On Christianity - with Jed Sanford

• 5 Objections
• Response to 5 Objections
• The Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus
• 3 Points of Departure
• On Christian Origins
• On the Holy Spirit
• On Belief
• The Trouble with (Traditional) Worldviews
• Imagination, Authority, and Knowledge
• On Marxism
• Christianity and Marxism
• In Defense of Skepticism
• Skepticism and Ethics
• Where I’m Coming From
• Tradition, Knowledge, and Metaphysics

I’m still planning to get to the Marxism stuff, and I want to clarify some of the relationship between Paul’s authority and the guidance of the Spirit. But, right now, let me try and clarify what I meant about not needing to buy into any particular worldview because it probably makes a huge difference to my epistemology and, therefore, this whole discussion. 

I know we’ve discussed this before, and I mostly agree that “each of us must (at least implicitly) have a worldview.”¹“On Belief,” paragraph 4. I would perhaps only add that these days there are a lot of people for whom this is very very implicit. It’s not just possible to muddle through life doing what makes you feel happy, but I think it is increasingly common.²Since originally writing this and thinking about it a bit more, I think it’s important to point out that the idea that we each must have a worldview that addresses certain key questions such as “what is good?” and “what is valuable?” is, if true at all, only partially true. That we all in life encounter situations in which these questions and their answers come to bear is certainly true. But, the more I learn about the world and other people, the more I realize there’s no necessity or inevitability to actually having an answer to questions such as these or even believing that an answer might be discoverable, much less comprehensible. The picture is actually quite a bit more complicated than that. (None of that is to say I don’t believe those questions are important, because I do.) I have a feeling this issue will arise again in our dialogue, so for now, I’ll just add that I believe we’re all muddling through life in one sense or another. Perhaps an important question is how we go about our muddling.

In my last reply, I realize now I didn’t make very clear what I meant by not needing to buy into any one worldview completely. In thinking back to that statement, I also realize now there are actually a couple things I could mean by that, but in the context in which I was writing what I actually meant was this:

In saying I don’t need to buy into a worldview, I mean I don’t need to accept any systematic set of beliefs that traditionally go together simply because they traditionally go together — e.g. the “package deal” in Christianity of “God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the church” you mentioned previously;³“On Christian Origins,” Section 3: “The Holy Spirit.” or, alternately, the package deal in Buddhism of the 4 Noble Truths, conditioned arising, reincarnation, and the doctrine of no-self; or then again, the package deal in Scientific Rationalist circles of evolutionary biology, naturalism, atheism, and moral relativism. Furthermore, what I mean when I say I don’t need to accept these things is that I don’t think I should accept them, unless of course the evidence leads to and supports that conclusion. Going yet one step further, I would add that I think the evidence rarely leads to and supports all parts of one of these sets of beliefs without problems. Rather, they are often systems of beliefs partly because the constituent beliefs within a given system depend to some extent on each other for support. In the worst cases, this creates a blatant circularity of beliefs (e.g. “The Bible is true because the Bible says so.”). Even at their best, there is at least some reliance on assumption, speculation, or appeal to tradition or authority (e.g. The Holy Spirit must be guiding the Church because that’s what the Church has traditionally believed). 

As for my statement that this isn’t “how we go about believing in almost anything else in life,”⁴“On The Holy Spirit,” paragraph 8. hopefully it makes more sense in light of the clarifications above, but just to clarify a bit more, what I mean is that we typically don’t go through life accepting everything a particular authority says just because they are an authority. For example, I can believe a certain scientist is authoritative in their field based on their credentials, knowledge, and experience in their field, but this wouldn’t and shouldn’t lead me to believe unquestioningly that they are probably right about everything they believe or assert is true (think of Richard Dawkins here if you like). Furthermore, note that their authority has a basis in something open to examination or verification. We can question scientists, historians, news agencies, and countless other types of human authorities, and people routinely do so in order to ensure that these authorities have a solid basis and/or that their individual assertions check out. So, I agree with what you say, that it can be quite reasonable to base our beliefs on an authority provided we have good reason to trust that authority. The important questions are what constitutes good reason to trust an authority and what should be the extent of that trust, and perhaps that is where our disagreements lie. In fact, I’m certain at least some of them do. 

To summarize, I’m basically just suggesting it is wise and responsible for someone seeking truth to question any and all authorities, and it may be perfectly reasonable to accept some of what an authority teaches and reject some of what that same authority teaches. I also see no reason this should not apply to the fields of theology and religion just as readily as anything else. 

But, maybe we are in agreement there. Let me know what you think!