Monday, July 11, 2022

The Altar To The Unknown God

Jesus spoke in the context of a culture that had largely embraced at least a distortion of Judaism, so, no matter how inconsistent, selfish, or otherwise stupid his listeners were, he was not introducing a totally random and foreign set of moral, theological, and metaphysical ideas that he expected strangers to just accept without any sort of evidence or proof.  Of course, the inherent truths of rationalism go far beyond Christianity and are true whether or not it is, so it is not as if the Bible could be true if it so much as denied rationalistic epistemology and logical truths.  The Biblical Jesus simply did not make his claims in a philosophical vacuum where no one had thought of or been exposed to the ideas of the Old Testament.

Paul does the same when he finds a crowd of philosophers in Athens surrounded by idols.  Acts 17:16-34 details how he handles this group of non-Christians after seeing an altar dedicated to an "unknown God," all without failing to acknowledge that they are not people who have never thought about philosophical issues before.  The text literally says that all the Athenians did with their spare time was discuss the current ideological trends with each other (Acts 17:21), so no matter how fallacious or inept or insincere they were, they at least were not trying to actively avoid talking about philosophy like many every non-rationalists do.  As an aside, it is ironically fitting that the culture associated with the Socratic method and its irrationalistic emphasis on social interactions over reason would give way to a society where the Athenians thought endlessly talking about ideas would in any way get them closer to the truth without autonomous, rationalistic thought!

The majority of what Paul says to these Athenians in Acts 17:22-28 about the uncaused cause--that it created the universe (17:24), that it does not depend on human recognition or its own creation (17:25), and that it is not beyond our ability to understand (17:27)--is even philosophically demonstrable through rationalistic proofs that have nothing to do with Biblical analysis, though nothing about God's existence or nature is self-evident like logical axioms are--not even the existence of the physical world itself, which is just assumed to exist by many people, is in any way self-evident.  Only after covering the points that do not require Christianity even though they are consistent with it does he move on to issues like the resurrection of Jesus.

Paul never talks to his audience as if they should just accept an entire kind of precise theism because a stranger says so, but he engages with the philosophical ideas of his listeners and their broader culture.  He might not be talking about the very foundations of all reality, which are logical axioms and their ramifications and not nature or God, yet he is not just presenting a random religion without addressing some sort of philosophical context that underpins Christianity.  The former would be idiotic and arbitrary.  The latter is rational and even pragmatic (though ideas are not true because of how useful they are or how easy they are to share or persuade with).  All rational evangelism is not based on assumptions, and it even addresses or admits the difference between evidences and logical proof and the fact that not everything in the Bible is philosophically verifiable.

That the Bible itself speaks highly of truth and outright condemns lying would even mean that someone must sin by Biblical standards to even believe or say anything to the contrary!  What so many Christian evangelists and apologists do not want to realize is that rationalism, including all of its ramifications for private thought and conversations with others, is true independent of scientific paradigms, religious systems, and personal preferences.  It is possible for some scientific frameworks and religions to be true, certainly, but there is no such thing as anything more foundational, far-reaching, vital, or illuminating than the laws of logic.  Rationalism is not an optional add-on to other ideas that might or might not be thoroughly valid; it is the only philosophical system that is true by default and that all other truths are grounded in and that all ideas are ultimately understood as they are through.

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