Snap-shot Beliefs

Posted by on July 23, 2010

Sen­sa­tion­al­ism is unde­ni­ably one of the marks of our cul­ture. It would appear that not only do we all want atten­tion, but we want to make it seem as if the things we are get­ting atten­tion for, are extra­or­di­nary. Read­ing Pas­cal last night:

Van­ity is so anchored in the human heart that a sol­dier, a cadet, a cook, a kitchen porter boasts, and wants to have admir­ers, and even philoso­phers want them, and those who write against them want the pres­tige of hav­ing writ­ten well, and those who read them want the pres­tige of hav­ing read them, and I, writ­ing this, per­haps have this desire, and those who will read this…1

“And those who will read this…” will want recog­ni­tion for hav­ing read and quoted Pas­cal. I sus­pect that in my case, this is where van­ity ends.

I came across this thought think­ing over book titles such as The God Delu­sion and god is not Great: How Reli­gion Poi­sons Every­thing (espe­cially the sub­ti­tle, in this exam­ple). Such mas­sive claims for books that really did not go on to show what their titles sug­gest. It’s claim­ing too much for hav­ing done so lit­tle, though I sus­pect it’s the fault of mar­ket­ing — how else will any­one buy the book if the title isn’t so ridicu­lously sen­sa­tion­al­ist. Though I haven’t yet had the oppor­tu­nity to read The Chris­t­ian Delu­sion, I sus­pect the case is much the same. It’s not going to be able to show that Chris­tian­ity is a “delu­sion” in the amount of space ded­i­cated to each topic, even if the essays are writ­ten excel­lently (I will say that my hopes are high for the book, and hope­fully it’s some where near Craig’s efforts Pas­sion­ate Con­vic­tion and Con­tend­ing with Christianity’s Crit­ics).

After all, who in our cul­ture is going to boast about writ­ing a 3,000 plus page, 5 vol­ume defense of the faith (Thomas Aquinas, Summa The­o­log­ica) and expect peo­ple to read it? Did Barth really expect any­one but the most “seri­ous” scholar to read his 10,000 plus page, 14 vol­ume Church Dog­mat­ics? (not that it is entirely afford­able) N.T. Wright’s Res­ur­rec­tion of the Son of God is con­sid­ered a “tome” at only 750 pages (it’s an excel­lent book, by the way), but only those most inter­ested in the res­ur­rec­tion are going to buy it in response to the ques­tions raised by peo­ple such as Richard Car­rier. I’m not try­ing to say that some­thing is defin­i­tive if it’s so long that it puts 98% of the pop­u­la­tion to sleep mul­ti­ple times. What I am say­ing is that devot­ing 500 pages or less to a task like “show­ing the­ism to be a delu­sion” is unrea­son­able. At best, these books — the the replies writ­ten to them — should serve only as intro­duc­tory mate­r­ial. Many of these books con­tain exten­sive bib­li­ogra­phies, which sug­gest to me that this is what the author means them to be.

The issue is that many peo­ple take these books as the defin­i­tive word from top schol­ars (itself an unrea­son­able expec­ta­tion). And the result is, I think, unfor­tu­nate — deci­sions made in what­ever direc­tion, on mate­r­ial that isn’t as con­clu­sive as a reader believes it to be. I sup­pose what I’m try­ing to say is that it makes me uneasy know­ing that beliefs are so frag­ile for many peo­ple; that the mere sug­ges­tion of a con­trary posi­tion will either send them into a defen­sive frenzy, or throw them into deep doubt. Beliefs should be much more sta­ble, not the “snap-shot” beliefs many peo­ple hold…

  1. Blaise Pas­cal, Pensees and Other Writ­ings, trans. Honor Levi (Oxford: New York, 1995), 124. ↩

Related posts:

  1. Chang­ing beliefs

Category: Theology

Comments
4 Responses to “Snap-shot Beliefs”
  1. Edward T. Babinski says:
    July 24, 2010 at 11:28 pm

    All books are merely intro­duc­tory mate­r­ial. We con­tinue learn­ing through­out life. But a sin­gle book, or a por­tion of a book, can some­times cat­alyze thoughts and lead to a change in point of view in at least some areas.

    Sec­ondly, Yes, some writ­ers are pro­lific, and few will ever get through all their works. Instead many folks sim­ply rely on whichever experts sup­port a posi­tion and direct peo­ple to those experts. And there are so many experts today, expound­ing such a wide vari­ety of inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible, that many folks sim­ply rest secure in what­ever belief they have, believ­ing that all the answers have already been found, and there’s no need to read wider or deeper on any par­tic­u­lar sub­ject, and in fact few peo­ple have the time and energy to do so since there’s a vast amount of mate­r­ial one can dive into on ANY sub­ject these days. And that makes mat­ters a bit of a conun­drum for those who believe sal­va­tion requires cor­rect belief. Because everybody’s got some “expert” they can cite con­cern­ing their beliefs. God must know that is the sit­u­a­tion and that peo­ple tend to hold on to beliefs via nearly any means pos­si­ble, and today every­one of any belief seems to have plenty of means pos­si­ble. At least enough means to argue amongst them­selves inter­minably, for a life­time or more.

    Even just among Chris­tians, have you seen all the titles listed in the “view” and “view­points” series pub­lished by Zon­der­van and Inter­var­sity and Baker? Three views on this, Four views on that topic. No agree­ment from Gen­e­sis to Revelation.

    http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2009/11/christian-publishers-admit.html

    This also brings to mind the recent cri­tique by Tri­abloguers of Lof­tus’ book, The Chris­t­ian Delu­sion. Did you know that Steve Hays of Tri­ablogue has had knock down drag out e-battles with a host of fel­low Chris­tians, call­ing them all sorts of names, from J.P. Hold­ing to Vic­tor Rep­pert (Chris­t­ian philoso­pher) Dave Arm­strong (Catholic apologist)to all the the­is­tic evo­lu­tion­ary Chris­tians at BIOLOGOS. He’s not just against athe­ism but for his own par­tic­u­lar inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible and God, and is will­ing to go at it just as vehe­mently when dif­fer­ences of opin­ion arise between him­self and fel­low Christians.

    Of course there are also more irenic sorts of Evan­gel­i­cals on the web, like the author of the new book, Evolv­ing in Mon­key­town (worth a read), or the Emer­gent folks and their pub­li­ca­tions, or the author of Blue Like Jazz. Or other forms of mod­er­ate Chris­tian­ity, like the authors of Bap­tists Today, or mod­er­ates and lib­er­als in major denom­i­na­tions. A lot of bib­lioblog­gers (google that word, since it will lead you to a host of Bible schol­ars on the web who also con­tribute to the very inter­est­ing “Bib­li­cal Stud­ies Car­ni­val”), couldn’t care less about some of the issues that make Steve Hays want to puke at fel­low Christians.

  2. Jeremy says:
    July 26, 2010 at 10:14 am

    All books are merely intro­duc­tory mate­r­ial. We con­tinue learn­ing through­out life. But a sin­gle book, or a por­tion of a book, can some­times cat­alyze thoughts and lead to a change in point of view in at least some areas. Sec­ondly, Yes, some writ­ers are pro­lific, and few will ever get through all their works. Instead many folks sim­ply rely on whichever experts sup­port a posi­tion and direct peo­ple to those experts. And there are so many experts today, expound­ing such a wide vari­ety of inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible, that many folks sim­ply rest secure in what­ever belief they have, believ­ing that all the answers have already been found, and there’s no need to read wider or deeper on any par­tic­u­lar sub­ject, and in fact few peo­ple have the time and energy to do so since there’s a vast amount of mate­r­ial one can dive into on ANY sub­ject these days. And that makes mat­ters a bit of a conun­drum for those who believe sal­va­tion requires cor­rect belief. Because everybody’s got some “expert” they can cite con­cern­ing their beliefs. God must know that is the sit­u­a­tion and that peo­ple tend to hold on to beliefs via nearly any means pos­si­ble, and today every­one of any belief seems to have plenty of means pos­si­ble. At least enough means to argue amongst them­selves inter­minably, for a life­time or more.

    This would unfor­tu­nately seem to be the case. I would imag­ine that this is a far big­ger prob­lem for some­one who takes casual inter­est in the sub­ject, as opposed to some­one who takes seri­ous inter­est in it; who would know the names of cer­tain peo­ple, the posi­tions they take, the argu­ments and counter-arguments involved, etc. I do think that regard­less of these two ‘groups’, there is a destruc­tive ten­dency not to be hon­est with ones beliefs and the posi­tions of oth­ers (and per­haps those who are ‘seri­ous’ have more of a prob­lem with this). Hence the rea­son — as you pointed out — that one is able to read only cer­tain authors and books — for a life-time, at that — and never really come to an under­stand­ing their own beliefs, because they lack the con­trast nec­es­sary. Peo­ple would rather have the authors they like to read tell them about oppos­ing views, than to go into them themselves.

    Even just among Chris­tians, have you seen all the titles listed in the “view” and “view­points” series pub­lished by Zon­der­van and Inter­var­sity and Baker? Three views on this, Four views on that topic. No agree­ment from Gen­e­sis to Rev­e­la­tion. http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2009/11/christian-publishers-admit.html

    It’s like you said, all books are “merely intro­duc­tory mate­r­ial”. I’m actu­ally very glad that there are books which exam­ine “four views on… three views on…” because even though there may be three and four dif­fer­ent views on ‘X’, there is in com­mon to all these views, ‘X’. There may not be agree­ment on how these things “work”, but there is agree­ment that there are these things, hence the mul­ti­plic­ity of views and the fact that there is con­ver­sa­tion. Dis­agree­ment per se doesn’t make some­thing “unknown” to us. If I were to pro­pose that the moon was made of cheese I don’t think any­one would take me seri­ously, just as if I were to pro­pose that the earth was flat (as some still do). While I under­stand that there is sub­stan­tial aca­d­e­mic schol­ar­ship behind some of these com­pet­ing views, I do think we need to be care­ful with decid­ing that there is “no agree­ment” or that there can’t ever be agreement.

    This also brings to mind the recent cri­tique by Tri­abloguers of Lof­tus’ book, The Chris­t­ian Delu­sion. Did you know that Steve Hays of Tri­ablogue has had knock down drag out e-battles with a host of fel­low Chris­tians, call­ing them all sorts of names, from J.P. Hold­ing to Vic­tor Rep­pert (Chris­t­ian philoso­pher) Dave Arm­strong (Catholic apologist)to all the the­is­tic evo­lu­tion­ary Chris­tians at BIOLOGOS. He’s not just against athe­ism but for his own par­tic­u­lar inter­pre­ta­tions of the Bible and God, and is will­ing to go at it just as vehe­mently when dif­fer­ences of opin­ion arise between him­self and fel­low Christians.

    Hon­estly, that doesn’t sur­prise me (allow me to add that I couldn’t find any debate between Dave Arm­strong and Steve Hays. Rather, all I could find was a debate between Dave Arm­strong and Jason Eng­wer — which was fairly civil). What can I say, I admire their zeal for the truth even though the major­ity of the time I can’t con­done the tone or approach they take. I do agree that it isn’t the most civil at times, and can get down­right nasty, but then again John Lof­tus, J.P. Hold­ing and oth­ers haven’t been out­stand­ing exam­ples of civil­ity either. It goes both ways. Let me add that if I thought a belief or set of beliefs was cor­rupt­ing Chris­tian­ity, I would stand against it and voice my opin­ion — much like I’m not at all a fan of the post­mod­ern turn within Chris­ten­dom (I don’t know what’s worse — “Fundy” or “PoMo”).

    Of course there are also more irenic sorts of Evan­gel­i­cals on the web, like the author of the new book, Evolv­ing in Mon­key­town (worth a read), or the Emer­gent folks and their pub­li­ca­tions, or the author of Blue Like Jazz. Or other forms of mod­er­ate Chris­tian­ity, like the authors of Bap­tists Today, or mod­er­ates and lib­er­als in major denom­i­na­tions. A lot of bib­lioblog­gers (google that word, since it will lead you to a host of Bible schol­ars on the web who also con­tribute to the very inter­est­ing “Bib­li­cal Stud­ies Car­ni­val”), couldn’t care less about some of the issues that make Steve Hays want to puke at fel­low Christians.

    That’s infi­nitely prefer­able so long as they don’t start going against tra­di­tion, scrip­ture, etc.

  3. Edward T. Babinski says:
    July 26, 2010 at 6:24 pm

    They’ll know we are Chris­tians by our zingers and picayune behav­ior toward each other. I’m not say­ing peo­ple in gen­eral don’t have dis­agree­ments on all sub­jects includ­ing reli­gion, but Chris­t­ian web-apologists don’t exactly break the all-too-human mold, do they? Even with an alleged holy book of books to lead them and the Holy Spirit to guide them and Jesus inside, THIS is their tes­ti­mony to the world. But any­one who has stud­ied the his­tory of Chris­tian­ity already knows that it con­sists of a his­tory of more excom­mu­ni­ca­tions and schisms than one can keep track of. Even today I know one blog­ger whose fam­ily went to a church that split three times in his life­time, Chris­tians refus­ing to wor­ship with other Christians:

    Steve Hays (Calvin­ist) vs. Dave Arm­strong (Catholic):

    DAVE ARMSTRONG’S TAKE

    Musta Hit a Nerve: What Anti-Catholic Lumi­nary Steve “Whop­per” Hays Really Thinks of Me http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2010/01/musta-hit-nerve-what-anti-catholic.html

    How Anti-Catholic Steve Hays “Argues” (Voltairean Humor in Puritan-Land) + Hays’ Inco­her­ent Expla­na­tions of How “Evil” I Am, Or My Writ­ing, Etc. http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2009/07/how-anti-catholic-steve-hays-argues.html

    How Lead­ing Online Anti-Catholic Apol­o­gist Steve Hays “Argues” #2 (The Sad Case of Lutheran Edward Reiss) http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-leading-online-anti-catholic.html

    STEVE HAYS’ TAKE

    High School Musi­cal. Star­ring Dave Arm­strong. Costar­ring Dave Arm­strong. With spe­cial guest star: Dave Arm­strong http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/07/high-school-musical-starring-dave.html

    Dave Armstrong’s glos­sary http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/02/dave-armstrongs-glossary.html

    Dave Arm­strong: Cow­ardly Anti-Catholic extra­or­di­naire http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/07/dave-armstrong-cowardly-anti-catholic.html

    Shop­ping for con­crete galoshes (Steve Hays address­ing Dave Arm­strong) http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/04/shopping-for-concrete-galoshes.html

    Schrödinger’s cat-holicism (Steve Hays address­ing Dave Arm­strong) http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/07/schrodingers-cat-holicism.html

    The mar­tyr­dom of Dave Arm­strong, R.I.P. http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2009/04/martyrdom-of-dave-armstrong-rip.html

    Catholic quack­ery http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/01/catholic-quackery.html

  4. Jeremy says:
    July 27, 2010 at 8:00 pm

    Incred­i­ble, such charity…