Tag Archives: Atheism

Humanist Ad Campaigns, Part II

Posted on January 16, 2011 | 2 Comments

Read part one here.

After a humanist friend of mine posted a comment on the ads, I responded:

“I found the ads ironic.”

To which she replied:

“You gotta explain the irony, Rich. You want to quote something from a philosophically Humanist publication that is as bad as any of those Biblical quotes? Notice I said “Humanist”, not just “atheist”.”

And we were off.  I’m going to call her “Margaret.”

RB:

A few things…first, humanists I’ve known are often pretty quick to cry foul when Christians engage in black and white thinking. Secondly, they also typically cry foul, often for good reason, when Christians handle opposing beliefs without academic responsibility…anyone can take something out of its context, without regard to the whole system, and make that worldview sound pretty silly.

I could do that to lots of things you say, most likely, and you’d consider yourself ill abused…in fact, I could probably take the very techniques inherent in the ads and make you sound like a crazed fundamentalist Christian.

Bottom line: it is very easy to take some quote, assert its stupid, and therefore assert the whole worldview is stupid.  That kind of treatment of opposing beliefs often gets Christians accused of irrationality (most of the time secular humanists are doing the accusing), and rightly so. But that is what is going on here. 

It is far more difficult to level a critique after taking pains to show what the passage (as opposed to just quoting a one liner and asserting what you think it means as self evident) actually means, understanding historical background, etc.

This is the very thing I try so hard to teach my seniors in the research methods class I have. Some of those ads on the website are laughable in the way they treat the verses.

To be fair, they are ads, not graduate research papers, so perhaps I’m expecting too much. A certain amount of leeway comes w/ the territory I guess. They won’t persuade many who are in the know, however.

Margaret:

Given the details, I disagree. You say “in fact, I could probably take the very techniques inherent in the ads and make you sound like a crazed fundamentalist Christian.” Please do so. And when I say do so, I mean take quotes from Humanist declarations, resolutions, and manifestos (such as the ones quoted in the ads) and put them alongside Biblical quotes in a manner that makes Humanism ethics sound monterous and Biblical ethics sound much more in line with today’s ethical standards. I do not think this can be achieved.

Also, Rich, born again Christians typically claim to follow the Bible to the letter. Having read the Bible and read about the Bible by Biblical scholars, I find such a thing to be impossible because the Bible isn’t internally consistent. However, my point is this: there is not a wide range of interpretation that can be made of Humanist declarations and manifestos. Their meanings are intended to be as clear as possible and they are written in modern language because they are in fact modern.

The Bible is an ancient and highly confusing book. It requires all sorts of apologetics and interpretations by clergy from various sects, theologians, and Biblical scholars often disagree widely about the meaning and context of many passages. This is what has allowed the Bible to be used to both advocate for both the abolition of and defense of slavery in the United States. While Humanist manifestos and declarations specifically apply to modern day issues and say what they mean clearly, the Bible is useless as a foundation for morality.

It’s greatest use in history seems to be by power-hungry charismatic individuals who use its supposed divine authority to push their own agendas.

RB:

People do it with Einstein and Darwin all the time. They take quotes from Einstein out of context (“God doesn’t play dice with the universe” and other quotes) to make him seem like a devoted theist, when most likely he wasn’t expressing devotion to a personal God at all, and given everything else he said/believed, probably wasn’t even a theist.  Dawkins might be right on that one.

 Likewise with Darwin: people isolate things he said to make it seem like he had these grand doubts about his theories.  I doubt it, though.

Martha, what I was talking about is a commonsense approach to understanding anything, written or spoken: communication happens from the whole to the part, yet those ads treat the Bible like it is a collection of isolated sentences.

That, actually, is the locus of much of the confusion you mentioned. The Bible would be much less confusing to you if you read it like everything else. Don’t read poetry like historical narrative. Don’t read historical narrative like doctrinal instruction. Take each type of genre as it was meant to be taken–this is what is meant by “literal,” not “interpret everything the exact same way.” Don’t isolate sentences out of their context, and so forth–if you do any of that, you’ll most likely miss the boat.

Here’s an example: the ad that uses the 1 Tim passage to suggest Paul was an obvious mysogynist and that he oppressed women. If Paul was really arguing what the ad suggests, do you think he would have had women as ministry partners (as is evident in his other letters and from the book of Acts)?

There is no attempt to understand the intent of the passage as a whole and nor is there any attempt to take into account all Paul’s other statements regarding husbands loving, protecting, and providing for their wives. No mention of the mutual submission from Ephesians. It’s all as if he never said any of that. If I treated a humanist’s writing like that, I’d probably get skewered as being irrational.

Same for the one about trusting in the Lord.  The suggestion is that the Bible is obviously against using the mind to rationally think with logic and evidence. Again, no effort to understand what the proverb might actually be suggesting. If it really did say that and that was the Bible’s message (“logic/evidence/intellect=baaad. Feeelings=goood!”), the history of Christendom most likely wouldn’t include guys like Augustine, Lewis, Aquinas, and Plantinga, and passageas like Romans 12 wouldn’t be in the Bible.

And on scholars, theologians etc “disagreeing widely:” you and I both know that there are many reasons people have for holding the beliefs they do, and many times those reasons don’t have much to do with the text itself. Some defend the turf they do because they want to impress a peer group. Others because it allows them to live a certain way they want to live. Still others because they’d give up lots of grant money if they gave up the game, etc etc. The point here is that pointing to the mere fact of disagreement among theologians and others doesn’t get you far. Best just to focus on the text itself, and your case for what you think it means. A solid, well-thought out and rational argument and interpretation will hold water, regardless of others (including “scholars”) that disagree. The mere fact of disagreeing voices does not mean there is no truth of the matter to be found.

By the way, what biblical scholars have you read? Sounds like you have read and consulted quite a few. Can you remember any names? Just curious.

Anything can be abused by power hungry charismatic individuals.  This is not a mark against whatever is being abused. Again, just because I might be able to take take some stuff you say out of context and abuse your words doesn’t mean you yourself are at fault. It’s all about whether the connection is actually there.

Lastly, yes, the Bible is ancient, and yes it is from a different culture, but why is that a bad thing? Are you suggesting we have no wisdom to gain from something ancient and outside of our own modern culture?

Part III coming up!

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Humanist Ad Campaigns, Part 1

Posted on January 16, 2011 | 3 Comments

Humanists have recently begun a number of ad campaigns.  They are silly.

Note I didn’t say “intolerant” or “in bad taste.”  My concern is not that they “hurt people’s feelings,” as if the skeptics and humanists need to step on eggshells when it comes to religious folk.  No, my claim is that the ads demonstrate the very signs of irrationality that humanists and such claim to eschew.

Some of the ads are patently absurd.   Take, for instance, the ad above.  Any thinking person who doesn’t have an axe to grind and isn’t already blinded by an agenda will recognize that Jesus is using hyperbole.  He was a Jew, afterall, who affirmed the Jewish Law, which includes the Ten Commandments, which includes the commandment “honor your father and mother.”   He is making a comment about the superiority of one’s love to God in comparison with one’s love towards everything else.  The ad obviously lacks charity, which is a pre-requisite of rationality when dealing with one’s ideological opponents.

Also look at this second ad.  It commits the fallacy of equivocation; it subtly uses another meaning of the word “fear” than what the passage intends.  Plus, it’s not as if fear is never a legitimate response to something.

And a third…how in the world does the group making the ads think that the proverb is actually saying that evidence and logic are bad things? (more on this later)  There are several perfectly good explanations of the meaning of that proverb, they make good sense, and for the ad makers to ignore them is the height of willful ignorance.

You might respond by saying that I’m setting too high of a standard for the ads.  They are advertisements, afterall, not graduate philosophy papers.  Yes, they are ads, and ad makers are usually given a pass to play more fast and loose with words and persuasive tactics than other genres of communication, but I still maintain that a little more charity and rationality and a little less caricature isn’t too much to ask.

I had a discussion with a friend on Facebook about this recently.  In the several posts that follow, I’m going to catalogue the conversation to unpack what I’ve started to say here in this post.

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Atheist Ad Campains

Posted on January 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

One of my buddies, a fellow Christian, emailed that picture to me the other day.  Some of his family members were floating it back and forth, commenting on how clever it was.

I had to chuckle, but not because I thought it clever.  IMO, it leaves atheists open to several responses.  One could just as easily retort back something to the tune of “Religion inspired Martin Luther King.  Science inspired Hiroshima.”

Someone could respond to that by pointing out that I shouldn’t be blaming a whole methodology for a particular thing that someone abused said methodology to invent…which is my point precisely in the retort in the first place. 

You see, the ad commits the fallacy of hasty generalization.  It lumps all religious ideologies into one amorphous whole, and it uses the evil caused by some specific religious ideologies to paint all religions.  Not a very rational or honest thing to do, yet I find some atheist types doing it all the time.  They completely ignore all the huge differences between religions and treat them all the same.  As one author quipped, saying all religions are ultimately the same is like insisting that aspirin and arsenic are ultimately the same because they come in tablet form.

I don’t know how folks can logically put the worldview of Jesus and the worldview of Mohammed in the same boat, but that doesn’t stop people from foolishly trying.

Talk to these folks, and you get the impression that belief in and devotion to any and all higher powers is dangerous.

I guess that depends on what the character of that higher power is.

I have reason to hold that when I pass away, I will be held accountable for my actions in this life by a powerful, just, loving Creator God who insists that I treat my fellow man with compassion…BOO!  Fear me.

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Another Reason why I Love my Job

Posted on October 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

I have this kid in one of my English classes that is quite the lil “new atheist.”  Self-proclaimed, btw.  He told me the first day of class that his goal is to be a spokesman for the new atheism, and to help rid the world of religion.  He is ambitious, if nothing else.

I’m telling you, this guy is uber-aggressive.  Quite the evangelist, really.  Anytime he finds a Christian student, he starts attacking and just will not stop.  In class, he constantly raises his hand and steers the conversation onto religious topics.  He frequently stays after class to debate me.  Rather than viewing his presence as an obstacle, liability, or nuisance (ok, I admit…a time or two I have thought in my head, “can’t I just eat my chicken in peace, pal?”), I view him as a great opportunity to use my gifts for the greater good.   Almost every day I get to use my education to hopefully get him (and his classmates) to pause and think things through.

When he steers conversations in class, I usually stick to asking good questions, and most of the time, I give him enough rope such that he hangs himself.  One of the students once asked me, “Mr. B, why don’t you just shut him down?”  My answer was that I want anyone and everyone to feel free to express their views in my class, and really, I don’t have to shut him down for the rest of the class to get it.  When he’s talking, I look around the rest of the class and often see eyes rolling.  Most of the time, quite a few hands go up in protest of his statements.  Sometimes, you don’t have to positively prove someone wrong for an audience to see it…sometimes, all you gotta do is let him talk.  Get out of the way.  I’m confident my questions are also doing work.

There has been one instance after class, though, where I have been a bit more aggressive.  One day he was ranting and raving to another student about Stephen Hawking’s new book.  Hawking boasts in the book that God is no longer needed to explain the origin of the universe, so it’s not surprising that this student would love the book.  Listening to the conversation, I couldn’t help but smile, and, seeing me smile, he asked, “What do you think of the book?”

I replied that I haven’t read the book (its on my list, don’t worry), but I’ve read some reviews, and I know a bit about Hawking outside of them.  His determinism certainly gets in the way, and I attempted to explain this to my budding new atheist.  According to determinism, the physical world is governed by the laws of physics, chemistry, or some other natural science (depending on what kind of determinist you are talking to).  So far so good, but the determinist goes on to argue that the physical world is all there is.   Therefore, the cause-and-effect laws of physics/chemistry governs everything, including thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and the words Hawking writes on the page.  Hawking might say or think that he believes his beliefs because he has good reason to, but rationality has nothing to do with belief, according to determinism.  Beliefs are caused by prior physical states.  Someone, say, my new atheist student, might think he chooses his beliefs based upon reason, logic, and evidence (he goes on and on and on about those three things in class, anyway), but that is illusory, if determinism is true.

All that doesn’t mean that his or Hawking’s  beliefs are false, it just undermines confidence in their beliefs.  How can Hawking or my student know their beliefs to be true, on determinism?  They can’t.  It all has to do with the particles, and nothing to do with a self or individual choosing based upon rationality and logic.   On determinism, there really is no such thing as a self or individual anyway…that, too, is illusory.

Add into all this that determinists advocate for their views like determinism is false.  They wax eloquent about everything being caused by the laws of physics, but then then write books, giving reasons, attempting to persuade individuals to choose determinism because it is true.  Thus, out of one side of thier mouths, they say, “I’m a vegetarian,” but out of the other side squeaks, “gimme that Inn n Out burger!”  Tough spot for a determinist.

The student just couldn’t see all this…he thought it was possible for c-fibers firing in the brain to cause the beliefs and for someone to choose based upon rational reasons.  He just couldn’t see that if determinism is true, the c-fibers are doing all the work, and the whole bit about rationality is just illusory mumbo-jumbo.

Determinism wreaks havoc on morality as well.  If everything is determined by prior physical states, including our actions, how can we hold moral agents accountable?  There are no moral agents who choose their actions on determinism, yet both are needed for a robust morality…more on that in a future blog post.

In my opinion, naturalism (the view that the physical world is all there is) is the real culprit here.  No room for legitimate free will in naturalism.  If this kid kicks his naturalism to the curb, he wouldn’t have problems like these.

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Dealing with an Atheist Gadfly, Concluded

Posted on July 1, 2010 | 4 Comments

Read the first post here.

Some of you have asked how it all went…it went mighty well, thank you.

It all went down like this: the Christian student group I sponsor at school had an end-of-the-school-year party, and I crashed it.  Yep.  I let them mingle and eat the pizza for a bit, then gathered the group together (kinda large…about 25 or so, most of which I had never seen in the club before.  Funny how that happens when you bring pizza and make it a party) and went at it.  I don’t think they were expecting that, even though I told them a few days before what I wanted to do.  I think they just expected me to briefly announce something and back off.  Well, that is not my style.  :)

First, I recapped what happened for those that weren’t there, then I had those that were there for the conversation rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 meaning the atheist totally walked all over them, 10 meaning that the Christians defended the faith exceptionally well.  Everyone gave a 4 score or below…which is an F.

I pointed this out to them.  My intent in this point, I told them, was not to put them down and make them feel bad about themselves, but to give them a chance to realistically assess their ability to articulate their faith and to handle themselves in a conversation like that.  Friends hold up mirrors when appropriate.  We went on to discuss the challenges that lie ahead for them in college and beyond.  The challenges are far from insurmountable, but when an unprepared Christian with a toddler’s ability to defend the faith and think through tough questions meets a hostile secular environment that *appears* intellectual and learned (key word right there, appears), the result is that usually the Christian ends up walking away from Christ sooner or later.

This all was a great reality check for them.  I’ve discussed it with most of them before, but, as Hugh Hewitt says, repetition is a precondition of success.  They need to hear that message over and over again, for experience has taught me that their prior mental habits and ways of talking die hard: most of the times I say it to them, they nod in agreement then go right back to faith and feeling talk.  Hey, it’s the religious diet they’ve been brought up on in youth group, so what do you expect?

The first day we didn’t cover any specific objections the atheist had.  We spent most of the rest of the time walking through how to handle a conversation with an aggressive contrary person.  This is all tactics, not specifics.  The atheist in the group (I got confirmation that he was just there to argue, btw) was a total steamroller.  He would make an aggressive accusation that usually involved attacking strawmen or using loaded language–more on that stuff later–and as soon as the Christians in the group would start answering the charge, he’d interrupt, change the subject, and make another charge.  They really didn’t know what to do with the guy.  I talked about how to reign the conversation in, how to keep it on topic, and how to graciously hold the other person’s feet to the fire on his use of loaded language.  This is a crucial lesson to learn, for most I’ve encountered don’t know how to identify loaded words that have an emotional impact but little argumentative force.  Most simply let the emotive power of the words fluster them, and they accept the legitimacy of the terms without question.  This is bad strategy.

Next we discussed how to go on the offensive a bit with questions of our own.  Why assume the burden of proof on everything and let the other person control the conversation?  Everyone in the discussion has a worldview; we’ve got our sticky parts to explain, but the atheist has more!  Why should we have to always be in the “hot seat?”  We went over a few easy, simple questions to ask in any conversation that are gracious, yet at the same time force the other person to do his fair share of ‘splainin.

I also spent some time on discussing the atheist’s use of straw men.  Some of the objections he had involved him foisting trumped up beliefs onto the Christians, then attacking those.  Example: at one point in the conversation he said, “so let me get this straight.  You guys believe that God fathered himself through a virgin, then was tortured to death to pay a punishment that he himself inflicted in the first place?”  There are so many straw men there in that one question that it’s hard to know where to begin.  For starters, Christians don’t believe God fathered himself.  We are trinitarians, not modalists.  Three persons, one substance.  That is why we are comfortable saying that there is one God substance, that Jesus, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are all God, yet Christ prayed to the Father often.  Hard to totally wrap my mind around that, granted, but God as Trinity is a world away from that guy’s rubber dummy.  The “Father/Son” titles of the first and second persons of the trinity do not connote any physical siring on the Father’s part.  God the Father did not physically sire God the Son (or Himself, for that matter); the titles are figurative, reflecting the intimate relationship they share with each other and of the roles each play functionally in the plan of salvation.  To suggest otherwise by charging that Christians believe God “fathered himself” is a laughable straw man.

I counseled the students to listen carefully in the conversation for straw men attacks because they occur frequently in conversations like these, and I gave them a few pointers on how to dismantle them.

That was the first day.  I told them to come back the next day to discuss specific objections.  I forgot, though, that I double booked that day, and I wasn’t even going to be on campus!  I was instead at a middle school about 15 minutes away doing presentations to the PE classes there about wrestling.  One of the presentations I was scheduled to give overlapped a bit with lunch at my school, so I was in a bit of a pickle.  Luckily, I had some assistants with me there, so I left them in charge of it during lunch and raced over to the high school so I could meet the kids for another lunch tutoring session.  It was a hard transition to swing, but with some considerable Providential assistance, I made it work.

About twelve or thirteen students returned that day.  We reviewed the previous day’s material, and then went over a few specific objections the atheist had.  We talked about God commanding the Israelites to wipe out the Caananites, a bit about “tolerance,” and a tad about freewill and determinism.  I’m surprised the atheist harped on that last one, for its an argument that’s been largely abandoned in philosophic circles.  His argument was that if God was omniscient (all-knowing), then that would exclude human freewill: God would know the future, including what I would do tomorrow.  Being God, his knowledge would be perfect and certain, therefore there’s no way I could choose otherwise.  If God knows that I’ll eat an orange for breakfast tomorrow, that means I have to eat that orange.  I am not free to choose.

The problem with this argument is that it does not follow that if God knows I’ll eat the orange that I therefore have to eat the orange.  All that follows is that I will eat the orange, not that I must.  There is a difference.  To see this, think about the direction of causality: does God’s knowledge cause my action, or vice versa?  For the person to show that God’s knowledge excludes human free will, he must show that God’s knowledge causes me to eat that orange, but that is a pretty tough thing to show.  How does merely knowing event X will happen, even if that knowledge is certain, cause event X?  Knowledge causes jack squat.

A much better way to look at it is to view it from the opposite direction: my actions causes God’s knowledge.  This doesn’t mean his knowledge is any less certain or perfect.  It just means that in the future if I choose to eat cereal instead, that will be the content of God’s knowledge.

If this is still a bit fuzzy, think of it in possible worlds terms.  A possible world is simply a fancy philosophical way of thinking about a way things could be.  The actual world, including the future events that will happen, is one possible world.  A world in which I choose to eat an orange is a possible world; a world in which I choose to eat cereal is another possible world.  A world in which I choose to eat oatmeal and play the piano (rather than wrestle) is another possible world.  Theoretically, there are infinitely many possible worlds: worlds which are logically possible (a world in which a square circle exists is not possible.   Since that concept is contradictory, it is not a possible world) but which might or might not be actualized.

For every possible world in which God exists (some think he exists in every possible world, making him a necessary being…another post for another time, perhaps), he is omniscient…without getting too far into the details, I’ll just say that it comes along with the territory of being God.  We therefore say that God’s omniscience is necessary: he must be omniscient.  It is impossible for him to be not omniscient.
This does not mean, however, that the content of God’s knowledge is necessary.  The content of God’s knowledge varies with every possible world.  In a possible world in which I eat an orange, that is the content of God’s knowledge; in a possible world in which I eat oatmeal, that is the content of his knowledge.  In every possible world, my actions are freely chosen, yet God is still omniscient.  My actions cause His knowledge.  It does not follow that his knowledge is not certain or it is somehow tarnished.  No meaningful definition of omniscience is sullied.

Heady stuff, I know…But I explained that to them, and wrapped up with some more general perspective.  I gave them a few resources for further study (a few Greg Koukl books, an str youth website, and Love Your God with All Your Mind by JP Moreland), and sent them on their way.
The feedback I received was overwhelmingly positive.  Students told me later that the tutoring sessions created much good conversation outside my classroom, which was one of the goals.  I’ve also received some messages recently from students saying that they’ve begun to frequent the websites I referenced….

Good stuff, good stuff.

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Just Can’t Talk Rationally with a Christian

Posted on March 14, 2010 | Leave a comment

The first debate I ever attened between a Christian and an atheist was when I was a freshman in college at Ohio State.  It was the William Lane Craig-Peter Atkins debate.  Having come to faith only a few months before, I had no clue about apologetics or anything revolving around the intellectual matters of the faith, and how worldviews played into spirituality.   While walking to the venue that night, though I told this to no one, I was so scared about what would happen: how would the Christian guy do?  What would I do if he was soundly beaten?  Thankfully, my confidence in the worldview of Jesus was bouyed greatly that night.  Craig did just fine.  That is actually an understatement.  My experience has been the same with virtually every debate I’ve attended/read/viewed since.

Last night I watched a recent debate on God and morality online (the question was “is God necessary for morality?”) that continued that trend.  There’s so much to discuss about it (whether or not the atheist actually understood the nature of the question and the key terms involved in the issue would make an interesting post in and of itself.  For instance, he seemed to reduce morality, which includes things like obligation, oughtness, and prescription, to something that in the end isn’t morality at all–behavior that has survival value and social utility. Yet here and there he would smuggle in these heavily weighted irreducible moral concepts and terms–like evil, wicked, should–but the reduction he espoused before didn’t have room for those kinds of concepts…I wonder if he really knew he was doing this and if he really knew the implications of his view), but there were a few statements the atheist made in the debate that caught my eye.  They are popular sayings, to be sure, but I often wonder why, because they aren’t very sound things to hold.

Here’s one: in his opening statement, he claimed that “it is dangerous to even challenge (his opponent’s) views with rational questions.”

Time out…back up.  What?  That would kinda make sense if it came at the end of a debate where the atheist clearly(or even clearly *thought*) he had won and where the Christian clearly was a crazy-eyed fool, but this came right out of the gate, within the first 2 minutes of his opening statement.

This attitude is something I caught from him throughout the debate.  Sadly, I’ve seen and heard this same outlook coming from a lot of the atheist/agnostic “free-thinking” (a term they have given themselves) crowd.  It’s even more popular to think that way in the New Atheist bunch.  Some commentators on this website love to spout that kind of blatherskeit, and I think it is the reason why atheists and agnostics who engage in public debates tend to show up at least looking rather unprepared.  The attitude is, “well, we free-thinkers are the rational ones and all the Christians are the ones who wouldn’t know logic if it poked them in the eyes, so what is there to debate?  I mean, what, really, can the Christians say?  Buncha wood-hippies.”  It’s almost as if they expect to win just by showing up.  

Hey, I’m not the only guy to notice this.  Take it from one within their own camp.

I hope that Jim (the atheist debater)–as well as the atheists/agnostics in attendance–put that view out to pasture after his exchange with McDowell (the Christian).
Some might say that there are a lot of stupid Christians out there.  This is true.  As my favorite radio talk show host says often, there are also lots of stupid atheists out there, so I don’t know where the comeback gets anyone.

Speaking to those who hold the above view (atheists are, automatically and obviously, more rational than Christians): so you disagree with me.  So you have good reasons.  So you say you “believe in science”–whatever that means.  Ok.  I get it.  You’ve got some good objections to Christianity.  Allright.  Fair enough.  Perhaps I’m badly mistaken.  I think it’s ok to think you are right and I’m wrong.  I do the same with you, and I’m not offended when you confidently proclaim that your views are true.  But at least realize that your group isn’t the only place in which rationality and logic lies.  Even if you disagree with guys like McDowell (and me), that should be obvious from all the literature written by smart, capable, and intellectual Christians throughout the ages (including the last 30 or so years) and from the plethora of debates out there on the web, DVD, and print.  Acknowledging this could keep you from some uneccessary embarrassment in your future engagements with those who don’t see it your way.

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Becoming a Three Thirds Disciple

Posted on February 7, 2010 | 2 Comments

My friend Brett Kunkle, who works for apologetics organization Stand to Reason, recently sent me his newsletter.  I’m going to quote some of it to you, for it highlights something about the role of apologetics in disicpleship that people often miss.

A bit of background: oftentimes when Brett speaks to Christians in high school and to youth pastors, he first poses as an atheist to the crowd.  They don’t know he’s really a Christian, so he engages them and slowly picks apart their faith.  He “comes out” later and walks them through the challenges, but his main goal in doing the posing is to wake the audience up to their need to learn how to defend their faith.  Most can’t do it very well.  Most can’t do it at all.

On to the letter:

It was eighty against one.  Not good odds, but when I role-play an atheist with the typical Christian students, I like my chances.  But these weren’t students.  They were adults.  And not just any adults, but Christian leaders on the East Coast.  Pastors, youth pastors, parachurch leaders, school teachers, and administrators.

I launched in to my “Why I’m not a Christian” arguments.  Debate quickly followed.  From the start, a number of adults appealed to their experience of the Holy Spirit–”I know God is real because I’ve experienced His Spirit.”  I quickly shot back, “How do you know that’s really God?  Mormons say the same thing.  Do you think they’re experiencing God as well?”

One man in particular was emphatic.  “I just know it’s the Holy Spirit speaking to me.”  He tried to bolster the argument, declaring God had spoken to him through the Bible as well.  I responded with a typical atheist challenge.  “The Bible tells us that God spoke to Abraham, asking him to sacrifice his son.”  Then I looked him in the eye and questioned him, “If God asked you to kill your son, would you do it?”  He joked about his son sitting there next to him, but he could not answer the challenge.

In fact, there were only two leaders out of those 80 who gave me real trouble during the exchange.  The first, a youth pastor, launched into the moral argument for God’s existence.  I tried to take the “morals are determined by society” route, but he calmly pinned me down.  The second, a deacon and Sunday school teacher, offered a design argument, articulating Michale Behe’s argument from irriducible complexity.  I quickly changed topics.

 

Brett goes on in the letter to reveal that both men had included thinking skills training in their discipleship to Christ: both made extensive use of the training materials from Stand to Reason.

Then, Brett continues:

Later, the man who claimed he just knew it was the Holy Spirit speaking to him approached me.  He wanted my help.  “My son, sitting next to me, is doubting everything.”  Then he burst into tears.  Embarrassed, he grabbed my arm and pulled me around the corner.  As he wept bitterly, his son’s story emerged.  A bright kid, grew up in a Christian home, led friends to the Lord, on fire for Christ, even preached in their church.  But now, he questioned it all.  He begged me, “Will you talk to him?  Please, will you talk to him today?”

After my final teaching session, the son approached me, quickly launching into a laundry list of objections to Christianity.  A lenghty conversation ensued, covering topics like objective moral truths, utilitarian ethical theory, Kant’s categorical imperative, retributive justice, divine hiddenness, intelligent design, and the experience of the Holy Spirit.  From the conversation, I guessed he was a graduate student in philosophy.  Wrong.  He was a high school senior.

His objections boiled down to this:  “I’ve been taught that Christianity’s truthfulness is confirmed by my experience.  I am no longer having powerful Christian experiences.  In addition, I’m reading arguments against Christianity.  I now wonder if it’s rational for me to remain a Christian.”  He had just rehearsed his father’s argument for Christianity…and its shortcomings.

I listened, offered thoughts to reframe his view of Christianity’s truthfulness, put personal experience in its proper place, and introduced him to apologetics.  He thanked me and we parted ways.

He ends by making a request to pray for the young man.

Brett’s letter underscores a few important things.  First, the Christian worldview has the resources to answer the objections and questions that are posed to it, but few believers are actually even partially equipped to grasp and communicate those resources.  Brett’s experience of the majority in the Church that he recounts in this letter is pretty standard for him. Just think: these were not youth group kids, but adult leaders.  When pressed, the only resource all but two of them fell back on boils down to a certain felt experience.  That is a biblical part of the life of the Christ follower, but it is of little help when doubts from within and challenges from without come…and both of those will come.

Secondly and relatedly, when we as the Church fail to value the life of the mind, we leave our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ naked and defenseless against the harsh winters of doubt, and we leave non-believers (those who are not easily persuaded by an appeal to a felt experience–which is most non-believers, I’d think) with nothing to grasp onto but “I know because I know because I know.”  Brett’s conversation with the high school senior bears this out.  Seriously, how is that valuing and loving them?  There are lots of smart folks outside the church.  When we have nothing to appeal to but the experience of the Holy Spirit, does that take their intellect seriously?  If we truly love them, the least we can do is prepare ourselves to be able to walk them through the answers to some of their nagging questions and doubts.

All this reminds me of a friendship I had with a colleague at my former school.  We talked about questions and objections to Christianity often (he was an agnostic) in the same manner that Brett talked with the young man.  After a few years, one day my friend remarked to me how satisfying it was to be able to talk to me intelligently about such things.  I was the only Christian in his life he could do that with.  Though the compliment meant a lot to me, I had a certain sadness in my heart: I was the only one?

Thirdly, I know many shy away from training their minds because they think that it’s somehow unChristlike and they view it as combative.  Visions of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly quickly pop into their heads, and they say, “no thanks.”** 

But apologetics need not be like that.  Used properly, it is conversational and relational.  The conversation Brett engaged in was natural.  I know the guy: he doesn’t walk around with a Evidence that Demands  a Verdict holster, and he doesn’t have a belt of William Lane Craig bullets strung across his chest.  He’s normal.  Furthermore, because he has trained his intellect, he can confidently converse with any non-believer, whether he be seeker or skeptic, full-time professor or full-time mom.

If you have nothing but an experience to stand upon, consider devoting your intellect to Christ too.  You need not get a phd in philosophy, though that’d be nice.  All you gotta do is…do something.  You can begin here.

**That’s not to put down either man; it’s just that many would rather not be so aggressively combative, and the two men fit the stereotype.

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