Epistomology

People sometimes turn epistomology into this game of hide and seek, where the truth is out there somewhere, maybe, and we all have to try and find where it's hidden. Fundamentalist Christians claim we have to look in the Bible. Determinists tend to say we should use empirical induction and deductive reasoning. Relativists like to say that we can find it anywhere.

I guess, in some ways I take the stand of all three. I think the Bible is a great source for truth. We find some very clear messages on ethics, particularly. That doesn't mean empirical induction and deductive reasoning don't work. They definitely seem to. Even relativists have a point. After all, if there is a God, why wouldn't He show Himself in more than one place?

Ultimately, where we go to find our "truth" says a lot about what we consider to be most reliable. Fundamentalist Christians say the Bible is the most reliable. Determinists think that they themselves are the most reliable. Relativists don't seem to think that anyone in particular is all that reliable.

This time, I may have to side with the relativists.

Fundamentalist Christians tout the Bible for basically everything. However, looking historically, how many times has a Biblical interpretation of something scientific turned out to be the right one? Flat Earth? Nope. Geocentric universe? Not quite. Couple thousand year old Earth? Not looking good.

Of course, after the fact people did a fine job of using Bible verses to support the new, scientifically proven view. However, if all Biblical scholars reading the Bible got one interpretation out of it, what are the odds they were all just reading it wrong? Even if they were, what does that say about the reliability of our track record of interpreting the Bible on a scientific basis?

Reason doesn't fare much better. Deductive reasoning is only as good as its premises, which are by necessity known by experience or intuition. Both of those things have been pretty shady for me in the past, and I consider myself a fairly reliable guy. Inductive reasoning is far from conclusive. To base an entire worldview on reason is to accept that we cannot know anything for sure. We could be completely wrong about most things.

And Relativists? Well, realistically, it is pretty unreasonable and unbiblical all at the same time. It does have a sort of appeal to it though. It's kind of like standing up from the frantic hide and seek game and setting up a lawn chair on the side lines.

It's Your Turn, Atheism!

Often in my previous writings, I seem to give an admonishment of sorts to Christians I feel get lazy in their thinking. On the other hand, I think I often give atheists a little bit of an edge when debating. This isn’t because I think atheists are smarter or because atheists have better arguments. It’s generally because I expect more from Christians. Christians should know better. They have a history of placing importance in rational thought with great thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis of Assisi, and even modern apologeticists like C.S. Lewis. To see a Christian simply not care about the evidence for their faith is mind numbingly frustrating.

However, that being said, this one’s for the atheists out there. I know you’ve been waiting patiently for me to write about you. While I am frustrated with Christians who don’t think logically, at least some of them come straight out and admit that they believe Faith is more important that Reason. They at least say that Reason will never be able show truth in the way Faith can, and Reason is at best a crutch to help us understand what we should be taking on Faith. To these Christians, I tip my cap, say God Bless, and realize that by their own definition, I will never be able to reasonably convince them of differences we may have.

Atheists don’t have this excuse. Atheists usually believe that Reason is much more important than Faith. I’m not talking about agnostics or skeptics: they have a completely different set of issues, which I hope to go into sometime. But a true atheist, who strongly believes God does not exist, has no excuse for faulty reasoning.

The worst part is that when atheists usually commit these logical errors, they do so while berating the idiotic Christians who could believe in “Tooth fairies, unicorns, Santa Claus, and God”. So rather than bash on the Christians who actually live out what they believe, maybe we can go over some of worst arguments I’ve heard atheists use.

“Atheists can be just as good of people as Christians.”

                Do atheists not see how insignificant this point is? Christianity does not claim that Christians are good people. Some Christians may claim they are good, just like I’m sure most people of any religion would. But the fundamental doctrine of Christianity is that “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” The Bible is full of exhortations to Christians to not live an empty faith and to stop the hypocrisy of their lives (look basically anywhere in James or in much of the gospels, to name a couple places). Christians are decidedly not good people. But then again, neither are atheists from a Christian viewpoint, and I feel this may strike the cord harder. If you, as an atheist, feel judged by Christianity, that is likely because you don’t meet up to what we think God’s standards are. It does not mean we think you are a worse person then people already Christians. Christianity is a tool to help the people who need help, and they come from every area of life.

                Besides, how well a group of people carries out their belief hardly is proof of the validity of their belief. Look at the cult of Charles Manson. Its members had strong convictions as to what was true, and they followed those convictions to the bitter end. Does that mean the cult had true beliefs? Not at all. Christians are humans too, and they still make human mistakes. But that does not necessarily invalidate the beliefs they hold.

“The Theory of Evolution/The Big Bang proves the Bible lies.”

                The Bible is no science book: we’ll give you that. Or I will at least, I’m sure you’ve heard your fill of fundamentalist objections. But lets examine this statement. Assuming all of these theories are true, what does that really prove? It proves that the theories of science held most commonly by scientists today (and are most likely to accurately represent our universe) are more or less in direct conflict with the views of the Bible. That is, Jewish writers thousands of years ago did not understand redshift, general relativity, genetic mutation, or natural selection. How dare a Jewish writer not understand evolution when the microscope wouldn’t be invented for thousands of years? How dare the Bible not explain general relativity, a theory based on the constancy of the speed of light, when geometry wouldn’t even be invented by the Greeks for a few hundred years?

                You might ask why God didn’t tell people to write down “In the beginning, nearly 14 billion years ago, to be precise, matter, energy, and time were created as they began expanding from a point of singularity.” Well, besides that the Hebrews may not have even been able to grasp how many a billion is, they certainly didn’t have any idea of what matter or energy is or even a relativistic view of time. “In the beginning” doesn’t sound like such a bad way to explain it after all.

                Even more importantly, why assume God told the people what to write at all? Despite what some Christians will tell you, the Bible doesn’t say that it is historically inerrant or that it is scientifically accurate or even that God told people what to write.  What it says is that the whole Bible is useful for teaching and instruction, and that the Bible is God breathed: God inspired. Sure God inspired the Bible. But just ask what the Ancient Hebrew word for micro bacteria is, and you may understand why the process of evolution is not given in the Bible.

“There are lots of other religions, and they all believe they are right.”

                This has logical fallacy written all over it. To say that one religion is wrong because there are lots of other alternative explanations is not only ridiculous, but logically unsupportable.  Say we have an equation: 5x + 2 = 0. The set of numbers we could take an answer from is at least the entire line of real numbers. Even if you realize that the answer has to be rational, that still leaves an infinite set of numbers from which the correct answer (only one in this case) can be taken. Here, obviously the answer is -2/5, but perhaps you have an army of elementary school students, each with a different answer. Would that invalidate the correctness of -2/5? Not at all.

                I think the point of this statement is not usually meant to provide an actual proof of Christianity, but perhaps an attempt to give the Christian some perspective. Maybe this statement is meant to say, “Look at all the other religions. They all think they are right too. Maybe faith isn’t such a great measure of proof.” If this is the point, then you’re right. By the same statement, though, don’t trust so heavily on your own beliefs. It works both ways.

“Christianity has been used to do lots of bad things in this world.”

                Absolutely it has. The Crusades, the Inquisition, much of the Dark Ages in general, murders of doctors who perform abortions, and much more can be attributed to the religion of Christianity. If you expand the statement to include all of religion, you get even more, including Islamic jihad, and the majority of conflict in the Middle East throughout history. However, on the other side of the coin, Stalin was a stanch atheist. Castro is a staunch atheist. Pol Pot and the Chinese revolution and Tiananmen square were all results of atheism. Nietzsche, an atheist, said “God is Dead” and predicted that following His death, social paradigms would fail and anarchy would break loose.

                Now, it’s no use simply divvying up the evil acts of history into “Religious” and “Nonreligious” piles. The simple point of the previous paragraph was to show that there have been evil people in both camps. The 20^th century was extremely good at showing that people are just as capable of using atheism to justify the evil they do as they are of using religion. There are evil people in this world, and they will use whatever they find convenient to do whatever they want to do. Don’t blame it on some contradiction within Christianity though. Blame it, if anything, on the gullibility of mankind.

There are more, but I think I covered many of the more frequent arguments. Of course, atheists will point to this and say it is nothing more than a straw man created by me so I can knock down the easiest arguments. Well, if I never went near the actually strong arguments of atheism, than I suppose this would be. But the purpose of this article is not to prove atheism wrong. It is instead to try to wake up atheists who themselves get lazy with their thinking. You are supposedly rational creatures. You should be able to formulate a decent argument based on something that isn’t so obviously flawed.

The Bible's True Place

                I feel like lately I have been propagating a very serious error regarding the Bible. I have written a bit about how I believe the Bible is not completely true and how we should not trust in it, but in God. I stand behind everything I’ve said so far, but I have one important caveat.

                Why should I be able to take down what God has inspired? Reason and science are great achievements of mankind, but they are only that: achievements of mankind. The Bible was inspired by God! Whether God chose a people and hand-made their history step by step or took an ordinary culture and used it for extraordinary things, both amount to essentially the same thing, don’t they? I feel humbled today, thinking that I could deem to say so much about the Bible without looking at myself first.

                The biggest error I’ve made lately is the cultural relativism I’ve subjected the Bible to. Who am I to throw out 39 of the books of the Bible (40 if you count Revalations) and say the remaining 26 or 27 will do? Who am I to take the Bible’s teachings and try to mold them into the cultural expectations of today? If we are going to believe in an absolute truth, why go halfway? Most importantly, who am I in this lost age of chaos to undermine the only reputable source of direction we can find?

                Maybe I’ve gotten this way through familiarity. It is certainly Biblical to feel rebellious, and it is socially acceptable to question “common sense”. I feel my attitude has been misdirected. The Bible is not at fault here. People who use the Bible as a curtain to hide their own sins of pride and laziness are the ones at fault. Just as much, the people like me who trivialize the Bible’s place in our society are also to blame.

                Here’s to the Bible: God’s word. Whether perfect or imperfect, literal or figurative, complete or partial, God-spoke or God-breathed, the Bible is not outdated or irrelevant or worthless. If we believe Christianity at all, we should treat this book with the respect it deserves. I’ve lately been using God’s word as a footstool, helping me reach other things, but relatively unimportant once I’ve done so. God’s book should be my ladder, which I continually climb, because it is folly to trust in my own understanding. Reason only gets me as far as I am able to use it, and to say I can discern everything is simply self flattery and self deceit.

                Finally, here’s to finding the Bible’s place in our lives: somewhere between my view and a fundamentalists, I guess, but ultimately still at the top.

The Bible Idol

I think when I talk about the Bible, people often get the vibe that I do not respect the Bible. I know I sometimes say things like, “the Bible is not the final authority” and “the Bible is not always 100% literally true” or “there are parts of the Bible that are downright contradictory to what Jesus said”. When people hear me say these things, I get the impression that they view me as a heretic, or even blasphemous. At the very least, they think I am seriously confused.

I understand the appeal of viewing the Bible as absolutely correct and the only sure way to know truth. It means we know exactly what happened, what we should do, and what is expected from us. The Bible gives us a sure footing for faith, if only because it is something we can turn to as explanation for anything we do:

                “Why shouldn’t we steal?” Because the Bible says so.

                “How do I know Jesus loves me?” Because the Bible says so.

                “Why is homosexuality wrong?” Because the Bible says so.

                “Why should we believe the Earth was created in 6 days?” Because the Bible says so.

                “How do we know Jesus really said the things He did?” Because the Bible says so.

                “How do I know I’m going to heaven?” Because the Bible says so.

I can see how having this fail proof way of interpreting the world is alluring and even convenient.  

Now, here is where many Christians will stop me. “I don’t act like that,” they’ll say. “I have reasons for why I believe the way I do.” Do you really? If you pretended you never read the Bible and then looked at the evidence with an open mind, would you still come to the conclusion that the Earth is only a few thousand years old?

More importantly is the answer to other questions.  “How do I know Jesus loves me?” Well, if the Bible is the only thing that tells you this, I can understand why you’d feel under attack when the Bible is under attack. When the Bible is the foundation of your faith, I can understand why you guard the Bible so carefully. I'm not saying faith is bad. Faith is good! Reason does not supplant faith in importance. Reason should support Faith. Faith is not always blind. Faith can be earned.

Yet, I propose that Faith not only can be earned, but should be earned.

There are several reasons why the Bible can be considered by anyone who claims to have an open mind on the subject to be wrong in several key areas. I think the Genesis 1 story fairly obviously contradicts the science we have found. The chilling accounts of infanticide and genocide in the Old Testament should be more troubling. The changing moods of the Old Testament God, the evil spirits He sends to torment men and cause them to sin, the games He plays with Job are all concepts that cannot be explained away, although it is often tried. When a respected pastor of a congregation believes that if any Amelekites were alive today it would be his duty to destroy them, we know there is a moral problem. At that point, it is difficult to split differences between Christian fundamentalism and Islamic jihad. The merciless injustice of the Old Testament is in direct conflict with the humble love shown by Jesus. To portray God in this horrific light is perhaps the greatest blasphemy of all.

Regardless of whether you agree with any of the last paragraph, there will come a time when you will hit a troubled spot in the Bible where you cannot quite understand a passage, or seem to feel the Bible is being self contradictory (maybe it is…). Whatever it is, not only will your faith in the Bible be tested, but the entire weight of your faith will be tested along with it. Because, remember, the Bible is what justifies your faith. This is perilous. It almost killed my faith. Because, even though the Bible is a great great book, the most inspired book ever written, to build your faith on anything other than God is to build your house on the sand.

This is a big problem I see in Christians’ faiths today. They view the triune God as the Father, Son, and Holy Bible. We place what the Bible says above what Jesus and, more often, what the Holy Spirit says. I understand that it is hard to listen to the Holy Spirit sometimes. It is difficult to pick out what it says amongst the mumbo jumbo of our own lives and our own inner thoughts. That is one of the reasons it is important to pray together and to have a sense of community: so none of us develops the God complex. When we start viewing our own thoughts as God’s, we are in dangerous waters. However, at the same time, when we start viewing Paul or Peter or Isaiah or Jeremiah or Moses’ words as God's, we are in almost as dangerous waters. Maybe more, because in some cases these words were handed down for generations orally before they were ever written down.

What does Jesus have to say about this? As stated elsewhere, Jesus had the biggest problem with the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the keepers of the Law. The Pharisees knew the Bible inside and out, memorized it backwards and forwards (literally), and studied it for hours every day. The Pharisees knew their stuff. Not only did the Pharisees know the Bible, but they meticulously carried out every law they could find and even some that were a stretch (sound familiar?) The Pharisees condemned anyone who did not or could not follow this rigid set of codes. However, one very important law the Pharisees did not keep: “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me”.  In God’s place, the Pharisees honored the idol of the Bible.

Jesus came to abolish this. John says Jesus is the Word. Not the Law. Not the Bible. Jesus says “I AM the Way.” Not the Law. Not the Bible. Jesus says “I AM the Truth.” Not the Law, and not the Bible. David sings out in Psalms, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” Jesus gives the controversial response, “I AM the light.” Not the Law, and not the Bible.

Does Jesus say He’s here to abolish the Law? No and yes. He does not give us free reign to run rampant through the street. He did come to put things in their proper perspective with the proper prioritization. God is first. Nothing comes before the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. Not even something as gifted as the Bible.

This is why I do not have a problem saying the Bible has a couple spots where things aren’t completely accurate. I don’t have a problem saying that the Bible is imperfect, or that the Old Testament writers seriously misrepresent God at times. Our savior is Jesus. We can believe in a just, holy, perfect God who detests sin without condoning the merciless, unjust, imperfect actions of so many Old Testament characters. In this fallen world, only God is perfect. Not even the Bible can claim that title as well. Only God is worth the dedication and commitment I see people give this book.