For me, at least, the question could be valid, but to be answered needs a lemma prepended explaining what it is that I’m answering.
So: For me, “belief” is not a level on a certitude scale, resembling axiom, postulate, hypothesis, and theory, to be disproven by an appropriate fact or array of facts. Rather, it is an interpersonal commitment of trust and assurance. I believe in God the way I believe in my wife, as someone I know and am certain I can depend upon, trust, feel assured of the love of. God is a Person whom I have Encountered and come to know and trust.
Okay, yeah, those experiences are subjective, non-reproducible, potentially subject to delusion, misprision, false approbation, etc. To which I can respond that, yeah, I know that, and I have done as good a job of testing them against reasonable objections as is possible. The bottom line is, either the experience of encountering an omniscient God was valid, or I irrationally trusted a subconscious delusion to lead me into taking irrational steps that resulted in some highly beneficial character development that I would have fought at the time I took those steps, because it was aware of events and encounters I would have in the future that reshaped me. As between a deity historically recorded as having (debatably) led people into life-changing decisions owing to Its knowledge of the future, and attributing that sort of intricate event-weaving and precognitive skills to my own subconscious, I find God the lesser unlikely hypothesis.
This does not, of course, mean that I subscribe to the plexus of dogmata that comprise contemporary American cultural conservative Christianity. Far from it!
But the disproof I would need is that God is not what I have encountered Him as, that someone or something was able to represent itself as God to me (including my own subconscious, yeah) which is not in fact God As I Have Known Him. Something that would cause me to lose my trust in Him.
And it ain’t happened yet – in fact, ups and downs in my life, highs and lows, the sense of being able to trust Him has just grown stronger.
It’s easy to see how you’d think that from your perspective. One person might look at a Picasso and see random blobs of paint, while another person might see a profound story. It’s no reflection on either person’s intelligence or worth. It’s just the way people see things. It was after long discussions with SentientMeat here that he finally encapsulated it all in a way that made sense to me and to him (an atheist) as well. The only way he could come to believe in God, he said, is if God reformed his mind in such a way that not believing in God was impossible. That clicked in my mind because that’s basically what happened to me.
I’ll take your G.K Chesterton and raise you a Bertrand Russell.
Speaking as a former atheist turned Christian and then turned atheist again, I’ve read some Christian Apologetic literature. C.S Lewis and Josh McDowell. I must admit you’ve raised my curiosity somewhat because I’ve never even heard of Chesterton before. Apparently he was quite a prolific writer. Perhaps you could point me towards some specific books or essays that were key to your conversion?
I don’t see any specific answer in your post to the OP’s question. What could convince you that you were wrong? If I gave you a mountain of evidence that the functions of the mind were purely physical in origin, would that do it for you?
How do you figure? He didn’t even reference the supernatural. He referenced attitudes and behaviors of human beings he’s encountered throughout his life. Those attitudes and behaviors had no common denominator with regard to belief. He just said he noticed that things HE thought about institutions and self-labeled people didn’t behave the way he thought they would. It had nothing to do with a spiritual turning point.
Yikes! Sorry, I see what you’re saying. (It is still true, however, that we — at least, I — see through a filter that wasn’t there before. Or else the filter that was there was removed. Or something like that. :D)
Interestingly enough, none of those “talking points” are remotely connected to atheism. I’m an atheist, and I don’t agree with a single one of them. For that matter, I suspect you could find any number of observant Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others who would agree with every point on that list. You seem to have conflated “atheist” with “anti-Christian.” Which probably explains your tenuous hold on that philosophy to begin with.
In a strictly rationalist way, we would of course say that there’s no relationship between Christian ethics and the truth of religion. But realistically it’s hard to truly maintain that idea. Firstly, there is surely high correlation between belief and ethics. You’ll find a lot more people following Christian ethics and believing Christian doctrine, then following the ethics without the doctrine.
Yet someone out there is probably itching to say that it’s still possible to practice the ethics without believing in any supernatural aspects of Christianity. Well, I did believe that for a short time, but I later changed my mind. (More on that later.) For now, I’ll say that such a viewpoint surely requires sizable internal tension. I hope everyone can recognize that. Could it really be that Jesus Christ was an ordinary human being who happened to have the best understanding of ethics, morals, and psychology of anyone in history, yet he also had a few unfortunate brain farts and accidentally declared himself to be the Son of God and the savior of the world? Could it really be that thousands of humanity’s greatest writers, artists, thinkers, philosophers, scientists, activists, and leaders all just took the Gospels at face value because they were too dumb to do otherwise? Can it be that over a billion people alive today continue believing without any good reason to do so? Even if you think that’s true, you still have to admit that it’s somewhat strange and demands an explanation.
Also, though, the foundational reasons for my atheism all came from things that certain people said. For instance, I knew that all religious experiences were hallucinations because others said so. I knew that the Bible was a historical pastiche of various ancient myths because people said it was true. I knew that evolution provided a satisfactory explanation for humanity with no need for a divine creator. And so on. But all of it rested on trusting certain sources of information while ignoring others. In fact, my entire education had always assumed that religious arguments were so ridiculous that there was no necessity to read them. All the experts had supposedly agreed, so there was no need for me to actually see the proofs for myself.
So the issue of ethics put a crack in that foundation and led me to begin exploring religious topics with an open mind. Was it indeed true, for instance, that only “fools” have ever seen religious apparitions? (As one Straight Doper recently claimed.) No, in fact I found that numerous intelligent, education, and emotionally stable people have had genuine religious experiences. Likewise, on many other topics, it turned out that the things I had learned were not true. So eventually the question had to be asked: if the proof that Christianity is false does not come from psychology, or from history, or from science, or from archaeology, or from anthropology, or from art, or from literature, then where does it come from?
I personally have had what could be called a religious (or mystical) experience. Zen Buddhism refers to it as Kensho. Time seemed to be suspended in an eternal moment and I could feel how all of the universe was really One and at that moment I knew, to a metaphysical certainty that the paternalistic idea of a God who punishes us eternally for our beliefs and actions simply cannot be correct. This directly contradicts the Christian faith. Do you dismiss my experience out of hand? How can you reconcile my experience with your experience, without calling me a liar?
I wouldn’t call you a liar, but I’d say that one of your assertions is false, at least with respect to me. I am a Christian, and I agree with you that God does not punish us for our beliefs and actions.
But were that correlation valid, you would find more people without the doctrine not following the ethics than people with the doctrine not following the ethics, which is not true either. The result is a product of population size, not correlation.
As an agnostic, I thank you for the implication.
How so?
Could it be that Jesus was a real historical religious teacher to whom various true, partially true and entirely mythical stories were ascribed post-mortem by people who needed the story to be true?
“Dumb” has nothing to do with it. There are many deeply compelling reasons to believe the Gospels and few not to. The problem is that many of those reasons have little to do with the veracity of the Bible. For starters, surely you must understand how attractive the idea of redemption is. Or (if you’re more cynical) the idea that all will be judged and those who were victimised in life would be exalted while those who victimised them would be brought low. Or even just that there is a benevolent and loving Father who has a plan for all things in Creation. I feel the draw of those concepts and I’ve never been a Christian.
Funnily enough, this is the argument a lot of lapsed Christians use for leaving the faith - they were told a bunch of patent nonsense by various people with their own personal interpretation of the Bible which could not be questioned, and when they got old enough or had had enough they left the church. Sadly, this is usually a rejection of the church, but the faith tends to go with it (because they’ve been taught that the faith and the church are one).
It sounds like you had the atheist version of this - “accept that religion is wrong without question”. I would submit that any belief system (even atheism) that insists on unthinking adherence is fundamentally flawed.
But if the things you were taught were wrong not because Christianity was right but because the arguments you were refuting were flawed, are you not in danger of jumping to unwarranted conclusions? If I demonstrate that the things that the Westboro Baptist people say are rubbish, have I proved that all Christianity is rubbish? Or should I cast my net more widely in search of the truth?
As for me (to put my own cards on the table - fair’s fair), it would be difficult for me to abandon my doubt - and let me reiterate that I consider myself an agnostic, not an atheist, and I do not insist in the non-existence of deities. However, were archangels to descend from Heaven to crown me Pope of the World, even if everyone else saw it I would continue to hold as a possibility the idea that I had had a psychotic break, or that this was some sort of alien joke. Which is not to say I wouldn’t take the job - I bet it’d pay well - but I could not believe unconditionally with my whole heart unless God (any god you like) changed me to make me do so.
I am not unsympathetic to the way of faith. I do believe, like Hamlet, that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of by us mere, flawed mortals. I have had experiences and seen extraordinary coincidences which I could not rationally explain, and I know people whose analytical faculties I respect deeply who are also people of devout faith. But I cannot tolerate poor logic in defense of faith; I would rather people said “I believe because I believe” than attempt to convince me that the Grand Canyon was formed by The Flood or that only a divine being could have dictated the Qur’an.
Do not believe because the atheists who taught you were fools. Do not believe because others do, and have done for millennia. Do not believe because you think it is necessary to have God looking over your shoulder in order for people to behave. Believe because you believe. That is enough.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that very few people here are going to be able to recognize that. Myself included.
That does seem unlikely. I’m sure there are a lot of people who have had equal or even superior insights into those subjects. Which is not to say that Christ didn’t have some really good ideas (either original, or picked up from previous philosophers), but the assumption that he was the best evar at these things is something that flows directly from your faith, and is not an objective fact.
If he is the Son of God, then you’d have to explain how thousands of humanity’s greatest writers, artists, thinkers, philosophers, scientists, activists, and leaders, as well as some five billion people living today, don’t believe in him at all. I mean, if he is unquestionably the smartest, most ethical, most moral, most divine person to ever walk the Earth, you’d need a pretty good explanation as to why so many people are too dumb to recognize that.
Where exactly were you educated that atheism was considered so much the default assumption that there was no point in even questioning it? I was raised in the heart of Liberal Secular California, and most of the people involved in my education were unabashed Christians or Jews. I don’t recall ever once being told by any sort of an authority figure that there was no such thing as God, at least, not until I was old enough to seek out such sources on my own initiative.
I don’t really see a need to prove that any particular religion is false. Rather, I notice the lack of proof that any given religion is true.
Out of curiousity, when you noticed all of these cracks in the foundations of atheism, why did you turn to Christianity? Why not Islam, or Hinduism, or Buddhism? It is, I suppose, a fortunate coincidence that when you discovered the truth of religion, the truth happened to be the dominant religion of the culture in which you were raised?
I was actually introduced to Chesterton after hearing that he’s one of J. K. Rowling’s favorite writers. I started with some of his literary works, including The Man Who Was Thursday and The Father Brown mysteries stories. I think that’s the best way to come to grips with Chesterton, because his language and his ideas both take some getting used to. However, the book that really did in my atheism was Orthodoxy. This book is Chesterton’s early autobiography and explanation of how he came to Christianity. I found it hitting extremely close to home, too close for me to reject it.
I’m welcome and open to hearing any arguments about the life of Jesus and the origins and the New Testament. Thus far, all of the fact-based arguments that I’ve heard have pointed towards Jesus claiming himself to be God. After studying the issue at some length, I feel confident that (1) All four canonical gospels were written within the lifetime of people who witnessed Jesus. (2) Members of the first century church believed that the gospels were accurate, and the authors were who they claimed to be. (3) There is solid historical evidence of Christian groups having a firm faith in the divinity of Christ within ten years of his death in 33 A.D. (4) Creeds attesting to his divinity were written within five years of that event, and the Apostles approved of them.
However, most of that studying happened after I converted. Before, I merely became convinced about the possibility of Jesus being divine. Scholars who argue against it (who argue that Jesus made no such claim and that others invented it) typically emphasize how such stories can change. It is possible that the gospel authors invented miraculous stories decades after Christ’s death. It is conceivable that bits of various mythical traditions were adopted for use in the gospels. But did it actually happen? I’ve seen no one putting together a definite argument for it. Most skeptics seem to assume that accidentally ascribing Godhood to an ordinary person (and a poor man who died a criminal at that) could happen at the drop of a hat, but it doesn’t. Why would anyone choose to tell such a story about Jesus if it weren’t true? Virtually any other person would be preferable.
So in summary, here’s what I concluded about the accuracy of the Gospels. By the standards of the ancient world, the records of Jesus’s life are remarkably good. We all believe in Homer, in the Buddha, in Socrates, and in Confucius, yet the evidence for those people is not nearly as strong as for Jesus. Now, this does not mean there’s rock solid, unbreakable, stand-up-in-court evidence that the Gospels are perfect. It does mean that the standard explanations that I heard from skeptics fell short.
(1) Why do you think that? I had the impression that it was pretty well established that the first of the four gospels, Mark, had to have been written close to, and at least finished after, 70 AD. If any witnesses to Jesus were say 25 in 33 CE, they’d be 62 then, when the first gospel was written. Leaving some time for dissemination, it seems that even the youngest witnesses would be really old before they came across it.
(2) Who did the authors of the gospels claim to be? Certainly not Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And what do you base your statement on, that first century Christians knew the authors were who they claimed to be?
(3) What is this evidence? Is there any evidence outside of the Bible of anything about Christianity in the first century (much less, by 43 AD)?
Actually, almost no one believes in Homer. Some scholars maintain that there must have been a single creative genius behind the Iliad and the Odyssey, and others suggest that the poems represent the cumulative effort of generations of poets. But pretty much everyone agrees that the name “Homer” is a pure fiction, invented centuries after the fact.
Also, I’m not sure that we “all” believe in the Buddha. I think it’s likely that there really was some such historical personage, and that he was a signifcant philisophical figure in his time, but I don’t believe he was in any way divine or supernatural. Pretty much just like Jesus.
The Buddha aside, though, “believes” isn’t really the right word for these people, is it? If there were never any such person as Confucious, does that impact the value of what’s written in The Analects? Homer was likely a couple hundred different Greeks writing over the course of several hundred years. The Iliad is still a great poem. Socrates might have been some guy Plato made up to prove a point, but that doesn’t invalidate the point Plato was trying to make. I don’t “believe” in any of these people. I accept that they likely existed because people who know more about that particular period in history than I do say they existed. If they’re wrong, well, I don’t really care, do I? If The Analects were written by Confucious, or if they were written by some other guy with the same name, it doesn’t really change anything about my life. On the other hand, if Jesus really is the Son of God, and if my level of belief in him is the determinator between living forever in perfect bliss, or being tortured for eternity by spiny devils, well, that’s a claim that I’m going to need to investigate with a bit more throughness than wether or not Socrates’ last words were really, “I drank what?”
On the other hand, if you just want to say that there was a rabbi named something like “Jesus,” who lived in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, and who had some pretty keen ideas about ethics and morality… well, I’m willing to take your word on that part. It’s when you start suggesting that he did things that are flatly impossible that you lose me.
Incidentally, do you believe in Robin Hood? There’s a figure about whom all manner of fanciful, romantic tales have been told. But if he existed at all, he was probably nothing more than a common bandit. Not just a political criminal, but an actual highwayman, who took valuables away from people at the point of a sword. And yet, there’s no end of stories about him. Why would anyone choose to tell such stories about him if they weren’t true? Virtually any other person would be preferable.
Either a hijack or an extenstion, but I’ve particularly wondered what would make devout Mormons question/reject their faith. It’s not that their beliefs are any harder to swallow than those of a lot of other religions in and of themselves, and some are neither provable or unprovable (you can’t prove or disprove that God and Jesus and angels and others visited Joseph Smith or that he never saw the golden plates for example), but
1- because some of the claims of the Book of Mormon are so specific
2- because the origins of the religion are a lot more recent (enough so that there are photographs of, if not its founder (I think there’s debate over whether certain photos from the 1840s are or aren’t JS) then at least of his wife and his apostles
3- because of the advent of DNA testing and archaelogy becoming a real science since the religion’s origins showing no link between native Amerindians and Jews/definite links between Amerindians and Asians/no evidence of great cities or great battles where they were said to be or of domesticated cattle/horses/elephants/chariots/etc. ever having been in North America or South America pre Contact but contemporary with humans
I’ve wondered how intelligent Mormons- and there are many- keep their faith. I’m really not picking on them per se, but I choose them specifically as a test case because unlike Jesus, whose followers have been dead for almost 2000 years, their Prophet’s followers are so recent that some still have great-grandchildren if not grandchildren living. (I actually used to correspond with a granddaughter of Orson Pratt, a very early pre-Nauvoo contact, though she may now be dead- if not she’d be around 100, but that’s still a pretty close link.)
In fairness, I also wonder how Fundamentalist protestants can scoff at claims of Joseph Smith being visited by Gods and angels and accept as valid evidence disagreeing with the B.o.M. but have no problem believing in creationism, virgin birth, the Ascenscion, and other equally unlikely miracles.
- but I could not believe unconditionally with my whole heart unless God (any god you like) changed me to make me do so.