One of my honors professors set the signature of his emails to read, in Latin: "doubt everything." His personal philosophy, at least in class, seemed to back this up. He was very firmly agnostic and relativist in his views and believed that nothing could be proven because nothing was really true. He stood in doubt of absolutely everything and considered himself the wiser for it.
These days, this is a very popular stance to take, especially when it comes to God and the supernatural. Faith is said to be "blind" meaning "contrary to reason and evidence." Popular culture reals with the apparent struggle between "religion" and "science" (which, in my opinion, is more of a controversy between two religious systems of thought--the fundamentalist Christian worldview and the neo-Darwinian atheist worldview--and their opposing scientific views--Creation science vs Evolutionary science). This debate is alternately cast as the clash of "faith" and "reason" or "ignorant superstition" and "enlightened logic." Those who embrace materialistic naturalism (the belief that the physical world is all that exists and that all phenomena in the universe and the universe itself can be explained by purely natural causes) and reject the notions of God and the supernatural are acclaimed as brilliant, wise, learned, and are portrayed as having arrived at their conclusions through years of careful study of unquestionable empirical evidence and exactingly unbiased exercises in logic. Those who believe in God are ridiculed as backwards and intellectually stunted. They are said to hold their belief on the basis of pure emotional wish-fulfillment, magical thinking, and other such muddled illogical things. Those who hold to further supernatural beings and occurrences (such as prophesy, angels, demons, miracles, visions, healings, etc) beyond the simple idea of a distant creator god are classified as totally insane.
Frankly, all of this makes my position as a Christian and as a mystic somewhat embarrassing. To believe these things, I am told by popular opinion, I must be very unreasonable. The only way to truly be reasonable is to doubt them, and the one who doubts them is wise and reasonable by definition.
Thinking about it, though, what I find most embarrassing is that I accept this sort of derision and even hold it as true, more often than I'd like to think about. It is a shame that we as Christians nod our head to this sort of slander from the world and say, "Yes, yes, our faith cannot be really proven, you just have to accept it without question. There really is, as you say, no proof, no argument, no logic, no evidence to back up our position: all we have is blind faith." When we say this by our words and actions we affirm that the only reasonable position out there is the position which stands in doubt or rejection of God and the supernatural.
Is it really true that faith and reason are such bitterly opposed enemies? Does it really make sense that the God who created our minds and invented reason would insist that we switch these things off in order to even realize He exists? Would the God who created everything really rig it so there was not a scrap of evidence to prove He was real? We believe that God came in the flesh around 2,000 years ago as a real historical event, commemorated this very day by the celebration of Christmas...and how then can we believe that all historical evidence is against our position? It does not make sense! If these things are true, I say that the atheists are right: if it the only reasonable position is to doubt God, then our god does not exist--or if he does he is playing a cruel joke on us all and is a farce of the God we've believed Him to be.
So, let us be reasonable for a moment. Let us be unbiased (as much as possible), logical, cool and unswayed by emotionalism or empty claims. Included in this, let us stand, at least at first, in doubt even of the statement that doubt is reasonable, specifically as it applies to the supernatural. Let us not accept this on blind faith. Let it be proven that to be reasonable is to be naturalistic in one's thinking. Is this really true?
Well, if it were really true, then should we not expect the naturalistic explanation to be a fully reasonable one, with no internal inconsistencies? Should we not expect it to logically and concisely explain the entirety of existence and human experience? If empirical evidence points only to natural explanations, should we not expect all points of naturalism to be backed by empirical evidence--or at least able to be so backed? If only the doubt of religion is reasonable then shouldn't there be a reason for everything in naturalistic atheism? Logically if the claims made about the reasonableness of religious doubt are so, then the answer to all these questions should be yes. Further, we should be able to see all of these things in our world today. If doubt is reasonable then it should be supported by reason, no? :)
So, is it? Here I invite you, the reader, to do your own through investigation. Leave no stone unturned and shun no source until you have proven it to be unreliable. I will give the answer that I myself have found out by my own observations and lines of reasoning, but don't take my word for it. Stand in doubt of me until you have found it true beyond reasonable doubt yourself.
My answer is no: religious doubt does not, in fact, prove to be reasonable. Naturalistic explanations of the world are filled with internal inconsistencies, including the following: life arising from non-life and everything arising from nothing (contrary to naturalistic science and atheist objections to Genesis), complex design and coded information arising from non-intelligent sources (which are, mind-mindbogglingly, imbued with superhuman intelligence and divine powers whenever anyone writes of such things as natural selection), dating inconsistencies, conflicting causation theories, and many more. Little reliable empirical evidence for such views exists and all such evidence has equally valid counter explanations, and huge parts of the worldview cannot even be backed by empirical evidence (including empiricism itself, which asserts that empirical evidence is the most reliable, yet can give no naturalist reason as to why this should be, see the following). Further, naturalistic atheism is totally unable to give any reasonable explanation for most things. The naturalistic atheist answer to the question of why we even exist is a classic example of this: "There is no reason! We're all just freak accidents! It just happened!" This is the standard "reason" given for pretty much everything, even though the probability of so many "accidents" coinciding to create the reality we observe to exist is admittedly so staggeringly small that to say it is "improbable" that everything just happened is a laughable understatement. To say it is impossible strikes nearer the truth but still fails to express just how absurdly small and insurmountable the odds are. Based on this, if I were to say that the only reasonable position is the position of religious doubt, I would be intellectually dishonest.
If anything, the reality is the opposite: faith is a thing proven, or at least provable, beyond reasonable doubt--if only one side can be reasonable, it is the believer's, not the unbelievers. A strong case for the total internal consistency of the Christian worldview can and, in many cases, has been made. While Christianity makes no claim that only empirical evidence is valid, many of its claims can be empirically proven--and only it gives a reason that empirical proof should work (in the Christian worldview the natural world is consistent because God set up its laws and He is consistent; in the atheistic world, why should we expect a randomly generated world to be consistent rather than random?). The Christian worldview can give a reasonable explanation for everything, and, in most cases, has already done so many times over.
If this is true, then it changes our approach to apologetics and faith. We should not accept new beliefs blindly if we do not know their source to be reliable. We should not, as the Mormons do, accept something as true simply because it provides some emotional appeal (Mormons converts are encouraged to believe the Book of Mormon if, upon praying about it, they receive a "testimony"--which amounts to positive emotional feelings). While emotions and experiences are valid and real--having been created by God--so are reason, logic, and evidence--having been created by the same God. When we have proven the trustworthiness of something beyond reasonable doubt (such as the Bible), we should then treat any doubts that arise concerning it accordingly. After all, if I believe gravity to be proven beyond reasonable doubt (which I do) then I will approach any claims of violating the law of gravity or any doubts that such a law exists with suspicion. Rather than first going to re-evaluate and re-prove the validity of that which I have established to be beyond reasonable doubt, I should first try to find out if the doubt that has just arisen is reasonable (is there reasonable grounds for questioning the validity of the source that has claimed that the law of gravity is a farce?). I should go through life with the inherent assumption in everything I do that what I believe and have proven to be true actually is true. If I believe it and have proven it, I should build my life around it.
When it comes to questions raised by others, it is lazy of me to simply defend my own position. If Christianity is reasonable and atheism is not, then why not point out that this is the case. Instead of being content to fend off the challenges of the religious doubters, why not issue some challenges for them? It is only reasonable to do so, if the truth of Christianity is--as I hold it to be--proven beyond reasonable doubt.
These days, this is a very popular stance to take, especially when it comes to God and the supernatural. Faith is said to be "blind" meaning "contrary to reason and evidence." Popular culture reals with the apparent struggle between "religion" and "science" (which, in my opinion, is more of a controversy between two religious systems of thought--the fundamentalist Christian worldview and the neo-Darwinian atheist worldview--and their opposing scientific views--Creation science vs Evolutionary science). This debate is alternately cast as the clash of "faith" and "reason" or "ignorant superstition" and "enlightened logic." Those who embrace materialistic naturalism (the belief that the physical world is all that exists and that all phenomena in the universe and the universe itself can be explained by purely natural causes) and reject the notions of God and the supernatural are acclaimed as brilliant, wise, learned, and are portrayed as having arrived at their conclusions through years of careful study of unquestionable empirical evidence and exactingly unbiased exercises in logic. Those who believe in God are ridiculed as backwards and intellectually stunted. They are said to hold their belief on the basis of pure emotional wish-fulfillment, magical thinking, and other such muddled illogical things. Those who hold to further supernatural beings and occurrences (such as prophesy, angels, demons, miracles, visions, healings, etc) beyond the simple idea of a distant creator god are classified as totally insane.
Frankly, all of this makes my position as a Christian and as a mystic somewhat embarrassing. To believe these things, I am told by popular opinion, I must be very unreasonable. The only way to truly be reasonable is to doubt them, and the one who doubts them is wise and reasonable by definition.
Thinking about it, though, what I find most embarrassing is that I accept this sort of derision and even hold it as true, more often than I'd like to think about. It is a shame that we as Christians nod our head to this sort of slander from the world and say, "Yes, yes, our faith cannot be really proven, you just have to accept it without question. There really is, as you say, no proof, no argument, no logic, no evidence to back up our position: all we have is blind faith." When we say this by our words and actions we affirm that the only reasonable position out there is the position which stands in doubt or rejection of God and the supernatural.
Is it really true that faith and reason are such bitterly opposed enemies? Does it really make sense that the God who created our minds and invented reason would insist that we switch these things off in order to even realize He exists? Would the God who created everything really rig it so there was not a scrap of evidence to prove He was real? We believe that God came in the flesh around 2,000 years ago as a real historical event, commemorated this very day by the celebration of Christmas...and how then can we believe that all historical evidence is against our position? It does not make sense! If these things are true, I say that the atheists are right: if it the only reasonable position is to doubt God, then our god does not exist--or if he does he is playing a cruel joke on us all and is a farce of the God we've believed Him to be.
So, let us be reasonable for a moment. Let us be unbiased (as much as possible), logical, cool and unswayed by emotionalism or empty claims. Included in this, let us stand, at least at first, in doubt even of the statement that doubt is reasonable, specifically as it applies to the supernatural. Let us not accept this on blind faith. Let it be proven that to be reasonable is to be naturalistic in one's thinking. Is this really true?
Well, if it were really true, then should we not expect the naturalistic explanation to be a fully reasonable one, with no internal inconsistencies? Should we not expect it to logically and concisely explain the entirety of existence and human experience? If empirical evidence points only to natural explanations, should we not expect all points of naturalism to be backed by empirical evidence--or at least able to be so backed? If only the doubt of religion is reasonable then shouldn't there be a reason for everything in naturalistic atheism? Logically if the claims made about the reasonableness of religious doubt are so, then the answer to all these questions should be yes. Further, we should be able to see all of these things in our world today. If doubt is reasonable then it should be supported by reason, no? :)
So, is it? Here I invite you, the reader, to do your own through investigation. Leave no stone unturned and shun no source until you have proven it to be unreliable. I will give the answer that I myself have found out by my own observations and lines of reasoning, but don't take my word for it. Stand in doubt of me until you have found it true beyond reasonable doubt yourself.
My answer is no: religious doubt does not, in fact, prove to be reasonable. Naturalistic explanations of the world are filled with internal inconsistencies, including the following: life arising from non-life and everything arising from nothing (contrary to naturalistic science and atheist objections to Genesis), complex design and coded information arising from non-intelligent sources (which are, mind-mindbogglingly, imbued with superhuman intelligence and divine powers whenever anyone writes of such things as natural selection), dating inconsistencies, conflicting causation theories, and many more. Little reliable empirical evidence for such views exists and all such evidence has equally valid counter explanations, and huge parts of the worldview cannot even be backed by empirical evidence (including empiricism itself, which asserts that empirical evidence is the most reliable, yet can give no naturalist reason as to why this should be, see the following). Further, naturalistic atheism is totally unable to give any reasonable explanation for most things. The naturalistic atheist answer to the question of why we even exist is a classic example of this: "There is no reason! We're all just freak accidents! It just happened!" This is the standard "reason" given for pretty much everything, even though the probability of so many "accidents" coinciding to create the reality we observe to exist is admittedly so staggeringly small that to say it is "improbable" that everything just happened is a laughable understatement. To say it is impossible strikes nearer the truth but still fails to express just how absurdly small and insurmountable the odds are. Based on this, if I were to say that the only reasonable position is the position of religious doubt, I would be intellectually dishonest.
If anything, the reality is the opposite: faith is a thing proven, or at least provable, beyond reasonable doubt--if only one side can be reasonable, it is the believer's, not the unbelievers. A strong case for the total internal consistency of the Christian worldview can and, in many cases, has been made. While Christianity makes no claim that only empirical evidence is valid, many of its claims can be empirically proven--and only it gives a reason that empirical proof should work (in the Christian worldview the natural world is consistent because God set up its laws and He is consistent; in the atheistic world, why should we expect a randomly generated world to be consistent rather than random?). The Christian worldview can give a reasonable explanation for everything, and, in most cases, has already done so many times over.
If this is true, then it changes our approach to apologetics and faith. We should not accept new beliefs blindly if we do not know their source to be reliable. We should not, as the Mormons do, accept something as true simply because it provides some emotional appeal (Mormons converts are encouraged to believe the Book of Mormon if, upon praying about it, they receive a "testimony"--which amounts to positive emotional feelings). While emotions and experiences are valid and real--having been created by God--so are reason, logic, and evidence--having been created by the same God. When we have proven the trustworthiness of something beyond reasonable doubt (such as the Bible), we should then treat any doubts that arise concerning it accordingly. After all, if I believe gravity to be proven beyond reasonable doubt (which I do) then I will approach any claims of violating the law of gravity or any doubts that such a law exists with suspicion. Rather than first going to re-evaluate and re-prove the validity of that which I have established to be beyond reasonable doubt, I should first try to find out if the doubt that has just arisen is reasonable (is there reasonable grounds for questioning the validity of the source that has claimed that the law of gravity is a farce?). I should go through life with the inherent assumption in everything I do that what I believe and have proven to be true actually is true. If I believe it and have proven it, I should build my life around it.
When it comes to questions raised by others, it is lazy of me to simply defend my own position. If Christianity is reasonable and atheism is not, then why not point out that this is the case. Instead of being content to fend off the challenges of the religious doubters, why not issue some challenges for them? It is only reasonable to do so, if the truth of Christianity is--as I hold it to be--proven beyond reasonable doubt.
No comments:
Post a Comment