Two Chinks In The Armor
The reference to Pascal's Wager in a previous post has incited to me address the issue of why Christians believe, and what is the basis of that belief.
Pascal's Wager is as follows: "If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having, neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is ... you must wager."
From my position, I see an impasse in the struggle between theists and atheists...neither side will ever be able to prove their basic supposition, that there is or is not a "God." Arguing from the atheist's side of the table, I don't see how our side could ever prove conclusively that there is not a God...our science will never be able to plumb the depths of reality in our universe. Certainly at this point in our evolution, there is far more that we do not know...and do not even know how to identify or measure.
So, what is our challenge, and what is the basis of our activity to "debunk" christianity? If we cannot achieve the goal of debunking by disproving the existence of God (which, I posit, we cannot), then what are we saying or doing?
I want to propose that christianity has to be debunked at two vulnerable points: (1) the legitimacy of the bible as the "source" reference for all that christians believe, and (2) the creed statements that grow out of an attempt to summarize and dogmatize the essentials for salvation contained in the bible.
In my experience as a believer and pastor for over 30 years of adult life (I became a believer as an adult, not a child) - and having spent 25 years of that life as a theologian and pastor - I observed that most christians fall back on the caveat of personal experience when threatened with logical arguments against belief or doubt in God. The statement I heard most often was - "I may not understand God, or the bible, but - I once was lost, and now I am found, was blind and now I see." In other words, they had an experience...and that experience is their fall-back position when threatened with logic or doubt.
I mention that fall-back position of experience because as I have read and participated in the commentary on this site, I have noticed that the christians fall back to a common position - "if you knew God like I know him, yada yada." That kind of fall-back (a retreat, in my opinion, and a admission of failure to prevail in the debate) is probably inevitable, and so must be expected in any debunking activity.
AND EVENTUALLY - BECAUSE MY EXPERIENCE OF GOD PROBABLY RIVALS THE BEST OF EXPERIENCE OF OTHERS ON HERE - I WILL BEGIN TO ADDRESS THAT EXPERIENTIAL POSITION.
But right now, I want to insist that christians are vulnerable at two points:
- their faith in the inerrancy or infallibility of scripture (yes, two different positions that lead to the same conclusion...what the bible says is true and can be believed about the essentials of salvation), and
- their trust in the summation of the essentials, found in the creedal statements of the Apostle's Creed and the Nicene Creed. These two documents were produced in the earliest years of christian formation, in response to perceived theological heresies and rebellion against centralized authority. They were intended to provide a common belief system that any and all groups, nations, and individuals could understand and agree with. My take on these creeds is that they are riddled with assumptions and contradict much of what the bible says about god and salvation...and so they represent - not an accurate summation of biblical essentials, but a made-up system of belief that most christians ascribe to whether they know it or not.
Remember, when challenged and debunked, most christians will fall-back to the well-worn "I may not understand, but I know what happened to me" position. There is a christian commentator on this site who admits that God does not answer prayer in the way he promises to in the bible, but that is OK with him because he has grown to believe (through his experience) that God only answers prayers that are prayed in a specific way for a specific thing. HIS EXPERIENCE has trumped biblical revelation and creed...and who can argue against that? We can only point it out.
28 comments:
My personal experience was certainly the greatest barrier to my abandonment of faith. I was so accustomed to seeing the world through Christ-colored glasses that I was capable of seeing "miracle" in practically anything. Every minor coincidence in our favor was a gift from God, every near escape from death the work of his protecting hand.
It takes a great deal of mental warfare for such a wall of delusion to be broken down, and I certainly have no difficulty understanding why the process can take such an incredibly long time for many believers. We grow so accustomed to imagining the Holy Spirit that we begin to feel him practically everywhere, and his existence becomes nearly irrefutable on a subconscious basis.
Again, this is the very nature of self delusion.
Caleb, ditto to your last post. Those were my experiences, as well.
I have always heard that it is policially incorrect to refer to Chinese people as "Chinks." Also, why would they be wearing armor? And how did they both get into one suit of armor? Did Pascal bet them that they couldn't do it? Should Christians be gambling any way? Do the elders know about this? Betting can get you into trouble:
One day, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum met. Tweedle Dee was carrying a sack. The conversation went like this:
******
What do you have in the sack?
Opossums.
I'll bet $5 I can guess how many you have in there.
If you guess, I'll give you both of them!
Ok. Three?
****
Clearly these people should not have bet.
Other people have tried cheating death by playing chess and stuff. I offered to play Bible Bingo with God, but he decilined.
So we see many more issues at play here when we get past the surface. I hope this has helped anyone thinking about betting.
Bill Ross
http://bibleshockers.blogspot.com
"who admits that God does not answer prayer in the way he promises to in the bible."
Brother Crow, please. Is it ok in this forum to mislead? Is that what you heard from me? I believe that I said that no such promises were broken.
In any case, your larger point is a bit muddled. You claim that we cannot debunk one other, yet you go on to provide ways to do it.
Two points: The bible claims inspiration at 2 Tim 3:16, not inerrancy. The second point about doctrinal issues is well taken. The Trinitarian view of God exists and was created outside the then closed canon of scripture and the Council of Nicea and others that followed. This is a suitable avenue of debunking in my mind.
The Arian belief in Jesus as Son and not God was among a number of belief systems about the nature of Jesus existing at the time. It actually predated Arius as can be shown in the writings of Tertullian, who likely coined the phrase "Trinity". It was officially declared heterodox at the council.
You certainly can bust out all sorts of arguments about inerrancy and doctrine, but I will point out, that these things have their genesis, so to speak, in mankind's imperfect worship of God, not in the bible itself. These are man made doctrines.
"These are man made doctrines."
As is anything within the Bible, seeing as it was custom tailor-made by such men in accordance with their own beliefs.
I suppose in the end, it all DOES come down to my personal experience. No one could explain God to me in a sufficient enough manner to GET me to believe. Forcing me to be obedient really just made me resentful. In the end, I left the church to find God. Funny thing, now that I've found him, the Church spends most of their time trying to tell me to keep him to myself...
sigh
"The bible claims inspiration at 2 Tim 3:16, not inerrancy." Chris, for clarification, what is your understanding of inspiration here? The literal translation of the word is "God-breathed" (Theos, "God," pneo, "to breathe"). Obviously, there is room for interpretation here, but most evangelicals understand it to me infallible and inerrant (they group these with passages like Psalm 119 and other, which praises the "perfect," "sure," "trustworthy," and "unfailing" of the Word).
Well, a couple of responses and observations...Chris, I did not say we could not debunk one another...I just said that I don't think proving or disproving God's existence is going to accomplish the purpose of debunking. The issue of inerrancy and infalliblity - though the bible does not use the word "inerrant", it makes claims about itself that can lead to no other understanding. Furthermore, christians throughout the ages have understood the bible to be "inerrant and infallible" -so any understanding of the bible outside of those definitions is certainly not mainstream.
Here is the issue - christians only claim (beyond personal experience) for the unique and exclusiveness of their religion is the legitimacy of biblical revelation. Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, the life, no man comes to the father except through me." If the bible is a legitimate tool of revelation, and its inspiration is unique enough for that to be a trustworthy statement...then how do you parse out the verses in it that are not true, accurate, etc? You can't - therefore, it is all or nothing game. CS Lewis said "Jesus is or is not the Son of God, because there is no other option." The bible either is or is not the word of God, there is no other option. And if it is filled with inaccuracies, fallible statements, errors...then I am not inclined to believe in the god it reveals.
As for point 2 - the trinity is a great example of doctrine that is inconsistent with the bible. You admit it has been done...therefore, I submit that the way christians define the bible - as inerrant and infallible - is also a flawed construct.
So, the fall-back position is the only position that works - experience trumps logic and reason. And, to quote Caleb, that is the very nature of delusion.
As far as Biblical inspiration and inerrancy go, check this out.
you know, I keep hearing about this "FILLED WITH INCONSISTENCIES" thing, but I rarely see any backup of it... Can you give me a link or something that shows me where these inconsistincies are?
I'll not accept it as true unless I can research it myself.
In any case, your larger point is a bit muddled. You claim that we cannot debunk one other, yet you go on to provide ways to do it.
No, he says we cannot disprove God (which is true; I also cannot disprove that there is a teapot in orbit around Jupiter). What we can do is show that belief in God is unjustified based on the evidence.
You certainly can bust out all sorts of arguments about inerrancy and doctrine, but I will point out, that these things have their genesis, so to speak, in mankind's imperfect worship of God, not in the bible itself.
But if the Bible can be wrong, then who cares what it says? Even the cannon itself was dictated by man and the politics of the early church. Claiming inspiration of the scripture but no inspiration of the extra-scriptural doctrine is meaningless, as without doctrine you don't know which writings ARE scripture. Even the OT was compiled by man extra-scripturally. Last I checked, there was no book of the Bible that listed the books of the Bible.
You claim the Bible was "inspired" by God, but even granting that for the sake of argument how do we know that the "inspired" message survived the authorship, error-prone copying and editing, translation, cannonization, and interpretation? This seems a large point to stake by blind faith; indeed, one could easily say that knowing what does and does not belong in the holy book is THE HEART of any book-based religion.
In the end, if the Bible isn't infallible, aren't you just making up your own religion, using the Bible the way a talented chef would use a recipie; not as a limitation of his genius, but as a template upon which to build his genius? And if religion is a la carte in this manner, how can you claim to have any objective truth, when your religion is, by definition, your subjective experience?
I guess I never understood how "personal experience" was any type of reason to believe anything. Unless something is written down and reviewed by many respectable people who are in the same (or affected) areas, "personal experience" is nothing more than anecdotal "evidence". Consider MY personal experience. I have personally experienced the fact that no gods exist. How does anyone claim that my experience is less valid than theirs?
Basically, it seems like claiming the "personal experience" argument gets into a pissing contest.
I suppose I just repeated and reiterated Shygetz' final point there, but this is something that angers me. My mother always claims "personal experience", and it's nigh impossible to explain to her that "personal experience" is actually less valid than scientific evidence.
Of course the bible is not inerrant. Look how many translations there are. They cannot all be correct?
Perhaps I'm making your case, but I do believe that the bible is God inspired, but written by man. This is not orthodox, I'm quite aware, but I have not characterized myself as such.
The Word of God can rightfully be claimed as inerrant, but the bible, while inspired, cannot make the same claim. And, we no longer have any of the original manuscripts, parchments, papyrii to validate any modern translations. Then of course, we have 15 centuries of hand copying by error prone men who had their own doctrinal axes to grind. And according to textual critics such as Bart Erdman, some of the most popular translations we see today are based on the worst traditions of biblical scholarship (ie. dependent upon the later documents as opposed to the earliest).
All this to say that the bible contains truth, but we must reason on it (presuppositionally)to discern what it is. Proverbs 2:1-5 says it best, "My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, 2 turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, 3 and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, 4 and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, 5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.
metaphyzxx,
inconsistencies?
a couple to get you started:
here
and here
metaphyzxx, just google "biblical inconsistencies" and go to it. The list is practically inexhaustable. I would also suggest you pick up a bible and read. Here is a simple suggestion: Read the different accounts of Christ's birth in the gospels. Then, read the different accounts of his death in each gospel.
Even many christians admit to the inconsistencies found in the bible...but then they fall-back to personal experience, or use some convoluted argument about authorship, historicity, or some other thing to justify the inconsistency.
My point is: (again) christians base the entirety of their belief system on the "perfect" revelation of God given in the bible. If they are basing this entire system of belief on a flawed document...doesn't it that show it to be a delusion? (as others have so wonderfully argued here, such as shygetz and caleb wimble).
thanks for the research material!
I would respond to this but, as usual from Brothercrow's articles this is full of red herring which apply only to fundamentalist (and, apparently, fideist) Christians.
gordonblood, you accuse me of red herrings! funny! you are a fisher of men, no? Anyway...it is amusing to see how you have used the red herring of aiming this argument towards fundementalists and fideism. I was a Methodist...reason matters to me! :) The reality is...what exactly does christianity (in any form or stripe) rely on to formulate its belief system...from knowledge of God, sin, salvation, identity of Jesus, resurrection, anything? Throughout its history (except for the earliest years when the so-called "apostolic" councils met to determine, with the blessing of the emperor, what would and would not be canon) what did christians form their emerging theology on? Scripture!
And I never heard of a fundamentalist church that practiced creedal theology or ritual. So my post is not targeting fundamentalists or fideists. It targets christians, who can only say they have any knowledge of Jesus as Christ on the basis of existing scripture. The bible is the foundational instrument of christian religion...and it is flawed.
Proving gods do not exist is hard, but finding evidence that Christianity isn't the one true religion shouldn't be so difficult. The only trick is getting Christians to agree on the positive claims that their religion makes and to use the same methods they'd use to reach conclusions on other theories.
(And now I'm wondering how informing it could be to examine Christian criticism of the Qur'an and whether they raise the same arguments non-Christians use against the Bible...)
Wow, I just had a debate with my religious wife covering pretty much all the points here. And yes, it did eventually come down to personal experience for her. Good timing, Brother Crow. Though it would have been even better timing if you published this yesterday!
Sorry, King. I'm usually a day late and dollar short.
Brother Crow: Before I go through the various comments, I have to state I am surprised that you fell into one of the classic traps, the 'A god -- which means MY God -- trap.'
A 'deistic God' which does not interact with the Universe it purportedly created is by definition undetectable, so it could neither be proven or disproven. Even a theistic god which has decided that mankind will not be advanced enough to receive his message until, say, Aug. 23, 2013, would, until that time, be equally undetectable.
But it is different with the "Christian God," the "Abrahamic God," the "God of the Bible," the "Qur'anic God."
These conceptions rest on certain claimed evidence and on certain logical structures. It is possible to -- I would argue it is easy to -- debunk THEM.
Brother Crow:
I have to take issue with your statement that "christians throughout the ages have understood the bible to be "inerrant and infallible" -so any understanding of the bible outside of those definitions is certainly not mainstream."
This is true only for conservative and evangelical Protestants, and -- for the most part -- only those American versions.
Thus Catholicism has always held the Bible to be 'infallible' only in regards to questions of faith and morals, not as far as history, science, etc. is concerned -- thus they fully accept evolution, the Big Bang, the 'documentary hypothesis' about the Pentateuch.
Most moderate to liberal Protestants, many more liberal Catholics, and almost all Jews but the ultra-Orthodox (in relation to the OT) would hold the Bible as the work of man displaying an ever-greater understanding of God, guided perhaps in some way by God, and not doubting that the subject is real -- which, of course, I would deny.
For a very interesting European Evangelical perspective on the subject, check out Chris Tilling's blog -- linked on the sidebar -- and do a search for inerrancy. Chris is an evangelical, but also a doctoral student of Max Turner's at Tubingen, and his perspective is one worth knowing -- as are the blogs linked to in the comments. (Chris himself is worth knowing, both for his scholarship and for the zany humor which he mixes with it.)
A further comment about the Trinity, and the very idea of the 'Son of God sent to redeem mankind and usher in a new world.' As I have pointed out repeatedly, these ideas are not Biblical, at least not from the Old Testament. They are from Zoroastrianism, the Persian religion that greatly influenced both late pre-Christian Judaism and even more early Christianity. (Remember how long the 'Holy Land' was under Persian control -- so much that Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, is a dialect of Persian.)
This is a pet theme of mine, ad while I have to be careful not to fall in love with my own thesis, the more I investigate, the more Zoroastrian influence I see.
Meta:
Even more, try and make sense of the various contradictory accounts of the Trial of Jesus -- ignoring the problems all of them have with everything we know about the Sanhedrin and Pilate from other sources.
In fact, try looking at a Christian attempt to harmonize the Synoptic Gospels with John, and how many ways they contradict each other. How long did Jesus' ministry last? OIne year say the Synoptics, three says John.
Or compare the account of Paul in Acts with his own account of himself in Galatians.
Hey Prup, first, great comments about the Persian/Zoroastrian influence on primitive xanity...very intriguing, and certainly consistent with the most recent research. You have incited me to study more on this subject meself.
About the view of bible throughout history...lets not forget that the "protestant" schism did not occur until perhaps the time of John Hus. "Catholocism" as the universal church did not have a unified interpretation of scripture until it began to respond to so-called heresies in the early middle ages.
I think it can be safely argued that literalism was the interpretive standard for scripture until the renaissance.
Also, let me clear up some of my own laziness..."inerrant" and "infallible" are different values. I have not done a good job of distinguishing, but I would argue that "infallible" for faith and practice has been the "mainstream" christian view of scripture from the most primitive times.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Brother Crow:
Here is a description of Zoroastrian beliefs. (You might find it enjoyable to make a list of which of them IS found in Christianity and IS NOT found in the Old Testament)
"The main doctrines preached by the Prophet Zoroaster can, then, be summed up as follows: There is a supreme God who is creator of all things both spiritual and material. He thinks his creation into existence by his Holy Spirit: he is holy and righteous, and by holiness are also understood creativeness, productivity, bounty, and generosity. He is surrounded by six other entities of which he is said to be the father and creator. Three can be said to be inseparable from his own essence--the Holy Spirit through which he creates, the Good Mind, and Truth. He dwells in his Kingdom, which means, no doubt, that he is absolute Lord of all that he has created--a kingdom which is now marred by the onslaughts of evil but which will be restored to its purity in the last days. Wholeness and Immortality, too, are inseparable from his essence, but they are also the reward he promises to those who do his will in Right-Mindedness. This last 'entity' or virtue is common to God and man and represents a right relationship between the two. God, the Wise Lord, stands beyond the reach of the powers of evil.
The world as we know it is divided between Truth and the Lie. Truth is created by the Wise Lord or is his 'son'. About the origin of the Lie the Prophet is mute. This dualism between these two opposite poles, these two alternatives offered to the free choices of men, is basic to Zoroaster's thought.; and although there are dim parallels to it in the sister tradition of India, nowhere that civilization are they so tremendously and so uniquely emphasized.
The creatures of the Wise Lord are created free--free to choose between Truth and the Lie. This applies as much to spiritual beings as it does to man. So Angra Mainyu, the Destructive Spirit, described surprisingly as the twin brother of the Holy Spirit, 'chooses to do the worst things'. This he does of his own free will as do the daāvas, the ancient gods whom, on account of the violence associated with their worship, Zoroaster considered to be evil powers.
Since the will of man is entirely free, he is himself responsible for his ultimate fate. By good deeds he earns an eternal reward: Wholeness and Immortality are his. The evil-doer too is condemned by his own conscience as well as by a just God to the eternal pains of hell, the 'worst existence'. "
(These are from The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism. Contributors: R. C. Zaehner - author. Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1961. Page Number: 60.)
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