Tag Archives: Subjective

Personal

How I talk to my mother about Christianity

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I could write a lot about this, so I’ll just try to provide a brief insight. I should probably put up a poll to see what my regular readers are more interested in: 1) news or 2) apologetics and mentoring.

A word of warning

One thing I’ve noticed about women is that they like it when men treat their mothers nicely and what they mean by that is never judging or disagreeing with their mothers, and never trying to change their mothers. This view of love is, of course, false. I want my mother to go to Heaven and to know and love God, so I have to talk to her about these things and disagree if she is wrong about them. So I think that disagreeing with her about spiritual things is being nice to her. But read on and judge for yourself.

The plan

My plan for my mother is not to begin by convincing her that Christianity is true. Instead, I begin by convincing her to approach religious issues just as she would approach any other area of knowledge, such as investing, or nutrition. If she agrees to treat religion as any other area of of knowledge, then I think that she will eventually conclude that Christianity is true. Currently, she is forming her beliefs about God’s existence, character and what he wants from her, using subjective mechanisms, i.e. – intuitions and experience. I want her to try a different method.

Goals

My goal for my mother, as with anyone else, is to try to get her to accept Christianity as objectively true, based on arguments and evidence. I don’t think that a person can be an authentic Christian if Christianity is just wish-fulfillment. I don’t think that a person will stick with Christianity when it goes against their own self-interest, unless their belief is anchored on arguments and facts. People act on what they really believe is true, when stressed by reality.

So, what I need to do is to argue for a method of discovery that is not dependent on emotions and intuitions, but is more rigorous. I need to offer my mother tools, such as the laws of logic, historical analysis and the scientific method. These tools can be used to investigate whether God exists, and what he is really like, and what he wants from her. By using these tools instead of intuition and experience, my hope is that I will be able to get her to arrive at a view of God as he really is.

Questions

The first question to ask her is “Does a Creator and Designer of the Universe exist independently of whether anyone thinks so or not?”. And then I ask the immediate follow-up question “How do you know that?”.

The second question to ask her is “What is the Creator/Designer’s character like?”. And again, the immediate follow-up question is “How do you know that?”.

The third question to ask her is “How does the Creator/Designer expect you to act?”. Once again, immediately follow up with “How do you know that?”.

Discussion

And the results of the inquiry were as follows: 1) she thinks that God is exactly like her and approves of everything she does, and more importantly, 2) her method of investigating religion is basically to invent “God” using her own feelings and experiences. Her method of arriving at these conclusions was by using intuition and experience, and she was resistant to the idea of using logic, science and history to find out the truth about God, his existence, his character, and what he wanted.

The next thing I did was to argue that her method of arriving at her religious beliefs was subjective and unreliable, and that she would never use that method of determining truth in any other area of life. I made a list of everything she cares about and started approaching each topic using her subjective method of determining truth, in order to expose the disastrous consequences that would occur if she made decisions in these other areas using intuition and experience.

For example, I explained my theories on how watching TV produces university degrees, how chocolate causes weight loss, how fruits and vegetables cause cancer, etc. All of this to show that subjectivism is not a reliable method of arriving at truth in any area of knowledge, especially in religion. The desire for happiness should not drive the search for religious truth. People need to avoid inventing a self-serving view of God, just because it gives them a feeling of security without any moral demands.

Finally, I introduce a reliable method of arriving at the truth in any area, including religion. I’m sure that you all already know about the concepts of propositional truth, the correspondence theory of truth, and the test for truth (logical consistency, empirical validation, experiential relevance). And you all know about how to use science/history/logic to confirm/disconfirm religious claims, etc. If necessary, I would apply these methods to other areas to show how they produce real knowledge.

A useful thing to do is to show how well-accepted facts like the origin of the universe from nothing and the crucifixion of Jesus falsify various world religions. This helps to make the point that a lot of people believe things that are false. That way, you motivate the question – “am I interested in knowing what is really true or am I interested in engaging in wish-fulfillment and projection in order to make myself feel better about my own selfishness and insecurity?”.

Some things I found out

I found that engaging in these discussions brought out some very interesting data that reminded me of what I see in the church. Each of these is worth a post, so I’ll just throw them out there in point form.

  • She viewed my efforts to get her to employ logic and evidence to determine her views as being critical of her
  • She felt “constrained” by allowing logic and evidence to override her “freedom” to invent a self-serving God
  • She didn’t want to know about the laws of logic, or how religions make conflicting truth claims
  • She didn’t want to know about what science and history could confirm/disprove religious truth claims
  • She thought that it was better to let everyone believe anything they wanted to believe
  • She thought that religion was mostly for making people believe things that made them feel happy and secure
  • She didn’t think that God expected her to act morally if it didn’t make her feel happy to do so
  • She didn’t care to find out the truth about whether God exists, what he was like, and what he wanted from her

Note: we didn’t get into any fights over this, it was just a friendly discussion, although I could sense her resistance.

My biggest concern about this view is that if it were a common view among Christians, it would increase the incidence of several non-Christian ideas, like moral relativism, inclusivism, postmodernism, pluralistic salvation, the non-reality of Hell, etc. And I think that if a lot of Christians believe Christianity is self-serving, then we will be perceived as being hypocritical by non-Christians when we don’t do the difficult things we are supposed to be doing. Non-Christians want to see some consistency between out actions and what the Bible says.

In a poll of my friends I did a while back, I found that people thought that talking to relatives about Christianity was the most difficult thing to do, higher than talking to people at work. So I’d be curious for readers to share their experiences about who is harder to talk to, and what you found in talking to people.

Mentoring

Apologetics advocacy

And here are some lectures that got me interested in apologetics.

Polemics

Is it necessary to use words to preach the gospel?

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The Pugnacious Irishman has some thoughts on it.

Here’s the problem he ran into at church last week:

The message today was a message that contradicts the biblical witness, yet it is a message I hear frequently in the 21st century.  I cannot see Jesus proclaiming the message that was proclaimed today.

[…]Our pastor’s main intention was to press home that our actions need to match our beliefs.

[…]Things started going off the rails, though, when a very obvious second message was proclaimed: the whole “actions-proclamation” dichotomy.

[…]Here’s why I say that: I thought I was just reading into the message, but that was put to rest when I heard the worship leader’s application: “go out and proclaim the gospel at all times.  Use words if necessary.”  He got it loud and clear.  When we got to my car, my wife, who is not an apologetics freak like myself (she’s normal, thank God!), turned to me and said, “I know what his intentions were, but do you get the notion that he was saying that you don’t need to talk to others about Jesus?”

Go here to read Rich’s answer to the problem.

I will surprise no one by stating that it is impossible to preach the gospel without using words, which is why Jesus used them, and why we have people writing letters, preaching sermons and disputing in public throughout the New Testament. In fact, it is literally impossible for someone to be saved without hearing about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The propositional content about these events is required, not optional.

Basically, the message of Christianity is that we are all sinful, and in need of a Lord and Savior so that we can be rightly related to God again. Works are just epiphenomena that occur after you have already been saved, showing that you really are saved. The message of the feminized church, on the other hand, is “do nice things because it makes you feel good, and it makes other people feel good – and that’s what Christianity is about”. So, saying things that make non-Christians feel bad, or that imply that they should be studying to change their beliefs is intolerant or harassment or a hate-crime.

Well, I haven’t been snarky, since, oh… yesterday. So let me tell you exactly why people in the feminized church emphasize actions instead of words, by referring to some of my favorite posts from way back when the blog started. That way, all you new readers can read stuff from back when I actually wrote really good posts on Christian apologetics, instead of really bad posts on politics.

Here are some of my thoughts on why people in church want to do nice things instead of telling others the good news and defending it against attacks. (If you only have time to read one of them read this one)

News

How objective are scientists about their research, given their political views?

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Hot Air linked to this Pew Research poll about the beliefs and attitudes of researchers in the scientific fields.

Excerpt:

More than half of the scientists surveyed (55%) say they are Democrats, compared with 35% of the public. Fully 52% of the scientists call themselves liberals; among the public, just 20% describe themselves as liberals. Many of the scientists surveyed mentioned in their open-ended comments that they were optimistic about the Obama administration’s likely impact on science.

For its part, the public does not perceive scientists as a particularly liberal group. When asked whether they think of scientists as liberal, conservative or neither in particular, nearly two-thirds (64%) choose the latter option. Just 20% say they think of scientists as politically liberal. However, a majority of scientists (56%) do see members of their profession as liberal.

Most scientists had heard at least a little about claims that government scientists were not allowed to report research findings that conflicted with the Bush administration’s point of view. And the vast majority (77%) says that these claims are true. By contrast, these claims barely registered with the public – more than half heard nothing at all about this issue. Only about a quarter of the public (28%) said they thought the claims were true.

Both scientists and the public overwhelmingly say it is appropriate for scientists to become active in political debates about such issues as nuclear power or stem cell research. Virtually all scientists (97%) endorse their participation in debates about these issues, while 76% of the public agrees.

I think it helps to make the point I was making earlier about the fraudulent science used to support global warming and Darwinian evolution. Many scientists have an agenda. They get paid by the government. The bigger government is, the better they get paid. Therefore, many are Democrats. Scientists tend to be biased in favor of material entities and explanations. Morality is non-material. Scientists therefore tend to resent the idea that moral claims are knowledge. They prefer to have autonomy from non-material moral rules. Therefore, many are atheists.

There are some dissenters of course. But these are rare.