Fideism

A fideist chooses to believe in god(s) but admits that the belief defies reason. Some well known Christian fideists would include Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), and Karl Barth (1886–1968).

I recently came across another Christian fideist, M. Holmes Hartshorne. He was Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Colgate University. He earned a Doctor of Theology from Union Theological Seminary under Paul Tillich. Hartshorne wrote a book entitled, The Faith to Doubt: A Protestant Response to Criticism of Religion (1963). Earlier he wrote an article in Theology Today (v. 13, no. 1 [April 1956], 63-71) entitled, "Faith Without Doubt is Dead." In the article he maintains that any honest Christian, unless in total isolation from the real world, will doubt his faith. He states:

Moreover it is fatuous to suppose that because a man is a Christian he is insulated from his world's fate. On the contrary, for us also the anxiety of contemporary doubt is present. Many a sincere Christian has knelt to pray only to watch his prayer fall limp to earth, destroyed by the lurking suspicion that it is but the weak voice of hope sounding hollowly in the immense emptiness of nature. And many a sincere Christian has wondered anxiously whether his belief in God was perhaps after all only so much wishful thinking, a hedge against the brutal realities of man's brief existence. Many have felt the impact of cultural relativism upon their thinking, and have been compelled to reflect upon the purely fortuitous forces which have determined the kind of beliefs we hold to and the kind of standards we regard as normative. Some, doubtless, have experienced nothing that could constitute a threat to their beliefs; but such cultural isolationism is not easy to achieve (p. 64).

Hartshorne maintains its futile to attempt to prove God's existence. He writes:

Basic to the faith of the Christian would appear to be a firm belief in the existence of God; and if God's existence becomes problematic, what better way to allay doubt than to prove that he exists, as did St. Thomas Aquinas, for example. But the difficulty is that the arguments for God's existence have not fared well at the hands of philosophers. Kant's historic demolition of the traditional proofs has pretty well written "finis" to all subsequent attempts to establish God's existence by argument. The certainties of logical demonstration are, after all, purely formal. St. Thomas's arguments presuppose at the outset what is delivered as a conclusion, and thus are not likely to be useful in moving the mind of a doubting Thomas. If one attempts to establish the existence of God empirically, the complete lack of evidence (i.e., of anything that points unambiguously to God) soon cools one's enthusiasm; moreover, one could not hope for more than a degree of probability anyway. And further, to prove that an infinite being or an absolute being exists would be to demonstrate the existence of a logical impossibility, an achievement that would be notable not merely for its results but also for the ingenuity displayed in developing criteria (p. 65).

Hartshorne argues that the Christian must live in the present. He cannot pretend that the world and man's knowledge is the same as it was centuries ago (as fundamentalists do).

It is futile and pathetic to attempt to turn the clock back, to attempt to establish again the beliefs that no longer stand. We would dearly love to preserve our moral standards, our cherished doctrines, our values, our civilization against the skepticism of a godless age. We would raise yesterday from the dead. But this cannot be. The skepticism of contemporary man (in which we reluctantly share) is rooted in the reality of a world situation against which the defensive efforts of any orthodoxy, doctrinal, liturgical, or legal will be broken (p. 66).

The contemporary Christian, according to Hartshorne, must be able to live with doubt and uncertainty. He states: Our Christian faith can give us an understanding and a courage that does not evade doubt but accepts it , that does not evade anxiety but accepts it (p. 67). Of course, this is anathema to the fundamentalist mentality which demands certainty and no ambiguity. Thus, evangelical Christian apologetic ministries rise up to offer "answers" to all of the problems presented against the Christian faith. For those who demand certainty, the "answers" provided by these apologists are good enough. To Hartshorne, however, this desire for certainty is akin to idolatry. He writes:

Orthodoxy always tempts us to equate human insight with God's grace. Doubt, on the other hand, frees us from the idolatry of identifying God's truth with particular theological doctrines, or moral standards, or class interests. Doubt shatters the idols we continually manufacture and discloses the degree to which our reasoning is rationalization, our objectivity is subjectively determined. He who refuses to doubt refuses to think, refuses to take upon himself the full measure of his responsibility as a man. All orthodoxy has this character: that it close the door to doubt and criticism and hence involves our life in crippling distortion (p. 68). . . .

[Doubt] delivers us from the folly of pretending that faith gives us knowledge and virtue that transcend the relativities to which human wisdom and goodness are subject (p. 70).

I respect Harthorne's position. I don't agree with him in his choice to believe in God or Christ but I respect the fact that he realizes it is based on faith and not reason. I have far more respect for him than I do those Christians, and especially those Christian apologists, who think that their faith is based on solid evidence and reasoning.

How Does One Explain a Temporary Loss of Faith in an Evangelical Christian?

I have been thinking some more about the loss of faith (for two days) that Michael Patton described in his post: The Day I Quit Believing in God. I came across another post by Jim Spiegel entitled: To the God Who Might Be There. Spiegel is the author of The Making of An Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief. (I am tempted to ask Spiegel if his unbelief was due to some immorality in his life but I will not go there).

Spiegel writes:

During my first year of graduate school I went through a brief crisis of faith, largely due to the influence of a particular professor who was especially adamant in his religious skepticism. In fact, you might say he was—pardon the oxymoron—a dogmatic skeptic. After a few weeks in his class I found myself struggling with doubts of my own and entertaining the thought that my Christian commitment was based on a lie. What if, after all, God did not exist? I recall one evening as I went to pray sensing the potential absurdity of what I was about to do—quietly thanking and praising a fictitious deity, and making assorted requests to someone who was not there. The usual feeling of God’s presence, an ineffable intuition that was reliable until then, was gone. What to do? I suppose I could have allowed that feeling, or the lack thereof, to dictate a decision not to pray at all (emphasis mine). But as I sat there I tried to make a rational assessment of the situation. If there really is no God, I wondered, then what harm will it do to pray? At worst, I mutter to myself for a few minutes and perhaps benefit from the meditative discipline involved in the process. On the other hand, if God is real, despite my failure to sense his presence, then he will hear my prayers and perhaps respond to my pleas to make his presence known to me again as before. And perhaps he will reward me by giving me more assurance than ever that he is real since my prayers in that state would be an even greater act of faith than my usual prayers prompted by the confidence that he exists. I’m not sure how lucid this reasoning was, but that was my thought process.

So I prayed. I prayed then and several other times during that period to the God who might be there. And as the days went by, my assurance of God’s existence did return—and yes, stronger than ever. Would that confidence have returned eventually had I ceased praying? I don’t know. But I’m glad I did it, since I believe that not only did God hear those prayers but it was also a good exercise in devotional perseverance.

Note that Spiegel says: The usual feeling of God’s presence, an ineffable intuition that was reliable until then, was gone.

I am intrigued by Spiegel's description of his temporary loss of faith as a feeling that God was no longer present. In the comment section, in response to a question, he elaborated on this "feeling":

As for the “awareness of God,” that is difficult to describe, but I would compare it to the feeling you might have when someone else is in the room when you don’t see or hear them (though at the level of the “numinous”). I would also emphasize that the “feeling” has a moral quality to it, as the awareness of God is closely associated with the “sense of ought,” as Kant would say. And it is also deeply connected to my sense of love and being loved. When I was going through that spell of doubt, I felt a sense of abandonment, I suppose. The assurance I had that I was loved absolutely and that, as Julian of Norwich once said, “all is well, and all will be well,” had faded. But after praying several times these things returned as well as the more direct, though very subtle, personal “perception” of God.

This "awareness of God" as the "feeling that someone else is in the room," which Spiegel describes, seems very unreliable to me. We have all felt at times that there was someone else in the room or in the house when there was not. At seances, due to the suggestive environment, people will claim to feel the presence of a dead person. Is this experience veridical? I don't think so. I have been in church services where due to the emotions, the music, the oratory, or some other phenomena, I have felt what I thought at the time was the "presence of God." Was it really the presence of God? I don't think so now. I think this feeling can be explained on a purely psychological basis. People of other religions (which evangelical Christianity would say are false religions) sometimes have mystical experiences in which they are certain they have "felt" the presence of the divine. Are these experiences genuine? I don't think so and most evangelicals would agree.

I find it interesting also that these "lapses of faith" that both Patton and Spiegel describe came as a result of intellectual arguments against Christianity (Spiegel from a "skeptical Professor" and Patton from a "former Christian"). As they tried to combat this with intellectual arguments in favor of Christianity, their faith did not return.

Spiegel writes:

As I recall, it was only my sense of awareness of God that dissipated during that period, rather than my being convinced that the evidences for God were somehow suddenly lacking. And I recall consciously reminding myself of some of those evidences (the existence of the universe, the presence of living things, consciousness, etc.) in order to combat the loss of my immediate awareness of God. But for whatever reason, at that time I was impervious to the import of the evidences.

Patton says:

My thoughts turned toward good theology and apologetics. I turned to the silver bullets that were normally on automatic pilot, but were strangely absent. So I forced it. I thought to myself “If God is not real, why is there something rather than nothing?” It did not work. Then I went into the prophecies of the Old Testament. How could they be there if God was not real? Finally, I went to the resurrection of Christ. How do I reject that without committing a thousand overrides to my intellect? However, none of them were effective in the slightest.

Why would intellectual arguments cause doubt but counter arguments would not resolve it? Here is my opinion. Over a hundred years ago, William James wrote: belief follows psychological and not logical laws (Essays in Psychical Research). Neuroscience is now confirming James contention. Robert Borton, an M.D. and a Neuroscientist, maintains that belief is more like a feeling than it is a rational deduction. In his book, On Being Certain, he writes: Certainty and similar states of knowing what we know arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason (p. xi). In an article in the Scientific American he says: There are two separate aspects of a thought, namely the actual thought, and an independent involuntary assessment of the accuracy of that thought. The former seems to come from the left hemisphere of the brain and the latter from the right hemisphere. Studies by neuroscientists indicate that religious or mystical experiences take place in the right hemisphere (see here). These experiences can be created also by hallucinogenic drugs and organic diseases such as temporal lobe epilepsy (see here and here ).

So, what is my conclusion as it relates to the doubt and loss of faith that evangelical Christians sometimes experience? In my opinion, the left side of the brain is telling the individual that Christianity doesn't make sense, its contradictory, it full of problems, and so on. The right side of the brain usually trumps the left side by the "feeling" that Christianity is true in spite of the problems. For whatever reason, sometimes the right side of the brain fails to give this feeling. It is at those times that the Christian is filled with doubt and uncertainty about the reality of the Christian religion.

"The Day I Quit Believing in God" by C. Michael Patton

Michael Patton is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary and an evangelical Christian minister. He operates Reclaiming the Mind Ministries and a popular blog, Parchment and Pen. He posted an entry on his blog recently entitled: "The Day I Quit Believing in God" . I like to read Patton's posts because he is an unusual evangelical. He is painfully transparent with his own faith struggles and he is honest in acknowledging a number of the problems with evangelical theology. This particular post about the day he stopped believing really resonated with me. It was similar in some ways to my own experience.

He writes:

When I quit believing, I was beginning to sit down on my couch at home. By the time I pulled my legs up beside me, the terrible and foreign realization came to my mind that I didn’t believe. I don’t know why, but as I began to think about God, Christ, prayer, and all those things that form the normal spiritual backdrop to my thoughts, they had been robbed of their primary fuel—belief. I simply did not believe. There was this sudden realization that it was all false. Covering my life like a dark coroners blanket was a new belief: the belief that my whole life I had fooled myself into believing in something that was not true. I did not believe that God was real.

I remember the first time I realized that my faith was slipping away. The thought popped into my head, out of the blue, "how can a person dying 2000 years ago have any relation to me and my sins today?" I pushed the thought out of my mind and went on about my business (I was working on my swamp cooler on top of my home in Arizona). The thought came back though and I realized that I needed to study the matter of the cross and the atonement more. I decided to file this doubt under "unanswered questions," while I continued teaching in the Bible College where I was employed. Occasionally, though, the thought would come back and it was like part of my brain was telling me that "this doesn't make sense" and "it can't be true." I chalked those thoughts up to the devil, thinking that he was trying to cause me to doubt. As I read various theological works on the subject, the doubts got bigger. I began to realize that this was not a matter of doubting some minor doctrine (such as the mode of baptism or type of eschatology) but it was the central doctrine of the Christian faith. That Christ died for my sins is the heart and soul of the gospel message. If that is not true, then nothing else in Christianity is true.

In Patton's case, his faith returned two days after it left. He explains:

I was on the elliptical machine at the gym. I was hoping that some exercise would help. While sweating away, I was reading a book about faith. The book did not really help, it is just part of my memories because of what was about to happen. After 35 minutes of elevated heart rate, suddenly, in a moment of time, it was like I could access the part of my brain again that was responsible for belief. Like a foot is awakened due to renewed blood flow, I felt the same relief in my brain (odd to say, but it felt like the right side) and in my soul. One minute I did not believe, and the next I did. My faculties returned to me and my faith was completely restored as if it never left.

Patton believes that this was some sort of test from the Lord. He says:

Since my “two days as an atheist” experience, I have had a lot of time to contemplate on what happened. I don’t have all the answers, but I am firm in my conviction that God was teaching me something through experience that I already believed in theory: Human effort is not ultimately responsible for faith, God is. In my ministry, I suppose this is important.

He mentions another evangelical leader who told him in private that he had experienced a loss of faith for 3 months. This leader never shared it with anyone publicly.

Well, my loss of faith has lasted for about 14 years now and I don't expect it to return. I felt the same type of mental anquish and emotional turmoil that Patton described for about a year or so. After becoming settled in my conviction that evangelical Christianity is not true, I have never looked back. I can honestly say that I have not had one doubt about my de-conversion. I have never thought, "well maybe Christianity is true after all." Although de-conversion was a painful experience, I can say today that I am glad it happened and I feel very liberated. At this point, I can agree with the words of Jesus: "You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free" (John 8:32).

Belief in God (right hemisphere) and Theology (left hemisphere)

Research by Michael Persinger, Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs (1987), seems to indicate that religious belief and/or religious experiences take place in the right hemisphere of the brain. The left hemisphere which is where the verbal and analytical functions take place attempts to explain the experience. These experiences are often very difficult to describe, in the same way certain non-religious experiences such as falling in love are hard to describe. Sometimes one is not able to put into words what they are experiencing. In 2 Corinthians 12:4, Paul says that there are no words to describe what he experienced when he was caught up to the third heaven. However, the brain seeks an explanation and a framework in which to make sense of the experience. These models or systems in which the experiences are explained, defined, and related to other beliefs are called theological systems. These systems are necessary in order to give meaning to the experience.

C. G. Jung calls initial religious experience Numinosum and maintains that organised religious confessions, rituals and dogmas are secondary. Numinosa, Jung writes, can be so powerful that they will destroy the experiencer if he or she does not have the adequate religious frame to encapsulate the Numinosum. If such a frame is not available, the experiencer, according to Jung, may become mentally deranged (Anne L. C. Runehov, A Neuro-psychological Explanation of Religious Experience).

So, religious belief seems to be based in the right hemisphere and the explanation and rational defense for the belief is based in the left hemisphere. So what happens if the connection between the two hemispheres is cut?

Michael Gazzaniga, founder of the Centers for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis and at Dartmouth College, the Neuroscience Institute, and the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, describes in the next two videos what happens when the connection between the two hemispheres is lost.





In the next video, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, the Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, describes a case where in one individual is found both a belief and non-belief in God. The right hemisphere of his brain is a theist and the left one is an atheist.



These studies, of course, do not prove either the existence or non-existence of god(s) but I think they are fascinating. They give us insight into the nature of faith and reason.


Further reading:

Anne L. C. Runehov, Sacred or Neural?: The Potential of Neuroscience to Explain Religious Experience (2007).

R. Joseph, The Right Brain and the Unconscious: Discovering the Stranger Within (1992).

Faith or Reason? Part Three

In two previous posts (here and here), I discussed how evangelical Christianity, while giving lip service to reason and evidence, actually rests upon faith. This is clearly evident when someone like William Craig says that no evidence could disconfirm his faith.

I would like to provide a further example today that evangelical Christians subordinate reason to faith. Dan Miller, Th.M. (Central Seminary), D.Min. (cand., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), recently published a post entitled: Reasoning Outside the Box of Human Reason. He begins by saying,

Unless you reason outside the box of human reason, you can forget about understanding the Jesus of the Bible. Only those willing and able to break the constraints of common experience and human rationalism can hope to make any sense of Jesus’ life and ministry.

I applaud him for his honesty. He seems to be admitting that unless we sacrifice our intellect, we will never understand Jesus' life and ministry. He continues:

The birth narrative of Jesus demands that we think outside the box. We have no conceptual or experiential category for a woman conceiving a child without sperm from a man. But the biblical authors announce that Jesus was conceived in the womb of a virgin named Mary by a direct act of God.

Why should we believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, according to Miller? Because the Bible says so, period. Since Miller (and evangelicals in general) have already predetermined, by faith, that the Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant, then whatever it says has to be true. Faith trumps reason for evangelicals.

Miller goes on to say the death of Jesus for sinners makes no sense. He writes:

At the heart of the mind-blowing truths that God opens eyes to see, is the truth that Jesus died to save sinners from God’s wrath. It is mind-boggling to think that God does not accept good people but receives those who are His natural enemies—people who lie, cheat, lust, swear, hate others, love themselves and fail to love God with all their hearts (Rom. 4:4-5; 5:10). It defies human reason that the sinless Jesus would die to pay the penalty of sin, forgive sinners, and defeat death in their place. That may not seem to make sense, but deep down in your heart, you know this is exactly what you need.

So, why should anyone believe that the death of Jesus saves sinners, even though, it is patently absurd? Because according to Miller, deep down in your heart, you know this is exactly what you need. People ought to believe that Jesus died for them because of some subjective notion? Yep, thats what evangelicals believe.

It should be crystal clear that evangelical Christianity is based solely on faith and subjective notions. Those apologists who claim it is based on historical evidence and reason are being disingenuous.

Faith or Reason? Part Two

In yesterday's post, I showed that Christian apologists subordinate reason to faith. They follow the lead of the author of Hebrews who said, By faith we understand (11:3). In other words, without faith it is impossible to make sense out of the Bible. One must accept the idea that the Bible is a divine revelation and then interpret everything in light of that belief. If science or reason contradict something in the Bible, faith demands that the Bible be true and science or reason be wrong.

Today, I want to give some examples of this methodology from a leading evangelical apologete, Dr. Norman Geisler.

Evangelicals believe that the Bible is without error. They argue that since God cannot lie and since God is the author of the Bible (albeit making use of human instruments); therefore, the Bible must not contain any untruths. Geisler, in his book, When Critics Ask (Victor Books, 1992) offers the following syllogism:

God cannot err.
The Bible is the Word of God.
Therefore, the Bible cannot err.

Once again, this idea goes back to Augustine of Hippo. In his polemical treatise against the Manicheans, he argued: "If we are perplexed by any apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, "The author of this book is mistaken;" but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood (Bk 11, par.5).

Geisler lists 17 mistakes he believes critics make when approaching alleged errors in the Bible. For our present purpose, I will deal with four of these.

1. Assuming that the Unexplained Is Not Explainable.

Geisler writes: No informed person would claim to be able to fully explain all Bible difficulties. However, it is a mistake for the critic to assume, therefore, that what has not yet been explained never will be explained.

But what does this boil down to? One must by faith believe there is a resolution to the problem even though no one has found it in over 2000 years. Once again, you just "gotta believe."

2. Presuming the Bible Guilty Until Proven Innocent.

Geisler thinks we should approach the Bible in the manner that the US courts approach a person charged with a crime. Presume innocency until guilt is proven.

The problem here is that for evangelicals like Geisler, it is impossible to prove guilt. Nothing could ever be accepted as an error by them; their conclusion is already predetermined by faith.

3. Confusing Our Fallible Interpretations with God's Infallible Revelation.

Geisler says: Human beings are finite, and finite beings make mistakes. That is why there are erasers on pencils, correcting fluid for typing, and a "delete" key on computers. And even though God's Word is perfect (Psalms 19:7), as long as imperfect human beings exist, there will be misinterpretations of God's Word and false views about His world.

Note that Geisler is presupposing the truth of the Scripture. Why? Because the Bible says its perfect in Psalms 19:7. How can one not see that this circular reasoning? He has by faith accepted the Bible as the divine word of God and therefore if there is something in the Bible that appears to be in error, the fault must lie with him not with the Bible.

15. Forgetting that Only the Original Text, Not Every Copy of Scripture, Is
without Error.

This retreat to the "original text" was popularized by B.B. Warfield in his book, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible.

This retreat to the "original text" is quite convenient. Why? Because the original autographs of the Biblical text are not available. They have long since perished. All we have are copies of copies of the originals. Since no one would ever be able to produce the originals, Geisler, and his evangelical friends, have an unassailable position. By faith, they believe the original documents were perfect and the originals are forever lost; therefore no one, in their minds, could ever demonstrate a definite error in the Bible.

So, as I argued yesterday, for the evangelical, faith trumps reason. They will give lip-service to reason but ultimately their religion, as all other religions, is based on faith.

Faith or Reason

The author of the book of Hebrews wrote:

11:1--Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

11:2-- This is what the ancients were commended for.

11:3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

11:6--And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Perhaps the greatest of the early church Fathers, Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE), preached (Sermon 43.7,9): Believe in order that you may understand (Latin--Crede, ut intelligas ). Following his lead, Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109 CE)wrote: I believe in order that I might understand.

So, according to these Christian theologians, man is supposed to believe (have faith) in God first and then try to understand. If there is a conflict between faith and reason, then faith prevails. In other words, one must subordinate his reason to his faith. The Bible college where I used to teach had the motto--Revelation over Reason.

As pointed out in a previous post, this is precisely what William Craig does when he says that he believes because of the witness of the Spirit and no evidence can defeat his faith (see Luke Muehlhauser's excellent discussion of this point). Presuppositional apologetes, such as Greg Bahnsen and John Frame, essentially say the same thing. They maintain that one must first presuppose the truth of Christianity and then it makes sense. Alvin Plantinga is not much different when he says that belief in God is properly basic and is justified even without arguments or evidence. All of this seems to boil down to: God said it; I believe it; that settles it.

I find this to be intellectual suicide. If the Christian God is real, then he created us in his image with the largest brain of any other creature. It would seem that he expects us to use our brain not "check it at the door." I found when using my reason that the Bible cannot be a divine revelation and that evangelical Christian theology is not only non-sensical to the human mind but its internally inconsistent itself. Therefore, I left evangelical Christianity for a more reasonable position.

Am I looking for excuses not to believe?

Sometimes I hear Christians say that unbelievers are merely looking for excuses not to believe. The implication is that the evidence is so overwhelming that only a stubborn rebel would refuse to believe. That is just simply not the case. The evidence for the truth of evangelical Christianity is in reality pretty weak. If God were interested in providing real evidence, he certainly could have done a better job.

Dr. Matt McCormick, Professor of Philosophy at California State University, has an excellent entry on his blog about this subject. He writes:

Suppose the almighty creator of the universe with the power to control every aspect of reality had sought to achieve a state where all or most normal, thoughtful adult human beings could reflect on the evidence available to them and come to believe that he exists. Could such a being create a state of affairs where being with our powers of reasoning could consult the evidence and conclude that God is real? It would seem that bringing about such a state of affairs would be a trivial matter for such a being. I am not all powerful, all knowing, or all good, yet I can make my existence perfectly obvious to humans.

Is the current state of affairs that most human beings are in one where the existence of such a being is obvious or reasonable? There are a great many people who believe, certainly. But there are a great many who do not. There are billions of Buddhists, for example, who do not believe in the existence of an all powerful creator God. Even those people who believe are doubtful about God’s existence being obvious or clearly indicated by reason. When polled, a great many of them respond that belief in God can only come through faith. And certainly in human history we can find billions more people for whom the existence of such a being was not obvious or reasonable.

What is the evidential situation we are in regarding the Christian God? Our central piece of evidence is a book that is made up of a collection of writings by a wide range of authors. The contents of this book have been culled from a much large body of religious writings over the course of centuries that make a wide range of inconsistent claims about the existence, nature, and history of this God and his actions. Humans have done that culling to arrive at a book that is alleged to be the one, true perfect source of inerrant information about this being.

If the all powerful, all knowing creator of the universe had sought to make his existence known and reasonable through that book or its stories, could he have done a better job? Could the miracles of Jesus have been bigger? Could they have been attested to by more sources? By more reliable witnesses? Could they have been reported by the original eye-witnesses instead of the hearsay reports we have? Could Jesus’ divinity have been less ambiguous? Could the same stories about a 1st century religious leader have arisen even though he was not a supernatural being? Could a more careful and systematic investigation into the stories about Jesus’ supernatural powers have been pursued? Were there people who were contemporaries of Jesus who were not convinced? Could the evidence for them have been better? Could the history of the documents that report the stories about God and Jesus have been less muddled by controversy, fragmentation, and ambiguity?

Most people would agree that the answers to all of these questions are “yes.” We can readily imagine a hundred ways in which the case for God on the basis of the Bible could have been better. It seems quite clear that if God had really intended humanity to believe on the basis of the Bible, he could have done a better job.

So, if there is a God, he/she/it created man with a large brain. Obviously, that God intended for man to use that brain. If during the course of using our minds, we find the evidence for the Bible and Evangelical Christianity to be less than convincing, can that God (assuming he/she/it is just and fair)condemn us? I hardly think so.

The Religious Condition by Jason Long

Dr. Jason Long, Pharm.D., a former Christian, has written perhaps the best analysis and refutation of evangelical Christianity for laymen that is available today. The book, The Religious Condition, is Long's second volume. His first work, Biblical Nonsense, dealt more specifically with the Biblical text demonstrating the problems associated with thinking its the Word of God.

As a former Christian myself, I find that Long understands precisely how Christians think and how they argue. He knows this because he was one himself. For this reason, I think Long's book is more effective than some of the "new atheist" authors (i.e., Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, etc.). Since the "new atheists" are writing as outsiders to the faith, they don't have the same insights into Christianity that a former devout believer such as Long. Some will wave off Long's work because he is not a "biblical scholar" and does not quote all the current scholarship in the field. But Long is writing as an educated laymen who has experienced the indoctrination of Christianity and was able to free himself from it through logical and rational analysis.

Long begins by showing how people typically come to believe in their religion. They are indoctrinated into it by their parents and/or the culture in which they are reared. He cites the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001 which shows that 84% of Americans belong to the same religion as their parents (p. 8). This is not surprising as parents are the most important formative element in a child's view of the world.

For those who claim that they chose Christianity on their own, Long says:

Individuals who claim to have made a rational, uninfluenced decision to join Christianity seem oblivious to how likely it was that they would walk right into the church. If that society had been propagating an Islamic viewpoint, the odds are that it would be right into the mosque (p. 9).

Many people do not seem to realize how the beliefs of the society around them shape their own beliefs. Man is a social creature and needs to "fit in" to the society and culture in which he lives. This influences most people to adopt the religious ideas that are dominant in their society.

After showing why many people have the religious beliefs they do (i.e., societal conditioning and indoctrination), Long explains why people do not give up these beliefs in spite of the evidence against them. He cites the psychological phenomena of "confirmation bias" and "cognitive dissonance." Long gives many examples of these two phenomena (pp. 21-52).

Confirmation bias involves assuming the truth of one's beliefs and then working backwards to confirm it. This is clearly seen in virtually every Christian apologist's writings. Long argues:

In short, either religious followers ignore evidence that is contradictory to their beliefs, or they superficially rationalize it. They interpret according to their preconceived notions and biases. When a skeptic points out a likely error, the Christian begins with the premise that it is not an error and then proceeds to defend by any means necessary what he is already convinced is the truth (p. 28).

When confirmation bias does not resolve the problem, cognitive dissonance kicks in. Cognitive dissonance tends to either minimize the problem or try to divert attention away from the problem by emphasizing the many good points of the belief. (See my previous post, for examples of this kind of thinking).

In the next part of his treatise (pp, 53-160), Long gives examples of this bias and dissonance in the arguments of Christians as it relates to science and the Bible, philosophical "proofs" for God, and other issues. Christian apologists have "answers" to all the problems but the question is, are these answers really plausible or are they merely theoretically possible?

In the last section of his book (pp. 161-245), Long addresses many of the objections he received from Christians concerning his first book, Biblical Nonsense. Long deals with these honestly and fairly and conclusively shows how bankrupt the Christian's arguments really are. This part of the book will be extremely helpful to skeptics who encounter these "Christian answers" on a regular basis.

I highly recommend this book to believers and non-believers alike. For believers, it will help them understand how they came to believe what they do and why it is so difficult to honestly question those beliefs. For non-believers, it will give insight into how conservative Christians think and the best ways to argue against their beliefs.

As I mentioned earlier, no one can refute a position better than someone who used to hold that position.

Why do people continue to believe in spite of the evidence?

I have often wondered how people can continue to believe something even though there is a mountain of evidence against the belief. I recently came across a psychological explanation of this called "Cognitive Dissonance." Leon Festinger (1919-1989), formerly a professor of Psychology at the University of Minnesota developed the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. In a book entitled, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the End of the World (University of Minnesota Press; 1956), he investigated a religious cult which had predicted the end of the world on a particular date but when the date came nothing happened. Some of the followers acknowledged they had been duped and went back to their old lives. The very committed ones, however, could not admit to themselves that they had been fooled and thus they came up with an alternative explanation. Perhaps it was not the end of the physical world but the end of a spiritual world.

The particulars do not matter. The fact is that when someone is committed wholeheartedly to a belief system and his or her whole life is shaped by that belief, it becomes very difficult to assimilate any information which runs contrary to that belief.

What is my point? I think this explains why most people who are committed to their religion or belief system will NEVER change their beliefs NO MATTER how much evidence is presented to them.

When I was a Christian, I used to be amazed at how intelligent people could continue to believe Mormonism even though there was so much evidence against it. One day I realized that I was just as guilty of closed-mindedness as they were. I would listen to the evidence against evangelical Christianity but only to "refute it." In other words, my mind was already made up. To entertain the idea that you may actually be wrong and that your whole life, which has been built around this false belief, has been misguided is extremely painful.

How does one eliminate this cognitive dissonance? According to Festinger, there are three ways to eliminate dissonance: (1) reduce the importance of the dissonant beliefs, (2) add more consonant beliefs that outweigh the dissonant beliefs, or (3) change the dissonant beliefs so that they are no longer inconsistent.

He gives a non-religious example of this phenomenon. Consider someone who buys an expensive car but discovers that it is not comfortable on long drives. Dissonance exists between their beliefs that they have bought a good car and that a good car should be comfortable. Dissonance could be eliminated by deciding that it does not matter since the car is mainly used for short trips (reducing the importance of the dissonant belief) or focusing on the cars strengths such as safety, appearance, handling (thereby adding more consonant beliefs). The dissonance could also be eliminated by getting rid of the car, but this behavior is a lot harder to achieve than changing beliefs.

Precisely because it would be traumatic and painful for one to give up their firmly held religous beliefs, people will rarely exercise option #3. So they tend to either minimize the importance of the dissonant beliefs or try to counterbalance those dissonant beliefs with more consonant beliefs.

For example, take an evangelical Christian who believes in the inerrancy of the Bible. When confronted with the strong evidence against inerrancy, the believer might respond: (1) "Well, inerrancy, does not really matter because the Bible is a spiritual book and in spiritual matters of sin and salvation, it faithfully accomplishes it purpose;" (2)"Well, there are many great things in the Bible and I will focus on those;" or (3) "I must give up a belief in inerrancy." Most heartily resist conclusion #3.

As pointed out in the previous post, it seems most people believe in their religion for emotional reasons not intellecutal reasons. Thus, the probablity of them rejecting their religion based on intellecutal concerns is remote. A few brave, honest souls will but most will not.

Do people believe in God for intellectual or emotional reasons?

Dr. Michael Shermer,the editor of Skeptic magazine, in his book Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time ,refers to a poll that was done regarding why people believe in God. The people were asked why they believe in God and why they think other people believe in God.

The results are below:

Why People Believe in God

1. Arguments based on good design/natural beauty/perfection/complexity of the world or universe. (28.6%)

2. The experience of God in everyday life/a feeling that God is in us. (20.6%)

3. Belief in God is comforting, relieving, consoling, and gives meaning and purpose to life. (10.3%)

4. The Bible says so. (9.8%)

5. Just because/faith/or the need to believe in something. (8.2%)

Why People Think Other People Believe in God

1. Belief in God is comforting, relieving, consoling, and gives meaning and purpose to life. (26.3%)

2. Religious people have been raised to believe in God. (22.4%)

3. The experience of God in everyday life/a feeling that God is in us. (16.2%)

4. Just because/faith/or the need to believe in something. (13.0%)

5. People believe because they fear death and the unknown. (9.1%)

6. Arguments based on good design/natural beauty/perfection/complexity of the world or universe. (6.0%)

I think that its interesting that many people say they believe in God for intellectual reasons (because of the evidence), whereas they tend to think others believe for emotional reasons (because its comforting).

My experience is that most people believe in God because they were indoctrinated to do so by their parents and culture. Very, very few actually came to the conclusion because of any evidence. Usually, people believe, and then later when challenged, look for reasons for their belief.

That is why few people ever deconvert from belief in God no matter the evidence. They believed in the first place for non-intellecutal reasons and thus intellectual arguments are not going to have much impact on them. They have an emotional attachment to their belief that defies logic and reason.

The "Witness of the Spirit" and the "Burning in the Bosom"

In a previous post, I argued that evangelical apologists such as William Craig have a vested interest in interpeting the evidence to agree with their belief in a literal resurrection. Because of their prior faith commitment and because of their careers being tied to their stand on a literal resurrection, they cannot interpret the evidence in a way that would disconfirm their faith

My contention is further proven by this video clip interview of Craig




In the interview he is asked how Christians should handle intellectual doubts. In response he says that he knows Christianity is true because of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:16--The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God). He says that even if the evidence points against his faith at some point, he knows the evidence must be invalid or misinterpreted because ultimately the inner witness of the Spirit trumps everything.So, he admits point blank that his mind is closed. Nothing can disconfirm his faith.

I fail to see how that is any different than the Mormon's burning in the bosom..

One of the foundations of Mormonism is its insistence that a person seek the truth by praying for a private, special revelation from the Holy Spirit.

"In answer to our prayers, the Holy Ghost will teach us through our feelings and thoughts... Heavenly Father will answer their prayers, typically through feelings of their hearts and thoughts in their minds." (Preach the Gospel, p. 39; this is the "2004 handbook utilized by the Mormon missionaries").

What they receive is sometimes called a burning in the bosom as a confirmation of truth. Mormons frequently appeal to James 1:5 for this, especially given that their founder, Joseph Smith, claimed that this was the verse and method he used for finding the truth. This is often accompanied by the insistence that one suspend judgment of his or her religion (even in the face of its historical and theological problems) until he or she has read the Book of Mormon and received, by prayer, a special revelation from the Holy Spirit of its truthfulness.

The Mormon knows his religion is true because the Holy Spirit has personally assured him. No amount of evidence against Mormonism can disconfirm this witness of the Spirit. I would like for Craig or some other Christian to tell me how that is any different from their position?

He would probably say: Well the Mormon's burning in the bosom is either Satanic in origin or its just imaginary. But wouldn't the Mormon say the exact same thing about the evangelical's witness of the Spirit?

Craig goes on to say in the video link that if doubts about evangelicalism arise, they come from Satan. So, I think my point in the previous post is just further confirmed. Evangelicals, like Craig, cannot be open-minded about the evidences for Christianity. They look at the evidence with their minds already made up. If the evidence causes them to doubt their Christianity, then they say the doubts are being put in their mind by Satan.

Craig may have two doctorates and be a learned philosopher, but when it comes right down to it, he is no different than the fundamentalist preacher who will stand in a pulpit today and proclaim: Jesus loves me this I know, because the Bible tells me so.

Am I Just Biased Against the Supernatural?

Some Christians will maintain that I and others who reject the literal resurrection of Jesus are just biased against the supernatural. In other words, they say we have made up our minds in advance of the evidence that the supernatural does not exist. Is that a fair assessment, in light of what I said yesterday about everyone being biased by their worldview?

I agree that I have a bias against the supernatural. But I maintain most evangelical Christians do as well, unless the supernatural event is recorded in their canonical Scriptures.

Why don't they believe that the Angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith? Why don't they believe in the miracles reported at Lourdes? Why don't they believe in the Hindu milk miracle?

They don't believe these miracles because they contradict their presupposition that the Bible is the Word of God. Now in all fairness, a minority of evangelicals might argue that these miracles are indeed true but that they are done by a diabolical power. At least that is more consistent. It is also more in line with the general mindset of the people in the Bible days.

For example, we were at the doctor's office the other day and a woman was having a diabetic seizure. She was screaming, groaning, trying to bite the nurse, etc. A first century person seeing this would have probably concluded that the person was demon possessed. They tended to interpret unexplainable events as being supernatural in cause. They were biased in favor of the supernatural(See Matthew 17:15-18).

As a post-Enlightenement individual living in a world where most events that used to be ascribed to the supernatural now have natural explanations, I freely admit that I am biased against supernatural explanations. I think the evidence for a supernatural cause for an event would have to be overwhelming (not extraordinary--I am not falling into the trap that extraordinary events require extraordinary evidence).

But are Christians any less biased, albeit in the opposite direction? No, I don't think so. Since they have presupposed the Bible to be a divine revelation, they will believe what it reports no matter what.

For example, Mark Smith claims he asked William Craig the following question:

Dr. Craig, for the sake of argument let's pretend that a time machine gets built. You and I hop in it, and travel back to the day before Easter, 33 AD. We park it outside the tomb of Jesus. We wait. Easter morning rolls around, and nothing happens. We continue to wait. After several weeks of waiting, still nothing happens. There is no resurrection- Jesus is quietly rotting away in the tomb.

I asked him, given this scenario, would he then give up his Christianity? Having seen with his own eyes that there was no resurrection of Jesus, having been an eyewitness to the fact that Christianity has been based upon a fraud and a lie, would he NOW renounce Christianity? His answer was shocking, and quite unexpected.

He told me, face to face, that he would STILL believe in Jesus, he would STILL believe in the resurrection, and he would STILL remain a Christian. When asked, in light of his being a personal eyewitness to the fact that there WAS no resurrection, he replied that due to the witness of the "holy spirit" within him, he would assume a trick of some sort had been played on him while watching Jesus' tomb.

Now whether Craig actually said this or not, I don't know for certain but it is in agreement with his writings in which he says that he knows Christianity is true ultimately due to the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. (See Reasonable Faith, pp. 32ff.)

So, Craig believes because of the "inner witness of the Spirit" and then he interprets the evidence to agree with his prior belief. No contrary evidence, according to him, can overturn his belief. Isn't that blatant bias?

Now, I maintain that my position is more consistent. I acknowledge my bias against the supernatural but I apply that bias across the board. In other words, when I read a report of a miracle in the Koran, the Book of Mormon, the Bible, or any other book, I begin with the assumption that it is false. I will examine whatever evidence exists and if there is overwhelming evidence, I am willing to re-think my initial assumption.

Evangelical Christians such as Craig, on the other hand, will not allow any evidence to disconfirm their belief in Christianity. When they read a report of a miracle in the Koran or the Book of Mormon, they assume its false and apply post-enlightenement criteria to examine the claim. When they read a miracle claim in the Bible, they assume its true and go about to explain away the post-enlightenment understanding of such a miracle claim.

Who is more consistent?