Works For Me

I have two Muslim friends that I talk with regularly. We debate politics, religion, and whatever else we can find to debate. They are both smart people that can hold their own in a debate, but when it comes to religion, neither has really thought a lot about how they would justify their own faith. So when I pose challenges to their faith neither of them finds themselves on real solid footing.

They have different reactions to this. One of them seems to chew on the problems more than the other. He goes home and poses questions similar to ones I've asked him to his own friends and family, and this makes them all uncomfortable. He's trying to resolve these things in his own mind.

The other really doesn't care. He says to me "Jon, I can't answer you, and you know what? I don't care. My wife is Muslim. My friends are Muslim. My parents are Muslim. I'm happy being Muslim. Why rock the boat?"

I'm thinking that's not a good attitude. You should go where the evidence leads. That's going to be better for you in the end, right?

Now, what the Christian apologist will say to me is "You say we should only believe what the evidence suggests. Where is your evidence for that belief?"

I think that's a fair point. I don't have evidence for this belief, so I can't prove that everyone should adhere to this belief. But what I can do is I can point out that evidence works pretty well. We've seen the witch doctors, prophets, and faith healers. We've seen that they have a poor track record. We've seen the scientific method. Failures occur in science, but science has a means of correction that dogma doesn't have. I'm sticking with evidence. History shows that it works well.

But then, what is my real criterion here? Is it "Believe the evidence" or "Believe what works"? Greg Krehbiel made an interesting point in this regard. He said that I believe things for which there is no evidence. I believe that I am not a brain in a jar being manipulated in my thoughts by some external source. How would it be possible to prove that false with evidence, since anything I would point to would be part of the program that is manipulating me?

So why do I deny that I'm a brain in a jar when I can't point to any evidence? My answer is that the assumption that I'm not a brain in a jar just works. If I pretend that I'm the only person in the world, and I steal or skip work, or maybe walk out into a busy intersection, things get uncomfortable.

Another thing that made me uncomfortable when I was a Christian was having these Christian beliefs that conflicted with the evidence. I had difficulty sleeping. My mind would race attempting to reconcile these claims and I could not do it successfully, and I had further difficulty putting these thoughts out of my mind. On the flip side of the coin rejecting Christianity was going to create other uncomfortable situations with friends, family, and my efforts to make sense of a world that had always been fully explained within the Christian paradigm.

But having beliefs that conflicted with the evidence just wasn't working for me, so I switched. But is that true for everyone? It doesn't seem to bother my Muslim friend. His beliefs work for him. Who am I to say he should change?

Christians Where You Wouldn't Expect Them

When I was in college my roommate had an acoustic guitar. Out of sheer boredom I decided to try and learn it. I learned basic chords and sometimes would learn to play a part of a song if I could get someone to show me. I've played off and on since then. Recently I managed to learn "More Than Words" by Extreme. This is the quintessential "get laid" song. Learn to play this and you improve your odds of scoring. Of course I'm not looking for that as a happily married father of two, but heck, my wife is impressed and there's nothing wrong with that.

Learning this song prompted me to look into the band Extreme just to learn a little about them. I'm really not much of a music connoisseur. The reality is I was always too cheap to spend money on CD's and concert tickets. My parents disapproved of this music anyway. The expected us to not listen to secular music in the car as teenagers driving around by ourselves. They kind of knew we did anyway, but we would never have a rock CD laying around the house. Me and my siblings were a little isolated from the music industry because of this. Which doesn't bother me. It was a waste of money.

But I learned that the lead singer is a guy named Gary Cherone. I went to his website and immediately a song started playing called "Need I Say More." This is exactly the kind of song that I like best. I love sad songs and I love acoustic guitar instrumentals. This song has an acoustic instrumental and is just as sad as can be. The first thing I did when I had the opportunity was to grab my own guitar and try to learn it. I'm working on it.

So I was very impressed with Cherone. I think his voice is great. This is the same guy that was the lead singer for Van Halen briefly.

So here's what surprised me. I was poking around online trying to find the tabulature for this song "Need I Say More" and it turns out Cherone is a Christian. And not just a Christian. A pretty hard core anti-evolution Christian. He's even come out heavily against abortion. Of course I think that's just great. But I'm surprised by this. Apparently Extreme has a song called "There is No God." And when I was a Christian while I thought "More Than Words" sounded great, it kind of left me feeling a little bit sinful for enjoying it, because I figured it had helped encourage some girls to sin. I'm not quite sure how this squares with his Christianity, which apparently is somewhat conservative.

It's all good I guess. His music still sounds great.

Bush-God Told Me to Invade Iraq

This is an old article, but does illustrate the dangers of having a President that thinks God speaks to him. I'd sooner trust that The Onion has God's ear, as this appears to have been prophetic.

Einstein-Religions are Childish Supersitions

Many Christians with a superficial understanding of history like to invoke Einstein as a person sympathetic to their belief in God, and Hitler as if he was an atheist. I've discussed Hitler previously. A letter that was recently made public from Einstein helps clarify his views. He writes:

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish."

and also:

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions".

Meet and Greet with Professional Christian Apologists

Some of my family members suggested I come to church recently to listen to a former atheist turned Christian give a talk. I was absolutely interested. I'm never having more fun then when I debate with these kinds of people. I had recently gone out of my way to meet Gerry Matatics in Ann Arbor give a talk, and I spent some time discussing things with him after his talk was finished. He promised to get in contact with me afterwards, but I never heard from him unfortunately. He even told me he'd send books, and I would have read them. But it didn't happen.

So I arrived at church wondering if the speaker would be someone that I would recognize. It turned out that it was. It was Randall Niles, from All About God. I was familiar with him. I've read books from Frank Turek, and I know Turek is associated with Niles. They work in a ministry that focuses on the fact that high school graduates are rejecting their own faith during college.

Niles was one such person apparently, but he returned to Christianity due to his mother's battle with cancer.

What is interesting to me is that Niles focuses on answering objections from skeptics and providing evidence for his faith. Yet these activities appear to have had nothing at all to do with his re-conversion. That's odd to me. When I discuss with Christians reasons for rejecting Christianity I usually focus on things that I found to be troublesome. Why would Niles form a ministry that develops tools that didn't even work on him? I have my theories, but I'll save that for another post.

It's interesting listening to Christians discuss skeptics when they don't believe there are any skeptics present. To me there was a sense in which Niles would try to elicit a "boo, hiss" type of reaction at the mention of an atheist. This is not a big deal to me, because I know the same thing is true if you get a bunch of skeptics in a room and they discuss Christianity. But it's fun for me to burst that bubble and let them know that there are skeptics in the room.

Niles took questions afterwards from the audience, and this is where I let the room know that I was present. I declared myself a skeptic and this is what I asked as best as I can recall. "Randall, would you agree the extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? There are a lot of outlandish claims made in historical books in antiquity. The Temple of Delphi defends itself with technicolor armaments. There is a mass resurrection of cooked fish. We have other people supposedly healing the sick and turning water into wine. We all dismiss those claims without really looking into them, because we understand that these claims were common back then, and the evidence needed to justify them would be substantial. You're telling me that 2000 years ago a man rose from the dead and he was able to walk through walls, teleport, etc. Can you agree that I shouldn't believe you unless you can provide extraordinary evidence?"

Niles replied that he did agree, and he then proceeded to offer some of that evidence. He talked about how people died for this belief, that women are reported as discovering the empty tomb and this is likely to be true because if the story were invented they wouldn't invent women because that would be embarrassing. He also talked about how God is not limited by our 3D world. He illustrated this by talking about how a person in a 2D world it would be unable to understand what we, in a 3D world, were capable of doing, and in the same way walking through walls and teleporting is not a huge deal when you start talking about other dimensions.

These are all points I'd love to debate, but there were others that wanted to ask questions, so I wasn't about to start into it in this venue. I replied that I was glad that he agreed with my point. I sat down to wait and hopefully discuss things further afterwards.

What is interesting is the whole point of Niles ministry is to equip people to answer the objections of people like me. So here I am. Give it a shot. Nobody came anywhere near me. I sat in my pew and nobody came within a 10 ft radius of me.

After the talk I sprinted up to the front to converse with Niles further. About 5 others converged on him along with me. He called on every single other individual before he looked towards me. He even called on a woman that had been seated and rose to stand along with us long after we had started standing. It turned out she didn't have a question, but was there with someone else that had been standing.

Finally it's my turn, and the room is mostly empty. I told Niles that I was glad that he came, and I'm not here to beat up on Christians, but I do enjoy debating with learned Christians that are willing to debate, and so since he's here I'd like to give him maybe just one thing to think about.

I said that he had pointed to Christians dying for the belief that Jesus rose. I explained that we can't assume that the people that died believed exactly like he does about the physical resurrection. In Peter's supposed writings he never says that he believes Jesus is physically raised. He says that Christ died in the flesh, but was raised a life giving spirit. Now, maybe he did believe that Christ was raised physically, but he never says that and what he does say at least suggests the opposite. Paul said that Christ was raised as a spiritual body and that flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God. He says that Christ appeared to him, but Pentecostals say this as well. Once again, maybe Paul did believe that Christ rose physically, but we don't know that he was an eyewitness to that and his writings at least suggest that he didn't believe that. Nothing in his writings suggests he did believe Christ rose physically. Not even Mark, our earliest gospel, says that anybody believed that Christ rose physically. It is only with Matthew, Luke, John, and Acts, our very latest texts, that this is asserted, and this accords very well with typical legendary growth; i.e. later texts are more impressive. So the skeptic has no trouble explaining that people were willing to die for belief in the resurrection. People have experiences where they think Christ appeared and rose, and they might be willing to die for such experiences. We simply don't know what those that died for Christianity actually believed, and this is key to this argument.

Niles responded by saying that by "spiritual body" Paul meant orientation, not the substance of the body, and also that hallucinations are not group events. He said a few other things that I don't remember. None of it really dealt with what I was saying.

So all in all, it was a good time for me. I get the impression that Niles is not quite up to the level of sophistication of someone like William Lane Craig or Greg Koukl. Craig will not admit that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and he has better spin on the physical resurrection issue. I can kind of tell from Niles' website that it's more of a surfacy treatment of the issues. Apparently that's his niche, which is fine with me. For my part I'm looking forward to the next Christian apologist that wants to descend into my region of the country. And I keep track of their schedules.