Sunday, April 29, 2018

Living As A Rationalist Christian

No one has ever told me that I do not take Scripture and Christianity seriously.  Likewise, no one has ever told me that I am not truly devoted to rationality.  I live out both rationalism and Christianity in a way that not even my enemies can legitimately criticize.  Still, this does not mean that they understand the complexity of living out both of them, the nuance being of a kind that puzzles many.

A great deal of Christianity might prove false in the end, and, unlike many I know, I openly admit this and embrace this truth.  I am not one of the Christians who will partner with almost anyone as long as the gospel is preached, nor am I someone who pretends like faith and logic are somehow reconcilable [1] or believes in a thing that has not been established in full.  The farthest I can get to verifying Christianity is acknowledging the incontrovertible proof of an uncaused cause and then accumulating evidence that the uncaused cause has a particular nature, ultimately making a broad evidential case that Christianity seems probable [2].

Thus far I have found no conceptual disparities between Christianity and logic.  That is, nothing in Christian metaphysics or doctrine is logically impossible, and here I refer to actual Christian doctrine and not the unbiblical bullshit that so many Christians believe about ethics, epistemology, or other miscellaneous subjects.  I certainly do not mean that logic can prove every aspect of Christianity.  Yet I do not want anyone making the mistake of believing that I would ever side with the Bible over logic, should I ever detect an actual contradiction between the two.  If they are both true, neither can be "more true" than the other, since although one truth can be more important than another, both can only be equally true.  But only one of them is necessarily true in its entirety.  Christianity is not self-evident, but logic is.

Logic cannot be false or anything short of universal [3]; to the extent that something is not fully established by logic, it could turn out to be false in the end.  No amount of faith--whether by faith one means trust in what the evidence points to or blind belief--can change this immutable reality.  The minds of the unintelligent cannot grasp the nuance in a worldview like mine, with the amalgam of a pure rationalism, probabilistic commitment on the level of behaviors, and simultaneous skepticism of all that logic cannot prove in full.

I have committed to living in accordance with Christian values because the evidence supports Christianity: 1) parts of Christianity acknowledging necessary truths, the existence of a material world, the existence of an uncaused cause, and the distinction between mind and body cannot be false, 2) Christianity is internally consistent, 3) external evidence supports it, and 4) no external evidence contradicts it.  But I certainly do not believe Christianity is true in full, only that it seems probable.  I have also also struggled with legitimate skepticism, the doubting of anything that is not logically provable, to the point of seriously questioning the use of not killing myself.  Many will not acknowledge that person can cling to perfect rationalism, skepticism of all that could be false, and Christian probabilism all at once.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-object-and-method-of-faith.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/12/metaphysics-and-absolute-certainty.html

[3].  See here:
A.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-impossibility-of-irrationalism.html
B.  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-impossibility-of-absolutely-nothing.html

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