Discussion Grounds

Tom,

You wrote that Christianity really came alive for you when you realized that

…it wasn’t a matter of trying to be a Christian, but having a living relationship with the true God through Jesus Christ.

…The sky was bluer and the grass was greener the next day. Temptations and personal weaknesses that had bothered me for years just disappeared. Now, that was freedom!

I had a similar experience. For years I tried and tried to “be a good Christian,” but I knew I wasn’t measuring up. Then I read The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard, which offered a rather simple “curriculum for Christlikeness”: fall head over heals in love with God. Then you’ll obey him because you genuinely want to, and it will be easy.

Falling in love with God that way, wrote Willard, is a matter of spiritual discipline. The discipline that worked best for me was to remind myself every 30 seconds throughout each day of all the wonderful gifts God had given me – green trees, blue lakes, creature comforts, intelligence, a strong family, and so on. Once I started doing that, my Christian life became much easier. And yes, “the sky was bluer and the grass was greener the next day.” So I think I can identify with your experience!

So far we have found a lot of common ground but in your last letter I can see we’ve reached some points on which we disagree:

1. You think Christian belief is properly basic; I do not.
2. I think there is a possible world which contains nothing supernatural; you do not.

And it seems that your belief about the second springs from the first. So that is our point of divergence.

It is a very early point of divergence. In fact, we could hardly have disagreed any earlier in our exploration. If Christian belief is properly basic to you – such that you believe it is warranted without a shred of evidence – then it will be hard to shake you from such a position, and ultimately futile to argue over the evidence itself!

In my fantasies, here is how our dialogue continues: By argument, I persuade you to abandon the idea that Christian belief is properly basic. Then you say you are a Christian because Christianity best explains certain facts about the universe: human reason, consciousness, morality, religious experience, and so on. I then demonstrate to you why “God did it” has such poor explanatory merit. I also offer superior explanations for all the phenomena you cite. You then realize that you have no good reasons to believe in Christianity or even theism, and you become a religious skeptic.

Of course, there’s always a chance you will be able to change my mind – and if Christianity is true, I hope you succeed!

In your last letter, you asked me:

Which of these more accurately states your position?

• There is no reason to believe God exists, or
• There is reason to believe no God exists

My answer is “both.”

I do not think there are any good reasons to believe a god exists. I also think there are dozens or hundreds of reasons to think the Christian God does not exist, depending on how specifically you define that God. And I think there are several reasons to think that no theistic God exists. And since there are some good reasons to think naturalism is true, there are some positive reasons to think that no gods of any kind exist.

At this point, our next step seems to be to argue over our earliest point of divergence: whether or not Christian belief can be properly basic. But I have been leading this discussion too much; feel free to take your share of the reins as well.

Cheers,

Luke