My reading material today has included Letter to a Christian Nationby Sam Harris and the first part of Christopher Hitchens' memoir Hitch 22. I was struck by a couple of similarities: both authors have had bad experiences with Christians and both have a terrible understanding of Christian theology. Given this, it is hardly surprising that they are atheists. If I understood Christianity the way they did and had been treated the way they have by Christians, I just might be too.
Surely this is one of the reasons that, as Paul explains, "the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those
who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant
them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth" (2 Timothy 2:24-25).
I don't think this means that we can never debate, but when it comes to talking to atheists, Christians need to do a lot more telling, and a lot less yelling. As I can (unfortunately) share from experience, one of the reasons that talking with atheists is often so fruitless is that a) the Christianity that is defended by the
apologist/evangelist is different than the Christianity being rejected by the atheist and b) the apologist/evangelist presents the argument is such an unloving manner that it doesn't matter what is said, it will not be accepted.
Regarding a), I have spoken with skeptics of all types: from
ex-pastors who have doctoral degrees from Christian seminaries to high school
kids who have never read a word of the Bible and I have yet to interact with
one who was not operating, at least somewhat, from a false understanding of the
gospel and the evidence upon which we believe it. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “Very
little of the opposition we meet is inspired by malice or suspicion. It is
based on genuine doubt, and often on doubt that is reasonable in the state of
the doubter’s knowledge.” People may be skeptical, but because of what they
believe, that skepticism may actually be warranted.
Therefore, listening
and educating is almost always the first step toward convincing. Before Christians can adequately
debate or discuss, we need to ask questions, find out what is actually
believed by the atheist and then gently instruct as necessary. If we just start arguing without
establishing what each side is actually trying to defend, each person will simply
speak past each other and the conversation will go nowhere.
Unfortunately, this approach takes time, patience, and humility, which is why I find it so hard to
practice. It is always much easier to get defensive about some point and start arguing. This, then, leads to point b). When someone calls or emails to say what an idiot I am for being a
Christian or to give me some silly argument that "proves" there is no God, my first inclination is to tell them what I think of their
intellectual ability (and not in a loving manner). Obviously, that temptation must be resisted. The right response
is to open up a dialog and, over time, make sure that this person is at least
skeptical about the right message (this will undoubtedly involve instruction) and is doubting even in the face of all the
evidence.
In the end, I suppose many people continue to reject the gospel even when they know it properly, are aware of all the evidence that supports it, and have been taught this by loving, thoughtful Christians. However, it would be nice if more people, including Hitchens and Harris, got that chance.
Richard Dawkins has taken a leave from his post at Oxford to study the effects of fantasy stories on children. It seems he is worried that they might be leading our children toward accepting irrational religious claims. Janie B. Cheaney has a good take on this, and Brandon and I discuss it at length on a recent radio show.
British journalist Matthew Parris recently visited his native Malawi to witness some charitable work happening there. His trip produced some interesting results:
It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities.
But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been
trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to
avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs,
stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing
belief that there is no God.
That belief is that Africa desperately needs God. As he expounds in his essay, Parris is convinced that Christianity produces real spiritual change in people and that this change is essential to African progress. We talked about this story at more length on a recent radio show, but for now I just wanted to point out Parris' self-professed approach to his world view. He is an atheist in spite of the evidence against it. His world view cannot account for the data, but he holds to it anyway. If this is not the blind, irrational "faith" that religious folks are often accused of harboring, I'm not sure what is.
In the previous post, I pointed out a few flaws with Christopher Hitchens' argument against religion. Now I would like to mention a flaw in his Christian theology. He made the claim that the Bible encourages people to hate homosexuals. It would be easy just to discount this as ignorance of the text, as it certainly says no such thing, but that would miss the potentially bigger and more subtle problem here. Rather than be ignorant of the text, Hitchens may be using a definition of hate that makes the text say what he claims. This seems to be what the authors of this this web page did. As evidence supporting their claim that the late Jerry Falwell hated homosexuals, they quote him as saying, "God hates homosexuality." Now, this statement can easily be defended using scripture and I believe paints an accurate picture of God's attitude towards homosexuality. Jerry Falwell was right. God does hate homosexuality. Of course, God also hates adultery and lying and gossiping. But He does not hate the individuals who practice these sins. Scripture is clear that God loves homosexuals and adulterers and liars and gossipers and wants the best for them.
Logically, it simply does not follow that because God does not approve of homosexuality that he hates those who practice it. However, that doesn't keep people from trying to make it follow. Those who equate hating homosexuality with hating homosexuals try to coherently support their position, but, as we will see, it simply does not work. Here is their argument in a syllogism.
Premise 1: Denigrating certain characteristics of a person - those that are
unchosen and unchangeable like skin color - is hatred of that person.
For example, to say "blackness is abominable" is bigotry because skin
color is outside the realm of moral discourse and beyond value
judgments. To devalue these type of characteristics is to unjustly
devalue the person.
Premise 2: Homosexuality belongs in the same category of human characteristics as skin color.
Conclusion: Therefore, denigrating homosexuality is to unjustly devalue the whole person and should be labeled hateful bigotry.
The problem here is that premise 2 is completely false. Homosexuality does not belong in the same category as skin color. Here we could spend some time debating the psychological, biological and sociological arguments over whether homosexuality is unchosen and unchangeable. Perhaps another time. For now, let's stick with the philosophical.
Homosexuality is a desire. It is an aspect of human intellectual and emotional life. Desires, as with other thoughts and emotions, can be controlled and changed. Therefore, they fall within the realm of moral discourse. We all know this to be true in many areas of our life. We label desires good or bad and work on changing the bad ones. Desires for too much food, too much nicotine, too much alcohol, adulterous sex, and pornography are quite common and powerful, but they are also rightly thought of as wrong and controlled and changed.
The only other option is to say that desires are completely determined and uncontrollable and outside the realm of moral discourse. However, if this is the case, then on what basis would gay activists condemn the desires of those who think homosexuality is immoral? What about those who have a desire to pass anti-gay laws? Aren't those desires just part of who they are? Wouldn't the activists be just as guilty of bigotry and hate as their opponents? The fact is, if desires are predetermined and uncontrollable, then moral discussion of just about anything is impossible. Everyone would have to be left to follow the desires of their own heart without judgment, whether that meant being gay or beating gays up.
Thankfully, that is not the truth of reality. Desires can be judged morally, and the desire to beat up homosexuals is wrong and should be changed. So should the desire to have sex with someone who is not your spouse. So should the desire to have sex with someone of the same gender.
One's desires are not the sum of one's identity. Just because God doesn't approve of certain thoughts does not mean that he hates the people who think them. Desires can be changed and often should be. As such, it is easy to see how God can love the sin while hating the sinner. He loves who you are, but doesn't approve of all you do or think. Hitchens needs to brush up on his theology or philosophy or both.
Atheist Christopher Hitchens has been getting a lot of press lately, so I watched a couple of his appearances on YouTube. Amazingly, I actually found myself agreeing with some of his arguments! As I’ll explain below, I think he is right to oppose hate-speech laws, although his thinking is somewhat inconsistent on the subject. Before we get to that, I’ll comment on his main claim to fame: his opposition of religion. Here he gives a typical polemic in a talk with Lou Dobbs:
In this interview Hitchens makes his standard point: religion is bad because it causes hatred, violence and other immorality. As the sub-title of his book states, Hitchens believes that religion “poisons everything” and therefore should be abandoned. He defends his thesis by giving many examples of supposedly religious people who were and are thusly immoral: Haggard, Swaggart, Hitler, the Ayatollahs of Iran, the Spanish Inquisitors, the Muslims who erupted over a Danish cartoon, and some others.
The major problem with Hitchens’ argument is that denigrating religion by using moral terms is pointless because the terms are meaningless outside of an agreed upon objective standard for right and wrong. Hitchens might think blowing up infidels is wrong, but what standard is he using to make that judgment? Certainly not the same one the Muslims doing the killing are using. They don’t think that blowing up infidels is wrong. Indeed, they think it is righteous as it conforms to the will of Allah, which is the objective standard they use for making moral judgments. In the same way, Hitchens might call homosexuality righteous as it does not violate any standard of conduct that he believes exists, but many others say homosexuality is immoral because, of course, it violates a standard that does exist – the nature of God as revealed in His will.
So in discussing religion, the question should not be, “Is it good or evil” as everyone will answer according to whatever standard they believe to exist. The question should be, “Which standard or morality does exist? What is true?” All religions (including Hitchens’) believe certain things to be true about the universe. They offer propositional claims about the nature of reality. Morality is then judged according to this reality. The real dilemma in debating religion is not deciding which one is “bad” or “good” as that already assumes something about objective reality to be true. Rather, the dilemma is deciding what about objective reality is true.
If there is a one true god of the universe who is the standard for morality, and that god thinks that infidels should be blown up, than that action, by definition, is good. If there is a god who thinks homosexuality is immoral, then it is. The question is, does a God exist? What is he like? What does he approve or disapprove of? This is the plane on which this debate must take place. Telling radical Muslims they are wrong is a waste of time if you don’t at the same time explain that they are wrong because the god they follow does not exist and the god who does exist does not approve of blowing up anyone.
Interestingly, even if Hitchens wanted to go this route, he could not. He could go as far as telling the Muslims or Christians that their god does not exist, but he cannot then say that what they are doing is wrong because he has no basis for saying so. If there is no god, as Hitchens attests, than there is no such thing as right and wrong and he should just learn to live with the meaningless, morality free, nihilistic universe that he has been randomly placed in and let the religious folks do the same. (Hitchens seemed to have a hard time grasping this point in the debate he had with Douglas Wilson here.)
In the next video, Hitchens is discussing a Canadian push to establish hate-speech laws that would outlaw speaking against people based on their religion or sexual lifestyle. Hitchens is arguing against the law because, he says, we need to be able to bash religious people, especially Muslims and Christians.
Now, as a proponent of free speech, I happen to agree that we should not implement these laws. The potential for misuse is just too great, particularly because “hate” is a moral term that will be defined according to whatever worldview the power hungry politicians happen to hold (see discussion of moral terms above). The last thing we need is the thought police roving around trying to stamp out whatever they personally believe to be “hate.” Indeed, Hitchens opposes the law because he says that he considers some of the people seeking protection from it to be the biggest haters. He defines what the Muslims say as “hate” and the Muslims define what Hitchens says as “hate.” Who is right? Do we really want lawmakers to weigh in on it? Hitchens doesn’t think so and neither do I. We should simply be able to have it out in an open conversation about whether or not the Muslims (or Christians or Jews, etc.) are right about objective reality or Hitchens is.
Hitchens made another interesting point that I thought worthy of comment. He said that it was terrible that religion was now starting to be considered something akin to skin color as far as civil rights are concerned. For instance, he pointed out that “Islamophobia” is becoming an accepted term within the legal system, on par with “racism.” Religious belief is not the same as race, he argued, and we should not offer the same civil protections to thoughts as we do to skin color. Malleable characteristics like intellectual beliefs and emotional desires should not be on par, legally, with genetically determined and unchangeable traits like the shade of our epidermis. I absolutely agree. In fact, the only problem with Hitchens argument is that he didn’t go far enough. He should have pointed out that “homophobia” falls into that category as well. Being gay is not the same as being black, and it should not be treated as such. Homesexuality is a desire; it is a thought. Sometimes it results in action, but the bottom line is that homosexuality is defined by a desire to have sex with someone of the same gender. As such, it is not a genetic trait on par with skin color.
I’m not saying we should bash gays any more than I am saying we should bash Muslims, but we need to start thinking about these hot-button issues within their proper categories and be able to talk about them openly.
