Category Archives: Deep Dive>Religion

How Reliable Is a Bridge Built on Faith?

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I recently wrote about the contradictory definitions of faith here. For this post, I’ll use this definition: faith is belief held not primarily because of evidence and little shaken in the face of contrary evidence; that is, belief neither supported nor undercut by evidence.

See that earlier post to explore the two definitions and see why I think this one is widely accepted within Christianity. To give one example of this usage, the popular Christian apologetics book I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist uses that evidence-less definition in its very title.

Faith as a belief that doesn’t demand evidence is getting close to the philosophy of Lewis Carroll’s White Queen: “Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Can even religion ennoble this approach? Let’s critique this popular definition of faith.

Why have faith?

Faith is permission to believe something without a good reason. Believing because it is reasonable and rational requires no faith at all. Trying to believe is like trying to fall asleep—it’s not something that benefits from intellectual effort. As an exercise, try to believe in unicorns or leprechauns. You can’t will yourself to believe.

Here’s the value in faith. Suppose you face a Chasm of Unknown. Maybe the question is, Is there an afterlife? Or, What explains the suffering in the world? If you could cross that chasm, you could hold the belief that there is an afterlife or that suffering is all part of a perfect plan. Or maybe it’s a Chasm of Longing—the loss of a loved one has taken all the joy from life. Or perhaps agonizing problems make one feel helpless. There may be no science or reason that can cross such a chasm, but no chasm is so broad that faith can’t teleport you across.

If someone’s life has taken a desperate turn, I won’t criticize whatever they need to believe to get through a difficult period. But for the rest of us, why would you want to cross such a chasm this way? Why ignore the tools you use in every other part of life for separating sense from nonsense?

What upholds our belief?

Part of the answer is Shermer’s Law, which states that we use our intellect to justify beliefs arrived at for non-intellectual reasons. If you believe something important (like the tenets of a religion) for no better reason than that you were raised that way, you likely won’t admit that, even to yourself. You’re going to use your intellect to assemble rationalizations for the belief even though those reasons weren’t what led you to that belief in the first place. You’ll point to apologetic arguments you’ve come across, not because they had any role in creating your faith but because they make you look rational.

Martin Luther King said, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” But why? Why take any steps in faith except to get you across a chasm that reason and evidence are unable to? And once across that chasm, is there anything substantial upholding your new belief, anything that you’d happily admit to an observer?

If there’s no good evidence to cross the chasm, just don’t cross. Admit the truth and say, “I don’t know” or “I don’t have enough evidence.”

Do you “take a step of faith” in any other discipline? Certainly not in science. There are guesses, of course, but the goal in science is always to replace guesses with facts and follow the evidence where it leads. Trust (belief based on evidence) is used in science, and there are no “leaps of trust.”

Faith often doesn’t mean answers but merely an end to questions.

A critique of faith

Faith is the worst decision-making technique available. Crossing a busy street, evaluating a dangerous mistake your child made, getting treatment after you’ve broken a bone—faith is never the tool to use. Faith is usually kept on a leash and used only when (1) you want to believe something that’s contradicted by (or unsupported by) the facts and (2) there are no big consequences for doing so. The few exceptions where there are consequences become either causes of alarm (children who died because their parents insisted on prayer rather than medicine) or public ridicule (people who sold their possessions to make themselves right with God before the end of the world or the woman who closed her eyes to pray while driving). “Jesus, take the wheel” might make a good country music song title but certainly isn’t something you’d really do.

Even a guess is better than a decision by faith because, with a guess, you’re willing to consider evidence that you made a mistake.

Faith is celebrated only when there’s nothing else, and Christian apologists prefer evidence. Want to know how I know? Because when they have evidence, they always emphasize it! No apologist says, “Well, we do have evidence for Jesus outside the Bible, but frankly I never put that forward as an argument. I find belief by faith to be much more compelling.”

And that’s a clue. Backers of a claim well supported by evidence wouldn’t bother appealing to faith, but faith would be the fallback if the claims were false. Faith doesn’t prove that the Christian claims are false, but that’s where the evidence points.

Faith in the New Testament

Let’s consider again: what good is faith? Paul the apostle didn’t have faith. He didn’t need it, if he indeed received the gospel from a vision of Jesus. The same is true for the disciples. According to the gospels, they heard Jesus’s message in person. I don’t have faith that my car is blue since that’s a fact that I’ve experienced. Why can’t we also have direct evidence of Jesus rather than relying on faith? Faith is required now because that’s part of God’s plan . . . or maybe because the whole thing is legendary, and Christian leaders today are just passing along a tradition.

If faith were a useful tool, there would have a method for distinguishing between true and false faith claims, but there is no way to judge if any particular proposition held by faith is true or not. Indeed, there may be nothing that’s impossible to believe on faith, and many of those propositions must be false, at least in the real world. Christianity itself shows the problem since Christians have disagreed on important propositions since the earliest days (the losing propositions are called “heresies” by the winners). The church has permanently split over such issues. Christian factions have fought wars over such issues.

This contrast between how religion decides questions and how science does is illustrated in the map of world religions. It’s inconceivable that a map of science would show one view of the solar system dominant in this part of the world and another in that part, one model of the atom here and another there, and yet that’s how it works with religion. In science, ideas are evaluated in the same objective way, and a new successful idea peacefully sweeps the relevant part of the scientific world within months or years. In religion, ideas aren’t evaluated based on evidence, and division remains static for centuries.

Scientists don’t gather periodically to sing, and no one writes articles telling them how to prop up their faith in science. There is no equivalent within science of doctrinal statements, a mental straitjacket dictating correct and incorrect thinking. Doctrinal statements create in Christian institutions a dystopian Nineteen Eighty-Four environment, where certain subjects become thoughtcrime. Consider what happened to Mike Licona when he crossed the line.

Christian rebuttal

One popular Christian response is something like, “But you believe in science on faith!” I don’t—I trust in science, and that trust is nicely supported by evidence—but let’s go there. They seem to be saying, “Well, you’re just as much an idiot as I am, since you believe stuff on faith, too!” But isn’t faith a good thing from a Christian viewpoint? Wouldn’t “You believe by faith, too” be a compliment? And if science and religion both use the same approach (“faith,” or whatever you want to call it), then why is it only science with the track record of curing disease, increasing crop yields, and landing people on the moon?

Let’s consider the trust I have in science. I’m an outsider to science, but it’s easy to evaluate science’s track record. I use cell phones, computers, and cars, and science delivers. But in principle I could become an insider. I could get a doctorate in evolutionary biology or cosmology or quantum physics and I would be able to test the claims for myself. Is there any equivalent within Christianity? Scholars with doctorates in theology are still burdened with the map-of-world-religions problem. In science, my doctorate would let me thoroughly understand the consensus view, but within religion there is no consensus!

That reminds me of a story. It’s said that Winston Churchill would sometimes drink too much. On one of these occasions, a woman said to him, “Winston, you are drunk!”

Churchill replied, “Indeed, Madam, and you are ugly—but tomorrow I’ll be sober.”

The analogous interaction for our purposes would be a believer who says, “You take science on faith.”

The atheist replies, “Let’s suppose I do, and you take God’s existence on faith—but I could get a doctorate in any science and lose that need for faith. Could you do the equivalent?”

Conclusion

Christians say that truth is their goal, and they even capitalize Truth to assure us (or maybe themselves) that they’ve really found it, but methinks they doth protest too much. They’re not welcome at the adult table until they use tools that actually work at finding the truth.

Faith recoils from reason because reason unravels the happy lies that faith wants to believe.

Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said;
“One can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the [White] Queen.
“When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day.
Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast.”
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 7/15/16.)

Image from Perry Kibler (free-use license)

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Captain America vs. Thor: Science vs. Supernatural

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captain america thor

Have you wondered how Captain America’s shield always comes back to him? (Captain America is the Marvel superhero with the round shield with the American flag motif.) He uses his shield as a weapon, throwing it so that it bounces off a wall, takes out a bad guy, and returns so he can grab it and throw it again.

According to the story, the super soldier serum that turned him from a wimp into Captain America gave him, not only strength and agility, but also the mental acuity to judge how to ricochet the shield so that it comes back. In other words, it’s just ballistics plus superhuman marksmanship. What might look like remarkable luck when seen once is something he can do on demand.

Of course, willing suspension of disbelief is still required, but comics and movies usually come up with some kind of plausible explanation for things that are new to us.

Captain America vs. Thor

What about Thor? He throws his hammer (Mjölnir) and it also comes back. What’s its secret? This time, it’s magic. That’s it—magic, end of story. There’s no attempt to align Thor with reality.

Compare this with the logic behind Captain America’s shield. We already know of medicine that can improve the human body and mind. The science of nootropics (smart drugs) is in its infancy, but some products can improve concentration and memory. The Captain America story simply asks us to imagine this actual field of research extended further, which will certainly happen.

The shield itself has special properties. It’s made of a new metal, which again is plausible as science continues to create new manufacturing techniques or materials with new properties. Science continues to startle us with new developments.

Here’s an example. If you’re unaware of Vantablack and related products, this is a startling development from left field. It’s a coating that acts like black paint, except that it is so black that it makes things look like a hole in the universe (video).

I give this only as an example of a product, the lack of which didn’t cause you to lose any sleep, but which is pretty cool now that it’s presented to you. The story behind Captain America’s shield is arguably in this category of startling yet semi-plausible things.

Thor’s Mjölnir

Back to Thor’s hammer. Odin cast a spell, the hammer became magic, and there’s nothing more to it. Once the drawbridge of your mind lowers to accept the supernatural, a magic hammer can come in unchallenged.

Sometimes the supernatural claim needs to know the password. Maybe only Norse mythology gets to come in. Or dogma from some other religion. But once a category gets a pass, the BS detector is switched off for its claims. Walked on water? Cured disease? Virgin birth? Raised from the dead? Made of three parts while still being one? Creationism? C’mon in! It’s not like we’re going to demand that it be plausible.

We usually lump all these movie superheroes into the same “it’d be cool to be able to do that, but that ain’t gonna happen” bin. But look closer, and notice the difference. Some stories are built on plausible science and others on mythological make-believe. That distinction exists in real life, too.

After seeing half a country actively reject
wearing a mask during a pandemic,
I would like to apologize to the filmmakers
of every horror movie ever made
for calling their characters unbelievably dumb
for going into the murder basement.
— seen on the internet

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Image from Wikipedia, public domain
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William Lane Craig Needs to Insult Islam Some More

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William Lane Craig delivered a one-two punch in a lecture comparing Islam and Christianity. In part 1, I responded to his defense of Christianity against Islam. Surprisingly, this theology scholar doesn’t understand the fundamental concept of the Trinity enough to explain it without committing heresy.

Attacking Islam’s concept of God

With reduced expectations, we move on to WLC’s second point. He says,

What I am going to tell you now is something that you will never hear in the media or from our public officials for they dare not say such things.

Oh Dr. Craig, what big balls you have! How fortunate for us to have WLC give us the hard truth. (I just wish he’d turn some of that tough skepticism onto his own worldview.)

Here’s the truth that WLC isn’t shy about stating: “Islam has a morally deficient concept of God.” This isn’t just a preference for Yahweh over Allah; instead, “The Muslim concept of God is rationally objectionable.”

1. God is loving

Here is his argument. Step 1: “God, as the perfect being, must be all-loving.” But why that attribute for a perfect being? What about others such as being kind, humble, polite, witty, sophisticated, sassy, or snarky? What are the objectively correct attributes of a perfect being, and how does he know? WLC is playing Victor Frankenstein, picking and choosing the attributes for his perfect god.

But let’s ignore that—does WLC’s favorite god meet his own criteria? The Bible itself makes clear that he doesn’t. Yahweh supports slavery and human sacrifice, has crazy attitudes toward marriage, and demands genocide (more here, here, here, and here). He even created evil. God clearly has a not-so-loving side.

WLC doesn’t care about consistency and sifts out Bible verses that support his preconception:

The love of the Heavenly Father is impartial, universal, and unconditional.

Yeah—tell that to the Canaanites. Or the enslaved. Or women. Or Jesus when he said, “Don’t cast pearls before swine.”

2. But Allah isn’t so loving

WLC contrasts the Christian god with the Muslim god in step 2: “According to the Qur’an, God does not love sinners.” He then lists many verses where Allah is said not to love unbelievers, evildoers, the impious and sinners, the proud, and so on. I can accept this point, but Craig seems to imagine that his god is immune to this pettiness. He should read his own Bible:

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9–10)

God created hell, and sending people to Hell isn’t what you do to people you love. Nevertheless, Jesus makes clear that God made most of his favorite creation so that he could send them to Hell:

Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. (Matthew 7:13–14)

 3. Allah loves only those who deserve it

Step 3: “According to the Qur’an, God’s love [is] reserved only for those who earn it.”

Given the choice between getting into heaven by works or by faith, I’ll pick the former. Christianity’s demand to believe the unbelievable to gain entrance into heaven fails from the start.

WLC should read his Bible. The parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25 makes clear that works get you into heaven. And there’s more:

For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done (Matthew 16:27).

[God] will repay each person according to what they have done (Romans 2:6).

The dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works (Revelation 20:12).

Craig’s own Bible makes the case for works, just like the Qur’an.

4. Therefore, Yahweh beats Allah

WLC’s conclusion: “Now don’t you think that this is a morally inadequate conception of God?”

Can he be encouraging us to judge god claims to see if they make sense? I’m all for that, but it’s surprising to hear from WLC. He skeptically judges supernatural claims but then plays the “Who do you think you are to judge God??” card when it’s his god being judged.

To highlight the emptiness of the Muslim concept of God, WLC gives us this thought experiment:

What would you think of a parent who said to his children, “If you measure up to my standards and do as I tell you, then I will love you”?

Tell us, Dr. Craig, what would you would think of a Bible that said this:

[Jesus said:] If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love (John 15:10).

The flip side of that is the Christian hell for people who don’t measure up to God’s standards. WLC is living in a glass house, and he should be more cautious whom he throws stones at.

WLC wraps up:

Therefore, it seems to me that the Islamic conception of God is simply morally defective. Therefore I cannot rationally accept it.

Sure, the Muslim god is morally defective, but so is the Christian god. WLC makes no attempt at an unbiased evaluation. He has no interest in fairly critiquing both sides of the issue.

And what does “I cannot rationally accept it” mean? If there’s a creator of the universe, it may be that he has the properties outlined in the Qur’an. The Gnostics, for example, thought that the creator of this world was imperfect (which would explain a lot). Since we’re going on no hard evidence in each of these cases, who’s to say that it’s not the Muslim or Gnostic creator rather than the Christian one?

Moral imperfections in the Qur’an

WLC sets up his own jihad against Islam by citing its barbarism. But for each Muslim example, Christianity’s own barbaric history has plenty of counterbalancing examples.

  • “[In 627,] Muhammad rounded up hundreds of Jewish families in Medina. Seven hundred Jewish men were put to the sword. Muhammad had their wives and children sold into slavery.” (That isn’t much compared to the Canaanite genocide that was ordered by God in Deuteronomy 7:1–5.)
  • Mohammed ordered the non-Muslims killed unless they converted. (That sounds like the persecutions of the Cathars, Anabaptists, and Huguenots in Europe. They also could have gotten forgiveness by converting.)
  • “Islam is a total way of life. Everything is to be submitted to God. . . . The Western idea of separation of church and state is meaningless in Islam.” (Like Kim Davis performing only those government duties that satisfied her interpretation of Christianity? Like science denial by school boards? Like the many examples of state-supported Christianity? The U.S. has plenty of examples, but can WLC be saying that he wants to fight against this kind of Christian extremism? I’d love to see him on our side, but somehow I think that this is just another example of one standard for his religion and another for the other guy’s.)

William Lane Craig has butchered the Trinity, the organizing principle of his religion. He’s painted a cotton-candy picture of the Christian god based on wishful thinking. But his critique of the Muslim god is on target. If he applied the same skepticism to his own religion, it would dissolve just as readily.

(h/t commenter bryce1012)

Some in the Republican Party
want official approval to oppress and marginalize
nonconformists, dissenters and freethinkers—
in other words, the very kind of people
who founded the United States.
— Tom Ehrich

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/11/16.)

Image from John Christian Fjellestad, CC license

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William Lane Craig Insults Islam and Misrepresents His Own Religion

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World famous apologist William Lane Craig picks up a machete and hacks a path through difficult theology in “The Concept of God in Islam and Christianity.” He doesn’t waste time building bridges with our Muslim neighbors but instead highlights their threadbare theology while he commits collateral damage to Christianity.

Defense of the Trinity (but with defenders like that . . .)

WLC begins by stating that Muslims have misinterpreted basic Christian teaching. Early Christians called Mary the “mother of God,” and Mohammed misinterpreted the Trinity as a king-consort-son arrangement. The Christian Trinity isn’t like this, and WLC says, “It is no wonder that [Mohammed] was revolted by such a ridiculous doctrine.”

I’m not sure that he was revolted, but let’s look instead at this being a “ridiculous doctrine.” I don’t see what’s ridiculous about it (except for the evidence-less supernatural part, which admittedly makes it quite ridiculous). You could find lots of king-consort-son triads in other religions—Zeus, Leto, and their son Apollo from the Greek pantheon or Osiris, Isis, and Horus in Egyptian religion, for example. If any collection of gods could rule the cosmos, I don’t see why it couldn’t be a family Trinity.

And WLC should be careful with that “ridiculous doctrine” crack since he makes clear that he doesn’t even understand his own ridiculous doctrine. Here’s his approach to the Trinity.

[The Trinity] is the doctrine that God is tri-personal. It is not the self-contradictory assertion that three gods are somehow one God. Or that three persons are somehow one person. That is just illogical nonsense.

That is indeed illogical nonsense. Unfortunately, it’s also Christian dogma. The fourth-century Athanasian Creed says in part, “The Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods; but one God.” You can try to get around it by saying that the three part is three persons and the one part is one god, but this is just wordplay.

WLC could argue that the definition of the Trinity is not stated in the Bible. For evidence, he could point out that the early Church needed centuries to reach agreement on it, and if it were obvious, it would’ve been dogma from the start. Illuminating the shaky foundation of this doctrine only undercuts his position further.

Craig continues:

[The Trinity] is the claim that the one entity we call God comprises three persons. That is no more illogical than saying that one geometrical figure which we call a triangle is comprised of three angles. Three angles in one figure. Three persons in one being.

Yes, a triangle is composed of three angles, but no, that is not a parallel to the Trinity. In fact, that commits the heresy called Partialism, the declaration that God is composed of three parts that make a whole. Other popular analogies that are also heretical for the same reason compare God to an egg (shell + white + yolk = egg) or to time (past + present + future = time) or to music (three notes make a chord).

WLC is in good company, and C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity makes the same mistake: “In God’s dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being, just as a cube is six squares while remaining one cube.” Six squares are parts of a cube, just like Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are parts of God? Be careful—a heresy like that can send a guy to Hell. (More on the Trinity here and here.)

WLC doubles down on his claim that Muslims (or anyone) pushing back against the Trinity is wrong.

Although this doctrine may seem strange to Muslims, once it is properly stated there is nothing illogical about it. It is a logically consistent doctrine, and therefore rationally unobjectionable.

Nothing illogical about it? You can’t even explain it without committing heresy! The most honest explanation that I’ve heard is that it’s simply a mystery, and we fallible humans on this side of heaven won’t ever be able to understand it. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains it as a mystery, for example. That doesn’t make the Trinity any more realistic, but at least Christians who say this acknowledge the difficulty.

God and love

WLC moves on to argue why the Christian concept of God is better than the Muslim version. The Trinitarian nature of the Christian god isn’t an embarrassment to Christians determined to argue that their god is monotheistic, WLC tells us; it’s actually an advantage.

Here’s his argument. First, “God is by definition the greatest conceivable being.” (This is the beginning of the Ontological argument, where apologists imagine that they can think into existence anything they want, but let’s avoid digging into the problems with that argument and move on.)

Point 2: “A perfect being must be a loving being, for love is a moral perfection.” Who says that love is a moral perfection? Where is the list of these perfections?

I agree that love is pretty great, but that’s because evolution has programmed me to think that love is pretty great. I feel this way for no more transcendent or objective reason than that. Why imagine that the feelings we have for each other translate unchanged to God? Christians eager to excuse God’s genocidal demands suppose that we simply can’t understand his thinking. But then if we can’t understand his thinking, don’t pretend to understand how he loves us or what “love” means at his level.

Anyway, “loving” is not on the short list of attributes that an objective observer would give the god of the Old Testament. Richard Dawkins’ famous quote at the end of this post summarizes some of these. The Bible makes clear that God is a lot more than just a cuddly teddy bear.

“Should you not fear me?” declares the Lord. “Should you not tremble in my presence?” (Jeremiah 5:22)

(More about God’s unpleasant characteristics here, here, and here.)

Point 3 in WLC’s argument: Love requires a target of that love, and for the current of love to flow before the creation of humanity, God couldn’t have been a single person. (And maybe because self-love puts hair on your palms?) Sorry, Muslims, your mono-monotheism isn’t as good as Christianity’s tri-monotheism. Or something.

Here’s how WLC puts it:

If God is perfectly loving by his very nature then he must be giving himself in love to another. But who is that other? It can’t be any created person since creation is a result of God’s free will, not a result of his nature. It belongs to God’s very essence to love, but it does not belong to his essence to create. God is necessarily loving, but he is not necessarily creating.

Wow—where did all these rules come from? It’s nice to imagine that God is loving, just like us, but how does WLC conclude that this is a binding attribute? And how can God not be necessarily creating since creating the universe must’ve been better than not doing so, and God always does the better thing?

And what kind of love are the three persons of the Trinity sharing? Is this parent/child love? Romantic/erotic love? How is this different from a polygamous same-sex marriage, and how do you know?

What would this love-in even look like? WLC apparently imagines that for the trillions of years God existed before the universe did, the three persons of the Trinity were just loving and loving each other. And then they’d start all over again. Was it nothing but compliments all day long?

“Y’know, those new trousers really work on you”

“Say, have you lost weight? You look great!”

“Oh, no—let me do that for you!”

“Can I get you a beer? You look like you could use one.”

But wait a minute—if this were before our universe was created, it was before time existed. How does love work without time? How can you create the universe, or anything, without time?

WLC would probably say that we just don’t know and that it’s ridiculous to speculate. I like that—let’s just say we don’t know instead of this philosophical masturbation based on nothing.

Concluded in part 2, William Lane Craig Needs to Insult Islam Some More.

The God of the Old Testament
is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction:
jealous and proud of it;
a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak;
a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser;
a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal,
genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal,
sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.
— Richard Dawkins

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 1/8/16.)

Image from Samuel M. Livingston, CC license
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Religions Continue to Diverge. What Does that Tell Us?

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Suppose supernatural truths exist, but we could only dimly perceive them. J.R.R. Tolkien expressed this idea this way: “We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light. . . . Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour.”

What would this look like? How could we tell that we lived in such a world?

We might see a Babel of religions because of our imperfect understanding, but we’d also see convergence. As the disparate religious groups compared notes, common supernatural truths would become apparent. Positive feedback would take hold as we matched our tentative consensus against that rudimentary understanding of the Divine. And if that supernatural Divine wanted us to understand, it would nudge us in the right direction so Humanity would gradually cobble together an accurate understanding.

Of course, in the case of Christianity where God is eager for each of us to have a relationship with him, we should see not a nudge or a vague hint of the celestial truth but overwhelming and unmistakable evidence that he exists.

Follow the evidence

What we see is neither overwhelming evidence nor even dimly perceived evidence. Humanity sees no common truth that pushes religions toward a single consensus view—there isn’t even any agreement on the number of gods or their names, let alone what it takes to please him/them. Religion’s fragmentation is bad and getting worse. For example, Christianity has 45,000 denominations now, and that is expected to grow to 70,000 by 2050.

The U.S. has bred important new Christian denominations including Christian Science, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarian Universalist Church, Salvation Army, Assemblies of God, Messianic Judaism, Shakers, Mormonism, and Pentecostalism. Outside of Christianity we find new religions such as Rastafari, Church of Satan, Cargo cults, Theosophical Society, Transcendental Meditation movement, Wicca, Neopaganism, and UFO cults such as Raëlism, Heaven’s Gate, Nation of Islam, and Scientology. Dozens of new religious movements spring up each year just in the United States.

The unstoppable growth of religious diversity is shown visually by the tree of world religions and the map of world religions.

If there is a supernatural truth out there and if beliefs are steered by reality (instead of wishful thinking, say), you’d think that religious claims would be tested and either kept or dropped based on how well they matched reality. With this view, we’d see humankind gradually converge on a single religious story. And yet we see the opposite because evidence doesn’t drive the search for religious truth.

Christian response

What then explains the popular Christian apologists who weave elaborate intellectual arguments for the strength of the Christian position? They’re simply supporting conclusions already made, and they get their support from Christians who want a pat on the head and assurance that there’s scholarly backing for beliefs they hold for no more substantial reason than that they were part of their environment growing up.

(Yes, adults do switch religions, but this is rare. Believers adopt a religion, not because it is the truth, but because it’s the religion of their culture. Only one percent of believers switch in as adults.)

The Christian response is often to emphasize Christianity’s unique aspects. “Okay, maybe Christianity wasn’t the first to celebrate a virgin birth or have a dying-and-rising god,” they admit, “but look how it’s different—look at its unique features!”

Sure, Christianity is unique. Every religion is unique. But the problem remains: if your religion looks like just another manmade religion, why would we think it’s correct? Why pick it over the rest? We shouldn’t, and since it looks like nothing more than a manmade religion, it should be rejected like the rest.

Another popular response is to argue that the one true God could have his reasons for not making clear the correct path. We simply don’t understand them. Yes, this is possible, but this is the “Aha—you haven’t proven me wrong!” gambit, which again is no justification for belief. You don’t hold beliefs because they haven’t been proven wrong; you hold them because there’s evidence that they’re right. Honest truth seekers follow the evidence, and it doesn’t point to Christianity.

Where does this leave Christianity?

Christians agree that people invent religions. That’s how they explain all those other religions. But in explaining away the other religions, they’ve explained away their own. Christianity looks like just one more manmade religion.

Religion is driven by human imagination and emotions, evolving as social conditions change, with no reality to tie it down. There is no loving god desiring a relationship who would make his existence known to us, and Christians use faith to camouflage this embarrassing fact. There’s not even a cosmic truth “seen through a glass, darkly” (that is, seen in a mirror, dimly). The glass isn’t dark; it’s black. There is no external truth nudging us in the right direction.

Christians, drop the pretense that this is an intellectual project. Admit, at least to yourselves, that your belief is cultural and built on nothing more solid than tradition.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something
when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
— Upton Sinclair

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 12/16/15.)

Image from Mike Mozart, CC license

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Proposal For a Christian Rumspringa

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Suppose young Christians were given license to question their worldview when they became old enough to evaluate the evidence. These teens wouldn’t be pushed into a Christian life but would be allowed to question their faith and learn about other ways of living. Maybe other sects of Christianity. Maybe Wicca or Buddhism. Maybe atheism.

Older and wiser after a few years of considering new ideas, these Christians would be welcomed as members of the church or, if they’d prefer, allowed to leave.

Rumspringa in the Amish community

We have a Christian precedent for this. Rumspringa (German for “running around”) is a phase that many Amish and Mennonite communities allow their youth to go through. It varies between groups, but it typically begins at age 16 and ends with marriage. It had traditionally been a time to find a spouse, but it now often includes exploring the wider world (as shown in the 2004 reality TV show Amish in the City).

Because Amish are Anabaptists, these teens aren’t yet baptized into the church. Offenses that would be unacceptable among members—dressing “English,” driving something besides horse-drawn vehicles, using alcohol, or even drugs or sex—are often overlooked. Almost 90% of youth eventually choose to become members of the church.

Rumspringa in the Christian community

What would a Christian Rumspringa look like? Church communities would encourage their youth to use their brains and evaluate the truth claims of Christianity. The Bible even supports this.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind (Luke 10:27).

By testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2).

This could be a position of strength for the church community. They’d make clear that they didn’t need to indoctrinate or strong-arm people into becoming members. Their claims could withstand public scrutiny, and churches that did things the old way—using indoctrination rather than education and labeling uncomfortable questions off limits—would feel the pressure to become more open.

I grant that this wouldn’t be easy on churches. “Because I said so” or “Don’t ask that question!” are easy appeals to authority, but that often backfires when youths become independent and unwilling to accept such weak answers. Fundamentalist congregations’ backwards attitudes toward homosexuality or science are sometimes cited as a reason young people turn away. One Barna study reports:

Three of the reasons that kids vote with their feet is that churches seem unfriendly to science, that churches are overprotective, and that churches are not friendly to young folks who doubt.

Church communities lament that many children go into college as Christians but come out as doubters or atheists—70%, according to one study. But why this is? What does it say that a mind sharpened and expanded by college is less willing to accept your religion? Maybe a faith built on indoctrination and custom rather than reason and evidence isn’t strong and isn’t worth much, and encouraging thought would actually be good for churches.

This reminds me of a chat I had with a Christian girl about 17 years old who was part of a group of sign-carrying Christians haranguing people in public. Long story short, her spiritual leader publicly scolded her for talking with me, hardly the independent attitude a wholesome upbringing should encourage in a young adult.

I’m sure that no conservative Christian church leader would consider encouraging their youth to explore other worldviews and follow the evidence where it led. They fear what honest inquiry would do. And what does that say about the truth of their claims?

Related post: “Imagine a Christianity Without Indoctrination”

Jesus is like the date who says, “I’ll call you.”
— commenter Kodie

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 8/17/15.)

Image from Ted Van Pelt, CC license

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