To Continue a conversation..

 Most of Atheist Vs Theist arguments on twitter I think are rather boring, people shouting slogans back and forth at each other. I tend to only wade in when I see a Theist who is being particularly hateful and odious, or one who's argument is particularly hilarious and absurd.  Truth be told, I'm on twitter mostly for the lulz. For example, when asked for proof to substantiate his claims on the existence of god,  @iDoIt_4DaGLORY told the Atheist that questioned him, that she should, and I quote, "Put your hand in front of your face..now blow...God put breath into your body!! #HeExist Glory To God  ". The ole "blow on your hand" defense was a new one for me, one I found that to be particularly hilarious, and I couldn't help but clown on the guy.  It's impossible for me to take someone like that seriously, or get upset by anything he said.

However, Yesterday I was on twitter, I saw a much more interesting dialog take place between some Christians and Atheists. I saw one of the theists (@jaybakker) post this picture

And I thought it was fascinating. As someone who was raised in Evangelical Christianity, I find the arguments and the rhetoric of their theology Christianity to be rather interesting, particularly in more "progressive" sects. The ways Cognitive Dissonance manifests itself in their arguments, I am endlessly fascinated with. That particular quote though, I didn't really understand, and was completely new for me. I had never seen doubt try to be reconciled into faith before. I wanted to hear the argument for it, so I asked Pastor Bakker on twitter what that meant.

We had a pleasant and polite exchange. I thought he was using the words belief and particularly faith in interesting, non traditional ways, and I wanted him to define faith as it meant to him. If I'm getting it right, he is saying that Faith is essentially Hope in that which cannot be proven. That, contrary to what many Evangelicals believe (ie that you can have no doubt in God), Pastor Bakker argues that doubt is natural, in having hope in which cannot be proven. That God knows that, and that you can still have faith, even with doubt, is a manifestation of the miracle of God's love. Or something, that's how I understood it, Pastor Bakker, if I'm getting it wrong, he can feel free to correct me.

Apparently our dialog was going along so nicely and politely that he assumed that I was an Evangelical Christian, instead of an Atheist. He's probably not used to Atheists asking him polite questions, which I think is a shame frankly. There's no reason Atheists can't treat polite, thoughtful Theists with civility. It must have come as quite a shock to him to see the back ground of my twitter page being a near naked picture of the lovely @morellaaddams, and reading my timeline would be further scandal, as I talk more about sex work, gender politics and crass joking around nonsense than I do about religion. But he hasn't unfollowed me yet, so he must have a strong stomach for kinky heathens.

Our conversation got cut off at a crucial point though, when I asked him what I think is the core problem with theism for me: "okay, I can go with 'Faith is hope for that we have not seen'. but then I'd ask, how does one know which thing to hope for? / if it hasn't been seen, why do we hope for one thing, and not the other, if we have no evidence, and aren't making our decision / to have faith, based on evidence? " Pastor Bakker's response was that was a big question for twitter, which is totally fair. It is, 140 characters is a difficult format for answering that. So I'm making this blog post, and if the Pastor would like to take a shot at it in my comments section, I would welcome it.

Before he does though, I'd like to expand on what I mean by that question. For me, I have seen no evidence, at all, that there is a creator. The only argument I can even come close to being okay with is " the universe's existence itself is. The complexity, the magnificence of it, how could there not be a design". I don't really agree, I think the universe's existence is only evidence of the existence itself, and saying there's a creator is a large logical leap. I think it's a product of humans anthropomorphizing the universe, as we tend to anthropomorphize almost anything, from our cars to our cats to our iphones. However, for the sake of argument, lets say that I agree, that yes, there has to be a creator. That there is some Force, some energy, some intelligence, some being, that is planning and mapping out the course of creation. The bigger problem for Christianity is: why should I believe theirs specific explanation of that Creative Force over any other religion, philosophy, myth or fiction? Because to me, all explanations of god seem equally implausible.

Here is what I mean by implausible. I will try to explain how I view Judeo-Christianity, from a dispassionate nutshell. What I am being required to believe by Christians is the following ( the details of it may differ from sect to sect, but the overall jist is the same): God created the universe. To populate earth, he made man in his image. But he also created man imperfect, created him so he would sin, so he would automatically displease god. As punishment for this sin, god's creation in his image would suffer in hell, for all of eternity. The only way to cleanse that sin, and not suffer eternally, was a powerful magical spell. What Sinners would do, is take an animal, ritually kill it, and then ritually burn it. By that magical sacrifice, man's sins were forgiven, and God was pleased. All other humans were sinners, and were going to hell, but his chosen few could enter heaven with him.

But, for some unknown reason, the unchanging, unchangeable God changed his mind. He decided to let all humans have a chance to avoid eternal misery, not just his chosen few. However, a much more powerful spell was required. Killing animals would not do. So, in order to let humanity know, that there was a new magic in the world, God had a son. But that son was also God, because there is only One God in Christianity, it is monotheistic. So this Son of God, which was also God himself, came into the world, and preached a new deal was here. In order to seal this deal, this God that is Man was killed in a Human/Deity Sacrifice, and then 3 days later rose from the dead. Through this act, Animal Sacrifice was no longer needed, all you needed to do, in order to avoid hell, was believe that God had become man, and had given this sacrifice. Christians commemorate this sacrifice by ritual symbolic cannibalism, in which they symbolically eat and drink the blood and body of the sacrificed god ( and some sects believe that the symbolic wafers and wine transform in your mouth into the literal flesh and blood of the sacrificed God, and the holy cannibalism is not symbolic, but quite literal).

That it how Christianity looks to me when I view it with any kind of objectivity. It it seems like any other mythical world view, with no demonstrable evidence that any of their claims are real or true. So my question is, why Christianity, and not Islam, or Zoroastrianism, Baha’i, Jainism or anything else? Why is it the above that you believe, and not something else? If you don't base your faith on evidence, but hope alone, how do you know what you are hoping for is real, and is right?

I will say, I think that the incorporation of doubt into faith is an extremely clever adaptation. Most Sects of Christianity maintain that you can have no doubt what so ever. That doubtlessness was easy to maintain in medieval times, when most people were illiterate and were surrounded 100% by fellow believers. However, as humanity becomes increasingly more educated and exposed to alternative view points, that kind of doubtless facade becomes harder and harder to keep intact. Either you have to resort to near cult like brain washing, turn up the heat on “hell fear” to scare people into staying in line, or rely on the power of denial ( which is powerful). Reconciling Doubt with faith is completely ingenious and not something I've see before. By acknowledging the doubt, rather than calling on believers to suppress it, doubt becomes easier to control. I'm not sure how much basis there is for it in the Bible, however. The Bible seems to incentivize utter and total faith, and punishes those with doubts and skepticism. I'd be curious what the biblical basis for the Faith with Doubts doctrine. I think having doubts about the supernatural is a completely rational thing, and I agree that most Christians will inevitably have them. I do disagree, fundamentally, with the conclusion you make. Doubt isn't an aspect of faith, it is the very essence of reason. Skepticism is at the heart of the Scientific Method, of having a rational view of the world. You should have doubts about God. You would do well, rather than trying to incorporate those doubts into your theology, to instead explore those doubts to their logical conclusions.