There are indeed many permutations, I just struggle with the logic that God can exist, but something is still not possible. Even with a watchmaker God.
That seems to me only to hold if you assume that god (/a god) is by definition omnipotent and you also take a certain kind conception of omnipotence :) On other approaches you could believe eg that god created the universe but also that god couldn't make time go backwards
Thanks, I can understand your point from a philosophical perspective. Removing God's omnipotence from your beliefs is understandable. I personally have wrestled with the Problem of Evil, not enough to dispense with his Omnipotence, but I can understand how you could get there.
However just because God isn't Omnipotent, doesn't mean he definitely doesn't have some power, enough for a Virgin Birth and Resurrection. Indeed, lots of weird stuff could still be within the power of any spiritual being.
Hey Rebecca, I enjoyed reading your article, and I empathize with your position since my father is in a similar circumstance. Just two things:
1. Never feel like you are free-riding in a Church service: All the beauty you talk about is a gift to us from God. These gifts are public in the best sense since God's grace is infinite - you being in a Church does not take away the experience of God from anyone else.
2. Good Reads: You're right, the whole essence of the Christian faith boils down ot the Resurrection - after that, the Virgin Birth isn't so hard to believe. Some contemporary philosophers offer really good defences of Christianity; the best I've read is Peter Kreeft, a professor at Boston College. I think you'd enjoy his "Between Heaven and Hell"; it's a Socratic dialogue and an all-around fun read. If you're interested in exploring the intersection of religion and philosophy, I recommend the book and Kreeft's other works.
I strongly agree with 1. She should go. Just as I (rarely) do. (Sermon quality is really down.) - I accept that Brae Sadler and the church(es) claim "the whole essence of the Christian faith boils down the Resurrection ". Sure, you'd say so. I don't believe in the literal resurrection. And I strongly doubt deep down most "Christian churchgoers" do. Most of them like to go to church. Did anyone ever join Christianity because they found the catechism so convincing? - Not even most of the Lutheran priests in Germany seem to really actually believe in literal resurrection- even the few straight male ones of them. And some of the Catholic priests seem to be too smart for this one, too. (Lutheran priest here consider the virginity-stuff a silly translation mistake. Which it is. - A Catholic might find salvation in reading Eugen Drewermann (Catholic priest, Professor and psychotherapist, esp. "Dein Name ist wie der Geschmack des Lebens"). I personally believe in Jesus resurrection as willingly as I do believe in Osiris' resurrection. And do care as much. Bryan Caplan just gave an interview on Brutal Truth where he explains why he doubts the sincerity of Muslims and Christians when they confess their faith in an afterlife. lol
I had a very similar experience. At some point in my life, I decided I did not believe in the supernatural, therefore, I did not believe in god. If I did not believe in god, it was wrong to call my self a Christian.
I do, however, try to live by Christian morals, because love, forgiveness, and charity are good values god or not.
Your piece reads to me as the near inverse of David Bentley Hart's "Confessions of an Irreligious Christian" from last year. He believes the resurrection and gets almost nothing from the practice.
Regarding the historical resurrection question, I got a lot out of reading Dale Allison's 2021 book on the topic. He doesn't oversell the evidence. Recommended.
I don't know if this will help your contemplation but here goes. This is a modern rendering of Thomas Kempis' 'The Imitation of Christ' written in 1400s.... ´Replace his use of Scripture with 'going to church'...If you wish to truly benefit from reading Scripture, approach it with humility, simplicity, and sincerity. Do not read in order to appear knowledgeable. Listen gladly to the words of the saints, and receive with reverence the teachings of the ancient fathers. Their sayings were not spoken lightly, but with deep purpose'
Wow, this resonates with my experience as a former Christian and articulates my feelings about attending church clearer than I’ve been able to. I still attend church as it’s important to my wife. My kids go as well and I think on some level it’s net good for them for various reasons. By donating money to the church I feel less bad about not contributing my personal faith to the community. Oftentimes I’m the one motivating everyone to make sure we’re not late for church or introducing myself to a new face and getting them connected (which I find pretty hilarious.) I’m also up front with others about no longer identifying as a Christian. No one really tries to convert me back. Maybe that’s a concern? There’s awkward moments for sure since everyone assumes I’m a Christian along with them. In any case I usually break the tension by telling them someone needs to be able to call emergency services should the communion wine be poisoned. 🤷♂️
A few great quotes because why try to restate what has been put so brilliantly:
"If there is a true way to relate to the miraculous, its ‘proof’ exists as much in the moral and experiential transformation it produces as in any fact that justifies the claims it makes. Christians don’t just make the case for miracles with arguments, they make it with their lives."
"I kind of second this, especially the last part, and I think it reflects a wider truth about Christianity and faith we are inclined to lose sight of in the age of online apologetics. Thomas Aquinas is supposed to have been asked at the end of his life to carry on his writing (this report is supposedly third hand so he might not have said it, but anyway) and having seemingly had some kind of religious experience, responded “all that I have written seems so much as straw compared to the things that have been revealed to me.” The point is, all the philosophical arguments or miracle claims and so on aren’t the actual thing, they are barely at the gateway to the thing, and the Christian who is concerned for you in a time of your life when no one else is, the old woman who spends her evenings in prayer, the believer who shows you a kindness they don’t need to; they are a far better witness than me or anyone else you will encounter in online apologetics who writes endless words in defence of Christian belief or thinks they can win you over with a one two punch argument or a YouTube short. I am inclined to forget this mid-online debate or when I consider my writing of too great importance, as we all are inclined to. First “go and do likewise.”
Both from Matt Whiteley, who is great.
Also loved this piece from the wonderful James Taylor Forman:
Despite being raised in the Lutheran Missouri Synod (mom was devout; we regularly attended), I've never felt any reverence from attending services.
I didn't stop thinking of myself as Christian until I was in my early twenties, but before that, I don't recall spending any time thinking about religion.
I actively dislike the experience on the rare occasions I attend weddings and funerals.
But, like you, Christian morals seem close to right to me.
A little over a year ago, my spouse and I decided to start attending church again. The biggest drivers behind our decision were the desire for community and for a place where our kids would be taught virtues. Neither of us was a believer, so we settled on going to a Universalist Unitarian church. It was not an easy experience to re-enter a place of worship, but what kept me coming back, besides the goals above, was the music. The church had a pipe organ. No headphones, however expensive, can replicate the feeling of 'Toccata and Fugue in D minor' as it encompasses a space. I could feel the deep notes in my body. Then, singing along with the choir, hymnals open, the communal aspects of connection. "We are with one voice, and with our voice we seek to transcend." I cannot find another place where I can replicate that experience for free on a weekly basis. For a variety of reasons, we stopped attending the church last month. So far, the only thing I miss is the music.
I have some similar sentiments. Yesterday I went to church with my father for the first time in a while. I still have completely different epistemics from the others there but it made me think that maybe for someone like me church must not be about believing, but about shutting off my disbelief for a while and just immersing myself in the emotion and ignoring the intellectual challenges.
You are not a free rider, you are yet another person struggling with faith. If you want to practice Christianity earnestly despite not believing its propositions are true in the empirical-rational sense, you need a permission structure that resolves the dissonance. One such structure is the view that Christianity and all religious traditions are emergent psycho-social phenomena, or even technologies, whose function is to facilitate personal wholeness and social coordination. But it only functions to the extent that people act as if it's true. Much of the tradition emerged before the Enlightenment, and people didn't have such a clean distinction between metaphor and physical reality back then. The metaphors and symbolism still hold deep wisdom and significance, and throwing them out because of misguided empirical-rational sensibilities is reckless. They give you time-tested vocabularies and practices to make sense of your purpose and struggles in life. Consider that worship and prayer are ways of examining and orienting your relationship with reality, with God, at a visceral level. You can participate in a living tradition that has shaped and guided fellow churchgoers across the world, and those who came before you, stretching all the way back to prehistory. This functionalist view was disorienting for me at first, but now I have a much greater appreciation of the faith than when I thought it was just a list of propositions and rules. And that is a manifestation of God's grace.
Hey Rebecca. This was a good read. I had 2 thoughts, both of which are difficult to fully articulate in a substack comment, but I will try my best.
(1) There seems to be a difference between wanting your beliefs to be the "result of good reasoning" and wanting your beliefs to be in accordance with (or at least compatible with) "good reasoning." I would not hesitate to say I want the latter, but I am not too sure about the former. The reason is this: I do not think that my own adherence to Christian dogmas (like the resurrection or the virgin birth) is the result of good reasoning per-se. It is not the result of my intellect submitting to an incontrovertible proof, working from premise to premise, and arriving at a necessary conclusion. Rather, these beliefs of mine are the result of faith. And faith is contingent on grace, on supernatural help; not reason, not even reason firing on all cylinders.
The point is that authentic Christian faith is not always the result of certain things falling into place in our intellect. Still, I would consider my beliefs to be in perfect accordance with good reasoning. St. Anselm coined the phrase "faith seeking understanding" as a way to understand the role of reason in theological thinking, and I think it's relevant here.
So, in brief, church isn't necessarily the place we go to discover new arguments or reinforce syllogisms in support of the Christian faith. Church, church proper, is what disposes us to receive and sustain the faith. This is largely the end of the sacred art you find so beautiful. Church is a source of grace. My conclusion, then, is that maybe you should come to church not to be convinced, but to be disposed.
(2) I am not quite sure what the criterion for “good reasoning” is. Perhaps you can render my first thought null and void if you clarify this. Because there is a sense in which my Christian faith is the result of “good reasoning,” insofar as we qualify what we mean by “good reasoning.” I am not aware of any proofs of the Christian faith (proofs in the strict sense). What I am aware of is an incredible amount of evidence for the Christian faith. I would argue that beliefs that emerge both out of logical proof and substantial evidence are well-reasoned. I bet you could agree with this. The difficulty, in your case, seems to be the fact that the evidence in question seems to contradict empirical proofs of the impossibility of virgin births or resurrections.
So, my question: is there any kind of evidence you could possibly be presented with that would “override” (so to speak) the doubt that flows from certain empirical commitments? It seems like a person with your disposition (not necessarily yourself) could have a road to Damascus moment, be struck prostrate by a blinding vision of the risen Christ, and then go about his day as normal because he knows for a fact that men cannot rise from the dead. This, however, strikes me as profoundly unreasonable. Therefore, there is a point at which “good reason” urges us to abandon our doubts rooted in empirical commitments and accept a new reality that can still account for those same empirical commitments. I am just wondering where you stand here.
"better conclusions about whether virgins can give birth and whether men can come back from the dead"
I think most Christians would agree that Virgins can't give birth, and that men don't rise from the dead; with the major caveat that God's miracles can make anything possible. If you don't believe in Miracles, that's fine; but it seems strange to frame it with specific complaints about the incarnation or resurrection.
My experience with philosophy leads me to believe that Miracles are more likely to be possible than not. Also the historical evidence points to something extraordinary happening to Jesus of Nazareth. So I lean towards the resurrection is more likely than the case that Jesus followers just spread the word for reasons other than witnessing a miracle. I don't feel like a phony because I don't have 100% confidence, though I do avoid the churches that preach with a great deal of certainty.
The appropriate symbolic gesture for non-believers attending a church service is to refrain from taking communion, not to refrain from attending. As long as you do that, you will have satisfied the requirements of courtesy and respect as Christians see them. But I think that I would have difficulty appreciating the aesthetic and moral qualities of the service if I did not believe in the Resurrection.
Thank you for being honest about your beliefs and not claim to still be a Christian when you aren't.
However I don't understand your reasoning for not being a Christian.
If God doesn't exist, then of course the Virgin birth and resurrection are not true.
If God does exist, then anything is possible, including the Virgin Birth and Resurrection.
To argue that you can't believe in the Virgin Birth and Resurrection, and therefore you stopped believing in God is to reverse the causality.
Best of luck on your journey.
I pretty much still believe in a creator god.. or at least I think it's rational to do so. There are many permutations available here!
There are indeed many permutations, I just struggle with the logic that God can exist, but something is still not possible. Even with a watchmaker God.
What am I missing?
That seems to me only to hold if you assume that god (/a god) is by definition omnipotent and you also take a certain kind conception of omnipotence :) On other approaches you could believe eg that god created the universe but also that god couldn't make time go backwards
Thanks, I can understand your point from a philosophical perspective. Removing God's omnipotence from your beliefs is understandable. I personally have wrestled with the Problem of Evil, not enough to dispense with his Omnipotence, but I can understand how you could get there.
However just because God isn't Omnipotent, doesn't mean he definitely doesn't have some power, enough for a Virgin Birth and Resurrection. Indeed, lots of weird stuff could still be within the power of any spiritual being.
Hey Rebecca, I enjoyed reading your article, and I empathize with your position since my father is in a similar circumstance. Just two things:
1. Never feel like you are free-riding in a Church service: All the beauty you talk about is a gift to us from God. These gifts are public in the best sense since God's grace is infinite - you being in a Church does not take away the experience of God from anyone else.
2. Good Reads: You're right, the whole essence of the Christian faith boils down ot the Resurrection - after that, the Virgin Birth isn't so hard to believe. Some contemporary philosophers offer really good defences of Christianity; the best I've read is Peter Kreeft, a professor at Boston College. I think you'd enjoy his "Between Heaven and Hell"; it's a Socratic dialogue and an all-around fun read. If you're interested in exploring the intersection of religion and philosophy, I recommend the book and Kreeft's other works.
Thanks Brae!
I strongly agree with 1. She should go. Just as I (rarely) do. (Sermon quality is really down.) - I accept that Brae Sadler and the church(es) claim "the whole essence of the Christian faith boils down the Resurrection ". Sure, you'd say so. I don't believe in the literal resurrection. And I strongly doubt deep down most "Christian churchgoers" do. Most of them like to go to church. Did anyone ever join Christianity because they found the catechism so convincing? - Not even most of the Lutheran priests in Germany seem to really actually believe in literal resurrection- even the few straight male ones of them. And some of the Catholic priests seem to be too smart for this one, too. (Lutheran priest here consider the virginity-stuff a silly translation mistake. Which it is. - A Catholic might find salvation in reading Eugen Drewermann (Catholic priest, Professor and psychotherapist, esp. "Dein Name ist wie der Geschmack des Lebens"). I personally believe in Jesus resurrection as willingly as I do believe in Osiris' resurrection. And do care as much. Bryan Caplan just gave an interview on Brutal Truth where he explains why he doubts the sincerity of Muslims and Christians when they confess their faith in an afterlife. lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI7kpLeiIdA&t=1010s
Churches: keep your liturgy an experience. Or lose your audience and live from administrating the huge wealth you gathered from the generations gone.
Rebeccas of this world: join me for Easter mass and let us sing the hymns as they were meant to be sung. Jesus has come to save the sinners.
I had a very similar experience. At some point in my life, I decided I did not believe in the supernatural, therefore, I did not believe in god. If I did not believe in god, it was wrong to call my self a Christian.
I do, however, try to live by Christian morals, because love, forgiveness, and charity are good values god or not.
Thank you for this post, it spoke to me.
Thanks so much
Your piece reads to me as the near inverse of David Bentley Hart's "Confessions of an Irreligious Christian" from last year. He believes the resurrection and gets almost nothing from the practice.
Regarding the historical resurrection question, I got a lot out of reading Dale Allison's 2021 book on the topic. He doesn't oversell the evidence. Recommended.
thanks!
I don't know if this will help your contemplation but here goes. This is a modern rendering of Thomas Kempis' 'The Imitation of Christ' written in 1400s.... ´Replace his use of Scripture with 'going to church'...If you wish to truly benefit from reading Scripture, approach it with humility, simplicity, and sincerity. Do not read in order to appear knowledgeable. Listen gladly to the words of the saints, and receive with reverence the teachings of the ancient fathers. Their sayings were not spoken lightly, but with deep purpose'
thanks!
Wow, this resonates with my experience as a former Christian and articulates my feelings about attending church clearer than I’ve been able to. I still attend church as it’s important to my wife. My kids go as well and I think on some level it’s net good for them for various reasons. By donating money to the church I feel less bad about not contributing my personal faith to the community. Oftentimes I’m the one motivating everyone to make sure we’re not late for church or introducing myself to a new face and getting them connected (which I find pretty hilarious.) I’m also up front with others about no longer identifying as a Christian. No one really tries to convert me back. Maybe that’s a concern? There’s awkward moments for sure since everyone assumes I’m a Christian along with them. In any case I usually break the tension by telling them someone needs to be able to call emergency services should the communion wine be poisoned. 🤷♂️
A few great quotes because why try to restate what has been put so brilliantly:
"If there is a true way to relate to the miraculous, its ‘proof’ exists as much in the moral and experiential transformation it produces as in any fact that justifies the claims it makes. Christians don’t just make the case for miracles with arguments, they make it with their lives."
"I kind of second this, especially the last part, and I think it reflects a wider truth about Christianity and faith we are inclined to lose sight of in the age of online apologetics. Thomas Aquinas is supposed to have been asked at the end of his life to carry on his writing (this report is supposedly third hand so he might not have said it, but anyway) and having seemingly had some kind of religious experience, responded “all that I have written seems so much as straw compared to the things that have been revealed to me.” The point is, all the philosophical arguments or miracle claims and so on aren’t the actual thing, they are barely at the gateway to the thing, and the Christian who is concerned for you in a time of your life when no one else is, the old woman who spends her evenings in prayer, the believer who shows you a kindness they don’t need to; they are a far better witness than me or anyone else you will encounter in online apologetics who writes endless words in defence of Christian belief or thinks they can win you over with a one two punch argument or a YouTube short. I am inclined to forget this mid-online debate or when I consider my writing of too great importance, as we all are inclined to. First “go and do likewise.”
Both from Matt Whiteley, who is great.
Also loved this piece from the wonderful James Taylor Forman:
https://www.taylorforeman.com/p/why-i-am-christian-again
One of the great ironies of faith is that, although it can be defended through argument, it cannot be fully attained through reading alone.
thank you!
Despite being raised in the Lutheran Missouri Synod (mom was devout; we regularly attended), I've never felt any reverence from attending services.
I didn't stop thinking of myself as Christian until I was in my early twenties, but before that, I don't recall spending any time thinking about religion.
I actively dislike the experience on the rare occasions I attend weddings and funerals.
But, like you, Christian morals seem close to right to me.
A little over a year ago, my spouse and I decided to start attending church again. The biggest drivers behind our decision were the desire for community and for a place where our kids would be taught virtues. Neither of us was a believer, so we settled on going to a Universalist Unitarian church. It was not an easy experience to re-enter a place of worship, but what kept me coming back, besides the goals above, was the music. The church had a pipe organ. No headphones, however expensive, can replicate the feeling of 'Toccata and Fugue in D minor' as it encompasses a space. I could feel the deep notes in my body. Then, singing along with the choir, hymnals open, the communal aspects of connection. "We are with one voice, and with our voice we seek to transcend." I cannot find another place where I can replicate that experience for free on a weekly basis. For a variety of reasons, we stopped attending the church last month. So far, the only thing I miss is the music.
The music is so wonderful isn't it..
I have some similar sentiments. Yesterday I went to church with my father for the first time in a while. I still have completely different epistemics from the others there but it made me think that maybe for someone like me church must not be about believing, but about shutting off my disbelief for a while and just immersing myself in the emotion and ignoring the intellectual challenges.
I’m sure you’re familiar with
‘ Who haunt Parnassus but to please their Ear,
Not mend their Minds; as some to Church repair,
Not for the Doctrine, but the Musick there.’
You are not a free rider, you are yet another person struggling with faith. If you want to practice Christianity earnestly despite not believing its propositions are true in the empirical-rational sense, you need a permission structure that resolves the dissonance. One such structure is the view that Christianity and all religious traditions are emergent psycho-social phenomena, or even technologies, whose function is to facilitate personal wholeness and social coordination. But it only functions to the extent that people act as if it's true. Much of the tradition emerged before the Enlightenment, and people didn't have such a clean distinction between metaphor and physical reality back then. The metaphors and symbolism still hold deep wisdom and significance, and throwing them out because of misguided empirical-rational sensibilities is reckless. They give you time-tested vocabularies and practices to make sense of your purpose and struggles in life. Consider that worship and prayer are ways of examining and orienting your relationship with reality, with God, at a visceral level. You can participate in a living tradition that has shaped and guided fellow churchgoers across the world, and those who came before you, stretching all the way back to prehistory. This functionalist view was disorienting for me at first, but now I have a much greater appreciation of the faith than when I thought it was just a list of propositions and rules. And that is a manifestation of God's grace.
Hey Rebecca. This was a good read. I had 2 thoughts, both of which are difficult to fully articulate in a substack comment, but I will try my best.
(1) There seems to be a difference between wanting your beliefs to be the "result of good reasoning" and wanting your beliefs to be in accordance with (or at least compatible with) "good reasoning." I would not hesitate to say I want the latter, but I am not too sure about the former. The reason is this: I do not think that my own adherence to Christian dogmas (like the resurrection or the virgin birth) is the result of good reasoning per-se. It is not the result of my intellect submitting to an incontrovertible proof, working from premise to premise, and arriving at a necessary conclusion. Rather, these beliefs of mine are the result of faith. And faith is contingent on grace, on supernatural help; not reason, not even reason firing on all cylinders.
The point is that authentic Christian faith is not always the result of certain things falling into place in our intellect. Still, I would consider my beliefs to be in perfect accordance with good reasoning. St. Anselm coined the phrase "faith seeking understanding" as a way to understand the role of reason in theological thinking, and I think it's relevant here.
So, in brief, church isn't necessarily the place we go to discover new arguments or reinforce syllogisms in support of the Christian faith. Church, church proper, is what disposes us to receive and sustain the faith. This is largely the end of the sacred art you find so beautiful. Church is a source of grace. My conclusion, then, is that maybe you should come to church not to be convinced, but to be disposed.
(2) I am not quite sure what the criterion for “good reasoning” is. Perhaps you can render my first thought null and void if you clarify this. Because there is a sense in which my Christian faith is the result of “good reasoning,” insofar as we qualify what we mean by “good reasoning.” I am not aware of any proofs of the Christian faith (proofs in the strict sense). What I am aware of is an incredible amount of evidence for the Christian faith. I would argue that beliefs that emerge both out of logical proof and substantial evidence are well-reasoned. I bet you could agree with this. The difficulty, in your case, seems to be the fact that the evidence in question seems to contradict empirical proofs of the impossibility of virgin births or resurrections.
So, my question: is there any kind of evidence you could possibly be presented with that would “override” (so to speak) the doubt that flows from certain empirical commitments? It seems like a person with your disposition (not necessarily yourself) could have a road to Damascus moment, be struck prostrate by a blinding vision of the risen Christ, and then go about his day as normal because he knows for a fact that men cannot rise from the dead. This, however, strikes me as profoundly unreasonable. Therefore, there is a point at which “good reason” urges us to abandon our doubts rooted in empirical commitments and accept a new reality that can still account for those same empirical commitments. I am just wondering where you stand here.
Anyways, this was a lot. Sorry to bug.
Atheist/secular universal unitarian congregations are the solution to this!
"better conclusions about whether virgins can give birth and whether men can come back from the dead"
I think most Christians would agree that Virgins can't give birth, and that men don't rise from the dead; with the major caveat that God's miracles can make anything possible. If you don't believe in Miracles, that's fine; but it seems strange to frame it with specific complaints about the incarnation or resurrection.
My experience with philosophy leads me to believe that Miracles are more likely to be possible than not. Also the historical evidence points to something extraordinary happening to Jesus of Nazareth. So I lean towards the resurrection is more likely than the case that Jesus followers just spread the word for reasons other than witnessing a miracle. I don't feel like a phony because I don't have 100% confidence, though I do avoid the churches that preach with a great deal of certainty.
The appropriate symbolic gesture for non-believers attending a church service is to refrain from taking communion, not to refrain from attending. As long as you do that, you will have satisfied the requirements of courtesy and respect as Christians see them. But I think that I would have difficulty appreciating the aesthetic and moral qualities of the service if I did not believe in the Resurrection.