Christianity, or any other religion, is not only a set of beliefs (the sort of things that could be “true” or “false”); it’s also a set of social practices, stories, etc. Whether the social practices are useful or pleasant, or those stories interesting or thought-provoking, is not necessarily controlled by whether the beliefs are true or false.
(In other words: A lot of people go to church who don’t believe in Jesus. And a lot of people like Bach or Handel who don’t believe in Jesus.)
However, sticking to the notion of Christianity as beliefs … I wonder if it is possible to dissolve the question in a way that is both comfortable and accurate.
What exactly would it mean for Christianity to be true? There are a lot of words that Christians use to talk about their beliefs, such as “salvation”: what does “salvation” mean, and what would it actually say about the universe if salvation existed?
For instance: if “I am saved” means “my soul will go to heaven when I die”, that would imply the existence of heaven; the existence of souls; also continuity of personality between a living person and a soul in heaven. Do we have evidence that these things exist? What would count as evidence for them?
If we were to accept the Bible or other writings as evidence, what distinguishes those writings from other writings that we are not giving the same evidentiary status? Why accept the Bible and reject the Talmud, the Qur’an, the Tripitaka, or the Guru Granth Sahib? Are we prepared to assert that the historical path by which the Bible came to us (including translation, error-prone recopying, political battles amongst bishops, and exclusion of the Apocrypha and other works) is preserving of evidentiary status?
(Some Christians assert that they believe the Bible because they were raised to do so; agreeing that if they had been born in Nepal they would be Buddhists. Is this a form of availability heuristic? If you recognize that an equally rational person, with the same human universals as priors, who happened to receive different data due to a different upbringing, would come to different beliefs, does that trigger Aumann’s Agreement Theorem?)
By what means do Christians arrive at their beliefs? For what purposes do they present arguments in favor of those beliefs (the arguments that make you tense)? Do these purposes appear to attract truth, or are they better explained as one of the non-truth-seeking social practices that also make up part of religion? If preaching is not truth-seeking, perhaps it is a sort of poetry or music. If the conversion experience is not about truth, perhaps it is about membership and belonging. (Do Christians try to convert you because they know something that they would benefit from your knowing as well? Or just because they want to give you a big hug?)
A couple of thoughts on this …
Christianity, or any other religion, is not only a set of beliefs (the sort of things that could be “true” or “false”); it’s also a set of social practices, stories, etc. Whether the social practices are useful or pleasant, or those stories interesting or thought-provoking, is not necessarily controlled by whether the beliefs are true or false.
(In other words: A lot of people go to church who don’t believe in Jesus. And a lot of people like Bach or Handel who don’t believe in Jesus.)
However, sticking to the notion of Christianity as beliefs … I wonder if it is possible to dissolve the question in a way that is both comfortable and accurate.
What exactly would it mean for Christianity to be true? There are a lot of words that Christians use to talk about their beliefs, such as “salvation”: what does “salvation” mean, and what would it actually say about the universe if salvation existed?
For instance: if “I am saved” means “my soul will go to heaven when I die”, that would imply the existence of heaven; the existence of souls; also continuity of personality between a living person and a soul in heaven. Do we have evidence that these things exist? What would count as evidence for them?
If we were to accept the Bible or other writings as evidence, what distinguishes those writings from other writings that we are not giving the same evidentiary status? Why accept the Bible and reject the Talmud, the Qur’an, the Tripitaka, or the Guru Granth Sahib? Are we prepared to assert that the historical path by which the Bible came to us (including translation, error-prone recopying, political battles amongst bishops, and exclusion of the Apocrypha and other works) is preserving of evidentiary status?
(Some Christians assert that they believe the Bible because they were raised to do so; agreeing that if they had been born in Nepal they would be Buddhists. Is this a form of availability heuristic? If you recognize that an equally rational person, with the same human universals as priors, who happened to receive different data due to a different upbringing, would come to different beliefs, does that trigger Aumann’s Agreement Theorem?)
By what means do Christians arrive at their beliefs? For what purposes do they present arguments in favor of those beliefs (the arguments that make you tense)? Do these purposes appear to attract truth, or are they better explained as one of the non-truth-seeking social practices that also make up part of religion? If preaching is not truth-seeking, perhaps it is a sort of poetry or music. If the conversion experience is not about truth, perhaps it is about membership and belonging. (Do Christians try to convert you because they know something that they would benefit from your knowing as well? Or just because they want to give you a big hug?)