Realization

It's strange, how moments of illumination can hit you without warning. I've recently sought in vain for the reason that potentially-fatal arguments against religion have little to no affect on many of those who hear them. "Chalk it up to a blind faith, or some sort of belief-perseverance", I would say to myself. As potent as those forces may be, I knew they did not stand alone. Today I realized another, and perhaps vital, aspect of this ability to nonchalantly shrug off devastating arguments.

I dub it the non-informed shrug.

In this moment I realized why it had been so easy for me to deconvert - indeed why I was quite ready to when it finally happened. The reason philosophy had such a profound effect on my religious beliefs was that I knew full-well what my religious beliefs meant and, further, what it meant for them to be true.I had also spent considerable time investigating the various defenses of Christianity. So when philosophy presented its arguments against religion, I knew Christianity had not the dexterity nor the robustness to survive such an onslaught.

I quickly turned to those who seemed confident in their faith (i.e. pastors, campus ministry leaders, seminary students, and websites answering questions submitted through e-mail), and was met with excuses and ridiculous answers to philosophy's questions. Most were taken back - both by my being the one asking the questions and by the very nature of the questions. The questions philosophers raise are not addressed in popular Christian apologetic manuals. Soon, I could taste Christianity's falsity in the very air around me.

So, by virtue of being informed, I was unable to ignore the questions. I realized that it was not merely I who was without an answer, but everyone who proclaimed Christianity. It is this state of being informed that crafts the crucial distinction between myself and the non-informed shrugger.

They feel secure in their belief in spite of their inability to answer the question because they think a theologian somewhere has answered the question. "Your question has an answer, I am simply not that intellectual and can't be bothered with looking into such things." They are able to discount the potency of the question by discounting their intelligence. "Since my religion is right, my inability to answer the question doesn't bother me. If you were to go talk with a theologian or pastor, I'm sure they'd set you straight."

I suppose I think about the theoretical underpinnings of my beliefs more than most.