The End of Christianity (2 page)

In desperation to avoid facing the OTF themselves, Christians have actually asked me if I have ever examined modernism from a nonmodernist point of view. Believers will even go so far as to say that they don't even know what the scientific method is (yep, just ask Christian scholar Randal Rauser, another case of
definitional apologetics).
Perhaps they might try explaining why science continues to advance without one, because I'm all ears. We might as well return to the prescientific, superstitious era of ancient peoples. While philosophers debate the minutia of what makes science science, science proceeds to deliver the goods in chemistry, astronomy, geology, medicine, physics, biology, meteorology, and so on, and so forth. Christians themselves accept the results of science in a vast majority of areas except in those rare ones that go against what some prescientific “agency-detectors” wrote in a collection of ancient superstitious biblical texts. There is a reason why atheist groups state that they promote science and reason. And there is a reason why faith-based groups sneer at them both.

We simply cannot turn back the hands of time and become Amish. We can only go forward with the sciences. To the outsider, the sciences are the paragon of knowledge. That's why they replaced our former ways of knowing. Scientific knowledge has so decisively passed an outsider test that we must examine all religious faiths in light of it. Show me the math, and we agree. Show me the experiment, and the argument is over. Show me the scientific poll, and the case is closed. Show me what we learn from brain science, and there can be no dispute. The sciences, then, are the only way to keep us all from deluding ourselves. So for a religious faith to pass the OTF it must be detectable by the sciences. Period. If believers want to claim that the sciences cannot detect God, then that means we cannot objectively know God at all. For the sciences are based on the evidence of the senses. If they reject the sciences, then let them propose a better alternative. What is that alternative?

The only true outsider position is agnosticism, which I've called the default position—as such, it is the neutral point of view. An agnostic as defined here in this instance is one who is skeptical of all metaphysical claims, and this is a true skepticism. I see no reason why we shouldn't start by looking at the world as agnostics, for it helps us determine fact from fantasy. All metaphysical claims must pass the OTF before we should believe them. Atheists and agnostics share this skeptical common ground. It's just that atheists are willing to conclude there are no supernatural beings or forces with enough assurance to say so. That's pretty much all there is to it.

In short, the OTF merely asks believers to test their own culturally inherited religious faith from the perspective of an outsider
with the same level of skepticism
they use to evaluate other religious faiths. It does
not
matter what level of skepticism they might apply, only that they
test all beliefs the same
, privileging none. Again, the OTF simply asks that believers take whatever level of skepticism they would use when examining religious faiths they reject and use that same level of skepticism when testing their own religious faith. Nothing more. Liberals, for instance, should be as skeptical of their own faith as they already are of fundamentalism, and vice versa. This isn't a radical doubt. It's the same doubt believers already embrace—just not when it comes to their own “faith.” And I'm saying that's wrong. Fatally wrong.

This dispels once again the wrongheaded objection that if the OTF asks believers to be skeptical as outsiders of their own religious faith, then why not be skeptical as outsiders that there is even a material world? That's like rejecting the OTF because it's not skeptical
enough
, and then using that as an excuse to not be skeptical
at all.
The OTF does not entail such radical skepticism. We have more than enough evidence to conclude that the existence of the material world is far more probable than any proposed alternative—which is why we think it exists.
³

WHY THE OTF FRIGHTENS CHRISTIANS SO

The whole reason Christians object to the OTF is because they intuitively know their faith will not pass the test, even though this tacitly concedes the whole argument. If their faith passed the test, they would be the first ones embracing the OTF and pushing it on everyone else. Instead, they argue against it. This tells us there is something very wrong with the Christian faith. In effect, what they're doing is like arguing against the need for a fair and impartial ruling coming from a fair and impartial judge in a court case. Why would anyone interested in the truth want that? No fair-minded person would ever want this, much less publicly argue for it. Believers will retort that it is impossible
not
to be biased, but this is the very thing I admit that causes me to propose the OTF in the first place. Again, what is the alternative?

Now, it didn't have to turn out that the Christian faith would fail the OTF. If God exists, he could have made the Christian faith pass it. He didn't do this, even though he should have done so, for it only takes a moment's thought to realize that if Christianity is true, it
should
pass the OTF. Otherwise there are billions of rational non-Christians who were raised in different cultures who could not believe by virtue of the fact that they were born as outsiders and will subsequently be condemned to hell. So, if Christians want to continue objecting to the OTF because of fears that their faith cannot pass it, let them admit that God is allowing people born into non-Christian cultures to be condemned to hell merely by virtue of the fact that they were born as outsiders into different religious cultures. And let Christians stop all cross-cultural, missionary-evangelist work, too, for if Christianity was not created to pass the OTF, then there could be no hope such efforts would succeed.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF ACCEPTING THE OTF

Christians might finally admit the OTF is neither faulty nor unfair and then bite the bullet by asserting their faith passes the test. But once they make this claim, they have just agreed that the skepticism of the OTF is a consistent, fair, and justified standard for evaluating one's own religious faith. At that point, Christians can no longer continually punt to faith when critically evaluating the grounds for their own particular Christian sect, since that is not how they critically evaluate the many other religions they reject. They don't let other religions get away with that, so they can't let themselves get away with it, either. What we're left with is an agreed-upon standardized test in assessing the grounds for any religion based in reason and evidence. At that point, the debate can really begin. Prior to this, there wasn't a debate at all but rather two opposing sides talking past one another. Afterward, believers should welcome the skeptic's point of view and even seek us out.

From then on, there can be no more quoting the Bible as a final authority without examining the reasons and the evidence for doing so all over again. No more repeatedly using what I call the “Omniscience Escape Clause,” which is invoked whenever there is an intractable difficulty, such as that found in passages like Isaiah 55:8: “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.” Why? Because we must be able to understand enough of God's ways to know that he exists, that he knows what he's doing, and that his ways are good. Most importantly, the problem of who has the burden of proof will have been resolved as well. For then it's agreed that the person with the burden of proof is the one making an extraordinary claim about supernatural beings and forces. All these things are good, and I welcome them if this argument achieves nothing else.

I would proceed to argue from here that Christians who bite this bullet are not actually testing their religion fairly. The impact of the OTF disallows a person from assuming faith in the religion under scrutiny. Having faith in a religion while assessing it will unfairly exempt that religion from an objective critical evaluation. Believers cannot claim to critically evaluate their own faith in a fair manner if when doing so they have their thumbs on the weight scales.

I would further argue that Christians are just fooling themselves when faced with the facts
apart from their faith.
Fooling themselves? Could that be? Yep. This is exactly what cognitive dissonance theory predicts. According to conclusive scientific studies in this area of research, we believe what we prefer to be true. Once our minds are made up, it is very hard to change them.
⁴
We seek to justify our decisions, especially the costly ones in terms of commitment, money, effort, time, and inconvenience. Almost shockingly, these studies have shown us that reading information that goes against our point of view can actually make us convinced we are right. We will even take the lack of evidence as evidence for what we believe. Social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson document these types of things in their book
Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts.
They tell us: “Most people, when directly confronted with proof that they are wrong, do not change their point of view or course of action but justify it even more tenaciously.”
⁵

This is backed up by the conclusion derived from a series of studies in 2005 and 2006 by researchers at the University of Michigan:

Facts don't necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite…when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts…were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
⁶

Christian, the mental pain you may feel as you read this book is called cognitive dissonance. To reduce it you must make a choice, and cognitive dissonance theory predicts you will almost always dig your feet in deeper—depending on how important your faith is to you. It also predicts that for us to overcome your objections, we must make a completely overwhelming case that leaves you nowhere else to run before you will change your mind—a demand that is largely unrealistic, because the kind of evidence required seems unavailable.

Since a completely overwhelming case seems elusive, Christians confronted with this scientific data usually proceed with the all too familiar “You Too” (tu
quoque)
informal fallacy, saying, “Hey, cognitive dissonance theory applies to you, too.” Christians will then use it to sidestep what this data does to their own faith, but this blatantly ignores the implications of this scientific data, which shows us we're all in the same boat, epistemologically speaking. Again, for emphasis:
We are all in the same boat.
That's how human beings like us think, all of us, with the exception that people who understand these things will be better critical thinkers than others. Because these thinkers are aware of their errors and biases, they're much more prone to compensate for them. To be in the same boat means we should all be skeptics who trust the sciences, knowing how easily the mind is swayed by nonrational cultural factors. We should be more demanding of hard, cold evidence before concluding much of anything. We will, in the end, be skeptics who base what we know on valid logic and the facts established by the sciences.

Don't get me wrong here. I grant that a religion could pass the OTF. It's just that I don't think any so-called revealed religion can do so, and I'm doubtful any religion can pass it. If it turns out no religion can pass the test, keep in mind it's not the fault of the test. It's the fault of religion. It simply means none of them can be justified, because this test is an entirely fair one that has not been shown to be faulty in any way.

THE LIBERAL BELIEVER AND THE END OF CHRISTIANITY

There are professing Christians who will read the books in this series and feel as if some of their particular beliefs have escaped our criticism. They believe differently precisely because there are just too many ways to be a Christian, as David Eller argues in
chapter 1
of this book. Since Christianity is a culturally evolving thing, skeptics are chasing down a greased pig. All is not lost, though. Christians in opposing camps can take up where we leave off, and they do. When it comes to Christianity, I agree with the Protestant criticisms of the Catholics as well as the Catholic criticisms of the Protestants. I agree with the fundamentalist criticisms of the liberals as well as the liberal criticisms of the fundamentalists. In addition, I agree with the Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish criticisms of Christianity, as well as the Christian criticisms of their religions. When they criticize each other, I think they're all right. What's left is the demise of religion and Christianity as a whole.

For instance, I don't say much by way of criticizing liberalism because I don't have to do so. Christian fundamentalists do that for me. Their criticism of the liberals is my criticism, which centers on one question: Why do they even bother with the Bible at all? Why not the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, or Mary Baker Eddy's
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures?
Or, why not just receive direct inspiration from God? Or “listen to their heart”? The liberal deconstruction of the Bible has put an end to biblical studies, as argued most effectively by professor Hector Avalos in
chapter 4
of this book. If believers no longer accept the historical underpinnings of their faith, they should look for a different one or none at all. It's the intellectually honest thing to do. To me, liberalism
is a pretend game
much like M. Night Shyamalan's movie
The Village.
In my opinion, liberals should stop pretending.

Liberals should openly recognize they did not come to their conclusions without a fight against the goads. They were forced against their preferences into accepting what science and biblical criticism led them to think. Now all they do is pick and choose what parts of the Bible to believe with no solid criteria for distinguishing the believable parts from the unbelievable parts except their shared evolving consensus—and, since it's an evolved consensus, they don't need the Bible to inform it. Liberals don't accept anything the Bible says just because it says it. So they can quite easily dispense with it altogether as irrelevant for their lives.