a "koala-t" post

To put it quite simply, I’ve been having concerns regarding the authenticity of the Christian faith, and these concerns have been developing—“fermenting”, if you will—over the last couple years as I’ve sought to reconcile preconceived notions with post-perceived reality, and in the conflict between them I’ve been seeking to be a more mature and balanced Christian, but in the process I’ve become aware of some things that make me doubt the worldview altogether. I’ve talked to a lot of doubting Christians over the years, and time and again I’ve found that a majority of the time it’s an emotional doubt: bothered by this or that about the Christian faith and how it makes them feel, or bothered by some sort of “hole” in their lives that Jesus won’t fill, emotional doubts that require lots of prayer and bible reading (apparently) but hardly ever any rational thought (unless it’s rational thought by a Christian writer or teacher; don’t you dare go to someone who could sway you away from the truth). I don’t knock these doubts but mention them only to point out that, for the most part, they’re not mine. My doubts aren’t “simplistic” doubts with classic Sunday School answers, either. I’m not agonizing over the fact of evolution; I’m not bothered by the biblical conceptions of hell; I’m not fazed in the least by a God who sends lions on rebellious youth. Rather, these doubts focus (primarily) on two things: (1) the dark nature of epistemology, and (b) the improbability of cascading assumptions. It goes something like this:

On Epistemology. Epistemology is the scientific word for the study of how we know things. I want to know the truth, and I want to commit my life to it. I believe that we should, to the best of our abilities, ascertain the nature of reality and live in accordance with it. Philosophies, religions, and worldviews all offer a framework to understanding reality and the consequential modus vivendi demanded in light of that understanding. As thinking creatures, it’s both a privilege and a responsibility to ask questions and seek answers, and this is, perhaps, the greatest enterprise available to human beings: the study of reality and the question of how to live in accordance with it. Some people go through life without asking these questions and having not a care in the world. But these questions plague me, and the necessity of the search compels me, and I can’t in good conscience push this aside for any reason. What keeps me up at night is the dark nature of epistemology, and that I can never really KNOW—for sure—that my perception of reality is correct. How we perceive the world isn’t pulled from a vacuum; and though we may be born blank slates, by the time we can ask these questions and try to answer them, we’ve already got a shit ton of baggage affecting the exploration. Our culture, our family, our education and experiences, our upbringing, our own inward drives and motivations and deepest desires, our biases and prejudices and fears, all this goes into the way we see the world and interpret our experiences. Our understanding is subjective, subjected to so many things we’re so often unaware of, and thus we cannot claim, 100%, that we know our convictions to be correct: to do so is a step away from humility and into arrogance, and it’s these type of people that make my skin crawl. Just because we think it’s right doesn’t make it right. The confident, devoted, and humblest evangelical has his match in the Islamic Middle East. We’re all confident we have the answers, the inside scoop, that we’ve got it figured out and have the duty to enlighten others. What egotism! How foolish it must look: a bunch of stupid, ape-like creatures running around spouting off God-knows-what, bloated with arrogant self-importance. But amidst all this talk of subjectivity, don’t think I disbelieve in Truth. I firmly believe in it. But I realize that our inabilities to ascertain truth may thwart the quest from the get-go. Maybe truth lies high overhead, and the most we can do is brush it with our fingertips when we stretch far enough. I’m trapped in my own subjective mind: though I may have a coherent perspective on reality that makes sense of the data, I can never been 100% sure, and that scares me, ‘cause when it comes to wrapping your life around something, uncertainty is far from optimal.

On Cascading Assumptions. I’m sure there’s an actual name for this, but this is just something that’s kinda formulated in my head over the past couple months, and I’m deeming it “The Improbability of Cascading Assumptions.” A simple principle of logic and reason (so far as I can tell) is that the truth will most likely lie in the simplest explanation; and a simple explanation, by default, is the explanation that has the least amount of assumptions built into it. Say I have a problem: one of my best friends is sick with a sore throat, has discoloring around the eyes, and can’t stop moaning. A simple explanation is that she really does have a sore throat, forgot to take off her mascara and it smeared, and she’s moaning ‘cause she’s sick or either having a really good dream. There are assumptions built into that: the assumption that she does have a sore throat (which could be verified by a doctor’s visit), the assumption that she wore mascara that day (a likely assumption), and the assumption that the noises do not imply anything other than what they would on any other given day. Now, let’s say I immediately jump to the conclusion that she’s been bitten by a zombie and is turning into a zombie, and I have to kill her by driving the shards of a flower vase into the back of her skull through the soft of her eye. This scenario is possible just like the first, but this one’s less likely because of the amount of assumptions (zombies are real, zombies bite to spread their sickness, she’s been bitten, and the way to kill a zombie is by piercing its brain, etc.). If all those assumptions turn out to be true, then that would be the correct explanation; but it wouldn’t be the most logical explanation because the amount of assumptions—both in quantity and quality—are astronomically higher than the first explanation, making the second highly improbable and thus illogical. My fear—a better word would be concern—is that embracing the Christian worldview is akin to leaping to the second scenario, calling out sickness as zombification, and then staking your life on it. That’s one hell of a mistake to make, especially for my friend with the smeared mascara. When examining our world, when trying to ascertain which framework works best to explain what’s going on, who we are, where we’re going, what’s wrong with us, and what the hell we’re supposed to do about it, it’d be wise to look at the amount of assumptions (again both in quality and quantity) that are required to be embraced in order to make the worldview work.

Am I fearful being in this place, doubting the authenticity of that worldview which I’ve staked my life upon? Yes, I’d be lying if there wasn’t some fear. It’s a scary thing. Think about it: you have a framework for your life, and you build everything around it; and then you start questioning that framework, wondering if it’s not the best framework after all, and then you realize that if you’re to “turn tables” you’ve got quite a mess on your hands, in both the personal and social spheres. But at the same time, I’m not frightened, because I believe that such good, honest thinking is something to be commended. I dare say that God would cherish such things; I’d like to think he’d prefer serious and honest questioning to blind and accepting faith. Puzzled minotaurs are always trendier than dumb sheep. Do I consider myself a Christian at this point? I certainly do, no less than Thomas who doubted Jesus’ resurrection. He was honest and critical about this doubt, and he wasn’t scolded for it; he wasn’t told to stuff out the doubt, to “just believe,” to “take it on faith” or “have faith like a child.” He was invited to seek, encouraged to explore his doubts, to get really hands-on with it (no pun intended). For quite a while I’ve been sweeping these concerns under the bed or stuffing them in the closet; but there’s no more room to hide them, they’re just growing, and it’s time to do laundry, if you get my meaning. It’s time to face these doubts and concerns and tackle them head-on, determined to follow the quest wherever it might lead.

But how do you move forward from a place like this? How do you begin to try and figure out if the Christian worldview really does make the most sense of our world and give the most coherent answers within the scope of plausibility? I’ve come up with a plan that’s really there more to give me guidance for starting off on this journey than anything else, a plan that will undoubtedly change but that is designed to examine some of the most hefty assumptions in the Christian worldview and to answer the question, “Is this a reliable and plausible assumption?” Granted the cascading nature of assumptions, I’m starting at the ground-up with the most obvious question (“Is it plausible that God exists?”) and then moving on from there; if he does, then the next assumption to look at would be (for instance), “Is God a good God?” We assume he’s good, and our holy writings tell us he is good, but is that a plausible assumption given the data we can gather from the world? And if that assumption seems genuine, then move on. I can allow assumptions, to be sure, because even the most rationalistic worldviews (like philosophical naturalism, the biggest opponent to theism and all its spin-offs) have them. But what happens when, in order to be embraced, the host of required assumptions are of such a magnitude to warrant unbelief? I’ve already started with the first assumption—“Is it plausible that God exists?”—and have a decent game-plan: I’ve collected a series of popular books written by the world’s leading members of “The New Atheism” (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett) and am going through them to see the points they make. I’m trying to be open to their points as well as trying to be aware of the assumptions that undergird their points. I am a firm believer that the best way to ascertain the reliability of your beliefs isn’t to read stuff that people who agree with you write, but to look at the other side. Christians would wish doubting atheists to read Christian apologetics; let’s do them the favor the other way around. Iron sharpens iron, but iron can only be proved in conflict. The conflict of worldviews, the earthquakes aroused in the friction, these things sharpen and hone and widen our perspective, and it’s a good and necessary thing if we want to advance in our understanding of the world. But in any quest there ought to be balance, and if I were to simply cling to “The New Atheists”, that would be foolish. So I’ve also got books written on the same subject from the other (theist, though not necessarily Judeo-Christian) point-of-view. It’ll be interesting, to say the least, to see what they have to say about one another. A few good and mild-mannered crack-shots always do the psyche good.

This place, it’s both scary and exciting. I don’t have any guilt over these doubts: I believe that, if we truly are created, then rationality is something God has endowed us with. How strange would it be if he gave us such a tool and then criticized and scorned the use of that tool? These doubts don’t stem, let me add, from a desire for the gospel to be untrue. I want it to be true more than anything. I like the answers it gives, the purpose, the guidance in life, the hope amidst life’s trials. I want it to be true. But I can’t shy away from the conviction that staking my life on something simply because I want it to be true is an awful way to do things. How would I be any different from the hip-hop whore shooting heroin with a community needle, staking her life on a twisted postmodern version of Epicurean philosophy because it is, simply, what she wants to be true? My own desire for the gospel to be true says nothing about the gospel but a lot about me. Our own arrogant certainty regarding the truthfulness of our beliefs, again, means nothing: it says nothing but about the belief and, again, a lot about us. A delusional man believes he is Napoleon Bonaparte; we say that belief reveals much about him, but nothing about the truthfulness of the delusion. But yet when it comes to ourselves, we give our own personal certainty the upper-hand, trumping the same logic we apply to the beliefs of others. Just because a worldview works to frame our lives, just because it makes sense, or we feel it to be true, or if it’s comforting and gives us purpose, none of that says anything about the validity of the belief. It may empower us to be better people, but that doesn’t mean anything, either. Take your stock from a variety of worldviews and meta-narratives out there, and each one can do all of the above and more. The popularity of a worldview or our respect and admiration of those holding it means nothing. A worldview embraced may bring us much happiness and joy, but George Bernard Shaw’s quip might prove useful: “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one."