Re: Deconversion

(Ken, it's interesting how you seem to go out of your way here
to avoid actually addressing me, saying "Gareth says this" and
"Gareth is doing that". That's your prerogative, of course, and
sometimes it's entirely appropriate; but I would like to know
whether I have become persona non grata in your eyes, no longer
to be conversed with.)

Ken Down wrote:

On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 01:49:38 +0200, Gareth McCaughan
<Gareth.McCaughan@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

After a very great deal of thought, reading and prayer,
I have come to the conclusion that Christianity is not
(for me) intellectually tenable. As of a few days ago
(no, not 6/6/6!) I am no longer a Christian.

Gareth has posted to this group that he has decided to abandon Christianity
and directs readers to a web page where he sets out his reasons for this
decision. These are basically three in number:

Wrong. I give there some of my reasons, and the three you mention
are some of the ones I give there. That is: what you represent
as my reasons are not all of my reasons. Furthermore ...

1. The problem of evil
2. Prayers are not answered
3. Christians are not good

#1 is fine, but neither #2 nor #3 is accurate. More below.

If I may, I should like to address them in reverse order.

Feel free. :-)

3. Christians are not good.
It is undeniable that the majority of those who profess Christianity are
less than models of what we might call Christian behaviour. However if we
look at the situation in detail, we find that it is not as bleak a picture
as Gareth might think. Any congregation will consist of three groups: people
who are Christian in name only; "new" Christians who are in the process of
becoming perfect; mature Christians.

I do not claim that "Christians are not good"; the wording
is yours, not mine. I claim that Christians are not appreciably
better than everyone else (in any respect: they are not notably
morally better, not notably wiser, not notably happier, etc.),
and that if Christianity were correct then we ought to see
Christians being *very much* better than others in at least
some of these respects.

I can think of no particular reason for supposing that those who belong to
the first group will behave any more than marginally better than the
non-Christian population.

Agreed.

Those who are "new" Christians - by which I do not mean the newly converted
(though obviously they are included) but also those who are still struggling
with the conflict between their unconverted desires and Christian ideals -
will also frequently fail to live up to the expected standards of Christian
behaviour. In fact, the only difference I can think of between the "new"
Christian and the non-Christian is that the former will be willing to
acknowledge their wrong behaviour whereas the latter will be more likely to
attempt some form of self-justification. The majority of true Christians
will come under this heading.

Then you are misusing the term "new".

Anyway, I don't think it ought to be true -- assuming the correctness
of Christianity -- that "new" Christians will be almost identical to
nominal Christians morally. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creation", after all; "it is no longer I who live, but Christ who
lives in me"; "we have the mind of Christ"; all these are addressed
not exclusively to "mature Christians" but to whole churches, some
of them young enough that quite possibly there were no "mature
Christians" in them yet.

There is a final comment that I would like to make, and that is that Gareth
is comparing Christians with Christian-influenced non-Christians. Although
British society is non-Christian in the sense that the majority of people do
not attend church and do not profess any form of Christianity, it is an
historical fact that British society holds to mores and standards that are
basically Christian. British atheists have standards of right and wrong that
are heavily influenced by Christianity.

Quite true. Which makes comparison easier, since Christians and
non-Christians here are aiming at broadly comparable things.
Obviously Christians will behave better by their standards
in ways non-Christians don't care about; if faith is reckoned
a virtue, for instance, then Christians will show much more
of it than atheists. :-)

I invite Gareth to compare Christians with non-Christians in some place
where there is no such Christian heritage. Or, if he has not the time or
means to undertake such a study overseas, he may wish to compare Christians
with non-Christians here in Britain. For example, just this week (ending
11/06/2006) a government report has been issued stating that Muslim
policemen are much more likely to take bribes than non-Muslim policemen; the
figure that was mentioned was ten times as many complaints against Muslim as
against non-Muslim policemen. I wonder what the figure is for members of the
Christian Police Association (or whatever the group is called) versus
non-members of that Association?

The report also identifies putative causes for this phenomenon,
which have nothing to do with the religion of the people in
question and everything to do with the societies they come
from. And it has been hotly contested (unsurprisingly) by
Muslim police.

My experience in India is very definitely that Christians in that country
are more likely to be truthful, honest and moral than Hindus or Muslims.

That's interesting to know; thanks.

2. Prayers are not answered
Gareth complains that in his own experience "answers to prayer" occur with
no more than random frequency and in particular he draws attention to
prayers for healing. Again, it is undeniable that most prayers for healing
are not answered by a dramatic healing; the question is whether this is
something at which we should be surprised.

This is again a misrepresentation, though presumably not a
deliberate one. Firstly, I'm not complaining, merely observing,
but I'll put that down to a general preference for rhetorical
impact over accuracy. Secondly and more importantly, the point
I was making is not only about answers to prayer but about
*any* interactions between God and those who are, or seek to
be, his people. However, let's stick with answers to prayer
for the sake of convenience.

God - assuming He exists - has created a physical world in which effect
follows cause. No reasonable Christian would expect that he would be
miraculously delivered from the law of gravity if he wantonly jumped off the
Empire State Building; why then should a reasonable Christian expect that he
would be miraculously delivered from a bad case of diorrhea if he wantonly
ate unwashed salad in Egypt? Once you accept that principle, one can extend
it to those who eat unhealthy diets, who live unhealthy life-styles or in
unhealthy places. The surprising thing is not that there are so few miracles
of healing but that there should be *any*!

That's true if you take it as axiomatic that a perfectly good
God would regard sticking to the rules he has made, and which
have bad consequences, as more important than the welfare of
the people he supposedly loves enough to die for.

And, as we have discussed many times in the past, I do not
agree with your premise that ill-health is generally something
we should be blamed for.

Nevertheless, there are "miracles", occurrances which appear to be
unexplainable by physical laws as we understand them. Furthermore, I believe
it is true to say that while there are "miracles" which happen apparently
at random, the majority of "miracles" occur in response to prayers. I do not
regard it as any argument to object that not all these prayers are to the
Christian God; I naturally assume that Christianity is the best form of
religion, but the Bible clearly teaches that God reveals Himself to all men
and is found by all men.

He has quite conspicuously declined, so far, to reveal himself
to me in such a way as to enable me to tell that he's done so;
and it can hardly be said that I haven't given him a chance.

(Well, it *could* be said, but it would be entirely wrong.)

I also do not regard the fact that Gareth himself may not have experienced
"miracles" as an argument against their reality.

(This is where it starts to become highly relevant that I was
not talking only about miracles.)

Gareth is still young, he
lives in a relatively safe country, he has - so far as I know - had a
relatively sheltered life. If the anti-Christian argument boils down to the
fact that someone has missed a train or not been cured of a cold in the
head, then I find it peculiarly unconvincing, particularly when weighed
against the testimony of so many Christians that far more serious problems
*have* been solved by prayer.

Just as well, then, that I wasn't making that argument.

1. The problem of evil
Gareth complains that the sort of perfect, omnipotent God he imagines should
have prevented or solved the problem of evil in ways which he would find
acceptable.

That is, of course, not an accurate or fair summary of what I say,
but once again rhetorical impact is clearly more important than
not bearing false witness.

He further complains that the Bible reveals a God who is very
different from the perfect God he imagines. Even assuming that this charge
is correct, it is not clear to me whether the problem lies with God or with
the God of Gareth's imagination. It seems to me that in some respects at
least, Gareth is guilty of constructing a straw God: God should be so and
so, God should behave in such and such ways; God does not, ergo God does not
exist.

What this actually means (unless it's simply untrue) is that when
Christianity says that God is good, I take that as part of what
Christianity actually teaches and decline to reinterpret "good"
as meaning "whatever God happens to be like" (since that would
render "goodness" consistent with *anything*, however awful, and
thereby drain the word of all meaning).

You are welcome to object to this. I am welcome not to care :-).

What makes it particularly ironic is that Gareth reaches so momentous a
conclusion based upon so little information. We have a single short chapter
in Genesis (which, in any case, Gareth rejects) to account for the origin of
evil in this earth; we have considerably less to account for the origin of
evil in the universe (and again, Gareth rejects the traditional interpretion
of those passages).

Nothing in what I say is in any way dependent on the details of
how evil began, either on earth or in the universe. It is the
fact that it's there, not how it got there, that matters.

Gareth's position appears to me analogous to that of a
man who rejects Caesar's "Gallic Wars" as a work of fiction and then
complains that he cannot adequately account for the Roman presence in Gaul.

I do not consider that the early chapters of Genesis, taken
however literally you may please, constitute an answer to the
problem of evil. Do you?

It is true that I, too, could wish that the world were other than it is.
With all my heart I wish that children didn't die of starvation in Africa,
that women were not raped in Burma or that men were not tortured to death in
Iraq. However when God says, "I am bigger and wiser than you; trust Me that
there is no other way - and in any case, I gave My Son to share in and
overcome the evil in the world," I am prepared to trust Him.

As a matter of fact, God is not on record (even assuming for
the sake of argument that the Bible, or the unanimous tradition
of the early church, can be considered as "God on record) as
saying anything of the kind. And, as I think I've remarked
elsewhere in this thread, Christianity proclaims that Jesus
overcame sin and death -- but in a way that doesn't actually,
you know, do anything to stop them happening.

What, when it comes down to it, is the alternative? Shall I rage uselessly
against the dark but ultimately resign myself to the thought that in a
random, purposeless universe things have always been like this and always
will be; or will I embrace the hope for a better present and a better future
which God offers? Even if God is nothing more than a symbol of hope, then I
intend to place myself unreservedly on the side of good against evil, on the
side of hope against despair, on the side of God against Satan - and
whatever I can do by the way of speech or example (including attending
church where that hope is proclaimed) by way of encouraging others to the
same determination, I will do.

I am very firmly in favour of taking a stand for good against evil
and for hope against despair. I am equally firmly in favour of
taking a stand for truth against falsehood; for that reason, I can't
follow what I take to be your line here: that even if in fact
Christianity is wrong it's better to go along with it because it's
the only thing that offers hope and goodness and the like.

0. The problem of reality
There is one problem which Gareth does not address in his web page and that
is a very simple one. There is a gentleman currently serving a prison term
in Austria who can argue very cogently against the Holocaust. His arguments
are logical, his evidence plausible, his sincerity undeniable, but it all
comes unstuck against the very simple question: did the Holocaust happen?
Fortunately in his case we still have living eye-witness testimony and so
all his cleverness comes to nothing.

Gareth does not address the question of whether the Bible stories are true.

No one asked me to. :-)

Did God bring the Children of Israel out of Egypt? Did Jesus exist? Did He
teach the things the Bible claims He did? Did he die in the way the Gospels
describe? If the answer to these questions is in the negative, then how does
one explain the nation of Israel with its traditions of Passover, and the
Christian church with its conviction that those things did happen?

My answers to these, some of which I'm more confident of than others:

- no, God didn't bring the Children of Israel out of Egypt,
but perhaps there was a (non-miraculous) exodus anyway;

- Jesus did exist;

- he taught at least some of the things the Bible says he did,
though doubtless there's been some elaboration and polishing
between the reality and the written record;

- he died in roughly the way the Bible says.

The fact that there's a tradition about something doesn't prove
that it happened. Do you believe that the Qur'an was dictated
to Muhammad? Do you believe that Krishna manifested himself to
Arjuna?

The simplest explanation for Buddhism - Occam's Razor and all that - is the
existence of Gautama Buddha; the simplest explanation for Islam is Mohammed;
the simplest explanation for Christianity is Jesus Christ. However while one
can reject the teachings of Buddha without rejecting his historical reality,
it is less easy to reject the teachings of Christianity withough rejecting
the historical reality of Jesus.

I don't reject the historical reality of Jesus.

Christianity has no reason to exist if
Jesus did not die and rise from the dead. Its moral and ethical teachings
are no higher than those of Stoicism or Platonism; its philosophical
conceptions are no deeper than those of the other philosophies of the time;
its "legends" no more appealing than those of Mithraism or the cult of Isis.

So you're saying that even the incarnate God couldn't come up
with any better ethics or deeper philosophical ideas than ordinary
humans inventing (by whatever means) their pagan religions?

Even more impressive is the fact that Christianity's earliest apologists
appealed to historical reality. Justin's reference to the records of the
trial of Jesus, preserved in the Senate house in Rome, is one such. Even if
he was mistaken in his belief that such records existed, a man facing death
for his beliefs is hardly likely to appeal to evidence which he knows to be
false, particularly when he is appealing to the very people who control
those records!

It isn't my opinion that the earliest Christians were generally
propounding ideas they knew to be false.

It could well be that Gareth might choose to reject certain forms of
Christianity, for the religion has undoubtedly changed over the centuries,
but it seems to me that the historical probabilities are in favour of the
Gospels rather than against them. From this it follows that if Jesus really
lived, died and was resurrected, then much else that seems unbelievable can
be accepted, even though it may go contrary to strict rationalism.

I agree (of course!) that the existence of the gospel accounts
constitutes evidence for the resurrection. I don't agree that
it's good enough evidence, given the extraordinariness of the
claim. If there were good reason elsewhere to accept the rest
of Christianity, then it would probably be appropriate to accept
the resurrection on those grounds (since then the claim wouldn't
be so extraordinary). But what I actually find is that almost
wherever I turn I find the evidence *against* stronger than
the evidence *for*.

If I may dare to mention the infamous "dark matter", the situation is
analogous: there are facts that cannot be explained by strictly rational
theories of the universe and so one must postulate the existence of a
substance which cannot be perceived by any of the senses or techniques
currently available to us. There are historical facts that cannot be
explained by strictly rational theories; is it unreasonable to postulate the
existence of a Being who cannot be perceived by any of the senses or
techniques currently available to us?

I am not sure that there are any such historical facts,
but let's suppose there are; then indeed one way to deal
with them would be to postulate such a being. But (as
with "dark matter", though you seem reluctant to accept
this) if your postulation is going to be any use then it
has to match reality reasonably well. I heard a nice
caustic remark about string theory recently: "string
theorists don't have explanations, they have excuses".
I'm not sure whether that's really true of string
theory, but it does seem to be true of Christianity.
Is the OT full of unfulfilled prophecies? Never mind,
we can explain that by reinterpreting them all to
refer to something their authors obviously never dreamed
of. Do the stories of the Resurrection totally fail to
match up? Never mind, we can explain that as unreliable
human memory: it's doubtless the easiest thing in the
world to forget whether you saw an angel descend from
heaven and roll back the stone closing a tomb door,
or whether you arrived and found the stone already
rolled away and a man in the tomb, or whether you arrived
and found *two* men in the tomb, or whether actually you
never went into the tomb at all but ran to fetch some
other people. Is the world full of evil to an extent that
seems impossible to reconcile with the goodness and the
power of God? Never mind, we can explain that by ...
well, no, actually, we can't explain it, but we can
argue that it's all very complicated and God is far
beyond human understanding, so that no one is really
entitled to make any conjectures about what sort of
world a good God would produce. And so it goes. Each
workaround would be quite reasonable, if the rest of
the picture were convincing; but there's a conspicuous
shortage -- from where I'm looking, and of course others
will see things differently -- of positive reasons sufficient
to justify dubious excuse after dubious excuse.

--
Gareth McCaughan
..sig under construc
.

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