EPTIn a way this site has altered the course of my life. I do not mean that trivially either; one fateful day, I was arguing in some old thread here on this very site that God exists (or something like that). Actually, to be quite honest, I'm not entirely sure what my argument was (I begin arguing with the thread on page 10, if you want to see for yourself), which says a lot about how developed my intellectual life was at that point (not very).
I was intelligent enough, however, to at least realize that what I was saying was extremely unclear, and bordering on incoherency (if not blatant gibberish); I realized for the first time that I had never thought critically about the beliefs which I held dearest. Given that I grew up in a sort of cult-like Christian sect (or, full-blown cult, depending on the definition of "cult" we're using), I suppose that this is not all too surprising.
What does make the story interesting, I think, is the fact that that particular thread changed my life. I was suddenly introduced to critical arguments against God's existence, and suddenly felt that I needed strong arguments to believe in God's existence. And so, I dove into the world of Christian apologetics (this was my senior year of high school). This lead me into contact with the study of philosophy more generally, which is today my field of academic study in college. While I am no longer all that interested in apologetics (at least in the classical sense of giving arguments for God's existence or what-have-you), I am certainly still carrying on to this day the personal project of clarifying what I think and believe, striving to match my beliefs with reality and what is true about the world, and striving to express my thoughts clearly (as well as simply thinking clearly). Not an easy thing, but TLnet has helped me in that journey in a pretty profound way, and so I thank you all.
(Although a silly side note related to that thread, reading a couple of things I wrote, I agree with something I wrote and that the thread creator seems to have missed. For one, the author for some reason conflated omniscience and omnipotence, and two, it is clearly not valid to simply assume that omniscience negates free will. You need an argument to get there, you can't just make that blanket statement. Especially considering that most philosophers, perhaps especially naturalistic philosophers, assume compatibilism is true, the view that free will and determinism go hand in hand. But, anyway, I do agree that if God has comprehensive and infallible knowledge of all future actions then we are not free in the meaningful sense; but I wouldn't bother to define omniscience that way. Puzzle solved (just kidding). Or... you could just read a lick of what theists have to say about it (say, read about molinism and open theism and other solutions) instead of arguing on TLnet about it. Ahem.)
These preliminary considerations now aside, I turn my thoughts towards the initial (poorly defined) purpose of this blog: some more or less random reflections on Christianity.
It is amazing that I grew up fairly convinced that Christianity was true with little to no doubt about the matter; I have difficulty now seeing how I used to think like that.
I think that like a lot of modern people, I really earnestly want to believe that something like orthodox Christianity is true; I want to believe that God loved the world enough to become one of us, and to die with us; I want to believe that this world will one day be completely redeemed and renewed, that our battles with disease, poverty, sin and death are not vain, a simple expression of our selfish desire to live and procreate, but rather an expression of a more fundamental need for relationships that transcend the grave, for what one might vaguely just call "meaning".
Of course, traditional Christian doctrine also teaches that the renewal of this world is bad news for the vast majority of humanity; most people will spend an eternity in apparently endless suffering.
To make matters worse, some Christian theologians have thought that this is somehow a joyful thing; Tertullian for one discouraged Christians from going to the Roman games to watch people be slaughtered... encouraging them that they would get to watch their enemies suffer for an eternity while in heaven instead!
Aquinas thought that from heaven, Christians would have the great opportunity to watch sufferers in hell, to eternally remind them of God's justice to the sufferers and mercy to them. And that extends to family members... He thought that watching them suffer eternally would somehow add to our state of bliss.
I'm not sure what to make of things like that. I don't feel like I need to raise an argument against these sorts of statements; but a great many people believe things like this, so I just don't know.
I have a hard time fitting "dogma" into the picture, you know? Why does God care what we believe? It seems to me pretty clear that it is his fault for giving us the improper cognitive equipment, if he actually wanted us to be able to come to belief in him. Honest and sincere people believe all sorts of differing things on the fundamental issues of human life; it seems like if God wanted us to all be Christians just from thinking really hard about it, then honest truth-seekers would all be Christians. Such is not the case.
I do find a lot of value in Christian morality, and even in the Christian moral life. I'm not just talking about "Christian values" in the American evangelical sense (sex only when married, and then only with the opposite sex, and while living in affluent white suburbs); I mean something more like the Christian tradition's sense of ethical cultivation. You know, virtue ethics. Human flourishing which springs from a denial of self, a cultivation of love for neighbor, and so forth. Of course it might seem silly to some to equate the elevation of human flourishing with specifically Christian virtues; but I find a lot of good in the Christian tradition's reflection on such issues.
What do you do when you cannot shake your hope that Christianity is true, that Jesus rose from the dead, and yet cannot shake your doubts about a huge handful of Christianity's central claims? Just reject what you doubt and accept what does work for you? That seems dishonest somewhere.
Do we have power over what we believe? I don't know. I don't think so, to be honest. I doubt that we "decide" what seems true to us. In some ways I can't shake the Christian faith; I cannot shake my hope for it, I cannot shake my belief that Christianity brings hope for this life and for the next, though I suspect that most Christians are rather confused as to the hope we have for this life. And I should probably count myself as one of them; I believe that living as Christ has the power to transform lives and to end in human flourishing, but the details are a bit tricky.
I cannot look in the face of an honest, truth-seeking practitioner of another faith, even say an honest and compassionate atheist, and hold to the belief that I have something they don't. That I somehow am saved, and they somehow damned.
I also cannot look to the cross and tell myself "no, this is a lie". Maybe I look at it as I look at poetry; but even in my most skeptical moments, I am suspicious that something was happening at Easter, something historical, and something true, in any sense of that word I can imagine.
I also feel "wishy washy"; I don't want to construct a God or a religion; and I certainly don't want to construct a God or a religion that is impotent, or believe in either of those that cannot change the world.
And yet I've resigned not to believe in changing the world.
I do dream of changing maybe a life or two, including my own; maybe living simply all my life, maybe living among the poor rather than the affluent, and learning from them and helping them in return wherever I can. But that is certainly a long way from changing the world.
If you read any significant portion, thanks for your time. Feel free to reflect here as well, whether critically of me or in agreement with something I've said, or simply to share and express some of your own thoughts on the matter. I think religious debate is all too easily a debate that happens between those bitter against religion and those who, for ease, I'll dub "fundamentalists"; I suspect that those sorts of debates are anything but productive for anyone.
