Growing up in a Southern Baptist Church, I didn’t see many people who knew much of anything about what they claimed to believe. Sure, there were the pastors and the deacons of my church who had answers, but at that age I didn’t have enough knowledge about the kind of questions that people were asking in the real world outside of the Christian bubble to even present a challenge to their knowledge of God. As I moved into my later teens I began to feel a kind of moral pressure that didn’t seem to line up with the teachings of the Bible. The Christian life, to them, consisted of these kinds of principles: Don’t drink, Don’t smoke, Don’t sleep with your girlfriend, Don’t associate with non-Christians, Don’t cuss, etc. (or at least don’t let anyone catch you doing any of those things). This, to me, was very troubling, and as I reached my senior year in high school I got tired of listening to these seeming contradictions in what the Scriptures taught and how people lived. So, I decided once I was out of the house and was no longer forced to go to church that I would walk away from it all together. Well, I made good on my decision and walked away.
As I went through my college years I began to listen to what was being said around me. Many times, standing around a keg of beer or around a table at bars, I discussed God with people. The majority of people that I ran into had grown up in the church and either left because of the same reasons that I did or because as they began to think about their faith, many things didn’t line up intellectually. Well, I added this to my arson of reasons why I thought the church was a joke.
Where did these people begin to understand the anti-intellectualism of Christianity? In college for the most part. Well, in January of 2005, a friend invited me to a Christian conference called Passion. I’m at a loss on how to describe what happened there, but it was the most earth-shaking experience of my life. I wasn’t willing to seek out and reenter that lifestyle that I had so joyously abandoned, and that is not what I found. I found the gospel. God, in His infinite grace, came after me. But, this was my ultimatum, “God, I suck at this Christian thing, and what I’ve seen before I hate. If you want me to do this Christian thing the way You designed it, You’re going to have to do it through me.” Well, this is exactly what He began to do. As I began to seek Him, I started seeing my life line up with the Scriptures. It wasn’t me trying to live out some kind of moral gospel, but rather, it was Him changing me from within.
As this journey continued, I began to ask the same questions that had been discussed with me over a few beers earlier on. I then realized that the majority of Christians were ignorant of their own faith and, in many instances, they were anti-intellectuals. This was very disturbing. I wondered, “Why should any unbeliever even listen to what I have to say? They will just laugh at my seeming archaic faith and see it as barbaric.” So, I began my journey for answers with the tough questions, and Missiologist is my attempt to teach on and work through issues of faith, thought, and Christianity that I have learned and am still learning.
Vjack, as he likes to call himself, the author of the Atheist Revolution blog, has launched an attack on religion, which involves Christianity, claiming that it is anti-intellectual. The problem with this is that he looks at the fallen people associated with Christianity, who I would agree in many cases are ignorant and do not have a firm understanding of reasons why they believe, and not at the Bible. If he were to take an honest look at the Scriptures he would see that they are intellectually robust and existentially satisfying. In his most recent post, What’s the Harm if Believing Makes People Feel Good?, he states that “it is difficult to argue that anyone should approach it with respect or even tolerance. In some cases, we may even incur an obligation to intercede.” He continues by saying, “One of the key ways religious belief causes harm is by undermining knowledge. It involves believing what one wants to believe regardless of what the data suggest, and this can easily assume a prideful ignorance that hinders learning. It becomes an excuse not to think.”
As demonstrated throughout Vjack’s blog, he is an evidentialist. According to evidentialist beliefs, “one is rationally justified in believing a proposition to be true only if that proposition is either foundational to knowledge or is established by evidence that is ultimately based on such a foundation.” Based on this view, since the propostition “God exists” is not foundational, it would be irrational for a person to believe this proposition apart from rational evidence for its truth claims. Alvin Plantinga, a world-renown Christian philosopher, asks, “why can’t the proposition ‘God exists’ be itself part of the foundation, so that no rational evidence is necessary?” The evidentialist counters by stating that only “propositions that are properly basic can be part of the foundation of knowledge.”
This begs the question, “What are the criteria that determine whether or not a proposition is properly basic?” In most cases, the evidentialist asserts these two criteria for a proposition to be properly basic:
- It must be self-evident
- or It must be incorrigible
For example, it is self-evident that “the sum of the square of the two sides of a right triangle is equal to the square of the hypotenuse” is true. Similarly, “the proposition ‘I feel pain’ is incorrigibly true, since even if I am only imagining my injury, it is still true that I feel pain.” Since, the proposition “God exists” is neither, then it is irrational to believe in God. Plantinga does not deny the criteria, but he questions whether or not these are the only properly basic propositions or beliefs. If so, then we are all irrational because we often accept beliefs that are not based on evidence or the two criteria as stated above. For example, how do we know that the world was not created ten minutes ago, our memories were implanted in our minds, our stomaches were created full with food we never ate, and we were created with an aged appearance? Surely, it is rational to believe that the world was not created ten minutes ago, but we have no evidence for this. Therefore, there must be a flaw in this evidentialist position of reasoning. Indeed, can we even trust the criteria itself, since the proposition, “Only propositions that are self-evident or incorrigible are properly baisc” is itself not properly basic?
Plantinga maintains, like John Calvin, that belief in God is properly basic. He states,”Man has an innate, natural capacity to apprehend God’s existence even as he has a natural capacity to accept truths of perception, such as ‘I see a bird.’ Given the appropriate circumstances – such as moments of guilt, gratitude, or a sense of God’s handiwork in nature – man naturally apprehends God’s existence.”
Although the evidentialist position is somewhat questionable, I would agree with Vjack that it is difficult to take believers seriously when they are content with being ignorant. Augustine coined the phrase, “faith seeking understanding,” and thought it beneficial for a believer to seek out understanding of one’s beliefs. Christianity is a thinking faith, and we should be a people who desire to understand it more fully and allow that truth to transform us.
As a Christian it is our duty, as commanded by God in 1 Peter 3:15, to be able to give a defense to everyone who asks us the reason for the hope that we have. We are to be not merely full in our hearts. We must be sharp in our minds as well. May the knowledge of God fill you and open you up to His beauty. May you be strengthened in your mind so that you can stand firm in a world of confusion. And, may your mind understand what your heart believes – that Jesus Christ is the truth, and by this truth you are set free.
Christ is All,
M
Comments and/or questions are welcome.
Resources: Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig