Embrace the truth; unless…

Based on a comment on my last post, I’ve been thinking much about how fascinating it is that many people superficially urge truth-seeking without committing to embracing the truth when it’s found. I myself am guilty of this at times; everyone pays lip service to the truth, but it’s hard to hold your views loosely enough to allow for frequent personal paradigm shifts. It’s a very human thing to do to pick out patterns from our experiences and learning, and it’s easy to become trapped by these patterns. Karl Popper illustrated this by the idea of a single black Australian swan falsifying the European hypothesis that all swans are white, which might have been based on thousands of observations.

Having said this, though, it also must be noted that while one must seriously take in counter examples to one’s world views to remain intellectually honest, one must also have realistic thresholds and categories for what one will accept as evidence. This is the argument at the heart of the tired old Russell’s Teapot spiel, and it’s modern, much less subtle variant “The Flying Spaghetti Monster”. One can never have any solid intellectual existence if one constantly engages in breaking down one’s world views in reaction to every absurd counter example that comes along. Whitman may have famously said he had the freedom to contradict himself because he “contained multitudes”, and Emerson denigrated a foolish consistency as “the hobgoblin of little minds”, but in everyday existence it’s a mark of mental instability to never have any constancy or pattern in one’s ideas.

This issue of realistic evidence categorization and threshold is at the heart of atheism, I believe. One can easily switch from atheism to theism and vice versa depending on which set of reality “filters” one chooses, and everyone has these filters. This is the foundation of what’s being spoken of in the term “worldview”.

So how does one go about analyzing the reasonableness of one’s reality filters? I personally think it comes down to explanatory power. If my worldview fails to explain much of the human experience, if it fails to explain aesthetics, the existence of the universe, morality, etc., then it may be time to examine my thresholds for accepting evidence contrary to my current beliefs.

In my experience, while atheists are often admirable in their congniscence of the necessity of explaining these aspects of reality, they accept evidence that’s far too flimsy and too much of an intellectual stretch to support their already unstable house of worldview cards. As an example, a helpful (but incomplete) analysis of some of atheist poster-boy Richard Dawkins’ intellectual canyon leaps can be found at this link.

As usual, I’d like to end this post with a reminder that though I feel pretty confident in my Christian worldview, I always welcome counter examples which may change my mind. In respect to my own reality filters, though, I ask that such submissions be pretty compelling. No lame, disrespectful divine pasta metaphors, please.

Lazy Faith

Several times this week I’ve seen religious people dismissed for intellectual laziness. The idea that religious people ascribe to their doctrines solely through blind faith is a very popular conception. I’ve certainly seen many examples of this stereotype in my lifetime, and in any people group as inclusive as “religious”, you’re bound to find examples of almost anything. Overwhelmingly, though, many of the most thoughtful and critical people I’ve met have been religious.

Though there have been rare exceptions, my general experience of the difference between the religious and non-religious is not intellectual rigor, but humility. Religious scientists and researchers I have known are particularly aware of the limits of human abilities and knowledge, and though they attempt to stretch those boundaries on a daily basis, they realize it is an intense wrestling match. The non-religious people I’ve known, on the other hand, tend (with some exceptions) to be strident in their views and feel that anyone who disagrees with them is intellectually shabby or perhaps even diabolical.

Have you ever noticed it’s often the most insecure people who trumpet their superiority most loudly?

Separation of Church and State

I’ve thought much about what it means to live in a pluralistic society that is based on theistic ideas (for anyone who doubts America was founded on a theistic basis, read the Declaration of Independence: “endowed by their Creator…”). I am all for restricting goverment from intruding upon religion, and governments given power to compel people religiously tend to be horrific disasters. However, to disallow government to acknowledge the basis for it’s governing philosophies in some attempt at neutrality seems self-defeating.

In a way, I think every form of government is ultimately a theocracy. Most are not a theocracy in the Gleichschaltung sense so feared by liberals everywhere, but every government has a foundational set of principles by which it operates. These principles are necessarily religious in nature, since religion is essentially a way of living. Even the most thoroughly secular government is religious, it just happens to ascribe to the religion of secular humanism.

All this being the case, I think that efforts to strip any religious trappings from government are futile. Those who would like to remove “In God We Trust” from our currency, “One Nation Under God” from our pledge, these are people who are blind to the fact that they’re trying to foist their worldview on others. They typically claim neutrality, and claim they seek only fairness; they probably even truly believe these things. However, ya gotta serve somebody, and it makes the most sense to acknowledge the worldview that guides your governmental practice. Regarding fairness, notice it’s not “In Jesus We Trust”; just acknowledging theism is pretty darn inclusive, since a tremendous majority of Americans believe in a God of some sort.

America is founded on the idea that rights are inherent in the human condition, and not just granted by government. This is a profoundly theistic idea, with many ramifications that have assisted in making America great. We abandon it at our peril.

Objective Morality

One of the strongest arguments for the existence of God, in my opinion, is the existence of an objective morality that isn’t exlainable non-theistically. Many have tried to create a measure of “good” without God, but it’s not too difficult to explore these efforts and see where they err either in the direction of :

a. subjective morality - whatever someone believes is good actually is good, genocidal maniacs are equivalent to the woman who bakes cookies for the orphanage

or

b. utilitarianism - things are good if they work in favor of the greatest number of people (or the strongest, or the smartest, etc.), which tends to make the disabled, the young, and the elderly rather disposable

or

c. selfishness - things are good if they favor me, forget everyone else (I can at least respect selfish people for being intellectually honest!)

I really honestly would like to hear from anyone who thinks they have a theory of morality that is objective, rational, and yet doesn’t require God. Please, someone!

Spiritual Cobbling

I’ve noticed a trend among people of my generation (80’s babies). It seems that many people I know put their belief systems/worldviews together using bits and pieces of books they’ve read (usually influenced by Eastern traditions), intuitions, and statements of people they respect. These very individualistic beliefs strike me as typically American, and I wonder how widespread this practice is. Is this the modern American religion?

Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason has a great piece on this type of spiritual cobbling here. I highly recommend reading the article.

The idea of verifiable spiritual truth is really missing in contemporary dialog.