Have you been interviewed by a “Street Epistemologist” lately? This is an organized street outreach, first described
in a book called “A Manual for Creating Atheists”, to create doubt in people of
faith. It is a soft approach designed to
combat the “angry atheist” image through a more reasonable conversation, which
unfortunately consists of a lot of unreasonable questions.
What makes the questions unreasonable is that they assume
the supernatural realm is beholden to the same laws as the natural realm. It assumes that one’s belief in God isn’t
valid unless it can be scientifically proven, and when it isn’t the implication
is that the person of faith should be ridiculed for their beliefs based on “unreliable”
methods to determine their beliefs.
Unfortunately, the truth is that most people of religious
belief haven’t really taken the time to reflect on why they believe what they
believe. I find I have much in common
with the street epistemologists in encouraging people to think through both the
source and the implications of their belief.
Many, such as Francisco, 22, whom I talked with on the sidewalk
yesterday, are just floating through life without thinking much about eternity,
distracted by day to day problems or entertainment and taking the future for
granted.
Faith doesn’t always come easy; even more so when one is surrounded
by a secular worldview and people who claim that all truth claims require “proof”
or must be falsifiable. This claim is in
itself unprovable or unfalsifiable. It
seems that the unbelieving world has its own version of the self-righteous
pharisees that Jesus criticized so much, who “…load people down with burdens
they can hardly carry, and …will not lift one finger to help them.” They claim believers must use a reliable
method for determining belief in God, which implies that they know what such a
reliable would look like. But they do not.
As a Christian I wanted to help Fernando become more
self-aware of the reasons for his current beliefs but also of his need to learn
about other beliefs. I would love for him
and others like him to take the time to reflect, to consider the claims of
Christianity and other religions, and to realize they need not feel ridiculed
for a belief in God or the supernatural just because it might not be able to be
empirically proven. And I gave him some evidence
from the Christian perspective, a summary of the Gospel and a description of
the biblical way to respond to it. I did
my part in presenting the Gospel, and other religions including atheism are
free to do theirs.
Francisco graciously allowed me to record our
conversation. See it HERE
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