(I have spent at least three days writing and re-writing this. The thoughts have been exceedingly difficult to formulate and discern, the words have been nearly insurmountable to extract. So I've simplified things and will probably try to progress one issue at a time at various, indeterminate times. Apologies for any possible/inevitable confusion caused by this rambling mess of words in this personal reflection.)
You might have noticed that instead of listing any particular belief system in the faith designation line, I simply have a shrugging emoticon. This is because for a while, I've been at a stage in which I'm really not sure how to classify my beliefs, and so when asked, I can only give a baffled shrug. Older TWeb members might recall that I used to post about Christian apologetics. I want to clarify that I didn't definitively conclude that Christianity is false; rather, I reached a point at which I felt that I couldn't definitively say that it's true. See, I had always gone by the general principle "If you have anything higher than a 50% confidence level that each aspect of Christianity is true, you're warranted in believing it." And so for years, I struggled with all these various issues and arguments, weighing them in my mind, and ultimately decided that I met that 50% criterion. But some time during that crash period when this site was down, I realized that I could no longer say that--my overall confidence level had dipped below 50%. It didn't all of a sudden drop, mind you--as I said, I struggled with various issues and arguments for years. It was a slow, long process. I do, however, firmly believe with much more than 50% confidence that if Christianity is indeed true, believers are called to worship God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength, and to witness about God in such a manner as well. And, of course, I can't really do that if my confidence level in the various propositions is below 50%, and so I cannot in good conscience continue to identify as Christian.
That said, I also cannot definitively identify as anything else. I can't say with more than 50% confidence that there is no deity in existence, or that any other conception of a deity exists, or what have you. I'm just...stuck in an awkward state of not really knowing what I believe, if that makes sense.
So in the meantime, I figured I might as well lay out a few of the issues that contributed to my confidence level dropping below the threshold.
I'm not sure how to piece together a coherent and consistent model of how "spiritual"/non-physical entities might interact with the world. I intended this post to be more of an outline than an in-depth analysis, but basically, it appears that human beings might not really have free will, that what we experience is actually illusory. For instance, as Benjamin Libet found in a famous experiment, the neural activity behind a subject's act of pushing a button actually occurs before the subject reports being aware of the conscious volitional decision to push it. Libet does allow for the possibility that a subject's consciousness allows the subject to freely veto a decision (i.e. he thinks we can freely choose to not do something), but this still seems to be at odds with the standard belief that we freely chose to actively engage in some sinful actions, or to actively do constructive, beneficial actions. It seems to me that if human beings do not genuinely have free will in committing sins or doing good works, then God cannot justly condemn or reward humans for their actions. But according to Christian theology, the very reason Jesus needed to die was precisely that human beings would otherwise have been under condemnation.
In the past, I tried to get around this issue with a "Oh, we'll just wait and see, maybe neuroscientists will find something later that allows for genuine free will," or considered options like "Maybe God, with divine foreknowledge, created a world that unfolds in a purely physical manner, but in accordance with what each individual would have freely chosen." But now, these just seem like excuses to me. They feel contrived, like implausibly convenient cop-outs.
And on that note, it ties into a larger issue...epistemelogical approach. The apologetic case for the historicity of the resurrection basically boils down to "Here are these historical facts about Jesus. The most statistically probable explanation of these facts is that he rose from the dead." But there's a substantial difference between intellectually toying with arguments and actually having a deep-seated belief in something. I can reason based on historical evidence that there probably was a religious teacher named Jesus who was crucified and died and that the tomb in which he was buried was later found empty, and that his disciples claimed to have seen him after his death. I can also reason that alternate explanations like "The disciples had mass hallucinations" might be flawed. But even if I intellectually conclude that belief in the resurrection is warranted, the overall picture in trying to synthesize all these various issues leads to a fairly convoluted and messy worldview that frankly, I can't say I truly believe. I have no proof or certainty that Jesus truly did rise from the dead and is still living at this very moment, literally as I type this post. Only vague, fuzzy weighings and attempted analyses of probabilities and whatnot. But those don't (and in retrospect, I'm not sure if they ever did) feel as if they fully align. What the head tried to hold as true didn't seem to match what was in the heart, and now the head might not hold it as true either. "Here are some intellectual propositions suggesting that God exists and Jesus rose from the dead," I'd essentially say, but then I'd come across a devotional or Facebook status from a religious friend exalting God in a prayer, and my arguments, even when there was no explicit refutation given, seemed hollow. They started to seem more like empty words than an expression of a heartfelt conviction.
And so I find myself stuck. Some issues no longer seem reconcilable, and when I try to focus on what's supposed to be the foundation, the head seems unable to harmonize with the heart. I have more to say, but trying to piece this together has exhausted me. I'll just leave this as it is for now.
You might have noticed that instead of listing any particular belief system in the faith designation line, I simply have a shrugging emoticon. This is because for a while, I've been at a stage in which I'm really not sure how to classify my beliefs, and so when asked, I can only give a baffled shrug. Older TWeb members might recall that I used to post about Christian apologetics. I want to clarify that I didn't definitively conclude that Christianity is false; rather, I reached a point at which I felt that I couldn't definitively say that it's true. See, I had always gone by the general principle "If you have anything higher than a 50% confidence level that each aspect of Christianity is true, you're warranted in believing it." And so for years, I struggled with all these various issues and arguments, weighing them in my mind, and ultimately decided that I met that 50% criterion. But some time during that crash period when this site was down, I realized that I could no longer say that--my overall confidence level had dipped below 50%. It didn't all of a sudden drop, mind you--as I said, I struggled with various issues and arguments for years. It was a slow, long process. I do, however, firmly believe with much more than 50% confidence that if Christianity is indeed true, believers are called to worship God with all their heart and soul and mind and strength, and to witness about God in such a manner as well. And, of course, I can't really do that if my confidence level in the various propositions is below 50%, and so I cannot in good conscience continue to identify as Christian.
That said, I also cannot definitively identify as anything else. I can't say with more than 50% confidence that there is no deity in existence, or that any other conception of a deity exists, or what have you. I'm just...stuck in an awkward state of not really knowing what I believe, if that makes sense.
So in the meantime, I figured I might as well lay out a few of the issues that contributed to my confidence level dropping below the threshold.
I'm not sure how to piece together a coherent and consistent model of how "spiritual"/non-physical entities might interact with the world. I intended this post to be more of an outline than an in-depth analysis, but basically, it appears that human beings might not really have free will, that what we experience is actually illusory. For instance, as Benjamin Libet found in a famous experiment, the neural activity behind a subject's act of pushing a button actually occurs before the subject reports being aware of the conscious volitional decision to push it. Libet does allow for the possibility that a subject's consciousness allows the subject to freely veto a decision (i.e. he thinks we can freely choose to not do something), but this still seems to be at odds with the standard belief that we freely chose to actively engage in some sinful actions, or to actively do constructive, beneficial actions. It seems to me that if human beings do not genuinely have free will in committing sins or doing good works, then God cannot justly condemn or reward humans for their actions. But according to Christian theology, the very reason Jesus needed to die was precisely that human beings would otherwise have been under condemnation.
In the past, I tried to get around this issue with a "Oh, we'll just wait and see, maybe neuroscientists will find something later that allows for genuine free will," or considered options like "Maybe God, with divine foreknowledge, created a world that unfolds in a purely physical manner, but in accordance with what each individual would have freely chosen." But now, these just seem like excuses to me. They feel contrived, like implausibly convenient cop-outs.
And on that note, it ties into a larger issue...epistemelogical approach. The apologetic case for the historicity of the resurrection basically boils down to "Here are these historical facts about Jesus. The most statistically probable explanation of these facts is that he rose from the dead." But there's a substantial difference between intellectually toying with arguments and actually having a deep-seated belief in something. I can reason based on historical evidence that there probably was a religious teacher named Jesus who was crucified and died and that the tomb in which he was buried was later found empty, and that his disciples claimed to have seen him after his death. I can also reason that alternate explanations like "The disciples had mass hallucinations" might be flawed. But even if I intellectually conclude that belief in the resurrection is warranted, the overall picture in trying to synthesize all these various issues leads to a fairly convoluted and messy worldview that frankly, I can't say I truly believe. I have no proof or certainty that Jesus truly did rise from the dead and is still living at this very moment, literally as I type this post. Only vague, fuzzy weighings and attempted analyses of probabilities and whatnot. But those don't (and in retrospect, I'm not sure if they ever did) feel as if they fully align. What the head tried to hold as true didn't seem to match what was in the heart, and now the head might not hold it as true either. "Here are some intellectual propositions suggesting that God exists and Jesus rose from the dead," I'd essentially say, but then I'd come across a devotional or Facebook status from a religious friend exalting God in a prayer, and my arguments, even when there was no explicit refutation given, seemed hollow. They started to seem more like empty words than an expression of a heartfelt conviction.
And so I find myself stuck. Some issues no longer seem reconcilable, and when I try to focus on what's supposed to be the foundation, the head seems unable to harmonize with the heart. I have more to say, but trying to piece this together has exhausted me. I'll just leave this as it is for now.
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