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Lyle Denham's avatar

Very well written Joe. We are on the same page down to crossing t’s and dotting i’s.

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Benjamin Kerstein's avatar

As someone who is neither a Christian nor an atheist, I think I can give a different perspective on your main questions: "Compared to what we see around us every day, are the basic tenets of Christianity really so irrational? What if said tenets are not irrational at all?"

To a non-Christian like myself, they may not be irrational compared to, say, New Age thought, but compared to something like Darwin's theory of evolution, they do seem quite irrational. Darwin based his conclusions on observable phenomena and sought to logically extrapolate an overarching theory based on those observations. That's been the definition of rational thought at least since Thales.

It seems to me that Christianity and all revealed religions--including my own--have no part in this kind of rationalism and ultimately cannot make use of it.

As a thought experiment: Imagine that you are not a Christian and know nothing of the tenets of Christianity. A person comes to you and says there was a man of flesh and blood who was actually God, and he was executed in the most brutal fashion imaginable and rose from the dead. As a result of this, the person says, if you believe that this man was God, you are redeemed of all your previous sins and become the object of his everlasting love.

My guess is that you would consider that person slightly irrational. I certainly would.

I do not think I have much caricatured Christian belief here and I do not wish to appear contemptuous. My point is merely that these beliefs are not rational and my Christian friends I most admire do not pretend they are. They believe because they have made a leap of faith and do not attempt to argue for it on a rational basis because they do not feel they need to. So long as they leave me in peace with my own beliefs--and God bless them, they do as I do them--that's perfectly fine with me, and I happily admit that many atheists I've encountered were quite bigoted and unpleasant in comparison.

In fact, if my Christian friends attempted to make a rational argument for their beliefs, it would sadden me a bit, because it's their belief that is most remarkable about them, and this would be sullied somewhat if they felt the need to make rational arguments to justify it.

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