Thursday, February 6, 2014

Rhetorical Stop-Gaps Before Death

I have noticed a tendency in the kinds of things unbelievers are saying today, particularly the more vocal ones. I call them "rhetorical stop-gaps before death," because I think they provide enough of a rhetorical shield against Christian arguments, at least until one dies and doesn't have to face them anymore. In the end, it is not about truth, but about who wins arguments and whether or not something can be said that will be subjectively self-satisfying while one waits for death.

Here is a sampling of some rhetorical stop-gaps before death:

"Even if I deny an objective morality, I can still be moral. In fact, I know a lot of atheists who are far more exemplary in their moral lives than many Christians."

Usually we are given an example or two here, both of exemplary atheists and of naughty Christians. At this point, I fight back the urge to yawn. The argument of the Christian is not that atheists can't be moral. The argument is that atheistic relativism (or nominalism) is an unsatisfactory foundation for ethics. In other words, yes, the atheist can be moral, but it sure seems puzzling to bother about being moral if you are a relativist. Fearing power isn't enough. Good and evil are left without any meaning except rhetorical meaning. What we are saying is that if atheism is true, then morality is a lively, but inconclusive, rhetorical game we play until death.

"Even if I am a relativist, that doesn't make my morality less real."

This is an elegant example of rhetoric. Notice the lazy equivocation in the choice of words. What does the atheist mean here by "real," I wonder. Does he mean "true?" If I suggest that my understanding of reality is such that we can kill newborns if we don't find them to be convenient, what can my relativist friend say to this? Of course, he can say that such an opinion is odd, that he doesn't agree, and that it is presently illegal, but can he say that I am wrong? Is he saying my conviction is less real than his?

I suppose that what he means is that relativism still gives us rules we can practice in the real world. Of course it can, but that is not the claim against relativism. Surely what I have just described can also give me a real set of principles as well, in the sense that I can practice them in the every day world. I want to know what the truth about morality is, and the relativist merely waxes on and on, not even eloquently, about the methodology of pragmatism and utilitarianism and nominalism and performative ethics to deliver to us a real system.

In short, I have asked the atheist to tell me what good can be. And he answers by saying that it is whatever the cauldron of human opinions should deliver to me. Oh, and don't forget the paralyzing profundity of the flourish that it is "no less real than a Christian ethic." Of course this last bit is always uttered with all summonable passion, or derision, or sardonic self-congratulatory dismissiveness, because emotion is the ally of rhetoric, not logic or truth.

"I am scientifically minded, and so philosophical questions are just irrelevant to me."

This one is always fun. It usually comes with the rhetoric of positivism--that if something cannot be verified in the perceivable universe, then it is either untrue or inscrutable. It never occurs to the person uttering this that such a position is itself a philosophical position that cannot be verified by scientific testing. How on earth are we to test the scientific facticity of a claim that "science is a sufficient source of knowledge about all things?"

So the claim is thick with irony. Here is a person claiming the deeply philosophical position that philosophy is a waste of time.

But you see, a person can get away with it if he is a scientist and can speak the rhetoric of science. Those whose specialty is not in the sciences will of course be intimidated, or lulled to sleep, while the scientist presents the scintillating details of his research, and then he ends his presentation with a dismissive, "You see that science can deliver the answers. I can't be sure of any truths that are not furnished by science."

To which we ask, "um, sir, I confess I'm interested in understanding your research as best I can, but where in your research did you find the truth that all truths are scientific in nature?" And then he goes back and details several of the facts from his scientific research. And then we say, "oh, you must be right." And rhetoric wins again!

"Well, such and such a scholar and so and so a professor say that there is very little possibility of such and such and so and so."

Who are these scholars? Why should I trust them? What is the nature of their research? What are their philosophical biases and assumptions? Nobody knows exactly, but they know more than I do, or so I am assured. Even the scholarly ones float theories that are utterly abandoned in five years, and yet I am assured that they are god-like authorities now. But most of the time the "authority" in question is a village atheist, cited in several blogs and on Facebook. Of course the article in question is authoritative because it got thousands of likes.

I had a student once assure me that scientists had shown that there is a chemical in the brain that makes people moral. I pressed him concerning his sources and he assured me that the sources were solid, but sadly he could only stammer feebly from his seat about a yahoo reference and a wikipedia article. So I asked him if they are giving "immunizations" against evil, and he sort of just stared back at me.

If I have to deal with another atheist whose ideas are a patchwork of the various arguments of cultural gadflies like Sam Harris, I might go insane. This is surely the downside of the internet age. Everyone can be an "expert." He reads second and third and even fourth hand accounts of various phenomena and then assures me that my Christian faith is wrong according to his "sources." Then when I offer my sources, like the many thoughtful Christian philosophers and scientists, he assures me that my sources are wrong. Can he show me published papers, time-tested works or even recreate the essence of the arguments himself? Can he assure me of the criteria used to verify his "facts?"

"Christians can't stand up to thoughtful atheists. The Christians in my class got totally owned by my professor."

At least once a year I hear from a former student claiming that a professor verbally bullied the Christians in a class in college. "Christians are unscientific morons, guardians of myth, clinging to emotion rather than reason…" blah, blah, blah. It is always the same, and in most cases the Christians in the class are gracious enough to endure it.

It must be granted that the average Christian is hopelessly uncritical about his own faith. And so if a nominally thoughtful atheist meets one, clearly he will get the better of the discussion. What puzzles me is that so few atheist professors bring in anything other than straw-men. They attack the simplest Christian ideas and the simpletons among the Christian faithful, and then boldly claim victory. Isn't this much like a middle-weight boxer boasting victory for beating a child?

In my classes at the Christian high school, I present the arguments, in detail, of atheists like Bertrand Russell, David Hume, Frederick Nietzsche, along with the arguments of modern atheists like Dawkins, Hawking, Provine, Tabash, Hitchens and the like. I'd like to know what student is exposed to any reasonable challenge to naturalism in public education? Surely there are any number of bright Christians whose arguments at the very least challenge the positions of modern atheism.

"The Old Testament is just bizarre. I mean, look, it says ___________." Fill in any number of cultural practices/conditions or phenomena that are not American.

One can buy a few years of rhetorical stop-gaps pressing the via negativa. It always works like this. The Christian says something which seems a mild threat to atheism. The atheist grabs hold of something in the question or subject that he can turn into an attack against some strange thing he does not understand in the Bible. The atheist makes said attack. Another Christian neutralized.

Let me be more specific about how this works. The Christian says something like this. "How can you make sense of morality as an atheist?" The atheist recognizes the word "morality," then rifles through the deep rolodex of his mental attack catalog. Card found, "Oh yeah, well you Christians call the Bible moral! Look at how God killed all those kids and stuff in the Old Testament!" The atheist waits for the stunned look on the Christians face. Voila, six more months of feeling superior to Christians. Rhetoric has again provided a stop-gap before death.

Notice what happened. The unbeliever gave me nothing by way of a positive case for morality in a godless worldview. The unbeliever demands that I respond to his dreadful interpretations of the Bible, but then has no patience to hear sound instruction as to the cultural, historical and linguistic significance of the things he thinks he knows from the Bible. He just assumes that anyone who picks up the Bible in English in the year 2014 will understand exactly what it is saying on first reading. And that may be true of some aspects of the text, but surely we should give the authors the honor of our scholarly attention if we are going to make the attempt to understand them or to refute them honestly.

Having said that, our larger argument is that if you deny God's existence, then you are left to assert a worldview like atheism, which leaves morality, human dignity, purpose and human reason without a foundation. But no atheist should worry about defending his own worldview; he can get by with rhetorical stop-gaps before death.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Unfriending is Fun and Healthy

It is amazing how many people in one's life are just waiting around to watch you fail.

Recently I posted some pictures of my girls learning to ride their bikes. I was very proud of them, and a little proud of myself, though it took me awhile to finally get out there and take the time necessary to teach them. I was worried about them falling, so I took them to a grass field, where I ran beside them for most of the learning period. I was able to get a couple pictures and then post them to social media. 

Almost immediately there was a stern response from some "family" members. They lectured me about my failure to have them in helmets. It was true. I totally forgot to grab the helmets. Truthfully, I didn't even think it would matter, given that I was taking them to the park to learn, where they could only ride their bikes at a fast walk pace on grass. They were perfectly safe, even without the helmets. But here were these concerned people, who never interact with me positively in any substantial way about anything in my life now finding an opening to critique my parenting. 

So, this has me thinking. What is one to do with people in one's life who couldn't care less about your success, growth or happiness, but do take an intense interest in your failures?

One could take the path of arduous efforts at true friendship. I'm not even talking reconciliation, because these people are not real friends. They are co-workers, distant family and Facebook "friends." But when you are 45 and don't want to invest the time, what are you to do? How about this: jettison them completely from your life! I have now taken the liberating policy of shutting out of my life anyone who is critical without meaningful investment in my life. Why on earth should I entertain the complaints of a person who is not even remotely committed to me as a person?

Of course I should consider the complaints of customers in my profession, but that is of a limited nature, and is not under the pretense of friendship. And I should also consider the constructive criticism of friends, but that is because they have shown a real interest in my health and happiness. They have earned the right. Perhaps I should even consider remote people who expose problems in the logic of an argument, etc. I can even see the merit of that. But I refuse to accept criticism that is leveled against me for no other reason than that a person is eager to find fault for their own entertainment and frivolous aggrandizement. Sadly, we all know people who belong to such a group, and should perhaps no longer know them!