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Apologetics, Christianity

8 sure ways to shut down a dialogue

June 16, 2017

I love to dialogue. I especially love dialoging with folks who believe differently from me. I’m a Christian and I genuinely love to sit down and talk with those who are not. I love to hear their story and how that story shapes the way they think about life.

But not every dialogue goes well. In fact, some “dialogues” are really just monologues masquerading as dialogues. Dialogue is interesting because, in order for it to be a dialogue, it really takes both dialogue partners genuinely listening and caring what the other has to say. Often enough, one dialogue partner shuts the dialogue down.

Here are 8 ways sure to shut a dialogue down.

  1. Act like your dialogue partner is helplessly biased and that you are completely free of bias.

We are all biased. Our biases color our evaluation of the facts. Christians are biased. Atheists/freethinkers/humanists are biased. No one is free of theory-laden observation. This is simply a fact of the human condition. But I don’t actually think we are helplessly trapped by our biases. I think we can reasonably conclude when we believe something on the basis of bias. Want to know the best antidote to for your biases? Dialogue. But acting like you are completely unbiased is a sure way to shut down dialogue with someone.

  1. Use a meme in lieu of an actual argument.

Memes can be funny. Memes can even be powerful. However, they are toxic for a dialogue. I always wonder who takes the time to craft these things that then gets shared a million times. If that’s you, come on out of the basement and consider discussing the issue with some thoughtful person. If that’s not you, then you should really consider refraining from posting that next meme you think will score you some points in a dialogue. All it’s going to do is shut the dialogue down.

  1. Be vicious towards the person you are talking to.

Don’t be vicious. It’s not nice.

  1. Be easily offended by the person you are talking to.

It’s a strange world out there these days. Way too often a discussion either turns vicious or someone plays the victim. Why is the space between these extremes so narrow? You should consider it a total blessing for someone to fairly criticize your ideas. In fact, it is a huge compliment. They have taken time out of their day to consider what you’ve said and to offer critical feedback. This is a gift. Now the exchange may get passionate and it may get lively, but don’t be so easily offended. You may even have to admit you were wrong, and that’s great because you are doing so on the basis of reasons. But if you play the victim, the dialogue is over.

  1. Caricature someone’s view so that it is easily dismissed.

I always find it interesting when someone tells me what my view is and there is about a half a kernel of truth to what they say. I mean it may sort of be in the same or at least neighboring ballpark, but it is not a view I or anyone I know would be interested in defending. This shuts down the dialogue because the rest of the discussion will likely involve attempting to simply clarify what my view even is much less getting around to discussing it.

  1. Compare their view to some loony fringe group with which no one would want to be associated.

There’s a lot of guilt by association in faith discussions. Apparently, I have to defend the nutcases and the radically uninformed because I believe 1 out of 100 beliefs in common with them?! Well I shouldn’t have to. My view should be considered for its merit all on its own. And so should yours.

Here are a few for Christians:

  1. For a Christian, when the argument gets tough, to just say, “Good objection, but it really just comes down to faith.”

Faith, as a notion, is really misunderstood. This is, in part, due to the way Christians talk about faith being some extra magic sauce that makes up for evidence and reason. So when evidence and reason run out, Christians often appeal to an almost mystical element of faith in lieu of a thoughtful consideration. This short-circuits the discussion. I’ll also note that a number of atheists have locked on this way of thinking of faith and act like this is necessarily what every believer means by faith. Besides being exceedingly unfair, this also shuts down a dialogue.

  1. For a Christian to say to the atheist, “I know deep down you really believe in God.”

Now I know that Romans 1:20-23 says some things that sound sort of like every person really deep down believes in God. Even if this is the right understanding of the passage, telling an atheist this still does not seem like a fruitful strategy.  Moreover, the passage really doesn’t say this. My own view of the Romans 1 passage is that God is present for all. This means that all people may be aware of God, but this doesn’t mean that all people believe and thus know (in a propositional sense) there is a God. We can be aware of things even while denying their existence. I think that all people are aware of a moral law, but there are plenty of people who deny the existence of any moral law. Likewise, though I believe that God is everywhere present, I take an atheist at his or her word that he or she does not believe in God. Given this, we can begin a dialogue.

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Apologetics, Philosophy, Scholarship

Why scholars aren’t getting the gigs

June 12, 2017

In a recent Inside Higher Ed article, the authors outlined reasons why scholars are often unable to reach wide audiences. They insightfully say:

There’s a yawning gap between academic writing and popular, hot-take journalism. Scholars fancy that they cover important, current topics, but they do so in styles and venues that reach only narrow audiences. And yet there has never been a better time for academics to reach the public directly, and in ways that are compatible with their professional contexts and goals.

They go on:

Scholars have insights, experience and research that can help the public navigate the contemporary world, but scholarly work all too often goes unseen. Sometimes it gets sequestered behind exorbitant paywalls or prohibitively steep book prices. Other times it gets lost in the pages of esoteric journals. Other times yet, it’s easy to access but hard to understand due to jargon and doublespeak. And often it doesn’t reach a substantial audience, dooming its aspirations to impact public life.

The article is talking about disciplines of all sorts. But I think this is extremely relevant to Christian apologetics and philosophy (and theology, Bible studies, etc.).

Scholars have left the planet

Most scholars have spent a better part of a decade in school immersed in some discipline absorbing the subtle minutia and nuances crucial to understanding the cutting edge of that field. They have become specialists and they speak and write to extend the discipline.

But something happens during that process. There’s a tendency for these scholars to travel to the planet of specialization and are unable to ever return to the real world. They speak a new language and can’t seem to remember how to get back to the real world.

Now scholars write A LOT. But it tends to be the case that only other scholars in that specific field are reading these works. It’s not uncommon for a scholar to spend a few hard months on an article (or even years on a book), and it is only read (especially in its entirety) by less than 100 people. Now this is not as tragic as it sounds. The primary goal of academic writing, it seems to me, is not necessarily a large readership. Rather the goal is to extend research and reflection on interesting areas in a discipline, and the impact is not always reflected in the amount of people who read it.

But still, there’s a concern. The concern, as I see it, is this stratification of scholarly material causes a fracture between those who know what they are talking about and those who are speaking to wide audiences.

This can be quite dangerous if this gap gets too wide.

How to get expertise to the people

One way to close this gap is to have, what I call, translators. Translators are not scholars, but they take the scholarship and make it more accessible and relatable. An example of translator in the world of science would be Bill Nye (formerly known as The Science Guy). Nye has no advanced degrees in science, but he has had a tremendous impact in science education and he is routinely called upon to speak as an authority in science . But since he’s not himself a scholar, his science chops are not exactly always on point.

In the world of Christian apologetics, we have translators as well. And we have some terrific ones. These are ones who take complex issues in science, philosophy, history, etc. that bear on the truth of Christianity and make them understandable and relatable for a wider audience. But, let’s be honest, just like Bill Nye, there are some who just simply don’t fully understand the issue they are speaking or writing about.

Now don’t get me wrong. This is not to minimize the importance of a translator in apologetics. There is an important space and a huge need for popular level apologists. My concern in this post is that there seems to be a lack of scholars who are getting (at least some of) their material out there in accessible ways. Right now in the world of Christian Apologetics, we have a growing number of popular level apologists that are doing really well, and God bless them for the work that they do. But it seems there’s a lack of scholars getting called upon to speak to popular audiences. And this is because scholars have very often done a terrible job at speaking and writing on a level that nonspecialists can understand.

Why are scholars typically bad at the popular level?

Here are some of the more salient challenges cited by the article that scholars face in writing to wide audiences and some of my thoughts about these challenges.

  • “Scholars often cannot answer the question ‘So what?’ about their own work”
  • “Scholars don’t know how to pitch.”

It’s often the case that the problems that scholars are writing about are only problems that academics have (the Problem of Evil literature can tend to be this way). So it is not that there isn’t a “so what?”, it’s that the “so what?” is only for someone who speaks the scholarly language. But there are many things that have been said in the scholarly literature about, say, the Problem of Evil that could be really helpful for a wider audience. But those connections are often not made. Until they make these connections, the scholar can’t pitch the relevance of their content.

  • “Scholars don’t write well enough to reach people outside the culture of scholarly writing.”
  • “Passion and generosity are missing from scholarship.”

The thought here is that scholars don’t typically write with their readers in mind when they write scholarly material. It’s really just the research and the argument that matters. Consequently, the writing isn’t compelling (writing with passion) and it is not helpful for the uninitiated reader to understand the material (writing with generosity). So something can be written academically well, but it may not be written well for an actual real-life reader.

  • “Academics can be jerks.”

Yes. Yes, they (we) can. I’ve actually found that many academics (though certainly not all) are overall humble people. What happens is that they use an authoritative voice, when talking as a scholar, and this can easily come across as jerkish. In academic writing, there is a need for this authoritative voice. However, when it comes to popular writing, there’s a need for intellectual humility to come across as well.

  • “This isn’t for everyone.”

I know some academics that I’m not sure are able to get back to earth. And that’s okay. We need these scholars to do what they do. But I tend to think these are the exceptions and not the rule. I think many scholars just aren’t good at this because they haven’t worked at speaking and writing this way. But they could do it if they try. And we need this.

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Apologetics, Philosophy

2 problems with Craig’s distinction of knowing and showing

June 9, 2017

In one of the best books on Christian apologetics in the last 50 years, Reasonable Faith, William Lane Craig says something rather provocative. He thinks that the proper basis for knowing that Christianity is true is not the evidence for Christianity. This might strike one as more than a bit odd given that Craig is the one of the world’s foremost Christian apologists. Craig certainly has a high view of the evidence for Christianity’s truth given the fact that he routinely takes on Christianity’s most difficult critics in formal debates on the evidence for Christianity.

So what’s going on?

Knowing and Showing

In the book, Craig makes a distinction between knowing and showing. He says:

…the way we know Christianity to be true is by the self-authenticating witness of God’s Holy Spirit. Now what do I mean by that? I mean that the experience of the Holy Spirit is veridical and unmistakable (though not necessarily irresistible or indubitable) for him who has it; that such a person does not need supplementary arguments or evidence in order to know and to know with confidence that he is in fact experiencing the Spirit of God; that such experience does not function in this case as a premise in any argument from religious experience to God, but rather is the immediate experiencing of God himself; that in certain contexts the experience of the Holy Spirit will imply the apprehension of certain truths of the Christian religion, such as “God exists,” “I am condemned by God,” “I am reconciled to God,” “Christ lives in me,” and so forth.[1]

Craig’s idea is the inner experience of the Spirit of God Himself—where He testifies to His existence and the truths of the gospel—is the primary way in which people come to the knowledge of Christianity. His idea seems to be that the best way to know something is to have direct experience of that thing. Though we can know in this way, we cannot share things known by inner experience. This is simply a fact about our inner experiences. We might say to another, “I feel your pain,” but we don’t mean it literally. What we mean by this empathetic claim is that we understand that one is feeling pain, and we have had what we take to be a similar feeling of pain. But mere testimony of an inner experience is not a good way to convey (i.e., provide evidence of) what the pain is like.

We can, likewise, tell people about inner religious experiences, but unless one has a similar experience, then this testimony seems too weak, in terms of evidence, to constitute knowledge.

So, for Craig, the best way (perhaps the only way) for us to convince another person of the truth of Christianity is to show that Christianity is true with arguments and evidence, which is what Craig offers in his debates, his books, and his interactions with students across the globe. Craig seems to think that this evidence, though it can move one along in their journey towards Christ, it never results in genuine knowledge unless and until God makes himself known to that individual. And it is not necessary for knowledge. The person completely uneducated in the arguments of Christian apologetics can be perfectly rational on the basis of his or her direct experience of God. Thus arguments and evidence play, at most, a ministerial or subsidiary role on the way to knowledge.

I think Craig’s distinction is problematic for two reasons.

Inner experience as evidence

First, though I certainly agree that religious inner experience is important for coming to a genuine and full knowledge of Christianity’s truth, it seems to me that it should be understood as part of one’s overall evidence set. That is, I deny that there is a substantive distinction between evidence, on one hand, and the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, on the other. The direct experience of God just is evidence—indeed, great evidence—for the truth of Christianity. This is described as testimony and experiences, after all, and we typically think of testimony and experience as evidence.[2]

This is best seen within the broader discussion of evidentialism in epistemology. In this discussion, it seems to me that inner experiences such as this would just count as evidence. Again, direct experience of some fact is typically thought to be the best sort of evidence (such as one’s acquaintance with what’s immediately before them). The debate in epistemology is whether we can be rationally justified by facts without our being aware of these facts (e.g., Plantinga thinks that we can have, what he calls, warrant for our beliefs in virtue of their being produced by properly functioning faculties even if we are not aware that our faculties’ proper function[3]). The evidentialist thinks there must there be something of which we are aware that points to the truth of our belief (call this evidence) in order for one to be rational. The point is that what Craig identifies as the proper basis of religious knowledge seems to fall within this category of evidence since these are facts of which we are aware that point to the truth of our beliefs.

 Experience needs interpretation

But this is mostly a terminological issue. The more pressing issue with this distinction is that inner experience, all by itself, doesn’t seem to provide a good basis for knowing Christianity is true. The inner experiences that we have seem crucially to need interpretation. The typical religious experience does not seem to have enough content to serve as the primary basis of our knowledge.

For example, let’s say one is in an evangelistic service and experiences an overwhelming sense of awe. Is this sufficient all by itself to rationally believe that the claims being made in the service are true? It seems not. Many Christians would agree that this is inadequate if it was, say, a Mormon evangelistic service. But why should this experience justify the belief in the Christian gospel?

Craig is quite aware of this objection and says that the counterfeit experience of, say, the Mormon does nothing to take away from his veridical experience.[4] But one seems to need reason for thinking that the experience is in fact veridical. If merely being veridical was sufficient, then all skeptical concerns could similarly be dismissed. When the skeptic asks how one knows that one is not in the Matrix given it would be qualitatively indistinguishable experience, it simply doesn’t address her concern to assert that one’s experience is veridical. She’s likely to ask again, “but how do you know it’s veridical?”

Now Craig might not think that the Christian and Mormon experiences are qualitatively indistinguishable, but this seems impossible to verify. If they are qualitatively indistinguishable, then the rest of one’s evidences will need to play more than a subsidiary role. It will have to be this inner experience of God along with the Christian evidences that rationally justifies one’s belief.

Do Christians have evidence?

One motivation for Craig’s view is the fact that many Christians have never considered the apologetic evidence for Christianity, and yet they certainly seem to believe Christianity in a rational way. Craig thinks that one need not have familiarity with apologetics to know that Christianity is true. And I agree! But, I’ll end with a provocative statement: I think that the typical Christian has evidence for the truth of Christianity (including the inner and outer experiences of God, but also the natural signs seen in the world,[5] etc.) even if he or she does not know any formal apologetic arguments. There’s no doubt most Christians can greatly improve their evidence and rational basis by considering the rich tradition of Christian apologetics. But to think that most Christians do not have any evidence is just to have an unnecessarily narrowed concept of ‘evidence.’

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Notes:

[1] William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith:  Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3d ed. (Wheaton, Il: Crossway, 2008), 43.

[2] There are some approaches to Christian apologetics that understand “evidence” as only formal arguments and “evidentialism” as the view that formal apologetic arguments are necessary for faith. This is a much derided view. The only problem is that I know of no one who actually holds this view. The discussion of evidentialism in epistemology is far more precise (than the one in Christian apologetics).

[3] See Alvin Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief (Eerdmans, 2015).

[4] Craig, Reasonable Faith, 49.

[5] See C. Stephen Evans, Natural Signs and Knowledge of God: A New Look at Theistic Arguments (New York: OUP, 2010).

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Apologetics, Christianity

How to NOT shelter your kids from ideas: Teaching our kids to think well

May 24, 2017

(Note: this is part 1 in a 3 part series. Part 2, Part 3)

It’s well known that between 60-80% of kids are leave the church when they hit a college campus. It seems to me a driving reason for this is that many Christian kids have not been exposed to certain ideas and experiences and then, suddenly, they are. In a word, we shelter our kids in all the wrong ways. We keep them from a variety of things for their protection. And unless they never move out or they never move out of the Christian bubble (i.e., grow up in a Christian home, go to Christian school, go to Christian college, work in a ministry, and so on), then they will someday be exposed to these things. If we don’t prepare them for this moment, then it can drop like a bomb.

Here’s how it often goes:

Mom, Dad, youth pastor, and pastor tell little hypothetical Suzy that Darwinian evolution is a foolish idea for which there is no evidence. They are sure to mock the notion that we descended from apes and disparage the people that hold it. She is told only people who are angry at and hostile towards God believe in Darwin’s theories because they will do anything to avoid God. She grows up believing only idiots and angry atheists believe in Darwinian evolution. Suzy head’s off to college very confident in her Christian faith only to find that the smartest people on campus believe in Darwinian evolution and they don’t seem particularly concerned with God. There is a wide variety of evidence presented for Darwinian evolution in a variety of classes and there’s nothing from her upbringing that’s helpful in answering these challenges. The student feels betrayed and lied to. Before you know it, Suzy is in a crisis of faith.

I’d like to suggest that this disparage-other-worldviews-and-hope-for-the-best strategy is not the best strategy. I want to suggest that we instead homeschool. Now I don’t necessarily mean that we have to pull them out of public school to teach them reading, writing, and arithmetic at home (but maybe!). What I mean is that, no matter what schooling option is right for your family, there is a biblical mandate to teach our kids at home. Part of this is exposing our kids to ideas.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against sheltering our kids. This is a large part of just what it is to parent. We literally shelter our kids from the outside elements (i.e., provide a home), we keep them fed and clothed, and we protect them against things we think will likely harm them. Towards this end, my wife and I shelter our kids from many TV shows and movies given the nature of the particular show or film. We think that allowing our kids to be watch certain things will likely cause (or at least support) a harmful moral effect out of step with our values. At this particular time and much to their dismay, we don’t even allow our kids to sleepover their friend’s houses. We want to protect them. It is our responsibility to shelter them in appropriate ways.

But ideas are different. I want my kids to be aware of the important ideas that are out there even if the ideas run contrary to my Christian commitments. This is not to say I hit them up with technical philosophy when they are still in diapers (at least, not too much)! There is of course an age appropriate process. The goal is that by the time they encounter an alternative idea outside of my home, the idea at least sounds somewhat familiar and they have a framework for processing the idea.

How do we do this? In the coming days, I will present three strategies. The first strategy is to teach your children how to think well and for themselves.

Strategy #1

As Christians, we don’t often see our role as parents in teaching our kids how to think, and we certainly don’t always value our kids thinking for themselves. We are pretty quick to tell them what to think and what not to think. But the problem with this is that when all we do is teach them what to think, then we’ve taught them a methodology. We’ve taught them to accept whatever the authority figure in their live tells them. But here’s the news flash: we won’t always be the sole authority figure in kid’s lives. Send them to college and they will have brand new authority figures. You have literally trained them to simply believe whatever the new authority figure tells them. Rather they need to be used to having to weigh the evidence for their beliefs.

Now we all want true beliefs. But I want to suggest that more fundamentally we should want true beliefs that are formed in intellectually virtuous ways. Even if an authority figure is teaching something that is true, it is not being intellectually virtuous to simply believe it in virtue of it coming from an authority figure. We have to get our kids to ask why. They need to value logic and reason. They need to see that even if something is true, we have no reason to think that it is true until we, well, have evidence to think something is true.

Try it sometime. Ask your kids if they believe in God. If they have grown up in a Christian home, they will very likely say yes. Then ask why they believe that. If your child can’t answer, then he or she likely has not formed that belief in an intellectual virtuous way…yet. Help them see that there are reasons, but they have to see the reasons for themselves. It is the only way that they will make their faith their own.

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Apologetics

Apologetics in Service of the Gospel

May 9, 2017

[The following post appears at theologicalmatters.com]

It is sometimes said that apologetics is a waste of time because no one comes to Christ through apologetics. You can’t, after all, argue someone into the Kingdom.

Now, it may come as a bit of a shock, but I (being a professor of apologetics) actually agree that no one comes to Christ through apologetics. No one is won to Christ on the basis of apologetics since that’s simply not the basis upon which one is won to Christ. One comes to Christ on the basis of the Gospel and the Gospel alone.

But does that mean apologetics is a waste of time?

Well no, definitely not. Let’s tease out some of the confusions here. But first it may be helpful to define Christian apologetics. Christian apologetics is the discipline of commending and defending the truth claims of Christianity without making assumptions an unbeliever cannot make (e.g., we do not merely cite Scripture in giving the defense).

The first confusion here is thinking of apologetics as merely one way to do evangelism (perhaps for the nerdy few!). I’d like to suggest that apologetics is not merely evangelism to the more cerebral among us. In fact, it is best to understand apologetics as importantly related to evangelism, but a substantively different pursuit.

This is perhaps easiest to see given the different (but, again, related) aims of apologetics and evangelism. Apologetics aims to provide intellectual reasons for assenting to the claims of the Gospel and removing any intellectual roadblocks to faith. Evangelism aims to bring people to faith in Christ as the Holy Spirit works through the sharing of the Gospel.

How are apologetics and evangelism related, then? When it comes to outreach, apologetics is not, in my view, necessary for evangelism, but it is often incredibly helpful…[read more]

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Apologetics, Philosophy

What is intellectual doubt?

May 1, 2017

More than one way to doubt

There are a variety of ways to doubt. The two most talk about forms of doubt are emotional doubt and intellectual doubt.

We can sometimes have every intellectual reason in the world to believe something is true, and yet we doubt. This form of doubt, and we’ve all faced it to greater or lesser degree, is emotional doubt (or sometimes called psychological doubt). An extreme example of this form of doubting is one who has a phobia of flying. The person may know everything there is to know about flight safety, and know (intellectually) that flying on an airplane is, by almost every metric, safer than, say, driving in a car, and yet the person will dramatically doubt the reasonableness of getting on the plane.

When it comes to Christian faith, we can sometimes be in a very good position intellectually in believing the truths of Christianity, and yet there is a kind of emotional inability to take the plunge.

This is a real battle. It’s a battle that, as a philosopher, I’m frankly not well equipped to engage (I wouldn’t suggest me for marriage counseling either!). I would however recommend that you read Gary Habermas on this issue. He has two books on emotional doubt and he’s graciously published these on his website here and here.

Making this distinction is not to say that there are no intellectual considerations when it comes to emotional doubt. It is also not to say that there are no emotions involved when we doubt intellectually. Like most things, it gets messy. But I’m primarily focused on (and much better equipped to think about) intellectual doubt.

It is also very common to wrestle with some objection to one of our beliefs. When the objection has to do with whether a new season of Dancing with the Stars begins tonight, this is not too big of a deal (Okay, for some it might be a pretty big deal!). However, when we wrestle intellectually with objections at the worldview level (informing issues religious commitment, politics, morality, etc.), this can be quite difficult. At times, it forces us to call into question our most cherished beliefs.

But what is intellectual doubt?

I characterize intellectual doubt as when we experience the intellectual pull or the force of some objection to a belief we have.

What’s interesting about doubt is that when we doubt, we have not yet conceded the objection. We just feel the force of it. We find it, to some degree, plausible. The objection has a kind of pull on us and yet, if we are still in a place of doubt, we still believe.

Suppose that I believe that a new season of Dancing with the Stars begins tonight and someone tells me it does not begin until next week. I now have an objection to my belief. But I’m not sure who is right. So I may still believe that it begins tonight and yet I’m now doubting it.

The nature of intellectual doubt

With this, we can give something of an analysis of doubt.

A person, S, doubts that p if and only if…

  1. S believes that p is true.
  2. For some objection to p, S does not yet concede the objection, but finds it plausible to some degree.

Let’s illustrate. Suppose Smith believes that God exists. But let’s say someone challenges Smith with the problem of evil. Smith is asked how a good and all powerful God could create a world with so much and so much horrendous pain and suffering. Smith doesn’t have a good answer for this and it is claimed that the belief in God is incompatible with the evil we see in the world. Smith feels the force or the pull of this objection. Smith maintains his belief in God (we can assume he has reasons for this that make him rational) but is feeling the force of this objection. Smith doubts his belief since…

  1. Smith believes that God exists.
  2. Smith does not yet concede that the problem of evil defeats the belief in God, but she is finding the objection plausible.

What to do about doubt

Now I think a more detailed analysis can be given here and I have given that elsewhere.[1] However, this account suffices to make the following point. Our doubts should drive us to look deeper. They should drive us to investigate the evidence both for and against. We should investigate whether the objection indeed defeats our belief. If we are believe that Dancing with the Stars begins tonight and yet we have an objection to this fact, then it seems the only thing we can do to alleviate this tension is to investigate further. Somebody grab the TV Guide!

If we believe that God exists, but we just ran into a thoughtful expression of the problem of evil, then I don’t know what to do other than look further into it. It’s not like the problem of evil recently fell from the sky. This has been debated for millennia. Millennia! In fact, a great statement of the problem of evil can be found in Epicurus from about 24 centuries ago! Christians and other theists have responded. In fact, one could easily spend a decade reading the problem of evil literature and probably not exhaust it. I don’t actually think that the theistic response is a complete slam dunk. The problem of evil is a difficult problem, but there are certainly important and really helpful theistic responses to the problem. Though none of them are slam dunks, I am very satisfied by the Christian answer to the problem of evil. But this is because I’ve looked into it.

Christians very often tend to either shun objections. They just seem to be able to ignore them insulated against potential problem. Or some allow objections to simply have their way with them.

There’s nothing I know to do with an objection other than to push in and investigate the rationality of the objection

One last point. You may need to change your mind. You may find that something you believe is not well supported. On a personal note, I’ve yet to find the smoking gun objection when it comes to my Christian faith. That is, there is no salient objection to Christianity that I don’t find an extensive literature of thoughtful Christians offering thoughtful answers some of which I find very satisfying intellectually.

Given this, we shouldn’t, as Christians, be afraid to encourage folks to explore the answers to deep and difficult questions. Again, what’s the alternative?

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[1] “Doubt as Virtue: How to Doubt and Have Faith without Exploding” in The Christian Research Journal (Issue 39 Volume #4, 2016).

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Apologetics, Uncategorized

The Resurrection is unbelievable…unless, of course, it’s true

April 15, 2017

If someone told you that his religious leader had been killed and then appeared again, you probably wouldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t either…unless of course it was true. What I mean is that if it was true, then you’d expect to see some things that aren’t well explained unless it was true.

Christians don’t believe in the resurrection just because someone ( or 4 Gospel writing someones or 12 apostle someones) has claimed this. When we take a close look at the historical situation, there are some aspects that are very difficult to explain…unless of course it is true.

One fact that I have always found compelling is the steadfast belief of the earliest followers of Jesus in a resurrected Messiah. To claim that, though the alleged Messiah was crucified, he has risen from the dead is very unusual indeed.

What makes the most sense for the disciples of Jesus post-crucifixion? To go back to fishing or whatever life they had led prior. What doesn’t make sense is to claim that Jesus was still the Messiah despite his being crucified.

N.T. Wright makes this point well:

https://i0.wp.com/religionnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Wright.jpg?resize=563%2C309

The historian is bound to face the question: once Jesus had been crucified, why would anyone say that He was Israel’s Messiah? Nobody said that about Judas the Galilean after his revolt ended in failure in AD 6. Nobody said it of Simon bar-Giora after his death at the end of Titus’s triumph in AD 70. Nobody said it about bar-Kochbar after his defeat and death in 135. On the contrary, where messianic movements tried to carry on after the death of their would-be messiah, their most important task was to find another messiah. The fact that the early Christians did not do that but continued against all precedent to regard Jesus Himself as Messiah, despite outstanding alternative candidates such as the righteous, devout, and well-respected James, Jesus’ own brother, is evidence that demands an explanation…The rise of early Christianity, and the shape it took in two central and vital respects, thus presses upon the historian the question for an explanation. The early Christian retained the Jewish belief in resurrection, but both modified it and made it more sharp and precise. They retained the Jewish belief in a coming Messiah but redrew it drastically around Jesus Himself. Why? The answer early Christians themselves give for these changes, of course, is that Jesus of Nazareth was bodily raised from the dead on the third day after His crucifixion (“Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins”).

This answer arises immediately after Jesus is crucified and it is given by his closest disciples. When the crucifixion should have squashed the Jesus movement, it only ignited it. The followers of Jesus rally around a central claim: that Jesus had risen from the dead. This certified him as the true Messiah. A Messiah that exceeded and, in some ways, radically changed the 1st century Jewish expectation. As Wright claims, we are faced with asking how could the disciples be so bold and so ingenious? What explains this straightaway is they met with the risen Jesus. No one would believe this…unless of course it happened.

Moreover, this is not an easy claim to make. Those who made it faced fierce opposition.

Chuck Colson once said:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/af/Chuck_Colson.jpg

I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren’t true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn’t keep a lie for three weeks. You’re telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.

There are no plausible reasons for the followers of Jesus to claim that Jesus had risen from the dead…unless of course he did.

According to Tacitus, Nero “inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace” (Antiquities). There’s little doubt that Christians were persecuted and killed for their faith. There is a good case to be made that most of the immediate followers of Jesus (i.e., the disciples) were also tortured and killed for their faith. What’s interesting about this is that they were the ones who were in the know. They were the ones that could confirm this claim or come clean and admit that it is a lie. They could have recanted and all of the persecution goes away. But they did not. As Colson makes clear, this is impossible…unless of course it was true.

The resurrection is no ordinary claim. One can’t affirm it easily because it has purchase on the one who would affirm it. It’s a tough word. But it is the very words of eternal life.

The resurrection, it seems, is virtually unbelievable…unless it is true.

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Apologetics, Philosophy

Is religious experience evidence? Yes, but…

May 18, 2015

A major reason why people believe that God exists is because, well, they run into Him. From time to time, people have direct experiences of God Himself. This is where one has experiences that are not plausibly explained in any other way other than that God exists. It is actually very common for people to report having experiences that seem to be clearly supernatural. These include such things as miraculous events, healings, answers to prayer, and even an overwhelming sense of the presence of the divine.

Having a direct experience of something is of course the ideal reason for believing that the thing exists. You may have all the reason in the world to think some thing does not exist until that thing shows up and says hi. However, direct experience of God is often criticized, not so much because folks don’t have amazing stories that are impossible to explain away, but because these reports are too common and point in too many different directions. Christians have stories, Mormons have stories, Muslims have stories, Hindus have stories, Spiritualists have stories, etc. and etc. Moreover, some Christians have a much greater emphasis on the supernatural, and it seems practically everything counts (getting to church on time with a prime parking spot is a miracle, on this view).

How do we sort all of these reports out? I’ll provide two cautions in thinking about experiences, especially reports about experiences. But first let me I wish to say that if God exists, then we should expect there to be many reports of experiences of God, and having a genuine experience of God can clearly be evidence that God exists. With this said, I do agree with the critics that not every report (even of Christians) is accurate. People, for some reason, make up stories. Other times, people unintentionally make mistakes of interpretation. It could even be that one has indeed had a supernatural experience but that the experience is not an experience specifically of God. On the Christian view, the world is both natural and supernatural and the supernatural realm includes far more beings than just God. Christians have always believed that there are angelic and demonic experiences, and I have little doubt that some experiences that people think are caused by God could be caused by demonic forces designed to confuse and distract people from the truths about God.

So direct experiences can be the most powerful evidence one has, but, at the same time, experiences have at least two liabilities. First, it is easy to misinterpret experiences. We have to be very careful and judicious with what we take an experience to mean. What happens is one thing, but what it all means is another. So I think we can reasonably infer that God exists on the basis of clear experiences that are only explicable on the thesis that God is real. However, it is often precarious to begin to fill in specific doctrine on the basis of experience alone.

Secondly, as it relates to evidence for the existence of God, experiences of God are often very individualistic. Experiences such as these are not repeatable or sharable affairs as experiences. The traditional arguments for God’s existence are ones that anyone can use as evidence for the existence of God once they are understood, and they can be shared with anyone. But when we hear a story about a person who has had some unusual experience, we can be blessed by these and they can help build our faith. However, when the experience hasn’t happened to us, then again I think we need to be very careful how these reports inform our views.

So there is evidential value in experience but there is also a great value in being cautious.

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