LarrySanger.org

A Rationalist Approaches Christianity

I am privately linking from here (below) a new essay about Christian religious epistemology, 20,700 words (if you can believe that). Here is the first paragraph:

The purpose of this discussion is to determine whether I should—whether it is rationally justified to—conduct a systematic study of natural and revealed religion, in order to decide whether I can in good conscience declare myself to be a Christian.

The question I examine is not whether Christian belief is (or can be made) rational. That is a very big question. Instead, I examine something more preliminary: Whether a person in my present position could explore Christian belief rationally despite some admitted biases, whether on various bases a peremptory judgment may be made against Christianity, what a rational procedure of exploring it might look like, whether such a procedure is consistent with my long-standing methodological skepticism, and finally, if so, whether I should in fact give up that skepticism. Inter alia I do explore what underlay and initially kindled my recent interest, and later also I share what specific (mostly philosophical) lines of thinking I have explored that gave me hope that a rational Christian belief might be possible.

The essay is here (210K, password protected); I have given some people the password. If you don’t have the password but want access, send me an email at larry (at) sanger (dot) io.

I will probably post a later version of the essay here on this blog after I get feedback.

Please add your comments on the essay here, below!

by

Larry Sanger

“Internet Knowledge Organizer.” Currently President of the Knowledge Standards Foundation, started Wikipedia and various other educational and reference sites. Ph.D., Philosophy, Ohio State, 2000. [read more]

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Please do dive in (politely). I want your reactions!

43 responses to “A Rationalist Approaches Christianity”

  1. Kevin Pick

    4. Christianity and methodological skepticism

    1/ Are you sure that the bible can’t be inerrant? The bible contains over 200 different types of figures of speech (similes, metaphors, synecdoches, and on and on) and is brimming with context that is overlooked by many. In my (admittedly limited) experience, I have never been able to find an error in the bible’s teachings. Atheists love to bring up slavery without knowing that in Israel, slavery was a form of indentured servitude to pay debts AND all slaves had to be freed on the jubilee year, which occurred every 7 years.

    I may come across as a “fundamentalist” but this is a serious question. How can you be sure that the bible, presumably authored by God (or God working through people), has errors without investigating them for yourself? Similarly, what makes you so sure that the stories about the Creation (not evolution), the Great Flood (that we all descended from 8 people about 4 thousand years ago), Tower of Babel, etc aren’t true? Have you looked into them yourself? Do a modest population growth calculation starting with 8 people and see how long it takes to arrive at 10 billion. Investigate why all coal and oil on the planet has carbon 14 in it. Look at the rates of increase of our ocean’s salinity and calculate backwards how long ago it was fresh water. I know this isn’t the place for this discussion, but if you look at the details, the scientific details, of precisely how we arrived at the age of the earth, you will probably be shocked.

    Respectfully.

    2/ As far as things in the Old Testament not applying to gentiles, etc, it goes back to understanding the cultural context of the Old Testament. It might not surprise you, after my rantings, that as I understand it, everything in the Old Testament, from the Hebrew Mazzeroth (the Zodiac), the Mosaic Law in the Torah, even the Hebrew calendar and feast days are all prophecies pointing to the coming messiah. I think what is lost in the Greek mind is that, to a Hebrew mind, prophecy is pattern, types (think prototypes), repetition, and mathematics.

    If you read Luke 20, particularly verse 40:
    And after that they durst not ask him any question at all.

    It doesn’t make much sense to us. Jesus was addressing a “typo”, an errant Yodh (a letter that looks to us like an apostrophe) to the Jewish leadership, that has the affect of making noun’s possessive. They faithfully copied the scriptures for centuries without understanding the meaning. But when Jesus explained it to them, they had no answer for Him.

    My point in all this is that we woefully fail to understand the meaning of the Old Testament. We ought to be careful about what we think we know, especially about a subject so vast.

    3/ I do not believe it is necessary to adopt all Christian doctrine to become a Christian. The fundamental message of Christ is the Gospel. Paul defines the Gospel as essentially three things in 1 Corinthians 3:

    1 Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;

    2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

    3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

    4 And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

    Admittedly, it isn’t that simple. I cheated. The scriptures back then meant the Old Testament. So, as long as you believe those three things, as laid out in the Old Testament, then you are a Christian. 😉

    Also, note that it is possible to believe in vain. Ponder that one.

    So really, this new heart of flesh given to us is just the starting point of Christianity. You can read about this all throughout the bible, that God would one day make it possible to remove our heart of stone so that we will walk with Him and observe His law. God (in my view) is not interested in taking away our fun. God promised to dwell within us and change us from within. The core of all of this is to repair the separation, the rip in the fabric of the universe so to speak, that separated us from Him in the Garden of Eden. Christians find that they never had to give up anything as they improved their walk with God. Truly, it changes our desires so that we no longer want to offend Him. The only way I found this out was to try it out for myself. I can attest, truthfully, that I have fundamentally changed over the last 7 years and it’s difficult to rationalize exactly how this happened.

    Anyway, all the other Christian doctrines, in my view, are peripheral.

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      OK, on your 1/ — I didn’t say the Bible wasn’t inerrant. I said that you don’t have to be prepared to defend the inerrancy of the Bible in order to be able to call yourself a “Christian” credibly. You could not be a certain kind of Christian, for sure, without being ready to defend the “literal truth” (on every simpleminded interpretation of the “literal truth”) of scripture, but (1) some Christians are prepared to recognize certain categories of error (such as scientific), and (2) the meaning of “inerrancy” is not exactly clear, especially if parts of the Bible can be interpreted as symbolic or metaphorical. It’s not like the Jesus and the Bible generally don’t quite frequently use symbol and metaphor; no one denies that.

      “Similarly, what makes you so sure that the stories about the Creation (not evolution), the Great Flood (that we all descended from 8 people about 4 thousand years ago), Tower of Babel, etc aren’t true?”

      There’s a burden of proof. There are massive numbers of archaeological, anthropological, biological, geological, and astronomical claims that are wholly incompatible with the claim that the universe was created 6,000 years ago. “What makes you so sure?” Well, let’s put it this way: I am not sure of much, as much as I might trust or naturally assume that certain things are the case. As a genuine skeptic (not an ersatz skeptic, who thinks skepticism gives him a license to deny claims without proof), I take the evidence of mainstream science as something you have a burden to disprove. Constructing serious theories of, as I said, those portions of archaeology, anthropology, biology, geology, and astronomy that entail that the universe is over 6,000 years old…is pretty tough. Good luck.

      “I would be shocked.” Indeed, I would be shocked if I learned that the judgment or honesty of mainstream scientists was so badly compromised that they all were mistaken in endorsing, quite independently, theories in their respective fields, apparently based on hard scientific evidence. So carbon dating is wrong, evolutionary theory is wrong, the dating of the Ice Age is wrong (or maybe there wasn’t an Ice Age?!), the dating of geological strata is wrong, the dating of the eons of prehistory is wrong, and the dating the age of the universe is wrong.

      Right now the only thing that surprises me is that you actually think you have good evidence of all that. I mean, maybe you do; I’m enough of a skeptic to admit that you might. But that is a heck of a lot for scientists to be wrong (or dishonest) about.

      —

      As to the rest, I have no further comment. E.g., I don’t have any strong opinion about what is necessary to be a Christian (or even, at this point, to be saved). Also, I do wholly agree that the Old Testament is incredibly important and incredibly easy to misunderstand, that the main themes of the Gospel can be found there in abundance, and that the God of the NT is certainly the God of the OT.

      Reply
  2. Kevin Pick

    Christianity Explained, Part 1

    1/
    “and I seemed to be told that I lacked wisdom, that not all
    would be revealed to me at this time, that I should not expect
    anything that had not already been revealed in scripture, and
    that I should keep reading and studying. That was essentially
    the only way I would learn what was available (about the
    divine, anyway) for me to learn.”

    I’m not being cute here, but this seems to jive with my experiences of God speaking to me.

    2/
    “why did God choose to make himself known in the ways described in
    scripture?”

    This is just a thought, I certainly do not know God’s plan.

    We have no real issue conceptualizing an omnipotent and omnipresent God. But an all loving God might be the most difficult aspect for us to understand, perhaps due to our fallen nature and the fallen world around us. But perhaps God’s plan all centers around revealing His nature to us. Consider this possibility: God created the universe with beings made in His image and gave us all free will knowing full well in advance that based on our own actions and decisions, that we would put ourselves in a predicament so insurmountable that nothing less than God’s own punishment and death could save us. Thus demonstrating his infinite love. Jesus said there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for your friends. If that’s true, there is no more of a superlative act of love possible than God’s plan.

    Again, I don’t know for sure. But this idea satisfies my curiosity about it.

    3/ I’m not personally convinced that God’s insistence is on purity. I think it has more to do with eliminating pride. It was Satan’s pride that led to him being fallen. It was Eve’s pride that led to her eating the apple (you can be as God), it is a denial of pride, and admitting that we need a savior, that leads us to Christ, and, ultimately (I believe), it is pride that prevents most people from accepting Him. We’re even told in the New Testament that our salvation is “Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

    This isn’t to say you’re incorrect on this point. Just providing an alternative perspective in case you find it useful.

    4/ “Presumably, we could have entered into a spiritual relationship with Jesus even if he had not been sacrificed on the cross”

    I don’t think this to be true. The satisfaction of God’s perfect justice was necessary for Him to view us as holy. To be sure, God knows the beginning from the end (he is outside of time) meaning the future sacrifice on the cross would allow relationships prior to it. But nonetheless, the sacrifice was necessary (at least as I understand it).

    5/ “And what happens to people who have not heard of the word of God?”

    The Hebrew Mazzaroth (the zodiac that we still use today) is a fascinating study. It begins with Virgo (the virgin) and ends with the Lion (Jesus, the lion of the tribe of Judah). Each zodiac sign has Decans that help complete the story. The implication here is that the plan of God’s redemption has been written in the stars and was passed down from Adam. Presumably (if all this be true), the narrative in the stars fell out of favor as God’s plan became more specifically revealed. You might find this study incredibly rewarding.

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Christianity Explained, Part 1

      “I’m not being cute here, but this seems to jive with my experiences of God speaking to me.”

      Cool!

      “We have no real issue conceptualizing an omnipotent and omnipresent God.”

      Not to be overly pedantic but philosophers of religion would beg to differ. I do know what you mean when you say this anyway.

      “But an all loving God might be the most difficult aspect for us to understand, perhaps due to our fallen nature and the fallen world around us.”

      Oh indeed that’s the one that puzzles me the most.

      “I’m not personally convinced that God’s insistence is on purity. I think it has more to do with eliminating pride.”

      I am probably being influenced by the Bible Project videos, but this gelled well with my reading of the OT. Mind you, “purity” means more or less the same as “righteousness”; it means moral purity in general, not just or even mainly sexual purity. Thus pride is included. Although I do understand what you mean insofar as pride is what stops us from trusting in Jesus rather than whatever our own desires and plans without God happen to be. Pride, the lack of a total childlike humility, is the main thing that prevents us from becoming fully reconciled to the will of God. But purity is the moral state that results in our being thus reconciled.

      5/ “And what happens to people who have not heard of the word of God?”

      “The Hebrew Mazzaroth” has something to do with that?

      Reply
  3. Kevin Pick

    Christianity Explained, Part 2

    1/ What I find particularly amusing about fine tuning is the lengths that secular and atheist scientists have gone to explain it away, proposing string theory and a multiverse. It’s okay that this universe appears to be designed, the argument goes, because there are an infinite number of other universes that failed. And thus, they demonstrate the end result of irrational rationality.

    2/ Happiness on earth and within our lives is (in my view) a bonus, but not necessarily God’s goal. Given our limited time on earth (and even the limited time of the entire life of the universe), even the worst human suffering and unhappiness will dwarf to zero over an infinite timeline. From God’s point of view over infinite time, the net “good” only need to outweigh the net “evil”.

    3/ “So—should I?”

    Sure, even if just provisionally to see where it leads you. You can always return to it if fruitless.

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      “1/ What I find particularly amusing about fine tuning is the lengths that secular and atheist scientists have gone to explain it away, proposing string theory and a multiverse.”

      I don’t know the science well enough to say whether explaining away fine tuning is the only reason for string theory and a multiverse. But if as I am told there is little in the way of confirming evidence for string theory and the multiverse—i.e., they are merely theoretical constructs with nothing to support them—then I would be inclined to agree with you. Postulating an infinity of entities on first glance seems less parsimonious than postulating one designing God.

      Reply
  4. Kevin Pick

    Conclusion

    Godspeed! Seriously, there is nothing more important than learning (1) Is God real? (2) If so, what does He want?

    I understand if my feedback is irrelevant to your discipline, but I hope it’s useful to you in some way, shape, or form. I don’t expect you, or anyone, to take anything at face value. But, if you want reference materials for anything I’ve posted, please don’t hesitate to ask.

    Let me just end with this: in Matthew 13, Jesus explains why he spoke in parables. It’s a heartbreaking study, but Jesus knew that many people would not accept Him. He fulfilled the will of the Father, and at the same time He offered as much mercy as He could given His constraints. The point is, we will all be judged. If we choose, our judgement occurred 2,000 years ago on the cross. If we reject that, we will each be judged perfectly. Ignorance is a defense, but only up to a point. We are without excuse.

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Kevin, thank you very much for your thoughtful feedback! It was extremely interesting and thought-provoking, and I appreciate all your time.

      Reply
  5. Silly Old Pops

    My two cents:

    I am no theologian, or any kind of deep thinker for that matter. Just a regular guy who believes in Jesus.

    Full disclosure: I made a good faith effort to read your essay, and indeed made it 20% through, but found it very tough going.

    I am reminded of Nicodemus questioning Jesus in John 3. Like you, he was attempting to find God rationally, logically. That is not the right way, as Jesus tells him: “If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?” Thankfully He didn’t let poor old Nicodemus go on for 20,000 words…

    Trying to find God logically is like trying to climb over the wall of the sheepfold instead of going in through the door. If God is real, He created logic, yet has chosen another way to find Him. If you can find Him by logic, than faith would be of no effect.

    You mention Plantinga and his witness. Perhaps like him, I too bear witness. I have met someone. I am telling you about Him. My testimony is that, yes, the God of the bible is real. Do I have any solid evidence? A photograph, perhaps a Patterson film, a thumbprint even? Not really. However, I am going to suggest that if that is what you are looking for, you are thinking too small. The entire universes is His thumbprint. I am finding that, in general, people underestimate how truly vast God is, trying to make Him conform to our expectations. He is larger than all that.

    If you are interested in learning about faith, instead of asking those who study faith, theologians, you might be better served to learn from those who practice their faith, believers. And here is an amazing thing: Because God is infinite, we will never be able to fully learn about Him. We will never arrive at a place where He can no longer teach us. Every time I learn something new, instead of finding the end, whole new vistas come into view. Eternal life is synonymous with eternal learning, eternal growth.

    One word of caution. Part of my witness is that, yes, there are wolves in sheep’s clothing out there. Much of what is purported to be ‘Christianity’ may not be. One needs the Holy Spirit to discern His voice. Satan has sown a lot of ‘chaff and countermeasures’ into the world. His most effective decoys are the ones that most closely resemble the real thing. “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.” Leaven. Even just a tiny bit of bad teaching can send you in the wrong direction.

    Larry, you are on the right track. “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Indeed, God came to me without me even consciously seeking Him. “I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not”

    Paul M.

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Paul, I appreciate your advice.

      Christians place such a primary emphasis on faith that I think they forget just how much they have learned about the Bible and Christ that gives meaning to the faith. I imagine a missionary encountering an isolated tribe, and once he has learned enough of their language, says, “You should believe in Jesus.” That would of course be ineffective and pointless. Who is this Jesus?

      I am obviously not in the same situation, since I grew up as a Christian and have recently read all the Gospels and Acts, etc. But even for someone like me, or who “knows enough to be dangerous,” I would say that they will not fully understand what you are asking until after they have read and understood enough of the Bible to make sense of it.

      Moreover, this emphasis on faith for the salvation of new believers, as absolutely necessary as it might be, means that those same Christians might not be teaching new potential converts everything they need to know.

      I’ll tell you, Pops, reading the Bible all the way through carefully, for deep understanding—with study notes and commentaries and other resources—seems to have been absolutely necessary for me to be able to take Christianity seriously. And again, I was raised Christian, and I knew comparatively much about the faith already, although I did not realize just how little I understood it and how compelling it might be if I had understood it.

      Moreover, in our secular society, a massive number of smart, well-meaning people don’t give Christianity a second thought because of how ridiculous it has been made to seem, from an intellectual point of view. Apologetics often comes across as addressing believers, but I wonder if more of it should not be addressed to skeptics.

      Re “Satan has sown a lot of ‘chaff and countermeasures’ into the world. His most effective decoys are the ones that most closely resemble the real thing.”

      The Holy Spirit is needed to “discern His voice,” you say; very well. Perhaps without naming personal names, can you give examples of types of bogus Christians, and why you think they are?

      Reply
      1. Silly Old Pops

        Hi Larry!

        I just saw your reply today on the 5th. I wouldn’t have known except I went back to copy and paste something I had written to you. I don’t know if this site has e-mail notifications, or maybe it went to spam or something. All is well that ends well!

        My Cristian testimony is part of my reply, and I’ll share some here. I would tell the whole thing, but it is long, and if you like I will e-mail it to you. Not that I mind if it is public, but it’s maybe too long for a blog comment. It’s difficult to write long letters in this little reply box. Hint hint.

        I can’t remember now what I have shared with you already, please forgive me if I repeat something.

        I was born again, out of the blue, in 2012. I had a spiritual experience that I remember quite clearly but is difficult to describe. The result of this was that I became convinced that Jesus IS real, and that He DOES love me! I was 41 years old at the time, and had been raised with very little (none, really) Christian or any other religious background.

        I read through the new testament of an old dusty KJV we had kicking around the house. As you can imagine, it didn’t make a lot of sense, but even then some of the stories resonated with me. Having been an unbeliever, I had no friends or family to turn to to learn more about this thing that had happened to me. Naturally I went online and started reading and watching videos. I also started attending a small church a few towns over.

        This is when I feel like I was led astray. From the outside, I had always assumed Christians were more or less monolithic in their beliefs. They’ve had 2,000 years to figure things out, after all. I mean, yes, I had been aware of Catholic vs Protestant, but was not aware of the depth of the disagreement, and having no skin in the game, never gave it much thought. Now I found it DID matter, and I became bewildered. There were some teachings that were CLEARLY wrong, and even as a ‘babe in Christ’ I could see that.

        In that environment I watched some U-Tube vids that made me feel perfectly awful for months. These men were teaching something that I know now is called ‘Lordship salvation.’ I’ll let you look it up, what it means, the counterpoints, etc. You ask that I not name names, so I will refrain, but they are very well known and very well respected teachers. The upshot is that I began to question my salvation. From my spiritual experience I had had, I knew Christ was real, but I began to doubt that I was good enough. I did not feel love, I felt judgement. I began a mental inventory of my good deeds, hoping they would be good enough. To know that Christ is real, but to feel unworthy of Him is a terrible place to be. It was a treadmill of despair.

        This lasted about six months, until I realized it was a false teaching. I honestly believe the Holy Spirit gave me that discernment. Unfortunately, the leaven of this teaching lingered in the corners of my mind for years. The little church I was attending did not preach this overtly, but I now strongly suspect that the pastor himself struggled with this very debate internally, grace vs works. “For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?”

        For years, I struggled with the reality of my salvation. The feeling was less intense, but persisted in the shadows. For some reason, this last winter I chose to revisit the Lordship salvation issue. During the course of this study, I finally after 7 years, understood the gospel. I cannot tell you the weight that lifted off of my shoulders. I can only compare it to the experience I had had back in 2012. I felt like I had been born again, again! I had been laboring to make myself righteous. I now understood that Jesus has in fact done that already. I only need to rest in His finished work. It really is that simple.

        This teaching, that we need to DO something to earn our salvation, that salvation is some sort of collaborative effort between Jesus and us, is very seductive. The wisdom of this world says: “There is no such thing as a free lunch, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” God’s wisdom says: “…whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” It sounds too good to be true, so we discount it. I found Lordship salvation to be a gospel of despair, never feeling good enough. I am afraid that others find it a gospel of pride, actually feeling like they are making themselves righteous by their own works. Both deny the saving power of Christ’s shed blood.

        This has taught me the importance of the gospel message. It is the single most important teaching in the bible. If one can understand and believe the gospel, everything else will eventually fall into place. Paul says this over and over again. I don’t claim to understand the whole bible, indeed haven’t read it cover to cover. I DO claim to know the gospel, that Jesus Christ has risen, and to be saved. That is where the rubber meets the road, as it were.

        I used to ‘spiritualize’ the following: “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God” I thought maybe if I ever bumped into a spirit, like Caspar the friendly ghost, I would ask them this question. I now know this has a more practical meaning. Note John’s reference to false prophets. They aren’t spirits, but men. What John is saying is to ask teachers, pastors, etc. what is the gospel? That’s how you know if they are led by the Holy Spirit. We can disagree on all sorts of things: end times, baptism, sabbath, etc, but we cannot disagree on Jesus Christ and His finished work. THAT is what saves us.

        Here is a bit of eastern philosophy, but it is fitting: ‘There are many ways to be unhealthy, many sicknesses, but only one way to be healthy, to be whole.’ Likewise, there are many false gospels, but only one true one. Satan doesn’t care which false gospel you believe, or if you don’t believe any gospel at all, just so long as you don’t find the real one. I have told you my story about one particular false gospel, but I know that there are many others.

        I’m afraid I have gone on too long, but I do want to address your first question. I am aware that my testimony of having had a spiritual experience does not save others, is not convincing, and I don’t often share it with others. It has more meaning for fellow believers than unbelievers. I know that it sounds foolish, and indeed people can mock it.

        Have you ever messed around with one of those brain teaser puzzles where one tries to take two pieces of twisted wire apart? Sometimes you can fiddle with them for hours and have no luck at all. Then, without knowing quite what you did, it comes apart! Look, everyone, I did it! Someone asks how? You have no idea, but look, see, the puzzle has come apart. Likewise, I have been saved. I have no idea how, I can provide no roadmap. I can only say that I once was lost, but now am found. That is my witness. And yes it looks foolish. I know it does because I used to be on the other side of that fence. I recall my former feelings of bemusement and disdain for Christians. And yet here I am.

        This is how God has chosen to reveal Himself: “But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.”

        I know that my testimony won’t resonate with everyone, maybe won’t convert anyone. I don’t really expect it to, but please consider the parable of the sower. We are called to sow what? The Word. Are we sowers responsible for how people receive it? No, it is the work of the Holy Spirit if someone is saved. Notice we are not called to sow our intellect, or our logic, or our ‘Christian lifestyle.’ We are to sow the Word. “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

        My personal testimony is that God worked through a single verse to reach out to me and save me. I hardly knew anything about the Bible or Christianity. I am not even consciously aware that I was looking for Him. That has to be part of why the gospel is so simple. If He required that we need to know the whole Bible front to back to be saved, who would be saved?

        I’m sorry I have gone on for so long. I hope I have made some sense, at least. I really do value the conversation that we are having, thank you.

        Paul M.

        Reply
        1. Larry Sanger

          I’ll have to reply in more detail later. Thanks for all of this!

  6. Joanne

    Some resources that might interest you in your rational questioning:
    The Rational Bible, commentaries by Dennis Prager on Exodus and Genesis
    Augustine’s Confessions (397AD) with Twitter book club #TolleLege

    Augustine’s autobiography, which documents his life from atheist to believer, is a study in thought, faith in the Triune God, and self -reflection I am reading it for the first time and his writing is so rich and tied to Scripture at every turn.

    I wish you well.

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      Thank you, Joanne!

      I remember reading the Confessions…I guess I would have been 18 at the time, and I haven’t read it since. I do remember liking it then, although I was already an agnostic, and how it told the story of how he went from the gnostic heresy to genuine Christianity. And I remember, “Lord make me pure, but not yet!”

      I might well give it another read now that so much time has passed.

      Reply
  7. James Peterson

    Hey Larry, wonderful blog! I agreed with your point, “we are flawed and imperfect beings, in my view, that people are attracted to revelation based religions.” Thanks for sharing it and keep posting!

    Reply
    1. Larry Sanger

      James, thanks for the feedback, but I can’t find that quotation anywhere in anything I’ve written. Intriguing statement. I’m not sure I agree with it. Our being flawed and imperfect made it more likely that we would be attracted to revelation-based religion? Well, our awareness of our imperfections has led many to seek divine assistance in rectifying the problem, and most if not all religions worth the name involved some sort of revelation.

      Reply
  8. Wayne Abbott

    Larry, I read your piece. Thanks so much for sharing it. For me, I think the thing I thought really needed clarification way up front was definitions. Things like “What it means to embrace Christianity”. Are we talking orthodox Christianity? Being able to say and take the creeds literally, e.g “Jesus has been literally sitting at the right hand of the Father for 2000 years”? Accepting Anselm’s theory of divine satisfaction as the theory that must be believed to claim oneself a Christian? Believing in a physical resurrection of the body? (This is in the creeds for sure and it seems to have been the popular understanding of how resurrection works among the Pharisees in Jesus’ time). Does any kind of ‘Liberal Christianity’ count? At the very beginning of the essay I would lay out precisely the definition of Christianity your are proposing to accept or reject. Can you clarify here?

    Reply
  9. Pawel

    Hello Larry, Keep posting please.

    >> Whether a person in my present position could explore Christian belief rationally despite some admitted biases …

    If only I had 1% of that thinking apparatus of the great Kurt Goedel!

    My understanding is that we could start anywhere, from Saint Anselm of Canterbury and go along centuries up to Kurt’s times (20th cent ) . It appears to me that as we go then we use more and more formal languages to describe the problem. Maybe that formalism helps fight biases?

    Consider an interview with many candidates:
    If I’m interviewer and I like one particular candidate during interview (I’m biased and not rational) then I tend to ask questions to get this person on board.
    OTOH
    If I have a bank of questions ONE for all candidates then no matter if I like somebody or not this formal way keeps me from misjudgement.

    This reminds me of one technical lead who used to say:
    It is better to be consistently wrong than to be inconsistently wrong.

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