Following from this post, which describes questions assembled by apparent atheist-to-theist convert Lee Strobel, posed to Hemant Mehta (and destroyed by Greta Christina and Ebonmuse) I decided I’d ask one or two questions of my own of theologists/apologists. Obviously I have my own thoughts on these questions but I really want to see answers from believers on these matters (even from non-believers who are playing Devil’s Advocate!). 
Also, I realise my questions may be in some ways incomplete or even naive, both to theists and non-theists alike, however the following are what occurred to me after reading Strobel’s questions (and the ensuing dismemberment of them), and I present them more or less how they appeared in my mind.
Without further ado, let us begin.
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1. Considering Christianity is only one of many religions which all make similar claims to be the revealed and absolute word of the creator of the universe and all contradict each other, do you think it’s more likely that:
(a) all religions are equally valid
(b) all religions are equally invalid
(c) only your religion is valid
If (c) how did you arrive at the decision that your religion is the “right” one? How do you discount other religions, many with an equal or greater number of followers, which make similar claims to divine inspiration? How do their various claims of divine inspiration, miraculous occurrences and absolute moral authority fail to meet your standards of evidence? What is it about those other religions’ claims that makes you reject them, even as you accept similar claims from your own religion? Finally, do you think you would be of the same faith you are now if you had been born & raised in a society where the prevailing religious culture were different (e.g. in an Islamic theocracy such as Saudi Arabia as opposed to a predominantly Christian nation such as the USA or UK)? If you were to contend, for example, that you’d still be a Christian even if your parents, family, friends, teachers and entire culture were Muslim, please explain how that would eventuate. If you were to contend that you’d likely be of the hypothetical faith you were raised in, whatever that was, would that in any way, even hypothetically, affect the truth claims of the faith you have now?
If (a) explain how that does not make all religions more or less irrelevant. If all religions make similar & valid claims regarding morality, for instance, it follows that following all or, more easily, none of them is equally acceptable to any gods that may exist. If such behaviour as forbidding murder & theft & promoting tolerance & charity is more or less common to every religion, should it not be sufficient to any god that may be observing us that we simply attempt to be “good” – that is, to minimise the harm we do and maximise the happiness of ourselves and others? Considering such morality is more or less universal among all human cultures and that such morality developed independently among cultures separated both geographically and by millennia, is it not logical to assume that such morality is a purely human development and not a gift from on high?
If (b) well … you’re an atheist.
2. If we accept, for argument’s sake, the premise that there is only one true religion and only one revealed truth of the universe, please explain:
(a) how in every religion there are differing branches who disagree over doctrine, mostly respectfully but all too often violently, despite being spiritual brethren and sharing core beliefs & revelations (e.g. Sunni/Shia, Catholicism/everyone else)
(b) how acts of sectarian violence are often indistinguishable in nature from violence between competing religions
(c) how it is to be determined which particular sect carries the one definitive version of the one truth, considering again the commonality of the source material for each faith.
Considering (a), it seems that the universe’s creator was unable or unwilling to share a single, coherent vision of the required religion with a sufficient number of people. If unable, the creator seems limited in its powers of persuasion or revelation and cannot logically be considered omnipotent or all-powerful, as most followers of monotheistic religion contend. If unwilling, this begs the question as to why this all-powerful creator would allow its creation to disagree and argue for centuries, frequently to the point of murderous intra-faith brutality. If the creator is indeed all-powerful yet unwilling, that requires an assessment of the morality of a creator who could choose at any time to intervene and reveal to the entirety of its creation its wishes, yet does no such thing.
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" If the creator is indeed all-powerful yet unwilling, that requires an assessment of the morality of a creator who could choose at any time to intervene and reveal to the entirety of its creation its wishes, yet does no such thing."
Worse. What we would have in that event is a deity who actively stirs the pot, fulminating conflict. If God(s) give any specific and exclusive revelation, any special revelation, to some and not all, to people in one land and not another, to people of one time and not another, or to people without a universal access and ability to comprehend without chance of honest misunderstanding, knowing man's natural ability to get things wrong and get violent about religion, then all He's doing is causing religious warfare.
So BEST CASE, the prophets all are false. Worst case: some are true, and God is setting man against man.
Hank,
Have you read "Dialog With a Christian Proselytizer" by Todd Allen Gates? I read it a year ago, and I thought he did a great job of showing both sides of the thought process (skeptic vs. fundie). It's not a typical read, it's like reading a transcript between two people, which make it easier to get through.
Somewhat OT, but when I clicked the "read more" link. the google ad that appeared above the complete post was for http://www.listentotheword.com, a bible based website.
Niklaus: Maybe not Off-Topic: One of the ads today is an outfit touting: "Find atheist females."
After reading that ad, it occurred to me that this ad told me next to nothing about a woman when it told me merely that she is an "atheist." If I were in the dating market, what would I think about dating an "atheist" woman? It gives me next to no image. I would need to know a whole lot more.
I considered, further, that most of the skeptics out there include numerous thoughtful believers among their social network (many of them are married to theists of one stripe or another). Consider, too, that many theists are Einsteinian theists.
I'm not a theologist, and I'm not sure of the definition of an apologist, but I am a theist (heretical Christian, apparently), and you do have a few holes there.
First, your analysis of 1 (b) is incorrect. Do note there is a difference between faith (belief without rational backing) in God and faith in a Religion (a dogmatic set of behaviors used to express belief in God). I have faith in God, I do not have faith in Religion.
Regarding 2, my position on 1 is that Religion is a man made thing designed, supposedly, to glorify a deity. As man made things, they are prone to all the design and implementation issues that man made things suffer from. As such I don't believe any of them are inerrant.
Regarding your position, I choose to believe that the Creator desires some product from a logical universe. I believe the Creator cannot therefore interfere in ways that would break causality, as it would invalidate the reason for the universe in the first place.
So, yeah. I suppose I believe in a deliberately-self-limited Creator. I believe other things about the personality of that Creator, but those are really points of faith, not reason. As such, I don't ask anyone to agree with me who doesn't agree with the initial point of faith that the aforementioned Creator exists.
"If (b) well … you’re an atheist."
I laughed so hard at that. It's really funny.
However, it's not nessecarily true. I suppose someone could believe that all (existing) religions are invalid, but still believe that there is a God that isn't being worshiped properly. I think it would be silly to believe that way, but there could be someone out there that does.
Kenny: That's good thought-provoking stuff. Whenever I think I've heard it all, someone like you comes along and forces me to rethink.
Hank, what you're really getting at is a matter of whether one has faith.
I have said this many times, faith is the belief in something in the absence of proof. Some here choose to call that belief in imaginary or invisible friends. Others mock the major tenets of my faith but, it's a free country (perhaps recently more so, eh?)!
I have faith there is a God. I have no proof for what my faith informs me.
You do not believe in God.
I do not require you to believe in God.
Why is it that so much effort goes into disputations of matters for which one side (mine) has no proof, and for which the other side has no faith? It's pretty much like aardvarks barking at quarks; it may make the aardvarks feel good but, it doesn't matter to the quarks. (Or does it, Dan?)
Anyway, you sound like the kind of guy who'd appreciate a beer now and then and I offer you the opportunity to share a few if we ever meet.
Or anyone else in St. Louis, whatabout that brew group, Lisa?
Hank, Good luck, and be good!
Thanks all!
Thanks Derek, that book sounds fascinating. I'll put it on my list (I just bought a bunch of those orange Penguin paperbacks they're re-issuing at the moment so it might take me a while).
Thanks for your response Kenny. I guess that description of your beliefs would make you a deist of sorts, if I'm hellbent on throwing you in a category. However, as a deist you'd be disqualified from answering any more of my questions.
Wait – kidding! 🙂 Having met the definition of a deist not so long I can understand your position.
I perhaps should have been more specific with 1 (b). I guess I wanted to express that as an atheist I find any positive claim for the existence of any supernatural god/creator without support – actually, more to the point, the fact that I find positive claims for the existence of gods without support is the reason why I fit the description of an atheist. So thanks for pointing that hole out! I agree that it's certainly possible to be unreligious but not an atheist, as I indeed was not so long ago.
I completely agree on religions – as far as I'm concerned they're all artificial constructs purportedly designed to glorify deities. I've no problem with that at its core, however many have been hijacked, mutated & perpetuated by generations of powerbrokers with vested interests in controlling peoples' behaviour and enriching themselves, I'm not mentioning any names *cough* the Vatican *cough*! That's what really bugs me about religion – not the core beliefs, however unsupported, but the all-too frequent unsavoury, unethical and equality-denying practices of the privileged priest-class and the fact that so many religions have a heirarchy seems contrary to the public image displayed, especially that of Christianity. Some resemble the kinds of parasitic monarchies most of the world dispensed with centuries ago, rather than a brotherhood of man.
They all share one thing in common though, and that's the claim for the existence of a god or creator – even the soft kind of deism that I once subscribed to. However I eventually came to the decision that my soft & personal form of deism was, like all the organised dogmatic religions I'd rejected up to that point, also the product of an unsupported claim (that a supernatural creator exists but he's beyond my comprehension), hence me fitting into the atheist slot whether I liked it or not. Here's my former deist manifesto in crappy cartoon form: link. The date on that comic is 2005. Barely a year later I realised I believed nothing of the sort! I just realised (after reading some atheist books, which crystallised my existing beliefs rather than "converting" me, it must be said) that (a) not only could I not justify my belief in a creator but also (b) the "requirements" of being nice and minimising harm were pretty much what I'd been trying to do my whole life anyway (thanks to my parents' sturdy moral character & still unclear religious beliefs, if they have any).
Religion (like science)is not just something one believes, it is a way of understanding(or a perspective) upon the world. This does mean that very few people even come close to worshipping in spirit and truth.
True religion takes pleasure in what God has created in the same way God takes pleasure in it.
True religion should not seek the destructive sinful selfish nature in man that would prevent the possibility of creative benevolent and loving actions towards others.
When the thoughts and actions of others can only be viewed as destructive towards the good and benevolent and loving spiritual nature of man, true religion looks upon all failures in religion (even ones own) as paths that do not bring pleasure to God.
The true God that exists and that is responsible for the world in all of its glory and wonder has also permitted the mind of man to think whatever it wishes concerning the natural world as well as God's relationship to it. God has given enough input into the world to show his perspective on most thought patterns, behaviors and actions.
Anyone who claims to have the perfect religion (or non-religion) is not aware of their own faults. Either they have no desire to evaluate their own reasoning abilities or are strikingly blind to their own biases.
Anyone who claims there is not a human tendency within man that drives him to put faith in something is not aware of his or her own biases.
Anyone who claims their biases and beliefs force someone else's biases and beliefs to be necessarily inferior or invalid is stuck on their own thoughts being "their God." Those actions and behaviors that lead to the acceptance of the imperfect as being inevitable choose to worship a God of their own designs and are prone to label other religions (or non-religions)as more imperfect than their own.
Christians do not claim to have the perfect religion, they claim to have a way that enables that which is more perfect regarding God's ways to be revealed to man.
Karl, that's quite a sermon.
It is also a complete non-answer, a thorough evasion of a series of quite specific questions and was exactly the kind of predictably vague, mushy, copy-paste pulpiteering that we at DI are used to reading from you. So, well done for precisely meeting my expectations.
Hey Tim
Far from seeking to mock, I'm interested in the source of peoples' beliefs, hence my questions. I don't think beliefs are inherently harmful but actions based on them can be and frequently are. The more extreme and irrational the beliefs, the more extreme and irrational the actions are likely to be. It's the actions of some faithful people on this planet which trouble me, be it flying into buildings, denying equality to others or just assuming people like me are evil.
Also, my questions were more directed at the kind of Christian that thinks I'm evil or hellbound or otherwise unworthy for not agreeing with them. You on the other hand seem like a perfectly decent chap and I'd happily sink a coldy with you. I'm Australian. Beer is like mother's milk to me so as long as first round's yours, I'm there 🙂
As for my aardvarking, my questions were in response to some alleged atheist-stumpers posed by some alleged leading theologians. The stumpers really weren't all that stumpy so I decided to ask some back. Mine weren't really saying "prove your faith beyond a shadow of a doubt", more like "why your particular faith over all the others?" It's simply my casual observation that most religious people follow the religion of their parents or the dominant religion of the culture they grew up in, which leads me to conclude most peoples' religions are a result of an accident of birth and not any kind of conscious choice, much like their nationality, hair colour, preferences of music. You dig what you dig & that's cool.
I'm not after some kind of victory here, what I do at DI is more a mental exercise than anything (my current job is unfortunately far from cerebral). But when I saw "provide a naturalistic explanation for miracles" I was like my beagle when she's on a scent.
Thanks, I try to be good. I really do.
I really thought I answered all three questions.
I guess I need to spell each out more clearly.
A) Of course not all belief systems(religions or non-religions) are equally valid. Some are based upon fiction that have little bearing upon reality. Some are the very antithesis of loving your neighbor as yourself. Some have contempt for those who don't agree with them. Mocking other people or their belief system however is an indication that you also have a belief system that is some what anti-thetical to the one you mock.
B) I guess I'm an atheist because I have disdain for various aspects and doctrines taught and modeled by various Christian leaders throughout history. Christians that claim to be morally better than any other group of people are seriously deluded.
C) My own religion is very invalid because it has innumerable connections to a flawed human that sees little hope for ever getting it right on my own.
The only reason I can have to hope that anything I believe concerning God and this life has any meaningful purpose comes from an acceptance of the realization that for all my attempts to get it right, only God fully knows if I do and supplies the means whereby which I can trust him to evaluate the process without partiality.
God is not a respecter of persons. If I live the moral and perfect life, God will acknowledge it. If I don't, then there are consequences, some in this life, some perhaps in the life here after.
I choose to believe in Christianity not just because I was raised in it, but I have evaluated the values and rationality of many other perspectives and have come to realize that though the people (myself included) who attempt to live a life of faith in Jesus Christ are indeed flawed and imperfect, they really aren't all just resigned to stay that way. They can live tranformed lives, both in the here and now but also potentially in the life here after.
I trust that was a little clearer.
That is a lot clearer and more succinct. Do you see a difference between the Karl who wrote this post and the Karl who posts links to geocentrism websites in support of some long discredited theory about a lost day in history?
Because I sure do.
I believe in the possibility that some atheists are a perceived threat to Christian fundamentalism, particularly among the Evangelicals. Personally, I find the intolerance of some Evangelicals to be incongruent with their professed beliefs.
Vicki, I also see these two Karls are very different animals. Curiouser and curiouser.
Karl(s), it's not my intention to mock. As I said I like to know why people believe what they believe, especially with regard to religion. Also, in my experience, it's more often than not people with a religious belief system who are more than happy to mock, pity, ridicule or condemn anyone who doesn't share their particular version. The more rigid their beliefs, the stronger their reproachment. Obviously that doesn't apply to all religious people, otherwise I wouldn't have any religious friends anymore.
Now Karl, your response (apart from your accusation) was sober, well thought-out and I thank you for it. I really am interested in peoples' reasons for their beliefs – not any sort of 'proof' of their faith.
However, that fact alone truly does make me wonder if that post was yours, especially considering not just your previous posting history at this blog but your very last comment in this thread! If future contributions from you could be that well-reasoned and free of blatant sermonising (regardless of whether I or anyone else agrees with them) I'm sure we can all get along fine.
Niklaus, considering some evangelicals see dire threats lurking everywhere from video games, Spongebob, condom vending machines, the Democrats, Led Zeppelin records (still!), Jon Stewart and the rest of the alleged "liberal" media, I'm hardly surprised that they see anyone who simply disagrees with their philosophy as a threat to their very existence.
The perceived threat is real and it follows along these lines.
If there is no connection on some spiritual plane with a "higher power" other than evolution then everyone has the right to try to shape society into anything they darn well think is the popular thing to do. If all life is amounts to a power struggle over who determines the extent of what's popular versus unpopular then there is no inherent value in any person only the utilitarian nature of the naturalsitic world.
This philosophy is diametricaly opposed to the belief that all men have value given them from their creator. Men and women who then sense a loss of meaning and value in themselves are resigned to live out their lives with no hope or desire for a restoration of a relationship with their creator. The Good News then becomes the irrelevant news. Evangelicals then have no good news for anyone, including themselves.
It should not be a threat that displays itself in intolerance towards people, it is an intolerance towards any and all religions or non religions that resign themselves to no hope in anything other than naturalsism and political utilitarian views.
Karl misses the point: Naturalists don't believe in either a "higher power" nor a "spiritual plane" as anything other than inventions of the mind.
We find value, meaning, and morality in the pure, true, marvelous, amazing natural world. Evolution is not a higher power, nor a thing to worship. It is an inevitable and necessary effect of survival given imperfect reproduction. It is blindly (but not randomly) guided by the simple laws of nature.
The value of a person is that which is ascribed to him by his social matrix. Be a "good person" and you will have high value.
But now I am off topic.
Karl:
Well, your explanation of the threat you perceive in the theory of evolution explains why you dig in your heels and grasp at straws like the "missing day in history" myth when you feel your beliefs are threatened. Ironically, you often wind up defending or being associated with crackpot theories that are never mentioned in the Bible.
Dan:
This seems both ethically wrong and incredibly naive. Do you really believe that people can be thrown away because they have no value in their "social matrix", like female babies in China? What if the value your "social matrix" ascribes to you is that of a slave? Just because you were born to smart and wealthy parents and got a free K – university plus education, does that make you more entitled to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness than other people?
One of the key achievements of the Enlightenment was to show how the religious doctrine of the worth of the individual could be separated from its sectarian roots, where it was always at risk due to irresolvable conflicts between opposing views of the sacred, and translate it into secular terms. The secular version of "created in the image and likeness of God" is "universal human rights".
The curious thing about Karl's critique of evolution as necessitating naked social Darwinism or totalitarianism is that the foremost advocates for ruthless capitalism and curtailing of civil liberties in the US are on the religious right.
How about the idea that all people have value because we finally came to the conclusion that this was the only way to proceed if we expect justice? It would seem to me historically to be exactly that case, and it was only recently (since the Enlightenment philosophically but in a practical sense only since the end of WWII) that we really began to act on this notion. It is not a notion inculcated by most religions—equally is bestowed by virtue of membership, all others have provisional status—but one presumed by civil law after embracing the truth that any other perspective leads inevitably to injustice and destruction. If this were something borne out by religious conviction, it would seem to me there would not have been such a gap between what Yeshua said and today and it would have been the Church(s) advancing it as a principle rather than secular democracy.
It is a very simple idea, Karl, that the value inherent in other people must be the same as you place in yourself. It is amazing to me how hard that concept is to grasp, apparently even among such highly trained and educated people as Popes, Bishops, and Evangelical preachers who routinely espouse "sorting lists" of those who are and those who are not. Even now there is an example of the kind of calumny capable in people who ought to now better with the current fracus in Germany over Bishop Williamson and his Holocaust denying.
I am not saying here that certain elements of this basic idea haven't been present in religious theory for centuries, but that it's self evident nature seems to have required secular legal recognition to make it count. You may see this as some species of "god moving in mysterious ways" but I see it as the intransigence of human nature finally coming to a point where the utility of justice is undeniable in the world.
I do not believe that nature possesses anything we would recognize as Rights. Rights are assertions on the part of people working to common cause. They are what we say they are. They are in many ways legal fictions, designed to allow us to coexist productively, and they have been hard won over time. People learn. That's how we get better. There are acts and practiced sanctioned in the Old Testament (and in few instances only tepidly repudiated in the New) which we would refuse to countenance today—yet the basis of religious fundamentalism sees those times as somehow superior. If those folks back then were in some way "closer to god" through their adherence to Levitical Law, then I for one am grateful that we aren't so close anymore. If we've gotten better, we've done it on our own.
I will try to address the contents of the thread, not what a naturalist interprets into my words.
I've said before that it is fairly obvious that most naturalists believe their perspective is anything but religious, so most are probably under the category B so they have no need to explain their perspective.
That doesn't mean that they don't bank their intellectual reputation upon something, nor do they have faith in a supreme being, rather they put their faith in whatever they can imagine nature can possibly explain without any other outside requirements.
Dan says, "the value of a person is that which is ascribed to him by his social matrix. Be a “good person” and you will have high value." If this is true then does any social matrix (including any religion) that ascribes good not also have the ability to ascribe to others thoughts and actions as bad?
We're back to values that are not scientific as I see it.
Well, Karl and Vicki both jumped on my contention that "the value of a person is that which is ascribed to him by his social matrix". It is based on the economic lemma that "the value of a thing it that which the thing will bring."
A rich society, like my wealthy parents who could afford to buy me new cloths from Goodwill more than once a year, considers it worth preserving as many people in freedom as possible. Poorer cultures, as in areas like the Congo and West Africa, still use slavery and pogroms on those considered less valuable.
Karl is right in that the "in" group does sometimes turn malignant, and vilifies some group on the slightest of excuses. Unfortunately, such leaders quickly gather ardent followers. Read the history of the KKK or the Maccabees.
How a person considers his own value is only partially a reflection of that lent to him by society. I've spent kilobytes discussing the definition of "value" with Karl elsewhere on this blog.
But without supernatural metrics, a value is dependent on its matrix.
Dan, I totally disagree with you that humans can only ever have extrinsic or instrumental value.
One doesn't have to have a "supernatural metric" to assign an intrinsic value to some person or activity.
I completely agree with Mark that assigning value – which boils down to assigning fundamental or inalienable rights to all human beings, is an assertion. It is a creative act – and I believe an essential one.
My dad was an agnostic, mom very Catholic. Dad had to agree to raise us 10 kids as Catholics so Mom would marry him. Dad was a true skeptic, and dropped out of engineering school to go and fight in the Pacific in WWII.
I took a hard look into other faiths in my early high school years, right about when I met Erich. I met Rabbi Ascher, a truly holy man whose compassion and courtesy are something I pray for daily. I met others who were Hindus, Buddhists, and followers of Islam. All were willing to discuss what it was that brought them to faith.
Later, I realized some of the priests and religious women I knew in my earliest years were just like the other people I had met and cherished for their openness and compassion. I sought out such priests and religious and renewed my faith in an early program for high school students which we later took nationally called the Search for Christian Maturity.
After graduation, I hitched around the country.
In my travels I became more firmly convinced of the goodness of people, a belief I still hold. People aren't good because of their faith, it's a choice we make to respect and appreciate others for who and what they are and the contribution they are to the world. People aren't bad because of their faith, its a contrary choice to not respect and appreciate others for who and what they are, etc.
Whilst we all will die someday, isn't it just more fun to have it be after we have had a blast with those we love, have cared for and to whom we have given our all? "Die now!" the ancient Greeks said to their champions, believing no day would ever be better. I disagree, and I will live each day as though it were my last, ever striving to have a blast!
Beer me (again), barkeep!
Dan
Actually, there is at least one more option than the dichotomy you describe, unless your 'matrix' option is more encompassing than you illustrate it.
Lemme 'splain – religions tend to value people based on some criteria handed down by a being of superior wisdom. 'Good' people are worth more than 'Bad' people, and should be protected accordingly. Technically and amusingly, some variants of Evangelical Christianity reverse this valuation, where 'Good' people need not be protected, as their only remaining purpose is conversion of 'Bad' people to 'Good' people, whereas 'Bad' people still need to be converted before they can safely be allowed to cease existence.
You seem to propose as an alternative valuation of persons based on their 'social matrix', or some form of socio-economic value. This seems to be less arbitrary than the religious valuation.
My thought was that Vicki and Mark illustrated a third option – a completely artificial valuation based not on a higher power, but based on the need for a just society and the need for all personal valuations to be equal in order to actualize such a society. It is arbitrary, rather than being real value based, but it is pragmatic, rather than being faith or dogma based.