Great post. I really like that you added “The existence of the Christian God would thus be worse than radical skepticism.” I’ve thought about pretty much that exact thing before! That Christianity is incompatible with so much of my understanding of the world that IF I twist my brain and imagine what I would be wrong about if it were real, it would be everything.
The world would have been specifically designed to deceive me. Statistics wouldn’t mean anything (if prayer works, someone would’ve noticed!). I would be fundamentally wrong about what “good” is and the entirety of morality (if you asked me to personally torture someone forever, with scalding brands, I’d turn you down). History wouldn’t mean anything (The Church has been wrong so much and they were so anti-science, that I guess having previous wrong predictions doesn’t matter). People used to believe all of the things in the Bible, instead of treating them as vague metaphors! Faith would mean truly ignoring statistics, science, reasoning, human progress, and logic to me. Faith really could be correct! But it’s directly against all of these.
This is why I think people who say faith and science are fundamentally at odds are more internally consistent than people who try to mesh them together. If Christianity is real, I think I might as well be a creationist for how many bullets I’d have to bite with the metaphorical view that many take today. And I mean that! I think setting science and faith completely at odds, and creationism actually being real somehow, is less of a bullet to bite than somehow mixing them.
(Note: this is specifically Christianity and not some sort of theism unrelated)
Yes, there's something to be said here about truth and the philosophy of language. As a general historical fact, the median Christian knew very little about theology; Christianity was mainly about attending the mass. The inside of a church we now conceive of with pews and pulpits and teaching/preaching was a product of the reformation/counter-reformation.
So, on one hand, I'm down with the sort of religious fictionalist/non-cognitivists/Wittgensteinians who are sympathetic to being religious/Christian. They actually have more in common with pre-modern rank and file Christians than the most orthodox today. But for myself, I just can't think that way. I think language is very much a pragmatic endeavor, and a lot of philosophy and theology tries to define terms with sufficient rigor that it actually ceases to be pragmatic (I think this is true of religion, but also secular philosophies like EA). I'm resistant to efforts to make rigid these fluid concepts and their unverifiable references.
Codifying dogma of any sort (not just religious, but also cultural/nationalist) just ultimately leads to political violence of some sort, without failure. I know this and see this to be true, and so when I say I refuse to believe in religion or its apologetics, it sounds like i'm an angry resistant non-believer, defying reason. But in reality, I'm just acting the most reasonably I can and know how to!
The dogmatism arises from the fact that, if you put enough effort in to think theology through, there seem to be some pretty clear things we aught to be doing. I don't see how that's at odds with a Christian God.
The Christian, Omnibenevolent God chooses to let human beings make their own decisions, though. If the Church is not a perfect reflection of what it should be (e.g. loving, non-harming), that doesn't reflect on the consitution of God, that reflects on the failures of man to enact God's Will (God's Will being human fulfillment). As a Catholic, I have no issue conceding that Christians are generally quite bad people and use their religious beliefs, and sometimes the Church directly, to cause harm to others. I estimated that about 85% of Christians don't understand what it means to love God (which is the greatest commandment). That can be a failure of the people in the Church to inform others meaningfully, but it does not have to be a failure of God to reflect in the physical world. You might grant that Jesus' teachings for how we should live are perfect (it's not hard to), but just because the teachings are perfect and even if the communication of them is ideal, that should not mean that everyone who hears about Jesus was/is compelled by perfect rationality to become a good and loving person following dogma strictly. If the argument was perfectly rational, we wouldn't have the genuine free will to choose anything else, and that wouldn't be free will.
Also, when Christians say God is Omnibenevolent, they originally meant that all existence is good because it is preferable to non-existence, and God is the substance and source of existence so God is all good. I actually don't have a convincing argument at the moment to connect that rationality of good to "love," but the New Testament and personal spiritual practice pretty clearly demonstrates that God is also perfectly loving. Just wanted to clear up a potential conflation of (common) good and what theologians mean by "God is Good."
I don’t think this comment understands my arguments at all. I’m sorry this is an unhelpful response, but you’ve missed the mark sufficiently that I’d have to basically write 1000 words, often repeating things I already said in the original post, and I don’t want to spend that time right now.
After rereading, no I'm pretty confident this is how I wanted to respond to it. How dogma and stricture hurt people is an inherent part of an organized, unified church. Personal practice leads to imperfect practices that are probably worse than the ineffeciency you get from dogma.
My argument in the prior comment was specifically that how the Church may harm people or how strict doctrine may harm people is not a reflection of God. It's a reflection of human misapplication of teachings, of human justification of behavior that shouldn't follow from genuinely following the doctrine. Of human culturalization of religion instead of seeking the teachings genuinely. Of individual people *choosing* to cause harm based on what they think the doctrine says or where it should go.
The Church *knows* that having strict moral teachings and organization is an obstacle to finding an ideal arrangement. The Church is filled with unideal things. None of that reflects on God, and that's a fundamental result of human free will.
This is basically a free will defense, which is not helpful. God being all-loving and all-knowing, would know how people would react to his teachings and dogma. He would know it would be used to harm in his name. What’s more, he would know what “human nature” would look like, as he would understand the parameters of human decision making, so he’d still be culpable. As I point out, that’s kind of an argument against God!
My entire point is that *this is a problem* and I why I don’t believe. The problem of evil is one thing, the problem of “setting up an institution that injects some evil with an unnecessary institutional rule called “dogma” is another.
You can disagree with that, that’s fine, but you’re not actually addressing the substance of the argument.
You’ve also set up a false dichotomies here: Dogma vs “personal practice.” I’m not arguing for “personal practice” but humility. Doctrine is not a bad thing! It’s the architecture of institutions. A better system would be “here’s some teachings, live them and you’ll benefit, don’t and you won’t.” It’s how many if not most non-Christian religions operate.
Okay final final thing, I think I accurately identified my issue with your framing with my first comment because I think at least part of your argument relies on the perspective laid out in the first paragraph of this comment I'm replying to, which I think is an unsatisfying and almost sad way of viewing God and His connection to humanity. This is the misconception I originally re-stacked about. But if you don't think that my original comment's arguments are persuasive on that front, I'd need to spend more time than I have to convince you.
Great post. I really like that you added “The existence of the Christian God would thus be worse than radical skepticism.” I’ve thought about pretty much that exact thing before! That Christianity is incompatible with so much of my understanding of the world that IF I twist my brain and imagine what I would be wrong about if it were real, it would be everything.
The world would have been specifically designed to deceive me. Statistics wouldn’t mean anything (if prayer works, someone would’ve noticed!). I would be fundamentally wrong about what “good” is and the entirety of morality (if you asked me to personally torture someone forever, with scalding brands, I’d turn you down). History wouldn’t mean anything (The Church has been wrong so much and they were so anti-science, that I guess having previous wrong predictions doesn’t matter). People used to believe all of the things in the Bible, instead of treating them as vague metaphors! Faith would mean truly ignoring statistics, science, reasoning, human progress, and logic to me. Faith really could be correct! But it’s directly against all of these.
This is why I think people who say faith and science are fundamentally at odds are more internally consistent than people who try to mesh them together. If Christianity is real, I think I might as well be a creationist for how many bullets I’d have to bite with the metaphorical view that many take today. And I mean that! I think setting science and faith completely at odds, and creationism actually being real somehow, is less of a bullet to bite than somehow mixing them.
(Note: this is specifically Christianity and not some sort of theism unrelated)
Yes, there's something to be said here about truth and the philosophy of language. As a general historical fact, the median Christian knew very little about theology; Christianity was mainly about attending the mass. The inside of a church we now conceive of with pews and pulpits and teaching/preaching was a product of the reformation/counter-reformation.
So, on one hand, I'm down with the sort of religious fictionalist/non-cognitivists/Wittgensteinians who are sympathetic to being religious/Christian. They actually have more in common with pre-modern rank and file Christians than the most orthodox today. But for myself, I just can't think that way. I think language is very much a pragmatic endeavor, and a lot of philosophy and theology tries to define terms with sufficient rigor that it actually ceases to be pragmatic (I think this is true of religion, but also secular philosophies like EA). I'm resistant to efforts to make rigid these fluid concepts and their unverifiable references.
Codifying dogma of any sort (not just religious, but also cultural/nationalist) just ultimately leads to political violence of some sort, without failure. I know this and see this to be true, and so when I say I refuse to believe in religion or its apologetics, it sounds like i'm an angry resistant non-believer, defying reason. But in reality, I'm just acting the most reasonably I can and know how to!
The dogmatism arises from the fact that, if you put enough effort in to think theology through, there seem to be some pretty clear things we aught to be doing. I don't see how that's at odds with a Christian God.
The Christian, Omnibenevolent God chooses to let human beings make their own decisions, though. If the Church is not a perfect reflection of what it should be (e.g. loving, non-harming), that doesn't reflect on the consitution of God, that reflects on the failures of man to enact God's Will (God's Will being human fulfillment). As a Catholic, I have no issue conceding that Christians are generally quite bad people and use their religious beliefs, and sometimes the Church directly, to cause harm to others. I estimated that about 85% of Christians don't understand what it means to love God (which is the greatest commandment). That can be a failure of the people in the Church to inform others meaningfully, but it does not have to be a failure of God to reflect in the physical world. You might grant that Jesus' teachings for how we should live are perfect (it's not hard to), but just because the teachings are perfect and even if the communication of them is ideal, that should not mean that everyone who hears about Jesus was/is compelled by perfect rationality to become a good and loving person following dogma strictly. If the argument was perfectly rational, we wouldn't have the genuine free will to choose anything else, and that wouldn't be free will.
Also, when Christians say God is Omnibenevolent, they originally meant that all existence is good because it is preferable to non-existence, and God is the substance and source of existence so God is all good. I actually don't have a convincing argument at the moment to connect that rationality of good to "love," but the New Testament and personal spiritual practice pretty clearly demonstrates that God is also perfectly loving. Just wanted to clear up a potential conflation of (common) good and what theologians mean by "God is Good."
I don’t think this comment understands my arguments at all. I’m sorry this is an unhelpful response, but you’ve missed the mark sufficiently that I’d have to basically write 1000 words, often repeating things I already said in the original post, and I don’t want to spend that time right now.
After rereading, no I'm pretty confident this is how I wanted to respond to it. How dogma and stricture hurt people is an inherent part of an organized, unified church. Personal practice leads to imperfect practices that are probably worse than the ineffeciency you get from dogma.
My argument in the prior comment was specifically that how the Church may harm people or how strict doctrine may harm people is not a reflection of God. It's a reflection of human misapplication of teachings, of human justification of behavior that shouldn't follow from genuinely following the doctrine. Of human culturalization of religion instead of seeking the teachings genuinely. Of individual people *choosing* to cause harm based on what they think the doctrine says or where it should go.
The Church *knows* that having strict moral teachings and organization is an obstacle to finding an ideal arrangement. The Church is filled with unideal things. None of that reflects on God, and that's a fundamental result of human free will.
This is basically a free will defense, which is not helpful. God being all-loving and all-knowing, would know how people would react to his teachings and dogma. He would know it would be used to harm in his name. What’s more, he would know what “human nature” would look like, as he would understand the parameters of human decision making, so he’d still be culpable. As I point out, that’s kind of an argument against God!
My entire point is that *this is a problem* and I why I don’t believe. The problem of evil is one thing, the problem of “setting up an institution that injects some evil with an unnecessary institutional rule called “dogma” is another.
You can disagree with that, that’s fine, but you’re not actually addressing the substance of the argument.
You’ve also set up a false dichotomies here: Dogma vs “personal practice.” I’m not arguing for “personal practice” but humility. Doctrine is not a bad thing! It’s the architecture of institutions. A better system would be “here’s some teachings, live them and you’ll benefit, don’t and you won’t.” It’s how many if not most non-Christian religions operate.
Okay final final thing, I think I accurately identified my issue with your framing with my first comment because I think at least part of your argument relies on the perspective laid out in the first paragraph of this comment I'm replying to, which I think is an unsatisfying and almost sad way of viewing God and His connection to humanity. This is the misconception I originally re-stacked about. But if you don't think that my original comment's arguments are persuasive on that front, I'd need to spend more time than I have to convince you.
that’s completely fair!