made up stuff' is only what you can directly prove or disprove with empiricism. Your limited approach means that you can't really TELL what is made up or not – to you, if it's not empirically verifiable, it's made up or irrelevant. Such an approach will not lead you to faith, hope, or love.
>> ANNE: Imagining and investigating new possibilities beyond current knowledge is *essential* to the process of science, and it's *far* from safe, because you can end up wasting a lot of time going down a dead end with your imaginings.
Which is why leveraging the wisdom of others ('trusting' them) can save you a lot of time. Sure, venturing out to where NO ONE has gone means there is no one to trust in those areas, but there is much to be gained by trusting the Bible and pursuing it.
BTW, regarding Rene Salm's book The Myth of Nazareth, this one questionable volume seems more of an outlier suggesting a conspiracy within archaeology supporting the existence of Nazareth.
Salm's qualifications are hard to find – see Who the hell is Rene Salm?
You'd do better to stick to real scholarship, and at least some that seems credible, if not objective – perhaps like The Historical Jesus: Five Views.