I began this debate by stating the claims that I would defend. The first is this,
1. There is no inconsistency between believing in the God of Jesus Christ and acting rationally in holding this belief
The second is this,
2. There is no successful argument against the God of Jesus Christ
Before getting into the more recent developments of this debate, I would like to examine how these claims have held up from the beginning. In my first post, I defended both of these claims by arguing that the God of Jesus Christ is not dependant upon the doctrine of biblical inerrancy (that the bible has no error), and that, in fact, contrary to a superficial first-look at the situation, if Christianity were true it is not improbable that one ought to expect the alleged difficulties with the bible and science. This being the case, such alleged difficulties are no evidence against Christianity, since they are what one ought to expect to be the case if it were true. I also represented this in symbolic logic in my opening statement.
I also defended that in the absence of demonstrable evidence, one can be rational in holding to a belief if it is based on an experience. For example, if I fed everyday a stray cat, and no one else saw the cat but me, until one day it disappeared, I would be justified in believing that there was a cat that I used to feed every day based on my experience of feeding this cat, even though I could not produce any evidence for the existence of the cat. Right that it is that someone who has not seen this cat has not had this experience, but at least this person is not justified in accusing me of being irrational by believing that I indeed fed this cat simply because I cannot produce the evidence of this cat.
In his first reply, Knockemoutt responded by presenting what he saw as objections against the rationality of accepting what was written about Jesus in the bible. However, when it comes down to it, his objections were irrelevant to the points I am maintaing as they do not constitute a successful argument against my God or the rationality of believing in Him. After a bit of debate on the topic, by his 6th post he seemed to accept this, saying, “we can argue on an on about historical/biblical accuracy but it really has little to do with the whole thing.” So it seems that he has granted one of my main contentions, that the God of Jesus Christ is not dependant upon biblical inerrancy. If this still seems strange to anyone, I would point out that it is the duty of a follower of Jesus to put their faith in God alone. Though it sometimes seems that many have put the bible as virtually a member of the trinity, I do not.
In his first reply he also argued that the God I am presenting is too small to be real. (his “conceptual size of God” argument) To the logic he presented, I replied by pointing out some faulty assumptions in his logic such as the identification of the beginning of the existence of the Christian God with the beginning of Judaism or Christianity. I pointed out that there is no reason to suppose that the Christian God was not active in the world simply because he didn’t fully reveal Himself until later times. (see post #5 for more) In his next post he responded by pointing out the number of people who have ever lived compared to the number of people who are Christians. However, as I mentioned, a more complete knowledge of God being revealed later does not show that the God of Jesus Christ did not exist and was not active earlier. Even the bible doesn’t claim this as we see even in the Old Testament, non-Jewish characters such as Job interacting with God… that is, it doesn’t claim that only at the outset of Judaism God acted in the world. (and the book of Job implies this for the reason I mentioned) I also mentioned, in relation to this, archeological finds from tens of thousands of years ago which show that pre-historic men believed in an afterlife. One also finds that many of the earliest societies to develop a writing system, even before the Jewish people, were monotheistic. We are in no position to say that the God of Jesus Christ has not acted before Judaism.
Knockemoutt also accused me of “using nothing more than Christian apologetics” here to which I can only ask my readers to carefully read what I have written, because I do not think he has accurately characterized me. In his most recent post, he says that I have claimed that God was masquerading as Zeus and other gods before Christianity. However, this is not what I have said. I only claimed that we have no reason to suppose God was entirely inactive before Christianity and Judaism. He also seems to introduce here the claim that we rationally disbelieve in Zeus while there is no more evidence for the Christian God. However, if it were (or if it is) true that God existed and made himself known by experience it seems like we do actually have more reasons to not just assume that God is irrational as one might do with Zeus. If the only evidence is experience, I do not see any people claiming that they have experienced the presence of Zeus. It is also the case that the very characteristics of Zeus probably suggest that if Zeus existed, he would make his existence more obvious because he would desire fame. (just going on my general knowledge of Greek gods, perhaps I am wrong in this case) Furthermore, the objections to Zeus in modern science such as that lightning is caused by his strong arms probably cannot be explained satisfactorily, as objections against the bible can be without being ad-hoc (as I have attempted to do in this debate… not that the biblical difficulties are nearly as difficult as the ones relevant to Zeus stories). I also do not think that the Zeus stories claim Zeus to be evidenced by internal non-demonstrable yet undeniable experience. (as it is with the Christian God)
Furthermore, we also see that since the evidence of God is internal and experiential, and we ought to expect that people are testifying to this experience. However, I have never run across a person who testifies to the experience of Zeus which suggests that no such people experience him. I suspect at this point that Knockemoutt will mention the other religious claims to experience from religions that contradict Christianity. To this, I reply that I would not be justified in a debate setting to accuse them of being irrational simply because their belief is based on experience rather than demonstrable evidence. Granted that I think of them as acting irrational in holding these beliefs because of my own experience, but I will not propose that for acceptance in our court of irrationality here, and it will be consistent with my intent here if my audience does not either. It is also quite possible that these other religions will not be able to defend against claims of ad-hocness and irrationality that Christianity can and that I have presented in this debate.
Another of Knockemoutt’s main points was that it was “rational to doubt claims of the divine by default. Critical evaluation of claims is a rational practice. If I have not experienced the divine, and those who claim they have cannot produce any evidence in favor of that claim, it is rational to disbelieve the claim. As Christopher Hitchens once said, ‘that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
In response to the first part of this, the claim of justified unbelief (that one rationally disbelieves without evidence) does not show that it is irrational to believe in God for everyone who does. However, the latter claim, is what Knockemoutt is maintaining as it is his side in the debate. In response to the Hitchens quote, I gave one instance where a person has only the evidence of their experience and is not irrational in holding to their belief that the experience indeed happened. The example I gave was a child who was abused and only later told someone about it much later when there was no evidence. Knockemoutt claimed that I brought up this point for emotional effect when it was entirely a logical point as it was the most clear case I could think of where one had a justified belief without demonstrable evidence. In response to this, Knockemoutt said that a court could not convict a person of abuse simply on the testimony of an incident where the evidence was gone. However, if I were to grant him this, we must still recognize that this is the court of rationality were are arguing at, it is not a court of law. The law is thankfully not in the business of declaring one to be irrational (save in the case of insanity). If this were the case, and we used the logic Knockemoutt proposed, we must then declare every victim of a crime irrational who cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that their attacker was so-and-so.
Another of Knockemoutt’s main points in the debate was that I am not defending my claim properly by giving positive evidence for it. I have defended the claim, that belief in God is not irrational, by maintaining a negative stance against arguments that belief in God is irrational. However, I would like to point out that I have been entirely consistent throughout this debate in defending this in the way I have done so. I chose this topic because I wanted the audience to see if claims that Christianity is irrational could stand up to scrutiny. Given what has been said, I don’t think they can. I also believe based on personal experience and not on some demonstrable piece of evidence, and the rationality of doing this I have also defended as a positive claim in this debate.
And even if I grant entirely to Knockemoutt that I have not succeeded in providing us real positive reasons to think that Christianity is rational, I think I have succeeded in showing that we have seen no successful reasons to think Christianity is irrational. If one thinks the proper position at this point is to take neither side and simply remain undecided on whether or not belief in God is rational, I would be entirely happy with that decision. If this means that neither of us one the debate, I confess that I don’t care. His decision would be accepting the points I have actually defended in this debate, because he has accepted that we are in no position to declare belief in the God of Jesus Christ irrational.
To wrap it up my last reply, I would like to thank Knockemoutt for participating and our audience for taking their valuable time to investigate this important issue. My hope is that whatever conclusion one comes to, everyone will focus on the logic of both sides of this debate and give each debater a fair hearing by reading each debater’s posts in their own words while doing their best to look at the logic of what is presented on each side without bias (as much as this is possible).
Thank you,
- Jeff
1. There is no inconsistency between believing in the God of Jesus Christ and acting rationally in holding this belief
The second is this,
2. There is no successful argument against the God of Jesus Christ
Before getting into the more recent developments of this debate, I would like to examine how these claims have held up from the beginning. In my first post, I defended both of these claims by arguing that the God of Jesus Christ is not dependant upon the doctrine of biblical inerrancy (that the bible has no error), and that, in fact, contrary to a superficial first-look at the situation, if Christianity were true it is not improbable that one ought to expect the alleged difficulties with the bible and science. This being the case, such alleged difficulties are no evidence against Christianity, since they are what one ought to expect to be the case if it were true. I also represented this in symbolic logic in my opening statement.
I also defended that in the absence of demonstrable evidence, one can be rational in holding to a belief if it is based on an experience. For example, if I fed everyday a stray cat, and no one else saw the cat but me, until one day it disappeared, I would be justified in believing that there was a cat that I used to feed every day based on my experience of feeding this cat, even though I could not produce any evidence for the existence of the cat. Right that it is that someone who has not seen this cat has not had this experience, but at least this person is not justified in accusing me of being irrational by believing that I indeed fed this cat simply because I cannot produce the evidence of this cat.
In his first reply, Knockemoutt responded by presenting what he saw as objections against the rationality of accepting what was written about Jesus in the bible. However, when it comes down to it, his objections were irrelevant to the points I am maintaing as they do not constitute a successful argument against my God or the rationality of believing in Him. After a bit of debate on the topic, by his 6th post he seemed to accept this, saying, “we can argue on an on about historical/biblical accuracy but it really has little to do with the whole thing.” So it seems that he has granted one of my main contentions, that the God of Jesus Christ is not dependant upon biblical inerrancy. If this still seems strange to anyone, I would point out that it is the duty of a follower of Jesus to put their faith in God alone. Though it sometimes seems that many have put the bible as virtually a member of the trinity, I do not.
In his first reply he also argued that the God I am presenting is too small to be real. (his “conceptual size of God” argument) To the logic he presented, I replied by pointing out some faulty assumptions in his logic such as the identification of the beginning of the existence of the Christian God with the beginning of Judaism or Christianity. I pointed out that there is no reason to suppose that the Christian God was not active in the world simply because he didn’t fully reveal Himself until later times. (see post #5 for more) In his next post he responded by pointing out the number of people who have ever lived compared to the number of people who are Christians. However, as I mentioned, a more complete knowledge of God being revealed later does not show that the God of Jesus Christ did not exist and was not active earlier. Even the bible doesn’t claim this as we see even in the Old Testament, non-Jewish characters such as Job interacting with God… that is, it doesn’t claim that only at the outset of Judaism God acted in the world. (and the book of Job implies this for the reason I mentioned) I also mentioned, in relation to this, archeological finds from tens of thousands of years ago which show that pre-historic men believed in an afterlife. One also finds that many of the earliest societies to develop a writing system, even before the Jewish people, were monotheistic. We are in no position to say that the God of Jesus Christ has not acted before Judaism.
Knockemoutt also accused me of “using nothing more than Christian apologetics” here to which I can only ask my readers to carefully read what I have written, because I do not think he has accurately characterized me. In his most recent post, he says that I have claimed that God was masquerading as Zeus and other gods before Christianity. However, this is not what I have said. I only claimed that we have no reason to suppose God was entirely inactive before Christianity and Judaism. He also seems to introduce here the claim that we rationally disbelieve in Zeus while there is no more evidence for the Christian God. However, if it were (or if it is) true that God existed and made himself known by experience it seems like we do actually have more reasons to not just assume that God is irrational as one might do with Zeus. If the only evidence is experience, I do not see any people claiming that they have experienced the presence of Zeus. It is also the case that the very characteristics of Zeus probably suggest that if Zeus existed, he would make his existence more obvious because he would desire fame. (just going on my general knowledge of Greek gods, perhaps I am wrong in this case) Furthermore, the objections to Zeus in modern science such as that lightning is caused by his strong arms probably cannot be explained satisfactorily, as objections against the bible can be without being ad-hoc (as I have attempted to do in this debate… not that the biblical difficulties are nearly as difficult as the ones relevant to Zeus stories). I also do not think that the Zeus stories claim Zeus to be evidenced by internal non-demonstrable yet undeniable experience. (as it is with the Christian God)
Furthermore, we also see that since the evidence of God is internal and experiential, and we ought to expect that people are testifying to this experience. However, I have never run across a person who testifies to the experience of Zeus which suggests that no such people experience him. I suspect at this point that Knockemoutt will mention the other religious claims to experience from religions that contradict Christianity. To this, I reply that I would not be justified in a debate setting to accuse them of being irrational simply because their belief is based on experience rather than demonstrable evidence. Granted that I think of them as acting irrational in holding these beliefs because of my own experience, but I will not propose that for acceptance in our court of irrationality here, and it will be consistent with my intent here if my audience does not either. It is also quite possible that these other religions will not be able to defend against claims of ad-hocness and irrationality that Christianity can and that I have presented in this debate.
Another of Knockemoutt’s main points was that it was “rational to doubt claims of the divine by default. Critical evaluation of claims is a rational practice. If I have not experienced the divine, and those who claim they have cannot produce any evidence in favor of that claim, it is rational to disbelieve the claim. As Christopher Hitchens once said, ‘that what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."
In response to the first part of this, the claim of justified unbelief (that one rationally disbelieves without evidence) does not show that it is irrational to believe in God for everyone who does. However, the latter claim, is what Knockemoutt is maintaining as it is his side in the debate. In response to the Hitchens quote, I gave one instance where a person has only the evidence of their experience and is not irrational in holding to their belief that the experience indeed happened. The example I gave was a child who was abused and only later told someone about it much later when there was no evidence. Knockemoutt claimed that I brought up this point for emotional effect when it was entirely a logical point as it was the most clear case I could think of where one had a justified belief without demonstrable evidence. In response to this, Knockemoutt said that a court could not convict a person of abuse simply on the testimony of an incident where the evidence was gone. However, if I were to grant him this, we must still recognize that this is the court of rationality were are arguing at, it is not a court of law. The law is thankfully not in the business of declaring one to be irrational (save in the case of insanity). If this were the case, and we used the logic Knockemoutt proposed, we must then declare every victim of a crime irrational who cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that their attacker was so-and-so.
Another of Knockemoutt’s main points in the debate was that I am not defending my claim properly by giving positive evidence for it. I have defended the claim, that belief in God is not irrational, by maintaining a negative stance against arguments that belief in God is irrational. However, I would like to point out that I have been entirely consistent throughout this debate in defending this in the way I have done so. I chose this topic because I wanted the audience to see if claims that Christianity is irrational could stand up to scrutiny. Given what has been said, I don’t think they can. I also believe based on personal experience and not on some demonstrable piece of evidence, and the rationality of doing this I have also defended as a positive claim in this debate.
And even if I grant entirely to Knockemoutt that I have not succeeded in providing us real positive reasons to think that Christianity is rational, I think I have succeeded in showing that we have seen no successful reasons to think Christianity is irrational. If one thinks the proper position at this point is to take neither side and simply remain undecided on whether or not belief in God is rational, I would be entirely happy with that decision. If this means that neither of us one the debate, I confess that I don’t care. His decision would be accepting the points I have actually defended in this debate, because he has accepted that we are in no position to declare belief in the God of Jesus Christ irrational.
To wrap it up my last reply, I would like to thank Knockemoutt for participating and our audience for taking their valuable time to investigate this important issue. My hope is that whatever conclusion one comes to, everyone will focus on the logic of both sides of this debate and give each debater a fair hearing by reading each debater’s posts in their own words while doing their best to look at the logic of what is presented on each side without bias (as much as this is possible).
Thank you,
- Jeff
"the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate" (1 Cor. 1:19)
