I stopped by Greta Christina's blog this morning and she just wrote something so inciteful that I've decided to copy it here. She's one of the most effective female bloggers out there. Here it is:
"I got an email from a reader, asking me a question. (As far as I can tell, it’s not in response to any particular piece I’ve written.) With their permission, I’m posting their email here, along with m...y response to it. (I’m keeping the reader’s name private, per their request.)
Do you think that it’s possible for an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person to be a Christian? Or do you feel that no reasonable, intelligent, and well-informed person could possibly believe in traditional Christianity.
Just curious.
Short answer: Yes, I think it’s possible for an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person to be a Christian.
But I don’t think Christianity is an intelligent, reasonable, or well-informed position.
Intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed people can be wrong. They can be profoundly wrong. They can be stubbornly wrong. They can be deeply attached to wrong ideas, with contorted and absurd rationalizations for their wrongness. They can be wrong about big, important things. In fact, I would argue that this is universally true: every intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person is bone-headedly wrong about something. Being an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person doesn’t mean every opinion or idea or belief you have is intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed. You can be an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person, and still have dumb, unreasonable, ill-informed ideas.
And yes, I think Christianity is one of these. I think all religion is one of these.
Can an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person be a Christian? Obviously. Many of them are. It would be absurd to claim otherwise, entirely counter to all the available evidence.
But that doesn’t mean it is intelligent, reasonable, or well-informed to be Christian. It isn’t. There is no good reason to think Christianity is true; there are lots of good reasons to think it’s bunk. And the same is true for every religion."
"I got an email from a reader, asking me a question. (As far as I can tell, it’s not in response to any particular piece I’ve written.) With their permission, I’m posting their email here, along with m...y response to it. (I’m keeping the reader’s name private, per their request.)
Do you think that it’s possible for an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person to be a Christian? Or do you feel that no reasonable, intelligent, and well-informed person could possibly believe in traditional Christianity.
Just curious.
Short answer: Yes, I think it’s possible for an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person to be a Christian.
But I don’t think Christianity is an intelligent, reasonable, or well-informed position.
Intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed people can be wrong. They can be profoundly wrong. They can be stubbornly wrong. They can be deeply attached to wrong ideas, with contorted and absurd rationalizations for their wrongness. They can be wrong about big, important things. In fact, I would argue that this is universally true: every intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person is bone-headedly wrong about something. Being an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person doesn’t mean every opinion or idea or belief you have is intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed. You can be an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person, and still have dumb, unreasonable, ill-informed ideas.
And yes, I think Christianity is one of these. I think all religion is one of these.
Can an intelligent, reasonable, and well-informed person be a Christian? Obviously. Many of them are. It would be absurd to claim otherwise, entirely counter to all the available evidence.
But that doesn’t mean it is intelligent, reasonable, or well-informed to be Christian. It isn’t. There is no good reason to think Christianity is true; there are lots of good reasons to think it’s bunk. And the same is true for every religion."
It used to puzzle me that there are so many devout people of faith who are immensely more intelligent than I am. This was until I noticed that those people simply choose not to subject their religious beliefs to the same standards as they do all their other beliefs. They seem to keep their gods safe in a little reason-proof box held deep inside them (I tend to call this "the God Box").
ReplyDeleteWhy do they do this? Because ultimately they see their faith as their sole dependable source of comfort (and America's fear and loathing of discomfort should never be underestimated). So, like the heroin addict who is deathly afraid of becoming dope-sick, or anyone who is unable to imagine there exists some way to cope with living life in an un-self-medicated state, these Believers, no matter how brilliant, or how rationally-minded, protect these little boxes and their contents with great stubbornness, carefully keeping them tightly sealed against any devilish and destructive rays of reason.