15AR20-35

( - previous issue - )

AR 20:35 - "Why should a belief's falsity matter to believers?"

Apologia Report 20:35 (1,264)

October 22, 2015

In this issue:

APOLOGETICS - when relativism allows for criticism without interaction

ATHEISM - Salon.com fed up with "glaring intellectual laziness" on the part of the New Atheism

------

APOLOGETICS

The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context, by Myron B. Penner [1] -- Tawa Anderson's review summarizes the book as a "polemic diatribe opposing the modern apologetic enterprise, exemplified (for Penner) most clearly by William Lane Craig. Penner's overarching thesis is that in our postmodern context, apologetic endeavors mired in the concerns and paradigms of Enlightenment modernity are doomed to failure - indeed, they are a 'curse,' and the one who utilizes them 'is a second Judas who *betrays* the Christ.' To replace Craig's modern apologetics, Penner advocates a postmodern Christian witness that edifies the adhering to an ethic of belief and witness."

After a lengthy description of the structure and content of the book, Anderson concludes that it "is among the most challenging, perplexing, and frustrating books that I have read in recent memory. While there are helpful elements to Penner's treatise ... the positives are greatly outweighed by the negatives." Of the negatives noted by Anderson, "Penner's rejection of the correspondence theory of truth smacks of postmodern relativism (despite his protestations to the contrary); while he seeks to preserve a notion of objectivity in truth, he manages to do so only by redefinition - his objectivity is merely a social (or cultural) relativism, not anything that resembles the external world. ...

"Penner makes unsupported and unsustainable accusations against apologists like Craig." Examples are given. "Penner mischaracterizes contemporary apologetics, and is ambivalent about what he calls 'apologetics *simpliciter*.' The apologetics he opposes is 'the Enlightenment project of attempting to establish rational foundations for Christian belief,' while he claims that apologetics *simpliciter*, which he professes to support and practice, is 'to defend Christian faith from specific charges of "falsehood, inconsistency, or credulity."' But today, a chief charge against Christianity's 'credibility' is precisely that it lacks rational foundations. Thus, it would seem, by Penner's own standards, what he castigates as 'modernist apologetics' is actually apologetics *simpliciter*. Beneath that surface, however, it seems that Penner does not embrace apologetics *simpliciter* either - there is nothing in The End of Apologetics that interacts positively or approvingly with *any* apologetics example in any age.

"This final critique leads to one of my major difficulties with The End of Apologetics. Penner fails to address biblical, ante-Nicene, and medieval apologetics. In fact, there are startlingly few biblical references at all, and no interaction with what are often considered key apologetic texts...." Philosophia Christi, 17:1 - 2015, pp241-7.

---

ATHEISM

"New Atheism's Fatal Arrogance: The glaring intellectual laziness of Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins" by Sean Illing -- it is a feather in the cap of Salon.com to run a critical piece such as this. With the political left being recognized from within for its increasingly vicious verbal hostility and illiberal extremes (e.g., The Silencing, by Kristen Powers [2]), Illing's piece does much the same in the worldview arena. He begins: "For all their eloquence, New Atheists show little interest in understanding how believers really think or feel."

After a brief intro, Illing reports that "The New Atheists are notoriously pugilistic. In print or on stage, they never run from a fight. Whatever you think of their tactics, they've succeeded at putting fanatics and moralizers on the defensive – and that's a good thing.

"But there's something missing in their critiques, something fundamental. For all their eloquence, their arguments are often banal. Regrettably, they've shown little interest in understanding the religious compulsion. They talk incessantly about the untruth of religion because they assume truth is what matters most to religious people. And perhaps it does for many, but certainly not all – at least not in the conventional sense of that term. ...

"If a belief is held because of its effects, not its truth content, why should its falsity matter to the believer? ... The point is that such beliefs aren't held because they're true as such; they're accepted on faith because they're meaningful.

"The problem is that the New Atheists think of God only in epistemological terms. Consequently, they have nothing to say to those who affirm God for existential reasons. ... The more interesting question is why religions endure in spite of being empirically untrue."

Illing argues that Richard Dawkins may find a distinction with the problem of meaning and truth "trivial, but I don't think it is." For example, "Dostoevsky ... although a Christian, refused to defend Christianity on positivist grounds. He considered God a motive force, not an empirical claim about reality or history. For his part, God was a bridge to self-transcendence, a way of linking the individual to a tradition and a community. The truth of Christ was therefore less important than the living faith made possible by belief in Christ.

"The great writer and humanist Albert Camus wrestled with Dostoevsky for most of his life. Camus was an atheist, but he understood the instinct for transcendence. And he knew that God was a solution (however false) to the problem of meaninglessness. Against the backdrop of death, what matters more: truth or a reason for living? 'I've never seen anyone die for the ontological argument,' Camus wrote, but 'I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living.' ...

"The New Atheists don't have a satisfactory alternative for such people. [I]f they don't understand that, for many, meaning is more important than truth, they'll never appreciate the vitality of religion." (<heh> Any problem with THAT? - RP)

"The New Atheists have an important role to play. Reason needs its champions, too. And religion has to be resisted because there are genuine societal costs. One can draw a straight line between religious dogma and scientific obscurantism or moral stagnation, for example. That's a real problem. But if religion is ineradicable, we have to find a way to limit its destructive consequences. ...

"People like Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens make a powerful case for a more humanistic ethics. Harris writes admirably about the need to be more attentive to the present, to the suffering of other human beings. I agree. But if we want to encourage people to care about the right things, we should spend as much time encouraging them to care about the right things as we do criticizing their faith." Salon.com, May 9 '15 <www.goo.gl/qfGk9q>

-------

SOURCES: Monographs

1 - The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context, by Myron B. Penner (Baker, 2013, paperback, 192 pages) <www.ow.ly/GsSqg>

2 - The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech, by Kirsten Powers (Regnery, 2015, hardcover, 304 pages) <www.goo.gl/hBREsH>

------

( - next issue - )