Arguing the Affirmative: RANDAL THE CHRISTIAN
Arguing the Negative: JOHN THE ATHEIST
Randal’s Opening Statement
At the end of his quasi-documentary Religulous, Bill Maher states, “Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking.”[50] With this quip, Maher aligns himself with the tired tradition of opposing faith to reason—a tradition that includes many of the leading atheists today. For example, Richard Dawkins writes: “The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices.”[51] John also endorses this tendentious definition of faith when he writes on the Debunking Christianity website: “Faith doesn’t need scientific evidence. It’s irrational. I want everyone to think ‘irrational’ whenever someone says the word ‘faith’ because that’s what it is.”[52] But the most famous iteration of this faith versus reason view comes from Mark Twain when he defined faith as “believing what you know ain’t true.” In honor of that ignominious definition, I’ll henceforth refer to this faith versus reason view as the Twain definition.
Those who adopt the Twain definition of faith tend to have an equally distorted view of reason. It is a view that demands that we always seek evidence, and where evidence is not available, we doubt. As W. K. Clifford put it in his famous essay “The Ethics of Belief,” “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”[53] Needless to say, when faith is defined as “belief without evidence” and reason is defined as “doubt without evidence,” the chasm between the two cannot be greater.
The problem with Clifford’s claim is that he never provides any evidence for it. He simply believes it and expects his readers to do so as well. Since a claim always demands evidence, Clifford’s failure to meet his own standard makes the claim self-defeating: if we accept it, we ought to reject it! The same problem attends John’s claim that faith doesn’t need scientific evidence. Apparently that claim doesn’t need scientific evidence since John provides none—a fact that leaves the reader suspicious that John has made a faith claim that is, by his own definition, irrational.
Clifford and John both provide good examples of what happens when you naïvely pit faith (= belief) against reason (= doubt). Buying into this dichotomy does not result in the expulsion of faith from your beliefs. Instead it merely leaves faith to sneak in through the back door unseen and unexamined. And as you can imagine, the faith that sneaks in the back door is the kind that would never be permitted through the front entrance. A case in point: Clifford and John’s self-defeating claims that slip into the back because they have no evidence to pay the doorman.
In order to get beyond this impasse, we can consider philosopher Anthony Kenny’s definition of reason: “The rational human being is the person who possesses the virtue that is in contrast with each of the opposing vices of credulity and skepticism.”[54] That is, proper reasoning prevails by believing when it is appropriate to believe and withholding belief when it is appropriate to withhold belief. Sometimes it is wise to believe a person’s testimony, but at other times (like when he or she makes arbitrary and self-defeating assertions) it is reasonable to be skeptical.
The interesting thing about Kenny’s definition of reason is that it has a faith element built into it. In its essence, faith is belief coupled with trust. Even the reasonable assent to a person’s testimony includes a trust (and faith) element in the veracity of the testifier. And this means that far from being opposed, faith and reason are really like two oars in a boat: Row on only one side of the vessel and you go in circles. You only really get going when you grasp both oars.
While the Twain definition may be spurious, it is nonetheless rhetorically brilliant, so I understand why atheists use it. Defining yourself as reasonable and everyone else as irrational “faith-heads” (as Dawkins says) is a good way to get the upper hand in debate. But faith still slips in the back door. You may say the atheist who insists “I exercise reason, not faith” is like the child who insists “I breathe air, not oxygen.” To breathe the one is to breathe the other, and the speaker who insists otherwise merely reveals his ignorance of both.
John’s Opening Statement
There are some things I know without much doubt at all. The most certain thing I know is the cogito of René Descartes: “I think therefore I am.” Could I be wrong and not really exist? I doubt it. And as long as I doubt it there is someone doing the doubting—me. There are other things I know; for instance, I know I’m typing these words and drinking some coffee while I do. (Ahhh, that tasted good.) I have no reason at all to doubt my senses and the personal experiences I’m presently having. They are incorrigible to me. Do I have faith that my coffee tastes good? No, I personally sense that it tastes good. There are other things I know without too much doubt—things too many to even list—and they are all based on solid empirical evidence along with good reasons for thinking them to be so. The more evidence and reasons there are for what I think is the case, then the more I can claim them to be the case.
When it comes to faith, there are at least two ways to understand it. First, faith as hopeful, wishful thinking, motivates us to achieve great things. It helps us win the love and affection of a lover, a sports contest, or an important award. Sometimes we must maintain it in the face of all odds; otherwise we may quit trying. This kind of faith is like a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it cannot make something come true that doesn’t involve our actions. Many things are simply beyond our control. Faith can’t make it true that Jesus arose from the dead. He either did or he didn’t. Faith will not change these kind of facts. So when faith is used to make facts true that it cannot make true, I think faith is pretty much irrational. Wishful thinking about facts we cannot make true is not what thinking adults should do.
Faith in the second sense is always a leap beyond the probabilities, for if something is highly probable then I don’t believe it to be true. I know it to be true by the degree of probability it has. We need to think exclusively in terms of probabilities and not try to add faith to them since faith doesn’t add anything at all. If we did this, all that would matter would be the probabilities. There would be no need for faith. Faith in this sense means someone is accepting an improbable conclusion. So I eschew faith-based reasoning entirely and instead embrace science-based reasoning. I may be wrong in how I assess the probabilities, but I can never go against them.
Having said this, I do agree that almost everybody has faith, but this isn’t a good thing. Rather, it’s a problem to be overcome. According to Michael Shermer, “The brain is a belief engine.”
We form our beliefs for a wide variety of subjective, personal, emotional, and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family, friends, colleagues, culture, and society at large; after forming our beliefs we then defend, justify, and rationalize them with a host of intellectual reasons, cogent arguments, and rational explanations. Beliefs come first, explanations for beliefs follow. . . . Once beliefs are formed, the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which adds an emotional boost of further confidence in the beliefs and thereby accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive feedback loop of belief confirmation.[55]
Psychology professor James Alcock defines faith-based reasoning as “belief in search of data.” Full stop. Think about the implications of this and you’ll realize that we must cultivate doubt not faith. Doubt is, after all, the adult attitude.
Evolutionary psychologist Jesse Bering calls belief “an instinct” in that “we have a cognitive bias to see intentions in inanimate objects.”[56] Pascal Boyer, professor of collective and individual memory, argues that we are “agency detectors” just like our animal predecessors who thought they saw agents, or predators, in the rustling leaves.[57] Agency detecting produced many more false alarms than actual threats to their lives, but because they had that instinct, they survived. Human beings also see agents in inanimate objects. Our human forbearers saw them in the thunder and lightning and concluded there were supernatural agent(s) above the clouds who were angry. They saw it in bumper crops and wives who gave birth to baby boys and concluded there were supernatural agent(s) who were pleased. Believers today still cannot bring themselves to think the universe was not created by a supernatural agent precisely because they still are agency detectors. This is the problem to overcome.
Randal’s Rebuttal
John defines faith in his opening statement as “accepting an improbable conclusion.” Unfortunately that’s yet another example of the spurious Twain definition—believing something you really ought not believe.
Among the things he thinks he knows, John lists the immediate deliverances of his sense experience. Why? Because, John says, “I have no reason at all to doubt my senses and the personal experiences I’m presently having.” But that’s not true. Sense perception often leads us astray. So the extent to which John accepts the deliverances of his senses despite possible error is the extent to which he trusts them. And as I said, trust plus belief is faith.
John still tries to meet Clifford’s view of reason by claiming, “I know it [any truth claim] to be true by the degree of probability it has.” That’s a ridiculous statement. John doesn’t do a probability calculation every time he has a sense experience. He has faith in his sense perception.
John’s Rebuttal
Clifford’s argument is not one of deductive logic resulting in a certain conclusion; it’s an inductive one. The evidence for his view is cumulatively found everywhere, leading us to an exceedingly probable conclusion. Probability is all that matters. Randal cannot slip in the mere possibility that there are things he can believe without sufficient evidence when the total weight of evidence is against such a bald-faced assertion. We need only look to the alternative proposition that people are within their epistemic rights to believe without sufficient evidence in any other area. That’s a recipe for disaster, and Randal knows this.
Besides, what is a fact? All facts are basically theory laden. So by definition, facts require a reasoning process to see them as such. When this is understood, there can be no objection at all to Clifford if we simply understand facts as evidence plus reasoning. So following Alvin Plantinga, Randal falsely mischaracterizes Clifford by arguing that his view is self-defeating. Who in their right mind would not want sufficient evidence except someone who wants to irrationally slip their particular trinitarian, incarnational, resurrection faith in the back door? Mormons and Muslims do the same thing.
Randal’s Closing Statement
If we really sought to provide sufficient evidence for every claim, we would face an infinite regress because every piece of evidence would require additional evidence ad infinitum. The evidence doesn’t support Clifford’s unrestricted evidentialism. Rather, it supports the necessity of faith (belief and trust) in every belief system. And trust in John’s arbitrary and self-defeating claims is not well placed.
John’s Closing Statement
Given cognitive faculties that are functioning properly, our senses are more than adequate to draw reasonable conclusions about our experiences. Look at the lengths Randal must go in order to slip his God through the cracks. No wonder I think he’s deluded. Faith is an irrational leap over the probabilities.