For a while now I’ve been having a rather hit-or miss conversation with a Christian commenter who goes by “murk” and who wants me to put my trust in “the only one who can uphold these things.” Unfortunately, no such person shows up in the real world, so murk’s invitation is actually urging me, in practice, to put my trust in murk. And that highlights an unfortunate flaw in the Christian faith, if not in all theistic religions. When it comes right down to it, you can either put your trust in material reality, and be a skeptic, or you can put your trust in the words and superstitions of men, and be a believer. Faith in any actual god is simply not an option.
Murk, no doubt, would deny that he was asking me to put faith in himself rather than in God. He’d like to say he wants me to put my faith in God. I can’t do that, however, unless and until some actual god shows up in real life and begins interacting with me. In God’s absence, the most I could do is what murk does: put my faith in the things that people say about God. But if I do that, who am I really trusting, God, or just people?
Let’s use the Qur’an as an example. The Qur’an says God wants believers to wage holy war (jihad) against unbelievers. What if that’s not true? Would that mean that God told a lie, or would that mean that the people who wrote the Qur’an told a lie? Obviously, if the Qur’an is a lie, it’s not God who has deceived you, it’s people. That’s how you can know that you’re not putting your faith in God, but in the people who wrote the Qur’an. Your faith is in whoever is offering you something to believe.
It’s the same with the Christian Bible. If you want to know who you’re really putting your trust in, ask yourself who would be deceiving you if the things you believe turned out to be false. The Bible says there’s a hell in which the wicked suffer for all eternity. If you believe that, and it turns out there is no such place, you haven’t been deceived by God, you’ve been deceived by the people who wrote the Bible. And that means that when you believe the Bible, you’re not believing God, you’re believing the people who wrote the Bible.
Same with personal superstition. Suppose you believe that God is telling you to do something and promising that things will work out in a certain way, and then they don’t. Was that God lying to you, or were you merely fooling yourself? (I had such experiences fairly often when I was a believer.) Obviously, you were only fooling yourself, which means that when you believed God was speaking to you, you weren’t putting your faith in God, you were putting your faith in your own superstitions and subjective feelings.
This is really bad news for believers, because it means actual faith in God—the kind that is supposed to save us—is literally not an option. In order for us to have faith in God rather than in mere people, it has to be God who is telling us the things we’re putting our faith in. And it can’t be just subjective feelings and intuitions and woo, because that’s putting faith in ourselves and our own spiritual insight. God has to be here, in person, in real life, visibly and audibly and tangibly interacting with us in order for us to have the opportunity to put any faith at all in Him rather than in the stories and superstitions and feelings of men.
And He ain’t here.
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Drager
January 8, 2013 at 6:28 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think you may be making a false equivalence between faith (belief without evidence) and faith (trust). These are different things. Theists often conflate the two when trying to twist debates, but its not a good idea as they are not equivalent.
I agree with you on type 2, but its type 1 faith that believers have in a god.
=8)-DX
January 8, 2013 at 9:29 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Reminds of my Catholic marriage preparation, where it was explained to me “why we believe”. It started with the Pope, the bishops, early Christians, Paul, the gospel authors, Jesus.
Right I’m supposed to trust hundreds of people I’ve never met and who’ve left unverifyable written and oral traditions.
Just the apostolic succession is enough:
Right. I’m supposed to trust a whole line of rich pompous and holier-than-thou old white men, many of whome were proven hypocritcs, money-grabbers, war-mongerers, philanderers and who have a vested interest in their interpretation of an old book to be the only true and moral one. Right.
Just imagin all those people in one room – popes, bishops, apostles, evangelists. Imagine them all sitting on their thrones and shouting at you “Believe!” I can’t think of any group of people I’d rather give the finter to.
Great post, loved it, nice to see you posting on here again =).
=8)-DX
January 8, 2013 at 9:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Aaaah! Typos! Must have been cross-eyed re-reading that one, sorry!
mikespeir
January 8, 2013 at 11:22 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As I always point out, it inevitably comes down to, “You say the Bible says Paul (or Moses or whoever) says God says….” No matter how you slice it, that precariously balanced, upside down pyramid is teetering on YOU.
smrnda
January 8, 2013 at 11:35 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Believe because I/we believe” is a pretty common tactic, at least among Christians I’ve met. Something underlying that case (if applied to your current conversation with murk) is implying that by rejecting murk’s belief, you think murk is a shitty person, or a deluded idiot, and some people will use this as a type of ‘conversion through good manners’ where the idea is to make you feel like you’re being rude to reject the beliefs of so many decent people. This is why so many newer Christian denominations place such huge emphasis on personal testimony.
Kevin
January 8, 2013 at 5:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah, murk. Sorry, but I’m not buying it.
You see, there’s this little problem you theists have. It’s one of a plethora of choices. You claim that your choice is the correct one. OK, fine. But every single person who believes in the supernatural makes the same claim.
Which is more likely? That YOUR choice out of the thousands upon thousands of choices is the correct choice — or that every choice is no better than any other? In other words, that they’re all wrong. All the products of human imagination. You don’t believe Islam is just as good a choice as Christianity, or Jainism, or Hinduism. You think they’re wrong. And they think the same of you. I’m here to tell you that you’re correct about that. They are wrong. But so are you. Nobody’s choice is correct.
The only way to win is not to play.
Gods were invented by primitives who didn’t understand the weather or human disease. Later, the idea of gods were co-opted as a convenient way of enforcing a society’s behavioral code. Dress this way, eat this not that because the god we believe in wants us to.
And, as a side benefit, it provided an indoor job for the smart people who didn’t want to work in the fields. Then a priest eats a bad oyster and suddenly all shellfish are traif. Or a kid with measles recovers (naturally) but the priest covered his testicles with pigeon blood — suddenly that’s the cure.
It’s all nonsense. Made up stuff that marries natural phenomenon with coincidental human behavior.
Nothing has changed since the first witch doctor first shook the first bones. It’s all human invention.
mikespeir
January 8, 2013 at 5:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Isn’t it embarrassing that here, in the 21st century, we’re still following the orders of some frizzled, begrimed primitive in a half-dressed bearskin frock who lived thousands of years ago?
Brian M
January 9, 2013 at 8:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Let’s be careful here. In some ways that half dressed primiitve was smarter and more observant than the typical modern man. Surviving in a natural “hunting and gathering” culture requires more smarts than, to use a perjorative strawman, a ditzy mall-bound teenager.
Peruse the (terribly classist and sexist) photos at People of Walmart.com before you so so smugly asusme the superiority of modern subruban man.
mikespeir
January 10, 2013 at 5:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
LOL! Point taken, but I stand by my grumble. Too much of our basic attitudes toward, I don’t know, things in general come from primitive misconceptions about how the world and we ourselves work.