July 2006


It annoys me when people say things like this:

I gave up my belief. I did not give up my knowledge. True faith requires the opposite. I had no true faith. I was not a true believer. (KC, former atheist, talking about why she left her faith, although she argues on the same page that she was never Christian to begin with.)

Now, I'm sure some Christians believe that way. But is this the legitimate biblical outlook? No. See Greg Koukl's article Faith and Facts for a full discussion of this issue. A few excerpts:

Some suggest we cannot find facts to support our faith, nor is it preferable to try. This is silly. We're enjoined to have faith in part because we have evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. … Frankly, if religion is merely an exercise in wishful thinking for me, I wouldn't wish up Christianity. It's far too inconvenient. … Biblical faith isn't believing against the evidence. Instead, faith is a kind of knowing that results in action. … biblical faith [is] not just intellectual assent. It's not just acknowledging that certain facts about Jesus, the Bible, the resurrection, or whatever, happen to be true. It's taking your life and putting it on the line based on your confidence in those facts. (Greg Koukl)

I've written more than one blog entry on this topic recently but I keep seeing this "faith rejects knowledge" idea everywhere and it just bothers me because it misrepresents what Christianity should be about and perpetuates the stereotype of "blind faith".

WavesWhat does being "openminded" mean? The Dictionary.com definition is "Having or showing receptiveness to new and different ideas or the opinions of others." I think that's pretty close. I'd say that openmindedness involves:

  1. Receptively considering other people's ideas
  2. Evaluating new ideas to determine if they are true or false
  3. Acknowledging that I might be wrong

The first point seems to be the most obvious and most intuitively understood. The second point is equally important. Like the old saying goes, "Don't be so open minded that your brains fall out." Hearing other people's ideas is great. Being tolerant of the opinions of others is important. But it's also important to weigh others' opinions and come to a reasonable conclusion about the validity of their claims. Even when we disagree with someone, it can lead to deeper understanding of the reasons we believe as we do.

The third point is critical, and often overlooked: Acknowledging that I (you) might be wrong. For example, I am now a Christian. Before, I was not. It's important to note that if I had not been openminded I wouldn't be Christian today. I am now a firm believer in Christianity; but I know that I could be wrong. Does that mean I lack faith? No! It only means that I remain openminded, and if sufficient evidence were to convince me that Christianity were not true, then I would not (could not) continue to believe. It seems very unlikely that such a thing would happen, given that I have spent a lot of time evaluating both "sides", but I can't deny the possibility exists.

Sometimes Christians are accused of being "closedminded". Some are. But the same criticism applies to everyone, because no one is without bias. If anyone (atheists and skeptics included) claims to be openminded on one hand but on the other hand precludes the possibility that they could be wrong, in what sense are they openminded?

Someone posted a comment on the Discuss Da Vinci Blog recently in the "Ultimate Da Vinci Code Question: Who is Jesus?" thread, where they commented "Lighten up, it’s just a stupid (fictional!) book. Faith is a personal thing. If your faith is strong, it shouldn’t be threatened by some hack’s novel." Of course this comment didn't really have much to do with the content of the original post. I replied, noting that Dan Brown doesn't think that The Da Vinci Code is "just a stupid (fictional!) book" (see the "Ultimate Question" article above). I then linked some articles about some of the things Brown got wrong in the book. The person's next comment was succinct: "Like I said emmzee, lighten up. Don’t be hatin’!"

This kind of attitude annoys me. Where did the idea that disagreeing with someone is "hatin" come from? I don't hate Dan Brown, he's free to believe whatever incorrect theories he wants, but he's still wrong. And while some may view the issues discussed in The Da Vinci Code as unimportant, I certainly don't. So why shouldn't I try to correct the gross errors present in the work? As stated before, tolerance is only possible when people disagree; it is, to use the dictionary definition, "capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others". Tolerance presupposes disagreement, and stating facts, if done in a respectful manner, is not "hatin".

Not marriedI hate giving any kind of recognition to claims like this, but since we may be seeing more of this in the coming months:

Is this woman the living 'Code'? (USAToday.com)

The gist of it is that Kathleen McGown claims she is from the 'sacred bloodline' as described in The Da Vinci Code. (Which in turn got its ideas from the lamentable Holy Blood, Holy Grail.) McGown is the "self-proclaimed descendant of a union between Jesus and Mary Magdalene" (emphasis mine). She's making a big claim here; not only that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child (for which there is absolutely no evidence) but also that McGowan herself is part of the resulting bloodline. Of course she is using the Da Vinci Code trick in her book by writing a "fictional" story about 'Maureen Paschal' which McGowan acknowledges is basically herself. This allows her to have all the fun of making truth claims while hiding behind the guise of fiction.

What is McGowan's evidence for her claims? There is none. From the article:

Despite the lack of hard evidence, McGowan's supporters include her literary agent Larry Kirshbaum … McGowan was one of his first clients and he helped her get a seven-figure, three-book deal with Simon & Schuster … Kirshbaum believes McGowan when she says she is a descendant of Mary Magdalene. "I feel she's entirely credible," says Kirshbaum … "She spent 20 years of her life researching this subject. You have to give her any benefit of the doubt because she's totally rational. I believe her absolutely. She had total credibility with me from the very beginning."

This lady spent 20 years researching and still has no evidence? That is not very convincing to me. Let's see what a respected historian has to say about this:

"A historian simply has to look at what evidence there is," says Bart Ehrman, chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina … "You can survey anyone who is a scholar of early Christianity and they will all tell you the same thing. It's completely bogus." McGowan says evidence of her ancient French lineage and connections to the sacred bloodline have been passed down through many generations of her family but admits "there are certainly holes in it." Much ancestral documentation, she says, was destroyed during the French Revolution. Ehrman is doubtful. "People didn't keep genealogies like that in the ancient world. There are no records. We have no account of Mary Magdalene even going to France until the Middle Ages, and the legend about her going to France sprang up because there was a cult to Mary Magdalene in southern France and they used the story about her going there as a way to explain the origins of the cult."

Ehrman is entirely correct here. And notice that Ehrman is not Christian and doesn't believe in the resurrection, so don't say he's just blind to the truth or somesuch nonsense. To summarize:

  1. There is no historical evidence that Jesus and Mary were married
  2. There is no historical evidence that they had a child
  3. Therefore there is no bloodline
  4. Even if there WAS a bloodline, McGowan has no evidence (let alone proof) that she belongs to it

And people say Christians accept things based on blind faith. As per my previous article on this blog re tolerance, McGowan is free to believe this if she wants; she should even be free to try to convince others. But she is still wrong and until she can provide some evidence for her claims no one should believe her and no one should support her by buying her books.

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