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Erasing Genocide. A Reply to Viktor Manzhul
Before I dive into our points of disagreement, I want to note that Victor and I agree on many things. We both agree on the use of reason and critical thinking to explore these weighty issues. We both agree that such profound existential questions are of vital importance and deserve careful attention, from believers and non-believers alike. We even agree that there is a rich intellectual history among proponents of theism and deism (though I would also add what Victor left out, that atheism too has a rich intellectual tradition, from the ancient Indian school of Charvaka materialism, to the oft forgotten Greeks like Prodicus, Euripides, Anaxagoras, Theodorus of Cyrene, or Democritus). [1, 2]
In addition, I would like to commend Victor for his critique of anti-intellectualism that is often found in the ranks of Christianity, this is a valiant rallying cry. I think he is an intelligent Christian who sincerely attempts to rationalize his faith, and I can gladly extol him for this virtue. I’m certain that if we met in person we would very much enjoy each other’s company without hatred or animosity. That said, I think his arguments and rationalizations are unpersuasive and founded on dubious premises. Ultimately, I come to a different conclusion; however, this does not mean that I think Victor is foolish or irrational.
1. On the Reasons Why Slavic Youth Leave the Church
In his essay Victor argues that there are a few key reasons that explain the exodus of Slavic youth from the church. As we shall come to see, many of these are unjustified speculations that offer nothing insightful into this phenomenon.
a. “They Aren’t True Christians.”
In a quintessential case of the infamous “No True Scotsman” fallacy [3], Victor attempts to argue that (i) since real Christians would never leave the faith, therefore (ii) everyone who leaves the faith was not a true Christian. This is a fallacious tactic because it creates a claim that is impervious to valid evidential counterexamples. For example, if I make a claim that “no true Scotsman drinks tea,” and someone points to genuine evidence against this claim (e.g., a photograph of a Scotsman drinking drink tea), I can simply redefine the group to exclude this valid counterexample by saying, “Oh, that’s not a true Scotsman.” Such a method can be used to reject evidence against any claim, and this is epistemically unethical. Also, as I’ve mentioned in my previous response, if I was not a “true Christian” then it’s probably impossible for anyone to evaluate who is a “true Christian” and this leaves us with a methodological impasse that nullifies this whole conversation.
b. “We Can Blame American Education.”
The irony here does not fail to amaze me, as Victor grew up in the secular USSR, where state atheism was the official dogma of the educational system, and I took my studies in a Christian-majority country, where about half of my professors were openly Christian. I have a total of six years of academic education (AA degree in basic science for nursing, AS degree in nuclear medicine, and a BA in communication), all of which were completed years before my deconversion. In fact, for my capstone project in biology, my professor graciously allowed me to present a lengthy paper arguing against the theory of abiogenesis (the evolution of organic life from inorganic matter).
What about the evidence? Does sociological research support Victor’s speculative hypothesis? No, the data showing a correlation between educational attainment and religiosity is mixed. Some studies of the U.S. indicate education is positively correlated with religiosity [4] while others demonstrate the opposite [5]. Interestingly enough, some researchers have conducted a meta-analysis of 63 correlational studies that seems to demonstrate a statistically significant correlation between higher intelligence and lower religiosity [6]. However, I would avoid dogmatically saying the average non-religious person is more intelligent, as that seems a bit premature without further research and a critical review of the meta-analysis. As I’ve said before, I know very intelligent people from both sides of this debate. In any case, the data does not support Victor’s hypothesis, and neither does my experience.
Let me conclude with a brief anecdote: one of my friends lost her faith during a four-year psychology program at a moderate Christian university, so I would advise against hastily laying the blame on secular “brainwashing.”
c. “We Can Blame Pastors, Parents, and the Church.”
Another scapegoat violently thrown under the bus is the collective integrity of the parents and elders of unbelieving Slavic youth. Victor says such youth has “likely seen very little manifestation of authentic faith and genuine sanctification in the church and family” and had they seen such faith from “parents, pastors, and other Christians” they would not have been disillusioned with Christianity. While I cannot speak for all Slavic youth, I will say that in my case, and in that of many others, this assessment is highly inaccurate and demeaning toward numerous Christians. Furthermore, the logic behind the principle appears to be severely flawed.
First, I will note that I am acquainted with deconverted Slavic youth from nearly every church (Baptist and Pentecostal) in my region. The logical implication of Victor’s statement will lead us to conclude that nearly every single church in my region is populated by inauthentic parents and pastors.
Second, it seems to imply a strange theological notion that people obtain or retain their salvation partly through observing the faith of others rather than the orthodox soteriological doctrine of justification and sanctification by faith through Christ’s atonement. Theology aside, there is no evidence that the sincerity of adherents to a particular paradigm can completely inoculate others from abandoning this paradigm. (Nor, I should add, does one’s devotion to a belief indicate the propositional veracity the belief). There are radical Muslims whose devotion to their faith can be substantiated by their willingness to die for it, yet this does not serve to prevent other Muslims from leaving the faith, nor an epistemologically warranted reason to accept the verity of Islam.
d. “They Haven’t Penetrated the Heights of Christian Intellect.”
Given what I know about Slavic Christians, and in fact the majority of Christians throughout history, this rings absolutely true. Early Christianity had its intellectual giants, like Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, and St. Augustine, but it was also marked by a large majority of believers who were illiterate. I’ve seen estimates of literacy in antiquity range from as low as 3% [7] to as high as 10% [8]. This leaves the vast majority of Christians without even the ability to read Augustine and scale these “peaks of Christian intellect.” As Origen writes about the demographics of early Christianity, “the simple and ignorant necessarily outnumbered the more intelligent” [9].
So yes, as an observation, Victor and I agree, this is a real trend, one that seems to have been consistent throughout Christian history. However, as an argument aimed at refuting the deconversion of former Christians (such as, “you can’t determine that Christianity is false, unless you have engaged with the deepest Christian thinkers”), this fails.
First, these deepest thinkers came multiple generations after the time of Christ, so by this virtue, no one living prior to the time of the Church Fathers could critically examine Christianity, which is absurd.
Second, the biblical text declares that everything necessary is contained within (2Tim.3:16-17), and sophisticated philosophers are unnecessary (John 16:13, 1Cor.1:20-27).
Finally, this requirement is arbitrary and unfair, as it’s not followed by Christians towards other worldviews. How many Christians demand that I must first seriously engage with the deepest thinkers from the secular tradition, and from every major religion (Baha’i, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism, Taoism, and Zoroastrianism, etc.) before deciding that all of these are erroneous and accepting Christianity? How many Christians have devoted a sizeable amount of time to read sophisticated apologetics from the intellectual tradition of these alternative worldviews before rejecting them? I don’t know of any. This is an obvious case of double standards.
2. On the Poverty of My Intellectual Journey
a. “Many Christian Thinkers Argue Far Deeper Than Yuriy.”
Yes, that is certainly true, many Christian thinkers who have written large volumes explore these issues in far greater depth than I did during the few hundred words with which I narrated a concise summary of my existential journey. And there are many atheistic thinkers that discuss the inadequacy of any moral justification of genocide with far more sophistication than in Victor’s brief article, but I will not hold it against him, because I understand the limits of this format.
b. “Why Did Yuriy Ignore the Rich Intellectual Tradition of Theists/Deists and Instantly Became an Atheist?”
First, I will note that it was impossible to chronicle the totality of my story in the original interview, so what we read were the existential highlights, the things I felt and experienced. I chose to avoid in-depth philosophical arguments because in the past this has often produced a lot of hostility in my interlocutors. To add a bit more context, once I put down my Norman Geisler book, I did not stop my intellectual journey, I merely stopped being certain that Christianity was true. I began to approach this question from the perspective of an agnostic. I no longer possessed confident theistic beliefs. Instead I was seeking an epistemological warrant to acquire accurate beliefs. This is what demarcated me from a believer who maintains an a priori confidence in his faith, and then performs a post hoc rationalization to defend that pre-existing belief.
I will be honest with the fact that did not spend a significant amount of time trying to justify deism. But why should I? I would first have to find good reasons or evidence to think deism is true. And in my opinion, the arguments of natural theology are equally weak when used to support theism as well as deism. In addition, deism is nearly dead among contemporary thinkers; we no longer live in the age of Locke, Rousseau, or Paine. After meeting Hume’s skepticism and entering the age of Darwin, deism has seen tremendous decline because the theory of evolution provided a persuasive natural explanation for the origin of humanity. In the past, when someone found reasons to doubt Christianity, he had to fall back on deism to produce an explanation of reality (or to avoid the lynch mob). Today, when one finds theism lacking, one does not have to retreat to deism because naturalism provides a more robust explanation of nature.
Even though I did not spend significant time with deism, I read prominent liberal/moderate Christian scholars and philosophers, including Dale C. Allison, Randal Rauser, Karl Giberson, Peter Enns, John Walton, Marcus Borg, and even some very conservative intellectuals, like Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig. However, I also read atheists and naturalists: J.L Mackie, William Rowe, Michael Martin, Bart Ehrman, Hector Avalos, Robert Funk, Michael Coogan, and Dale Martin. The naturalists provided far more persuasive explanations of reality than the supernaturalists. Though, of course, I don’t think the choice is a binary one between theism or atheism. After all, we have pantheism, panentheism, igtheism, transtheism, ultimism, etc., but I found none of these compelling (except perhaps ultimism).
After losing the firm foundations of my faith, by day I read and studied, and by night I prayed and sought God from the chasm of my existential angst. The final step in my deconversion was a personal encounter with the evidential problem of divine hiddenness. I received no answer and found no evidence upon which to ground belief in God, and so I stopped believing. But is this a good reason to believe there is no God? Some have said it’s not because God does not dance to the tune of my flute and he does not owe me evidence. I think this is an intentional obfuscation of the situation. If the ultimate answer was atheism, we would expect in this world a confused mixture of religious beliefs with no reliable way to determine which is an ontological reality. If the ultimate answer was Christian theism, we would expect to see a reliable way for people to know this. So then it’s not that I imposed demands on God, but rather that if God were to exist, because of his very nature, there would be certain things we would expect to see in the world.
Alas, I didn’t see evidence of a God, nor did God respond to my pleas for relationship, and so the straw that broke the camel’s back was the problem of divine hiddenness. There are many other arguments that philosophers think are persuasive, but this is the one that moved me. In the interview, I wrote of this in the form of first person narrative; I explained how it felt. Below, I will outline the philosophical argument behind my experiences, as expounded by Canadian philosopher J.L. Shellenberg [10, 11], though other philosophers have produced modified versions, including Theodore Drange [12], Stephen Maitzen [13], and Jason Marshes [14].
i. If a God exists, he is necessarily a perfectly good God. (Evil or amoral gods are said to be logically impossible by most philosophers.)
ii. If a perfectly good God exists, he will necessarily overcome any burden to instantiate relationship with any creatures that are (a) capable and (b) willing. (Because any creature capable of relationship with a good God would benefit, and a good God, necessarily desires good for others.)
iii. There are capable and willing creatures who try but are unable to initiate a meaningful conscious relationship with God.
iv. Hence, a perfectly loving God does not exist.
I find this to be a very compelling evidential argument for the non-existence of God. Numerous anthologies and responses to it have been published, the most popular defence being that God withholds revealing himself for some greater known or unknown good [15]. I don’t think this is a persuasive response, but even if I did, it would logically follow that at this current time I am fully justified in not believing in God until such a time when he reveals himself to produce that greater good. Furthermore, if we respond by saying God has a reason for staying so hidden, we cannot simultaneously argue that there is good evidence for believing in God.
c. “Atheism Doesn’t Give Answers for ‘Important Questions of Life (Meaning of Life, Eternal Life, Justification of Morals, an Origin All Existing and So Forth).’”
No, atheism doesn’t give one book which claims to contain all the answers, but I contend that life is not so simple that one book can contain answers to everything. To learn about the meaning of life, we must study philosophy, in particular the existentialists. To learn about ethics, we ought read ethicists and study human nature. To learn about the origins of the universe, we must study physics and cosmology. Atheism was never meant to answer these questions, but neither was simple theism. One has to add supplementary philosophical beliefs to their theism to make sense of reality – divine command theory as their system of normative ethics, or a particular religious creation narrative as their story of origins.
3. On the vindication of genocide and infanticide
a. Why Theological Defences of Genocide Will Never Convince Anyone Who Isn’t Already Convinced.
I doubt I will ever persuade Victor to see things from my side because his foundational presupposition inoculates him. If I first believe that “atheism is true, no matter what” and ground all my logic in that axiom, then no argument or evidence could ever convince me otherwise. I believe this is the starting position of most Christians. So instead of trying to persuade anyone on the issues in the Old Testament, I want to kindly outline the methodological differences between Victor and myself.
In propositional logic there are two common ways to argue using a shared premise: modus ponens (if A then B; A, therefore B) and modus tollens (if A then B; not B, therefore not A). When approaching the biblical descriptions of genocide, we have one premise in common and an additional premise that differs:
- Shared premise: If the Bible is divine truth, then everything it teaches ought to be good.
- Christian: The Bible is divine truth; therefore, genocide is sometimes morally good.
- Non-Christian: Genocide is never morally good; therefore, the Bible is not divine truth.
For Victor and most Evangelicals, the foundational premise is that the Bible is God’s truth, and therefore, no matter what the evidence is, the only logical outcome is that they will always find a way to rationalize it. On the other hand, my foundational premise is that genocide, infanticide, rape, slavery, etc. is never morally good (and while I don’t have time to defend secular ethics here, those inclined can see my brief comments on ethics in the interview or visit a more expanded essay on metaethics [16]). So, ultimately, everything hinges on this issue: What do you think is more reasonable, that the Bible is always true or that genocide is always wrong? Victor and other Evangelicals chose the former; I chose the latter.
b. Why I Think Victor’s Rationale is Flawed.
I won’t address every single element of Victor’s defense of biblical genocide because it has been done before. When I was a Calvinist, I too used similar rationalizations. And while I can’t speak for Victor’s deepest thoughts, when I defended the brutality of the Old Testament, I didn’t empathize with the victims but treated them like faceless statistics in a history book. As Stalin once said, “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”
Humans can often erect emotional barriers to distance ourselves from the horrifying reality of suffering, and I believe defending genocide is a perfect example of this. I don’t mean to say we should use emotion instead of reason, but that when we think about subjects which are grounded in human experience, it’s irrational to exclude the emotional reality of suffering from our analysis. It’s illogical to speak of the ethics of suffering as though we are analyzing an abstract mathematical model. In any case, far better articulations of Victor’s exact argument have already been made, most recently in Christian philosopher Paul Copan’s 256-page “Is God a Moral Monster?” [17]. Likewise, far better responses than mine have already been written, such as biblical scholar Thom Stark’s 345-page “A Critical Review of Paul Copan’s ‘Is God a Moral Monster?’” [18].
As I said earlier, if you presuppose the Bible is God’s truth, and are clever enough (as Victor is), you will be able to rationalize absolutely anything and no evidence could ever change your mind. For this reason, I won’t try to convince anyone; I merely want to make a few comments to explain why I personally don’t find Victor’s approach satisfying, even if others do.
i. The overall methodology is suspicious: Dozens of religions have sophisticated and educated apologists that (a) first assume the validity of their religion and then (b) using deductive logic, find a way to rationalize away the problems posed by their religion. The fact that such a methodology works for all religions indicates that it is an unreliable process of discovering what is true.
ii. The specific argument is universally applicable: Even now ISIS militants are committing genocide; they indiscriminately kill men, women, and children who are “infidels.” Most people recoil in shock and horror at the barbaric cruelty of these monstrous acts. Yet ISIS uses the same exact argument as Victor to justify their brutality. Their God commanded it, their victims are being judged by God, their God is the only one who can make this judgment, we are but clay compared to Allah; therefore, their genocide must be morally good. The fact that both ISIS and Victor can use the same argument frightens me and indicates that it’s a dubious argument.
iii. The trivialization of suffering is horrifying: Victor argues that, ultimately, all death is the same because “all death is violent” and; therefore we should not be shocked by genocide. This is a false equivocation of the peaceful death of an elderly man to the brutally agonizing, painful, and slow death of screaming children. Just imagine the horrifying reality of the biblical genocide: untrained men with dull iron age weapons chopping and hacking at a terrified mob that includes women and children. These wounds don’t kill instantly, they maim and terrorize the gentle flesh, as the victims scream out in pain. Mothers weep as their children slowly bleed to death, until their tears are silenced by the relentless blows of their aggressors. Sisters tremble as their brothers limbs are crudely dislocated, knowing they are next to feel the wicked sting of primitive metal. How can these extended moments of unbearable pain compare to gently passing in your sleep? They cannot. In the end, Victor attempts to soften the biblical portrait of God by saying death is merely a transition, but I don’t see how this helps. According to Evangelical theology, for most people this “transition” only leads them from the tip of the blade into a fiery furnace of God-initiated and God-sustained eternal conscious torture.
iv. The view of God’s options is very limited: Speaking of the flood, Victor argues that it was necessary for God to destroy everything because of the wickedness of men. I would argue that, while Victor is limited in his imagination, God – if he exists – is not. Could God really not think of a way to purge evil without murdering every innocent woman, child, and animal? Would God really need to cause little kittens to suffer pointlessly in order to judge a wicked man on the other side of the planet? In my opinion, such a bold claim is very naive. I am a mere human being and I can come up with a dozen ways right now that don’t require such unnecessary collateral damage. God could have simply given every evil person a heart attack. He could have commanded lightning to strike anyone who performs a violent act. For an omnipotent and omniscient being, the options are literally limitless.
v. The glorification of violence is dangerous: It is proposed that God killed 99.99% of mankind with a flood because he was displeased with their violence. This makes little sense because it seems to indicate that God used violence to curb violence. It is like a parent who sees that some of his children are fighting, and instead of talking to them or lovingly correcting them, he simply beats them all to death and decides to raise new children. Allegorically, this teaches that violence is an appropriate means of solving problems, because, purportedly, even God’s ultimate solution is violence. Not once in the flood story do we see God speaking with people, urging them to change, explaining a better way, or calling them to peace and reason. Instead, we only see violence, death, and destruction. Understandably, sometimes humans are put in situations where the only possible way to stop violence is by using violence. Yet God would not have such limitations, he could simply freeze everyone in place and speak with each person, fully illuminating their minds with their errors and gently inviting them to a better, more peaceful way. Of course, someone may reply that this would inhibit their free will, yet this is not true. If a prisoner is locked into a room with a counsellor, he still maintains the freedom to reject wise council. But if free will is the issue, killing people and throwing them into a fiery torture chamber from which they can never leave, most certainly removes a person’s ability to make choices, so I can’t see that as a superior solution. Someone else may reply with: “God has the right to do anything he wants! He can destroy whoever he wants!” And that may be true, but if there was a God who was utterly violent and destructive, such a God would be no different than satan. These kinds of violent portraits of God are as horrifying as is the promotion of violence as the ultimate means of solving problems.
vi. The logical conclusion of defending infanticide is appalling: Most Christians vehemently oppose abortion, saying it is murder. Yet, in Victor’s defense of genocide, he claims killing infants (and every unborn child) was a moral good because they would enter heaven. He further says that if these children grew up to be adults, they would have learned wickedness from their parents and likely ended up in hell. I have heard this principle many times and have never understood how people fail to see the insurmountable problem it poses. If it’s true that all children instantly go to heaven, and God in the past approved killing infants of unbelieving parents to guarantee their salvation, then abortion is the most effective evangelism program on the planet. If murdering a child guarantees them heaven, while allowing them to live carries a real possibility of them ending up in hell, then the most loving thing a parent can do is kill their child. For why risk their eternal damnation when you can secure their salvation? If such an act was a moral good in the past, then why is it a moral evil today? What a horrifying conclusion! Yet this is an irrefutable implication for anyone who claims that Old Testament infanticide is morally good because it caused children to go to heaven. Not only this, but making such a claim poses problems for all of Christian soteriology. If God creates a workaround by which all killed children go to heaven without believing in Jesus, repenting, being born again, sanctified, etc., what’s the point of demanding that for everyone else? Why not just create billions of humans as children, kill them as infants, and send everyone to heaven that way?
4. A Few Closing Words
I speak from the bottom of my heart when I say that I appreciate everything good that has come from Christianity. I don’t have anger, condescension, or hatred towards the people who believe. I think most are like Victor – sincere, dedicated, and decent people who often do much good in the world. And who knows, perhaps Christians are even right, perhaps some people have a sensus divinitatus that provides them with private sensory evidence of God.
Alas, I am being as honest as I can be. I don’t have this and I’ve never seen it. I cannot find reliable reasons or good evidence that compels me to believe. Instead, I see the arguments from theists as weak reasons to believe, and some good reasons to think atheism is probably true. I am honest about this. Try as I may, I cannot lie to my conscience. I cannot force myself to believe that which I sincerely don’t think is true. Perhaps it is my mind that is broken and corrupt, but if that’s the case, and God does exist, why doesn’t he fix it? I am willing, I assure you. But unless this happens, I intend to remain honest to my conscience.
Works Cited
[1] Bremmer, J. “Atheism in Antiquity.” The Cambridge Companion to Atheism. Ed. M.Martin. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
[2] Whitmarsh, T. Battling the Gods Atheism in the Ancient World. New York: Knopf, 2015.
[3] Dowden, Bradley. “Logical Fallacies.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#NoTrueScotsman (Accessed 27 Jan 2016).
[4] Sacerdote, B., and E. Glaeser. “Education and Religion.” (2001): 29. http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/glaeser/files/w8080.pdf (Accessed 27 Jan 2016).
[5] Hungerman, D.M. “The Effect of Education on Religion” NBER Working Paper Series #16973. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2011. http://www.nber.org/papers/w16973 (Accessed 27 Jan 2016).
[6] Zuckerman, M., Silberman, J, and Hall, JA. “The Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity: A Meta-analysis and Some Proposed Explanations.” Personality and Social Psychology Review (17) Nov. 2013: 325-354. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23921675?dopt=Abstract (Accessed 27 Jan 2016).
[7] Bar-Ilan, M. “Illiteracy in the Land of Israel in the First Centuries.” Essays in the Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society. Ed. S.Fishbane.
[8] Harris, W.V. Ancient Literacy. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press, 1989.
[9] Origen, “Contra Celcius.” 1.27
[10] Schellenberg, J. L. Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.
[11] Schellenberg, J. L. The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism. Cornell University Press, 2007.
[12] Drange, Theodore M. Nonbelief & Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998.
[13] Maitzen, S. “Divine Hiddenness and the Demographics of Theism.” Religious Studies. (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 177.
[14] Marsh, J. “Darwin and the Problem of Natural Nonbelief.” The Monist (96.3:2013): 349-376.
[15] Murray, Michael J., and David E. Taylor. “Hiddenness.” In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion. Second ed. Ed. Chad Meister and Paul Copan (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 368-377.
[16] “Life after Faith – How Do Atheists Ground Morals?” The Reluctant. http://yuriystasyuk.com/life-after-faith-how-do-atheists-ground-morals (Accessed 29 Jan 2016).
[17] Copan, Paul. Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2011.
[18] Stark, Thom. “A Critical Review of Paul Copan’s “Is God a Moral Monster?” Review. http://thomstark.net/copan/stark_copan-review.pdf (Accessed 27 Jan 2016).