Assembly Line Apologetics: You Believe What?
by Jason Wisdom
Suppose you interviewed someone who had worked at a particular job for 40 years. You watched him work and asked him a series of questions about the way the company functions, what it stands for, what his employer is like etc. You would, at least subconsciously, assume that he knows what he is talking about. It would be silly to think that someone could work for a company for 40 years and not be able to answer these questions. As a result, you would probably not feel any need to probe around and ask the same questions of all of the other people who work for the company–especially when most of them had only been there for a few years. Maybe you even took a shift working on the assembly line. You would like to think so. You would feel like you already knew, on a basic level, about the company. But what if it turned out that the guy you interviewed always worked the same spot on the line and never took any time to look into the way the company works. He never talked to the boss or his fellow employees outside of work. He never read the training manual or company mailers. He fell asleep during all of the orientation and safety videos. For 40 years, he just punched in, stood there, kept his head down, punched out, and went home.
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Unfortunately, this analogy is comparable to many Christian churches. Many believers have gone to church for more than 40 years, and you would like to think that by talking to them, you would be able to get an idea what a Christian believes. But the reality is that they have not read the Bible, they do not spend any time with God outside of church, and they have only been semi-conscious for the majority of sermons that they have heard. They just show up, keep their heads down, shake hands, smile, and go home.
But that is not the only troubling comparison that can be made between these two scenarios. Let’s assume that you never actually found out the back story on the factory worker that you interviewed. In reality, you would be totally clueless…
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Assembly Line Apologetics: You Believe What? – because it’s true
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The problem with presenting an idea of the world based solely on ontological arguments is that there is no objective way to determine who is correct in a disagreement. Is it simply the one who can argue best? What do you do when you have two people who’s voices in their heads or interpretation of a badly edited and translated book disagree?
This is precisely why faith is not a reliable epistemology. You would not rely on faith when buying a car or determining which medical procedure is best for your sick child, so why should religion be any exception? Critical thinking should be applied to all aspects of life. And unfortunately, no religion, Abrahamic or otherwise, stands up to critical thinking skills without alot of special pleading.