DIALOG WITH AN ATHEIST: PART 1

[This is the start of a series of posts capturing my part of a two-way conversation 12 years ago with an old high school friend, an extremely bright engineer who could be characterized as an atheist. It is slightly edited to make it more understandable, but you will have to rely on my comments to figure out the gist of his counter-arguments since I didn't save his e-mails. I began the subject by suggesting that he at least consider the claims of Christianity and then reminded him of Pascal's Wager. Blaise Pascal made the practical argument that one loses nothing by accepting Christianity and runs the risk of losing everything by rejecting it.]

Pascal's Wager

You are quite correct that Pascal's comments are a long way from establishing the Christian faith. But that is not what they were intended to do, at least by themselves. Instead they fall into the category of apologetics—the removal of barriers to belief so that the claims of faith systems can then be subsequently evaluated by a person.

Concerning the wager itself, the situation is not quite as muddled as critics have suggested. For one thing, it is probably a safe bet to only consider major faith systems in one's calculations. Otherwise we have the situation where a god or gods have condemned all but a handful of people who have ever lived, or will ever live. Of these systems, most of the Eastern religions do not recognize or talk about an afterlife (Confucianism), give one many lifetimes to reconsider their choices (Hinduism), or only envision the afterlife as a vague merging into nothingness with no clear-cut distinction in consequences between those who “believe” and those who don't (Buddhism).

Thus, Pascal's Wager only applies to those religions with a definite everlasting distinction in status between those who believe and those who don't. The various schools of Judaism, for the most part, do not dwell much on the afterlife and many would deny the existence of heaven and hell, taking Marcus Aurelius' view. Christianity and Islam remain to be considered as the religions with high up-sides and down-sides.

I know I have oversimplified the argument to a great extent, but Pascal's consideration alone would lead one to pay the most attention to these two faiths. In doing so, it is best to keep in mind that any religion can only be fairly judged by looking at the “reasonableness” of its original teachings and the character of its founder. Thus, we should not dwell unduly on negative aspects of the history of the religion's practitioners: the Crusades, modern Islamic jihads, support of slavery, the Inquisition, right wing political views of TV evangelists, etc. These should only be taken into account if it can be shown that such aberrations are in fact not aberrations, but part and parcel of the original faith system.

Concerning the character of the original founder, one must consider the limited biographical information available. Muhammad has been characterized by his critics as an illiterate, ignorant, war mongering bigamist and child abuser. If any or all of this can be proven to a reasonable degree, then it would go a long way toward invalidating his truth claims.

Jesus, on the other hand, has been universally praised throughout the ages, even by non-believers, as a compassionate and insightful teacher. He is arguably the most influential thinker the world has ever produced, even though he operated in a backwater part of the world, had absolutely no power base the way Muhammad did to spread his ideas, and died as a criminal. This alone does not prove he was divine. However, to rephrase my favorite Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis, we are not given the option to consider him merely as a good man or prophet. Jesus consistently pictured himself as Lord over the forces of the world, one who had a unique relationship with God, and one with supernatural knowledge of the afterlife. This sort of person may be divine, cynically evil, or a madman, but he is certainly not just a good teacher.

I have somewhat dismissed Judaism in the above argument, but only concerning Pascal's statement. In fact, one should seriously consider this as an option. My own approach would be to start with the root documents that both Judaism and Christianity are based on: the so-called Old Testament. Then look at the subsequent teachings that resulted in modern day Judaism (the Mishnah, the Targums, and other rabbinical writings) and Christianity (the New Testament). See which one is more consistent as a further revelation and/or clarification of the Old Testament.

By the way, the whole concept of Hell as “punishment” is a bit simple-minded and not as nuanced as the biblical accounts picture it. But that's a whole new topic.

Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius has a very good point in that any belief system should be just as much concerned with one's walk here on earth as with “pie in the sky.” Anyone whose faith is solely built around the selfish desire to get a heavenly reward and escape punishment will likely not lead a very fulfilling or noble life. (And certainly, religion should not be viewed as a trade-off between depriving oneself here on earth in order to get more later on.)

It is interesting that he treated Christians as the greatest enemies of the Roman Empire and mercilessly persecuted them at every opportunity. So much for living the noble life! Oh well, we are all human.

Getting back to his argument: It is totally based on the fact that God (or the gods) is not at all interested in how humans view Him, but only in how we relate to our fellow creatures. This is an unproved assumption and not by any means a universal belief. For example, the so-called “two tables” of the Ten Commandments deal, respectively, with our dealings toward God and our dealings toward others. Both are treated in an equally serious manner.

Marcus Aurelius is ascribing his own definition of “just” to the gods rather than looking for any revelation from them that might clarify the point. This is the universal problem that philosophy has in trying to formulate absolute statements on the condition of man and the universe based on man's reason alone in the absence of any possible divine teaching on the subject.

Marcus Aurelius' other major assumption, or assertion, is that God will accept a human being on the basis of his virtuous life. This is close to the teachings of Islam and many other religions. Christianity as a whole is based on the concept that man, through his own efforts, can never please God totally and therefore there will always be a huge gulf between God and man. Jesus is the only one making it possible to bridge that gap (and that is another long discourse in itself).

JEPD Hypothesis

The various related schools of criticism you allude to go under the name of Higher Criticism, Form Criticism, Source Criticism, etc. They have their origin in Germany in the late 1800's and have been widely influential in scholarly Christian circles, slowly spreading their influence to the various seminaries and then later to the popular press. This Documentary Hypothesis is considered as a given by many practicing Christian pastors and teachers, especially in liberal mainline churches.

Paradoxically, just as the influence of this school of thought is at its popular zenith, it has been almost completely discredited as an intellectual dead end by most modern biblical scholars. There are several reasons for this complete turnabout. In the first place, the school of thought began with the given that there was no written form of language for Moses to use at the time, and therefore a long period of oral transmission was necessary before the Pentateuch was actually reduced to writing. Archeology has shown this to be a false assumption. Secondly, the supposed relatively recent ages for the various original J, E P and D sources were based on linguistic considerations that have been overturned now that we have more comparative literature of the time to investigate. Finally, the various practitioners of this school have fought endlessly with one another concerning which passages properly belong to one source or to another. The results almost cancel one another out with their discrepancies, even though they utilize the same methodology.

The biggest problem with these brands of criticism is the large amount of assumptions that must be made regarding the content of the original writings, the editing process employed, and which is the most “authentic” (meaning “the oldest”) source.

The current trend goes in the opposite direction of the “higher” critics and includes those who practice Canonical Criticism, New Literary Criticism, Discourse Analysis, etc. All of these approaches take the assumption that the only safe starting point for Biblical analysis is to take the text as it stands without speculating on the process that led to its formation or try to recreate the supposed originals. Then the text should be analyzed as any other document to look at the flow of ideas, literary techniques employed, and the place it has in the whole biblical canon.

For decades, I have been practicing a form of the above research in carrying out structural analysis on each book of the Bible, looking for linguistic and thematic clues as to the overall form (almost always symmetrical in nature) that the book takes. In this way, one can identify the main points of the text, the proper “chapter” breaks, and occasionally say something about the actual authorship. As a side benefit, such analyses have been very helpful on occasion in deciding between alternative readings where the wording of the original text is somewhat in doubt, and in explaining the frequent duplication in stories and teachings that has been used elsewhere to prove multiple authorship of some books. The amazing thing is the continuity in literary form demonstrated throughout the Old and New Testament, over a long time span and including both Jewish and Gentile authors. It almost makes one believe that there was divine inspiration to the whole thing!