I saw a comment on Facebook today that prompted a memory of something I have thought previously but not written about. So now I am writing about it. Thanks, Facebook!
A Christian friend of mine told the world that he is about to read a copy of Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, that well known, aggressive (and often lampooned as philosophically poorly constructed) case against religious belief. Perhaps sensing from the comments being made that my friend was unlikely to be persuaded, an atheist friend of his was quick to advise him that while she did not think highly of Dawkins’ books on atheism, still: “you should at least approach atheism with the openness that Christians tell atheists to approach the Bible with.”
This might sound reasonable to you at first. It just sounds like a person is being asked to be reasonable, right? I don’t think so. Suppose that you are a happily married man, and that you have been one for some years. You have a wonderful marriage, and you can honestly say that you love and trust your wife more than anyone else in the world. With this background in mind, just imagine if I told you that your wife is being unfaithful to you. What would your initial reaction be? Imagine, further, that I told you that you should really be open minded about this. You should, I tell you, try to be just as open to the possibility that she is cheating on you as you’d like others to be to the possibility that she is not. Further, imagine that you were immediately persuaded that my approach was the right one.
Suppose that your wife hears of your open mindedness and protests with you. “How could you suspect me of this, after all these years?” Do you think you’d be making matters better by telling her that you couldn’t possibly let your history together influence your judgement on this most important matter? If your wife didn’t have a reason to run off, you just gave her one!
Now what’s wrong with this picture? What is it that would make your judgement astonishingly poor in the above scenario? It should be pretty obvious: An approach to investigation might be fine for somebody who has no commitments of a certain type, and yet quite inappropriate for someone who has those commitments. In this case, because of the type of commitment that you believe you and your wife have to one another, you actually have a prima facie duty to trust your wife rather than her accuser. If you didn’t know your wife at all, and a wise friend who you have come to trust told you that she is a loose woman that you should probably avoid, then the situation is reversed. Because of your relationship with your friend, you could well have a justified suspicion of this woman. How high the evidential hurdle is must take into account what you already know and the duties you take yourself to have. If you’re going to accuse my wife of being unfaithful, you’d better have the kind of evidence that can clear a very high hurdle.
So it is when a Christian is asked to consider atheism. It’s not true that the Christian should be as open minded to the possibility of atheism as he would like people to be to the possibility of Christianity, any more than I should be as open to the possibility of my wife’s unfaithfulness as I would like people to be to the possibility of her faithfulness. A person who is a Christian has what he or she takes to be a relationship of trust. They have a prior commitment (and in fact the relationship between Christ and the church is likened, in the Bible, to a marriage e.g. Ephesians 5:31-33). When I talk about a prior commitment here, I do not just mean a prior belief, something that they affirmed before and don’t want to give up. I mean not a commitment to a proposition but to a person – to a relationship, call it what you will. It is a relationship of trust, and more than that, of worship. Of course, you might not believe that any such real such relationship exists any more than one that a person might have with an imaginary friend. But if you use that as a reason for the Christian not to put stock in that relationship, you’d obviously just be asking them to give up Christianity before they even begin. As far as the Christian is concerned, such a relationship does exist at the outset, and hence the duty of trust exists as well.
So here’s what I think about the instruction to investigate impartially, being just as open minded on the issue as we want everyone else to be: What might sound like a simple request for reasonableness actually conceals the very type of presuppositions (whether conscious or not) that the inviter is asking you not to bring to the investigation.
Glenn Peoples
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Tags: apologetics, scepticism
Yes but you claim to know God on a personal level and you talk to Him by praying. But to be honest it’s a bit of a one-sided relationship don’t you think? You do all the talking and never hear anything back. Instead, anything good that happens in your life you interpret it as coming from God, possibly as a reward or even just because of His mercy. Or if you’re going through a difficult time, God ‘talks’ to you through scripture; that’s an old favourite one. But that’s a little one-sided don’t you think? Why can’t God actually verbally talk back to you Himself? He did to Samuel did He not?
So this “relationship” you claim to have with God doesn’t seem like a very good justification because, do you really know Him that well at all? It is very one-sided after all.
I like to go by the dictionary and I don’t see how you can have a problem with it. If you just want to argue semantics, then on all accounts be my guest, but I like to use a dictionary frequently to make sure I know what someone else is implying, and I find it’s the best way to get to the heart of an issue by defining the key terms used. I’m not arguing that you need to use the English dictionary to LEARN about concepts in theology or philosophy (although it can help e.g. I learnt what physicalism meant in a theological sense the other day) but instead we can use the dictionary to truly understand what things mean and use that to our advantage.
Of course I’m fully-aware of the major philosophical reasons for and against the reasons believing in God, however Elizie claimed that a Christian’s faith is based upon proof and evidence of the existence of God so I wanted to hear this evidence?
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Yeah but let’s be honest (i.e. let’s say that I’m right), deep down you really know that God is there and that you’re accountable to him.
So this further “evidence” that you ask for is moot.
See, we can all pose false challenges by asking other people to agree with us in the name of being honest.
You are simply being silly with this “I like to go by the dictionary” routine. If you’re interested in knowing what Christian theologians over the centuries meant by “faith,” what do you think the best kind of source to use might be? C’mon, use your head.
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If I have ever said that there is “no evidence” it would be in the same context as there being “no evidence” for the existence of Icelandic Elves. I.e. I’m sure that many Icelandic people are having what they feel are genuine experiences (which counts as a form of evidence) but that the evidence is so shoddy as to be dismissed as “no evidence” for all practical purposes.
Damian can you tell me I can find peer reviewed journal articles and books, elaborating something like the detailed cosmological arguments, ontological arguments, moral arguments, telelogical arguments, arguments from religious experience, that one finds for the existence of God in the literature today.
Apparently its really common because the claim that the philosophical case for both is on par occurs time and time again in popular atheist discourse.
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“You do all the talking and never hear anything back. Instead, anything good that happens in your life you interpret it as coming from God, possibly as a reward or even just because of His mercy.”
Thats a rather sweeping and quite absurd generalisation.
It appears that you think that christians are the same as “spiritualists” (ie, new agers, etc). I think you might have been watching too much oprah.
You have not seen my wife, but since I talk about her, you would assume that she does exist, until evidence came to light that called that into question. But since she does exist, thats unlikely. Also, we quite often communicate none verbally, since we have been married some time and know each other quite well. A look in the eye, a twitch or the way a comment to someone else is phrased is often enough to communicate volumes. But it appears to you, that would not be enough to entail communication.
My point being that you cant see my wife, and you can not understand our personal modes of communication, and yet she exists. The same applies to God, just because you have not seen Him, or communicated with him, or heard or seen him communicating with someone else is not, and can never be evidence for his non existence. I am sure there is some form of fallacy that covers this argument.
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I commonly see the argument, in one form or another, that if God existed, every single person would necessarily have exactly the same evidence for such. Thus the fact that most people have never seen a miracle is used to prove that they’ve never happened (since God is required to perform miracles uniformly through time and space), or the fact that some people have never heard of Christianity is proof of God’s nonexistence (as if God, in order to exist, must communicate with every human being in the same way).
Thomas Paine was probably one of the more influential miscreants in this regard, saying “Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information.” His argument was that the Bible, being in human language, could not be a message from God to all humanity.
The same ill-conceived illogic still plagues us today, sadly. Some people just think that their experiences are a representative sample of the universe.
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I can’t really be bothered to debate this anymore cos you don’t really listen to anything I say. I do not know “deep down” that God exists, in fact deep down I think YOU have a hell of a lot of doubt in His existence but these are times of weakness of course, aren’t they? So you push the questions away.
There are much much better arguments out there for your case but the arguments you use are rather pathetic to be honest. I’ve heard so much better from Christians and you’re not doing yourself much justice by saying that you shouldn’t be open-minded; just makes you look more foolish. Blind faith is NOT a good thing.
But never mind nothing I say will change your minds and nothing you say will change mine.
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I am finding Glenn’s post deeply ironic. Heres why:
One of the many arguments for religions as evolutionary adaptations is that they are (for men) the guarantors of the providence of their progeny. Woman, of course, need no such mechanism, as they can be certain of who fathers their children.
It seems clear that a large part of the dogma of the christian (and some others such as islam) religion is focused on reducing the likelihood of female infidelity and thus reducing the likelihood that any particular man is investing his valuable resources in the upbringing of somebody elses genetic offspring. The extremely strict sanctions against infidelity, promiscuity, sex before marriage or even condom use seem to come directly from these concerns. I mean, think about it. From a “selfish gene” perspective, who stands to lose the most from a bit of promiscuity?
For those that are at all interested, you should try reading some of the research: Heres one link I quickly dredged up on google:
http://www.anth.uconn.edu/faculty/sosis/publications/HumanNaturespecialissueonreligion.pdf
Finally, I would respond to Glenn’s thought experiment here by flipping the roles around a bit:
How should a woman react when a friend tells her her husband is being unfaithful? When he often comes home late from the office? When she finds lipstick on his collar, and smells perfume on his clothes? When she see’s strange charges on his credit card bills? Or for a more accurate analogy with regards to religion and evidence: When she finds video footage of her husband having sex with another woman in their marital bed?
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Just like to point out that atheists love to demand evidence and signs for God’s existence but when it is supplied they start making excuses. There is a cosmos full of evidence. How does a Universe arise from nothing?
And sure I have difficulties relating to God at times but I believe He is good.
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Josh – “I can’t really be bothered to debate this anymore cos you don’t really listen to anything I say.”
You’re one ironic guy.
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Nick, female promiscuity (or lack thereof) is hardly the point.
What’s more, what you describe in your example of a man being accused of infidelity is mounting evidence. I have no problem with this. Why would I? All I have said is that given the default position is that of trust, the threshold of evidence against a spouse you have loved and trusted for years is going to be a high threshold.
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Josh,
Glenn’s position is simply that (to paraphrase Matt) one should start with this assumption that God exists. Open mindedness requires only that you need to rethink your starting assumptions if and when evidence to the contrary is forthcoming.
You haven’t given evidence to the contrary, just expressed your doubts and misconceptions about faith and Christians.
You wrongly assumed faith equals blind speculation. You wrongly said there’s no evidence, and Matt shot that one down pretty convincingly.
You wrongly assumed that all Christians are full of doubt, and demanded some kind of admission.
You clearly hold an incomplete view of religious thought, and have not understood what people are trying to tell you. Discussion is usually a good way to learn. Be open minded!
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Nick,
I’m having trouble seeing the slightest hint of irony. For one, I’m sure Glenn (and many, many others) can attest to there being much more benefit to a fidelitous relationship than simply knowing your kids are yours. Secondly, the fact that religion often proscribes infidelity hardly shows or even strongly suggests that the or a purpose of that religion is to forbid female infidelity. (And I certainly would NOT agree that a “large portion of the dogma” of Christianity is even relevant, and Christianity/Judaism has historically been just as hard on male infidelity as female.) Indeed, the proscription of infidelity is one thing that is very common in ancient legal systems that legislated on moral issue. (Which, one could argue, are also social issues, but I digress.)
What I think it suggests is that the human mind is such that fidelitous relationships are good for mental and social health, and infidelity is damaging – it’s an effect of how humans think and act. The fact that religions proscribe infidelity is hardly evidence that they are responsible for it being stigmatized – rather, I would think that it’s entirely sensible to say that religions (and many ancient legal codes) proscribe infidelity because it hurts people, and that’s bad.
So no, I don’t think it’s ironic. And your “turning around” the analogy does nto work, as it’s horribly asymmetric – Glenn did not say he would be hard-pressed to believe someone who told him his wife was having an affair, here’s an extra credit card in her name, lots of jewelry appearing out of nowhere, hotel trips neatly coinciding with business trips of hers, and video evidence. No, to turn it around you’d have to have stopped at “How should a woman react when a friend tells her her husband is being unfaithful?” To which I’m sure Glenn would respond that the situation is entirely symmetric, and I’m guessing his wife has as much foundation to trust him as he for her.
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Precisely CPE. Why anyone would think that “turning it around” and changing it to add in bits of evidence is any kind of knockdown is beyond me. Gender has nothing to do with the example.
I think what’s happening here is that really committed skeptics just need to see religious belief in a certain way: irrational, disconnected from evidence, blind, dogmatic, closed minded etc. Believing this has become a deeply important doctrine for many of them, and so no matter how unlikely a piece of evidence might be for that doctrine, it will be siezed upon, and interpreted – no matter how contorted that interpretation is – as confirming that doctrine. That is why this blog post is being interpreted in the way that Josh and Nick are interpreting it.
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The most irritating atheist dogmas I know of are precisely of that sort. One is that religious belief is there for the main reason not of describing truth but for providing easy explanations for things religious people are too dumb to understand, such as your post earlier on Dawkins’ post on religious responses to Pat Robertson. It’s unbelievable how atheist polemicists like Dawkins think that a few misguided souls who actually do hold to God-of-the-gaps as a scientific theory are representative of religion, and that knowing how something came to pass completely eliminates the very question of “why” or “who.” The impression I get from Dawkins is exactly that; he has a notion of what “religion” is all about, and attacks it. This impression of religion, though, since he deliberately doesn’t do research, is less resembling of actual historic Christianity and more like the Family Circus version. So pop culture things like a certain Genesis interpretation, a certain view of what the afterlife is like, etc, are taken for granted is “Christian doctrine” when they aren’t, and have never been, accepted as core dogmas.
But Dawkins wouldn’t know. In the preface to The God Delusion, he quotes a fan of his defending Dawkins’ deliberate scholarly illiteracy, saying studying what Christianity actually teaches is about as useful as reading books on what color the Emperor’s scarf is, and musings on the wonder of His frilly trousers; since Dawkins is here to show that the Emperor has no clothes, there isn’t much point. Dawkins, and many of his fans, completely fail to realize that their attacks on Christianity make substantial claims about Christianity, and those claims are generally quite ignorant.
I’d relate my counter-analogy, but this post is long enough without it
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Exactly CPE. Atheists cling to their beloved strawman caricatures, and find it amusing to tell each other ignorant tales about those medieval Christians. Evidence and scholarship are sadly lacking when the atheist launches his moral crusade.
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The irony is there because it seems that Glenn has not considered any evidence about where his religion comes from.
I just don’t think his analogy is accurate/useful, except as an attempt to bind people in.
A more correct representation of the position would be if Glenn’s wife did not react in any way to the physical world. No interaction with electromagnetic radiation (i.e. Invisible), no measurable or observable effects outside of Glenn’s behavior. People are not saying the Glenn’s wife is cheating on him, they are saying that they do not believe that his wife exists. In other words, from their vantage point, they can see no evidence for her. In other words a delusion.
Now, from my point of view, I don’t need to doubt somebodies sincerity in “having a relationship” with an undetectable entity, and in fact this does not really concern me as long as they don’t start basing their decision making and treatment of other people on things that this undetectable entity is telling them.
But, what I want to point out, is what a huge trap this style of thinking is. I would recommend that people learn a little bit about some of the common mental illnesses to get a bit of a picture of how susceptible the human mind is to delusional behavior. They are many ways that peoples delusional ideas about reality can screw them up. Hypochondria, OCD, generalized anxiety disorder, psychosis etc…
The first step in recovery/coping from these sorts of illnesses is to recognize the trap of belief and break free from that trap. Not easy, I can tell you. It is kinda hard to ignore when your own body is sending emergency signals that you are at deaths door. Eventually however, hopefully you start to except the counter evidence. I.e. when you don’t die, or when the terminal illness that you think you have is just not detectable.
In summary, establishing a faith relationship of the sort that Glenn is advocating has an inbuilt assumption about the veracity of your own thoughts and feelings. This is an assumption that I think just does not stand up at all and even a cursory examination of human behavior and history will demonstrate that.
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Nick, you may invent your own anlogy and say that it represents what you want. I will do likewise.
As for your separate issue (and I’m not sure that you recognise that it is a separate issue), of “it seems that Glenn has not considered any evidence,” then all I can say is that you must be very very new here.
Did Glenn write about that evidence in this one blog entry? No. But it is just lazy to say that I have never done so. Your misguided faith betrays you, for you are now passing judgement on what Glenn has and has not done without investigating.
See Nick, the ones who believe the fairy tales are not the ones you think.
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Nick, I’m guessing you’ve never seen Glenn’s wife either. Yet if you tried to tell him that she doesn’t exist…
Assuming your experiences/evidence or thereof is the norm isn’t any better.
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@CPE… I may not have seen Glenn’s wife, but I have no trouble at all accepting that she exists. Where I start having trouble is if Glenn states that she does not interact with electromagnetic radiation, or exists on some “metaphysical plane”.
@Glen. True, I have no idea what you have or have not considered. It seems clear to me however, that you are performing the role of group integrity enforcer here by undermining the ability of group members to think critically. Read some of the modern research on this subject. Its quite interesting.
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Nick, you *are* new here. There’s a lot of back and forth between Christian bloggers, in fact I was questioning Glenn earlier in the thread. But please continue your attempts at psychoanalysis!
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Nick, am I “undermining the ability of group members to think critically”?
Again, you speak without examining. You admit that you don’t know what I “have or have not considered.” In fact it’s clear enough to me that you don’t even know how much argument and reason for my beliefs I have presented at this very blog and podcast.
So perhaps it’s wise to reserve judgement about whether or not I am undermining the tendency to think critically. On the contrary, my history here shows that I encourage that very thing when it comes to theology and philosophy, and I do try to lead by example.
Like I said, you’re new. I wouldn’t comment based on a simple lack of experience.
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@Glenn. Of course I do not know what you have considered or not, I can only read what you have posted and then comment on that.
What I am saying here, is that I think that your argument is bad. I am also speculating as to underlying reasons for your post.
What you are advocating, quite clearly as far as I can see, is that people shouldn’t consider (or at the very least, don’t give weight to) evidence that contradicts their own religious teachings.
There are two main problems with your post.
1). Your analogy is bad. Lets for arguments sake say that you have a personal relationship with god. I would posit that this relationship must be so unlike that between a husband and wife relationship as to make your analogy worthless. Just think about the imbalances for a start. God would definitely have a bit of an information and power advantage over you being an omniscient being and all. Essentially you are just rehashing the “you gotta have faith” trope with a bad analogy. Incidentally, I must say, that “you gotta have faith” idea is brilliant. I suspect that this idea alone would explain the longevity of christianity. Unfortunately its also a cognitive trap of the first order which can and has caused our species quite a lot of bother.
2). You don’t consider (at least not in your post) the implications of human fallibility. It is well documented and easily reproducible that humans can and do suffer from all sorts of psychological/emotional biases and delusions. Granting “the way you feel” about something an overarching superiority over any contradictory external evidence is very risky behavior. By doing this, you are jumping into a cognitive trap that you might not ever be able to escape from. This is not critical thinking, quite the reverse.
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Nick, if Glenn claimed such things about his wife perhaps you wouldn’t believe… but if you told him that she didn’t exist, it wouldn’t make him any more likely to believe you
Your criticism of Glenn’s analogy falls flat, also – the relationship is very different, but Glenn never said it was similar in anything other than being a relationship of trust. Such was completely irrelevant to his analogy, and thus is irrelevant to a critique of it.
More importantly, though, you seem to think we are unaware that humans are fallible. Of course we know that! What I don’t know is why you think that we should assume our beliefs are necessarily more fallible than yours… People have delusions, but do you really think we have good reason to believe that religious beliefs are somehow more susceptible to delusion and wishful thinking than irreligious beliefs?
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@CPE Gaebler…
How can you possibly have a relationship of trust with an omniscient entity? That seems like the last thing that a god would need. Maybe an insecure or jealous god perhaps.
I have already conceded however, that that whole “take it on faith” gambit is pretty difficult to refute. This is what makes it a dangerous cognitive trap in my book. I do think though that this idea is also very inconsistent with the common portrayals of god, and does raise for me, the immediate question: Why does god want us to take this stuff on faith? Is gullibility a virtue?
Even in human relationships, I don’t see that there is any need to put extra weighting when it comes to evaluating ideas/evidence from other people. Surely the adult approach with such matters is to discuss them openly. There is of course, such things as tack, or timing with these matters. But again, why would a god feel threatened by an adult discussion?
I am not assuming at all that your beliefs are any more fallible than mine. Of course I am fallible. I get to see that most days. What I am saying is that it is dangerous to trust your own feelings/beliefs too much. Being open to criticism and “heaven forbid” actually changing your belief when confronted with contradictory evidence is critical thinking. Again, this is not what Glenn is advocating.
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Nick: “What you are advocating, quite clearly as far as I can see, is that people shouldn’t consider (or at the very least, don’t give weight to) evidence that contradicts their own religious teachings.”
Seriously, are you even reading? Nobody has said anything at all like this, much less said it “clearly.”
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Nick: “Being open to criticism and “heaven forbid” actually changing your belief when confronted with contradictory evidence is critical thinking.”
And that’s the point. By all means come up with contradictory evidence, but that’s not the same as expecting people to start out as blank slates. I’ll consider good evidence against my position (i.e. “contradictory evidence”), but it had better be good.
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“How can you possibly have a relationship of trust with an omniscient entity? That seems like the last thing that a god would need. Maybe an insecure or jealous god perhaps.”
I don’t follow… Why does God being omniscient mean we can’t have a relationship of trust with him? I’d think it’d mean we’d have even more assurance that He can keep His promises, no?
Not to mention the “last thing a god would need…” is kinda presuming something about God. Who says He NEEDS us? Needs in what way?
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CPE is right…
In fact the bible is quite clear (as least I think so), that God created us to represent him on earth, in a similar fashion to someone like, say, a Roman Emperor putting a viceroy or some one in charge of a “conquered territory”.
The expectation is one of relationship, of mediating the emperors wishes to the people, which can not be done without intimate knowledge of the emperor.
Now, while you no doubt discount the bible as authoritative, it makes logical sense, in respect to freedom of will etc.
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this articles reveals quite clearly why religion is so dangerous.
” It’s not true that the Christian should be as open minded to the possibility of atheism as he would like people to be to the possibility of Christianity(…)”
The fact that you can’t see that such nonsense makes one lose all credibility, shows how badly one’s brain can be poisoned by religion. you can make silly rationalizations and bogus analoigies, but the fact remains: phrases like “intellectual honesty” or “honest discourse” is absent from your dictionary. It’s sad really.
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As always, your insight is special AOR.
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This analogy is really similar to the one Gary Habermas used in his book Dealing with Doubt.
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