Thursday, June 6, 2013

There Is No Intellectual Problem with Biblical Christianity

Yep, that's what I said. I get tired of people suggesting that there is. It's ALWAYS, not just usually, but ALWAYS the case of a person suggesting this who doesn't understand how ultimate beliefs work.

The problem is a worldview conflict. The problem is in your necessary beliefs. Cognitive dissonance takes place when you hold secondary beliefs that are in conflict with your necessary beliefs (usually ingrained within you from early childhood on) concerning the nature of reality and what authorities have the ability to interpret that reality (which will also be determined by your ultimate beliefs concerning reality).

What happens is that most people, especially Westerners, hold all sorts of conflicting ideas because we pick up ideas from here and there from various places. This is even worse in a pluralistic, global atmosphere, where ideas are adopted as you were just looking for things that struck an emotional cord or thought were interesting, but have now treated ideas like an all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet. Forget the fact that chinese noodles don't really go with hot dogs in beans. Pile it on.

The problem, of course, usually occurs when one is confronted with his inconsistencies. This often happens in school or by reading a particular book or hearing lectures on the internet. It can also just occur by one's own growth in thinking about what he believes. This is where cognitive dissonance kicks in.

The individual now realizes that those secondary beliefs that are in conflict with his ultimate beliefs no longer make sense in light of them. He often doesn't realize that is what he is doing. Instead, he's largely ignorant of his ultimate beliefs and their absolute determination of what he views as viable in light of them. Instead, he'll often just pit secondary beliefs that stem from those ultimate beliefs that he now views as absolutely true against other secondary beliefs that do not stem from those ultimate beliefs, or are not compatible with them, in order to refute the validity of those secondary beliefs that cannot be true if his other set of secondary beliefs are true.

This happens a lot in religious circles in the West, simply because our primary religion is a secular humanism based in ultimate beliefs that are largely naturalistic (atheism, agnosticism, deism). That's why the academy (the Western tribal prophet) has convinced everyone that the closer your conclusions follow a naturalistic train of thought, the more it is you are doing true scholarship, coming to the objective truth of a matter (as if holding a legion of beliefs based upon an ultimate belief that is self refuting somehow gets you closer to truth, but it does get you closer to academic excellence in the cultic Western mind).

What then occurs is doubt and unbelief in those secondary beliefs. The individual, again, thinks that he is coming to see reality more clearly and that what he believed before can no longer be sustained within the framework of self evident truths (again, truths that are self-evident as long as you assume the ultimate belief system that supports them, but he doesn't usually realize this).

What you end up with is a bunch of people whining about how they need to reconfigure Christianity to make sense in light of those "truths," which is really nothing more than turning Christianity into a spiritual form of secular humanism that includes some sort of belief in a Jesus that is more accommodating to his ultimate beliefs that are largely in conflict with those the Bible would have given him.

This is what occurs in liberalism. This is why so many atheists are being made in our culture. I say this from an intellectual standpoint. The Bible is clear that God gives people who think they are wise in their worldviews, wiser than God's Word, to the foolishness of them, and hence, their minds are darkened. But from an intellectual standpoint, if one truly understands the nature of ultimate beliefs, he realizes that doubt and unbelief are not intellectual problems. They are epistemic problems. Ergo, there is no intellectual problem for Christianity. There is only an epistemic problem that will continue to create false Christians when they never realize that their beliefs and practices are based upon a belief system that is completely hostile toward Christianity, or apostates who think that they have jettisoned orthodox Christianity because they can't make sense of it as a viable belief system within the framework of what they "know to be true."

It's sad really. Not because they choose a different path, but because they don't know why they've chosen it. Indeed, they've been so deceived that they now think they could choose no other. In this way, their ultimate beliefs have not given them greater academic freedom, but an enslavement that has cut off all other choices but that which is either incoherent and mystical when they want to hang onto some form of Christianity or complete unbelief when they do not.

13 comments:

  1. Spot on. Have you read any atheists/agnostics/liberal Christians who recognize the above?

    I think Edwards's thinking about the affections has to come into this, too. i.e., is it possible to think you have a particular ultimate belief (i.e. inerrancy), but then for it to be revealed (whether this person realizes it or not), that they never really *wanted* to believe in that more than any other alternative?

    I ask this because when I had a crisis of faith a few years ago, *everything* was demolished: I didn't know what I believed about much of anything, other than that Christ had changed me in some way. It was only because I *wanted* to trust in Him that I looked for answers that would support belief in His Word's trustworthiness, whereas I know that if I hadn't wanted that ultimate belief to be true, I wouldn't have persevered and picked up the pieces.

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  2. I think you're absolutely right, Ben. You can see this when liberals constantly allow people to share reasons why they don't believe or why they doubt, but don't allow anyone to answer those questions. "We don't want to hear any of those answers" is the mentality. The fact of the matter is that people want to see incoherence, chaos, confusion, contradiction, etc. because it allows them to no longer be bound to a higher authority than self. If I can wipe out the clear voice of Scripture and historic Christianity then I get to be the one in authority for myself.

    Couple this with God's giving them over, and you end with them being embittered toward anyone who sees more clearly than they do. Hence, they are constantly on the attack and guarded against anyone who might have insight into answers that establish rather than disestablish orthodox Christianity.

    As you've said, there are many people who have doubts and ask questions, largely due to the conflict caused by alternate necessary beliefs, but believers are taken through the fire and remain believers. False believers are burned up in the fire and their new "faith" is nothing but the opposite of genuine Christianity. The Spirit's hold on a person's life, then, as a true believer makes all the difference in the world.

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  3. I think the slow death of Christianity is mainly due to hard line, dogmatic, fundamentalists like you. Nothing helps create more atheists/agnostics then pitting modern scientific beliefs up against the rigid, unchanging nature of scripture. So please, I urge you, be as conservative, as fundamental and as dogmatic as you possibly can about your Christian beliefs. Don't give the homosexual agenda and those godless darwinists an inch!

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  4. Stupidity is the cause of atheism. If you see a rise in it, you know what kind of culture it is in which you thrive.

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  5. "The fool says to himself, 'There is no God.'" I've seen nothing in your fallacious arguments that prove otherwise. The fact that atheists have to posture themselves as intellectuals by using logical fallacies, most of which consist of ad hominem or question begging, displays the intellectual bankruptcy of such a dogmatic, fundamentalist religion as is atheism.

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    1. Your response makes my point. "It's my way or the highway!" Your way of course is hard line Calvinism - something most other Christians see as totally absurd. Hey I want you to be a fundamentalist. It helps make more atheists. That's because your worldviews are incompatible with reality, although you will never see it.

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  6. And I want you to keep making blind assertions about reality that are rooted in a self refuting belief system. It strengthens my Christian fundamentalism. It also lets me know that you have no real argument. Keep it up. But, as I said before, don't do it here. If you want to make a real argument, go for it. If all you're going to do all day is call your opponents names because it makes you feel better about your cult, I'm just going to delete your posts.

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  7. You have no real arguments backing up your belief system that aren't just vain attempts to swallow how absurd they are and I caught you contradicting yourself numerous times.

    It isn't a lack of education that is leading people away from Christianity, it is having more education and critical thinking skills. The biggest and blindest assertions are always made by those of religious faith like yourself. You have little to no scientific or archaeological evidence backing up most of your beliefs and we established that before & that you believe in it on faith.

    So yes keep being fundamental - people like you will always keep the faith - and that's fine with me - as long as people like you decrease in numbers.

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  8. It's funny how we remember things. I remember actually refuting everything you said. You evidenced an ignorance of archaeology, an ignorance of what the Bible actually says, and nothing but blind assertion based upon a self refuting system. Even now, you appeal to what you think is evidence, but it is merely based upon your metaphysical beliefs that are self refuting. In case you don't understand what that means, it means that your whole view of reality is faith-based and false. So good luck with your increase in numbers. An idiocracy apparently is what you seek. I guess, in the end, that's all atheism has: the desire to seek the majority vote. Since no truth can be established therein, it can only be a world of might makes right, not a world of reasonable faith.

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  9. Oh, and thanks for the encouragement. If uncritical people find my stuff to be anti-intellectual, I'm on the right track. So I will keep it up. Thanks.

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  10. And I suppose "reasonable" faith is denying most of what modern science says in order to make your worldview tenable? Yeah, that's reasonable. You didn't refute what I said, you merely patted yourself on the back and declared victory prematurely while every argument you made presupposed biblical inerrancy and simply made a game out of semantics. And please don't lecture me on "might makes right" sensibility, that's what your entire ethical system is founded on, and that's why divine command theory is classified under ethical subjectivism.

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  11. Hahaha. You'll go down to your grave not understanding my arguments. I can't explain to those who cannot comprehend a simple argument. Even now, you don't get that I've completely dismantled your atheism. You just keep on keepin' on. In any case, this has been fun, but your comments, as always, have nothing but assertion without substance, so they're a waste of time to read and will be deleted. I've given you numerous chances to produce an actual, real-life, grown-up argument, but you insist on stating your conclusions as your premises, and that is what makes your chosen monicker so ironic. Fare thee well, "Thinker." Do your best to maintain that illusion that your system isn't completely bankrupt of logic, morality, and any self awareness.

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