Thursday, June 5, 2014

Too Smart (Ass) to Be a Christian

This is my 18th year teaching Christian apologetics to juniors and seniors in high school. I have dedicated an enormous portion of my life to studying and articulating the best arguments in favor of Christianity and against other positions, particularly atheistic naturalism. I don't by any means think I'm in the top ten percent of intellectual defenders of the faith, but neither am I in the bottom ten percent.

Here is what I have found: In response to the best Christian ideas, one does not get sound argument as rebuttal, but peacockery, even from some of the "smartest" people in the world, like Richard Dawkins. And after all these years, I must confess that I'm just bored with it all. I'm even considering going back into simple biblical studies for awhile. Perhaps I'll pull out my Greek text and dig into it again rather than enduring another of these dreadful and tired repartees. Everyone begins their philosophical project on the ground of some epistemology, usually his or her own authority, and surely the Bible is as trustworthy as Marx, Dawkins or Rorty.

But let me get to the point of this little post: I have to confess that it is stunning to the point of leaving me speechless to see this arrogant grandstanding among the young. They certainly haven't earned the right to be arrogant! No one really has, but it is especially annoying coming from a 17 year old. He is not too smart to be a Christian; he is too smart-ass to be a Christian. And all of his ideas are merely distilled and parroted from some 1st or 2nd page google search, which parroted it from some atheist who is clearly not engaging thoughtfully with the historically robust Christian argument. The irony in this, which of course is lost on such students, is that I am actually engaging the best ideas of historical and modern atheism while this 17 year old quotes lines from the Internet. I am teaching and refuting better atheism than the drivel he is regurgitating from some blog.

I can't tell you how many times I have endured budding "intellectuals" in my classes, brazenly asking some question they think appeared in the universe for the first time in the oracle of their neophite brains, only to be quickly answered, not by me, but by Augustine, or Luther, or Calvin, or any of a number of thoughtful Christians. Now is that an end of the matter? Does this bright young skeptic concede that the question has been sufficiently answered? No, he persists in stubborn unbelief, not because he is smart, but because he is a smart-ass. His only reply to substantive arguments against him is to be derisive and dismissive of them after the fact, and within the safe confines of his "group." I suppose it shouldn't surprise me in this the age of entertainment. The winning idea is the zinger, or merely the idea that the "right people" happen to affirm.

The other thing that I find curious is that it is becoming increasingly fashionable to be merely a critic of others, on everything, all the time. This I see as pseudo-intellectual cowardice hiding behind a facade of boorish sarcasm. It even usually comes with a pinched face and pinched tone of voice. So yeah, very winsome! Satire has become our sincerity. I understand a period of investigation into philosophical matters, but at some point, one should commit courageously to a perspective, until there is some good reason not to do so. The problem is that we have cultural heroes who spend their time critiquing the views of others all the time. Hitchens made a career out of it. What is it exactly that they are defending? Who knows! What exactly do they believe is the basis of ethics or human dignity or love or reason or meaning? Who knows! But they know you can't know, because they don't know, and clearly they are smarter (asses) than you are.