Chapter
One: “The Outsider Test for Faith”
The
Outsider Test, as we have seen, has become a popular, widely-employed argument
against Christianity. But John Loftus
attempts in particular
detail to develop this argument, and his name is most closely associated with
it. Let us therefore begin by
critiquing his
version of the OTF.
In his 2013 book, The Outsider Test for Faith:
How to Know Which Religion is True, Loftus
summarizes his case in four steps, or theses:
(1)
The Religious Diversity Thesis:
“People who are located in
distinct geographical areas around the globe overwhelmingly adopt and justify a
wide diversity of religious faiths due to their particular upbringing and
shared cultural heritage, and most of these faiths are mutually exclusive.”
(2)
The Religious Dependency Thesis: "To an overwhelming degree, one’s
religious faith is casually dependent on brain processes, cultural conditions,
and irrational thinking patterns.”
(3)
Given those two facts,
it is “highly likely that any given
adopted religious faith is false . . . "
(4)
In practice, one should hence test one’s religion “from the perspective of an outsider, a nonbeliever, with the same
level of reasonable skepticism believers already use when examining the other
religious faiths they reject.”[1]
These
four assertions raise all kinds of questions, both theoretical
and practical. First, what
does Loftus mean by “religion?” Does he
put his own ideas about the nature of things up for grabs, alongside the
beliefs of the
Athabascans and Zulus? Or does he take
his opinions as objective and inviolable because they are not what he defines
as “religious?”
In
other words, if “religion” (whatever that is) depends on irrational
“brain processes and cultural conditions,” where do skeptical thoughts come
from? If historical contingency, and glitches
in the hardware of our mental circuitry, lead Christians astray, why are the thoughts of
atheists assumed to be free of bugs? Did Richard
Dawkins’ brain evolve separately from those of church-going
primates? Or to ask the question
historically, have
not vast schools of post-Christian thought – Stalinism, Maoism, Objectivism, Freudianism, and so on – shown that atheists often rely
on “irrational thinking patterns” with the worst of them? If “patterns of irrationality” are common to
humans in general, why does Loftus only mention those sins of thought when
he writes about
people with whom one
disagrees? Does this manifest a
Manichean desire to set “religious” sinners apart from purer orders of
humanity? (“It’s not my fault!” “The
woman (Mom) gave me the apple of religious nurture!” “The snake (the winding double helix that
is to our notions of evolution roughly what the Fates were to ancient mythology) tempted me, and I ate!”
If
the OTF is to be of any rational value in helping us find truth, it must take a neutral stance
among worldviews, supernatural and
secular. (Human nature being
constant.) Therefore, for the purpose of
this test, religion is best defined in what sociologist Peter Berger calls a
“functional” sense – in terms of the roles beliefs play in
our lives, not their
intellectual content. We all have
“ultimate concerns,” to use Paul Tillich’s definition of
religion, and the
OTF should encourage us to be more objective about judging among those
concerns, not to
tacitly assume anti-God views hold a
privileged status in our
inquiry.
Also (back to
Loftus’ first premise), in
what sense are religions, however we define them, “diverse?” Does that mean they disagree about
everything? Obviously not. Skeptics tend to define religion, after all,
as belief in supernatural entities, thus conceding
that the vast majority of people in all ages and times have agreed at least on
one thing – that atheists are wrong. But
if diversity is an argument against the claims that people differ on, does that
not make it more probable that whatever
unites religions
across cultures, is true? So in
offering the OTF, does Loftus
make his own
beliefs empirically vulnerable, and admit that it yields (already) some evidence for the
supernatural? Or is this a “damned if
you do, damned if you don’t” sort of argument, in which reality automatically
tells against (non-secular) “religions,” whether they agree with one another or
not? A valid argument, like a two-edged
sword, must cut both ways. A mountain
slope that takes you downhill in one direction, must take you uphill if you
walk in the opposite direction. The
OTF therefore cannot be taken as an argument against religion, if we deny the
possibility that agreement between religions on a given question, should also
tell against secularism.
Taken
seriously, then, Loftus’ version of the OTF seems flawed even
in theory. Then when we look at the concrete and complex phenomena of how people convert,
further problems arise.
For one thing, ideas, like water, do not flow freely
in all directions. Three
drops of water that fall on different peaks in the Three Gorges region of the Himalayas
are fated to flow into the Yangtze and Sea of Japan, the Mekong through Vietnam
into the South China Sea, or into the Irrawady through Burma and out into the
Indian Ocean. Faiths are also biased (though
not fated) by the contours of social and political geography to
move along certain paths. Loftus
fails to properly take the effect of this “social geography” into
account. The cheery term “shared heritage” only weakly hints
at the barriers people often face in converting to a new religion. An American who joins the Hare Krishna sect
will likely feel awkward putting on saffron robes and chanting outside the
library in downtown Chattanooga.
Strictures against conversion to serious Christianity among upper-caste
Hindus, Burmese Buddhists, Japanese salarymen, or Danish anthropology
professors can weigh even
more heavily against
conversion. Group identification (“We
Thais love our king and worship Buddha”), while allowing eccentric beliefs in private,
usually impedes formal conversion to “foreign” religions, as oil repels water, or
as 15,000 foot ridges impede the flow of water from one canyon to the next.
So the
powerful human instinct for conforming to the habits of our fellows makes
conversion to alien beliefs extremely difficult under ordinary circumstances,
even in a “free market” of religions. And markets are usually not
free. A Saudi living in Mecca had best
make out his will before getting baptized publicly (sprinkled or
immersed). Most Afghans are Muslim for
the same reason most Albanians once voted for Enver Hofha: they value their necks. According to David Barrett and Todd Johnson,
nine million Christians had been martyred by Muslims by the year 2000[2],
while almost 32 million had been martyred by atheists. Jews have suffered even worse,
proportionately, but the demographics of all great faiths, and
most anti-faiths, have been shaped by persecution.
Fear of bodily harm, whether from police, neighbors, or evil jinn, is of
course an even more powerful constraining force than bourgeois forms of social
pressure.
But
some countries (mostly Christian and Buddhist) are freer than others
(especially Marxist
and Islamic). And some societies
(especially western) encourage individuality and freedom of expression, while
much of the world (especially societies growing from great ancient rice-growing
civilizations of Asia) encourage conformity.
No understanding of human history is valid that fails to take such
powerful social forces into account. If we
are to evaluate religious
conversion, we
must recognize that the
dice are generally loaded. It is foolish
to pretend Saudis or even Japanese are as free to decide what to believe as an
American college kid away from home at a “university” which displays people and
ideas from around the world like so many succulent fruits in a marketplace of ideas.
More radically still, I think Loftus’ argument hides a fundamental
misconception of how Christians understand other faiths. For
one thing, as I have already hinted, "diversity of religious
faiths" is genuine, but in some ways superficial. As Chesterton noted, religions around the
world commonly include four beliefs: in "God, the gods, philosophy, and
demons." In years of studying world
religions, I have found Chesterton's observation to be largely (not always)
true. Peel away labels, and many beliefs
seem to be universal or at least widespread. People in hundreds of cultures around the
world do turn out, as we shall see, to be aware of a Supreme God “outside” the
Abrahamic tradition. Chesterton is also
right in supposing belief in inferior spirits, good and bad, to be
universal. Anthropologists also find
people who reason systematically about the cosmos even in “primitive” tribes, as Paul Radin pointed out, and as
Stevan Harrell, head of the Anthropology Department at the University of Washington and
one of my MA supervisors,
observed from his study of Chinese religion as well. Apparent experience of the supernatural is
also universal. (Skeptical
proponents of the OTF often point this out themselves, oddly supposing that the
widespread experience of miracles, somehow must prove them all false!) This
could be called the "lack of religious diversity thesis,” and should be
held in tension with its cousin, the “religious diversity thesis.” If widespread disagreement renders a religious tenet
less credible, then agreement must render it more credible. (Just as, if one goes downhill from Jerusalem
to Jericho, one must go uphill from Jericho to Jerusalem.) One cannot make the one argument, without
implicitly admitting the other as well.
Nor
is Loftus' second premise empirically safe. Often, as he concedes, people do adopt
religions they had not been taught as children.
And as a study by the skeptic Michael Shermer suggests, even Americans
born into one religion grow up to
rationally evaluate their beliefs.
Shermer found that when asked, “Why do you believe in God?,” the top two
reasons cited evidence
and reason: “The good design natural beauty / complexity of the world or
universe” (28.6%), and “The experience of God in everyday life” (20.6%). (When I asked a smaller number of experienced
Christians the same question, this second sort of response often seemed to do with the direct or
indirect experience of miracles.)[3] The third most-popular answer, which garnered
only 10.3% of votes, seems less obviously rational: “Belief in God is
comforting, relieving, consoling, and gives meaning and purpose to life.”[4]
Yet even in that case, some may mean that Christian faith lends
coherence and unity to our understanding of the world around us. As Augustine said, “Our hearts were made for
You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in you,” which in
Augustine’s case seemed to mean he thought that the nature of man pointed to
the reality of God. Faith in God satisfies
our souls, as food satisfies our stomachs, because the heart was made for
worship as the stomach was made for
food. (The analogy is prominent in both halves of the Bible.) Not everyone can articulate their thoughts as
eloquently as Augustine, Calvin, or C. S. Lewis (who also argued in this mode),
but many theists may be thinking implicitly along similar rational lines, from
the nature of man to the reality of his Creator.
By
contrast, Shermer found that most people thought other folk believed merely
because they found faith comforting, were raised to believe, feared death or
needed something to believe in.[5] Remarkably, Loftus quoted
Shermer’s study to buttress his dubiously rational belief that belief is dubiously
rational:
“Michael
Shermer did some extensive research on why people believe in God and other
weird things. Nine out of ten people
said that other people are influenced by nonrational factors to believe in
weird things, and yet these same respondents turned around and said they were
the exceptions to the rule. How is it possible
for nine out of ten respondents to be the exceptions to what nine out of ten of
them recognize to be the rule?“[6]
Loftus
(and perhaps Shermer, since he gave The
Outsider Test for Faith a rave review) are forgetting that people know
their own minds better than those of their neighbors. You may guess why I became a writer, married
a girl from Japan, or head
to the mountains in winter with cross country skis in my car. But I have the inside scoop. What I say about my own motives is testimony. What I say about
why other people believe is speculation. Speculation is seldom good evidence:
testimony often is.
Nor
should one conflate “how people come to conclusions” with “why people believe:”
the first refers to historical causation, the second to present inference. For instance, I
came to believe that bean plants grow up poles because my father told me so, on
raw parental authority. This belief was
sensible: my father had grown beans since his family planted a Victory Garden
during World War II. But I now also
believe this folk tale (or Folks’ tale) because I have planted beans myself, and watched them
skinny skywards. “Faith” often begins like a seed, then winds
heavenward in light of growing evidence.
As the Samaritans told Jesus, “We believed at first because the woman
told us, but now we have seen you for ourselves.” (John 4:41) So with many who “grow into”
Christianity. Just because we initially
accept a belief on partially irrational grounds – this belief, rather than some
other, happens to present itself to our minds, backed by authority – doesn’t
mean we gain no more
rational grounds for holding onto it. We generally do. Anyway, that’s how we learn most things:
science, history, geography, all sprout from faith in authorities (parents, teachers,
books, heaven help us, the Internet).
Then our belief grows or withers, as it finds further nourishment in the
soil of empirical experience, and begin to branch out. (As
a language teacher, I am bemused by the thought that, since I studied before I
traveled, for all I knew at the time, the French or Russian or Chinese I
learned in school could have been imaginary languages invented by my
teachers. What a great practical trick
that would have been! Though not
really so practical!)
Also,
in most of the world, serious Christian faith is not the default position. Even most American Christians go to secular
schools, listen to secular music, watch secular movies, and (in extreme
cases) read the blogs of John Loftus or PZ Myer. We also stand
in our cultural skivvies under that vast cataract of historical cacophony we
are taught to call the “Enlightenment.”
Notice,
for example, the anti-Christian propaganda in the Princeton Review’s study guide for the AP World History exam for
high school students. (Which I found my son
reading). In that book, there is a section dramatically
entitled, in bold, “The Enlightenment: Out of the Darkness, Into the Light.” This
section begins with a word (which I will put in italics for emphasis) that implies that the “Enlightenment,” and the Scientific Revolution
that preceded it, were contemporary and parallel movements:
“While the scientists put forth
revolutionary ideas, the philosophers and social critics had a revolution of
their own . . .
Why was a “revolution” needed? Because Christianity had been a tool of
political oppression:
“During
the High Middle Ages and through the Renaissance and Counter-Renaissance, the Church allied
itself with strong monarchs . . . Because the vast majority of their
populations were Christian, the best way to rule was to align oneself with
God. Monarchs became convinced that God
had ordained their right to govern, and that meant that people had a moral and
religious obligation to obey them . . . “
Is
this good history? Not a bit
of it. Most of the concepts the authors would likely
recognize as enlightened – modern science, democracy, civil organizations that
aid the poor and sickly, the overthrow of slavery and liberation of women, even
tolerance – had been developing within the Christian civilization they deride
here for centuries before the so-called “Enlightenment” began, or even before
the Scientific Revolution (also a questionable term, Rodney Stark has recently
argued) hit its peak. (We
shall later trace a bit of that influence.)
And it is
striking that in search of an “Enlightenment” figure who began writing early
enough to allow the authors to use the word “while”
here (and imply
that Science and the Enlightenment were born at the same time), the authors
offer the name Thomas Hobbes. High school
children will not have read Hobbes. In
fact, the man was
gung-ho for tyranny: “as in
the presence of the master, the servants are equal, and without any honor at
all; so are the subjects, in the presence of the sovereign.”[7] Hobbes also criticized the pious scientific pioneer Robert
Boyle for testing his theories about gases by experiment.
But here’s
the point
relevant to Loftus’ argument. Having been indoctrinated in public schools
(and I have seen worse, substitute teaching in rural school districts in
Washington State),
is it really plausible to describe the products of such education as purely and
simply “insiders” to Christian tradition?
May it not be truer to say public school children, the majority of
students, are socialized to some extent to despise Christianity? (And then often get a double dose in college,
including from some of Loftus’ “Bright” friends – as we
shall shortly see?)
So
cultural dependency in our “Christian” culture may be real, but is by no stretch
of the imagination "overwhelming."
When
I raised this objection, Loftus offered a peculiar response: “For a boy who is
home-schooled by
snake handlers or a girl raised by KKK parents, those are the only cultures
they know.” A paragraph later, he added,
still addressing me, “Christian theists respond by asking me to explain the
exceptions. I am asking them to explain
the rule.”[8]
By
all means, let’s explain the rule before the exception! Are boys and girls raised by snake-handlers
and bigots in
white sheets the exception even in American society
(still less, say, London),
or the rule? They are such rare
exceptions, that in half a century, I have never knowingly met either. (Well I did meet the red-headed son of a
missionary in Hong Kong who lectured us on a snake he’d just caught in the
oyster beds, even as it hung onto his thumb by its fangs: “This snake is only
mildly poisonous – I need to work its jaw out gently or I’ll hurt it.” But his peculiar madness was purely
scientific.) Children are raised in
homes of many religious traditions and varying intensities, then usually go to
secular schools, where they are brainwashed with the biases of the Princeton Review, and where they imbibe
a thousand forms of secular influence – rap music, X Box games, The Simpsons, Big Bang Theory, forty
hours for every one in church. That’s
the rule, snake-handling KKK home-schooled
kids are rare as falling stars. (Maybe
rarer: I have actually handled
a meteorite.) Diversity is not just the
presence of other “religious” communities.
It is also a secularist tradition that took root centuries ago in the
West, deeply hostile to Christianity, that
now holds great influence in the public square.
A
related problem with Loftus’ argument is that atheist worldviews seem as
“culturally dependent” as any other.
Loftus claimed that "Atheists do indeed take the OTF. That's why atheists are atheists in the first
place".[9] But in fact, people also "adopt and
defend" skeptical ideologies because of where they were born and how they
were educated. (Never mind “brain processes!”)
In
the fall of 2011 I surveyed 124 Chinese intellectuals, mostly in northern
China, about their religious beliefs.
Among college students who gave clear answers, about two thirds avowed
atheism. But young Chinese who had
already graduated from college were far more likely to identify themselves as
believers of some sort – especially in Zen, Confucianism, or Christianity –
with only one third of those
clearly choosing the “there is no God” option on my survey. So evidently Marxist propaganda succeeds in
making young Chinese into atheists, at least until they get out of school and
gain wider experience.
Most
atheists today live and have been raised in communist countries, where denying
religion is expected. A broader survey
showed that about two thirds of Chinese claim no religion—which would mean
almost a billion non-theistic
Chinese alone.[10] Combine that with armies of unbelievers in
Vietnam, North Korea, communists in Latin America and Europe, those who were
brought up to skepticism in Eastern Europe, and skeptics who acquired their
atheism through democratic secular humanism constitute at most maybe one in
five atheists in the world today. The rest are at least partly the products of
anti-religious indoctrination.
And
even among western secular humanists who cast off religious faith in their
youth, can we really be sure that they do so for purely rational reasons, not
because of cultural influence? Many
atheists in the West are raised by unbelievers.
Others convert in high school or college. Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris explicitly say
this should be a goal of education through the influence of “godless
professors,” as Daniel Dennett calls himself.
One finds some
such professors at many universities. A
student wrote the following description of Loftus’ friend the best-selling
author and philosopher Peter Boghossian at Portland State University:
“His
heroes: Dawkins, Habermas, James Randy, Dennett, Pinker, Hitchens, Socrates,
Darwin, D. Davidson, Wittgenstein. His hit list:
Postmodernism, pseudoscience, religion, superstition, mysticism,
fascism/totalitarianism, Sarah Palin. This class will give you an opportunity
to live a life free of illusion.”[11]
“Hit list?” No hint of brow-beating young
minds there!
University
of Texas political scientist Jay Budziszewski recalls how he was hired:
“Eighteen
years ago I stood before the Government Department of the University of Texas
to give a talk . . . my here’s-why-you-should-hire-me lecture. I wanted to teach about ethics and politics,
so as academic job seekers do everywhere, I was showing the faculty my
stuff.
“So
what did I tell them? Two things. The first was that we human beings merely
make up the difference between good and evil; the second was that we aren’t
responsible for what we do anyway. And I
laid out a ten-year plan for rebuilding ethical and political theory on these
two propositions.”[12]
Budziszewski
asks, in retrospect, whether
this was the right plan for getting a job teaching the young, or for “getting
committed to the state mental hospital.”
He now thinks not only were both propositions wrong, but that he knew
they were wrong at the time, and was deceiving himself with sophistry. But it concerns him that such a program would
win him a position at one of the world’s top universities, teaching America’s
future political leaders how to think about ethics! “Morality is an illusion, we have no choices.” Is this how the faculty at the University of
Texas desires to shape the souls of future mandarins at the Department of
Justice? Nor is this a rare bias in
academia. Perhaps the real question is, how
do so many bright young people survive such propaganda with their faith
intact?
Yet another flaw in Loftus’ argument is logical in
nature, but points to the empirical value of the OTF, if it can be corrected
for the many weaknesses described so far.
Strictly speaking, does John's initial conclusion--point three–really
follow from the premises that precede it?
If we adopt certain beliefs because we have been taught them, does that
mean they are probably false? Obviously
not. My belief that the earth circles
the sun is "culturally dependent."
If I grew up in ancient Carthage, or among the Yali in Papua New Guinea,
I would probably not believe in heliocentrism.
I believe it because teachers told me this, and have never proven it for
myself. However many intriguing models
of the solar system may exist in other cultures, the fact that mine is also
culturally-conditioned, in no way means it is wrong.
Loftus
seems to be committing a version of the genetic fallacy, here, the idea that
the origin of an idea discredits it: "Mario is Italian, so of course he
thinks olive oil is healthier than corn oil!" Maybe
Mario’s cultural bias does incline him to favor the olives; but that doesn't
mean olive oil isn't genuinely superior, or even that Mario doesn't hold
his view for sound medical reasons as well.
Skeptics
commonly reply, “But you don’t have to take heliocentrism or the health benefits
of olive oil on faith–you can prove them scientifically–unlike religion!” But who does?
How do I know that electrons circle the nuclei of atoms? That Earth
contains an outer core
of molten iron and
nickel? Or even that I have two lungs? If we had
to prove everything personally by the scientific method, we might as well toss
our hands in the air, break off a tree branch and go club a slow-moving
marsupial for dinner. Not having to
“prove everything scientifically” is one of the advantages of civilization. (And even if you do an experiment, you still
rely on human testimony – in the form of electronic impulses between neurons of
your brain – when you relate your results five minutes later.) We are human.
There is no escaping absolute reliance on our five senses, cognition,
and reports from people we trust, beginning with ourselves.
At
a Neolithic town site in the Fertile Crescent, archeologists found seeds from
more than a hundred different plant species.
These seeds represented a cumulative knowledge of edible plants that had
been tested and handed down from generation to generation, and would ultimately
pave the way for civilization.
Aristotle,
an heir to such Neolithic technology, pointed out that aside from direct,
scientific proof, it is rational to accept beliefs by attending to the
“undemonstrated dicta and opinions of the skillful, the old, and the wise,” who
over generations serve as gatekeepers of truth in every tribe. Indeed, had
his ancestors not already been doing that for millennia, Greek civilization could not
have produced Aristotle to help invent science.
Why
is the fact that an idea about the cosmos is accepted in the modern West, more
impressive than the fact that it was accepted by, say, Sawi headhunters in
Papua New Guinea? Obviously, because
modern western ideas – scientific or religious – have faced far more critical
tests, by better-informed thinkers, over a wider range of conditions, than the
stories jungle-dwelling headhunters tell in their straw huts at night. Sorry if that sounds patronizing or
politically suspect. If it’s any
consolation, I will later argue that the headhunter may well know something
worth listening to. But it is a simple
fact that a John Frum aircraft made of bamboo will not fly as well as a Cessna
or Boeing. And as we shall see, it is
also a simple fact that like “western” science, Christianity has passed a far
more stringent and impressive series of “outsider tests” in the process of
becoming international.
So what is the Outsider Test good for?
Given
all these problems – the difficulty of defining “religion,” the complexity of
religions agreements and disagreements between them, the subtle and often
indirect ways that evidence acts on belief, and beliefs filter evidence (for skeptics
as well as Christians and Buddhists), the complexities of cultural biases and
individual motives, the social component in conversion, including official
propaganda, legal strictures, and mob violence – can the OTF tell us anything at all about the truth of religious
claims? Or is it simply an Ad Populum argument
in a cowboy hat off the rack of the Fort Wayne, Indiana Walmart?
For Loftus, the OTF does
look at times like a
rhetorical gambit by which to persuade Christians to cast a gimlet eye at the
Gospel:
“We
must offer them a shocking test, one that may help get them out of their
dogmatic slumbers like nothing else can do.
And they will object as strenuously as they can to the OTF because they
know their faith does not pass that test. That’s why Christians argue against
it just like Muslim scholars would . . .”[13]
Clearly
one must be cautious with the OTF. It is
no magical wand. It is
at best a tool, limited in scope, and requiring careful handling. A strong argument for any general interpretation of
reality should also rely on the best in philosophy, science, and all
the evidence that can be gleaned from history about miracles and the lives of
founders and saints.
But
despite all the cautions and problems described above, I believe there is a core of sense to the concept. It is wise to let the world be our auditor,
to help screen our
personal and societal biases. Of course
Secular Humanism has to go into the kitty, too.
Whether children
are raised in
the Hitler Youth or the Soviet Komsomol, taught Reformed catechism or politically correct
liberalism, we do tend to
copy errors and prejudices as well as insights and wisdom from our elders. It is therefore wise to take the full counsel not
just of the “skillful, old and wise” within a single culture, but of humanity as a whole. It is sensible to search for a faith that
includes great insights of many times and places, the fullest picture of
reality from men and women most widely recognized as admirable. Seeking a view of life that retains what our folks have found true, and that
also helps explain insights from other branches of humanity, is a valid and
important way to test belief systems. I
am delighted that John Loftus and his skeptical colleagues have issued this challenge. When the OTF has been debugged and polished
up, I propose that the Gospel meets and answers it most
fully.
So
I don’t think Christians need to “argue against” the Outsider Test for
Faith. Following Chesterton, I would
rather ask skeptics to open the window, to sail to the South Seas, to take the
world of religions more seriously, not less so – then look
for Jesus in Samoa,
Sichuan, or Swaziland.
We
must, however, reformulate the four theses Loftus offers for the OTF in more plausible terms. So let
me close this chapter by tentatively proposing a more careful formulation of
the OTF:
(1)
Unity within Diversity Thesis:
“People who live in distant regions of the world tend to adopt different
beliefs, some of which conflict, some of which agree. While no sure proof – there may be structural
or mental reasons for us to adopt similar false beliefs, while true beliefs may arise uniquely from a single
location – universal beliefs that agree are more likely to reflect universal
realities in some fashion than those that are solely created by individual
cultures.”
(2)
Ideological Dependency Thesis: “All
thought is conducted by fallible human beings and is therefore subject to error
– that of atheists no less than that of Anabaptists, Buddhists, Wiccans or
Zoroastrians. Thus it is wise to pay
particular attention when the wisest men and women in diverse cultures agree.”
(3)
Double-Skepticism Thesis: “One
interesting result of a fair application of the OTF may therefore be to cast a
little doubt on atheism itself, since awareness of divine realities is almost
universal, and is generally recognized by the wisest within most great
civilizations.”
(4)
Fulfillment Thesis: “One should,
therefore, test great faiths not with blind skepticism, but looking for areas
of common agreement, transcendent insight, and intellectual tapestries that
synthesize important threads of insight from many traditions.”
Note: Now here's Chapter Two, in which I make the argument that Loftus and his fellows seem so determined to concentrate on -- a concentration of mind that has not, however, resulted in clarity of thought, so far.
[10] Carson Menchen, Byron Johnson and Rodney Stark, “Final Report: The
Empirical Study of Religions in China”
[11] Rate
My Professors, at http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1266472
[13] Loftus, ‘Where David
Marshall Goes Wrong,” Deconstructing Christianity Blogspot, January 2, 2011 and following.
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