Over at his blog Fides Quaerens Intellectum Christian philosopher Johnny-Dee writes:

I think the objection goes like this: It is wrong for you to believe that your belief is true because it implies those who adhere to other religious beliefs are wrong. This objection is rife with problems in validity and soundness, but I’d like to ignore all of that for now. Consider what the objector is suggesting: Christians should have a belief that they do not think is true. [Full post]

Sometimes when a person expresses offense when Christians claim that Christianity is true (not just “true for me” but absolutely and objectively true for everyone) they may indeed object because they hold to an incorrect and inappropriate conception of tolerance, as I’ve commented on previously (see Tolerance and Stating Facts != Hating). But more often they are objecting because of a similar but subtly different reason, namely that they are making what I’ll call a category error regarding religious truth claims.

When some people express offense that a Christian believes Christianity to be really true, they are conceiving of Christianity as being in the realm of personal (relative) opinion rather than objective truth. That is, they see choice of religion as being like choosing your favorite ice cream flavor: A person isn’t “wrong” because they prefer vanilla over chocolate. So too, the erroneous argument goes, a person isn’t “wrong” because they prefer Baha’i over Christianity. Greg Koukl talks about this using the ice cream / insulin analogy:

There is significant confusion on this point. Americans think of God, religion, and morals like ice cream and not like insulin. They choose religious views according to tastes, according to what they prefer rather than according to what’s true. [Full post]

Of course, this raises the question of whether choice of religious belief is really like choosing our favorite ice cream flavor. Hmmm, after adding the picture above I really crave ice cream … Ahem. Like I noted in my article Aren’t there many different paths to God? for From Today On (also posted here):

If someone is dying and needs medicine, you need to give them what will heal them, not what they like best. In the same way, Jesus gives us what we need, and ultimately what is best for us. There are many different paths, but they don’t all eventually lead to the top of the same mountain. Some veer off to the left and the right; others climb entirely different mountains! And if God is real, truth about God is not like ice cream; it’s like medicine, and only what is true can heal.

Further reading: Three Tough Questions and Their Answers by philosopher Michael Horner, including “Aren’t all religions the same?”

Streaming video: Dr William Lane Craig speaks about the properties the cause of the universe must possess. I have commented on natural theology before and the attributes God must possess, and in fact add a few others to Craig’s list that he does not mention, but I think his brief talk is quite well done as far as it goes. (After the break, 2:22 long.)

Watch the video »» (more…)

I can understand why a person would choose to be agnostic. I myself was agnostic for many years. I would have called myself an atheist, though in reality I was in fact agnostic.

Though I’ve written on agnosticism before and in particular whether the “we cannot know anything about God” hypothesis is a good one, but I wanted to make an observation re agnosticism that I’ve been thinking about recently. This may not be a particularly well crafted argument as I’ve written it, but such is the nature of blog posts!

Agnosticism is, in my humble opinion, the least reasonable position with regards to God’s existence (if having a lack of opinion can truly be called having a position, that is). Here I am referring to “closed” or “strong” agnosticism which is content to not believe nor disbelieve in God’s existence, not actively seeking agnosticism.

First of all we can ask whether it is more important to a) Discover truth, or b) Avoid error. In my opinion it is more important to try to discover truth. The process of discovering truth may lead sometimes to error, while avoiding even searching for truth may avoid error but will never find truth. Often it is through making mistakes that we learn, so it would seem that making errors (while the error in itself may be negative) will often have a positive end result. As Adam Osborne supposedly said, “The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake - you can’t learn anything from being perfect.” (Thank you ThinkExist.com!)

Now apply this reasoning to the agnosticism question. Note that in regards to God’s existence, there are only two possible options: Either God exists or God does not exist. God cannot “kind of” exist. (I am here not referring to any particular conception of God, merely whether God of any kind exists or not.)

Here then is the situation regarding the God dilemma: The theist has a chance of being right and the atheist has a chance of being right. They will of course differ on their appraisal of the odds, but regardless, at least by taking a position they have a chance of being correct. The closed agnostic, however, has no chance of being right, because they take no position one way or the other. Therefore, since the strong agnostic has no chance of being correct, it seems to be a poor (lack of) position to uphold.

However, as I said earlier, I can understand why someone might have strongly held agnostic (lack of) beliefs. “Don’t you think it’s arrogant,” the argument might go, “to think that YOU have the truth about God?” Thus sometimes strong agnosticism may be the result of the perceived modesty of the position. But agnosticism of the closed or strong variety turns out to be rather arrogant when it supposes that it is impossible for anyone to really know that God exists or what God is like. Is it really humble to suggest that no one, anywhere, at any time or any age or under any circumstances, has really got it right about God? Or is it more humble to say, “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this issue, and I may be wrong, but here’s what I think.”? I’d say the latter is more reasonable.

Please check out my previous post Is God unknowable? for further discussion on whether the claim that we cannot know anything about God is well founded.

I saw an interesting post today on Thinking Christian commenting on one of Richard Dawkins’ opinions expressed in the recent Dawkins / Lennox debate (and also in Dawkins’ book The God Delusion).

Read it here: Religion Leads Logically To Violence, But Atheism Doesn’t–Richard Dawkins

I agree with Tom Gilson’s opinion on this issue, and this is an issue that is raised often (and will continue to be raised given the fact that it is often repeated by the new atheists) so it’s worth thinking about. I haven’t yet watched the debate but it should be interesting.