I don’t usually respond to letters from readers . . . because I have a day job and can hardly do all the things that it requires, but this one was interesting and captured the ideas in many letters and questions I get. It was also better written than most and so does not represent a “straw man.”

The following is unedited and only the name has been removed.

My comments are marked with “I respond.”

My letter writer begins:

I read your article published on California Republic entitled Ivy Schools Cause Strange Ignorance. I too agree that philosophy and religious studies would enhance student perspectives, if not appreciation, of history, art and culture.

I respond:

Parents should note that no reasonable person can believe that ignorance of intelligent religion is a good idea. If your son or daughter is going to a college where religious discussion is ignored, then he or she is getting a very incomplete education.

The letter writer continues:

However, possessing of such a broad
perspective as you appear to, you must concede that other individuals will come to sometimes dramatically different conclusions than yourself even when presented with the same body of information.

I respond:

Hurrah! That is the fun of living . . . we get to inquire for ourselves! It is true of any phenomenon or state of affairs that people can come to dramatically different conclusions . . . not just religion!

My Christian faith teaches me to fear no question, no idea, and to joyfully follow the argument wherever it leads.

I am not sure what that has to do with the rest of the letter! The fact that a topic is difficult, or the subject of intense debate, does not make all opinions equal or prove that “nobody knows anything” about it. . . just raises the interest in it!

The letter writer continues:

You speak for the Christian God with an earned measure of authority but I think you will agree that no measure of work will earn one the opportunity, much less the capacity, to be God’s mouthpiece with the final word on what God is thinking and intending. Your own thoughts and intentions are, of course, a different story but you cannot, in good faith, credit those as God’s own.

I respond:

This is a common confusion. One can be uncertain, but still have a degree of knowledge. I am not certain that my wife loves me (I could be wrong), but I have enough evidence to base my life on it.

Of course, I am never sure I am right and that I know God’s will or what is true of Him.

That is why I must always approach any issue with a measure of humility. I could be wrong.

However, the letter writer may be confusing humility with the need for total uncertainty. There are many things about which I am not sure (beyond any doubt) about which I am sure beyond a reasonable doubt.

Best reason and best experience help me to know what God expects in certain situations. It would be arrogant of me to deny the logic of arguments and experience to cling to uncertainty in the face of the evidence.

While I cannot be sure, I can still be sure enough to “know” in any meaningful sense of the term . . .

Of course, even about these things (I know), I am still open to competing points of view!

My letter writer continues:

I know from experience that you do not
speak for the Gods of other Christians, the vast majority of whom seem to be far less studied in the Holy Bible or the history of what they claim is their religion, never mind other religions or systems of thought. Rather than commit themselves to such intense introspective investigation they are, instead, conditioned to listen to authorities such as yourself, many of whom might well be charlatans who exploit them.

I respond:

I don’t know if this is true. My experience of religious believers would indicate that they are a thoughtful, well-read, and introspective lot . . . but let’s assume my writer is correct.

If so, then he would be making a fairly trivial observation:

The majority is less well informed than experts in any area of knowledge. As a result, it is reasonable to trust experts.

Who doesn’t do this?

I know little about the higher Maths, so I trust experts that I know and have reason to believe are sincere and well qualified.

It would not, therefore, be weird or irrational for most folk to do the same thing in philosophy or theology. Folk do the best they can.

Of course, experts can be frauds or hum-bugs, but then what is a man to do? Become an expert in everything?

This is simply an argument for care in choosing authorities . . . not for something different about religious knowledge.

Is my (relative) ignorance of auto mechanics an opening for frauds and con-artists? Of course. . . and so I choose my mechanic with some care. Christians would be wise to do the same . . . as atheists should as well.

Atheists are often not better served by their gurus (see the dreadful arguments of Dawkins . . . easy pickings for the Christian apologist) than Christians are by the TV evangelist.

My writer continues:

If they read their Bibles they might apply Jesus’ litmus tests to such persons but it’s so much easier and more pleasant to simply believe what they preach while turning a blind eye to their their practices.

I respond:

This is wrong, but at least my world-view (traditional Christianity) has an explanation for why people are irrational. It is difficult to devise one on Darwinian grounds!

My reader continues:

After all, who actually wants to believe that God might be so indiscriminate or apathetic as to allow “bad things” to happen to “good people” regardless of what they believe or disbelieve about God?

I reply:

Actually, many of us would prefer (if we were just picking a view based on preference) that this were NOT true. We wish there was no All Seeing Eye, no Final Judgment, and that we could just do as we please . . . and if we escape earthly judgment, then all would be well.

Sadly, we cannot believe it . . . because it is not true.

To pretend that theism is picked by the believer because it is attractive gets rid of the fact that it was atheism that was founded to get rid of the fear of the gods . . .

The Epicureans (rightly) feared the dark possibilities of the after life so much that they got rid of it. . . and banished their gods. After all, “interested gods” might clobber us. . . and a loving God makes demands on our behavior.

It is simply a common error to think folk are theists because it is comforting. The All Seeing Eye of God is frightening to sinful man, not comforting . . . at least at first!

My writer continues:

No, it feels good to be special, to be
part of and favored by something greater than ourselves and we want to believe anyone who reinforces these comforts — which is what you do in this article, at least if the reader is Christian — especially when we grow accustomed to them.

I reply:

It can feel good to be part of something greater than ourselves . . . but that does not make it false. Atheists get a great deal of comfort (I assume) from their noble “courage” in standing together in an empty universe . . . part of a human cause greather than themselves. The fact that they get comfort and even self-satisfaction from their atheism is (on the whole) something good about it . . . not a reason to reject it.

Sometimes people irrationally believe that a pleasant idea must be wrong or suspect!

In the same way, the fact that theism comforts some is not good reason to reject it.

My writer continues:

Atheists like Heather McDonald (assuming she is) may not understand the symbolic rituals and their very real emotional connections that bind together a religious community in fellowship.

I reply:

In a liberally educated adult in the West (such as Heather McDonald), that is unacceptable! I understand secularism since I was trained to do so. . . why can’t she do the same?

My letter writer continues:

You, in no less a condescending manner, hinted at this but still indulged God as a separate and distinct entity that you were describing the motivations of.

I reply:

That is because He is a “separate and distinct entity” . . . I actually have more reason to believe this than in the existence of the letter writer!

My letter writer (assuming he is not a product of my imagination!) continues:

And that separateness, I think, is what many atheists struggle to understand. Why would a distinct, all-powerful being be so concerned with and share the
opinions of the believer who narrates and speaks on behalf of this being, neither of which it appears able to do for itself despite being all-powerful?

I reply:

It is rather that we attempt to share His opinions. We gather those opinions from Writings that we have sufficient reason to believe to be His, from His creation, and from His Voice in our hearts.

Of course, we could be mistaken in all of this . . . but there is no good reason to think so of which I am aware.

I assume by “not speaking” the writer means “audibly” or “visibly” to humans . . . but surely that is very limiting to God since the human eye sees so little of the spectrum and the ear hears so little of the music of the cosmos! Indeed, God speaks to our souls . . . since He is a spirit this makes most sense.

How can we be sure that it is His voice and not our own? First, we must compare what He seems to say with reality (as we know it). Second, we check what He says against what the Writings that contain the most verified of His thoughts.

All of this is not odd . . . or unusual, but the way we check all of our internal experiences (such as love!) to make sure they are sane.

My letter writer continues:

And the atheist attacks that idea with all the effectiveness of putting an imaginary friend into a head lock which, naturally, can be very frustrating, even enraging for some. It doesn’t make sense to an atheist in much the same way it doesn’t make sense to a Christian that there would be no God, something nonsensical is irritating and must
therefore be made sense of.

I reply:

It makes sense that God is not real, it just isn’t true. Does falsehood have to irritate? I think not.

I am not irritated by atheism . . . just atheism that has not bothered to do even basic research or attempted to understand a belief system about which one is speaking and writing.

I have greatly admired many atheists . . . but I cannot admire a man or woman who attacks a view he or she does not try to understand.

Any atheist is free to challenge my beliefs about God . . . and about those we can argue.

My letter writer continues:

In my own efforts to make sense of this separateness, a deity is not distinct from its believer, without which the deity would not be identified or expressed.

I reply:

In fact, a combination of arguments and experiences indicates that the Divine is different from the believer. If there were no men, then God would still exist . . . though there would not be a great deal of human conversation about Him!

Why believe the Divine is just within the believer? The simple explanation for the sense of Someone outside of oneself speaking is that Someone is there . . . it will require proof that it is “just in our heads.”

The simplest explanation regarding this email writer (about whom I know nothing beyond the email) is that he exists and writes sincerely. This could be wrong, but the burden of proof is one the person who asserts to me that he is a imaginary or having me on!

My reader replies:

It’s the connection shared among believers in
their mutual belief in this deity that makes the deity a part of reality.

I reply:

This is asserted without argument. Theists have their own experience of the Divine (which seems different in kind from other experiences), philosophical arguments for His existence, and the experiences of others on which to draw in order to assert that God is not just in their heads.

God is real and is not silent. Simply to assume this is not so without giving an argument is irrational pride . . . which I assume my reader wishes to avoid.

My reader continues:

One might argue that the powerful, intangible relationship between and binding believers is, itself, the deity; the very being that, in fact, does acknowledge prayer and does care for its members, its children if you will. In which case, internet prayer circles would make sense and caring for oneself as a part of a greater whole one shares with others seems not
so narcissistic after all.

I reply:

This is, of course, one possible view of God . . . but I think not the best. I would refer the writer to the work of a former professor of mine Ed Wierenga or to the Oxford don Richard Swinburne for more on the rational coherence of theism.

My letter writer continues:

Again, I think you hinted at this idea but relating what God wants without qualifying your statements as your own opinions, educated as they may be, is a lot like rattling off the demands on a ransom note from the sock eating monster who lives under our beds.

I reply:

Anyone who asserts anything as a “truth” is (of course) giving his opinion. In fact, that statement is my opinion! And the last statement is my opinion . . . and it is my opinion that it is my opinion. I am not sure all of this is very helpful!

Either a reader understands that anything one writes (when not being ironic) is the writer’s opinion . . . or overly long blog posts (!) are going to get infinitely longer.

If you have evidence that a sock-eating monster lives under your bed, if that is the best explanation of your losing socks . . . and if their good arguments independent of your experience and in fact of human experience (some sock-eating monster equivalent to the Ontological argument for God’s existence) then I will take your analogy seriously.

However, the Aquinas of Sock-Eating Monsters does not exist.

You see I can sympathetically look at rational ideas with which I do not agree (for example Hegel’s) . . . and see their attraction.

Atheists like Heather McDonald do not seem so charitable and charity is (after) a philosophical virtue!

My reader continues:

Sure it appeals to other sock-eating monster believers but it does nothing to seriously answer the
questions and concerns that someone like Heather McDonald raises and I hope you can at least understand how crazy the notion is that there is sock-eating monster, much less that someone happens to know what it wants, even if you find it unacceptable to compare such a thing to God and I
doubt you would seriously accept such an explanation as an adult. Apply the way you feel about the sock-eating monster to God and you have some idea how Heather McDonald probably feels about God, naturally. How then will you address her concerns?

Thank you for your time.

I conclude:

My appeal to Heather McDonald was not that she should accept my experience or arguments on my authority . . . but that any educated adult should know religious arguments well enough to refute them. Ms. McDonald does not know even basic arguments (which are not experiences) nor does she read the experience of her neighbors at all charitably.

That is just too bad.

This is the very problem with Ms. McDonald’s education (and perhaps yours?). To compare arguments for traditional Christian theism (which after all I did not invent) to arguments for your sock-monster is (just perhaps?) a bad analogy.

Refutations of theism should at least be sophisticated enough to deal with Augustine (4th century AD) . . . and show awareness of the topic about which one is writing (in this case prayer).

If I claim to refute atheism (something I am not doing in this post), it would be wrong to do so against arguments that no actual sophisticated atheist makes.

I don’t expect Ms. McDonald (0r you) to agree with these arguments or relate to my experience (if it is not like your own), but I do think you can understand.

The arguments (after all) are open to anyone . . . and I can imagine the experience of being an atheist (and sympathize with it . . . at times wishing it true!).

It would be sad to believe that non-Christians have a failure of creative imagination or logical skills in following arguments! In fact, I don’t believe it . . . since I have such beloved friends who are not Christian theists, but most public atheism in this era seems to have declined dreadfully. In a large movement (like Christianity), one must accept degenerate theistic claims, but American atheism is very small and both on the Internet and in public . . . the very worst sort of arguments are starting to speak for the idea.

That is too bad and will not serve atheism well in the long road.

In any case, I enjoyed your note . . . and urge you (as Socrates would say) to follow the argument for yourself . . . where ever it leads you!