May 23, 2009

• Luke Muehlhauser & "Caricatures of Christianity"

  Intro:

  These are reposted comments of mine from Luke's excellent post over at Common Sense Atheism (link).

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  Luke,

  This is a great post.  All too often Christians react to things that are entirely accurate.  For instance, if you say they talk as though they are married to god and then point out that the Bible literally portrays them as the bride of Christ, how in the world are they going to complain? 

  Like you, I actually appreciate a dead on “caricature.”  If someone can actually broadside me with a description of my position that sounds absolutely ridiculous at face value and in fact describes what I think…that’s valuable to me.  That’s accountability.  That’s like the whole point to get you to take a step back and think…am I nuts?  Am I sure these crazy sounding claims are actually defensible?  Do I really have my feet on the ground here?  Of course, on the other hand you get really horrible, flakey and bigoted caricatures that misrepresent things so badly as to not even be worth responding to.  For example, one may present an argument from evil in a highly dispassionate manner that articulates why it is implausible that a good, all powerful, all knowing deity is responsible for the spiritual health of the humans of earth.  Time and time again, Christian after Christian will summarize, “So basically what you are saying is that God didn’t do things how you want them done,” as though the nature of anything I say hinges on trivialities of human experience.  Or they accuse me of “complaining” as though I actually think God exists to complain to.  Such summaries might actually resonate if I could tell their unspecified theory of divine management from the chaotic anything goes world we apparently live in.  I honestly don’t think a good god is at work here tending our souls towards salvation any more than I think a cosmic basketball coach is secretly preparing everyone for the afterlife NBA.  Am I complaining to the basketball coach I don’t think exists?  Am I mad I didn’t get to play more basketball as a kid?  Is the jury still out on whether or not most of us will be harlem globe trotter material by the end of our days?  I don’t think so. 

  Christians don’t tend to even put themselves into the argument as stated and test their summaries or rebuttals to see if they even work.  They just react…like people who are married to their god and have a very limited tolerance for considering divorce. 

  So yeah, I get really tired of the misrepresentation and the lack of fairness and honesty…the lack of self awareness and such from my Christian opposition in debate land.  I like how you carefully dissected one such iteration of that bullshit.  I know this is a value war and has ultimately little to do with argument and evidence, so actually being kind to Christian bloggers is important, but at some level bullshit is bullshit.  And I have just as much trouble as everyone else trying to justify why exactly their brains so often can’t seem to put one thought in front of the other even in just hypothetical terms. 

  Ben 

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  Haecceitas: Do you really think that the Bible literally portrays Christians as the bride of Christ?

  Yes, I actually believe the Bible says that all true Christians can fly up into the air and assemble themselves like Voltron into a mega-bride in order to combat this guy:  four-headed atheist monster.

  Let's focus on something less trivial next time, eh?  Oops, I guess that’s what all these comments are about.  *shrug*  My bad.  Carry on then.

  Lorkas: More than that, it characterizes those who worship other gods as unfaithful wives and prostitutes.

  Indeed. 

  Ben

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  Luke,

  It seems to me that many sophisticated Christians may spend so much of their intellectual time convincing themselves that overviews like your “caricature” don’t apply that to bring things back around to ground zero will simply always strike them as insult.  To be fair, there are a lot of angry atheists out there that may use the same or similar words and have every evil, hateful intention to merely inflict as much emotional damage as they can (and they have their xtian counterparts, too).  Naturally, as someone else pointed out in the above comments, context is what is relevant.  I do understand that, as a thoughtful atheist, I’m inheriting the sins of many many atheists who came before me and so I try to cut Christians a break when they overreact.  But when they can’t get back on course, it seems my empathy has been wasted and they are simply preset to never listen again (note: I’ve learned to just stopping talking when they get their “evil switch” flipped).  If Christians don’t want to be labeled as credulous fools just because other Christians are who believe the same things, then naturally they need to be open to different varieties of atheists who may say similar things that aren’t meant to be inflammatory. 

  As I think you said in your last lengthy comment, how is it really fair to never use the term “magic” again when talking about Christian beliefs?  It’s not like they are going to get into the mechanics of God’s magic powers, believe that there are even mechanics to God’s magic powers, and they’re not going to stop believing in miracles (the exploits of those magic powers) either.  Even the most intellectual Christians are stuck and permanently stuck with that position until God starts doing something like reliably healing amputees with his magic powers via the prayers of only Christian evangelists.  That’s just how it is.  If using the term “magic” makes it sound stupid, it’s because it so greatly conflicts with our background knowledge and that’s the whole fricken point. 

  I would even defend your “party tricks” bit since believing Jesus did miracles is also an integral part of validating his status as God.  The rhetoric trivializes it correctly I think in contrast to the obvious lack of similar sympathy God has in general for all sorts of people with worse ailments and conditions than Jesus happened to have mercy on in the gospels when it actually looked like he cared.  Christians would like to have some extreme blinders on there (if the sample range is all human history) to pretend like Jesus gets credit for showing up and for three years doing what is *overall* the equivalent of a few party tricks…just as you said.  If they can’t recognize that as a valid observation…oh well.  Obviously there isn’t going to be a realistic conversation if tough important questions are just going to get blown off as “slander.”

  Modern Christianity just has a monopoly of really bad over-developed magical thinking and the inappropriate levels of confidence backing that is what yields the offense.  Even if there is something more to their case, they need to understand that is exactly what it looks like from the outside in this modern world where science (not sorcery) has been extremely successful and they need to step up to that plate rather than be offended. 

  Ben

  • 10:00 am
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