Seeking out disagreement

You can certainly expose yourself to different ideas and opinions without leaving comments on the Christian blogs you are visiting. The only thing I hear that sounds even potentially like trolling would be the comments. Since the bloggers and their readers may not know your motivation, I could understand how it might come across as trolling.

NFQ just commented on my blog – i’m a “christian” who in employed full-time at a church. NFQ was crazily respectful and gracious.

As one who is inside the “christian” camp, Leah’s above comment about discussing religion with those who are simply culturally religious is very frustrating. I think it’s frustrating for everyone…

Also, sorry if any Christians come trolling your site to be obnoxious. Several of the atheist blogs I read run into this frequently. Oddly, the same trolls can find my site sometimes….

I can appreciate your willingness to surround yourself with people who don’t believe like you do. I have some family members that I dearly love and respect that are either agnostic/atheistic. As a Christian, I find the “new atheism” more interesting than offensive. It seems to be less intellectual than the atheism of old. Ironically, it almost carries with it the same tone that religious fundamentalism taunts. Here is an interesting article by David B. Hart:

“A truly profound atheist is someone who has taken the trouble to understand, in its most sophisticated forms, the belief he or she rejects, and to understand the consequences of that rejection. Among the New Atheists, there is no one of whom this can be said, and the movement as a whole has yet to produce a single book or essay that is anything more than an insipidly doctrinaire and appallingly ignorant diatribe.” (see the whole article at: [Link removed -- Google flagged this site for malicious software installs. -NFQ])

I am in agreement with this statement. I’d be interested to hear Leah, NFQ, and vjack interact with it. I happen to think that anti-intellectualism is not limited to Christians. Anti-intellectualism is pervasive throughout all spheres of our culture. If you don’t believe me visit the magazine rack at your local convenience store.

On another note, I’m looking to start reading some classic atheistic works and was wondering if any of you all have any suggestions, save Hitchens and Dawkins. I recently purchased Bertrand Russell’s “Why I Am Not a Christian” for starters.

@Jarod – I really don’t think your quote matches with reality. Most of the “new atheists” make exactly the same intellectual arguments that those before them made. They definitely understand the beliefs they’re rejecting. What’s different is their tone. In that sense, they are less “intellectual,” but I don’t think that’s so bad. What really separates the new atheists from the others is that in the past many atheists thought religion was wrong, but didn’t see it as all that horrible a thing. The new atheists see religion as very harmful to society. That means they have to argue not just that it’s wrong but that it hurts people. They are more outraged at religion, and are arguing that it’s really bad, so they offend religious people more. That doesn’t mean they don’t also make all the correct intellectual arguments against religion.

Remember too, though, that part of the difference is that they’re really trying to convince people. Most people don’t make these sorts of decisions as the result of rational argumentation. Missionaries don’t go up to someone and start providing historical evidence for the reliability of the gospels. They make emotional appeals. They say things like “Look how much good work our church does.” Atheists attempting to “deconvert” people say “Look how many children your church molests.” I can fully understand why you don’t want to read books of stuff like that – it’s not the real reason religion is wrong – but don’t confuse the presence of emotional arguments with a lack of intellectual arguments.

NFQ: I’m not sure why it’s flagging the link I posted as having malicious software. I’ll check that out.

Aristarchus: My intention is not to promulgate a generalization on modern/postmodern atheism. I’m not one to think that we should always write off our emotions: human emotion is a beautiful thing. I don’t mean to sound as though I was down-playing emotional appeal. When we appeal to someone by saying that something is bad (morally-loaded term), one should be prepared to speak of what is good (morally-loaded term). This is an inconsistency that I run across in these types of dialogs.

Leah: Thanks for the suggestions. If you interested in reading some works by Christians who give a reasonable apologetic, I’d recommend the following:

Why I Believe in God, by Cornelius Van Til (not sure if this one is still published)
Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton
Reason for God, by Timothy Keller
Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, by Flannery Oconnor

Blessings,
Jarod

“Am I just being a disrespectful troll”

Nope. Disrespect comes through disrepsectful behavior, not through asking questions, or even in sharing a viewpoint. It’s no different from my being here on your blog. I don’t think I’m being disrespectful, anyway

“I haven’t heard any good answers to these questions yet,”

Then it seems to me you haven’t looked very well, or in the right places, or perhaps what you mean to say is that none of the answers you heard were persuasive to you as an atheist. I’ve seen plenty of good answers from skeptics that were not persuasive, but I still thought they were good answers and logically coherent. Meant respectfully, btw…

“great introduction to the importance of critical thinking about “supernatural” beliefs. ”

How would critical thinking with regard to supernatural beliefs be distinguished from critical thinking with regard to non-supernatural beliefs?

I don’t think you are being a “troll” as well NFQ.

Define a “good answer.” It’s very hard for me to understand how one can put such authority in their own rational understanding of “the facts,” especially when your own rationality is viewed as being a bi-product of evolutionary mechanism. To put it another way, how is one able to comprehend the meaninglessness or meaningfulness of their own existence simply by their finite interpretation of the “facts” when your own rationality is at the mercy of the ethereal “chance.” Why trust your own understanding? This is “authority of reason” is both mythical and unconvincing to me, though I can understand where you are coming from based on your critical thinking processes. I just don’t agree with the foundation from which your argument springs. It seems that you are smuggling in an a priori into your argument.

I will readily admit that I am doing the same when I say that our knowledge is analogical to God’s knowledge. God, our creator, is the ultimate interpreter and we are the finite re-interpreters. We think our own thoughts after God’s thoughts, that is to say, God is always presupposed in our thinking whether we acknowledge His existence or not. Our knowledge is necessarily related to God’s knowledge in that all facts exist by virtue of God’s interpretation. Our reinterpretation does not somehow nullify the reality of the triune God’s Interpretation.

“Arguing about God’s existence, I hold, is like arguing about air. You may affirm that air exists, and I that it does not. But as we debate the point, we are both breathing air all the time.” Van Til

Jarod

“I have not seen one that I would call “logically coherent.” … Where do you think “the right places” are to be looking?”

Hmm. Browsing through your blog, and with your open-minded demeanor, you must just not mean what I think you mean. How about this: what is an area you think is logically incoherent?

“The process is the same; that’s the point. Many people “compartmentalize” and never get around to applying their otherwise good critical thinking skills to their supernatural beliefs.”

I agree completely. It’s also true for the set of non-believers. Critical thinking is rare across the board. There just happen to be more belivers to exhibit the trait

@knitman: Thanks for piping in. My question isn’t necessarily directed towards NFQ, but to anyone of my anti-theist/atheist/agnostic [AAA hereafter] friends. My statements are not meant to personally attack anyone, but to give an απολογία.

I commend your observation that I am stating God’s existence as fact. My AAA friends are standing on an epistemology that is assumed as well. This is what I’m wanting to tengo with. You might have guessed that my epistemology is the eternal Word of God, which is that knowledge by which God makes Himself known. If there were no knowledge of God there would be no knowledge of man. G.K. Chesterton said it in a more a tongue-and-cheek way: “If there were no God, there would be no atheists.” If the knowledge of God wasn’t an inherent reality in the mind of humanity, there would be no market for denying His existence.

NFQ stated in her “about” section that there are parts of religion that she finds incomprehensible. Indeed, the eternal, triune God is incomprehensible. However, He has made Himself comprehensible by virtue of His intervention in human history through His Word, and through the person and work of Jesus Christ. And it is in this person that I put my faith and trust.

Jarod

“If one of your premises has no logical reason to be taken as a given, you are not making a logical argument.”

There’s a genuine and demonstrated difference between logical validity and the soundness of an argument. An argument can be logically coherent and flat out wrong at the same time. Critical thinkers will recognize this distinction.

@knitman, I think you overstate the point a little, in a way that would lead to radical skepticism. Technically, my belief that my sense perceptions correspond to the existence of physical objects in a material world is also belief in an idea. In this case, I am basing my whole thinking (and my choice of path when there is an open manhole in my way) upon an idea that I have decided is fact. I have never proven the existence of a material world or my ability to perceive it.

I don’t think it’s fair to criticize religious people for making a different leap of faith in their cosmology, simply because it is a leap. Part of the way I justify my leap is by pointing out that no one has yet had experiences that suggest the physical world is an illusion, and this model has useful predictive powers.

My attack on parallel religious lines of argument is that their faith based model has poor predictive powers and doesn’t accord with observed data.

Ok, sometimes words have different meanings in a logic textbook than in a dictionary. Both are valid uses of the word. There’s a certain sense in which the argument “If I know A and that A implies B, then I know B” is logically valid. However, if you have no reason to believe A is true, it is still illogical (in the everyday sense) to believe B. So unless you have some reason to believe the Bible is a reliable document, it’s not logical to believe your argument. Obviously we can’t prove here that there is no logical argument for God. That’s the point of this blog, many other blogs, lots of books, etc. Many of us, though, have heard a lot of smart people try to argue for God, and haven’t found those arguments at all logical. The fact that the arguments you give above are the best you can come up only reinforces this in my mind.

@NFQ:

To clarify: I believe God, eternal Being, although incomprehensible, reveals Himself in ways that are comprehensible (naturally and specially).

@knitman & @Leah:

I would not consider myself a fundamentalist in the way in which you use the word. I do believe in the “fundamentals” of Christianity, but I do not identify with the movement called “fundamentalism” and its Constantinian roots. I am grieved at how this movement has caused many people harm.

I do consider God’s existence as fact because I believe He presupposes our thoughts and existence. To me, God is a personal being and not an idea. My anti-theist/atheist/agnostic (and sometimes ID) friends often unwittingly presuppose an idea in their argumentation, namely, the principle of uniformity. They reason by induction upon this idea without justification. Hume called this the “problem of induction.” I appreciate how you (Leah) recognize this as a “leap of faith.” This hardly ever gets called into question because the “facts” are often preached rather dogmatically and without question.

I believe that God’s providence and governance of the created order provides science with the uniformity of nature that it seeks to employ. I am not anti-science by any means, in fact, I believe that the physical sciences in no way contradict or threaten the reality of God. However, many scientists of the day tend to postulate their data/theories along with certain philosophical doctrines that elevate the authority of the scientific method in fanatical fashion. I’ve heard this referred to as “scientism.” I am in agreement with what the late agnostic Neil Postman wrote:

“Scientism… is the desperate hope, and wish, and ultimately the illusory belief that some standardized set of procedures called ‘science’ can provide us with an unimpeachable source of moral authority, a suprahuman basis for answers to questions like ‘What is life, and when, and why?’ ‘Why is death, and suffering?’ ‘What is right and wrong to do?’”

From: Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology

Blessings,

Jarod