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Is Christianity false or is it just mean and judgmental?

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Have you noticed lately that there is a decided lack of atheists who argue against Christianity on factual grounds? Instead of constructing arguments against Christian theism, what I am seeing more and more of is that people try to say that Christianity makes some group feel bad, and therefore Christianity is not worthy of pursuit and engagement.

Here’s how it works. You have a person who has some sinful habit or other that they don’t want to give up, and they notice that people are judging them and saying that what they are doing is wrong. And they feel bad. And they decide to attack Christianity to make the Christians stop judging them. So how do they do it? Do they argue that the concept of God is logically incoherent? No… Do they argue that some instances of evil and suffering are gratuitous? No… Do they argue that the universe is eternal so that it had no Creator? No…

What do they do?

What they do is pick on some statement by a conservative Christian that makes them feel bad, and then claim that they are victims of meanness. And apparently, making someone feel bad is some sort of disproof of Christian theism. Why is that? It’s because we have decided as a culture that the purpose of religion is to make people feel good about themselves and to be “nice” to other people. And by “nice”, we mean not making other people feel bad about the sinfulness of their behavior. So people are making Christianity irrelevant just by assuming that the purpose of life is happiness, and that any religion that makes people unhappy can be dismissed.

Before, people thought about Christianity as something that you investigated, and that was either true or false. People understood that Christianity made claims about the external world that were either true or false. For example, Christianity claims that the universe had a beginning in the finite past. And the people who disagreed with Christianity would try to produce arguments and evidence that the universe was eternal, as with the steady-state theory or the oscillating model of the universe. And people were willing to change their behavior to match what was true, even when it made them feel less happy. But not any more.

I think somehow, as a society, we have internalized the following beliefs:

  • God wants me to have happy feelings
  • the purpose of religion is to give me happy feelings
  • God’s moral will for me is that I be “nice” to others
  • being nice to others means accepting whatever they want to do as “good”
  • accepting whatever anyone does makes them like me
  • when people like me, I feel happy, which is what God wants
  • there is no need for me to study God’s existence
  • God exists when I want to be comforted, and doesn’t exist when I want to sin
  • there is no need for me to study God’s character
  • God’s character is pretty much like my character, whatever I want is fine with God
  • there are no moral rules or obligations from God that apply to me
  • religions are all the same, I choose the one that makes me feel happy

So you can see that someone who believes things like this can claim to be a Christian, but would actually attack real Christians who hold to the old view of exclusive factual claims and moral judgments. The real Christians are people who have studied these questions, who know that God exists, and what he is like, and accept the Bible’s moral teachings as authoritative. So you could have a famous pastor who defends the Bible’s prohibition on sex before marriage, and have someone feel bad about being judged, and then a bunch of these “the purpose of life is happiness” people will appear and chastise that pastor for making people feel bad. And many of them will claim to be Christians, and attend church, too.

Now notice that this mob of happy-feelings people are not going argue against the pastor using the Bible, because the Bible is pretty clearly against fornication. What they’ll do instead is they’ll pick out some piece of the Bible that seems unfair, like the slaughter of some group of child-sacrificing pagans, and they’ll rail against that Bible passage in order to discredit the Bible’s authority on moral questions. And then the good conservative pastor is made to feel bad because he has broken those unwritten laws – he made someone feel bad using this evil book.

No factual claims about God’s existence were made. No historical arguments were made. No evidence was presented. The mere fact that the Bible is mean to talk about killing the poor Canaanites is used to prove that the Bible has no moral authority at all, on any issue. “It’s mean” entails that it’s false. And you can have people who read the Bible for devotions, who sing in church, and who lead worship, who think that the Bible is false because it’s mean, and it’s mean because it can be used to judge people and make them feel bad.

An example

Now consider single motherhood, as in this case.

Excerpt:

She tells her children to do as she says and not as she does.

But the words of mother of 14 Joanne Watson – who receives more than £2,000 a month in state handouts – have fallen on deaf ears.

Her 15-year-old daughter Mariah is pregnant, the father has ‘left the scene’, and the youngster is about to start living off benefits.

Mrs Watson, 40, is raising her giant brood alone after parting from her husband John, 46, three years ago, and breaking up with subsequent partner Craig le Sauvage, 35, last year.

Despite this, she has still managed to squirrel away enough cash for a £1,600 breast enhancement and a sunbed. She claims she has always encouraged her daughters to use contraception – but, inevitably, it seems they would rather follow the family tradition.

Mariah’s pregnancy comes after Mrs Watson’s oldest daughter Natasha, 22, got pregnant with her son Branford, now six, when she was 16. Her second eldest daughter Shanice, 19, also got pregnant at 16 with her 22-month-old son Marley.

Mariah says she has no concerns about becoming a teenage mother, as it seems the most natural thing in the world. Initially, she and her child will be supported by the taxpayer.

She is expected to move into a housing complex for single mothers and will receive supplementary benefit and child allowance for her baby.

The youngster, who is due to have a boy, said: ‘I’m not nervous. I’ve been around babies my whole life so I know what to expect and that I can handle it. The father isn’t involved and I don’t want him to be either. I’m really excited and think I will be a great mum.’

Now there are two responses to this from people who profess to be Christians. The first response, my response, is to make a general argument against having sex before marriage, using the latest statistics to show the harm that fatherlessness causes to children, and more evidence besides. My response is not to pick on any one person, but to set moral boundaries, to make moral judgments against the selfishness of parents, and to not celebrate and subsidize anything that will harm innocent children. I don’t want to make anyone person feel bad, I just want to say what the evidence is. However, even a general argument using evidence does make some people feel bad, so I am judged as “mean” for giving my opinion and backing it up with evidence.

But there is another response. This response comes from someone who professes to be a Christian, but they are actually a “God wants me to be happy and to be nice to people so they will like me and then we’ll all be happy” person. They would never dream of judging anyone for anything they do. And they are very angry with me for getting my moral rules out of that horrible Bible, and for using facts and evidence to make people feel bad. They believe in compassion, which is the idea that says that the moral boundaries of the Bible are false, and that we have to celebrate and subsidize any and every variation on the traditional family, regardless of the harm caused, so that the selfish adults don’t feel bad about their destructive choices.

And what do we make of a person who feels that saying “it’s wrong” is mean, because it makes a guilty person feel bad? Well, here is the truth. A person who argues against the Bible based on the happy-feelings model is no friend of God, and no friend of the victims of selfish actions. They may think that they are being a good person by affirming the decision of the 15-year old to have a child with no father, but they are not good. Stealing money from their neighbors without providing anything in return isn’t good either. They may satisfied their invented happy-feelings God, but they have grieved the real God, and hurt the real child. And they did it by refusing to set clear moral boundaries.

Positive arguments for Christian theism

Commentary

What today’s young adults think of marriage, commitment and happiness

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Mary sent me this article from Mercator/The Public Discourse. It talks about young people’s views of marriage.

Excerpt:

First, let’s take a look at how working-class young Americans think about marriage.

Meet Ricky, 27, an unmarried father who has been in “about eighteen” relationships and is in his fourth engagement (though never married). Although he has a wedding date set, he questions the point of marriage: “You’re willing to be with that person and you’re gonna spend the rest of your life with that person, so why sign a contract?”

But Ricky does like “the whole thought of what it’s actually about.” What is the “whole thought” of marriage? “It’s, like, being there for the other person and helping them when they’re down, helping them get through tough times, cheering them up when they’re sad,” Ricky says, “You know, just pretty much improving each other’s lives together.” In other words, marriage is about mutual help and companionship.

Ricky also sees marriage as permanent. “When I go into marriage divorce isn’t even on my mind,” he says. “It’s like not even an option.” He looks at his mom’s three divorces and the divorces of his aunts, uncles, and cousins, and asks, “Why’d y’all get married? When I put in what I’m doing I give over one hundred percent.  You know, I do what I’m supposed to do, I put pride behind it.”

And like everyone with whom we talked, Ricky believes that marriage is about commitment. Cheating is inexcusable.

In short, while Ricky would be fine with an informal, common-law marriage arrangement, he definitely aspires to at least some of the ideals of marriage—namely, mutual help, fidelity, and permanence.

Missing in Ricky’s discussion of the meaning of marriage is any connection to children. In fact, he specifically mentions that children and marriage are unrelated. “It’s kind of biased if you say you have to be married because you have a kid, you know. ‘Cause I mean, that’s not the point. I mean, that doesn’t matter.” He goes on to say, “Of course a child needs a father figure and of course a child needs a mother figure.” But that “really has nothing to do with the marriage.”

Further, we found that young adults’ belief in marriage as commitment and permanence comes with an asterisk: so long as both spouses are happy and love each other.

For instance, Brandon, 27, who ended his engagement when his fiancée cheated on him, lauds marriage vows as a “beautiful thing” in which two people say, “Hey, I wanna be with you and nobody else.” He laments that those vows aren’t “necessarily taken so serious as maybe what it used to be.” However, he adds, “But … if you’re married and if you don’t feel like it’s working out—you know, if you guys don’t wanna work it out, I don’t really see a problem with getting a divorce. ‘Cause, it’s just like why live your life in misery?”

Or as another cohabiting young man put it, “I think that the people that get divorced and married and divorced and married are stupid, honestly. But I mean, if you’re unhappy, you got to make yourself happy.”

For as much as young adults express hopes of permanence and commitment, those ideals crumble against the specter of unhappiness. What should the unhappily married person do? A common response went something like this: “It probably means that you married the wrong person and were never in love in the first place. You might have married for the wrong reasons—maybe because the person had money, or just because you got the girl pregnant.” As one roofer put it, “Maybe they was never in love at all!”

What is this enduring love that promises perpetual happiness and for which young adults are searching? Brandon’s response was a common one: “Love is a feeling that you just get when you just know, man. I don’t think there’s a word for it. Like, if you like look into that person’s eyes and it’s, like, you just feel it. Maybe just by the kiss, or by the look, or by the touch.”

Or as one woman defined love: “You know when your body lights up when you get that first kiss from a guy and your whole body is like in overload?….When you are still with that person ten years from now, and you still feel the same way.”

Many of the young adults we interviewed emphasized love’s subjective aspects—such as powerful emotions and “the spark”—as love’s essence. While they recognize the objective aspects of love—such as genuine care for the other person, faithfulness, and friendship—they tend to see the subjective aspects as the authentic indicator of marital love.

Discerning whether the “spark” will endure is of the utmost importance, particularly if one is determined to avoid divorce. Maggie, a twenty-year-old whose parents divorced when she was 13, wants to “set up the life of the non-divorced … for my kids and the future. That’s my plan, really, just normal, try to be normal.” Given this goal, Maggie worries about finding the “right person” with whom she will always be happy.

John, 21, whose parents divorced in his early childhood and is now in a cohabiting relationship, struggles with the same uncertainty. When asked how one knows that he has found the right person, he stresses that you have to “know absolutely for certain, with 100 percent of your being” and that the person has to be “somebody who makes you happy.” But evaluating whether or not the person will always make you happy is tricky and time consuming—especially if one believes, as John does, that happiness is essentially outside of one’s control.

This unrealistic view of marriage is like the total opposite of the Wintery Knight method of courtship and commitment. I totally de-emphasize happiness seeking, the need for “in love” feelings, premarital sex, cohabitation and serial monogamy. I instead favor strict evaluation of spousal candidates over a long period of chastity and courtship – with the aim of maximizing the chance of providing a stable environment for the raising of effective, influential children.

What makes a commitment in my view is not the feelings, it’s the decision of each spouse to work conflicts out – to honor the marriage vow no matter what. And how come no one cares about forming the character of children any more? That should be at the center of the courting evaluation process, because marriage is also for them – they are the vulnerable ones. The spouse you choose has to be suitable for stability – suitable for loving and raising children.

It seems to me that young people are only half right about the goals of marriage. They are right about permanence, but wrong about the needs of children. And when it comes to love and commitment, they are completely wrong. Their view of commitment is no commitment. Commitment is carrying out your obligations to someone when you don’t feel happy – because you love them and want what is best for them regardless of how you feel. The promise comes first.

This is why I put such an emphasis on having a plan for the relationship. Actually there are multiple plans – a plan for the relationship, a plan for each person to grow their spouse, a plan to impact the culture with the relationship and a plan to raise effective and influential children. Once you are committed to specific plans that are objective and not subjective, it really doesn’t matter whether you go some period of time without feeling happy. The relationship is about the plan – not your feelings.

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Commentary

Is there a war on women? Who started it?

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A few decades back, a vocal minority of women decided to revolt against chastity, small government, low taxes, marriage, courtship, and motherhood. They decided that it was better to be able to have recreational sex before marriage, to put their own careers ahead of motherhood, to liberalize divorce laws, to pay women to have children without being married, to vote for higher taxes, to expand government to offer social programs and redistribution schemes, and to assault the traditional gender roles of husbands and fathers. Most men had nothing to do with starting this revolution, but men in general went along with it because they wanted freely available recreational sex more than they wanted children to be safe in stable, married homes.

In the end, the vocal minority of women managed to convince the majority of women and men to accept their views in large part, and society has changed. And we can see the end of the revolution in the face of Sandra Fluke – the “victim” of the” conservative war on women” – as she pleads with Congress to force taxpayers to subsidize contraceptives, abortions, etc., so that women can substitute chastity, courtship, marriage and motherhood with recreational sex, careers and subsidized day care.

Has this change in society made women happy? Let’s see what the research says.

Mary Eberstadt writes in the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

This brings us to Myth No. 4, which is perhaps the most interesting one of all: The sexual revolution has made women happier.

Granted, happiness is a personal, imponderable thing. But if the sexual revolution has really made women as happy as feminists say, a few elementary questions beg to be answered.

Why do the pages of our tonier magazines brim with mournful titles like “The Case for Settling” and “The End of Men”? Why do websites run by and for women focus so much on men who won’t grow up, and ooze such despair about relations between the sexes?

Why do so many accomplished women simply give up these days and decide to have children on their own, sometimes using anonymous sperm donors, thus creating the world’s first purposely fatherless children? What of the fact, widely reported earlier this week, that 26% of American women are on some kind of mental-health medication for anxiety and depression and related problems?

Or how about what is known in sociology as “the paradox of declining female happiness”? Using 35 years of data from the General Social Survey, two Wharton School economists, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, made the case in 2009 that women’s happiness appeared to be declining over time despite their advances in the work force and education.

The authors noted that women (and men) showed declining happiness during the years studied. Though they were careful not to draw conclusions from their data, is it not reasonable to think that at least some of that discontent comes from the feeling that the grass is greener elsewhere—a feeling made plausible by the sexual revolution?

However one looks at the situation, it seems difficult to argue that the results of the revolution have been a slam-dunk for happiness.

It is always hard to disentangle the weeds from the plants in such a large field. But if the sexual revolution has made women so happy, we can at least ask what it would look like for them to be unhappy. A broader inquiry might yield some results worth thinking about, in contrast to the shortsighted political theatrics over a supposed “war on women.”

It’s not only women who are victims of feminism, but children, too. The wife of one of my closest friends gave me Mary Eberstadt’s book on daycare’s effects on children, which is entitled “Home Alone America“. I thought it was a pretty good read, and it shows the importance of not allowing children to come home to an empty home. It’s not good for children to live in households where they are left unattended. But feminism supported that, too.

UPDATE: Donald Sensing pointed me to this post on his blog where he wonders why Democrat elites cannot understand why some women are rebelling against the sexual revolution, and get quite concerned by all of the massive costs of providing women with consequence-free sex.

Excerpt:

“Basic health care” for women, in Democrat lexicon, means nothing at all but being given free contraceptives and abortifacients or abortions. That’s it. In their mind, American women should not think of health care primarily in other terms.

[…]In the Democrat mind, sex without sex’s consequences are the only thing that women should think about when they approach a voting booth. [Liberal women in the media] actually think that unless the government makes sure that women’s sex lives are unencumbered, then a woman simply cannot manage her job,  housing or children. Sex rules all else.

The Democrat party truly cannot comprehend a woman going to vote who is more concerned about the dent in her paycheck caused by $5-per-gallon gasoline than finding free condoms, or who worries about the future impoverishment of her children and grandchildren because of Obama’s borrow and spend binges more than she worries about buying the Pill, or whose most pressing concern is not sexual liberty, but a college-graduate son or daughter who has moved back to live with mom because s/he can’t find a job and therefore can’t make student loan payments and rent at the same time.

Not in the Dems’ world view is a woman who pays her mortgage every month but who knows that her home’s market value is less than the mortgage principal remaining, and stupidly thinks that this is more important to her future (and thus her voting) than getting morning-after pills. There is no room in Democrat gender-identity politics for a woman who has been married to one man for 35 years and so never thinks about getting free contraceptives or an abortion (that is, what Dems say is “basic health care”) but who is intensely concerned with her elderly parents’ net worth falling as inflation rises.

No, these women simply do not authentically exist in the Democrat universe. Such women simply have not heard the full message that there should be nothing more important to a woman than sex, sex, sex.

To the Democrat party, women are simply sex objects, though with political and statist rather than fleshly purposes. But objects is all they are.

I hope that more women start voting for marriage and family again, and give up on recreational sex. It’s not working for anyone.