In the video "where the f*ck did christianity come from?" the author bonnetthoughts shares that they stopped being a Christian after pursuing higher education in theology and Biblical Studies. 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 recent insights provided by historical studies of the Bible about the development of the Christian movement, including the recognition of the absolutely pivotal role of Paul in transforming that movement from a minor Jewish sect to a world religion. Besides the author's description of Paul as "hijacking" Jesus' message its all pretty standard contemporary biblical studies stuff. My beef is not concerned with such findings, but lies with the core argument implicitly presented in the video for rejecting belief in the Christian God as traditionally defined and derivatively, for seeing Paul as a "hijacker" of some otherwise more historically accurate message of Jesus. 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 such as Christianity OR God as traditionally defined in any such traditions is not real and he/ser/it has no actual role in the explanation of how religions come about. There are possible naturalistic explanations for everything, such as good historical and anthropological explanations for the processes bringing about Pauline/Nicaean/Trinitarian Christianity. Therefore, the Christian God as traditionally defined is not real, which is to say, the Pauline God does not exist and can play no role in the explanation 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 and empirical explanations for everything that happens in reality, including historical & sociological descriptions of the forces helping to bring religions into existence and God as defined in some particular tradition is real? In other words, why couldn't a God, including a God like that of traditional Pauline forms of Christianity, choose to create a reality/World/Universe which is functionally indistinguishable from a world originating from an impersonal natural force or forces, operating according to natural laws (i.e. is not chaotic)? In such a world, the only way that conscious beings might be able to come to any awareness or understanding of God might be via their own imaginations and reasoned extrapolations based on what they experience about nature--Which is to say, indirectly but not directly in an empirical. In short, the author is arguing that unless one has incontrovertible and direct physical evidence that God exists, then it can make no sense to even entertain the possibility of a creator deity or to 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 increasingly recognized by contemporary epistemologists this kind of outlook failed to recognize the self-contradiction of its own core principle: "No sentence can be meaningful" (i.e. capable of being 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 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 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 can make himself/herself/itself manifest via absolutely obvious magical/supernatural interventions in their lives. Indeed, one can sense this outlook in the author's apparent disappointment with higher education. Her educational experience did not reveal a magical benign deity who like "fairies living at the bottom of one's garden" could be expected to manifest him/her/itself 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 goals. 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 can discerned using modern historical and critical methods that the real Jesus's views about his own role in God's plan don't necessarily fit neatly with the categories devised by the Gospel writers or the later reflections of early church leaders and councils, which eventually lead to traditional Christological formulations, doctrines and creeds, I don't feel obliged to drop my New Testament in disgust. I rejoice in the contributions of all these fellow human beings. 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, or that the editors of biblical materials were possibly pursuing monarchist goals after the Israel/Judah split, I don't cry "Lies! All lies!" and drop my Hebrew Scriptures. I thank God for the providence and creativity of human communities struggling through often terrible circumstances. 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 my religion, it is by these complex material, biological and sociological processes that understandings of God come about in our naturalistic world. The author of the video seems to manifest a common American assumption that all political discourse is ultimately corrupted and corruptive, and to be distrusted.
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 embracing naturalism (perhaps an unusual kind of it) and some kind of naive Sunday school theism, is something to which I say "hallelujah!" Somewhat strangely, it seems like 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. I thank God for the United Church of Canada and its tolerant, progressive and non-anti-intellectual outlook.
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