Reasons to Believe
“To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”- W.K. Clifford
This quotation comes from a rather famous paper (famous by the standards of philosophy, which are considerably lower than most other standards of fame) called “The Ethics of Belief.” In it, Clifford tells the story of a man who owns a ship of questionable seaworthiness. Though his ship has seen better days and is in need of significant repairs, and even though he has some serious doubts about her reliability, the man believes sincerely that the ship will safely complete her voyage. So he takes people on board, and sure enough, she sinks. Clifford’s verdict is that the ship-owner is responsible for the lives of the deceased.
But suppose the ship arrives at the destination safely. Clifford still believes that the man is guilty, because he believed something on the wrong grounds. Even if the ship does not sink, the man has plenty of evidence to suggest that it will, and he is morally responsible to believe that it will.
One of Clifford’s targets here is religion, and I feel the weight of this objection. I’ve at times felt upset at God for not believing in Christianity for the “right reasons” – I became a Christian when I was a child, when I wasn’t able to assess the evidence properly. If I was going to write my life story, I would make it so I believed everything for all the right reasons, the right reasons being readily available to me upon reflection.
A friend and I chatted a couple nights ago about reasons to believe in Christianity. We figured there were at least three main ways to accept it: (1) on authority (usually either the Bible or the Church, and parents when young), (2) on argument (philosophical or apologetic arguments), and (3) on experience (ranging from mysticism to individual religious experience). This isn’t meant to be exhaustive, but I think it covers the major reasons why people become Christians.
None of these are without problems, in my view. Take (1). We wouldn’t accept just anybody’s authority on important religious matters. The authority must be reliable on that subject. And it may be difficult to establish the reliability of the authority in a non-circular manner. A famous (again, philosophy famous) example of circular reasoning is that we can believe in God because the Bible (an authority) tells us so. But when asked why the Bible is an authority, the response is, “Because God wrote it.” A coherent picture? Sure. But for one to accept the Bible as a trustworthy authority, one has to assume its contents are true. Authority could be proven trustworthy in other ways, but I wonder why anybody would find the Bible or the Church authoritative on their subject without already believing in some significant claims of Christianity.
I think belief because of (2) isn’t as controversial. If I had some completely irrefutable argument for Christianity, that would be great! But I don’t have that argument, and I don’t know anyone who does (though many Christian apologists and some philosophers think that arguments can show it is very likely that Christianity is true.) I also tend to think this group is smaller than the other two. If you meet a Christian, it’s more likely that she is a Christian because she accepts some authority or has had some experience than that she has a good argument in favour of Christianity.
What about (3)? Right now I think this is probably the strongest reason to believe in Christianity. But I wonder how prevalent this is. I’m not sure how many religious experiences in my own life I can point to, and the ones that I can could be attributed to other causes.
What about you? Are you a Christian for one or more of these reasons? If you’re not a Christian, which of these do you think would be most convincing?
In reading this post and thinking about the three proposed reasons for believing in the Christian faith, I’m struck by an observation; don’t reasons 2 and 3 necessarily need some authority to back them up?
Take for example the philosophical discourse leading to a belief in the Christian faith. Would not that discourse take place with someone who is viewed as an “authority” in Christianity by the individual seeking a reason to believe? In my experience, rarely does someone promote a belief in Christianity who is not already a believer. In the case of two believers seeking to define their belief through philosophical discussion, how did they originally find their faith and was it because of an “authority”?
In this sense, and maybe this is just me, I would even consider (assuming myself in this example a non-believer) a Christian peer with whom I am having a philosophical discussion with to be an authority on matters Christian (assuming also that they had established what they believed and weren’t themselves believing only because of an authority).
Furthermore, if someone has a “religious experience,” whatever this may be, and seeks to define a belief in the Christian faith through it, do they not have to rely on some pre-established authority to connect this experience with Christianity? Again, I think it to be a rare occurrence that someone who has no knowledge of Christianity becomes a believer through a religious experience without first searching for an authority of some sort to make sense of that experience. If everyone could define religious experiences as inherently Christian I believe we would see a greater number of Christians, but often these religious experiences are interpreted through other religious authorities or as “divine experiences with nature.”
I know that I myself founded my belief first based on authority and then sought to define it through philosophical discourse as well as religious experiences. I recognize that you mention these three reasons are not exhaustive in any way, but my question is this; are there many Christians who founded their belief independent of authority of some kind and what would you consider to be authority in this sense?
Hi Drew, thanks for the questions. I think maybe we’re using two senses of the word “independent” in relation to authority. I don’t mean that if one accepts Christianity on the basis of argument or some religious experience that no authorities may help sway your decision. I just mean that the reason you believe isn’t because you trust what they say in virtue of their authority. So perhaps Joe Pewsitter is an authority on Christianity, but if he convinces me to become a Christian with a good apologetic, then my reason for believing is based on argument, not authority. If I just took Joe Pewsitter’s word for it, then I’d accept the belief on authority.
I don’t know of anyone who has accepted Christianity in the complete absence of authority. Perhaps most of the people I know have believed on some sort of combination or mutually support between the three (or more) reasons. But I guess I’d be surprised to hear of a conversion occurring absent any kind of trustworthy Christian resource.
Hi. I’m commencing this post by saying I am sure there are cases of people out there converting to Christianity because of option number Three. In fact I have been specifically told the facts regarding two such cases, and am close to someone who’s gone through many terrible things someone in north america could go through to arrive at the conclusion: God exists. My commencement continues beyond commencing to state that through option number Three (experience) I have come to understand one hundred percent how one would become Christian in some fashion. Although I myself am not.
The problem with option two isn’t that you simply Can’t have an irrefutable argument for God (because you can’t) but that most people think science (//let me stop you reader here: science was born of philosophy. through the birth of science philosophy became this sort of bridge between theology and science. but now, to me, philosophy might as well be science. hence philosophy now sucks at being any sort of bridge. continue\\) is irrefutable, though it is entirely possible that it isn’t. Because too many people believe science to be the be-all-end-all, the total lack of lab experiments proving existence of God means no one’s going to buy a good argument for God unless someone in a white coat and glasses holding up a beaker of shining liquid says “Yes, God exists! I and my team have just spent ten years asking one monkey the same question, and then by miracle he suddenly blurted out the answer in perfect Japanese, and then peed this golden fluid. God exists.” You can’t walk around toting some grand argument. Well, I mean, you can. Sure you can. But who’s going to listen? I mean listen enough to change how they’ve already been seeing the world? That’s a tough thing to do, and it almost never happens all at once.
Option Number One is by far the most “successful.” It’s the best. Even those who grow up under this authority (parents) questioning until finally breaking away will come back to it after certain experience. In these cases (one) two (three) of your reasons play into each other. I’ve witnessed this happen to people close to me as well.
So, to conclude what I guess turned out to be an essay-response, I concur. Coming from my background and you from yours, reason number one is by far the strongest. And this authority works in different ways depending on which country or culture we look at, along with which branch of Christianity.
I’m currently an apologetics student at ACTS seminaries.
One thing that’s really being pressed on me in my readings is that we haven’t really covered this issue in its entirety if we ignore one fact: the Bible repeatedly gives the impression that the ultimate authority/reason/experience is the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. Romans 8:16 “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” (see also John 6:44) Perhaps this can be filed under “experience,” but it’s much more personal than that.
I understand how foolish this sounds to the ears of the non-believer, but the Bible admits that, too:
1 Corinthians 1:18,19
18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.
This isn’t to say that apologetics is a useless task (cf. 1 Pet 3:15; 2 Cor 10:5), but we certainly mustn’t ignore these important passages.
Any intelligent biblical discussion of this issue must, in my opinion, acknowledge the spiritual realm:
2 Corinthians 4:4
“The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”
(Please note that this is an in-house discussion, and not an attempt to use the Bible to convince those who don’t accept it in the first place.)
If we are to take these scriptures seriously, then I contend three things:
(1) Our primary reason for belief is actually the drawing/witness of the Holy Spirit. That IS the “evidence.” I very much disagree the W.K. Clifford quote, however, because we believe all sorts of things without evidence: we trust that our senses generally give us accurate information about the world; we trust that other persons exist, though we cannot prove it; we believe that the universe is intelligible to humans; we believe that communication is possible; we believe in morality; etc.
(2)It seems to me that apologetics is useful for dealing with intellectual excuses or stumbling blocks, but ultimately the issue at hand is the cross of Jesus Christ. We can, perhaps, argue someone up to the cross. But if they turn away from it, then I believe that all argument is fruitless after that point. If they are intent on disbelief, nothing can be done by way of argument.
(3)If we are to speak about this issue within the church, then we should do so biblically. We might like to imagine that there is some transcendent position available to us such that we may stand above both the Christian and non-Christian worldviews and discuss them impartially–but according to the Bible, no such position appears to exist. We’re either alive in Christ, or dead in our sins. If this admission causes us to fear that we might “turn people off” from Christ, then this betrays that we really do think that coming to Christ is merely an intellectual choice, rather than a spiritual resurrection.
So I think that before we can even have the current discussion, we need to pray and think about what it really even means to come to life in Christ.
Hey Mark, I guess as I see it, confirmation of the Holy Spirit is experiential. That’s not to say it requires overblown emotions or anything like that (and I touch on this a little bit in my next post). John Calvin believed that the surest confirmation that the Bible was God’s word was the Spirit’s conviction in our hearts. While apologetics may give us good reasons to trust the accuracy of the Bible, I agree with Calvin that conviction should be from the Holy Spirit, not apologetic arguments. I like your idea of apologetics removing stumbling blocks which prepare us for God’s revelation of himself through the cross of Jesus – I think this allows adequate and significant room for intellectual discussion, but doesn’t imagine that we can eschew revelation through Scripture or the personal witness of the Holy Spirit.