The Happy Heretic wants to debate a Christian

[Mangetout]

STOP PRESS!!!

This landed in my mailbox:

From: “Judith Hayes”

Hello:

I’m in the unusual position of having accepted two debating partners and having them both wash out rather quickly. One Christian told me that the concepts of a “soul” and “heaven” were not necessarily part of Christianity! Sheesh! The other seemed very bright and honest and eager, but I haven’t heard a word in over a week.

So, if you are still willing, I would like to hear what you have to say. Many people accurately pointed out that my questions in my column were “all over the place.” Of course when I began writing it I was just randomly thinking of questions, and midway through I got the idea of formalizing things. In order to keep this thing from becoming an unwieldy mess, I have tried to focus on the broad, important issues and not get bogged down in minutiae. So here are the questions I would like to begin with…

I won’t post the questions for the moment as I think it is very important that I try to answer them from a personal perspective, even if that means I get my arse whipped.
My feeling is that I might too turn out to be a ‘wash out’.

[InquisitiveIdiot]

“Wash out” - translation: 1) willing to accept the differing views of others. 2) Not wishing to raise a stink about some minor theological issue so she can tear you apart.

Yeah, good luck.

[Siege]

I’m rooting for you. Please keep us (or me, at any rate) posted!

CJ

[Apos]

With most of the non-theists here being on your side against her disjointed and nasty ravings Mange, and given your posting history, I doubt you’ll be getting any arse whipping. But I wouldn’t fault you for washing out either if it gets too lekatty.

[Susma_Rio_Sep]

I looked up the website of Judith Hayes. She tells us:

I am Judith Hayes, The Happy Heretic. This monthly column was born in November 1996. My grandfather was a Lutheran minister, his son was a Lutheran pipe organist, and his granddaughter is an atheist. Now that’s my kind of evolution. I have a lot to share with you, so please start clicking. . . .

I think she has made good valid points against Christians. But I asked her by way of her ‘comments’ link why she calls herself a heretic when she is an atheist. And I told her that maybe she is more of an apostate than a heretic.

For myself I don’t think I have to debate her. I am a theist but a postgraduate Catholic kind.

And I told Judith Hayes that she should not be angered with God; God is an innocent bystander here.

What can I say about her here in these boards? I think she is doing Christians a good useful service, keep Christians thinking; otherwise, the faculty of thinking might get atrophied in them. And that would be a temendous loss of a God’s gift.

Susma Rio Sep

[RickJay]

*Originally posted by InquisitiveIdiot *
**“Wash out” - translation: 1) willing to accept the differing views of others. 2) Not wishing to raise a stink about some minor theological issue so she can tear you apart.

Yeah, good luck. **

Bingo. I maintain that there will be a “no true Scotsman” disqualification in the very near future.

[Mangetout]

OK, there were 8 questions in the email, but it had sat there for a couple of days, so first off, I replied thusly:

From: “Mange Tout”

Hi Judith

Thanks for coming back to me and sorry that your message has languished a couple of days in my inbox; I haven’t been checking it so frequently (although I will now).

I’ll try to reply to your list of questions when I get home tonight. It is quite a broad set of topics and although I’m sure we can start off talking about them all together, it may become necessary to concentrate on them a few/one at a time if the dialogue gets too convoluted and lengthy. I’ll do my best, in any case.

Regards

Mike

To which I got the prompt reply:

From: “Judith Hayes”

Hello Mike:

I agree that we should take these issues one or two at a time, follow them till we reach a reasonable impasse, which we surely will, and then move on. Just discussing the issues is what I think will be interesting. I have already heard from scores of readers who are looking forward to this. So, rather than wait until you have had time to address them all, why don’t you send me your responses one at a time? That way I won’t be sitting here dead in the water. There’s no big rush on any of this, but I also don’t want it to drag out into next year!

Thanks, and I’m looking forward to your first answers.

Best,

Judith Hayes

So I picked three of the questions I thought would offer the best introduction to my viewpoint and answered them:

From: “Mange Tout”

Hi Judith

Here’s my first attempt at addressing some of your questions, I hope you’ll forgive me for rearranging the order of presentation a bit, but I thnk it might aleviate the need for me to refer forward to thngs I haven’t yet said. I think it is important to point out that I do not consider myself an authority on anything beyond the scope of my own views - I will endeavour to be totally honest and frank in all my answers and there will be questions to which I have incomplete answers, or no answers at all (I don’t feel that a gap here or there necessarily invalidates the whole though).

(1) Since a source cannot be quoted in order to prove the accuracy of that very source, what is your reason for believing that the Bible is authentic? Any claim you might make can be made by any Muslim, and with equal sincerity, about the Koran. So why do you believe the Bible is true?

I think it is very important to start by defining what we mean by ‘true’ - for some people, when they say ‘the Bible is true’, they mean that it is factually and literally true and inerrant in every part. For others, the phrase would mean that the Bible contains usable truth. I count myself among the latter group, indeed I believe the Bible-as-science-book-and-ultimate-source-of-truth view is little more than a position of psychological denial.
As to why I believe in the Christian God and the (truth contained within the) Bible - it is a matter of personal experience and possibly also national culture; I had a series of utterly compelling (but at the same time wholly subjective) experiences that I truly believe to have been interactions with God. After these experiences had begun, I happened to meet up with a group of Christians and found them(the experiences) sufficiently consistent with the core concepts of the Christian deity to comfortably accept that faith; further (also subjective) exploits after this point further reinforced this view (although the cynic would no doubt describe that as selective bias.).
Would things have worked out markedly different if I had encountered a group of Mormons or Muslims? Perhaps, maybe even probably - who can say? My faith is (as far as I am able to discern) based in spiritual reality (if that isn’t an oxymoron), I cannot honestly judge the faiths of those who believe different things because I have not seen what they have seen.

(2) What proof do you have that human beings have a soul? How do you know that there is a life after death?

I don’t have any objective proof at all; that isn’t to say I don’t feel that there is no evidence, just that the evidence I do have (which relates primarily to the existence of a caring deity - the souls and afterlife bits being largely inference) is highly subjective and not really presentable to third parties (no less compelling for this though, from where I sit) - I can tell you about it sometime if you like, but I can’t show it to you.
I believe that faith is necessarily a personal thing and that even if it were possible for me to somehow convince you that what I am talking about is real, I think it would be of little value unless you experienced it for yourself. This might seem like weaseling, and again, I can’t really give you anything other than my personal assurance that is isn’t.

(6) The Ten Commandments are presented as the ultimate guide to moral human behavior. Lying and envy made the list of things not to do, but the following did not: rape, cannibalism, slavery, child sexual abuse, wife-beating, assault & battery in general, torture, suicide and kidnapping. While envy is not a nice thing, granted, how can it possibly be more important than slavery or rape? Can you explain the glaring omissions?

Jesus condensed the entirety of the Jewish law down to only two instructions; (paraphrasing) “Love God with every part of your being” and “Love your neighbour as if he/she was yourself”. Of course it doesn’t go into much detail (but expanded lists like the Ten Commandments are prone to omission).
I don’t find the two-law summary to omit anything important.
It can arguably be further condensed to “Love your neighbour as yourself/do unto others…etc” in view of the passage where God is described as saying “whatever you did to folks in need, you did to me”.

Anyway, perhaps this is a start, perhaps I’m not exactly the flavour of debator you were hoping for (in which case, I trust you will say so) - I almost wonder if you have not set yourself a near impossible task; anyone bold/conservative/fundamentalist enough to tackle you head-to-head on the kinds of big issues you deal with on your web pages, are somewhat unlikely to sustain reasonable debate with you, whereas you might well find that other Christians agree with you on more issues than you imagine.

Kind regards

Mike

I still have five questions to answer, one of them is a real toughie (or at least scholars have been scratching their beards over it pretty much forever), but I’m not going to post anything here until I’ve tried to answer it myself.

[E-Sabbath]

Psst! Mange! You left your first name at the end. Considering you removed it from the top… might want to get a Mod to erase it.

[Mangetout]

I’m not too worried; it was included in my introductory email too (quoted earlier in this thread).

[Uncommon_Sense]

Good work so far, Mike, looking forward to the rest of the list mangetout.
I fear you may not be controversial enough for her (though you make perfect sense to me), but I do hope she engages you.

If I may suggest that when you are through with this and at some point in the future other posters here may want to have a stab at answering the very same questions that you have. I`d like to see Maybe Poly, Lib, etc. have a go at it. Or myself for that matter.

[InquisitiveIdiot]

You’ll never end up debating her. This is why:

Heretic: Why do christians believe X?
Mange: I believe X because of personal reasons, but can’t really prove it to you in any way. Sorry.
Heretic: Oh. Um…

-or-

Heretic: Here’s a nitpicky detail Y fundies like to rant about. I disagree with them.
Mange: Good for you.
Heretic: You aren’t going to insist that I’m wrong, like the other fundies I get to rip apart?
Mange: Nope. Some fundies are crazy. Most Christians would just agree to disagree.
Heretic: Oh.

See? Not a very heated debate, thus not really fun for the teeming millions to read.

[tracer]

*Originally posted by Susma Rio Sep *
I asked [Judith Hayes] by way of her ‘comments’ link why she calls herself a heretic when she is an atheist. And I told her that maybe she is more of an apostate than a heretic.

You ain’t the first. In her April 2001 column, she even whined about how much mail she gets telling her she’s an apostate and not a heretic. (Of course, she chose “The Happy Heretic” as her nome de plume because of the alliteration, but given the bent of her columns, she could have called herself “The Angry Apostate.”)

And I told Judith Hayes that she should not be angered with God; God is an innocent bystander here.

She will, of course, answer (if she answers at all) that she’s not angry with God (it’s kinda hard to be angry with something you don’t believe exists), she’s angry with people who believe in God.

[RexDart]

*Originally posted by whuckfistle *
** I`d like to see Maybe Poly, Lib, etc. have a go at it. Or myself for that matter. **

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Polycarp maybe, but no no no no no no NEVER let Lib anywhere near this thing. Totally the wrong sort of way to approach a debate like this. The endless references to the nebulous idea of “modal logic” which leads at best to pantheism, and answering every tough question about god with “God is Love” and a reference to a religious experience wouldn’t exactly lead to much of a debate. (Though it does lead to 10+ page threads here in GD )

Great, often intellectually stimulating fellow, but totally the wrong person to enter a debate about specific issues, since Lib doesn’t divorce the single issues from the total package.

I guess as an athiest I would expect the Christian to lose, but I’d like the Christian to lose because the contrary positions are right, not because the debater is inept. And I’m guessing this “happy heretic” isn’t much of an atheist, because an atheist ought to be rather familiar already with all the arguments of the theists (in their many varieties) so as to best attack them. The way she has phrased her questions shows that she doesn’t fully understand her opposition.

IMHO, I think it would have been best for the Xian side to put a Catholic up for this debate, as they have the most thorough library of theological replies to various single issues, though Mangetout seems to be doing fine.

[Mangetout]

OK, I tried to answer two more of her questions yesterday:

From: “Mange Tout”

Hi Judith

I’ll have a crack at another couple of your questions today… here goes…

(4) Why are there so many Christian denominations? There are over 25 of them, and they all disagree on many important issues, such as the Pope, saints and Joseph Smith, to mention only three. How did the Revealed Word of God become so scrambled that no one can agree on what it is?

How did it get scrambled? He entrusted it to humans!
Seriously though, the history of the church is a very interesting and chequered read; many of the denominations came about as the result of differences in practice, rather than differences of core doctrine, for example the Methodist church branched off the Church of England because the CofE was failing to fully address the spiritual, social and material needs of the lower classes, however since that branching event, much change has occurred and the two denominations now see themselves almost as allies - there are big differences in practice, but the core doctrines (following what we believe to be the teaching and example of Christ) are very similar.
In actual fact though, it may be true that the gulf in practice between the two denominations is narrower than the diversity of practice in either of them, if such a thing can be quantified.
As regards bigger differences between the protestant denominations and, say, Catholics and LDS, again, this probably comes back down to the subjectivity thing I mentioned in my last email; I consider my own form of worship and faith entirely right and appropriate for my experience of God; I can’t impose this on anyone else because they are not me and I don’t have direct access to their experience.
So if it is all just a mishmash and none of it really matters, what is the point of any of it?
Well… there is one teaching that seems to be almost universal, regardless of faith or denomination - “do unto others as you would have them do to you”.
So have I watered down Christianity to this single, seemingly dull little precept? Not at all - all it is is that this is the part I feel most comfortable imposing on the world (and I think I would argue that there’s nothing dull or little about ‘do unto others’ - looking about the world, I’d say it is what nearly everybody needs a bit more of).
One more thing I’d say on this is that I believe finding spiritual truth is a bit like trying to track down the source of a radio broadcast; depending entirely on where you stand, the signal may appear to emanate from any point of the compass - the more you move about and the more bearings you take, the better idea you’ll have as to where it is coming from.

(8) If God did not know there would be evil in his universe, he could not be omniscient (all-knowing). If God knew there would be evil but could do nothing to prevent it, he could not be omnipotent (all-powerful). If God knew there would be evil but chose to do nothing to prevent it, he could not be omnibenevolent (all-good). Can you reconcile these observations?

Wow!, this is the real toughie! Scholars have been chewing on the problem of evil for milennia, I don’t suppose little ol’ me is going to crack it, but here’s my best shot.
I don’t think there is any elegant Great Unifying Answer to the question, but suppose for a moment that evil is not so much something to be known about, something about which things must be done, or something that requires a choice.
Suppose evil is just an inherent feature of the way the universe works (like shadows - they don’t so much have existence of their own as they are defined by the absence of light) - now we need to be a little careful here, or else we deduce that evil is necessary and from there, it is a short step to ‘evil is good’, which is clearly absurd.
But without the possibility of shade, there can be no contrast; if everything were equally and uniformly radiant, we wouldn’t be able to see anything (or at least we wouldn’t be able to discern an object from the background). Perhaps evil can be defined as somewhere that [whatever is good and true] is absent. - I can’t see how such a thing could logically be prevented while still allowing things to move about.
That’s about the best I can do for now; I’m aware that I haven’t done justice to this question and as I said, it may not have a single elegant answer, perhaps there are a multitude of possible answers, each of which intersects a corner of the truth - I hope this one has.

I must turn in now… more tomorrow I hope.

Regards

Mike

No replies as yet…

[Mangetout]

From: “Mange Tout”

Hi Judith

Just a quick afterthought… May I assume that it will reciprocally be OK for me to publish our conversation(s) for myself?

Thanks & regards

Mike

[Uncommon_Sense]

I really enjoyed your respnse to Q 8.

[grimpixie]

No response yet???

Grim

[Mangetout]

To bring the thread up to date…

There were a couple of confusing to-and-fros over emails that apparently went missing; I won’t bore you with the details of that, allow me to bore you with the other stuff instead:

From: “Mange Tout”

Hi Judith

Here I go again…

(3) If you maintain that humans have souls, what happened to the billions of souls of the humans who existed before Jesus was ever born? And how do you know it?
(5) Will Jews go to hell?

I think I’ll lump these two together - given that we’ve already established my belief in a caring deity (and acknowledging that I haven’t empirically proven his existence - the question is about what I believe, rather than what I can prove), I believe that a human being is just far to precious to allow damnation to occur through simple neglect, I also believe that God, being a smart guy, knows exactly what it takes to win the heart of even the really stubborn runaways.
Of course, this does not exactly gel with our observations - it would seem that people die frequently without noticeably turning to God, or in some cases, even getting the chance.
But of course we’re only seeing what happens to the mortal part of the person; God is quite capable, I believe, of intervening in such a way as to meet the individual personally at the point of physical death, giving them the chance to make an informed choice. Why anyone would choose to turn away at this point, I couldn’t possibly imagine, but I suppose if that is what they really, really wanted, then they could have it.
As regards the people who died before the arrival of Jesus, they entered into a state of existence that I believe to be quite unlike our own, in which the earthly temporal reference frame, and considerations of ‘before’ and ‘after’ (at least in relation to earthly events) don’t have much meaning…
This probably isn’t a very conventional Christian view, but it is where I’m at presently - I know in my heart that there’s a loving God, I simply cannot believe he would be so lax as to leave things to chance.

(7) Why was the most important event in the history of the world - the birth of its Savior - entrusted only to a small handful of shepherds in one small area of the Mediterranean? Why wasn’t the whole world notified of this momentous occurrence at the same time? Weren’t South Americans, for instance, as important as Mediterranean Jews?

I’m not sure how workable it would have been for Jesus to have been born in several places at the same time and it certainly doesn’t seem to have been the case that the handful of shepherds promptly forgot about it all and let the whole thing fall away into obscurity (or else this conversation would have no subject).
Taking into account my ramblings above, it doesn’t really matter where or when it took place, as long as it took place.

Well, there it is; I’m not entirely satisfied with my responses, but that is normal.
Will I be a washout? (or has that already happened?), time will tell…

Regards

Mike

From: “Judith Hayes”

Hello Mike:

[All this in brackets is not part of the formal debate, okay? Sorry for the delay. I know I usually have next-day responses, but all is chaos here. I am still receiving new offers for debating partners, and many people have just answered all eight questions, typed them out and then sent me their 20-page e-mails, without asking me about it first! It’s quite a mess, but I asked for it, and I’m doing my best to straighten things out.]

[First, yes, I received your answers. Thank you. There is a problem though. I realize that I was overly ambitious in putting so much out there at once. To cover it all fairly, we’ll end up with 20,000 words I’m afraid, maybe more. So here’s my plan. I would like to focus on the primary question, Question #1, since it really is at the heart of all the other questions. You have clearly stated your belief in the Christian God and the Bible, and all your other reasoning takes it from that point. However, saying the Bible contains “usable” truths is far from saying it is the inspired word of God, as Christian doctrine clearly states. Are you sure you want to say no more about how you know the Bible is authentic and inspired by God? After all, I could say that “Gone with the Wind” contains “usable” truths. In other words, your answer is not at all persuasive and I would be obliged to render it meaningless if I’m going to be honest. Do you want to change or amend your answer to Question #1?]

[As for the other questions, we’ll take them one at a time, depending on how things go, and how much reader interest there is in the debate. I also wanted to tell you that since I got off to such an overwhelmingly bad start, I decided to accept TWO debating partners, you and another nice man, in case either one of you dropped out for any reason. I hope that is all right with you. I will present you separately of course, and neither of you will be speaking for the other. Fair enough?]

And now back to my main purpose in life - answering e-mail!!

Best,

Judith

From: “Mange Tout”

Hi Judith

Thanks for your reply.

I’m pretty much happy with my view on the role of the Bible as a source of truth; Christian doctrine does indeed say that it is the inspired word of God, but I think it is worth mentioning that the loud voices of conservative/extreme fundamentalist Christianity - insisting that this is to mean that it is utterly infallible in every word, and is to be used as a reference book for science - are (I believe) a relatively modern phenomenon, as well as being by no means a majority (as if that proves anything).
A number of my more fundamentalist brethren have at times challenged me on my somewhat relaxed stance, saying “but if we accept that passage x isn’t absolutely factual, then how can we know whether any of it is factual? and we might as well just throw the whole thing out”.
The ‘All the Bible or none of it’ challenge is (I believe) a false dichotomy and indeed the thrust of it is often directed toward stifling the awkward questions in their tracks and amounts to little more than “Don’t question whether the Bible is true because you might not get the answer you want (or the answer you’re supposed to get)”, and besides, believing that A is true solely because the veracity of B depends on it, is perhaps the worst possible reason to believe anything.
We have this large squashy organ between our ears - I believe God intends… no, EXPECTS us to use it properly, rather than unquestioningly being spoonfed received ‘truth’.
Yes, I believe that the Bible is inspired of God, but I also believe it is possible for other writings today to be inspired in the same way. I don’t believe the Bible should be worshipped and I don’t believe it was dictated verbatim - we need to be careful to factor for cultural and personal bias.

As regards other documents containing usable truths, that is an interesting point, because one of the strange (highly subjective) things I mentioned earlier, leading up to my conversion was that words from other documents (such as newspapers even) would suddenly strike me as conveying a message for me personally - of course there’s no way to prove that this wasn’t all just a figment of my overactive imagination (although I wholeheartedly believe it wasn’t) - I believe God is capable of transcending the bounds of any box we might choose to contain him, regardless of how we might revere or respect the box.

A ‘heads up’: Occasionally I slip and use words ‘truth’ and ‘fact’ as if they are interchangeable - I try to be careful as I hold them to rather different definitions (the story of the boy that cried wolf contains truth/truths, but little in the way of actual fact).

Hope this helps

Regards

Mike

[Uncommon_Sense]

Well, she seems to be treating you rather fairly so far.

Keep it up Mange.

[Mangetout]

From: Judith Hayes

I’m pretty much happy with my view on the role of the Bible as a source of truth; Christian doctrine does indeed say that it is the inspired word of God,
What’s frustrating me is that I’m not understanding why you believe that the Bible is a source of truth. ??? I’m not interested in whether you think every word is inspired, that it is inerrant, but why you accept it in the first place? Once again, anything you might answer to that could be said, sincerely, by any Muslim. But you can’t both be correct. If the Bible is the word of God, the Koran is not, and vicev versa.

Yes, I believe that the Bible is inspired of God, but I also believe it is possible for other writings today to be inspired in the same way.
See what I just wrote above. Do you understand my confusion? Bible or Koran, which is it? And why? Can’t be both because they contradict each other so completely.

Best,

Judith

From: “Mange Tout”

Hi Judith

What’s frustrating me is that I’m not understanding why you believe that the Bible is a source of truth. ??? I’m not interested in whether you think every word is inspired, that it is inerrant, but why you accept it in the first place? Once again, anything you might answer to that could be said, sincerely, by any Muslim. But you can’t both be correct. If the Bible is the word of God, the Koran is not, and vicev versa.
Well, the reason I consider the Bible useful is that I believe I have experienced interaction with the God described therein - the experience came first, then the desire to know more; it just so happened that this took me along the path of Christianity and that I found my experiences to be consistent with it, it might have been quite different if I had been born in, say, India or Turkey, but there is no way to be sure of this.
Although you say that you accept my opinions on inerrancy, you still seem to be holding me to a rather loaded positions regarding ‘The Bible is the word of God’ - I’m not entirely sure how Muslims view the Koran (in the sense of it being ‘the inspired Word of God’), but I don’t see any reason at all why there cannot be deep truth in both texts.
Sure, I don’t feel that the Koran is particularly relevant to me personally (I have no doubt that many Muslims feel the same way about the Bible)- this insistence that one must negate the other seems to me like saying that a cookbook and a car repair manual cannot both be right, because they are so different.

See what I just wrote above. Do you understand my confusion? Bible or Koran, which is it? And why? Can’t be both because they contradict each other so completely.
I think it might help if you were to offer an example or two of such contradictions.

Regards

Mike