Discussion Grounds

Tom,

You and I have a great deal in common!

You write Thinking Christian, a blog advocating a thoughtful and ethical Christianity. I write Common Sense Atheism, a blog advocating a thoughtful and ethical atheism. We both read some of the philosophical literature concerning theism vs. atheism, but we are not professional philosophers. We both respect science but not so much postmodernism and relativism.

We were both raised Christian, and we have both experienced God in powerful, convincing ways. (At least, we have experienced what we believed to be God.)

We both want to know the truth, and we are both willing to change our minds if we are shown to be wrong.

Most disagreement between Christians and atheists begins over some specific proposition, for example: “God raised Jesus from the dead.” The Christian affirms it, the atheist denies it. Soon they find out their disagreement is more fundamental, for example over historical method or epistemology in general. And later they may discover their disagreement begins at a more fundamental level still. And so they cannot resolve their disagreement over the resurrection of Jesus because their point of divergence actually lies much further back.

Rather than “working back” in this way, I’d like to first find everything we agree on and then work our way forward to find our earliest and most fundamental disagreements. Perhaps then we can not only emphasize what we have in common, but also argue at the true origin of our divergence in beliefs.

But whatever our point of first divergence, we should each be clear about what we believe. I believe:

1. Theism is almost certainly false.
2. Christian theism is definitely false.
3. There are no good reasons to think that any supernatural gods exist.
4. Metaphysical naturalism is probably true.

Being a Christian, I suspect you have a much longer list of propositions to affirm. I don’t need you to list your position on every Christian doctrine, but a brief sketch of your concepts of God and Jesus and their interest in (and interaction with) humanity would be useful.

Next, let’s try to find some common ground. I’ll start conservatively. Can you also affirm the following?

• There is a single, objective truth value for each proposition we might discuss concerning the existence of God and the truth of Christianity. (Truth is not relative.)
• Science is thus far our most reliable and successful means for gaining knowledge about the natural world.
• Humans are plagued by many cognitive biases, which corrupt their pursuit of the truth.
• The laws of logic are true. (That is, we are speaking the same language about the universe. For example, we agree that something can’t both exist and not-exist at the same time in the same way, because that’s part of what we mean by the word “exist.”)
• Some propositions are more probably true than others.
• You and I and the external world exist.
• The supernatural may exist, but it cannot be known to exist a priori.

So there’s a start! In your first letter, I’d like to hear what you believe and whether you agree with the above propositions.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,

Luke