Author: Gene

Keller, here, defends Christianity in the face of fanatics. He tries to explain that what people think of fanatical Christians, people who loudly voice their opinions on a myriad of topics and look down on those they disagree with, are not fanatical Christians at all. He stresses that the essence of the Christian faith is not a moral improvement plan (told you they’d make poor doctors, see Character Flaws) but salvation by grace from God. He says such a notion is profoundly humbling and that the bible teaches to be humble, sensitive, empathetic, etc. He says that those thought of as fanatical Christians are in fact not Christian enough.

This is one of those sections where what Keller says is true, but it doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t mean what he wants you to think it means. He doesn’t disagree that those people commonly thought of as fanatics exist, which is good, because everyone knows they do, he just says they’re not Christian enough. However, this doesn’t remedy the problem that fanatics exist. They are still there, part of religion, and a reason to dislike it.

Keller also implies that it’s not Christianity’s fault that those people are like that. That Christianity is about forgiveness and empathy and those fanatics are just going off on their own. The problem is that the stuff the fanatics say is also in the bible, or whatever religion is in question. The notion that you are the chosen people, and everyone else is going to hell, is in there, and it provides a lush environment for fanaticism. Also, the rest of the church, the non-fanatics, provide cover for the fanatics, willingly or not. They do not separate themselves completely from them and often defend or use the fanatics selectively, when it suits them. The tacit support afforded by being the member of such a large, popular group as a religion emboldens a fanatic. In all these ways religion is still producing the fanatics, even if you believe that the fanatics are missing the point.

Further, if you think about it, Christianity does pretty much tell people to be fanatics. It’s true it also tells them to be humble and nice, but if you really believe that God is going to send someone to Hell, someone the Bible tells you to love, unless you convince them to join the church, it seems completely reasonable to do almost anything to try to convince them.

So for the reasons above, Keller’s arguments in this section are wrong, intentionally obfuscating, and also irrelevant.

A note on violence:

This section’s issue, fanaticism, is just a scaled down version of the previous section on violence. Instead of worrying about whole nations being influenced by a few fanatics, he’s concentrating on the fanatics themselves. It seems telling to me that he doesn’t use them same argument as he did in that section, that people will tracendentilize something even without god, here. He doesn’t, I suspect, because it seems obvious on this scale that it is not true. We all know examples of people who are pretty normal, nice, and fun to be around, except when it comes to religion, and it is difficult to think that if it wasn’t for religion the same would be true with those people, but the subject would be politics or philosophy or something else. This seems to strengthen my argument from that section that societies would not necessarily trancendentilize a new idea, if we could somehow abandon god.

In this section Keller defends Christianity as a force for peace. Well, actually, no he doesn’t. He admits that religion causes violence and war by tracendentalizing already present cultural differences, making it possible to conflate disagreements into a “cosmic battle between good and evil.” He doesn’t give in entirely, though. He goes on to say, well, secularism is just as bad as religion. He sites several examples I’m sure we’re all familiar with, the Nazi’s, the Soviet Union, and a few others. He adopts Allister McGrath’s idea that in the absence of god, society will “transcendentalize” something else in order to appear morally and spiritually superior. So, to clarify, secular societies worship something else (like the state, or a race) in place of god, with the same negative effects.

Mostly we agree, since Keller is mostly conceding on this one, at least so far. I would like to point out a few things about his half hearted defense.

First, it’s not necessarily either or. I mean, you can have religious conflict, and other conflicts based on a religious like connection to another concept. Usually the two become muddled, religion is used to justify the other conviction, but the root cause is still separate. I mean to say that just because a society is religious, doesn’t mean they aren’t also racist, for example. So religion isn’t an alternative form of justification for violence, it’s an additional form. Just because it’s not the only problem, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be solved.

Second, the examples of terrible secular societies are the ones that completely abolished religion. It is a special sort of authoritarian government that can do something like abolish religion. The sample is biased. Societies that abolish religion are more likely to commit acts of violence just by their authoritarian nature. Societies with high secularity that are not authoritarian are less violent than similarly free, religious nations, see Scandinavia.

The notion that man will necessarily trancendentalize something is not well demonstrated. It is certainly true that societies can, as demonstrated by history, but it has not been demonstrated that it must be so. In fact, the evidence used to suggest such a notion is certainly biased. Even if the tendency to trancendentalize non-religious ideas is pervasive, that is no excuse to continue to allow religion as a further reason for bloodshed.

This is the first section in Chapter 4, we’re making progress. Here, Keller defends Christianity against the complaint that its practitioners are not especially good. It’s leaders have widely publicized moral failings and the typical congregation suffers from at least as much internal conflict as other volunteer organizations. His first defense is that Christianity never said Christians would be perfect, or even good. He explains how there is no level of moral “goodness” required to be a Christian and that increasing ones moral character is not strictly required, since all good things come from God already, and anything a mortal might try to do to please God would be insufficient, He provides forgiveness and a loving relationship out of grace.

Keller quotes the phrase that church, “is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.” He draws on this analogy to suggest that perhaps people with troubled characters would be drawn to the church, like the sick to a hospital. He also suggests that if one of these “sick” people had been Christian for a while and greatly improved since converting she might still not be as morally stable as someone fortunate enough to have been raised in a environment that nurtured moral health, and so to the casual observer, the Christian might appear to be of worse character than the irreligious lucky person.

Unlike some of Keller’s arguments, this section seems pretty internally consistent. I don’t think it paints Christianity very flatteringly, however.

He provides some reasons why Christianity might look bad, it attracting “sick” people, but he doesn’t provide any evidence that it isn’t actually bad. His scenario of the Christian significantly improving but still being inferior to a non-Christian is plausible, but he doesn’t actually provide any reason why it should happen, or evidence that it does. Not only would individual Christians have to improve, which I’m sure some do, he’d have to show that they improve more than they would without Christianity and that the total effect on all Christians is positive, that is, that there aren’t just as many people suffering ill effects because of Christianity, as those getting benefits, which I am far from sure about. His argument depends on faith and wishful thinking.

Even if you give him that argument, though, Christianity still doesn’t seem very attractive. The hospital metaphor breaks down pretty quickly. First, Christianity claims we are all sinners, and therefor all sick and should all be in the hospital all the time. With real hospitals, if you are in the state of being like everyone else, you are considered healthy. Healthy people only go to hospitals to help or visit the sick. The church has never healed anyone, and little wonder, since by their own admission it’s not important. Our moral acts cannot win us the favor of God, in fact, any good thing we do comes from God already, so improving the moral character of people is at best a secondary mission to the Christian church. The primary objective is to keep people in the hospital, not to help them. This is not how real hospitals operate, despite what conspiracy theorists might think, and if they did everyone would agree it would be reprehensible.

At best Keller’s argument paints Christianity as a place to get help if you’re desperate. The doctors are sick themselves and don’t have mandate or special motivation to help you, and even if you get lucky and they do help you, they’ll try to keep you there forever to hang out with people sicker than you. It seems clear that an organization specifically dedicated to helping support those in need would be better suited to the task than the Christian church, and even without one available it is unclear that Christianity would be of benefit.

Keller expands on the previous section in this one. He even somewhat speaks to some of my concerns from my critique of the previous section, although I don’t think them resolved. I’ll explain why after I summarize his position.

In this section Keller takes the position from the last section, that restriction is a good thing so long as you find the correct restrictions, and argues that Christianity is the right set of restrictions. He starts by asserting that love is the right sort of restriction. He explains how love is restricting, even though people don’t think of it that way. Then he clarifies that the kind of love he is speaking of is the good, symmetrical sort, not one sided, where each party sacrifices (is restricted) for the other. Then he finally links this to Christianity by saying that the Christian God is different from all other deities in this respect, because he has changed himself for mankind, becoming a man and suffering and dieing.

In my previous post I complained that Keller just didn’t argue that Christianity was the right sort of restriction at all, and he has done so here. He has done so, however, by making a different unsupported assertion, that love is the right kind of restriction. So, I have all the same problems I had in the last post, just now about his claim about love. He has only pushed back the subject of the argument one step, a common argument technique, but not a logically effective one.

But love is nice, everyone likes love. It is much harder to argue against love as a good thing than Christianity. So lets assume Keller is right, and love is a good restrictive environment, the natural restriction to place on all humans at all times. What about the notion that a person can having a loving relationship with God.

First of all, you have to make a lot of assumptions again. You have to assume that God exists and the Christian interpretation of the biblical story of Jesus is accurate and correct, all of which have no evidence and are logically unsound. But let’s make all those assumptions. Then you are left with the claim that an omnipotent being loves a person the same way that person loves that omnipotent being. Keller says,

When you fall deeply in love, you want to please the beloved. You don’t wait for the person to ask you to do something for her. You eagerly research and learn every little thing that brings her pleasure. Then you get it for her, even if it costs you money or great inconvenience.

Well, good news! God is omniscient and omnipotent and he loves you. That means his research will be very thorough and it won’t even be inconvenient for him to do everything you want without you even asking. *sad trombone* Well, clearly that’s not what is happening.

Maybe, you’re thinking, God loves us like a mother (why is Christianity so patriarchal?) and she knows what’s good for us, better than we know ourselves. Maybe she’s created the best universe she can for us beloved humans, while still allowing us free will. But then why are there people like me, who don’t believe in her? Clearly it would help my chances at making the right decisions to get to heaven if I knew she existed, and if she loves me, she should let me know. And if she loves me, why will she torture me forever? If she loves her good Christian followers, why will she torture their unbelieving friends and family?

Keller says,

For a love relationship to be healthy there must be a mutual loss of independence. It can’t be just one way. Both sides must say to the other, “I will adjust to you. I will change for you. I’ll serve you even though it means a sacrifice for me.”

The whole notion of a loving relationship with a god is very problematic. If God is perfect, then how can God change for you, as you change for him? If he did change, he’d necessarily become not perfect, which is impossible. Also, God exists outside of time, and knows all things, so how could anything you do have any impact on him? The Jesus myth does not get around these problems, even if you believe it.

Love is generally a good thing, even though it is restrictive. It helps people get along, it helps holds human society together, and society is a good thing. But that is love between humans. Co-opting the idea of love to tenuously justify your irrationally held religious beliefs, as Keller has done, is either cynical or desperate, and is not acceptable in either case.

In this section Keller attempts to defend Christianity against the charge that it is restrictive, that it constrains an individuals ability to decide what is moral. Since this is obviously true, he argues that it’s actually a good thing. He sites examples from the physical world, like a pianist who practices for many, many hours to become a virtuoso. His thought being that the restriction of freedom while learning, since the pianist can’t be doing whatever he wants and must instead practice, is good, because it allows him to have freedoms he would not have otherwise when he is a master and can play music he never would be able to otherwise. He then goes on to explain that not all restrictions are good and that one must find the right restrictions. From here he asserts that spiritual freedoms should adhere to restrictions as his physical examples do. As argument he uses purport that people believe that some actions are immoral regardless of the beliefs of the person acting, therefor concluding that those people believe in an objective morality, a restrictive framework which must be adhered too, as with the physical world.

There are too many things wrong with this section for me to cover them all. Here a few that bother me the most, in no particular order.

Keller fails to provide any argument that Christianity is a good thing in all of this. Assuming you believe everything in his statements, he still has never provided anything to make you think that Christianity would be the correct restrictive framework. He has provided no list of benefits to your spiritual well being, no evidence of it’s superiority to Hinduism, or Scientology, or Placebo. He didn’t even bother to write a compelling hypothetical. This indicates to me that his position in this section is a post hoc rationalization, and not a position logically reached from a neutral starting point, or he would not have omitted such an important step.

If I give Keller a charitable interpretation I can read this section as an argument not that Christianity’s restrictions are good, but merely that they are not always bad. Maybe he only means to point out that you can’t just assume from that mere fact of restrictions that something is bad, and this is true. However, if this is what he is arguing he is missing the point. The complaint is not really that there are restrictions, more that there are too many restrictions. He has to make the case that the restrictions put on the Christian mind are more beneficial, or less harmful, than the lack of those restrictions, the ability to sample a variety of moral philosophies and choose ones favorites, and make a personal amalgamation. I guess he thinks he has done this with his argument that there is an objective morality because he has an implied premise that Christianity knows this objective morality perfectly. It must be perfect, otherwise people making up their own versions might be superior.  This is a huge unstated premise, that has zero evidence or logical basis. It is a version of the common circular logic, the Bible says I’m right and I’m right because I’m following the Bible.

Perhaps Keller thinks of Christianity as a helpful tutor. A guide that helps people learn about the Truth of morality. But it is only possible to think this way if one is already a believer, you have to have faith that Christianity is the keeper of the knowledge of objective morality. If you don’t accept that claim, then Christianity is just another belief system, one that discourages free individuals (mostly children) from exploring alternative possibilities out of fear that they will choose the “wrong” answer. It is a reasonable thing to do, given the assumptions of a Christian believer, but they are unnecessary assumptions, not shared by everyone.

Finally, I should point out and argue with Keller’s flimsy evidence supporting the notion that there is such a thing as objective morality, on which his whole argument in this case rests. In the section he tells of a frequent exchange that he feels makes his point. A doubter will say, “People should be able to make up their own minds about what is moral,” and he will respond with a question, “Is there someone out there doing something right now that you think should stop, regardless of what that person believes?” to which the doubter will reply, “Yes.” Keller will then feel they have shown that they believe in a moral truth outside of the belief of the actor, but this has not been shown. The doubter has only admitted to not agreeing with the moral stance of someone else, and nothing about who is right or wrong.

Keller should ask, “Can you objectively show that someone should stop their activity, regardless of their beliefs?” to which the answer would be “No,” if we’re being strict about it. Any objective measure, would rely on a value judgement somewhere. Should that man stop murdering people? Only if you value their right to live as greater than his right to kill. Just because pretty much everyone agrees with those values, doesn’t mean it’s objective, it’s still a value judgement.

I didn’t like this section. I feel like Keller himself doesn’t believe what he’s saying, so he sorta just skipped passed it quickly. The take home message is that he’s right that restrictions alone are not a reason to condemn something, however, he has done nothing to refute the complaint that Christianity is unnecessarily and harmfully restrictive to individual believers. His hand waving arguments are distractions, and poor ones at that.

Keller, in this section, is answering the charge that Christianity is culturally rigid, or stifling. He does so by suggesting that Christianity is culturally diverse and has spread to many varied cultures on the globe. He says the fact that it has done so is evidence that it is culturally tolerant, at least compared to other religions. He cites rapid increases in the number of Christians in Africa and Asia in the last half century. He also quotes a Christian and African author, Sanneh, who agrees with his notions and says that existing cultures are incorporated into Christianity, at least, in the case of Africa. Keller also references his own congregation, in New York City, heavily in this section, as an example of Christianity molded to a local culture.

I will assume that Keller ignores the vast cultural diversity within Africa and Asia and lumps them together for the sake of brevity, and I will do the same. The fact that Christianity has and is spreading is questionable evidence for it’s cultural flexibility. An alternative explanation would be that Christianity has the greatest combination of proselytization mandate and resources. It seems like this would be a large contributor, at the very least.

That said I think I mostly agree with Keller here. Christianity is pretty varied around the globe, and the things required to be a Christian (belief that Jesus is/was the son of God, died for sins, resurrection, etc.) don’t actually impact daily life terribly often. Religion is important to culture, but people, at least with Christianity, do have some flexibility in the way they express their Christianity.

The main problem in regards to culture, with Christianity, is shared by all religions, which is that they encourage people to act as if they know, with 100% certainty, things that they do not, and cannot, know. This sometimes leads to destructive behavior with regard to culture. Religious fervor can drive people to do terrible things, like genocide and war, which is definitely not good for the cultures involved. More intimate examples are those of “witches” and homosexuals. People considered witches (and this is actually still a problem in Africa) were almost always those outside the mainstream of the majority Christian culture. Their cultural freedom may have been limited anyway, by human nature, and they may have been insulted and shunned, but they probably would not have been burned alive if not for Christianity. The more apparent example, in the U.S., is homosexuality, or gay culture, which is certainly being repressed all over the globe, but most intensely in places with religious traditions against homosexuality, namely Christian and Muslim nations. Minority cultures are not treated well in general, but religions, Christianity included, give people certainty, which can lead to terrible extremes.

As I mentioned in the last post, people are diverse enough, and we have plenty of reasons to distinguish the in group from the out group without the added layer of religion. Religion is an unnecessary level on top of human nature and culture that can cause problems, and, in fact, likely will, for the reasons argued above. The level of cultural tolerance between religious people is actually evidence of how little people really believe in their religions. If people truly believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, then they have a divine obligation to murder adulterers and those who work on the sabbath(s)(Leviticus 20:13 and Exodus 35:2). My point in mentioning this is that Christianity is actually more culturally insensitive than Christians are.

My stance is that religion is rarely the root cause of cultural problems, since religion is so esoteric. It is, however, capable of being an accelerant to any animosity. Religions, Christianity included, do not stomp out cultures, but one culture might be emboldened by the messages of religion, Christianity included, to stomp out another.

This section is again off, what I consider to be, the main topic. To be fair, though, Keller is addressing reasons given against Christianity, and not all of them have to do with the existence of god.

In this section he addresses the complaint that Christianity is too restrictive or selective a community. That they are closed and judgmental. Keller admits that some forms of Christian exclusivity are bigoted and unjust, but says that is not the fault of Christianity as a whole, and that similar fringe behaviors can be found in many larger communities. He also argues that any community must set some limits on membership, or the meaning of the community is lost.

On this we agree. It is clearly necessary to the meaningfulness of a group to have some restrictions on membership. And groups have the right to form, in my opinion anyway, around whatever set of beliefs they want to. I think there are enough important distinctions and points of contention in the population, though, that dividing people up over belief in various mythical minutia is counter productive.

Keller, and others I imagine, would argue that Christianity is a community of people with shared moral beliefs in helping the poor, and loving thy enemy, etc. etc. but in practice, I think, this is not the case. There are many other organizations that are better organized around moral codes, various activist and charity organizations for example, than Christianity is. By this I mean the diversity of opinion of various moral issues within the Christian community will be greater than within those secular organizations with clear moral positions. The practical divisors between Christians and non-Christians are belief, or professed belief, in various stories about Jesus and Mary, which seem a silly thing to form such an fervent community around. This, I think, is the more clearly stated objection to Christianity Keller is hearing, and he hasn’t addressed it, at least not so far.

Still, this is not an argument against the existence of Christianity. I think groups should be able to exist around whatever beliefs they want. It is just an argument against membership in that group.

In this section Keller pits Foucault against C. S. Lewis. He presents Foucault’s case as being that any declaration of truth is actually a power play, and that truth is entirely relative. He quotes C. S. Lewis’s objection to to this, which is that Foucault’s premise is itself a declaration of truth, so it would work against itself. C. S. Lewis also makes the analogy of a window, saying that you see through a window, like Foucault claims you can see through a declaration of truth, but that this is only useful if there is something to see behind the window. If everything is a window, then there is nothing to see.

I think I agree with Keller in this particular case. Not all declarations of truth are power plays and not all statements of fact are equally valid.

I think this boils down to the question, does reality exist? Is there an objective truth, a right answer. I think there is. This is one of the few assumptions required to be a rational materialist. As an assumption, I cannot logically prove it. However, I think science’s track record of correct predictions provides decent evidence.

So I agree with Keller on this one. I have a caveat to mention, though, and that is to distinguish between Truth and truth. Capital ‘T’ Truth gets used in a lot of strange ways, but I understand it to mean the absolute, immutable, 100% true state of things. Basically, the way the universe really is. I believe such a thing exists, but I do not believe it is knowable. We can use the scientific method to approach it, and sometimes we describe the best of our efforts in that regard as lowercase ‘t’ truth, but we cannot fully understand Truth. Anyone who claims to know Truth, especially on extremely complex subjects as human behavior, is not believing in the same sort of thing as me. Keller in this section does not seem to be presenting anything problematic in this regard, but I want to address it now to avoid confusion if the various “truths” are conflated.

I don’t really know what to do with the next several sections. My initial thought was to ignore them, since there are no arguments in them, but I have decided to lump several of them into a group and at least comment on them. Since these sections are not in the same format as the previous ones, my response will also be somewhat different.

A brief summary of the content of these sections (the rest in chapter 2 if you are following along) is that Jesus died on the cross and suffered. According to Keller this means that God must love us, and the reason for suffering is not that God is just being mean, since he came down and suffered with and for us. Keller then goes on to speak of heaven, and how it will be so glorious as to undo all suffering, and that heaven will actually be better because of all the suffering. He gives as a comparison the increased appreciation and pleasure in a treasured object after it is recovered from being thought lost forever.

I know it might seem like it to some readers, but there are actually no arguments for the existence of god in any of these sections. So I have nothing strictly on topic to say. I will try to follow Keller a bit, though, in case anyone is interested.

Keller, in these sections, assumes the existence of God (that’s why there’s no argument) and then makes several other large claims, and provides no evidence. He claims that Jesus existed, was the son of God (and also God), and that he died and was resurrected. He uses these assertions to claim that God loves us, but since the assertions are baseless, so are claims built on them. He also claims that there is a life after death, and that in at least one form it is so perfect as to undo all earthly suffering. All of this can safely be ignored, since they are just assertions without backing.

There is a tenuous connection to our previous arguments about suffering, when Keller asserts that heaven will make all the suffering worth it, which could be interpreted as a reason for suffering. First, this is a terrible argument because it rests on the assumption that heaven exists, which has not been established, to say the least. Second, this is actually a simple reworking of the original argument, that suffering is good for us, since it makes existence after the suffering better. I’ll remind you of my argument against this, which is that God can do anything, which would include making existence exactly as good as he wants regardless of previous suffering, thus rendering the suffering unnecessary.

I don’t feel like I am really qualified or interested enough to argue here about the internal logical inconsistencies of the biblical Jesus myth. All I will say is that, at least to my reading, there are many.

I also feel that I should point out, just in case, that the bible, and all the stories in it, are not evidence of god. The authority of the bible as a reliable source rests on the existence of god, so it is circular to then use the bible as evidence for god.  Put another way, if there is no god, then the bible is just an old book like any other, so why would you believe everything it says?