I recently had someone mention an essay, written by Peter van Inwagen, which purports to be an interesting, perhaps even persuasive look at reasons to be a Christian. So, why not, says I? Let’s go take a look at it and see if it stands up to critical scrutiny.
Spoiler alert for the curious: it doesn’t.
Peter van Inwagen is an analytic philosopher, born in 1942, and, at least I think, current John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He wrote an autobiography of sorts called “Quam Dilecta” which was included in a collection of essays by religious philosophers called “God and the Philosophers”. I haven’t read the whole thing, at least not as I write this, but so far, color me not at all impressed.
van Inwagen’s supposed defense of Christianity, at least, isn’t the standard fare. He admits, quite openly, that nothing he believes can be defended intellectually and the story behind his beliefs is absolutely not rationally compelling. At least he gets points for honesty. Yet if none of that is true, then what’s the point behind it? It really comes down to “I believe because I want to believe” and not because he has any good reason to do so. I could just bail out right there as nothing within his essay gives me any reason to accept his claims.
It also comes off as a presuppositionalist screed of sorts. In it, he says “if anyone who reads this essay thereupon becomes a Christian, that person was already a Christian — as regards propositional belief — when he began to read it; he just wasn’t aware of that fact.” That’s just nonsense. It’s like the people who claim that absolutely everyone believes in God, they just don’t know it yet. But that’s dumb, isn’t it? Dumb to everyone who isn’t already presupposing that it’s got to be true.
Yet doesn’t that passage suggest one thing? The essay itself is entirely powerless to actually convince anyone because, in the end, it was all God’s doing or some such nonsense and van Inwagen had nothing at all to do with it. That is also something that we hear regularly in apologetic circles. “If you fail to convince the non-religious, it’s not your fault because only God can change anyone’s mind!” That’s a bald rationalization to comfort the inevitably failed apologist whose weak arguments don’t tend to get anywhere fast.
We see quickly that this essay is more of a means to make excuses for the failure of Christianity than to actually defend or support it in any way. van Inwagen seems to understand that as well, as he writes “To set out these arguments, in my judgment, is to present those who attend to them with good reasons for accepting that faith. The arguments will almost certainly not convince anyone, but then such arguments as I might give for the truth or falsity of nominalism or regarding the deterrent powers of capital punishment would almost certainly not convince anyone either.”
Then what is the point? Much of his essay is just stories about his religious life and while these might be, at least somewhat comforting to those who can see themselves in his tales, that doesn’t actually mean anything. There is no argument here to be offered. It’s all just “I’m really happy to be a Catholic!”
Well so what? Because I don’t care that you’re a Catholic, I care that the beliefs that you hold in your head are factually correct. This is something that the religious don’t seem to understand. They’re looking for comfort, they’re not looking for evidence. They’re not looking for rational reasons to believe. It’s all “I’m happy and that’s all I care about!” Yet it shouldn’t be. This is why philosophy, when it comes to religion, simply doesn’t impress. It’s got nothing at all to say that anyone should value.
Just today, I was having a debate with someone over a video I did a week or so back, where I criticized some “atheist celebrity” or something and all of his apparently religious audience came bounding out of the shadows to scream how mean I was. How was I mean? I just was. Where did I go wrong? I just did. He’s an icon! I can’t dare say anything bad about him! It’s funny that for an “atheist icon”, he only seems to have religious-sounding fans.
One of them demanded that he’d used Bayesian analysis to determine that theism had points in its favor. Yeah, how does that work exactly? Because we don’t care about your analysis, we care about your evidence. One of the examples I criticized was the point where he said that, because the religious offer an “explanation” for morality, therefore theism is more likely. That’s nonsense. They don’t offer an explanation, they offer a rationalization. They just baldly assert that their god done it. Can they prove that? No. Can they support it in any objectively demonstrable way? No. Yet because they have an emotionally-comforting story, it’s got to be better than nothing, right?
No. Not right. The only explanation that matters is the one that’s defensibly true. That’s why I questioned just how “atheist” this guy was, especially since he ran around getting on religious podcasts, defending religion. Every single thing that he said fell in favor of religion, they were all common apologetic talking points. It’s like he went and watched a bunch of Frank Turek videos and then made his responses. I wouldn’t actually be surprised if that’s how it happened.
But nobody likes that because, apparently, he throws around a bunch of big sounding words and the delusionally faithful swoon. But here’s the reality. Richard Carrier did a Bayesian analysis on the existence of Jesus and came to the conclusion that there was no real Jesus in history. Are these people going to accept that, just because it’s got the taint of philosophical masturbation all over it? No. Of course not. They don’t care about that. It doesn’t get them to the conclusion that they like. So why is one better than the other? Because one gets them where they desperately want to go and the other does not. It’s that simple.
The fact remains that the only thing that matters when it comes to religion is whether or not the religion is factually correct and, sorry for the religious, but they’ve got nothing but flapping lips and wishful thinking to get them there. You can’t reach any demonstrably correct conclusion about the real world, and like it or not, that’s what religion is. If God supposedly made everything, then there had to be some demonstrable evidence left behind. Where is it? Even if it existed, there would be no way to find it with philosophy. It’s the wrong tool for the job but it’s the only tool that the religious can use to get where they want to be.
Yet the only place I want to be is where the evidence leads me and that simply isn’t any religion under the sun. In fact, the more that I look, the less likely any religion seems to be. Why? Because it’s all made up nonsense, wrapped in wishful thinking and emotional gobbledygook. There is no “there” there. You cannot get from objective reality to anything demonstrably true in religion. Anyone who thinks that we can, please give it a try. It’s funny to watch them fail.