Alright, let me begin with the promised housecleaning. Either I'm being completely ineloquent or you're misunderstanding me. I apologize that the conversation has taken this fairly pointless turn, probably on my account. I said,
“I think Christianity is false, and I’ll tell you why. I’m telling you why, also, because I think Christianity, and religion in general, is hurting society. At the very least it’s stunting our maturity by having us hold on to the broken promises of bronze age myths, and many would argue that there are much more visible, often violent ways that it hurts us as well. But even if it were not the case, the fact that it is a falsity that needs refuting would be enough.”
In this I am expressing confidence in my position. I did not come to this conversation as an agnostic, and I didn’t try to paint myself as one. You said that this:
“proves my point that you aren't as much on a search for truth, but rather convincing others that you are right, in the face of all other arguments to the contrary. You clearly have declared your animosity to Christ and Christianity, and have proven my suggestion that you aren’t really open at all to any of the arguments we have tried to proffer.”
And
“Those are not words inviting discussion. They are not the words of someone questioning.”
And again
“You paint yourself as someone who is simply examining all the various options and wants to see it all before he will believe any differently.”
I think you took my saying, “conversation is the best way to sort this out, where we're both able to give our sides in hopes of establishing our position as true. Because only one of our sides can be true, and learning truth is very important isn't it?”
And
“But I was convinced by conversation to change my beliefs before, and I’m open to it again.”
to mean that I have no stance in the matter already. I do have ideas that I think are true. But learning is a process, and I am open to that process. Confidence in ones position doesn’t equate to willful blindness to other ideas or a contrary position. I do think Christianity is wrong, but I don’t believe it dogmatically. I don’t think that allegiance to a proposition despite all evidence against it is a virtue, and I do all I can to avoid putting myself in that position. So I have not painted myself as someone that is “simply examining my various options”, but I likewise don’t convince others that I am right, in the face of all other arguments to the contrary, and I am open to arguments that you try to proffer. Does that make sense? I do think I am right, and I do think you are wrong, because I’ve heard many arguments for both sides. But I will not dismiss your arguments by fiat – I don’t think that what I have is ultimate truth because it has been divinely revealed to me that it is – I am convinced it is true because it’s reasons are sound – so I am open to sound reasons from your position.
Even if I were just collecting information to make a determination at a later point, I need a yardstick to separate the wheat from the chaff. That yardstick has to be reason, of course. What else do I have? If it’s not based on reason I don’t even understand the process I’m going through, let alone any conclusion I might come to. The difference is I am instead applying reason to your arguments as they come at me. Otherwise I would have to be 100% open to any tripe about fairies and nirvana that someone could throw at me.
So I hope that clears that up, and I’ll leave it at that.
Let me turn back to your arguments. You said,
“So because I don’t understand, I must deny the God behind my questions? I have already stated that if I could understand Him He couldn’t by definition be God and He would be of no use to me. God is not dependant on my understanding Him.”
I must admit that I’m at a bit of a loss with this. You’re suggesting that if you could understand God, he would cease to be God. I do not understand why this should be so. An entity’s existence is not dependent on your understanding of it. If we discovered intelligent life on Mars, we could observe it and understand virtually everything about it, hypothetically, without it being aware at all of our existence – and it would still go on existing even if we were wiped out. The deists believed that they could understand god through nature, but that this god was not interested in them, and may not even be aware of them.
Your suggestion only works with a God that is by-definition unknowable, which begs the questions, how do we know him?
You go on to say,
“I do have to point out that you have yet to answer my simple proposition that God exists or he doesn’t and if He does, it is his responsibility to reveal himself. The problem is, that if one assumes He doesn’t exist, there isn’t much he can do to show them, because he will not override their free will and demand their belief and faith. They will see it all through the lens of unbelief and interpret it in a way that proves their point of view.”
“No, I can’t answer all the questions. I can’t come up with the grand unifying theory of the universe in which God fits and all the pieces make sense and give it to you in a neat formula or perfect word document. I don’t understand how God’s sovereignty and my free will exist together. I don’t understand how God has chosen who will be saved and others not. There are a hundred other things that I don’t understand.”
“He isn’t found in my understanding Him. He is found in faith.”
“He isn’t in the ‘proofs’ that science, archeology, or higher criticism which you quote. He isn’t going to be discovered by the powers of my intellect or reasoning.”
“First of all, there is evidence all around that suggests the possibility of a god; The evidence of order in the universe; The evidence of moral choices”
First I have to point out the obvious contradiction – evidence of order in the universe and moral choices are both observations made and processed by intellect and reason. So this bridge that would allow us to possibly assume the existence of God is through intellect and reason. But if God intended that, he didn’t quite think it thru. Ockham’s razor takes God very easily out of the equation.
“entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”
We have very eloquent explanations for order and morality which don’t invoke God. To tack God onto quantum theory is superfluous – we have no need of that hypothesis. In other words, the universe goes on spinning, and societies go on outlawing murder, without God, and if we add God on, it makes the whole proposition less likely than it is without him/her/it/they.
So we have no reason to assume God’s existence, and without positive evidence for something, we can reasonably assume it’s not there. We really HAVE to assume it’s not there, or else we’d be ducking all over the place, expecting axe murderers just over our shoulder, and asteroids on a collision course with our house.
So that puts all of us squarely in the field god is apparently helpless against. Disbelief. “if one assumes He doesn’t exist, there isn’t much he can do to show them, because he will not override their free will and demand their belief and faith.”
This all knowing (but apparently not all powerful) deity has given us all intellect, and then told us not to use it. We have to abandon reason, and accept things as true that we don’t understand. That is absolutely ludicrous. I would argue that it’s not even possible. When you say something you don’t understand is true, you don’t even know what “true” means in this sense. This is where Christians use the word “faith.”
What does that even mean?
What in the world to you mean it’s based on faith? You mean you’ve chosen to say it’s true even though you have no reason to think it’s true? Then, of course, you don’t KNOW it’s true. You’ve already said you can’t understand it.
Turning back to your core argument - It is correct for you to say that an unknowable God would have to reveal himself, but I’ve demonstrated that the account of Jesus apparently doing this act is dubious at best. It takes a leap of faith to believe it. But again
What does that mean? It means you’re choosing to believe it even though you have no reason to – in fact, in this instance you have every reason NOT to! Biblical scholars are the ones telling you this in fact – telling you this Bible is not reliable – and if it’s not reliable, it’s obviously not from God, and much less is it something we should take at face value.
So this unknowable God has to reveal himself – but if he’s there, he has yet to make it clear (if it would even be possible for him to do so).
And I’ll end here in saying that, again, I’ve implored God many times to show himself. If this God has given me the powers of reason and expects me to use them as I go through every day life, yet really plans to damn me for eternity on the scant evidence he’s provided that Jesus was his son, or that he even exists, he is either malevolent, or stupid. I have no reason to think the Bible is his word, or that the heavens declare his glory. I know this not because I have taken a leap of faith, but because I understand how I got here. That is the only way to truly “know” something. To say that I know something by faith is to redefine the work “know” out of rationality.
I would love to see you talk this out in real time with Randy, or someone because I think there's a lot more to your relationship with God than what you're "reasoning" here. I think there's hurt and disappointment and unmet expectations and even an incorrect view of who God is and what He wants in a relationship with you. I think it's nearly impossible to work through those things in a blog post.
Its always easier to write because no one can argue back. And no mater how illogical the point you are attempting to prove since truly in writing you only hear yourself, you are always right.
Thanks for the reply Kevin. I appreciate your acknowledging my confusion and attempting to help me see some of your statements in a different light. The most frustrating part of this conversation is that we are having it with words on a computer screen and can't, as your mom has said, have it in real time where we can hear each other, see our expressions, ask questions, etc. It leads to a lot of misunderstanding. I will try harder to look beyond the words and try and see your heart.
As to the second part of your reply, I will have to give it some thought as to how best to reply to some of what you said. That may take a few days due to my schedule, but I will get back to you.
If we're going to keep talking let's please not get bogged down with analyzing innermost emotions. Aside from being unreliable, they're also irrelevant to the truth of whether Christianity is true or not.
I assume that the "innermost emotions" you are referring to as irrelavent are what I called "your heart". Why are you so afraid to go there? We are more than just our intellect. You are refusing to acknowledge a very pertinant part of the human experience.
Any search for God must acknowledge the heart of man, as that is what the God of Christianity is interested in. In fact, that is where He meets us.
I'm not afraid to go there, I'm just extremely suspicious that any useful discussion can come out of it. Brokers don't think with their emotions for financial decisions, mechanics don't think with their emotions when they work on an engine. I'm not going to say emotions aren't involved or don't influence our lives but emotions aren't reliable enough to give us truth outside our own minds.
For what it is worth, you are putting a lot more thought into God and the Christian faith than most people who ascribe to it, at least from my experience. If nothing else, I hope the people who are involved in this meeting of the minds with you can appreciate your willingness to devote so much time and mental space to it, even if the end result is not one side being won over to the other's point of view.
8 comments:
Randy,
Alright, let me begin with the promised housecleaning. Either I'm being completely ineloquent or you're misunderstanding me. I apologize that the conversation has taken this fairly pointless turn, probably on my account. I said,
“I think Christianity is false, and I’ll tell you why. I’m telling you why, also, because I think Christianity, and religion in general, is hurting society. At the very least it’s stunting our maturity by having us hold on to the broken promises of bronze age myths, and many would argue that there are much more visible, often violent ways that it hurts us as well. But even if it were not the case, the fact that it is a falsity that needs refuting would be enough.”
In this I am expressing confidence in my position. I did not come to this conversation as an agnostic, and I didn’t try to paint myself as one. You said that this:
“proves my point that you aren't as much on a search for truth, but rather convincing others that you are right, in the face of all other arguments to the contrary. You clearly have declared your animosity to Christ and Christianity, and have proven my suggestion that you aren’t really open at all to any of the arguments we have tried to proffer.”
And
“Those are not words inviting discussion. They are not the words of someone questioning.”
And again
“You paint yourself as someone who is simply examining all the various options and wants to see it all before he will believe any differently.”
I think you took my saying, “conversation is the best way to sort this out, where we're both able to give our sides in hopes of establishing our position as true. Because only one of our sides can be true, and learning truth is very important isn't it?”
And
“But I was convinced by conversation to change my beliefs before, and I’m open to it again.”
to mean that I have no stance in the matter already. I do have ideas that I think are true. But learning is a process, and I am open to that process. Confidence in ones position doesn’t equate to willful blindness to other ideas or a contrary position. I do think Christianity is wrong, but I don’t believe it dogmatically. I don’t think that allegiance to a proposition despite all evidence against it is a virtue, and I do all I can to avoid putting myself in that position. So I have not painted myself as someone that is “simply examining my various options”, but I likewise don’t convince others that I am right, in the face of all other arguments to the contrary, and I am open to arguments that you try to proffer. Does that make sense? I do think I am right, and I do think you are wrong, because I’ve heard many arguments for both sides. But I will not dismiss your arguments by fiat – I don’t think that what I have is ultimate truth because it has been divinely revealed to me that it is – I am convinced it is true because it’s reasons are sound – so I am open to sound reasons from your position.
Even if I were just collecting information to make a determination at a later point, I need a yardstick to separate the wheat from the chaff. That yardstick has to be reason, of course. What else do I have? If it’s not based on reason I don’t even understand the process I’m going through, let alone any conclusion I might come to. The difference is I am instead applying reason to your arguments as they come at me. Otherwise I would have to be 100% open to any tripe about fairies and nirvana that someone could throw at me.
So I hope that clears that up, and I’ll leave it at that.
Let me turn back to your arguments. You said,
“So because I don’t understand, I must deny the God behind my questions? I have already stated that if I could understand Him He couldn’t by definition be God and He would be of no use to me. God is not dependant on my understanding Him.”
I must admit that I’m at a bit of a loss with this. You’re suggesting that if you could understand God, he would cease to be God. I do not understand why this should be so. An entity’s existence is not dependent on your understanding of it. If we discovered intelligent life on Mars, we could observe it and understand virtually everything about it, hypothetically, without it being aware at all of our existence – and it would still go on existing even if we were wiped out. The deists believed that they could understand god through nature, but that this god was not interested in them, and may not even be aware of them.
Your suggestion only works with a God that is by-definition unknowable, which begs the questions, how do we know him?
You go on to say,
“I do have to point out that you have yet to answer my simple proposition that God exists or he doesn’t and if He does, it is his responsibility to reveal himself. The problem is, that if one assumes He doesn’t exist, there isn’t much he can do to show them, because he will not override their free will and demand their belief and faith. They will see it all through the lens of unbelief and interpret it in a way that proves their point of view.”
“No, I can’t answer all the questions. I can’t come up with the grand unifying theory of the universe in which God fits and all the pieces make sense and give it to you in a neat formula or perfect word document. I don’t understand how God’s sovereignty and my free will exist together. I don’t understand how God has chosen who will be saved and others not. There are a hundred other things that I don’t understand.”
“He isn’t found in my understanding Him. He is found in faith.”
“He isn’t in the ‘proofs’ that science, archeology, or higher criticism which you quote. He isn’t going to be discovered by the powers of my intellect or reasoning.”
“First of all, there is evidence all around that suggests the possibility of a god; The evidence of order in the universe; The evidence of moral choices”
First I have to point out the obvious contradiction – evidence of order in the universe and moral choices are both observations made and processed by intellect and reason. So this bridge that would allow us to possibly assume the existence of God is through intellect and reason. But if God intended that, he didn’t quite think it thru. Ockham’s razor takes God very easily out of the equation.
“entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”
We have very eloquent explanations for order and morality which don’t invoke God. To tack God onto quantum theory is superfluous – we have no need of that hypothesis. In other words, the universe goes on spinning, and societies go on outlawing murder, without God, and if we add God on, it makes the whole proposition less likely than it is without him/her/it/they.
So we have no reason to assume God’s existence, and without positive evidence for something, we can reasonably assume it’s not there. We really HAVE to assume it’s not there, or else we’d be ducking all over the place, expecting axe murderers just over our shoulder, and asteroids on a collision course with our house.
So that puts all of us squarely in the field god is apparently helpless against. Disbelief. “if one assumes He doesn’t exist, there isn’t much he can do to show them, because he will not override their free will and demand their belief and faith.”
This all knowing (but apparently not all powerful) deity has given us all intellect, and then told us not to use it. We have to abandon reason, and accept things as true that we don’t understand. That is absolutely ludicrous. I would argue that it’s not even possible. When you say something you don’t understand is true, you don’t even know what “true” means in this sense. This is where Christians use the word “faith.”
What does that even mean?
What in the world to you mean it’s based on faith? You mean you’ve chosen to say it’s true even though you have no reason to think it’s true? Then, of course, you don’t KNOW it’s true. You’ve already said you can’t understand it.
Turning back to your core argument - It is correct for you to say that an unknowable God would have to reveal himself, but I’ve demonstrated that the account of Jesus apparently doing this act is dubious at best. It takes a leap of faith to believe it. But again
What does that mean? It means you’re choosing to believe it even though you have no reason to – in fact, in this instance you have every reason NOT to! Biblical scholars are the ones telling you this in fact – telling you this Bible is not reliable – and if it’s not reliable, it’s obviously not from God, and much less is it something we should take at face value.
So this unknowable God has to reveal himself – but if he’s there, he has yet to make it clear (if it would even be possible for him to do so).
And I’ll end here in saying that, again, I’ve implored God many times to show himself. If this God has given me the powers of reason and expects me to use them as I go through every day life, yet really plans to damn me for eternity on the scant evidence he’s provided that Jesus was his son, or that he even exists, he is either malevolent, or stupid. I have no reason to think the Bible is his word, or that the heavens declare his glory. I know this not because I have taken a leap of faith, but because I understand how I got here. That is the only way to truly “know” something. To say that I know something by faith is to redefine the work “know” out of rationality.
-Kevin
Kevin,
I would love to see you talk this out in real time with Randy, or someone because I think there's a lot more to your relationship with God than what you're "reasoning" here. I think there's hurt and disappointment and unmet expectations and even an incorrect view of who God is and what He wants in a relationship with you. I think it's nearly impossible to work through those things in a blog post.
Love,
Mom
Its always easier to write because no one can argue back. And no mater how illogical the point you are attempting to prove since truly in writing you only hear yourself, you are always right.
Kevin, I don't mean to be rude, but, get a hobby.
Thanks for the reply Kevin. I appreciate your acknowledging my confusion and attempting to help me see some of your statements in a different light. The most frustrating part of this conversation is that we are having it with words on a computer screen and can't, as your mom has said, have it in real time where we can hear each other, see our expressions, ask questions, etc. It leads to a lot of misunderstanding. I will try harder to look beyond the words and try and see your heart.
As to the second part of your reply, I will have to give it some thought as to how best to reply to some of what you said. That may take a few days due to my schedule, but I will get back to you.
Randy
If we're going to keep talking let's please not get bogged down with analyzing innermost emotions. Aside from being unreliable, they're also irrelevant to the truth of whether Christianity is true or not.
I assume that the "innermost emotions" you are referring to as irrelavent are what I called "your heart". Why are you so afraid to go there? We are more than just our intellect. You are refusing to acknowledge a very pertinant part of the human experience.
Any search for God must acknowledge the heart of man, as that is what the God of Christianity is interested in. In fact, that is where He meets us.
Randy
I'm not afraid to go there, I'm just extremely suspicious that any useful discussion can come out of it. Brokers don't think with their emotions for financial decisions, mechanics don't think with their emotions when they work on an engine. I'm not going to say emotions aren't involved or don't influence our lives but emotions aren't reliable enough to give us truth outside our own minds.
Kevvy!
For what it is worth, you are putting a lot more thought into God and the Christian faith than most people who ascribe to it, at least from my experience. If nothing else, I hope the people who are involved in this meeting of the minds with you can appreciate your willingness to devote so much time and mental space to it, even if the end result is not one side being won over to the other's point of view.
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