Consciencebound

This page is a list of the various questions that come to my mind from time to time. Some of these questions are what has caused my level of faith to deteriorate quite significantly as I have not found adequate answers to them that will allow me to remain a consistent Christian. I still try to be open as much as I can to any answers that I am able to find from different perspectives, I just do not have a commitment to ONE answer to any of these that demands my assent. Most of these questions are coming from the perspective of the Christian world view as that is where I have come from but they will not be limited to that. I will from time to time discuss these questions in my blog . If any of these seem rude or disrespectful, that is not my intent. They are just the honest questions that are on my mind and heart that I am trying to be honest about.

1. How do we know what we know?

This question is the realm of the subject of epistemology or theory of knowledge. It is at the same time so basic that it almost does not need an answer but also one of the most illusive philosophical questions that a person can ask them self about what they believe is true about the world. Some examples of this applied to my specific situation are:

- How do we KNOW that the Bible contains no error?

- How do we KNOW that the God described in the Bible is the one true God?

- How do we KNOW that the books which the Protestant Christian tradition considers to be inspired are to be considered as given by God? Is it possible that Christians are wrong about that?

- How do we KNOW that the gospel and other accounts in the protestant Bible are not based on legendary material?

- Is it possible that there is legend woven in and out of the accounts that we have in the Bible?

If you think that you are pretty sure about what you know, push yourself with questions like these and see where it takes you…

2. If the world is as the Bible says it is, why is it that we don’t experience and see the miraculous events that were reported to happen “way back then”?

It seems apparent that the more educated a society gets, the less superstitious and in some ways the less religious it gets. We can see a steady decrease in the amount of things that are relegated to the supernatural as our society goes on. Things that used to be quickly explained as the work of God or demons now have natural explanations and it seems that the presumption of naturalism is the only way that we can learn more about the world that we live in.

3. How many contradictions would it take for a committed Evangelical Christian to change their position that the Bible is infallible?

I used to believe very strongly that the Bible was not only inspired by God but also without one error. My beliefs have changed as I can’t honestly say that it does not have errors any longer. There are too many seemingly obvious errors of science, history, logical contradictions etc to believe that any longer. Most will say when pressed that it is only the original manuscripts that are without error and not the copies, but that seems like almost a meaningless statement since we don’t have anything remotely close to what “the originals” are. I am not sure if there would even be a way to know that what we had was the original even if we had it. The reason I ask the question of how many contradictions would it take is that most conservative Christians would agree that there are in fact errors in the Bible that we have but that those errors are relatively few and insignificant so they do not think that the whole book is unreliable because of a handful of errors or problems. There are plenty of numerical discrepancies, historical inaccuracies and general internal contradictions but most people will just think that they are not going to throw the whole thing out because in time, these “problems” will be ironed out. But my question is how many problems would there need to be in order to decide that the Bible was just not a reliable source of information?  Here is a link to a page talking about many of the problems in the text of the Bible.  I don’t agree that all the texts pointed out in that link are problems necessarily but there are many that at the very least show that the text of the Bible does in fact have errors in it.

4. Why is it necessary for us to act as if we are so sure about the things of God?

Given the amount of different positions that there are out there, to be committed to one particular position seems to be awfully arrogant. I know people take offense at being called arrogant, but I can’t think of any other way to honestly put it. It just seems like a cop out to say that you are totally sure that what you believe is true unless you are not really interested in what is true, but only in what your own opinions are. If a person is interested in the truth, then you would think that they would be open to correction. Most religious people that I know are not open to the possibility that they are wrong or that their belief system is wrong.

5. Is doubt and questioning truth claims a good thing or a bad thing?

It seems that when a Christian talks to anyone who believes something other then Christianity, their encouragement is to doubt their beliefs in this non-christian system and to consider Christianity and consider the critiques that may have been written by their favorite Christian apologist. Why is it that this is the suggestion that is given in EVERY instance except when a person is doubting Christianity? When someone is doubting whether or not “God hath said…” in the Bible, the majority of Christians seem to discourage doubt and questioning. Not all do this, but an awful lot of them do. Why are people bothered by a “doubter” reading books from those who are critical of the Bible and often only want a person to read those books that are “favorable” to their established position? i have a post in my Blog on this here

6. Is the Bible a clear source for morality?

The statement is often made that there is no possibility for objective morality apart from the Christian world view (or at least apart from a theistic God). But is Christianity and the morality derived from the Bible, really that clear of a moral guide? Do not murder (except if God tells you to), Protect innocent life (except if God says to dash little children against the rocks), Do not lie (except when your own skin or that of someone close to you is in danger), respect human life (except if it is your daughter that you want to sell as a slave), be like Jesus (except when he gets angry or calls people names which are damnable), etc. It just seems that a person is just as much left up to their own “moral sense” about many important issues whether they look to the Bible or not for their morality.

7. Do we seriously think that the Bible foretells the future?

I don’t mean that this is necessarily impossible since all things are apparently possible with God. I mean, there seems to be a large amount of “prophecy” that is in the Bible which seems suspiciously vague or even not a prophecy at all. If a so called Bible prophecy is shown to either not come true or if it can be shown that a Biblical writer is mistaken when he says that a previous text is talking about an event that is current to them, would that make the Bible unreliable? I will go through the specific texts in the blog soon but until then, just think about it. Ask yourself if this were the case, how would that effect your faith?

8. Is God to be Tested?

It is usually said that God cannot be tested or that we are not in a place to test God. Yet the Bible seems to have several places where God is indeed tested to show that he is real, true, alive etc. Elijah prays to God to show up the prophets of Baal, Gideon prays that God would do a supernatural thing in keeping a fleece dry that he puts outside while the whole ground is left wet, Moses duals against the magicians of Egypt with magical powers of God to show that God is true. Why is it that this is not happening today? Why is it taboo to ask such a thing of God now which would seem to be especially helpful to those of us who are naturally skeptics of some sort? If God said that he does not do that any longer then fine, but did He? And if the Bible did say that (which I don’t think that it does) wouldn’t that be a little suspect? I talk about this in the blog in a little more depth here.

9. Was Jesus Really Sinless?

The Bible states pretty clearly in the New Testament that Jesus was without sin. This is also a necessary component in the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement of Christ. If Christ took our place on the cross as the lamb of God, then it was necessary that he be sinless in order for his sinlessness to be imputed to believing Christians. At least this is how conservative Christian theology works it out. The problem is that it seems that according to the history that we have in the New Testament, it appears that Jesus sinned according to his own definition.

Matthew 5
21″You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”

Jesus in other places is shown to be angry with people and to hurl insults at them and call them names such as, fools, brood of vipers, hypocrites, white washed tombs, etc. Jesus angrily overturned the tables of those buying and selling in the temple and drove them out with whips while yelling at them. I heard a sermon today which reminded my of this question that I have had in the past. The explanation was that Jesus’ anger was correct and righteous and was therefore justified. This does not seem to be a sufficient way to get him out of this difficulty. It seems that the only way is to discount what Jesus himself is reported to have said in Matthew 5 as that appears quite clear.from the context that what Jesus is saying is wrong is being reduced to the very inception of wrong doing in the heart. There are no exceptions given in that passage and he is saying that it is not an act of murder that condemns a man but even the words that he speaks or the thoughts that he has in his heart. So the only way around this is to engage in special pleading and to say that the laws that apply to all of humanity do not apply to Jesus because we have a previous theological commitment that says that he must be perfect.

10. How can faith be epistemologically valid if it provides no method for distinction between true and false propositions?

By “epistemologically valid” I mean is faith a reliable means of “knowing” things. That is, since there is no way to determine between true and false faith either by the believer himself or in assessing someone else’s faith, is faith even a valid way to determine truth at all and in any circumstance? Faith is an “internal” verification of a certain proposition that a person “believes” to be true. There are many propositions available to choose from and so the question is, is “faith” a reliable way to determine which proposition is true? When asked this question most Christians will say that their faith is known to be true or not if it agrees with what the Bible says. But the obvious problem is that they only way that they say they “know” what the Bible says is by faith. So how is a person to really be sure that their faith is a true faith or not?

11.  If design in nature is supposed to be a proof for an intelligent designer, is poor design in nature a proof that the designer is either not very intelligent or that there is no designer at all?

There seems to be many design flaws both in the human body and in nature as a whole.  flaws that seem to cause problems and only as we have created “work arounds” are we able to overcome these flaws.  one example might be the fact that humans and many animals receive air into their lungs and food into their stomach through the same opening thus creating the often occurring problem of choking or getting food stuck in the wrong “pipe”.  There are many others that can be listed but the point is that would poor design be a proof against a designer or at least that the engineering done by the supposed designer was short sighted?

12.  Some of the first people to see Jesus after his resurrection did not recognize him (according to teh gospel accounts).   Doesn’t this present a big problem for the historicity of the resurrection if it was only later that people “discovered” it was actually Jesus whom they witnessed?

13.  Can the gospels be trusted if we don’t know who wrote them?

The gospel accounts in the Bible do not actually contain the names of who we consider to be the authors in the text.  At least not in early copies of the texts that we have.   The names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John only appear much later in history.  Over a hundred years later in some cases.  It may be that these men were the authors of these gospels but we honestly do not really know.  If we do not know who wrote the gospels then how reliable are they really?  Would an anonymous witness stand up in court in our day if we knew nothing about who they were or could not cross examine them?  Since it was very common in those days to write under a pseudonym, it seems that it is at least possible that the writers of the gospels did this and that they would not thought of it as a bad thing necessarily.

14. Is CS. Lewis’s famous argument for Christianity a false “Tri-lemma”?

The Christian writer C.S Lewis framed an argument in his book Mere Christianity that Jesus can only be one of three possible things: a Liar, a Lunatic or Lord of Heaven and earth.  This is called the trilemma or the liar, lunatic or Lord argument.  But does this even take into account all of the possibilities of who Jesus was? Here are a few more things to consider:

- Legend. The writings that we have about Jesus could be and even appear to be legendary.  Not that the NT writers made him up, but that his identity was embellished over the 20 to 60 years that transpired before the gospel accounts were actually written down.  Lewis’ argument starts off assuming that we first of all have a text that is totally reliable and has no errors of fact in it.  This is a very big assumption.

-  Mistaken. Even assuming that the writings in the 4 gospels are reliable (big assumption), Jesus could very well have been mistaken about who he said he was.  there have been many people in history who have thought they were either God or at least a prophet and were actually not.

- Misunderstood.   Since Jesus didn’t write anything all for us telling us who he thought he was, we have to believe those who wrote about him and attributed sayings to him.  It is very probable that those who wrote down the saying of Jesus got them second or third hand or even worse.  That means the likelyhood that they could have been mistaken about what Jesus said is highly likely.

I recently read a pretty good article talking about some of these problems with Lewis’ famous argument at this link