You’ve probably noticed along the way that there is a wee bit of disagreement when it comes to religious issues. Christians disagree with nonchristians on a host of fundamental issues, and (I know this will come as a shock) but Christians disagree with other Christians too. In fact, we disagree with great variety, creativity, and regularity!

What are we to make of this disagreement?

This can be seen as a challenge to religious belief. The rough idea is that religious belief is unjustified given the wide, varied, and regular disagreement amongst people who are all equally competent in forming their views.

Let’s unpack this. The first point is, no matter how smart and educated I am, there seem to be adherents of other faiths who are equally smart and educated. These are, what are called, my epistemic peers. According to Thomas Kelly, epistemic peers, as it relates to some specific question, are “equals with respect to their familiarity with the evidence and arguments which bear on that question.”^[1] It is also often added that peers are, on the whole, equals in terms of intellectual ability. So the epistemic peer in view here is one who has considered all the same evidence as us, is equally intelligent, and yet rejects the truth of Christianity.

The objection is that, given the radical disagreement among epistemic peers, the evidence for Christianity cannot be  compelling. If epistemic peers are looking at the same evidence and coming to radically different views, then the evidence must not be definitive. The Christian has a broad set of defeaters then for her claims. What are the defeaters? The defeaters are all the epistemic peers across all the different religious views. That’s a lot of defeaters!

In response, it is important to point out that the diversity of opinion is not simply a phenomenon of religious inquiry. There is incredible diversity among epistemic peers in disciplines, such as philosophy, science, economics, morality and politics. Most people don’t seem to mind holding a minority position in these areas. That is, it is common for there to be epistemic peers looking at the same evidence and deciding to affirm a different position and we don’t lose sleep about this. Why should it be different for religious topics?

Moreover, one will be hard pressed to find beliefs for which there is no dissent whatsoever from someone who looks to be an epistemic peer. For example, suppose that Smith believes that white supremacy is false and a morally abhorrent view. Let’s say that Smith has arrived at this view as a matter of careful reflection and it is a matter of strong conviction. However, suppose one points out that there are white supremacists out there, some of whom are presumably epistemic peers. Should this diminish Smith’s conviction that white supremacy is false? Hardly! He might (as I am) be at a loss to understand why someone would find white supremacy plausible. But it would seem to be intellectually irresponsible of him to lesson his conviction on the mere fact that there are white supremacists.

What seems unclear is whether there are clear epistemic peers, those who are truly looking at the same evidence in the same way as I am. There are many who I encounter who have clearly not worked very hard to fully appreciate the Christian arguments. There are definitely some who have carefully and thoughtfully considered some of the evidence, but even these are few and far between. The writings of the so-called New Atheists are a good example of this. In fact, atheist philosopher Michael Ruse makes this very point:

I have written that The God Delusion made me ashamed to be an atheist and I meant it. Trying to understand how God could need no cause, Christians claim that God exists necessarily. I have taken the effort to try to understand what that means. Dawkins and company are ignorant of such claims and positively contemptuous of those who even try to understand them, let alone believe them. Thus, like a first-year undergraduate, he can happily go around asking loudly, “What caused God?” as though he had made some momentous philosophical discovery…There are a lot of very bright and well informed Christian theologians. We atheists should demand no less.^[2]

The point here is not to return the favor and merely ridicule Dawkins and company. It is to say that there are few who take the time and care to understand the opposing view. If that’s right, then my rationally justified belief shouldn’t suffer at all from existence of someone who disagrees in an uninformed way.

But what about those who thoughtfully reject Christianity? Michael Ruse says that he has given effort to understand what Christians are claiming and why they are claiming it. And so he doesn’t simply dismiss in the way of Dawkins, but he still definitely disagrees.

Are these who carefully consider Christianity epistemic peers? I think there is reason to say no, not at least in a strict sense of being an epistemic peer. This is of course not to say that unbelievers are epistemically inferior to Christians. Rather the point is that there is so very much that goes into forming our fundamental beliefs that it is at least plausible that no two people share a strictly identical epistemic situation. To see this we should first emphasize our limitations as knowers. There is only so much one can carefully consider in a lifetime. So though Ruse has given effort to understand certain Christian claims (and this is commendable), when I have heard Ruse speak, it seems clear to me that he has hasn’t fully considered all of the nuances of the Christian position. We have a limited bandwidth and no single person can carefully consider all alternative view. This is especially true when we consider the complex but important subtleties of arguments.

There are also many non-epistemic factors that affect our belief formation. We are not mere logic machines. Our upbringing and prior experiences certainly figure in to our belief formation, as does our hopes, fears and desires. The atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel has said:

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.^[3]

Now I don’t think that Nagel is irrational in his atheism just because he wants it to be true. As a world-class philosopher, he still presumably holds to his atheism on the basis of evidence. But the point is I don’t share his desire for atheism to be true. Thus his approach to the world is very different from mine.

These kinds of factors undoubtedly affect how we form our beliefs. I grew up at a Christian addiction recovery center. I grew up seeing the gospel change the life of guys who were so thoroughly broken by their addiction that if the recovery center didn’t “work,” then suicide was the only other legitimate option. I’ve also seen the gospel affect the lives of many, many people (including my own) during the course of my life and ministry. Presumably Nagel lacks this sort of experience. But I can’t shake its effect on me. Given this, could we ever be considered epistemic peers on this issue? It seems not.

Where does this leave us? I’d like to suggest that given the subtlety of the evidence and the way that we bring our desires and background to bear on what we believe, there are no identical epistemic peers. We might be equals in our general ability to discover truth, but this need not mean that we are identical epistemic peers. Rather it seems we all have a limited but nonidentical view of the world. Does this leave us condemned to skepticism? No because skepticism, as a view, has the very same issues! The skeptic has a limited view of the world too.

The point of all of this is to say that we can do no better than doing our level best to believe in accord with our evidence. After careful inquiry and reflection, we should believe those things that are best supported by the evidence that we have. If our best evidence points to atheism, then we should be atheists. If our best evidence points to Christianity, then we should so believe. I myself have a hard time seeing how one can look at this world and not see a wide variety of evidence for God. However, presumably my atheist friends think similarly about their atheism.

This brings up one last point in closing, the radical diversity of the world should, it seems to me, foster an attitude of intellectual humility in the realization that we may be wrong about some of what we believe. If I’m right, we have a very limited view of the world and so our engagement with others should reflect our limitations (i.e., treating others with respect, having genuine curiosity about what they believe, etc.). However, it seems to me to be an over-correction to think we cannot rationally believe something in the face of disagreement.

^[1] Thomas Kelly. “The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement” in Oxford Studies in Epistemology (New York: Oxford, 2005), p. 174.

^[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/02/atheism-dawkins-ruse

^[3] Nagel, Thomas, The Last Word, pp. 130–131, Oxford University Press, 1997.

I’ve argued (here) that doubt has instrumental value  since, when handled properly, it leads to truth, knowledge, and (since I think Christianity is true) to a greater faith. Though it seems a bit ironic, confident faith is, in my view, the result of asking deep and difficult questions.

One worry here is that this all sounds a bit risky. Is it wise to tell people, people young in the Christian faith, that they should doubt their faith? Admittedly this sounds a little crazy. And you should know that the last thing in the world that I want is to find out that someone walked away from the faith given my suggestion to doubt. It feels a whole lot nicer and safer to just have them remain as they are.

But here’s the problem, kids are walking away from the faith in droves! The statistics are not good. The most conservative numbers say that 3 out of 5 (60% of) Christian kids walk away (Barna). Other studies have it up to 75-80%. One study of Southern Baptists puts it as high as 88% of kids walking away by the age of 18 (SBC Family Life Council). I have four children. And I can do math. So this stat keeps me up at night.

It may be a bit risky to encourage some doubts. But let’s just be honest, what’s riskier? Having them consider deep and difficult questions that may cause them to struggle a bit or just loading them up with all the “right” answers and never have them seriously consider opposing beliefs? The current statistics suggest that the “let’s hope for the best” strategy is far riskier.

Now we’d be fools to think that these kids walk away from the faith only for intellectual reasons. There are a lot of things going on in college, and let’s just say it’s not all studying. You put a few thousand 18-22 year olds on a campus with little moral supervision and we can all guess what’s going to happen. For some students, it is a never ending party with a few papers and exams sprinkled in from time to time. Students, of course, find this tempting and choose the party over their faith. That happens and I’m not sure more apologetics will address what’s going on here.

But there are some (and many who this is true, at least, in part) are confronted with ideas contrary to their Christian faith and, lacking any satisfying answer, walk away for intellectual reasons.

These students often feel betrayed. They grew up in church learning about Christianity week in and week out. They were given the impression by pastors and parents that there were no legitimate challenges to the belief in God, the biblical claims about Jesus, the reliability and accuracy of Scripture, etc. They thought it is only the fool who denies the existence of God, or that there’s not a shred of evidence for Darwinian evolution, and that Scripture can withstand any and all tests. And then they find themselves amongst some of the smartest individuals they’ll ever meet in their lifetimes who defend each of these ideas in compelling and thoughtful ways.

I’ve got to be honest here, I think that our kids have been betrayed if they were told only idiots believe these things. Since many adults haven’t wrestled with the deep and difficult questions, it seems they try to get their kids into the same cognitive place of making the Christian assumptions. But it’s not working. It is a different world with our kids. It is not enough to assume its truth and hope for the best. Our kids are pummeled with hostility towards a conservative Christian faith. I believe that apologetics will cease to be just some hobby discipline for only the heady few. It will be the way of intellectual survival for the next generation!

But there’s an alternative.

We can help our kids, and those to whom we minister, feel the weight of the objections to Christianity. Will it cause them to doubt? It probably will, at least, a bit. But would you rather them have doubts while in your care or when they’re surrounded by thousands of hedonists pressuring them to all things unchristian? Here’s the beautiful thing, when they are in your care, you can walk with them through their doubts.

To be clear, I’m not recommending that one should be a mere skeptic, asking “But why?” for every claim that is made no matter what it is. It is of course great to ask why, but it is not great when the person is doing this only to be stubborn and deflect from really engaging in the reasoning.

I believe that apologetics will cease to be just some hobby discipline for only the heady few. It will be the way of intellectual survival for the next generation!

What I am recommending is that, together with our kids, we seek…I mean really and genuinely seek after…the truth by asking the deep and difficult questions. We take it slow and we do it together, but we begin to allow our kids to feel the force of the hard objections to Christianity. They are going to feel it at some point and so let’s have them feel it with you in the room. We also allow our kids to ask any question and push on any claim they don’t understand or find satisfying. We are seeking the truth and so we are not afraid of any question whatsoever. We show them the best answers we can for those questions. When (not if but when) a question comes and we don’t know the answer, we look into it together. We show our kids how to resolve, as best we can, these tensions. I want my kids to experience that. I want them to feel the force of an objection but then I want them to feel what it’s like to resolve that tension with robust answers. This is the way of confident faith.

Now it may seem like I’m just assuming that everyone will find every answer to every issue and everything is going to be super great. To the contrary, I think that this is hard and messy work. This is where there is indeed a risk. But I just have to speak from my own experience. I have found that Christianity’s resources to be deep wellsprings. I have devoted most of the last 20 years to this exact pursuit and I’m continually blown away by Christianity’s ability to provide an answer to the deepest and most difficult problems. This is not to say that everything is a slam dunk. There are a variety of issues where I find myself, in a way, minimally satisfied by the Christian answer even though some tension may remain. But there are apologetic slam dunks and when I consider the cumulative force of the case for Christianity, I find myself deeply satisfied intellectually (despite having a few questions that lack, so far, a deeply satisfying answer) and I know many others who would say the same thing.

Christians stand in a long and rich tradition of considering the hardest objections and offering thoughtful responses. In fact, there are many objections to Christianity historically that were best articulated by Christians! The shame of it all is that many Christians today think that this is somehow contrary to faith. But asking these questions was done historically as an effort for the purpose of a greater faith. The thought is that if Christianity can address our hardest questions, we come out with a deeper and more abiding faith. It can be a difficult process and almost certainly will include some doubts along the way. But we come away with truth and a deep faith. And that’s a great value indeed!

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Let’s just get this out of the way. Yes, as a Christian, I’m biased. I put more effort into following the teachings of Jesus and conforming my life to the way he lived than anything else I do. So, of course, I think Jesus is peerless and Christianity has had an unrivaled and positive effect on the world.

But I’m of the view that biases are not all bad. It certainly doesn’t make sense to say that, given a bias towards a belief, one cannot defend that belief in a rational way. We’d only be able to defend the views that we don’t believe and this makes no sense at all. I also want, for example, my doctor to be really biased towards his medical research. I don’t want him to come in to the exam room with a completely open mind! Every once and a while a doctor can be limited by his or her bias, and that’s of course the worry with a bias. But, on the whole, to have a bias is not necessarily bad. Likewise, I have a bias towards Jesus, it doesn’t follow that I don’t take him to be peerless and the movement he started to be good in a rational way.

So here are a few of the ways I think this is true.

First, I think that Jesus is peerless in the way in which he affected the course of human history. In one sense, this point is easily established given the fact that Christianity is the largest religion on the planet and has been for some time. In terms of sheer numbers, this seems to already establish the greatness of Jesus’s impact. This is especially extraordinary given that the large majority of Christian traditions require conversion. That is, unlike Islam and other hereditary religions, one is not born into the Christian faith, but must choose, even if born to Christian parents, to convert to Christianity. I and many of my friends and colleagues pray regularly that each of our children will come to Christ. I also know many Christians whose children have never made this decision, or made this decision when they were young, but later decided otherwise. And though this is deeply disappointing and remains a matter of prayer, they are not ostracized from the family. They are loved and accepted in virtue of who they are not for their religious commitment. This isn’t to say there are not social pressures in Christian families for children to sign on, but, on the whole and unlike many other religions, Christians recognize the need for each individual to make their own decision and they may walk away if they so choose.

But this only establishes the great impact of Christianity. It doesn’t establish that Christianity is good. I’d like to suggest that when we consider the impact of the Roman Empire in its Christian phase and what gives way to Christian Europe, and Christianity in the new world, the impact is inestimably good.

Now let’s get this out of the way as well. There’s no doubt there was a lot of corruption and injustice along the way. There has been and is A LOT of darkness and immorality that has been and is done in the name of Christ. I think we, as Christians, need to own this fact. However, if I had the space, I would argue that these injustices never map on to the life of Jesus. That is, when Christians or the church have done terrible things, they were (and are) acting profoundly unchristian. When I myself don’t live up to acceptable moral standards, I also am not exemplifying the life of Christ. But that will have to be a topic for a later post.

Even though there are these stains, I wish to argue that the impact of the movement started by and grounded in the teachings of Jesus and the other biblical writers has been overwhelming positive. In fact, most of what people would laud as the virtues of our society came to be only because of the Christian worldview. I’m not saying there is no way in which these virtues of our society could have came about. But, in a wide variety of cases, these goods came from Christianity. Moreover it seems especially clear that these are easily grounded in the Christian worldview as a natural fit. This of course why many of these things came about as Christian movements.

I realize the bigness of these claims, but that’s my pitch.

Here is a sampling.

Literacy

The Christian church has made tremendous efforts towards worldwide literacy. Wherever the church has gone (especially in protestant missionary efforts), so goes literacy. It is hard to quantify the global value of literacy. Christians have of course been motivated for people to understand Scripture, but have very often seen literacy as a value per se. Indeed, there are a variety of times and places in which the Christian pastor has functioned as the primary school teacher educating the youth in all aspects of education for some town or village.

Medicine

Prior to the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire, the diseased and sick were largely despised and sent away. The early church saw itself as living out the gospel by caring for, at great risks to themselves, these outcasts. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, these efforts at caring for the sick are given expression in a much wider way. The later advent of modern medicine and medical education comes out of Christian Europe and continues to this day. It is so very common that hospitals and medical clinics all over the world—including places ravaged by poverty where they can’t afford to pay anything—were started by Christians who, again, saw themselves as living out the gospel by caring for the sick.

Science

To be clear, it was the early Greeks (before Christianity comes on the scene) who began to wonder about the skies and attempt incredible feats. Aristotle systematizes many of the sciences. So it is not like Christians invent science and of course one need not be a Christian to do good science. However, there are worldviews that do not easily make sense of the scientific enterprise. Whenever a worldview comes to think of the cosmos as unintelligible, then science grinds to a halt. This happened a few times with the Greeks (e.g., the Sophists who earned the ire of Socrates and Plato) and it took Plato and Aristotle to reset the world as broadly intelligible in the Greek mind. Given the Christian view of the world as God’s intelligently designed work of art and humans as caretakers of the world, it is no wonder that the scientific revolution comes out of Christian Europe. The idea motivating many scientists was a desire for knowing the creator by discovering facts about his world.

Universal Human Rights

It is very common today to believe that all humans have rights—indeed even unalienable rights. It doesn’t matter their station in life or what they look like. Each and every human deserves life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness/property ownership. But why think this is true? Though this seems obvious to us, it is kind of a radical thought when you think about it. Why should all humans deserve life on, say, naturalism? The mosquito doesn’t have this right. Not even the higher animals have this right for most of us. But this is today taken as absolutely fundamental to a society. And if we trace this belief back to its roots, we will find the biblical teaching that all humans are created in the image of God and therefore have a kind of dignity and sanctity. What other worldview (other than a Judeo-Christian view) has held to this idea without being inspired by the Judeo-Christian view?

Again, Christians have at times lived in a radically inconsistent way with this idea. Christians in America owned slaves and even used the Bible to argue for this position. In fact, my own denominational tradition (Southern Baptist) was on the wrong side of that issue at the time. Again, it can be shown that these Christians were acting profoundly unchristian (and had terrible exegesis in their use of Scripture on this point) in treating other humans as no more significant than farm equipment. But what is often missed in this discussion is that the drive for the abolition of slavery was also one grounded in Christian values and led mostly by Christians. In other words, it is not the case that the Christian position in the era was pro-American slavery. It was a battle of Christian values and the infinitely more Christian position of treating everyone equally (thankfully) won the day no matter their skin color, position in life, and country of origin.

Culture

Christians have also made colossal contributions in art, literature, philosophy, music, etc. There is no way to be a specialist in any of these areas and not run into a robust Christian contribution. This contribution has waned significantly in the last century or so. But a life of expressing aesthetically can be driven in large part by a God of aesthetic beauty. This is a very natural fit. A life of creating beauty and artful expression is at home in Christianity and this can be seen as demonstrable in history of the arts.

Now this isn’t meant as bragging and I’m really trying to not overstate here. My point is simply that these massively important aspects of our world come naturally (both historically and conceptually) out of a Christian worldview.

It is the life and teaching of a Jewish rabbi from Nazareth who started a worldwide movement that has impacted the world in immeasurable ways.

Many Christians think that doubting is a bad thing. Is this right? Does finding ourselves in a place of doubt have value? Now no one thinks that doubting is altogether enjoyable and no one thinks one’s goal in life should be to be a big doubter! But as the name of the blog should suggest I think there is benefit when it comes to doubt and I think that having faith and having doubts are perfectly consistent states. And I have been known to encourage folks to embrace and investigate their doubts. So why do many Christians think doubting is a bad thing? One reason is there are a few passages of Scripture that seem to take, let’s call it, a low view of doubt and the suggestion is that doubting is contrary to faith.

The go to passage on this is in the first chapter of James. James tells us that if we lack wisdom, we should ask God. He goes on:

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways (James 1:6-8).

The first point to make is James has a particular context here. He is not talking about all situations of doubt. It doesn’t seem like he has in mind the perhaps more typical experience of doubt where the doubts just creep in beyond our control. People don’t typically set out to doubt their worldviews, but simply find themselves with questions they can’t fully answer.

But notice for James to say that we shouldn’t doubt, suggests that the doubt in view is under our control. As a general matter of principle, if it makes sense to say “don’t x,” then x is something we can do or can refrain from doing. It makes no sense to go to my one of my kids and say “don’t be human” or “stop thinking…about anything.” These are things that are beyond their control and I’ll likely only get strange looks from them. By contrast, it makes a lot of sense to say “stop taking your brother’s toy without asking” or “don’t light the house on fire” since it is entirely possible for them to refrain from doing this.

If James has in view a person who shouldn’t doubt, then it seems that James has in view a Christian who is already completely confident in his or her faith. That is, it is in the ideal, a Christian person should not doubt God’s willingness to provide wisdom. His point is it is very inconsistent for a person who has every reason in the world to trust God to provide wisdom to simultaneously doubt that God will provide it when needed. This is being double-minded and those who are fully mature should, well, knock it off.

What James is not addressing is how one comes to a place of full confidence. It is here, I’d like to suggest, that doubting is (or at least can be) a good thing. Again, it is not good in the sense that we want to remain at a place of doubt (see James 1:6-8). But it is beneficial for a greater good—growing in our confidence. The good of doubting, I’d like to suggest, is instrumental. That is, doubt when handled properly leads to truth and knowledge (and, since I think Christianity is true, it can and should lead to a more confident Christian faith!).

Tim Keller has said that doubts function for faith in a way similar to antibodies in the human body. When we ignore our doubts or just simply try to stop doubting, this doesn’t typically go well for us. Faith without some doubts is not a healthy faith. The doubts may go away for a time but they tend to come back, and they often come with friends! By investigating our doubts, we press in more deeply to our faith. We are forced to ask deep and difficult questions we have been too afraid to ask. This can of course be a bit scary and intimidating. But if the Christian faith is true and reasonable (as I think it is), then we will find answers to these questions. This isn’t to say that we will resolve all issues and we often have to live with some tensions. There are quite a few deep and difficult questions for which I have overall satisfying answers but not knock down drag out answers. There are many things that I still think about and consider whether there are perhaps better answers. This can also take a significant amount of time. This is hard work, but it is very satisfying work since we are coming to a place of truth and knowledge about the deepest and most important issues.

And here is the beautiful thing. It is because of the doubt that we come to a place of confidence and greater faith in these truths upon which we settle. Once one can see one’s way clear of some doubt, one comes to a place of confidence. We not only find truth and confidence for ourselves, but we are now equipped to help others walk through similar quandaries or thoughtfully answer the objection from a hostile inquisitor. We do this with confidence.

And here comes the teaching in James. If you need wisdom confident Christian, ask God without being double-minded since it would be silly to doubt God when we are rationally confident that God has the ability and promises to provide wisdom and guidance when we ask.