Briefly On Faulty Apologetical Arguments:
This posting was written as a result of some things I have seen in social media feeds over the years and in particular, one that I saw earlier today. Basically, I see a number of well meaning folks who treat apologetics arguments as if they are by themselves conclusive. This is a common problem with the apologetics mindset but rather than go into that general subject, let us treat at this time of a common apologetics argument used by Christians. These folks often whip out arguments like
Pascal's Wager or CS Lewis'
Lord, Liar, Lunatic purported trilemma and use them with a certain smugness as if they contain some magical checkmate to thereby trap others like a spider traps a fly in their web. In reality however, neither of these arguments is as foolproof as the users of them so often presume. I will now briefly dispatch with both to prove my point.
Pascal's Wager
The main outline of this argument is one that attempts to shoehorn the person its presented to with the idea that either God exists or he does not and therefore you only have a few options. Going off of memory{1} the analogy is something akin to this:
- God exists, you believe, therefore you are rewarded
- God exists, you do not believe, therefore you are tormented
- God does not exist, you believe, you lose nothing
- God does not exist, you do not believe, you lose nothing
The gist of the argument is it is better to wager on God's existence should you have any doubt as to whether he exists or not. The flaws in the wager are many but the most significant one is as follows:
It presents false dichotomies to the person it is given to.
To start with, there is the rhetorical "what if you are wrong?" which of course implicates the person giving the wager because they admit implicitly that
they could well be wrong too.
However, they never approach this subject with that presupposition in reality while they expect those they interact with to. There are other problems as well including the idea that all potential religions, deities, afterlife scenarios, etc are not for consideration but instead, only the Christian one or some variation of a Christian one.
Why should the reader logically do that?
If you consider the various permutations of potential religious possibilities, the Christian conception{2} is merely one of a long list and unless presupposed to be deserving of special consideration is logically no more deserving of it than any other religious claim out there.
And that is presuming you can logically narrow it down to one particular variation of the various sometimes contradictory Christian formulations rather than merely presupposing whichever formulation you are particularly partial to (if any). This fact alone dilutes the wager and makes it basically worthless as a genuinely persuasive argument for anyone who does not live in a time or under the assumption that the only religion possibility is the Christian one.{3}
Lord, Liar, Lunatic
In a certain sense, this argument is even weaker while it is probably appealed to with a greater frequency than the wager one.{4} It purports to force the reader into a trilemma of sorts where only one possibility makes logical sense; namely, that Jesus is Lord. If he is not Lord, than the only other possibilities according to the hypothesis is that he is a Liar or a Lunatic. The fundamental weakness to this argument is the claim that Jesus said he was God. Nowhere in the Synoptics does Jesus make such a claim so the only Gospel source where the claim can be somewhat substantiated is the Gospel of John. But herein lies a problem with that source: most Christian theologians who study the Bible claim that the Gospel of John is a more mystical gospel than the others. Also, in all the gospels, Jesus speaks in parables and uses metaphors a lot.
So one could say on the one hand that Jesus need not be a lunatic or liar when he was said to call himself God but could instead be an honest man who made a mistake{5} and that one additional example alone falsifies the presumptive trilemma. But beyond that, one would have to prove in the example where Jesus is said to refer to himself as God
that he was to be taken literally in that passage rather than merely assuming he was. Jesus said many things about himself including that he was a vine and the apostles were the branches, he was a door, he was the sheepsgate, he was a shepherd and the followers were sheep, etc. You cannot ignore the numerous ways that Jesus spoke metaphorically and in parables and then state with definitiveness from the text itself that any claims to divinity he was purported to have made were to be taken literally. You have to presuppose the claim you would be trying to prove and that is circular reasoning and thereby is illogical.
As I know what postings like this can do, I will put in a footnote my actual view on this matter so I am not misunderstood.{6} The bottom line to this posting is this: there is no argument one can make rationally for religious belief that does not involve some aspect of acceptance on faith. The degree of acceptance of faith may vary by the given argument except at perhaps the most fundamental level{7} but beyond that, there should be a lot more humility on these matters than many
pundits, agenda provocateurs, and apologists often manifest when interacting with others.
Notes:
{1} I am sketching it out in vague form above from memory so if the formulation is not precise, I apologize in advance.
{2} To the extent that there is or could be a single Christian conception of course.
{3} See footnote two.
{4} Probably in part because more Christians these days are familiar with CS Lewis than they are Blaise Pascal.
{5} Remember, an honest man who makes a mistake is no less an honest man because of it.
{6} To be clear, I am not saying I think this way.
{7} For example, Aquinas' Five Ways which while successful in its intention only purport to prove the existence of God through reason and does not presume to argue for a specific religious formulation of God.
