Dan Phillips, a frequent contributor to the fundamentalist Christian blog Pyromaniacs and pastor of Copperfield Bible Church in Houston, Texas, thinks Evangelical Christianity is the only rational worldview. Phillips had this to say about this supposed rationality:
A Mormon friend, in passing, remarked that religion is not rational, so he didn’t expect it to make sense. It’s a matter of faith, not reason.
You might think, “Right: Mormon. I don’t expect rationality, either.” Hang on.
He went on to give an example—but the example was not how a human could become a god, or how there could be only one god and many at the same time, or how God can keep changing His mind about things, or how two equally-inspired books could contradict each other. His example was the virgin birth. I said there was nothing irrational about the virgin birth, and the conversation simply moved on elsewhere…
…But was he right? Is religion irrational? “Religion,” maybe. Christianity, no…
….Perhaps definitions are part of the problem. There is a world of difference between rational and rationalism. The latter is a philosophy, a worldview that asserts that man can know truth by the use of his unaided reason. The former merely means that something is in accord with reason, it doesn’t violate fundamental canons of thinking such as the law of non-contradiction.
Is Christianity rational?…
…But are some of our faith-tenets irrational? Two that I hear cited specifically are the Trinity, and the Virgin Birth.
The second example is just plain silly. I have never understood how this can be an issue to anyone who believes Genesis 1:1, and thus grants the premise of a God who created everything out of nothing. It’s like saying, “Everything out of nothing? Sure! But make an existing egg alive without a sperm? No way!” Canons of rational thought are not even stretched, let alone violated, by the fact of the Creator and Ruler thus operating within His creation.
How about the Trinity? Surely the doctrine that God is three and one is not rational?…
…The Trinity is the Biblical teaching that there is but one God (Deuteronomy 6:4), and that this one God is Father (2 Peter 1:17), Son (John 1:1), and Spirit (Acts 5:3-4). The simplest way I have been able to understand and express the truth is that God is one in one way, and three in another. Or, we could say that God is one “what” (i.e. one as to His essence), and three “who’s” (i.e. three as to His persons).
Now, do we understand the Trinity exhaustively? Of course not! How exactly does God manage being what He is? We don’t really need to know, since we’ll never need to be God. Nor should the finite expect to understand the infinite exhaustively. It is as C. S. Lewis says:
If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about. (Mere Christianity [Macmillan: 1960], p. 145.)
But we know enough to love Him, to worship Him, and to discern truth from error. And we know enough to know that there is nothing irrational about the doctrine.
Is Christianity rational? I daresay it’s the only worldview, ultimately, that is.
It’s not hard to spot Phillips’ presupposition: the Bible is true and all discussions about what is rational must begin with the Bible. However, for those of us who do not accept the Bible as truth, the authority of the Bible has no relevance. The evidence that demands a verdict is that which can be observed, tested, and verified.
Are there things in the Bible that are not reasonable to believe? Are there things that a rational person would have a hard time accepting as factual? Phillips gives two examples of beliefs that some people, even Christians, consider irrational (lacking a rational explanation). His two examples are cardinal Christian doctrines: the virgin birth and the Trinity.
What evidence do we have, outside of the Christian Bible, that the virgin birth is a rational, reasonable belief? Is there any medical proof for a virgin becoming pregnant without having her egg fertilized by the sperm of a man? Is there any record anywhere, outside of the Bible, that a virgin has ever given birth to a child? Of course not. Belief in the virgin birth is not a rational belief. Believing that a virgin can have a child requires Evangelicals to have faith. They must be willing to blindly accept that the Evangelical God is capable of impregnating a young virgin so she can give birth to a God/Man.
Many Christians wisely reject the notion that Jesus was born of a virgin. It’s Evangelicals who stubbornly dig their heels in on this issue. For them, the text of the Bible is deified, and when this happens reason goes out the window. This is the kind of thinking that gives us young earth creationism and a host of other rational mind defying beliefs. Believing the Evangelical God miraculously impregnated an unwed Jewish teenager runs contrary to everything the Evangelical and the atheist know to be true. To suggest, as Phillips does, that the virgin birth is rational because the Bible says it is, is not an reasoned argument; it’s blind, irrational faith.
Phillips also uses the Trinity as an example of a Christian doctrine that is reasonable. Once again, Phillips’ Evangelical interpretation of the Bible becomes the arbiter of what is rational. For the atheist, the argument for the reasonableness of Trinitarianism is not important. Three in one, one in three, one in one, it matters not. The only question that matters for the skeptic and the atheist is whether there is sufficient evidence for the existence of the Evangelical God, or any other God for that matter.
The atheist, based on the available evidence, concludes that the Christian God does not exist. The Christian has the same evidence as the atheist, but rejects it, and by faith believes that the Evangelical God of the Bible really exists. Contrary to what Phillips says, Christianity is all about faith, and that faith, many times, is quite irrational. (1)
I know Phillips doesn’t mean for his post to be a complete and full defense of the rationality of Christianity, but there are many other illustrations of rational irrationality he could have used. How about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead? All of the evidence, apart from the Bible, points to a reality we all know to be true; people die and they don’t come back from the dead. There’s nothing in the natural, observable world that suggests that the dead come back to life. Again, believing otherwise requires faith in what the Bible says about the resurrection of Jesus.
Here’s another “rational” Evangelical Christian belief: Jesus walking through walls. According to the Bible, after his resurrection from the dead, Jesus walked through walls. This is a claim that any of us can test in about 10 seconds. Stand up, go to the nearest wall, and try to walk through it. How did it work out for you? Were you able to walk through the wall, without doing damage to yourself or the wall? Silly, I know, but this is another example of a Bible truth that requires faith to believe. No one, Jesus included, can walk through a solid wall.
I found the C.S. Lewis quote about the difficulty of believing the Christian narrative to be quite interesting. I heard this line of thinking many times when I was a pastor. The essence of the argument is this:
If Christianity is a man-made religion, do you think its makers would have included the irrational, bat-shit crazy stuff found in the Bible? The crazy stuff is proof that what the Bible says is true.
Here’s the problem with this argument. Phillips mocks the Mormons several times in his post, but if I judge Mormonism by the standard set by C.S. Lewis, I would have to conclude that Mormonism is factual. Who has more crazy beliefs than Mormonism, right? OK, maybe Scientology is worse and Mormonism comes in a close second
Phillips enters this discussion with his mind made up. Christianity is the truth and Mormonism is just another man-made, heretical religion. After all, everyone knows Christianity is a not religion. At least Phillips didn’t trot out the “Christianity is a relationship” line.
What do you think of Phillips’ closing line:
Is Christianity rational? I daresay it’s the only worldview, ultimately, that is.
Share your thoughts in the comments.
(1) I am not suggesting that a person can’t look at the natural world and reasonably conclude that there is a deity or a higher power. However, it is a huge jump from the deistic view that a God of some sort created the world to that creator being the Evangelical God of the Bible. There is a gigantic chasm between these two and the bridge that spans that chasm is called faith. I am amazed at how readily Christians chuck faith in hopes of trying to “prove” that Christianity is reasonable. They diminish their religion when they do so.
When I called myself a Christian I thought Christianity was rational, but that was because I bought into the worldview that humans were inherently sinful and deserve punishment and that a loving God must allow free will.
But even I, with a Christian apologist worldview, found the Trinity a hard concept to understand. The Trinity was one of those sort of concepts that one could accept provided you did not think about it deeply, but if forced to seriously consider it, then likely it would ‘do your head in’.
After studying theology (where achieved a distinction grade), I admitted I was less sure about the Trinity at the end than when I started. I had to consign it to that category of last resort for the believing Christian, a Holy Mystery.
Now I no longer call myself a Christian I have can deal with this sort of matter without the elevated cognitive dissonance.
I can now finally answer the question of why the Church battled for centuries over the doctrine of the person of Christ. I can now understand how ‘heretical’ groups like Arian Christianity could apparently persist for so long. I now realise that the reason for these battles is actually quite straightforward – the Bible teaching is contradictory.
You mention the Bible being contradictory. I came to the same conclusion too. Once I realized that every theological viewpoint could be supported by the Bible, it became much easier to walk away from all of it. So when I am asked who is right, I reply, they all are. The Calvinist is right, the Arminian is right,the Baptist is right, the charismatic is right, the Catholic is right, the Mormon is right, they are all absolutely right. Anything and everything can be proved by the Bible. Take any two verses…Judas went out and hung himself. Go thou and do likewise. See, I just proved we should hang ourselves. Why? because that’s WWJD, what would Judas do. ? I know….snarky.
It also helps to view the Christian myth with non-Christian eyes. Imagine having never heard the Christian story. How would you respond to this God impregnating a virgin story? Would it sound any less crazy than any of the other religious myths?
To take that particular example, virgin births, mythology (i.e. the remnants of other people’s religions) is awash in virgin births. So if you were coming at Christianity in the early days, when there were competing religions with virgin births, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. IIRC, Mark doesn’t even mention the virgin birth; I’ve seen it suggested that it was added later to give Jesus more street cred as a god.
The Virgin Birth and the Trinity both strike me as straw-man arguments.
For the Virgin Birth, he seems to be saying that since we know miracles occur, and God is great, there is no reason not to believe in this miracle. It’s perfectly rational — except that his basic assumptions are wrong. For the Trinity, in truth Christianity has struggled with that one. However, it never struck me as being less rational than accepting the dual particle/wave nature of light… again, assuming that the members of the Trinity actually exist. I’m pretty sure light exists. The Christian deities, not so much.
In truth, I’m not one for argument; give me evidence, not arguments. But even I can blow off silly arguments like these.
I agree totally with the post and the comments that have been made. A few thoughts on the subject.
I actually agree with Phillips; if God really did create the world in the way he believes then, quite frankly, bringing about a virgin birth would be ever so easy. So it’s not irrational in one sense to believe in deity procured virgin births, but it requires an acceptance of Genesis creation to begin with, something which is irrational.
I’ve never seen a discussion of poor old Mary. What right did God have to implant his seed into her, however he achieved it (at least the Greek gods used to have a bit of fun along the way). She was simply told she was chosen, but seems to have had little choice. Maybe bible schools discuss this; I wouldn’t know.
The ‘simplicity’ argument is one I use regularly, but actually to counter Phillips’ arguments, not to support them. If the world is created by God then why make it so complex. Quantum physicists now say the universe isn’t just difficult to imagine, it’s actually more difficult than we ‘can’ imagine. A considered creation would surely not result this way.
Lastly on the trinity, I really don’t think much attention is paid properly outside of bible school. I was in discussion recently with a Jehovah’s Witness (okay, not a brilliant example of logical thinking) and I commented on the trinity, and that Jesus isn’t just the son of God, he is God. He didn’t take my point, and insisted he was only the ‘son’. Maybe it’s just their teachings, but I get the same impression from casual conversation; people refer to the trinity in the hymns they sing at weddings and funerals (hardly anyone in the UK goes to regular church now) but none seem to have considered the underlying belief.
The way I always understood the Trinity was by comparing it to flag: it has (often) three colors but is one flag. The problems started with God having begotten Jesus yet him being the same age nevertheless (I know… God is eternal and doesn’t have an age supposedly). C.S. Lewis also says this thing about the Holy Spirit that it is the product of God and Jesus’s combined love, much in the same way as we say in the spirit of our team, country, …… fill in the blank. But this is also a time-related issue, because it means the spirit of God can only happen once there is love between the two others, so they have to be first. Of course, the solution to all that is to place God outside time and us time-bound creatures are too stupid to understand it anyway….
The other thing was this whole discussion about Jesus’s death. Was he fully human on the cross, or fully God, or a mixture? And if God is undividable and unchangeble than how can God the Father have forsaken him? And if he is not forsaken by God than how is he punished for the sins of the world, since that is a huge part of it? Yeah, problems with the Trinity there as well. So I just let it rest (when I was a believer) because I didn’t have the answers and the people around me didn’t either.
On the quote at the beginning: I often wondered if I would be able to stay a Christian, to hold my ground, if I would be persecuted. I was pretty sure I might not… and already felt guilty about it beforehand. It was not so much the thought of death but of pain and torture. My only hope in that regard was God’s forgiveness and the story of Peter being taken back into the fold.