Let me be more specific. What is the challenge posed by the question "Why do people believe in God?"? And what is so different about this question compared to the classic epistemological questions concerning the reasonableness of religious belief?
The destabilizing nature of the question comes from the fact that the query shifts the conversation from reasons to functions. In the classic apologetics debate the focus was on reasons, the warrants and epistemological justifications for belief. But during the Enlightenment a new critique emerged, a question that swept past reasons and asked about the social and psychological functions of belief. Might religion be doing some kind of useful social or psychological work for us? Perhaps religion was vital to keeping order or keeping the unwashed masses docile? Perhaps religion allowed us to be happier, more productive, hopeful and cooperative? Maybe, in short, religion had a function. A social and psychological reason for its existence and ubiquity. Religion isn't about metaphysics but about coping, socially and psychologically.
The sentiment is one I definitely have felt running underneath conversations I've had with a lot of people - an inherent suspicion of motives. However, the problem of underlying presuppositions influencing the way we think seems to be common to people of faith and nonreligious alike. I've heard Lewis answers this one way in Miracles by giving reasons why naturalistic worldivew may not be more philosophically attractive than a belief in God (and why belief in the Christian Triune God makes sense and can be trusted); Beck answers it a different way by examining different scientific theories used to "explain away" religion.
The primary goal of these essays is to examine the debate concerning the function of belief at the level of the critique itself. That is, we won't cede the sociological or psychological territory by responding to the critiques with theology. At least not until the data is in. That is, we'd like to not cede the facts to Freud prematurely, resigning ourselves to theologically spinning inhospitable data if things in the laboratory don't come out the way we like them to. Such a move might be logically coherent but, via Occam's Razor, would appear rather defensive. Rather, we'll wade into the empirical waters and deal with the claims at their most basic level: The function of religious belief inside the minds of believers.
James Emery White encourages all readers in "A Mind for God" to have at least a cursory knowledge of apologetics, the defense of the faith. 1 Peter 3:15ish commands us to "always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander." So, I hope this article helps us meet these encouragements and commandments by noting that while the command stays the same, the debate is not what it used to be.
2 comments:
Hi Jesse,
I don't normally keep up with Experimental Theology, except for the occasional article posted by you or Alan that looks like it might be interesting. Of the few posts I've read, I do appreciate the abundance of thoughtfulness, contemplation, and reasoning that obviously went into them.
Apologetics isn't an area I'm familiar with, so I believe I'm missing something major here. The thing is, I'm not seeing the validity of using questions like "why would you feel the need to believe in life after death?" or "What need is it fulfilling?" as attacks on religion. To me, using these questions as attacks seems to presuppose the falsity of religion, which may be an ok tactic for math proofs, but I'm not such a big fan of it for these purposes. To a religious person, the religion is fact. The earth revolves around the sun, is fact. Why do you feel the need to believe that the earth revolves around the sun? ... I mean it's an odd question, but not an unanswerable one. Such a belief allows one to theorize in more detail about relations between other extraterrestrial bodies in the solar system. But how would such a question be used to attack the belief that the earth revolves around the sun? So I'm not saying that those questions aren't valid to ask. I'm just not seeing how they are valid to ask as attacks on religion. Would certainly appreciate any explaining you might be able to do to help me understand.
I don't think the issue is really a direct attack on religion - the idea is sort of a bridge that bypasses the need for God.
On one side, we have the existence of religion. On the other side, we have evolutionary psychology. The question underlying each question on religions functionality is "can religion be shown to have a function that explains why it exists as a purely natural phenomena?"
Those questions directly aren't bad - they're even asked in some small groups. They're also not really proofs of anything (in the classical sense). Asked in the right way, however, they can cast religion as, say, a defense or coping mechanism? A Freudian subconscious reflex to cover fears (say, death)? An evolutionary mechanism to aid in group selection?
In other words, through Marx, Darwin, Freud, etc, attacks on religion began to appeal not to people's logic, but to suspicion.
The analogy about the fact of the earth revolving around the sun might then become "why does there need to be a sun in the first place? Perhaps light is a phenomena naturally explained by things on earth".
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