Circular defenses and church authority June 8, 2006
Posted by mwj as religion, twu. trackback.(Authentic religions) too can degenerate into idolatries; especially where the will to power is waiting to corrupt them; and this, alas, is almost invariably the case when the Church becomes endowed with temporal authority.
-Gabriel Marcel, “What is a Free Man?”
Today I stumbled across the Secular Web, and found an interesting piece entitled Advice from an Agnostic Baptist Minister. The authorship is anonymous (as most agnostic baptists would probably like to remain), but it offers some interesting insights into the forces that keep Christian beliefs firmly entrenched in the minds of their believers.
The article focuses on the inspiration of scripture as the foundation of Christian thought, and explores three reasons “why you will get a Christian only so-close to thinking twice about his or her presuppositions regarding the divine nature of the Bible.”
The first reads like something out of an IDIS text: one’s metaphysic (or worldview) is very personal in nature and resists being violated, due to the fact that this metaphysic is how one makes sense of the world. This goes for anyone’s cherished beliefs: it takes much more than mere facts to get us to change our minds.
The second reason he presents is an interesting one: “everyone has certain innate conceptual templates hard-wired into our brains from years of evolutionary development, and these concepts are susceptible to being attached to religious ideas.” He mentions a book by Pascal Boyer called Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, which expands on this idea.
But it is the final reason presented in this article that really intrigues me. The author points out that “Christianity has a built-in defense system that effectively wards off attackers with the flick of a cliché or pat answer and a retreat to Bible verses considered relevant for supporting ‘proof’.” He identifies a few examples of this “built-in defense system,” which are essentially just circular arguments that presuppose the things they purport to prove.
The first is the belief that “the non-believer cannot understand the things of God because he doesn’t believe; if you would only believe, then you would understand.” Essentially, no one can understand the faith a priori, they must believe first and then their eyes will be opened.
The second is the belief that “the Bible is the Word of God; therefore, anyone who disagrees with it must be wrong.” Again, impossible to combat, because any attempt to discuss internal inconsistencies or apparent contradictions can be waved off by simply saying our understanding is deficient (ie. the problem is with us not the Bible).
The last example I will mention is the dualistic nature of Christian belief as a whole. There are good Christians, and bad atheists, and many of the latter have been sent by Satan or other demonic forces to try and divert, dissuade and otherwise deceive the true believer. Of course their arguments will be persuasive, for the Devil works in subtle ways to trick up the unwary. Vigilance is the only way to ensure he does not get a foothold, and vigilance in this case means dismissing any argument that challenges such a basic Christian tenet as the inspiration of scripture.
Some of these examples may seem a little like straw men. Many Christians do not rely on these circular arguments, or openly admit that they believe in something they can’t fully explain, and don’t feel the need to hammer every logical nail. And of course, as the author points out, “90% of the debate regarding Christianity is internal,” meaning that there are many approaches to and explanations about how exactly scripture is inspired, how it got that way, and what that means for the believer.
However, these circular defenses seem to crop up all over the place in Christianity, and indeed in many religions. The nature of religious belief is such that requires existential commitment before intellectual comprehension. As such, the option is always available to defenders of any faith to divert any attack by maintaining that an outsider will just never understand. Either that, or they are actively conspiring against the believer (and God) in challenging the precepts of the faith.
Why do I mention all of this? Well, I liked the article and thought it provided an interesting insight into why cherished beliefs are so cherished. But I am also fascinated by these circular self-defense mechanisms, and their implications for institutionalized religion. Two examples, and then I will close.
The first is Islam. I have, as yet, failed to come up with a satisfactory explanation as to why young Muslims are willing to blow themselves up to kill non-Muslims. The seventy virgins thing just doesn’t do it for me. Nor does any sort of hidden political agenda, at least not on the part of the suicide bombers. Desparation, too, is only a partial explanation, since a number of these people do not come from impoverished nations.
Islam does, however, have some very strong self-defense mechanisms, which we’ve seen mobilized in the recent Mohammed cartoon debacle. The publication of these cartoons, meant to be a commentary on Muslims in Denmark, was met with violence and condemnation, because the Koran condemns any visual representation of Mohammed. Instead of questioning whether such a tenet is a good one or not, embassies were burned, riots started and people killed. As the debate continued and western journalists clamoured for their right to blaspheme, the stance of the Muslim world became firmer. Criticism only begat a further hardening of principles on both sides.
The second example is much closer to home. At TWU, I experienced a number of these self-defense mechanisms during my tenure as Editor-in-Chief of Mars’ Hill. The most often repeated of these relied on biblical exhortations from Paul and Jesus towards unity on the part of Christians. Printing challenging editorials, so the argument goes, flies directly in the face of this divine injunction. This is handy for anyone trying to avoid harsh criticism.
These examples and others are leading me to a sharper understanding of the need for separation of church and state. If the church (or an “arm” of the church) has temporal power, the temptation to use these circular defenses to justify action or suppress opposition becomes too great.
However, just the phrase “separation of church and state” is not enough to make sure these two stay separate. It’s just as destructive to have “good Christian governance” at the level of a university board as it is at the level of a country’s government. If those in power are able to get away with trite appeals to scripture or God’s will whenever they are questioned, the possibility of corruption becomes almost inevitable.
Comments»
I’ve actually found Holy Writ pretty useful in dignifying my position against those in a position of authority over me (parents, administrators, professors, myself) - but either these folks know scripture better than I do (pulling things out more readily than I) or they’ll care nothing for my interpretation, granting it only their pursed lips, cocked glance, and air of suspicion.
Damnit….I submitted a long response to this post only to get a “you did not fill in your email” BS.
Here, just read some Beccaria instead:
“Nothing is more dangerous than the common axiom that one must consult the spirit of the law….The spirit of the law, then, would be dependent on the good and bad logic of a judge, on a sound or unhealthy digestion, on the violence on his passions, on the infirmities he suffers, on his relations with the victim, and on all the slight forces that change the appearance of every object in the fickle human mind. The fate of citizens…are at the mercy of false reasonings or the momentary churning of a judge’s humors. Thus we see the same court punish the same crime in different ways at different times because it consulted the erroneous instability of interpretations rather than the firm and constant voice of the law.”
In response, I disagree, with everything, including the use of a grey font as opposed to the traditional black text, and…uh…the extreme close up of an electrical plug which confronts me upon visiting this site…just give me a couple days to find the appropriate Biblical reference…
Interesting discussion, one question…
Is secular critique the “a priori” method of avoiding corruption? If it is, then excluding religious arguments seems logically sound. If it isn’t, then, excluding religion from influencial authority and setting up another flawed (or destructive) method as supreme seems, to me, just as imprudent.