The Apology of Martiro: Part 6 of 10

Fifth, your understanding of faith is not that which is promoted in the New Testament or by Christian intellectuals spanning the entire history of Christendom. Your rejection of faith is not a rejection of quintessentially Christian faith, but a faith of your own concoction. This, if you have studied logic, is known as attacking a straw man.

I am uninterested in how Christian intellectuals have redefined a word in order to suit their purposes. Far from being a "faith of my own concoction", I am adhering to the recognized definition of the word and understand it to mean a belief in something for which we have insufficient evidence. After all, if we did have evidence for a belief then faith would not be required as evidentiary support would be enough. Faith is believing something to be true without evidence or, at times, in spite of evidence to the contrary. That is what the word means and that is what I am rejecting. If you are expanding its meaning to include trust, reverence, devotion, obedience, or anything else, then simply use those words instead. Assigning additional meanings to existing words not only causes unnecessary confusion, but also serves to bolster their power by providing artificial lattice work. I suspect that is why it has been done and that is why you reject my rejection of faith. Even if you were to accept my argument that things should not be believed without evidence, you have ascribed so many other meanings to this word that knocking down one pillar will not collapse the building. There is a straw man here, but only one that has been overstuffed.

The Apology of Martiro: Part 5 of 10

Fourth, you make this confession without so much as suggesting what it is about the arguments for Christianity you found to be "misguided or patently absurd." I have a suspicion that it wasn't reason that was guiding you to such conclusions. For example, when you say "I slowly began to realize that my justifications for believing what I had been taught was true were no more valid that the countless claims made by any number of other religions, all of which I summarily rejected without qualm," it tells me you haven't really undertaken a serious study of Christian apologetics—or, if you have, you've rejected the apologist's arguments on the basis of a specious set of presuppositions which were not themselves ever subjected to rational scrutiny.

Again, my reason for not going into greater detail for the justification of my disbelief is because my original post was merely a confession, not an apologetic diatribe. Here are some of the apologetic arguments I have considered and a brief response to each.

Argument 1: Cosmological Argument - If everything that exists has a cause, why is a special exception made for God? The problem of infinite regress is unavoidable here, which is perhaps why the Kalam variant was introduced to contemporary audiences by William Lane Craig. However, if we are to accept the Kalam's premise that everything that began to exist has a cause, we still have no reason to suppose God is immune to this rule, only an assumption. Yet even if we make this assumption, we must ask ourselves why it is reasonable to believe that a god has always existed but unreasonable to make the same concession for the universe. The distinction is arbitrary. Even if a first cause is admitted, this cause does not necessarily entail personification as it could just as easily be naturally occurring. To assert a god must be the first cause would require evidence.

Argument 2: Teleological Argument (ex. Paley's Watchmaker) - Just because something has the appearance of design does not necessarily mean it was designed. The reason I can recognize that a watch I found lying on the beach was manmade is because I have prior knowledge of this fact. I know that people make watches and have observed both the design of a completed watch and the non-design of the raw materials composing it. Conversely, I don't have any experience with what proponents of this argument consider a "non-designed" world. I only have experience with natural objects that appear to have some level of complexity to them. However, complexity does not constitute design. A snowflake is much more complex than my name written on a piece of paper, yet we ascribe the cause of one to natural events and the other to design. The reason is because we understand the physics behind how a snowflake is created and know that this process occurs naturally, independent of any mind directing its motions. We must have a natural reference point in order for the recognition of design to have any meaning or else it is impossible to distinguish between the two.

Argument 3: Ontological Argument - Imagining the greatest thing possible does not prove existence. I can imagine the greatest unicorn to ever roam the Great Plains of Narnia but this does not mean it actually exists.

Argument 4: Pascal's Wager - The false dilemma here is that our only options are to worship the Christian God or not. However, there are many other gods that we would need to also worship in order to hedge our bets. In fact, we would need to believe in all gods if we were to wager correctly. This introduces the problem of insincerity, however, in that we are worshiping God/gods not out of reverence, but out of fear that something bad will happen if we don't. Those who make an earnest attempt to determine the correct God but are unable to do so would be condemned while those who never even undertook such a journey, preferring instead to simply blindly follow would be rewarded. I doubt this is the sort of reverence a just God would prefer.

Argument 5: Moral Argument - I will address this in your sixth objection.

The aforementioned claims all pertain more to belief in God than acceptance of Christianity. Specifically, I reject Christian claims because its supposed evidence is no more substantiated than that of other religious claims. Miracles performed by Jesus in the Bible have no basis for belief whatsoever in that they are merely anecdotal and in no way constitute evidence. A position of disbelief is actually the default by which any claim is subject to until the one making the claim has met their burden of proof. For example, I don't believe that there is a teapot orbiting the moon. If someone told me that there was a teapot orbiting the moon, the rational position would be to disbelieve them. I am justified in this disbelief because I have never seen a teapot orbiting the moon or have any evidence of teapots doing such things. However, if I pulled out a telescope and looked up at the moon, only to see a teapot whisking its way through space, my position would now change. The burden of proof for the claim that a teapot is orbiting the moon would have been met and my beliefs would shift accordingly.

The same is true with God. I do not believe that Allah, Zeus, or any other ancient deities actually exist. I am justified in this belief because no evidence has ever been presented to me that Allah or Zeus exist. Despite all of ancient Greece and 1.6 billion Muslims alive today telling me that these gods exist, I have no reason to believe it because their personal feelings and anecdotes are not sufficient. You probably feel the same way. You immediately recognize that although someone may be passionate about a belief to the point of certitude, this belief must still be validated with evidence. Hence, you don't believe in Allah or Zeus. You believe in the Christian God. You believe in this God, presumably, because you feel that a certain burden of proof has been met to justify this belief. You may have affirmations from friends and family that these beliefs are true, personal feelings of awe and wonderment whenever you think about this god, or apologetics that you believe all justify faith in the Christian God. Most importantly, you must have something that is different from what Muslims have that convinces you that you're right and they're wrong.

And that's when we start to look at evidence. All of the justifications of faith I just named are not evidence. Even something as supposedly scientific as Christian Apologetics only serves to postulate questions that it then attempts to answer by presupposing a Christian God. And that is why I struggle with faith. In every other aspect of my life, I apply a standard of critical thought to determine what is and what is not true. Nothing is exempt from this level of scrutiny because my understanding of reality would suffer otherwise. When I apply the same level of critical thought to Christianity as I do to every other religion, indeed every other aspect of my life, it simply doesn't measure up. I don't believe that Mohammed ascended to heaven on the back of a winged horse at the exact spot that the Temple Mount now resides. This is a perfectly rational position to take and no Christian would fault me for taking it. Yet, I have the exact same amount of evidence that Jesus rose from the dead, Moses talked to God, or any number of such miracles as I do for the claim that Mohammed ascended to heaven. Therefore, I must either apply critical thought and reject both claims or suspend it and accept both. But no one accepts both. They believe one and deny the other, attributing their decision to faith. This is problematic because it in no way allows us to arrive at an accurate understanding of our world and in many ways hinders it. Faith is simply the belief in an idea despite no corroborating evidence and, sometimes, even in the face of conflicting evidence. It is not a path to truth.

The Apology of Martiro: Part 4 of 10

Third, it is unclear why, if you had undertaken any serious study of apologetics, "things like faith were easily ripped apart since they could appeal not to reasons, but only authority." Faith is an existential response to God, à la Kierkegaard, but it is founded in facts. The natural theology of Thomas Aquinas and the Thomists, when coupled with the historical apologetics of N.T. Wright, Gary Habermas, and William Lane Craig, provides a sturdy intellectual foundation for the Christian faith. And if you've read the New Atheists, you know they have nothing on Aquinas. Dawkins attempt to tackle the Five Ways in his book The God Delusion, for instance, is quite demonstrably pitiful.

This is where the emotional pleas are made. After all, how could anyone have read these great apologetical works and not have arrived at the same conclusions at you. Clearly, the only explanation must be that I did simply not "undertake any serious study".

If we are to abide by Kierkegaard's Existentialism and take our necessary leap of faith, we must admit that we are uncertain of our choice. For if we possessed certainty in our decision, faith would be rendered moot and the consequences of our decision assured. Let us now suppose that there are two men, a Muslim and a Christian. Each desires to take this leap of faith, knowing that their reason and study have brought them only thus far and the next step to God must be taken only through faith. Which one then will be taking a step closer to God and which one will leap only into the abyss? Have we a way to tell? If faith is our only means of knowledge, both paths are indistinguishable. A man may have faith in a great many things, but if those things have no basis in reality then his faith has served not to guide his steps, but rather to obscure them altogether.

Now let us observe Aquinas' Five Ways. The first three are quite similar and jointly form what is commonly referred to as the Cosmological Argument. This apologetic maintains that since actions have causes, we can trace this unbroken chain of events all the way back to the beginning to determine what set them in motion. The argument goes on to postulate that since nothing can cause itself to happen, something outside of the known universe must represent this initial cause.

This cause is said to be God who created everything from nothing. God was able to do this, it is claimed, because He resides beyond the realm of time, reason, and physics and is not bound by the rules dictating how everything else must behave. Despite the fact that there is no evidence for this belief, for the sake of argument I will concede that something from outside of our reality could have created something from nothing. Even if this were true, nothing presupposes that this thing must be personified. It could just as easily be a natural event. To go one step further and claim that this new cause is now more than a cause, that it has godlike attributes is simply a claim for which we have no evidence. All we have managed to do is move the chain of events one step further back, yet we are no closer to answering our original question than we were before.

The Apology of Martiro: Part 3 of 10

Second, skepticism is not, as a global philosophical method, fit for the pursuit of truth. It is epistemologically and pragmatically self-refuting. We should only be skeptical of claims of which we have reason to be skeptical. A strict Cartesian foundationalism that begins from one indubitable fact of consciousness simply will not do.

I never claimed skepticism as a "global philosophical method". I merely said that I am skeptical about this particular claim. That's it. You seem to think that because of that stance, I am advocating that anything apart from Cogito ergo sum  is unknowable. A position that advanced the notion that everything should be completely rejected until demonstrably proven true, only to then have those demonstrations called into question until they too could be proven true, etc., etc. is indeed self-refuting and unfit for the pursuit for truth. In this matter, I agree with you. Fortunately, at no point in my post did I claim this philosophy so it is somewhat curious that you chose to argue against it...I would hate to think that anyone who "studied logic would attack a straw man".

As for your assertion that "we should only be skeptical of claims of which we have reason to be skeptical", if the notion of an invisible, all-powerful, world creating, omnipresent, omniscient, Red Sea splitting, demon fighting deity for which we have no evidence for is not one of them then I don't know what is. The extraordinary nature of each of these claims is reason enough to pursue further inquiry, but taken as a whole we should at least pause for a moment before readily accepting them altogether.  I am skeptical when Muslims tell me that Mohammed flew up to heaven on a winged horse. Why would I not also be skeptical when Christians tell me that Jesus walked on water?

The Apology of Martiro: Part 2 of 10

I must say, this is a very elegant confession. But it raises a few questions.

First, if you were interested in studying the other side, why sample the writings of Dawkins and Hitchens? Any atheist worth his or her salt knows that the New Atheism movement is not intellectually respectable. They aren't saying anything new, nor are they the best at providing reasoned objections against theism. For that, you'd do better to read Michael Martin's Atheism: A Philosophical Justification or the two volumes Martin edited with Monnier: The Impossibility of God and The Improbability of God. Furthermore, the New Atheists typically end up being far more "fundamentalist" than their religious opponents.

Referencing some of the more well known atheist writers such as Dawkins or Hitchens was merely done for the readers' benefit as these are authors most people are familiar with. I thought it unnecessary to also include George H. Smith, Bertrand Russell, or the oratorical wit of Matt Dillahunty. Few people know of the former two and virtually no one outside of the Austin, Texas community is familiar with the latter.

As an aside, I'm not sure how a "New Atheism Movement" can be accused of not saying anything new. If that is the case, then why call it a "new" anything? I wasn't even aware such a thing existed as I tend not to get caught up in "movements". Also, who said an atheist had to be worth his salt? We lost our saltiness long ago...didn't you know that?   

The Apology of Martiro: Part 1 of 10

In my last post, I revealed that I am no longer a Christian. I explained that my faith had been slowly dying over many years and, despite my sincerest efforts to resurrect its validity, it could no longer serve as a means of understanding the world around me. I intended my post to be an honest declaration more than anything else, the first tentative steps into a new world lined with the uncertainty of reactions from both friend and foe alike. My intent was not to expound on the reasons for my apostasy or dwell on the minutiae of every single argument used to justify my decision any more than was necessary to simply make this announcement. After all, few people quote Kierkegaard at their Baptism. Still, this rather modest confession was an apparent affront to one reader who seemed to take issue with my decision. He deduced that my deconversion could not have come from a sincere attempt to find truth, but (rather ironically) from intellectual apathy to the point where I had simply discarded my faith arbitrarily at the discretion of my whims. Initially I was taken aback by such a condemnation. After all, to disagree with the conclusions someone has drawn on a particular issue is one thing, but to question his sincerity of discerning truth is another matter altogether. To attack a man's ideas is to challenge his intellect, but to attack his sincerity is to question his character. It is not the sort of indictment anyone should level against another without first understanding both the nature of the person they are attacking and their own motivations for doing so.

                                          

And now to address my assailant directly:

To the former, you have no knowledge. You don't know anything about me other than what you have read in one blog post. As for the latter, I have my suspicions. Only someone who is emotionally invested in a particular issue has any reason to stray from the matter at hand into the realm of personal attacks. When someone becomes emotionally invested in a position, no amount of empirical evidence or rational arguments to the contrary can ever dissuade them from their original stance. By attacking my character, you revealed the most obvious flaw in the arguments you believe give credibility to your position. You revealed a bias. And no truth, no matter how obvious, can ever penetrate the roadblocks erected to "block the path of inquiry".

In the next few posts, I will respond to each charge my accuser has leveled against me. His words will be highlighted in red while mine shall remain in black. At the end of my rebuttal, you can judge for yourself whether or not I have made my case regarding God's existence. Perhaps I shall convince you of my position, perhaps not. But as for the other pronouncement against me, that I am somehow insincere in my desire to know truth, I welcome any challenge without hesitation. All of my careful deliberations and words of reflection amount to nothing if my character does not stand. Though I may one day succumb to timidity and pass through the quiet doors of deference in all else, in the face of this challenge I will relent to no man.