from contrary evidence. But this also means the external evidence does not have
to support their faith, so why bother with apologetics at all? Why not just preach
the Bible, as neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth suggested?
Christians have long ago abandoned the horrible and barbaric view of an
eternal fire-and-brimstone hell (thanks in no small measure to Robert G.
Ingersoll in the nineteenth century) and replaced it with a metaphorical one
described as "the absence of God." Now with a globally connected world of
diverse, sincere religious believers, more and more Christians are embracing
annihilationism (a la Johnathan L. Kvanvig in The Problem of Hell), whereby
the sinner simply goes out of existence upon dying. But if this is the case, why
would Jesus die for us if all he did was save us from nonexistence? And so why
fear hell at all? How is it any punishment to simply cease to exist? And why
bother evangelizing if this is so?
Christians are also embracing "Open Theism" in light of problems with time,
relativity, and the notion of a timeless God (a la Clark Pinnock, editor of The
Openness of God). It's now believed by more and more Christians that God
doesn't have foreknowledge of future free-willed human actions. Still other
professing Christians go one step further by embracing "Process Theism" or
panentheism, especially in light of the fact that there is no satisfactory answer to
the problem of evil for a perfectly good omnipotent God (a la David Ray Griffin
in God, Power and Evil. A Process Theodicy). Process theists simply deny God
has omnipotence. He cares. It's just that he can't do much about it but persuade his creatures to do good. But if Christians can deny God has foreknowledge and
omnipotence then why not also deny God cares for us? A few have done just that
(a la John K. Roth in chapter 1 for Encountering Evil. Live Options in Theodicy,
ed. Stephen T. Davis).
Christians are also arguing that Satan is the reason why animals have suffered
for millions of years on this planet before the advent of human beings (a la
Gregory Boyd in Satan and the Problem of Evil). In the past, apologists believed
animal suffering resulted from the supposed fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden
of Eden. Now in a post-Darwin world they are laying the blame on Satan's
activity before a human fall, or by arguing that the fall retroactively caused
natural suffering (a la William A. Dembski in The End of Christianity: Finding a
Good God in an Evil World). Others, like R. C. Spoul and Russell Moore, have
decided that in order to answer this vexing problem they must reaffirm young
earth creationism.1 And yet other professing Christians have rejected the
existence of Satan and the historicity of the Garden story altogether (a la Conrad
Hyers in The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science). But once
Christians admit there are nonhistorical myths in the Bible, the floodgates are
open to consider it may all be mythical.
In light of the effectiveness of the scientific method of naturalism, Christians
are now forced to defend their faith by arguing that "everything should be fair
game" for the critical scholar-that scholars need to be open to the possibility that
any claim, no matter how strange, is, technically speaking, "on the boards" (a la
Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd in The7esus Legend). But once every claim, no
matter how bizarre, is truly considered fair game, then what's to stop people
from believing in, well, anything and everything?
Then, too, Christians are adopting Preterism (or partial Preterism), which is a
view of eschatology attempting to answer the problem of Jesus' failed prophesy
of the consummation of the ages after two millennia. Many Christians are now
claiming these prophecies were fulfilled metaphorically in 70 CE, with the
destruction of Jerusalem (a la N. T. Wright in .7esus and the Victory of God).
But in making this case, they must claim the whole history of theology was
wrong to say otherwise, and if that's true, then why should we accept anything
the church has believed from the beginning?
In light of philosophical problems with regard to personal identity after death,
many Christians are now claiming Jesus did not bodily rise from the grave. According to them he arose spiritually in some sense. (a la John Shelby Spong,
Resurrection: Myth or Reality? along with others). But once this is granted,
what's the difference between seeing spiritual bodies from merely seeing visions,
which have no objective reality to them? Liberal Christians like these are well
along the road to atheism.
Many professing Christians are even embracing the homosexual by arguing
that a homosexual lifestyle is not a sin. Sixty-eight clergy in Madison,
Wisconsin, in May of 1997 affirmed that "homosexuality is neither sickness nor
sin", while the US Anglican
Church voted to allow gay bishops. Christians have repeatedly reinterpreted the
Bible on slavery, women, democracy, science, the environment, and animal
rights, as we became socially and scientifically enlightened. But then, if the
Bible is this malleable, capable of being interpreted differently in every
generation, how can exegetes really think they have the correct interpretation of
it at all? And what's there to prevent Christians from using the Bible to support
future changes if and when the world embraces socialism, homosexual
marriages, assisted suicide, cloning, and family planning (like abortion)? Some
already do.
The Christianity of the past was different than today's Christianity. Nearly all
modern Christians would have suffered under the Office of the Inquisition with
what they believe, it's so far removed. And the Christianity of the future will be
just as different as the presently accepted one. Shouldn't Christians just walk
away from their faith and recognize it as the delusion that it is, once it has been
shown to be false? But that's not what they'll do. Instead, they will reinvent it.
This happens in every generation, even if there remain pockets of Christians who
embrace the views of the past. It's too bad, really. Like a chameleon, Christianity
will always change its colors as the surroundings change with each subsequent
generation.
So with a book like this one it'll be no different. Rather than admit the
arguments contained herein have been successful, Christians will simply change
what they believe in order to keep their faith. Will existentialism or fideism or
mindless Pentecostalism be the wave of the future? Probably so. But for
believers who are intellectually honest with themselves and the arguments, I
suggest it's time to get rid of the dizziness that swirls in your head by jumping
off the merry-go-round of faith. Let me finally make a comment on the title to this book. Unlike the bestselling
atheist book of all time that targets religion in general, The God Delusion by
Richard Dawkins, this one has a more specific target: Christianity. The word
"delusion," by my Microsoft Word 2002 Encarta World English Dictionary, is
defined as: "1. false belief: a persistent false belief held in the face of strong
contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of a psychiatric condition; 2.
mistaken notion: a false or mistaken belief or idea about something." While I
personally think in most cases people are brainwashed by their culture to
believe, the title is not meant to convey that believers have any psychiatric
disorders because of their faith. Just keep in mind as you read through this book
that brainwashed people do not know that they have been brainwashed.
The phrase "faith fails" in the subtitle suggests that religious faith does not
stand up to rigorous scrutiny. Let me provide an example from what one
Mormon said about the skeptical book.7oseph Smith and the Origins of the Book
of Mormon:
I could probably spend a few years of my life trying to find dirt on the
author of this book and likely, I would find some. The question is: why
would I? Yes, it's very easy to find dirt on someone, if that's what you are
looking for, because the bottom line is: people believe what they want to
believe. If you want to KNOW something, why not ask the only one who
truly knows: God? That was Joseph Smith's message. That was the message
of the Book of Mormon. It was also the message of our Savior, who said:
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall
be opened unto you" (Matthew 7:7). Or you can refer to the scripture
quoted by the prophet himself: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of
God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be
given him.... But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that
wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let
not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord" (James 1:5-7).
I know Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. Not because some person
told me, and not because some man showed inc a book full of evidence
(there is much evidence for those who want to find it). I know, because like
7oseph Smith, Igotdown on my knees, in faith, and asked my Heavenly
Father if it was true. You cannot know anything, but by God. What do you
have to lose? I'm not giving you my opinions. I only invite those who wish
to know the truth ... If you want to know, ask God, I prornise you that He will answer if you honestly seek only the truth.2
This Mormon claims that people who don't believe don't want to. He's not
offering his opinions either. He knows because he has the inner witness of God
in his heart. And he claims there is "much evidence" for anyone seeking it. Does
any of this sound familiar to other believers? That's why faith fails. Faith can
lead people to justify whatever they were raised to believe-that's why. So in
order to test one's faith, every believer must subject it to a brutal examination of
the evidence and the arguments. There is no other way.
To honest believers who are seeking to test their own inherited religious faith,
this book is for you. Our contention is that when you subject your own faith to
the same level of skepticism you use to scrutinize other faiths, you will find out
why faith fails.
NOTES
1. R. C. Sproul, Truths We Confess: A Layman's Guide to the Westminster
Confession of Faith
"A Creationist Watches Animal Planet," Southern Seminary Magazine 74, no.
2. J. C. Gregersen, "Do You Really Want to Know?" review of.Joseph Smith
and the Origins of the Book of Mormon, 2nd ed., by David Persuitte,
One of the great mysteries is why, despite the best arguments against it,
religion survives. After all, every argument in support of religion has been
shown to be inconclusive or demonstrably false, yet religion persists; of course,
if the case for religion in general fails, then the case for any particular form of
religion, like theism or monotheism or Christian monotheism, naturally fails too.
If religionists/theists/monotheists/ Christians would just be rational, would just
listen and think, atheists grumble, they would see their error and abandon their
erroneous ways.
Ironically (or not so ironically), religionists/ Christians confront the same
stubborn resistance-and not only from atheists. The problem is especially acute
for them when trying to "share" their beliefs with members of nonChristian
religions, both other "world religions" and those "primitive" or "traditional"
religions against whom Christians relentlessly send missionaries. Why don't
those people accept Christianity, and why don't they accept it in the form that
existing Christians practice and teach it?
I fear that discerning Christian proselytizers, who have been doing this for
much longer than atheist polemicists, have discovered the answer, and it is an
answer that those who want to "win" the contest and to influence society must
heed-namely, culture. From the earliest Jesuits in the Americas to contemporary
missionaries in remote villages, successful promoters of Christianity have
realized-and exploited-the fact that religion is not only about, not even mostly
about, "beliefs" and "arguments" but about a worldview, a way of life, and a
learned and shared and produced and reproduced regimen of experience.
In this chapter, I will illustrate how the concept of culture is relevant to the
understanding, practice, and success of Christianity in particular and religion in
general and how some cunning Christians know this and have used it to their
advantage for a very long time. I will further show how the concept of culture
reduces Christianity into just another cultural phenomenon, operating by the
same processes and yielding the same results as any cultural phenomenon. One
of the key qualities of culture is diversity: there is no such thing as "Christian
culture" but rather "Christian cultures"; indeed no such thing as Christianity but
rather Christianities. This will also explain, finally, why the efforts to debunk
and displace Christianity through evidence and logic-the atheist's stock in trade-
have been and will continue to be largely futile. Christians are not easily argued
out of their religion because, since it is culture, they are not ordinarily argued
into it in the first place.
CHRISTIANITY AS CULTURE
Culture is the central concept in my chosen profession, anthropology. I could,
therefore, present an anthropological view of the concept, which I hope that
readers will seek out, perhaps in my new textbook on cultural anthropology.1
Instead, I want to demonstrate how professional Christianity has absorbed and
deployed the concept quite intentionally and remarkably effectively.
Unbeknownst to most rationalists, atheists, and academic anthropologists,
Christian missiologists (those who study and teach the ideas and methods of
mission work) have generated a considerable literature on the subject and
actively share and perfect their craft.' Whole organizations, institutes, and
publishing houses (like Orbis Books and Zondervan, to name but two) exist to
fulfill these functions. The challenge for missionaries is that the groups upon
which they descend already have their own religions and, more problematically,
have their own languages and values and institutions
that tend to support those
religions and to make Christianity strange and incomprehensible or to defy it
altogether. Smart mis sionaries understand that they must penetrate these barriers
and invade and co-opt these languages, value systems, and institutions (which is
why translation of the Christian scriptures into local languages is such an urgent
goal for them), and, as quickly and completely as possible, either dominate or
replace these systems and institutions with ones of their own making and in their
own image.
In Winter and Hawthorne's Perspectives on the World Christian Movement,3
which amounts to a guidebook for culture-aware missionaries, many of the
chapters are dedicated to spreading the message of the critical importance of
culture. Charles Kraft, one of the leading figures in the project, describes culture
as "the label anthropologists give to the structured customs and underlying
worldview assumptions [by] which people govern their lives. Culture (including
worldview) is a people's way of life, their design for living, their way of coping
with their biological, physical, and social environment. It consists of learned,
patterned assumptions (worldview), concepts and behaviors, plus the resulting
artifacts (material culture)." 4 I think that most professional anthropologists
would regard this as a workable characterization of culture.
Kraft goes further, though, to enumerate several more advanced qualities of
culture:
• Culture "provides a total design for living, dealing with every aspect of
life and providing people with a way to regulate their lives."
• Culture "is a legacy from the past, learned as if it were absolute and
Perfect."
• Culture "makes sense to those within it."
• Culture "is an adaptive system, a mechanism for coping. It provides
patterns and strategies to enable people to adapt to the physical and social
conditions around them."
• Culture "tends to show more or less tight integration around its
worldview."
• Culture "is complex."
Of the worldview central to any particular culture, he makes several assertions:
• It "consists of the assumptions (including images) underlying all cultural
values, allegiances, and behaviors."
• It grounds and explains "ourperception of reality and responses to it."
• Its basic assumptions or premises "are learned from our elders, not
reasoned out, but assumed to be true without prior proof. "
• "We organize our lives and experiences according to our worldview and
seldom question it unless our experience challenges some of its
assumptions."5
The immediate relevance for Christian missionization, and for our eventual
purposes in this chapter, consists of three points:
1. Christianity, like any religion, is a part of culture. It is learned and shared,
and it is integrated with the other systems of the culture, including its
economics, its kinship, and its politics.
2. Christianity, like any religion, is a culture. It offers its own worldview,
specific terms with which to speak and think, and specific symbolic and
organizational and institutional forms. It is never only beliefs, but as Paul
Hiebert stresses in the same volume, Perspectives on the World Christian
Movement, it is also always feelings and values and allegiances and
standards for judgment and evaluation.6 It is a more or less complete design
for living.
3. Christian missionization is a type of cross-cultural communication and
Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion Page 2
