Letter to Audience member

Nina wrote to me after the debate on Thursday, and I figured that my response fit well enough to be an entry.

Dear Nina,

Thank you for your kind words on my performance at the debate last
Thursday. I’m sorry that it took me this long to reply, but I wanted
to reply in a full manner.

I’m sorry to hear that you didn’t participate in the discussion
because you felt some reservations about how you could back up your
opinions – I hope that I didn’t create a hostile atmosphere where
opinions that differed from mine were excluded…

You wrote, “To begin with, I disagree in a way that we don’t have
enough information to live “correctly.” I recognize that we as humans
are not capable of understanding everything and there’s reason in
that, but I also believe that God sent his son, Jesus, to live on
earth in the human form to show us, to be the example. That’s what the
bible deals with a lot is Jesus’s life and the perfect example of how
we should live- that’s the information, that’s all that we are “required” to know!”

There are a few ways that I would argue that we do not have enough
information to live “correctly” if Christianity is the Truth. First of
all, picking up the fact that Christianity is correct (if that is the
case), is the first hurdle to knowing how to live. Muslims, Mormons,
Christians, all have sacred texts, have the same kind of “evidence”,
point to a supernatural deity, can list similar conversion
life-changing stories – and they express mutually exclusive claims,
which means that someone’s wrong somewhere. When you boil it down, if
there are even just 2 competing “faith-based” claims that are
mutually exclusive (like Islam and Christianity), a person does not
have enough information to choose the “correct” claim BY DEFINITION.
The reason I say “BY DEFINITION” is because if the decision is made
because of rational deliberation and evidence, then, it is a reason
based claim. If a person can reason the correct answer, then it is NOT
a FAITH issue at all. So, seeing as we do have at least 2 competing
claims to reality, and they are faith based claims, we do not have
enough information to live “correctly”.

That being said, I do think that people have a general sense of how to
live correctly. Various social pressures and acculturation,
evolutionary biology, empathy etc., can all help a person lead a good
life in the moral sense.

I have a few problems with using Jesus’ life as the example of how we
should live our lives… There is a lot that you’d have to extract
from the Gospel accounts that you’d have to rationalize to apply it to
your life in a meaningful way, in my opinion. (Like, should a
Christian refrain from getting married because Jesus didn’t? Well, no,
but he taught about specifics about marriage, and we can take that
into consideration of how to live a perfect life. What about the issue
of slavery, then? Is that a practice that you wish to condemn? Yes,
(most likely). But, Jesus never says a word against slavery. Well, if
you look at his teachings, you can see that he implies… and so on
and so forth with hundreds of issues) And, even if Jesus was the
perfect example of how to live, the question of whether the Gospel
accounts accurately transmits that is another vital one.

“I also want to bring up the point that Revelation deals with Jesus’
second coming and the fact that we will all have a second
chance…perhaps that’s when those who didn’t hear of Him before will
first become aware..there’s a reason behind it all that we as humans
are physically, mentally, or spiritually capable of understanding and
that’s okay.”

This is another thing that has always kinda bugged me. So, God judges
a person who has heard of Jesus, based on whether that person has
chosen to accept Jesus’ sacrifice for his sins, right? Believing that
Jesus died and rose again, but rejecting the sacrifice as payment for
my sins would still leave me “unsaved,” right? And, if someone offers
you a choice between two things, and offers you a choice between two
things and gives you all the information you would need to make that
decision – there is no way that giving information would in any sense
impede my ability to make a free decision. In fact, I would argue that
I can only make a truly “free” decision, if I know what I’m choosing
between.

So why doesn’t God just make it abundantly clear that sacrifice has
happened? We’ve just established the fact that believing that the
sacrifice happened is not sufficient for going to heaven, and that
informing a person about the choice does not impede free will in any
sense (it actually enhances it, giving a person a truly free choice).

When I say abundantly clear, I mean any of a number of possible
things: being born with the knowledge of God, his actions, his
sacrifices, and exactly what a person needs to be “saved” should he so
choose – available at any time to any person in essentially the same
way by merely reflecting on the knowledge in their minds. Or, when
Jesus “overcame death” he stuck around, in an un-aging body with
unhealing wounds from when he was killed for thousands of years.
Giving people the opportunity to see and approach Jesus for
generations, and that could be corroborated easily. You can’t say
that if Jesus showed himself to people, with wounds and all that it
would impose of free will – unless you say that Jesus imposed on
Thomas’ free will.

“Audrey, a girl on my hall, said that she stayed until the very end and that you discussed your past and being a Christian before. I would just like to inquire as to why that changed; I’m just curious.”

Yes, I used to be a Christian. I changed because I started
questioning one day, and I came across a number of questions that were
unanswerable, yet needed to be answered for me to have faith.

Quick example:

You are told that a perfect Just Judge has determined that because of
your actions (X), you Justly deserve was is in Box A.
But, that you wouldn’t like what is in Box A, and the Judge does not
want you to have what is in Box A; you would like what is in Box B,
and the Judge wants you to have what is in Box B.
Which should you choose? If this is a test, it’s a tough one. Do you
choose what you Justly deserve regardless? Might the test be that you
were rewarded for choosing the virtuous route, even facing the
possibilities of *terrible things in Box A*?
Might everyone who chose Box B be punished for denying what he
deserves and choosing what he *wants*?

“I don’t feel like I can argue you into believing and that’s certainly
not what i’m trying to do. As a Christ follower, I think it’s just as
important for me to be challenged with this so that I go deeper in my
faith.”

Don’t worry, I don’t feel that you tried to argue me into believing.
I hope that I continue to challenge you in productive and interesting
ways. If you have any more questions, thoughts, whatever, please let
me know.

BUM