On Interacting With Street Epistemologists

What’s been my experience so far interacting with Street Epistemologists? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

I was asked by an apologetics group I belong to to describe what has been my experience thus far dealing with street epistemologists. You see, I was thrilled when I heard Peter Boghossian, author of “A Manual For Creating Atheists” (which I have reviewed here and interviewed Tom Gilson on here) had decided to come out with a show called the Reason Whisperer where he plans to have live conversations with people of “faith” and get them closer at least to deconversion.

I think this is a Godsend really.

I’ve long been waiting to see if there is something that will wake up the church from its intellectual slumbers and this I hope is it! We’ve had more than enough warnings and yet too many Christians are too caught up in themselves to realize they’re to do the Great Commission.

So I wanted to see what these street epistemologists were made of. Myself and some others with the same interest went to the Facebook page of Peter Boghossian. There we began asking questions and challenging what was said. It’s noteworthy that Boghossian himself never responded to us.

In fact, one post at least was a practical dare on Boghossian’s part when he linked to Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman and said the apologists won’t post on this one. He sure was wrong! More of us posted than ever before!

I’d like to report on how that has kept going and that Boghossian is being answered every day, but alas, I cannot.

Why? Because he banned us all.

Keep in mind, this is the same one who sees a great virtue in “doxastic openness.”

What I did find from the interactions I had is that street epistemologists are woefully unequipped. They read only that which agrees with them. They will buy into any idea if it goes against Christianity. The Earth was believed to be flat? Sure! I’ll believe that! Jesus never existed? Sure! I’ll believe that! Not having the originals of an ancient document is a problem? Sure! I’ll believe that! I still think about the person who recommended I read “The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross”, a book so bad that even the publisher apologized for it.

For street epistemologists also, science is the highest way of knowing anything. Now this is something understandable. If matter is all there is, then the best way to understand the world is to use a process that studies matter specifically. The problem is science can never determine that matter is all that there is any more than it could have determined that all swans were white. Science is an inductive process and while one can be certain of many of the claims, one cannot say they have 100% certainty.

Edward Feser has compared the use of science to a metal detector at the beach. Let’s suppose I was looking for a treasure map I’d heard had been buried at the beach. I go all over the local beach with a metal detector and say “Well I guess the map isn’t here. The detector never pointed it out.” Sure. I found several other objects that had some metal in them, but I never found the treasure map.

You would rightly think this is bizarre. After all, a map is made of paper and while a metal detector does a great job of picking up objects that are metal, it simply will not work with paper. This is not because a metal detector is a terrible product. It is because it is not the right tool for the job.

So it is that in order to determine if matter is all that there is or if there is a God, science is not the tool for the job. Now some might think science can give us some data that we can use, but it cannot be the final arbiter.

Yet for street epistemologists, it seems enough to just say “Science!” and that rules out everything else that’s religious. This would be news to many scientists who are devout Christians and see no disconnect between science and their worldview.

Yet here, the street epistemologists once again have an out. It is why I in fact call them atheistic presuppositionalists. They will simply say that these people are experiencing a kind of cognitive dissonance. They are compartmentalizing themselves and not seeing that their worldviews contradict.

This would be news to someone like Alister McGrath, Francis Collins, or John Polkinghorne.

As I said, these only read what agrees with them. They will read Bart Ehrman on the Bible, but they will not read Metzger or Wallace in response. They will read Boghossian and follow him entirely, but they will not bother to read his critics. They will read about how people in the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat, but they will not read James Hannam’s book on the matter, see Thomas Madden’s scholarship there, or even read the atheist Tim O’Neill who disagrees with them.

Street epistemologists will also go with extreme positions. They will tout on and on about how Jesus never existed and only say “Richard Carrier” or “Robert Price” in response. They will not acknowledge that the majority of scholarship, even scholarship that ideologically disagrees with Christianity, says it’s certain that Jesus existed. They do not realize that biblical scholarship is an open field where anyone of any worldview can join and writings go through peer-review.

Interestingly, these same people will go after Christians for not believing in evolution because, wait for it, there’s a consensus that this happened! The consensus of scientists is to be trusted. The consensus of scholars in the NT and ancient history is not to be trusted!

Also, if you do not hold to their view, well you are obviously emotional in nature in some way since you only believe because you want to believe and because of how you feel. It never occurs to some people that there could be intellectual reasons. In fact, it follows the pattern that if they don’t think the reasoning is intelligent, then it is just emotional.

It’s in fact a direct contrast to what is often said in many religious circles. “Well you’re just living in sin and are blinded to the truth.” Now I don’t doubt for some atheists, they don’t want to give up an immoral lifestyle. Also, I don’t doubt that for too many Christians, their only basis for being a Christian is how they feel and an emotional experience. Both of these groups have reached their conclusions for the wrong reasons.

Yet psychoanalyzing is seen as an argument to street epistemologists. If they can say you just believe for emotional reasons, then they can dismiss what you say. Note that it is dismissal. It is not a response.

I consider this a form I see of what I call atheistic hubris. Note please as well that this does not mean all atheists are this way. It just means that there’s a sizable portion of what I call “internet atheists” that are this way. The idea is that if someone is an atheist, then they are rational and intelligent. Therefore, all their thinking is rational and intelligent and all their conclusions are rational and intelligent.

The reality is we must all be constantly watching ourselves and one of the best ways to do this is to read our critics. Our critics will show us our blind spots and if we are wrong, we are to change our minds accordingly with the evidence.

An excellent example of something Boghossian and others constantly get wrong is faith. Boghossian says it is believing without evidence or pretending to know something that you do not know. Now in a modern vocabulary, I don’t doubt this. Too many Christians use faith this way and treat this kind of faith as if it is a virtue. It isn’t.

The question is, when the Bible uses the word faith, does it mean this? The answer is no.

In all of the writings I’ve read by the new atheists speaking this way about faith, not one of them has ever consulted a Greek or NT Lexicon in order to make their case. They have just said that this is what the word means. Oh they’ll sometimes quote Hebrews 11:1, but a text without a context is a pretext for a prooftext. I have also given my own exegesis of what the passage means here.

Also, I do have another great source on what faith is.

Faith/Faithfulness

“These terms refer to the value of reliability. The value is ascribed to persons as well as to objects and qualities. Relative to persons, faith is reliability in interpersonal relations: it thus takes on the value of enduring personal loyalty, of personal faithfulness. The nouns ‘faith’, ‘belief’, ‘fidelity’, ‘faithfulness,’ as well as the verbs ‘to have faith’ and ‘to believe,’ refers to the social glue that binds one person to another. This bond is the social, externally manifested, emotionally rooted behavior of loyalty, commitment, and solidarity. As a social bond, it works with the value of (personal and group) attachment (translated ‘love’) and the value of (personal and group) allegiance or trust (translated ‘hope.’) p. 72 Pilch and Malina Handbook of Biblical Social Values.”

As it stands, the most I get told to this is that it is an appeal to authority, which indicates that street epistemologists don’t even understand the appeal to authority. Strange for people who claim to champion logic.

Sadly, they’re just following in the footsteps of Boghossian himself. Boghossian’s techniques will not work for any Christian who is moderately prepared to defend his worldview. It’s a shame that he who teaches so much about doxastic openness is so often incapable of doing what he teaches.

I conclude that if this is what we can expect from street epistemologists, then we really have nothing to be concerned about with them. Street epistemologists are just as unthinkingly repeating what their pastor, in this case Boghossian, says to them, as the fundamentalist Christians that they condemn. They are really two sides of the same coin.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

We Don’t Need No Higher Learning

Hello everyone and welcome back to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. I’ve been looking at inerrancy and talking about the research done into a text which raises a question that often comes when I’ve been discussing this on the blogosphere. Do we really need all these scholars to understand the Bible? Do we need higher learning?

Yes.

We shall continue next time….

No no no. Of course I’m not going to leave it at that. The objection is that isn’t it possible for simple and ordinary people to understand the gospel and be saved by reading the Bible?

Well, yeah. I have no problem, but that’s also like saying you can at least understand the plot of Romeo and Juliet by reading the play. You can, but in order to fully appreciate the work of the Bard, you will need to be trained in the literature of the time.

But can’t we all just pick up our Bibles and let the Holy Spirit teach us?

There are a number of attitudes I think that are behind this kind of question a lot of times when one is confronted with the idea of higher learning. The first is pride. The idea is that one is capable enough to understand the Bible without the guidance of others. Charles Spurgeon once even warned his students to not be so arrogant as to think they are the only ones the Holy Spirit has ever spoken to.

The second attitude is laziness. We don’t want to really work at studying something. Even as an apologist, this is something I still can struggle with. There are times that book being read can seem so boring and that other thing I’m wanting to do is more enjoyable. Of course, there are times one does need to take a break from the reading in order to think about matters or to just play. However, to work at times for all of us takes effort.

It is amazing that we would condemn a child when the child instead of wanting to work out the answers to the math questions chooses to look in the back of the book. We do not approve of the student who when needing to do research looks up Wikipedia or goes to Yahoo Answers or some other format like that.

Yet somehow, when we come to Bible Study, this is suddenly a virtue.

But it’s the Word of God!

And?

Because it’s of God, it should be easy?

Seriously. When has that ever been the case?

I would think it would be just the opposite. God is not the easiest topic to understand. There is a whole subject of theology and it is known as the queen of the sciences. Paul in a passage like Romans 11:33-36 writes out in praise the wonder of God and how he is beyond understanding.

But hey, it’s his Word, so it should be simple.

No.

Job compared wisdom to a mine where choice metals are dug for. If you want wisdom, you have to work for it. If you are a disciple of Christ, there is some activity to be required on your part. You are not just to be someone passive. You are to be seeking the truth as much as you are receiving it.

But we’ve got the Holy Spirit!

Yes. You do have the Holy Spirit and do you think He caters to laziness? The Bible celebrates the value of hard work. Are we to think that it celebrates that in all areas, except where it comes to the study of God Himself and His Scripture. In that case, hard work is to be avoided. Just be passive.

It’s amazing that these same people want to teach us that we don’t need teaching.

If you really believed you don’t need to be taught, don’t go to church. There’s no need to hear what the preacher has to say. There’s no need to read any books on the Bible either. You can get that on your own. No need to study Greek or Hebrew. If God wants you to know something, he’ll make sure he transcends the language gap.

Just sit back, do nothing, and let God beam all the knowledge into your head.

Of course, you’ll also have to deal with your neighbor across the street who has the Holy Spirit as well but is obviously living in sin or something since he disagrees with you.

It is a shame that we have reached a point in the life of the church where higher learning is discouraged and we think God should spoon-feed us everything.

“Well I guess everyone has to be a scholar!”

No. Not at all.

But everyone should be thankful for the scholarly community. If you want to grow in the knowledge of God, you’ll have to do your part. Read good books. These are books that will challenge you. Read also books that you disagree with. There are people who have the Holy Spirit just like you and think you’re wrong. See why they do.

If you want to, by all means go to a Bible College or Seminary. Even if you don’t want to enroll in classes, many schools have programs where you can audit a course. You can just sit in on the courses and hear what the professor has to say. If you can’t do that route, and you have a portable device like an IPhone or IPod, go to ITunes and find ITunes U and download podcasts from Seminaries. These are free. While you’re driving, put in your headphones and listen. When you walk the dog or take out the garbage, listen. You can also find a wealth of material at various websites. For apologetics, I highly recommend the apologetics315 blogspot.

Also, argue. Find people you disagree with and argue with them. There are places online this can be done, but mine that I do a lot at is TheologyWeb.com, where I debate under the name of ApologiaPhoenix. I also debate on Facebook under my real name, Nick Peters.

Get a blog of your own also. The blog is the personal way to reach the world today. It is your message board to everyone else to share what you’re thinking and what you’re learning and let other people come and comment on what it is that you’re saying. The discussion of great ideas will foster good thinking in you.

It will take work and you will always be learning. You will never reach a point where you cease study, but that’s what also makes it fun. There’s always something new. As it stands right now, I have a number of reading projects lined up.

If you want to be a scholar, excellent. However, while you do not have to be one to understand the Bible, you should readily avail yourself of their works. They are there for your building up and edification.

We shall continue next time.