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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   5617 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 12, 2023

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I find it interesting that The Motte tends to treat Christianity with kid gloves that are not reserved for other belief systems. For example, the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans is widely called out here as being simply wrong. Which it almost certainly is, in my opinion. But consider the idea that a man 2000 years ago was god incarnate and rose from the dead and we should believe this because a few people who lived decades later wrote that this was true and because some other people have had some visions and powerful feelings. This idea is, I think, even less likely to be true than the idea that there is no difference in intelligence between different genetic groups of humans. But Christianity on The Motte is usually not met with accusations that it is as absurd, indeed perhaps more absurd, as any flavor of wokism. Wokeism gets often and in my opinion properly pilloried on here for being nonsensical on the level of correspondence to objective reality, but Christianity typically gets a free pass. Even the atheists on here mostly refuse to really call it out as being absurd when the topic comes up.

Does this happen because Christianity is largely not viewed as a threat and because since wokeism is this community's main out-group and Christianity is vaguely right-aligned in the modern West, people here tend to follow the principle of "the enemy of an enemy is my friend"? Or, to be more charitable, maybe it is because wokism can fairly easily be criticized on the level of normal scientific investigation, whereas the claims that Christianity makes go so far beyond typical materialism that one makes an exception for it because its claims are fundamentally viewed as being orthogonal to scientific investigation?

Religion is not about literal scientific claims. “Religious language” is unique. Definitions of God are also not as simple as imagined. Origen was writing about how Genesis is figurative in the 3rd century, Tertullian was writing about how the absurdity of Christian led to a stronger belief, and the earliest Gospel commentary we have is allegorical (Fortunatianus).

While the point of the religion is to have a perfect belief that God was born to a virgin, walked on water, converted water into wine, and so forth, this is tremendously difficult. The number of Christians who truly believe these things on a deep level are approximately the number of Saints. Consider how differently a person would act if they had a true, deep certainty that Jesus as depicted in the Gospel is returning: that imitating Jesus leads to true happiness, that you receive a new life, that Godly suffering leads to joy. You would be the most restless missionary ever while having no anxieties.

Christianity uses all kinds of things as propaganda to draw people into the inner faith, but at the heart of it it’s not “literal”. It’s true, and in fact more true than the literal. But not literal-scientific.

While the point of the religion is to have a perfect belief that God was born to a virgin, walked on water, converted water into wine, and so forth, this is tremendously difficult. The number of Christians who truly believe these things on a deep level are approximately the number of Saints

I don't really think they're that rare. I mean I believe those things. And while I'm not the most restless missionary ever, I feel pretty guilty that I'm not. It sure seemed like everyone at my church believed those things, and was also pretty obsessed with missionary work.

C. S. Lewis put my perspective pretty well in his essay "The Grand Miracle":

One is very often asked at present whether we could not have a Christianity stripped, or, as people who ask it say, "freed" from its miraculous elements, a Christianity with the miraculous elements suppressed. Now, it seems to me that precisely the one religion in the world, or at least the only one I know, with which you could not do that is Christianity. In a religion like Buddhism, if you took away the miracles attributed to Gautama Buddha in some very late sources, there would be no loss; in fact, the religion would get on very much better without them because in that case the miracles largely contradict the teaching. Or even in the case of a religion like Mohammedanism, nothing essential would be altered if you took away the miracles. You could have a great prophet preaching his dogmas without bringing in any miracles; they are only in the nature of a digression, or illuminated capitals. But you cannot possibly do that with Christianity, because the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, which is uncreated, eternal, came into Nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing Nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left. There may be many admirable human things which Christianity shares with all other systems in the world, but there would be nothing specifically Christian.

I disagree with Lewis. In an alternate universe where Pontius Pilate let Jesus off with a whipping and he later died in a cholera outbreak, you could still have a religion based on his ministry of the Kingdom of God — the infinite grace of the Father, the equality of sinners be Him, the need to forgive debtors as one's debt has been forgiven... it's a spicy take on judaism. Without the resurrection, "Christians" might teach the same doctrines, but grace wouldn't be mediated personally through Christ.

If tomorrow, incontrovertible evidence came out that the apostles lied, you could still salvage a religion from the wreckage. Christians would have to perform some interprative surgery on the parts of the Bible where Jesus claims to be God — maybe make it like Buddhism where any enlightened person can be God? — but there are already stretches in biblical interpretation, as is.

I think you could salvage a religion out of Christianity if Christ did not rise from the dead, but it wouldn't be Christianity. I agree with Paul (emphasis mine):

Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.

But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. For “He has put all things under His feet.” But when He says “all things are put under Him,” it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted. Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.

Otherwise, what will they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead do not rise at all? Why then are they baptized for the dead? And why do we stand in jeopardy every hour? I affirm, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. If, in the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantage is it to me? If the dead do not rise, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!”

You beat me to it.

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