ain't got time for that
This post is preparatory to another one.
I’m a long-time Mac user — in the spring of 1985 I bought the original Macintosh and have owned no other brand of computer since then — and I used to be evangelistic about it. When friends and colleagues complained about their PCs, or about Windows, I would be quick to tell them how much happier and more efficient they would be if they just switched to the Mac. I would list all the cool features of the Mac and extol its reliability. I would offer to help them switch.
I still hear those complaints, but now I simply try to look sympathetic. I don't evangelize any more. I don't do it because after some years of expressing my Mac enthusiasm I noticed that almost everyone I talked to got the same look on his or her face — the nearly blank I-don’t-really-want-to-hear-this look. At first I wondered about that expression: I mean, didn’t you just tell me how frustrated you are? Wouldn't you prefer to eliminate that frustration?
What I was failing to realize, in my Mac evangelist days, was the power of the better-the-devil-you-know principle. Its an enormous amount of trouble to move all your data to a new computer and then to learn wholly new ways of doing things. It requires a major investment of time and energy, and people I know tend to be pretty busy and not to have much time and energy to spare. And it does no good to explain that switching is not as much trouble as you might think — that might be true, but then it might not, and for many people the risk of massive complications is more than they want to take on. None of people I talked seemed to doubt my claim that Macs are better than PCs, but weighing the added value against all the trouble . . . well, it was just more than they wanted to think about. Thus the blank but slightly discomfited looks.
I called myself an “evangelist,” and Mac users can be pretty religious about their computers, but this is an issue in real religious dialogue as well. We Christians can find our enthusiasm about Jesus met with the same blank looks. I’m not talking about people who know that they don't want to be Christians, for whatever reason. Rather, I’m thinking about people who guess that Christianity could possibly be true but the likelihood isn't high enough to justify the time and energy it would take to find out.
We all have to make choices like this all the time. Look, there are a pair of Mormons at my door — should I talk to them and find out what their religion is all about? Hey, the Jehovah’s Witnesses left some pamphlets — should I read them and find out whether there’s anything to their beliefs? Or how about this: should I investigate becoming a vegan? Or joining the Libertarian Party? Or making my next car a hybrid?
People get evangelistic about all of these things, and there’s something mysterious about why we respond as we do — why we pass over many of these options without a second thought, give brief consideration to others, and thoroughly explore just a few. There’s just not time in one life to investigate everything, and that means that we have to make some choices with very limited information. Which means that people are not being irrational just because they dismiss your favorite cause without thorough research. They’re doing what we all do.
Alan
That is an interesting approach. I tend to agree with you, though think there might be more people who fall in the first camp for something like Christianity, in that it is just not that plausible (just like how Mormonism isn’t that plausible to me, or Hinduism, etc). That being said, I am very much like this type of person on a variety of things… for example, veganism. There is a part of me that thinks the culture of meat consumption is a bit cruel, that it might be good for my body if I were to do it properly, and that also thinks it might be a spiritual discipline of sorts with its mix of ethical commitment and abstinence (of a sort). But… I have yet to do it for any extended period of time.
I think my general desire to consider the idea came from dating a vegan for a period of time, and thus learning to see the importance of it from the inside (or at least more inside than just a knee jerk reaction to PETA). I also have talked to a Calvin Philosophy prof about it who made the argument that the spiritual discipline component of it has been the piece that has had the biggest impact on him. So, I began to care about it because I cared about someone who cared about it (that was a mouth-full)… and I found the arguments to be compelling from a professional arguer. But… here I am recovering from a turkey bash 3 days ago very much filled with the real deal, and tofurkey nowhere in site.
— Peter Boumgarden · Dec 1, 04:15 PM · #
Alan,
Good and thought-provoking post, as usual, and I have great sympathy with you for the way your fine academic institution was described by that very silly lady – I have a couple of Wheaton alum friends, and they are darling and wonderful people, even if they and I have somewhat different ideas about the hereafter.
However, I do feel obligated to note that, although I am definitely no theologian, so far as I can tell, it would take almost no “time or energy” to find out whether or not Christianity is true – all you have to do is die and find out whether you are in heaven or hell or not. Unfortunately, that knowledge doesn’t do you so much good at that particular point.
I’m not really being facetious here, or at least I’m not trying to be – I can, with some amount of effort, sit and learn about Mac computers, or vegetarianism. I can then try them out and find out whether or not they make my life easier, or better, or whatever.
But with Christianity, I can, after some study and work, implement its tenets in my life, and find out whether it makes my life better or not, and I’m totally open to the idea that it might. But that still doesn’t answer the question of whether it’s actually true or not, does it? So I don’t think missionary belief about the efficacy of Macs is on a continuum with missionary belief about Christianity, or any other religion, for that matter.
— David Samuels · Dec 1, 06:10 PM · #
so far as I can tell, it would take almost no “time or energy” to find out whether or not Christianity is true – all you have to do is die and find out whether you are in heaven or hell or not.
True in a sense; though in another (and perhaps stricter) sense this means that it takes all the time and energy you have. . . . (And if there’s nothing after death at all, then Christianity will be false but we won’t know. This is a variation on the old “If a tree falls in the forest” problem.)
But that still doesn’t answer the question of whether it’s actually true or not, does it?
You’re precisely right that that marks the limit of my analogy. I still think the analogy holds, though, for my purpose, which was to describe how people decide whether a possibility is worth pursuing, not about how their decision turns out.
— Alan Jacobs · Dec 1, 06:27 PM · #
A fair enough response, and also a good point that, although dying takes comparatively little time or energy, it also happens to be all the time and energy we have left to us…
— David Samuels · Dec 1, 06:56 PM · #
This is a thoughtful post and it really calls for thoughtful comments as well.
But let me ask this very simple question, because it’s very fundamental but I don’t hear anyone making even the slightest attempt to provide an answer:
Where is there any evidence, of any kind, to suggest that Christianity is TRUE?
I don’t mean evidence that there is a god – there’s really none, of course, but there is, at least to my mind, lots of good stuff to chew on when this is the question.
I don’t mean evidence that Jesus or any of the other characters in the Bible really existed – the only thing that would prove is that they existed. Right?
I’m asking for ANY evidence that the Christian god is THE god who created the universe, that Jesus was god incarnate, that we can gain immortality in this faith…
I mean, there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, right? Not one single crumb?
Evidence – wouldn’t there be SOMETHING?
I don’t understand the comparison to other beliefs like vegetarianism – the evidence that animals raised for food often suffer overwhelming cruelty is pretty much irrefutable, right?
Even if you want to debate other choices, such as should I buy a hybrid car, well, there’s real, tangible evidence to be used on both sides of the debate.
And sure, you might line up some stuff on the “For Christianity” side, like, perhaps, Christians are more charitable, or what-have-you (I know these things are debateable), but I imagine anything like this might be employed as an argument for perhaps any theological belief system – what I’m looking for is something, ANYTHING, that says Christianity, specifically, is TRUE.
For myself, I think there’s a lot of things about life, existence, and love, that compel me to believe in a creator, in my soul, but there’s exactly nothing, to me, that says this creator is precisely the god of Christian belief.
What have you got?
— William · Dec 1, 08:19 PM · #
Last night I was watching a documentary about Galileo.
You know, that Catholic church in the 1600’s was pretty much a whack-job. “Heretics” were imprisoned, tortured, forced to repudiate views they knew were true, some even burned alive.
Books were banned and ideas suppressed. Lives were ruined and lost.
What’s the deal? How does the Catholic faith of today reconcile with this odious history? Or is it now some sort of completely different faith, with no connection to this other barbaric church?
And “truth” – they were convinced they had it then, right? The Earth was the center of the universe, the Sun traveled around the Earth, and if you thought different, well, good luck to you.
So – they were wrong in thinking they knew the “truth” in 1630, right?
But now – now they’ve got the “truth” right? The “true truth”?
I guess it seems to me like many Christians would have to say, well, they did get things pretty wrong back then, but now, now! we’ve got things right.
But how do you know that?
Sorry to seem strident – but there are some pretty big holes in Christian arguments about knowing the truth, don’t you think?
— William · Dec 1, 09:06 PM · #
William, very appropriate questions — but hard to answer in part because human character and inclination vary so much. First of all, though I am not a Catholic nor a particular defender of Catholicism, I would recommend that you not take your history from TV documentaries. But then: if you want to get philosophically hard-core, you could read Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief. Or for a more accessible take on the evidentiary situation, you might try one of the many books or articles by William Lane Craig, many of which are available on his website.
But I tend to think in other terms. Once the poet Robert Bridges laid out all his objections to Christianity in a letter to his friend Gerard Manley Hopkins (poet and priest), and Hopkins wrote back, “Dear Bridges, Give alms.” What he meant was that Christianity is best defined not as just a set of beliefs, of positions on certain issues, but rather a whole way of life; so the best way to come to understand and evaluate Christianity is through doing what Christians do. So if you really want to test the legitimacy of Christianity, I would suggest that the best way to do that is to go to church for a few weeks, or months if you can manage it. That’ll give you the best sense of what Christians believe and why they believe it, what they do and why they do it.
— Alan Jacobs · Dec 1, 09:28 PM · #
Mr. Jacobs,
Your point about being careful regarding TV documentaries is well taken – still, I think the general facts of Galileo’s persecution, or of other, more horrifying incidents, such as the burning of Giordano Bruno by the Catholics, are well established. If there are disagreements about some of the details, it’s still not a history to be proud of.
One thing: I was raised Christian (Lutheran), attended Christian school for 9 years, went to church, read lots and lots of the Bible, prayed, went to Sunday school, had communion, etc. I am not a Christian now, but neither am I an atheist.
To me, the finest spiritual teachers are Lao Tzu and Walt Whitman.
You write:
“So if you really want to test the legitimacy of Christianity, I would suggest that the best way to do that is to go to church for a few weeks, or months if you can manage it. That’ll give you the best sense of what Christians believe and why they believe it, what they do and why they do it.”
I agree that this could demonstrate all kinds of things: that Christianity is “good”, or better than other belief systems, or that it causes people to be kind, or generous, or caring, etc.
But how could this ever show, in even the slightest way, that Christianity is “true”? By this I mean that the Christian god really exists as described, that Jesus was his son and died on the cross to offer redemption, etc.
Heck, other belief systems cause people to behave morally as well: Buddhism would be a pretty fine example. And of course, there are plenty of good, fine, decent, moral atheists.
I am all for systems of belief that cause people to be good – god knows we are desperate for this.
(For this part of the discussion, I will leave out all of the bad, oppressive, authoritarian things that Christianity delivers…)
But – isn’t there a fundamental problem for Christians if the Bible is myth?
Don’t get me wrong – I would call myself a lover of myths.
I don’t see anything wrong with myths and belief systems that emphasize good behavior – but that’s not how Christians see Christianity, is it????
It isn’t considered a mythology to guide us – it’s considered really, really true, right?
Do we really want people to be deluded in this way, even if it makes them “good”?
(Whether it really does make people “good” is debateable, I’d say, but that’s for another day.)
— William · Dec 2, 01:04 AM · #
William, lots of things are true that one can only know the truth of by a certain kind of experience: for instance, that someone loves you. In recommending churchgoing, I’m suggesting that the truth of Christianity may be best tested in that way. I’m not talking about whether it’s good for you to practice Christianity, I’m talking about whether it’s true. And I do believe that Christianity is true, and that the Bible is truthful, and that I’m not deluded in thinking either of these things.
But I don’t think that comment threads on blogs allow for the best possible exploration of these issues! — which is why I recommended some alternative ways of pursuing the matter. There’s just no way to find out whether Christianity is true — or even plausible — without a significant investment of your time, whether in discussions or in reading or in action.
— Alan Jacobs · Dec 2, 01:41 AM · #
Don’t mean to be too brief, William! — but I have papers to grade, alas. I can’t share your enthusiasm for Whitman, but Lao Tzu is awesome.
— Alan Jacobs · Dec 2, 01:59 AM · #