Where David Marshall Goes Wrong, Part 2

This is Part 2 in response to David's criticisms of the Outsider Test for Faith. Part 1 can be found here.

I'll place what he wrote in blockquotes again.

"4) So the best way to test one's adopted religious faith is from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism used to evaluate other religious faiths. This expresses the OTF."

It seems there may be an even bigger problem with Loftus' argument than those mentioned above. This is a failure to understand how religions relate to one another….The religions of the world are not like so many fruits in the market, from which (having only one dollar) you must choose a single item, and leave the rest. Jesus said, "Don't think I've come to abolish the Law and the Prophets. I have not come to abolition, but to fulfill." (Mt. 5: 17) This applies, I have argued, not only to Judaism, but to the deepest truths in other spiritual traditions as well.

Religions relate to one another because all of them use a faith based reasoning. By contrast there is a science based reasoning which examines life in the universe and our place in it through the sciences. Science focuses on that which is detectable and its method is doubt. It is the skeptical adult approach rather than the gullible childish approach to an issue that if a god existed he would be pleased with. If God is not detectable and if he cannot be apprehended by such an adult attitude then I can't help him.

The fact that we can find similar beliefs across the spectrum among the religions is true enough, but there is just too wide of a gap in what religionists believe to think the similarities are god given. They are culturally given and mostly created by males in an ancient superstitious barbaric age. Almost all ancient cultures sacrificed human beings--mostly children and virgins--to their deities. If David had lived in those times he could make the same argument that these similarities point to his own particular culturally situated tribal deity.

Besides, we can explain the god impulse scientifically. Our brains evolved from the lower species of animals and so we have a built in agency detector inherited from them. Animals who survived were the ones that saw faces in the leaves and the grass and the trees. Precisely because they saw faces in random objects in the woods they also had the time to escape from any predators lurking in the woods before they struck, even if this meant a lot of false alarms. It’s this same agency detection that caused the ancients to see divine agents behind strange events their world, like lightening, or thunderstorms, or disasters like fires. And this same agency detection was at work when they had a good crop, or the birth of a boy, or when they had a dream. As agency detectors they saw divine beings behind these events and it still lingers on today. Even in today’s world after a plane crash kills everyone on board except one woman, she will see the hand of god in it and believe god has a purpose for her life because she was spared.

In other fields, too, the best test of a new theory is not whether it completely displaces prior theories, but whether it incorporates whatever truth is to be found in them. It is a singularly "fundamentalist" way of thinking, that one must choose one religion, and discard the rest. In some cases, one must make choices. Either God is one, many, or not at all. But one doesn't need to choose between Yahweh, Elohim, theos, Allah, and Shang Di: the one only-existing Creator God is recognizable under many aliases.

David has a bit more enlightened view of religion than people held to in previous centuries. Bloodthirsty wars were fought over them, and there's a lot of killing going on today because of them too. I find it utterly ignorant though, for someone like David to think he can stand up in the midst of stadium filled with religionists to tell them all: "Hey, I've got the answer. We don't need to choose between Yahweh, Elohim, theos, Allah, and Shang Di, or Xenu, Thor, Odin, and the thousands of dead gods, or that guy who claims he's Jesus living in Texas. No, we share common ground." Yeah David. Try that and get back to me. The common ground all religionists share is a faith based reasoning.

I only ask where David's enlightened view comes from and how far is he willing to take it? It doesn't come from the Bible, that's for sure. It comes from the advancement of learning. Surprise! We do learn from the past. Believers simply morph their faith into our ever increasing knowledge that was and is discovered by the sciences, even if there are always pockets of believers living in the past. Others like John Hick take this enlightenment much farther when he simply bites the bullet and argues for a religious pluralism based on the religiously ambiguous nature of existence, and as such he claims it's rational to interpret the data of existence as an atheist.

So much for theism. When it comes to specifically Christian doctrines, Loftus' argument seems to ring even more hollow. Why should we deny that Jesus died for the sins of the world, because some people in Sichuan Province or Uttar Pradesh never heard about it, or don't immediately recognize its truth when they do? The West took hundreds of years to come around -- why not give the Chinese and Indians time to mull things over, like a mustard seed that grows into a tree and gives shelter to many birds, to which Jesus compared the Kingdom of Heaven? Why should we doubt that Jesus rose from the dead, because we first heard about it in Sunday School? We may be told about planets in Monday school. If either belief is untrue, sure, discard it. But in the interum, why should the assumption that our teachers (any day of the week) were ignorant be the default position?

Here let me quote Friedrich Nietzsche: "A god who is all-knowing and all-powerful and who does not even make sure his creatures understand his intention—could that be a god of goodness? Who allows countless doubts and dubieties to persist, for thousands of years, as though the salvation of mankind were unaffected by them, and who on the other hand holds out the prospect of frightful consequences if any mistake is made as to the nature of truth? . . . Did he perhaps lack intelligence to do so? Or the eloquence? Must he not then . . . be able to help and counsel [his creatures], except in the manner of a deaf man making all kinds of ambiguous signs when the most fearful danger is about to befall on his child or dog?"

The fact is that if the OTF is not how we should judge these beliefs of his then how else does he propose to do so? I find it really strange that Christians like David object to it without offering an alternative. David, what is your alternative? Surely, given the fact that your god will judge the living and the dead, your faith should pass the OTF since people all over the globe have been raised into different cultures as outsiders. Your faith must be able to convince them as outsiders. If it can't then how does your god expect them to convert and then later judge them if they don't?

On balance, the act of stepping outside oneself and reconsidering one's beliefs may be helpful at some stages of our journey. I think people of different beliefs will almost always learn a great deal by extending themselves in that way.

Wait, am I reading this right, that after writing what he did David thinks the OTF is a good test for faith? Then why all of this criticism?

But when we do, what should we look for? Look for, not one religion that is as right and rigid as crystal, and all the others totally wrong. Instead, look for something alive. Look for a map of reality that takes into account miracles (sorry, they do happen!) as well as mice. Look for a map that puts God in heaven (as we have known, for thousands of years), and follows a good guru, who loves the poor, feeds the hungry, and loves women in a holy manner. Try to incorporate primitive insights about sacrifice and redeem them.

Others using a faith based reasoning will tell us to look for something else, David. And those religionists who agree with you would actually strongly disagree with you about many of the particulars. Besides, the miracles and hells of one religion are denied by the others and vice versa. So how do you propose to critically evaluate them if it's not with the OTF? And if you agree that we should evaluate other faiths with it then why shouldn't we evaluate your own faith by that same standard?

Part 3 of my response can be read here.