Season 1 Finale: To Thine Own Self: Bridging the Gap Between Differing Worldviews

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Skeptic’s View

This week’s blog represents the final post in the season. I am writing this at a time when I have no idea what I am going to say on the podcast. Dale and I are not sharing our notes ahead of time. So I don’t know what he is going to say or how any of this is going to go. We had one overarching principle: Make one final, impassioned plea to our audience for the truth that matters the most to us.

Dale’s passion, Dales truth has nothing to do with mine. So I will not be talking so much to Dale, but past him and directly to you, the reader, the listener, the skeptic and seeker on the fence and looking for answers. I will be true to my own passions and views. And that sparks the theme for this presentation. To thine own self, be true. Let’s get started:

Be True to Your Life

The Christian arrow points in the opposite direction to being true to one’s self. Christianity requires one to deny one’s self to the point of being dead to one’s self. What the bible calls for is a form of spiritual suicide. We must die to ourselves to such a degree that it is no longer us that is alive, but Jesus living within us. Compare that to the idea expressed in Gal. 2:20a:

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

Remove this from its religious context just for a moment so that you can better appreciate the horror of the idea. If a person says that you are dead to them, you recognize that you have offended them and that an apology is in order. If they say they are dead to themselves, you recognize that they are clinically depressed and medical intervention is in order.

There are other implications that border on the genre of fantasy macabre. If my body is emptied of my self but remains undead, we would consider that a zombie. If the self is suppressed by a controlling spirit that has taken over my body, we wouldn’t call that a good thing: something usually labeled demonic. It is never a positive thing to empty one’s self of one’s self, die to one’s self, and give our bodies to an external spirit. Only in religion could this be considered positive.

Yet the bible does not only suggest this course of action, but demands it. We must die to ourselves if we are to live for Jesus. However, I believe that to die to one’s self is the worst kind of death. It is suicide due to self-loathing. And it is a bad thing every time.

I call upon the reader to love yourself. Never die to yourself. Let me be dead to you if you must. But don’t let anyone convince you that you would be better off dead to yourself. You matter. Your opinions matter, your life, loves, hates, curiosities, confusions, searches, pain, and joy – it all matters. And you should not throw it away like so much rubbish.

I had a conversation with a person on another forum recently who expressed the idea that we humans were mere maggots before god. Well, I suggest that there should be nothing in the universe that makes you feel like a maggot. Like a frog, you are glorious, warts and all. No one needs to kiss you in order for you to be worthwhile.

To think otherwise is to allow yourself to become emotionally compromised. The first part of my case is to guard yourself against this type of emotional compromise. Religionists cannot take advantage of the strong and secure. They seek your vulnerabilities. They try to pick off the weak among us, those who feel like they are broken. You are not broken. You are not worthy of death. And you should resist in the strongest possible terms those who call upon you to die to yourself.

Be True to Your Humanity

What the inter-dimensional being known as Jehovah/YHWH/Jesus/God wants us to do is not just deny our autonomy as thinking individuals, but deny our very humanity as if it were a bad thing. Listen to how his representative describes it:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, because all that is in the world (the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the arrogance produced by material possessions) is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away with all its desires, but the person who does the will of God remains forever. 1 John 2:15-17

If you take the Bible at its word, everything about your humanity is messed up beyond repair, including the only place in the universe you can call home: earth. You are not to love the world or anything in it. That’s how fundamentally bad humanity is made out to be. The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life is just another way of saying humanity.

Look at how we have learned to disparage our ontological nature. We say things like, we are only human. Why does “human” get reduced to an “only”? Why don’t we say instead that we are gloriously human? Religionists have taught us that humanity is a bad thing to be overcome rather than celebrated. Look at how another biblical author viewed it:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Gal 5:22-24

Notice that these fruits of the spirit are contrasted to the works of the flesh. In this context, flesh represents humanity. As mere humans, we are awful creatures. Only when inhabited by the essence of the alien god can we produce anything good. Those good things are not native to the human creature. To be only human is to be hopelessly inadequate.

Christians want you to deny and suppress your humanity. And I call you to be true to your humanity. For Jesus, being holy means rising above your humanity. But I say that holiness is an artificial standard that no one should attempt. It is meaningless. Don’t be holy. Be human. It is not a thing to be loathed, but to be embraced. At any rate, it is what you are. So be a great one.

Be True to Your Morality

Christians try to own the very idea of goodness by claiming that god is good. They are not saying that god behaves well. They are saying that god is the very personification of goodness. Without god, there can be no goodness. Were you to ask a Christian if humans could be good if god did not exist, they would answer in the negative. For them, no good can exist outside of their god.

That means that apart from god, no one can be moral. They night behave in certain prosocial ways. But the Christian would not credit that as morality. Furthermore, Christians do not really believe that humans could maintain prosocial behavior apart from the grace of god. The only morality in the universe is god’s, and his alone. The best we can do is mimic him and obey him. But we cannot generate moral ideas and behaviors for ourselves.

I believe that is utter bunk! The only way the Christin can know god is good is to have an independent standard of goodness they feel god meets or exceeds. Otherwise, god could literally just go around killing babies for no good reason and Christians would have to recognize that as good.

Now that I think of it, when god wiped out entire cities and villages with his armies, I don’t recall him sparing the babies. It does seem like he had a few options for humanely preserving the infants. So in a sense, god did go around killing babies for no good reason and Christians declare it good.

It is ironic that in almost every system derived by humans, the only way officials can enforce the law is to break it. There is a different law in place for the people who enforce the laws of the land. This is the Christian’s defense for god. Yet god does not have our human limitations. So he should be able to devise a law that he could also model.

Look at how god models parenting. He kills his children when they go astray. Then again, he did give parents permission to kill their kids when they got too far out of line as well. So maybe that was a bad example. To model peace, god declares war time and again. Instead of modeling restraint, he releases fires from heaven. God is the ultimate example of, “do what I say do, not what I do.”

God demands we follow an inhuman moral law that we can’t keep. But upon closer inspection, he can’t keep it either. So instead of trying to follow the conscience of a god, why not follow your own? If you can judge god to be good, then you have a standard of good. Consider it. Refine it. Use it.

You don’t need the Bible to teach you about slavery. You know it is wrong in all its forms, and always has been. It has never been a good thing for any people, anywhere, at any time. That differs from god’s ethical intuition. But yours is better. Use it.

You know that personal, ad hominem attacks are bad, and that you shouldn’t do it. Yet you give Jesus a pass when he goes off the rails and insults the Jewish leaders with the harshest of local invectives. Stop apologizing for that behavior and follow your evolved conscience that informs you that civility is better. It is the same conscience that pushes many of you to chide me when I have crossed the line. It is a good instinct. Consider it. Refine it. Use it.

You all know there is nothing inherently evil about same-sex relationships. Yet the Christian suffers ethical confusion because both testaments of their awful book tell them that homosexuals are persons most foul. They revel in acts that are an abomination to their god. It is expressly forbidden in the strongest possible terms, even to the point of being a death penalty offense.

But you already know that is utterly ridiculous. There has never been a point at anytime in history when people should have been put to death for having intimate relations with people of the same sex. Everyone with a well-developed, human conscience already knows that. You don’t need some ancient book to inform you on the matter, Your conscience is sufficient. Consider what it tells you, refine it. Use it.

I could go on in this way for a long time. But I think you get the point. I know that not every conscience is perfectly calibrated. But I trust that modern humans are more calibrated for goodness than the Bible. Christians want you to deny your since of ethics in favor of that ancient book. But I say that would be the end of society, every society. Believe in yourself. Your version of goodness is better than those who thought witchcraft deserved death by burning.

Be True to Your Senses

Christians rely on the supernatural because the natural world is simply not enough to justify their claims. They promote a world of the invisible and unknowable because that is where their god hides.

Did you ever wonder why god wasn’t just visible to everyone? Why can god only be detected in the heart and not with the eyes and ears and skin? Why is it always internal and unfalsifiable, even to ourselves? Almost all experiences of god are etherial and highly questionable. They have a feeling that can’t be quantified or qualified. They see a vision that, in another context, would be classified as a hallucination. They hear a voice not audible to anyone else in the area. This is as tangible as modern god encounters tend to get.

However, there is no logical reason that this should be the case. If a person says they have a million dollars, their friend has reason to be skeptical, especially if the evidence for this money is the same kind of evidence as that which is used for god. Imagine trying to convince a loan officer at a bank that you have a million dollars using Christian logic:

“But I do have collateral in the form of $1M. “

“Fine. May I see a bank statement to that effect?”

“No. It is not in a bank. That is a mere earthly institution.”

“Okay, can you produce the cash?”

“Well, not exactly. It transcends mere paper.”

“Hmm… Can you show me tax statements?”

“Sorry, it is not subject to human taxes. And before you inquire further, it is invisible, and is in another dimension of space-time. So, how about that loan?”

As you can see, such a claim would be rightfully considered ridiculous. Yet this is exactly how god is presented to the unbeliever. He is defined into existence, philosophized into existence, wished into existence, bullied into existence. But he is never, ever tangibly demonstrated into existence, at least, not any existence we can access.

Christians want you to ignore your senses and believe in things you can only imagine, and not even that very well. They want you to believe that you can make adjustments to the natural flow of space, time, and matter by spouting faithful incantations otherwise known as prayer. They want you to believe that those prayers are effective even when your human senses tell you otherwise.

Remember Paul’s conversion? In one of the tellings, Paul heard a voice from heaven. But all his traveling companions heard was thunder. Christians want you to ignore your senses and call thunder the voice of god. Don’t do it. Be true to your senses.

Conclusion: Be True to the Search

Unlike my interlocutor, I do not believe that a person is obligated to seek god in any way. If god wants us to discover him, he can make it easy for us instead of hiding behind an invisibility cloak. But if you do choose to embark upon a search, be true to it wherever it leads, even if it leads you out the door.

The only concern I had about last week’s guest was that she started her argument from a position of faith. And in her own words, she was not willing to give up that faith position. This admission followed my question to her about her starting point. I asked her if she had considered the possibility that god was an evil person and the Bible was a bad book. She acknowledged that she had not considered it, nor was she willing to do so.

Helen wrote an academic book on biblical violence without once considering the proposition that the poison passages could simply be an accurate portrayal of an imperfect god. To even consider the possibility would violate her faith position. Her unshakable starting point is that god is good. If that is your unshakable, unexaminable starting point, then no conversational progress can be made on that subject.

If you are going to search, then you have to search everything. You have to be true to your search or else your search is a sham. You should be commended for asking some hard questions. But if you are avoiding some questions, then you are not asking the right hard questions. And you know it.

Thank you for reading this post and listening to the podcast and being in dialog with an unbeliever. But remember, I was once a believer with a faith position similar to yours. The difference is that I didn’t shy away from asking the kind of questions that could potentially shatter my faith. I didn’t take as much care to protect my faith. I was more interested in the truth, whatever that happened to be.

I’m not better than you. It took me a long time to get to the point where I could ask those truly dangerous questions. Until I did, my search was meaningless. Don’t deceive yourself into thinking you are examining your faith when you really aren’t. Be true to your self. Be true to your life. Be true to your humanity. Be true to your morality. Be true to your senses. And be true to your search.

And that’s the final view from the seeker for season 1.

David Johnson

 

A Time to Reflect- Season 1 Wrap-Up (Christian’s View)

Ecclesiastes 3:1 provides us with some wise advice; “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to Podcast, and a time not to Podcast….”.  OK, so maybe I was a little liberal with my Bible quoting there, but I have no doubt that the author who penned this verse would have whole-heartedly embraced my sentiment about Podcasting as being true to the spirit of what he was trying to convey.  With Season 1 of Skeptics and Seekers coming to an end, it is now time to reflect on the last 10 months.

As the Bible is known for being a book of books, the following will be a blog of blogs providing an outline of my take on 5 of the common skeptical objections that I have encountered repeatedly throughout this season.

Skeptical Objection #1- Different Strokes for Different Folks:

I believe it was none other than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who once pointed out that the purpose of life is “to get as far as possible from imperfection”.  I think this motivation is fundamental to the human condition; we are currently in a state of imperfection and we want to achieve a state of perfection to whatever extent is possible for us to achieve.  This is the very thing that the various religions (or “wisdom traditions” as Huston Smith called them) claim to provide answers to and it explains a large part of our fascination with them in terms of analyzing, following and debating about them.

However, one criticism I have received from the S&S skeptics relates to my particular approach of assessing religion; in other words, my use of an intellectual approach.  It’s said that my years of rigorous study and research have somehow blinded me to the fact that there may indeed be other valid paths which one can take which could just as equally lead human beings to discovering true religious beliefs and hence allow them to get closer to achieving that desirable yet frustratingly elusive state of perfection.

In the first place, despite my emphasis on intellectual argumentation, I do recognize that human beings are more than just “rational animals” (as Aristotle put it), humans have been created with various capacities and faculties and no two humans are exactly alike in terms of their preferences, strengths and weaknesses, etc.  So, God has created a wonderful diversity within humanity and I fully acknowledge this fact; I believe God cares about all of us as unique individuals of immense value.

The Hindu gurus have developed various sets of detailed instructions for actualizing our full potential as human beings; observing the diversity of proclivities amoung human beings, they have outlined a total of 4 different paths or yogas that are specifically designed for each “spiritual personality type” to aid them in achieving their ultimate purpose in creation.  The first, for people with a strong reflective/intellectual bent (like me), is Jnana yoga; it seeks to connect people with God through knowledge (this includes reasoning from the Scriptures as much as external philosophical and scholarly reasoning).  The second is Bhakti yoga or the way to God through Emotions (the strongest of which is the emotion of love); the purpose here is to reach God via cultivating the love that He has for us and that He created at the base of every human heart, this is sometimes achieved via relating to God through a healthy and active prayer life (1 John 4:19- “We love because He God first loved us”).  The third is Karma yoga, the path to God through work.  This path appeals to those with an active bent who feel satisfied only when busy; the old adage, “busy hands are happy hands”, summarizes this avenue to God quite nicely.  Finally, we have Raja yoga, which outlines the path to God through various Psychophysical exercises and/or various spiritual experimentation techniques.  This last approach can include everything from meditation to using drug-induced visions or dream experiences to gain access to the divine/spiritual realm.

Now, it may surprise many of the skeptics to learn that even though I’m a Christian, I can and do appreciate some insights that other religions have to offer and, with the possible exception of the 4th yoga, this notion of the Hindus about the different types of pathways to God reflecting the different spiritual personality types is one such example where I think Christians can learn a thing or two and easily modify these ideas in ways that make them useful within a Christian context in particular (2 Corinthians 10:5- “… take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ”).

It’s important to notice that while human beings have their own individual preferences and proclivities, none of us are strictly one thing or another, instead all such yogas have some relevance to the experiences of all humans.  Thus, the different paths are not mutually exclusive, I can work at a homeless shelter cooking food for them whilst lovingly letting them cry on my shoulder and at the same time answer their intellectual questions about the Problem of Evil.

That said, what of the criticism I received from skeptics saying that I seem to be somewhat privileging the intellectual or “knowledge- based” path to God over the others.  It’s true, I’m unashamedly an advocate for the Jnana yoga approach and I think that it needs to play more of a role in everyone’s religious evaluations and decisions (though obviously not to the total exclusion of the other paths).  It is often joked by these skeptics that the philosopher-types often walk around with their heads in the clouds, to which I simply reply, indeed, for where else could one get the best glimpse of the magnificent splendor of the sun and be able to bask in its wonderous light.

Parmenides, who created the world’s first sustained philosophical argument, wrote a poem whereby a Greek goddess contrasted the sensational vs. logical paths to knowledge and proclaimed, “nor let much-experienced habit (judgement via sensation alone) force you along this path, to ply an aimless eye and resounding ear and tongue, but judge by logos (reason)”  Similarly, entirely outside the Western tradition, Hindus themselves also recognize that the Jnana (knowledge-based) path is the “shortest path” to true wisdom; you’ll have to forgive me if I tend to be impatient in wanting to live in a state of perfection sooner rather than later!

Therefore, since the path to God inevitably will involve having correct beliefs (or at least a priori it could involve such), then one must utilize their God-given rational faculties to help them adjudicate answers on essential religious questions; God gave us a mind, He must want us to use it.  If you entirely neglect the intellectual path to religious knowledge, than you are doing something wrong in your quest for truth; this in turn will prevent you from achieving your full potential as a human being and will ultimately keep you in a state of miserable imperfection.

Skeptical Objection #2- Authoritative Apologetics vs. Epistemic Humility:

Another major criticism that I have received on multiple occasions, is that when I present some of my ideas and defenses for the Christian faith, I apparently come across as a religious fanatic, a fundamentalist and/or an arrogant apologist lacking in humbleness and conciliatory tone.  This is often accompanied by the skeptic pointing to other Christians who have an opposing viewpoint to mine and them complaining that I’m too young and inexperienced to have a valid opinion worthy of consideration.  According to these “humble” skeptics, I lack what is called epistemic humility.

Rather than lambasting these skeptics for their hypocrisy, I do think that the criticism partially reflects something worthy of consideration, especially since it is often leveled against various Christian apologists; this is the issue of individual Christian certainty vs. confusion.

Throughout the season, either David or a skeptical commenter on the Boards, has whipped out the old “Yeah, but this Christian over here disagrees with you” gambit as a way of somehow disavowing my own opinion and/or at least to try to get me to second guess what I think is true.  Dale believes homosexuality is a sin according to the Bible, well post a recent poll that shows the majority of “professing Christians” in North America disagree with him, or Dale believes in Molinism, well what about all the Calvinists who don’t believe in libertarian freewill, or Dale says Hell is not so bad because it does not involve some kind of medieval torture chamber scenario, well simply mention that David was a Christian preacher back in the day and he doesn’t concur with that reading of the text.  After which, if I have the nerve to remain firm in my original position, it is often supposed that I’m not really engaging with the issue or I am just speaking based off my own set of entrenched presuppositions.  What on Earth is going on here?  How can these skeptics be so misguided about me (and Christian apologists in general)?

Well, I submit that at least part of what is causing this friction between me and the skeptics regarding my firm stance on some of the issues I’ve researched, stems from us having different views on how one should address a relatively new field of epistemology; its known as the “Epistemology of Peer Disagreement”.  This field of study asks what a rational person should do when faced with an epistemic peer (someone equally competent, familiar with the same evidence and who has an equal cognitive and educational base of knowledge) who holds a counter viewpoint to one’s own view.  There are two predominant approaches on how one should react in such a situation; i) the Conformist View (the viewpoint that many of the S&S skeptics seem to adopt or at least what they expect Christians should adopt while they themselves hypocritically don’t have to) and ii) the Steadfast View (the one that I have taken during the show and will continue to take).

The “Conformist” view (aka the “Conciliatory” or “Equal-Weight” View) says that whenever such a situation arises, then either both parties must abandon their beliefs/opinions entirely OR some compromise position must be arrived at and agreed to by both peers; this is what the S&S skeptics foolishly want me and other Christian apologists to do when confronted with the fact that other lay Christians disagree with my take and/or that two or more Christian scholars disagree on a relevant issue- they hope to bully us via epistemic shaming into abandoning our beliefs.  Thankfully, the rational person is not forced to take the extreme measure that these skeptics are insisting on here, the “Steadfast” view says that one can be epistemically justified in continuing to hold to one’s beliefs even in the presence of peer disagreement.

When confronted with a peer disagreement, one need not shut off one’s brain and mindlessly remain agnostic like the skeptics wish, there are numerous possibilities which can explain why such a disagreement has taken place and which must be assessed first before one is required to abandon one’s rationally justified/warranted beliefs.  In the first place, the Conformist view must be false because it is self-refuting (logically impossible to be true)- after all there are epistemic peers who disagree about the validity of this very approach and to avoid this issue by excluding the principle of peer disagreement from its own Conformist standards would be sheer skeptical question-begging at its very worst.

Secondly, it is very hard, if not impossible, to truly tell if two or more people are in fact “epistemic peers”- sure they may both have PhD’s from an accredited university but maybe one did their homework whereas the other slept in class or perhaps one keeps more up to date with the academic peer-reviewed literature than the other; very rarely would we expect two humans to be exactly on par with each other on a given issue (even if they are considered experts in the field).  What’s more, one may have overriding reasons independent of the disagreement itself to prefer one’s own view vs. the opinion of a peer; this would mean that one is privy to outside knowledge that the other is not and thus, once again, the two would not really be peers on the issue (I utilized this on occasion in Season 1 when I couldn’t prove my beliefs were true directly, such as with the Virgin birth for instance, but could say I was warranted in believing them via indirect evidences for the truth of Christianity and the Bible’s sufficient attachment to the Christian religion, so merely pointing to a scholar who doesn’t believe in the Virgin birth based on the lack of direct evidence alone is totally irrelevant).

Thirdly, we have the issue of bias interfering with the integrity, honesty and fairness of an alleged peer’s analysis on a given issue.  Perhaps most Christians think homosexuality is cool today because they saw ABC’s What Would You Do? and didn’t want to be made fun of by others like the “Christians” on the television program.  The same can hold true for scholars who may have a considerably larger knowledge base than I might, scholars are just people and are not immune from such influences; and so, simply appealing to one’s academic credentials of contrary expert to invalidate my own opinions is not sufficient in its own right for me to abandon my beliefs, at least not without me giving due consideration as to the reasons behind that scholar’s disagreement with my opinion.

Finally, I have first-person knowledge of my own treatment of an issue and so, to the extent that I’m not engaged in any form of self-delusion, I alone truly know if I was fair in my treatment of the evidence for and against a given position or not; but I do not necessarily have such knowledge about an alleged peer or scholar who disagrees with me about their treatment of the topic.  Thus, one should privilege one’s own beliefs based on what they know of their own research against the claims of some disputant who claims to be one’s peer and/or even superior on a given issue and not simply abandon their opinions without due reason to do so.

To summarize, we are each of us, responsible for working out our own salvation (or at least partially responsible as no one can come to a knowledge of God without Him first drawing us to Him- John 6:44).  As such, we need to ensure that we are truly open to the truth and fulfilling the criteria for being a “real seeker” on these important religious issues.  Does that mean we should simply dismiss the contrary claims of other Christian peers and scholars holding different views than our own? – No, of course not!  We all need outside help from time to time and so all of us need to be open to the reasons that others present for their contrary opinions and assess them for ourselves as best we can to discover the truth (sometimes this will entail us modifying our opinions accordingly in the light of new data).  Skeptics take the Steadfast position all the time with their own opinions about God and religion, none of them cower in fear and abandon their skeptical beliefs simply because one can quote a fellow skeptic who disagrees with them (should we use the same name-calling tactics they used against me on them, should I call them a bunch of fundamentalists or skeptical fanatics incapable of engaging in dialogue with Christians due to their being so entrenched in their own biased presuppositions?)  At the end of the day, if, after having considered a contrary opinion, I find that my view remains the warranted position to hold, then I will be epistemically courageous enough to stick to my guns and remain steadfast in that opinion and I implore all of you, whether Christian or skeptic, to be intellectual honest and brave enough to do the same!

Skeptical Objection #3- To Infinity & Beyond: The Issue of “Head Canon”:

On several occasions, it has been brought to my attention by skeptics that something I have said or an argument I have made is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible and thus, according to them, this invalidates my opinion as somehow being anti-Christian or unwarranted.

My skeptical co-host has coined the term “Head Canon” to describe any terminology or notions that Christians employ which go above and beyond the explicit statements of the Bible itself.  I remember watching a great documentary on the history of Christianity called, “A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years”; the presenter Diarmaid MacCulloch stresses how his main character, which isn’t Jesus or any other individual Christian person but “Christianity” itself, has historically been very dynamic and evolving over the past 2000 years and he suspects it will continue to do so over the next 1000 years to come.  I think it is an obvious fact of history that the Christianity practiced by most Christians today has become drastically different than that practiced in the first century A.D.  The question is, so what?  Ought Christians to adhere strictly to the confines of what is explicitly sanctioned in Scripture only?

Protestants have typically envisioned two basic approaches to Scripture, Jean Calvin and the Reformed on the one hand advocate for a regulative principle of worship whereas Martin Luther took a more liberal Normative approach.  The former prohibits any kind of innovation from entering the life of a Christian (in a worship context at least) whereas the latter allows us to glean the essential biblical principles of worshiping God and then to manifest those principles in ever-evolving forms to better reflect any changes at the time and circumstances in question.  I favour the latter approach as the correct one to take; the former is reminiscent of many of the problems inherent to Sunni Islam which has the intellectually and emotionally stifling doctrine of bid’ah (prohibits Muslims from engaging in any kind of religious innovation or speculation)- even asking the question is God to powerful to create a rock He can’t lift it could get you the death penalty for heresy).

Thankfully, true Christianity is not like that, since its very inception Christians have been expected, nay commanded, to wrestle with God and the Scriptures (the very name Israel means one who wrestles with God, see the founding story where Jacob wrestles God and receives the name Israel- Gen 32:22-32).  In the NT we are commanded to “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).  What’s more, the early church had no problem continuing this trend as they developed and formalized their understanding of various doctrines that the Bible had not fully fleshed out; Scripture provided a sufficient amount of puzzle pieces for others later on to put them together in a more systematic way only after engaging in some serious reflection on them (for example the fully fleshed out and crystalized notions of the Trinity and the Canon of Scripture came only later on in the post-NT era).

Hence, I see no issue whatsoever for Christians today to continue to use Scripture the way God intended,  as a means to provide Christians with the essential building blocks of fundamental Christian doctrines and moral principles upon which to base our lives while at the same time using our God given rational faculties and logical laws to help us evolve and formulate an increasingly better and better understanding of God and who/what He is.  One must of course be careful not to become too dogmatic with their own ideas unless one has due warrant (I think my own church becoming dogmatic about Calvinism and its unquestioning adherence to the 1689 London Baptist Confession is a case in point of what not to do).  But I also think the typical Protestant and skeptical impulse to think that just because a notion or idea a Christian is advancing comes from later on (i.e. the post apostolic period) and/or it is not fully disclosed in the Bible directly than it must mean it is false is likewise a deeply mistaken point of view and only serves to stifle our experience, knowledge and sheer joy we have as we grow in our relationship with our Creator.

Skeptical Objection #4- Christians “Making Things Up” (The Problem of Skeptical Presuppositionalists & The Assumptive “Nothing Buttery” of Scientism/Empiricism):

Various times this season, I have encountered an obstinacy from various skeptics to my arguments because they claim that I’m “just making things up” or they will allude to some arbitrary distinction between “plausible/scientific” explanations and my “fanciful/supernatural” explanations.  However, as we shall soon see, Oxford mathematician John Lennox is entirely right to warn the sincere seeker to beware of the pseudo-intellectual assumptions of “nothing buttery” that is often imposed onto reality by such skeptics (i.e. scientism, empiricism and/or metaphysical/methodological naturalism).

Much of the differences between myself and the lay skeptics I’ve interacted with on S&S stem from us each embracing an entirely different outlook about the nature of the philosophy of science; many of the skeptics take a view called an Internal Philosophy of Science (IPS) view, for them philosophy is merely another branch of science proper and there is no fundamental difference between philosophical questions vs. scientific ones since all such questions and their answers ultimately reduce down to scientific truths (for example epistemology is really just a branch of psychology, biology and neurophysiology).  More importantly, for such skeptics, science is its own rational justification and does not need evaluation from some alleged “higher viewpoint”.

I on the other hand, along with most rational people, take an External Philosophy of Science (EPS) position whereby “science” itself is a proper object of study via applying “higher” philosophical reasoning and logical principles to evaluate questions pertaining to the nature of good vs. bad science and scientific methodology.  Philosophy is considered a “second-order or normative discipline” (with science itself only being a “first-order or merely descriptive discipline”) and it is philosophical reasoning that is seen to rationally justify the presuppositions of science and evaluate the epistemic validity of various scientific claims (such justification usually come from the fields of metaphysics and epistemology).  An EPS approach is preferred over an IPS understanding of science for multiple reasons but mainly because most critical thinkers recognize that an IPS view merely begs the question by asserting the epistemic authority of science in the first place and artificially breaks down the obvious distinction between normative and descriptive issues.

Going hand in hand with a skeptical IPS understanding of science comes the non-evidenced/unwarranted assumption of scientism/empiricism, an utterly foolish notion that says unless something squares with well-established scientific beliefs and/or is amenable to scientific/empirical investigation via the scientific method, then it is not true or rational to believe (i.e. everything outside of science proper is mere subjective opinion and constitutes “just making things up”).  This form of strong scientism is obviously logically absurd as it is self-refuting- strong scientism is not itself a proposition of science but a second-order issue of philosophy, but there is a weaker version of scientism which merely states that science is the best we got so to speak and all other fields of study will eventually reduce down to scientific ones.

However even the weaker form of scientism can’t speak to the truth of the numerous presuppositions which the scientific method merely assumes to be true in order to work (for example, the existence of theory-independent world i.e. realism, the knowability of the external world, the laws of logic as necessary truths, or the reliability of our cognitive faculties to serve as rationally justified truth gatherers).  Furthermore, a position of scientism/empiricism doesn’t adequately address either the “underdetermination of theories by data issue” or the “problem of induction”  (Hume’s issue of rationally justifying inductive inferences).

Some other non-evidenced assumptions that skeptics make in this regard relate to methodological/metaphysical Naturalism and the naïve assumption that there is one universal set of necessary and sufficient conditions which makeup and embody “the scientific method”.

The position of scientism/empiricism is grounded in a position of metaphysical and/or methodological naturalism and the main antagonists to this position are the “Ontologists”; the principle difference being that the latter recognize the reality of both the physical natural world and of abstract non-physical entities.  Skeptics like to “make stuff up” when they assume, without due warrant, that all mental entities like consciousness or freewill, abstract entities (like numbers and logically possible worlds) and relations are not real entities but illusory.  Skeptics make up, out of thin air, some arbitrary line of demarcation between science (plausible) and pseudo-science (fantasy), however no such “line” has been able to be consistently implemented through a set of consistently applied conditions as various scientific fields will often fail to adhere to one or more such conditions and yet still be considered science.

Finally, skeptics naively assume that there is one thing called “the scientific method” practiced universally by all scientists, when in fact there are multiple scientific methods with radically different approaches for arriving at scientific knowledge.  In direct contrast to pop culture’s notion of a straight-forward inductivism representing scientific reasoning, actually a better way to picture how science works is via a hypothetico-deductive method known as the “Eclectic Model” for developing scientific methodology (or rather methodologies).  The Eclectic Model recognizes that scientific methodology is actually a cluster of different methodologies suited to particular fields of study, it involves various forms of reasoning including deductive-nomological (falsification principle for example), deductive-statistical and inductive-statistical arguments and recognizes the different kinds of scientific explanations that science covers (compositional/structural explanations, historical/forensic, functional, transitional and intentional explanations plus as Richard Swinburne would say perhaps personal explanations should not be excluded from science either).  It essentially tries to assess science in relation to 7 fundamental aspects, only the first of which I wish to focus on to prove a point; the formation of scientific ideas.

Skeptics have taken me to task on here for “making things up” when I engage in critical thought-experiments or claim to have had a God-given insight via a properly basic belief but actually scientists appeal to very similar sources of insight when formulating their own ideas.  This is an area called the psychology of discovery and there is no formalized step by step procedure that scientists must follow in this regard- often scientists will arrive at their notions through a creative process of educational guesswork “from below” called abduction (inventing a theory to fit the observed facts already known) and/or using methods “from above” where they allow overriding knowledge in other fields to guide their ideas in a particular case; does this ring any Molinistic Defeater bells for you skeptics).  After going through the other 6 aspects, skeptics will be shocked to find that Christians are likewise in good company with many of their atheist scientist counter-parts on those issues as well- so next time maybe you lay skeptics should realize I’m just being a good scientist in generating my ideas and you should congratulate me for doing good science instead of criticizing my approach unfairly.

For all the assumptive skeptics out there, I believe it was none other than William Shakespeare who once said, “there are more things in heaven and earth my dear misguided Skeptic …. than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.  Moreover, to paraphrase Dr. Walter Wink similar sentiments against the “narrow-mindedness” of modern skeptics, “People with an attenuated sense of what is possible (or plausible) will bring that conviction with them to their examination of reality in whatever field of study they pursue and will thereby diminish it by the utter poverty and limitations of their own experiences and worldview”.

Skeptical Objection #5- A Christian’s Argument from Ignorance OR a Skeptic’s Blissful Ignorance:

When presenting my Shroud series or arguing for a miracle of God which attests to the truth of Christianity, skeptics will often accuse me of using an argument from ignorance and/or a “God-of-the-Gaps” type reasoning (i.e. you can’t prove it’s not a miracle by explaining it naturally, therefore God did it!).

Unfortunately for the skeptic, this is entirely false and instead I provide a detailed logically deductive argument based on co-opting the skeptical argument from “undue confusion”.  Skeptics recognize that God would or should not allow certain kinds of confusion to take place amoung reasonable people (average person), I simply capitalize on this to argue via 11 premises that God exists and we “reasonably” identify certain events as showing God’s involvement; I such events “G-Belief Authenticating Events” (see the attached document for my 11 premise and premise #8 for the criteria I apply consistently for identifying such events).  This argument allows me to consistently and systematically survey all of the various religions and their associated positive and negative evidences, as far as I know I’m the only person who has taken such rigorous efforts to compare the various religions truth claims.

Premise #8 argues that a “reasonable person” could detect God’s involvement in an event’s occurrence on condition that one can prove it fulfills the following criteria; i) the event actually happened, ii) the event is an “Extraordinary” event (see my series on the Shroud Part 4 for detailed explanation of how an event can fulfill this criterion), and iii) the event takes place in context charged with religious significance in an appropriate manner (i.e. the event is “sufficiently attached” to the religion, serves to attest to its truth and is not “subsumable” to any other religion/s- see the S&S shows on subsumability and sufficient attachment in the sources section below).  The argument gains its warrant by saying that given the fulfillment of these criteria, then a reasonable person could be unduly confused by thinking it shows a religion is true and God could never allow undue confusion to occur if God does not want us to follow that religion, hence it must be the case that God does want us to follow that religion.

After years of pain-staking research with some of the world’s experts in this area (a small fraction of whom I have brought on as guests onto S&S), I have discovered that Christianity is the one true religion that God wants human beings to follow; the evidence from the Shroud of Turin, the Resurrection appearance to the “12”, the Vindication Argument and the inner witness of the Holy Spirit- all of these positive evidences were sufficient to over-ride my 95% certainty that Christianity was false based on the negative evidences (which I categorize into Inerrancy Issues, Preservation Problems, Moral Misapprehensions and Human Factors).  I implore you skeptics on here to be a “real seeker” and open yourself up to considering these and other evidences, be humble and admit you don’t know it all; look at the evidences for the truth a fresh, with a renewed determination to seek out the truth!

The End of an Era- My Closing Thoughts on a Wonderful Season

Throughout this season, we have covered everything from the burden of proof to the Shroud of Turin to my “skeptically acclaimed” Molinistic Defeater and so having reflected on much of the feedback I have received on things I’ve done right vs. wrong over the past 10 months.

It has been a privilege working with David as I have managed to learn quite a lot from him on many fronts, I was able to refine my ideas and hone my conversational skills to present an increasingly better case for Christ in response to skeptical objections.  I think I’ve come a long way from when I first started out back in late July of last year.  Likewise, I think it has to be admitted that not everything about my time on S&S this season has been positive- there are clearly aspects about my personality that have either developed and/or been revealed as a result of my interactions with what I perceive to be hardened and entrenched skeptics in the comment sections.

At the end of the day, I do not regret anything about my time on S&S, it has revealed my strengths and exposed my weaknesses and I think I have accomplished part of my goal of “bridging the gap” with skeptics.  I feel I have taken great pains to do most of the time on the Podcast by emphasizing how one should go about thinking systematically on these questions and providing some fresh insights on old arguments.  I mentioned in the very first show of S&S that I value interacting with skeptics because they often ask good probing questions that can help one to develop better arguments for God and Christianity; I still wholeheartedly embrace this sentiment.

In closing, I’m grateful for all the lessons that I’ve learned during my time on S&S this season.  If we do come back for a Season 2, I fully intend to do the best I can to improve and do a better job than I did in Season 1 by cultivating my strengths and eliminating my weaknesses.

Have a good summer everyone 😊

Dale

 

Sources:

a)  My 11 Premise Argument Document in Skeleton form (just the premises) = Dale’s 11 Premise Argument for Miracles based on Undue Confusion- inlcudes Premise 8 criteria

 

b) 7 page article on the limits of science by Martin Gardener (this is one of the readings I have in my Philosophy of Religion class), it speaks of the practical and in principle limits of science = M. Gardner- Science & the Unknowable

Another good source on the Eclectic Model to scientific methodology (methodologies) see here = Eclectic Model of Scientific Methodology

 

c) Also see this documentary on the fundamental differences between people who prefer the way of Bacchus (god of wine and ectasy- disorderly emotions/sensation and mind bending lunacy path to God) vs. Apollonians (logical/rational and orderly path to God), see from the 48-58 min mark here = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgy7bXaaK9U .  Also see some point form notes on the 4 forms of yoga by Huston Smith here = http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/syllabi/r/robbins/1JM8Q-PHIL203/HinduNotes.html  or here = https://sheberhinduism.weebly.com/four-paths-to-the-goal.html .

 

d) A great 6 part documentary series on the evolving history of Christianity by Diarmaid Macculloch = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7f7ILenKBQ&list=PLWaExGUvN3AkN3BC4wUtgiW_2roh5pEkG (Part 1-6 Playlist).

 

e) William Lane Craig on the nature of abstract entities like numbers, propositions, etc. and divine aseity, see Parts 2-4 for good explanation on the nature of these “things” = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWscWmEdpJ8&list=PLIpO3BUiq2IFdX50i-DIb6-posLJL7NEz .

 

f) For exaplanation of my G-Belief Authenticating Event criteria in relation to the evidence from the Shroud of Turin, see Part 4 here = https://skepticsandseekers.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/supplemental-6-part-4-evidence-for-christianity-based-on-the-shroud-of-turin/  & Part 6 (for Criterion B.- Extraordinary event) here = https://skepticsandseekers.wordpress.com/2018/09/21/supplemental-8-part-6-evidence-for-christianity-based-on-the-shroud-of-turin/ .

Also see the two shows I did on the Religious Context criterion (2/3 aspects discussed).  For “Sufficient Attachment” see here  = https://skepticsandseekers.wordpress.com/2018/09/01/the-resurrection-revisited-the-issue-of-sufficient-attachment/  & for “Subsumability” see here = https://skepticsandseekers.wordpress.com/2018/08/12/does-the-resurrection-prove-christianity-the-issue-of-subsumability/ .

 

g) Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument (to prove scientism is false b/c rational people claim to have knowledge that has to be arrived at non-empirically = BOLSTROM- ORIGINAL SIMULATION ARGUMENT PAPER- NOT FOR CLASS- MY OWN USE ONLY