In the above video the author shares that they stopped being a Christian after pursuing higher education in theology. As they put it:
"Christianity is not a direct line from Jesus today but the product of a very long highly
engineered deeply political process that took centuries to build."
The author then goes on to describe some very recent insights provided by historical studies of the Bible into the development of the Christian movement, including the recognition of the absolutely pivotal role of Paul in transforming that movement from being a minor Jewish sect. Besides the author's description of Paul as "hijacking" Jesus and his message its all pretty standard historical biblical studies stuff. My beef is not concerned with such findings, but lies with the core argument presented in the video for rejecting belief in God and derivatively for seeing Paul as a "hijacker" of some otherwise "more historically accurate message" of Jesus based on the findings of such historical (and sometimes archeological) research. That argument is based on a form of false dichotomy that goes something like the following:
Either there are possible naturalistic explanations for everything that happens in reality (including historical & sociological descriptions of the forces bringing about religions) OR God is not real (and he/her/it has no actual role in the explanation of how religions come into existence). There are possible naturalistic explanations for everything (such as good historical and anthropological explanations for the processes bringing about the religion of Pauline/Nicaean/Trinitarian Christianity). Therefore, God is not real (i.e. God does not exist and can play no role in explanation of the existence of religions).
1. If p then not q (i.e. not p or not q)
2. p
Therefore, not q
(A valid material implication).
The problem is with the acceptability of premise 1. It is not obviously clear why the implied dichotomy is true. Why is it not possible for there to be natural/empirical explanations for everything that happens in reality, including historical & sociological descriptions of the forces helping to bring religions into existence and God is real? In other words, why couldn't a god (God) including a god like that of Christianity choose to create a reality/World/Universe which is essentially and functionally indistinguishable from a world originating from an impersonal natural force or forces but at least operating according to natural laws (i.e. which is not completely chaotic)? In such a world, the only way that conscious beings in such a reality might ever be able to come to any awareness of or understanding of God might be via their own imaginations and reasoning based on what they can experience about nature in such a reality. Which is to say, indirectly (not empirically). In short, the author is arguing that unless one has incontrovertible and direct evidence that God exists, then it can make no sense to even entertain the possibility of a creator deity (i.e. adopt an attitude of faith as "trust" about the origin and fate of reality).
This argument seems a variation of the core problem with the 19th and early 20th century Positivist outlook and its core Principle of Verification. As is now increasingly recognized by contemporary epistemologists, this outlook failed to recognize the core self-contradiction of its own core principle: "No sentence can be meaningful (judged true or false) unless its truth can be decided by empirical tests." This is not a principle that can satisfy itself. Instead, it is a complex epistemological claim, resting on a host of philosophically contentious presuppositions (metaphysical, epistemological and ethical), which must be wrestled with in a deeply philosophical manner.
Another way of expressing the dichotomy is this-- The author's position is premised on the contentious notion that no Abrahamic God (God of ethical monotheism) would ever make naturalistic worlds. What I mean by "naturalistic world" is a world that would be functionally indistinguishable from the kinds of world that naturalist materialists (like I was before joining the Christian movement) believe is the reality we live in. But it is unclear to me why this would be so. It seems premised on an unconsidered belief that the only genuine forms of theism are those that assert that the world is one not "red in tooth and claw" but one where God can and does intervene arbitrarily and frequently to protect the lives of his/her/its followers and makes himself (herself itself) perfectly manifest via magical/supernatural interventions in their lives. Indeed, one can sense this outlook in the author's apparent disappointment with higher education. That her educational experience did not reveal a magical benign deity who like "fairies living at the bottom of ones garden" could be expected to occasionally manifest himself directly, but instead a complex story of historical human religious development dependent on real individuals with complex experiences, conflicted motivations, and contestable ethical and political assumptions. When such realities came into view, the author just seems to assume that all that can be done is to pick up ones intellectual toys and go home.
But such discoveries don't bother me as a Christian. When it becomes clearer that a historical analysis of Jesus's views about his role in God's plan don't necessarily fit neatly with the categories devised by Gospel writers or the later reflections of early church thinkers and church councils, which eventually lead to traditional Christological formulations, doctrines and creeds, I don't feel obliged to drop my New Testament and huff away. When I learn about the possible connection between the ancient Israelites to the Bronze Age Collapse or the Hyksos, or the possibilities that David might have been a minor local warlord (if he existed at all), I don't cry "Lies! All lies!" and drop my Hebrew Scriptures. The complex historical, sociological and indeed political journeys to religious positions and traditional formulations and narratives are not a corruption of some "real" historical truth of Christianity, it is by these complex ongoing material, biological and sociological processes that we come to understand God in a naturalistic world.
In short, our imaginative, reasoned and ethical reflections on history in respectful living communities of discourse is how God could choose to communicate to beings in worlds like ours, not despite of such processes. That I am not forced to choose between a real naturalism and some kind of naive Sunday school theism, is something to which I say hallelujah! Somewhat strangely, it is narrow-minded literalist and fundamentalist religious conservatives (so-called "conservative evangelicals" predominantly in the United States) and naturalist positivists and materialists who assert otherwise. Strange bedfellows indeed. I thank God for the United Church of Canada and its tolerant, progressive and non-anti-intellectual outlook, amen.
