For a religious faith to pass the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) it must be justified by the sciences. Period. If believers reject the sciences as a way to know the truth then let them propose a better alternative. So if the OTF is to be rejected, what do we put in its place? What’s the alternative?
This 13 minute cartoon video is very instructive, although a bit boring. It's the kind of stuff that converts people to Christianity within a Christian culture. [Warning: Watch it at your own risk! You may convert! lol] This is all you need to do to convert people. Tell a person who is in need a nice tear jerking story. It's easy!
Check this out! Derren is a genius! Think you can be completely rational and uninfluenced by your cultural surroundings? Think again. And then think religion. The cultural influences for Christianity are everywhere in America. This helps to explain why Christians are not usually reasoned out of their faith because they were never reasoned into it in the first place. Really!
In my next post I'll examine in detail David Marshall's criticisms of the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF). I have seen him in action a few times on Amazon and here at DC and he’s like Paul Newman in the movie Cool Hand Luke who gets beat down time after time by George Kennedy only to keep getting back up to get beat down again. George just got tired of beating on him and walked away. I suspect David will not be satisfied with my response and won’t admit defeat just like Paul Newman and I’ll just tire of beating on him and walk away too. Here's the clip below:
Christians have faulted the so-called New Atheists with ignorance. They do the same thing with me. If only I knew this or that I would see the error of my way and believe again. But think about this. How much philosophy should Richard Dawkins know to rationally reject religion? How much science should Christopher Hitchens know? How much Bible should Daniel Dennett know? How much theology should Sam Harris know? How much should we know to rationally reject religion? How much? What if we know very little? What if all we know is that God did not save our child and she died from Leukemia? What if a scientist rejects religion because s/he cannot adequately test supernatural hypotheses? What if a historian rejects the claims of a religion because as a historian s/he must assume a natural explanation for the events in the past? What then? Are they culpable for doing so when this is all they know to do? When can it be said that a person can rationally reject a religion? Surely the theist cannot possibly demand that nonbelievers must know all that can be known before their rejection of religion is warranted.
To put it in terms of the Outsider Test for Faith, how much should someone know in order to reject Mormonism, or Catholicism, or Islam, or Orthodox Judaism, to name a few. How much do YOU know of them?
In a private letter to his nephew Peter Carr, Jefferson offers some advice on how to study religion, which represents the OTF that I defend:
We abhor someone who is supposed to decide between two parties who also has a conflict of interest. That person could be a trustee of an estate, a judge, or a principal. We want a fair and impartial judgment. We want a fair ruling. So arguing against the Outsider Test for Faith is like arguing against a fair and impartial ruling. It is to argue against what is intuitively obvious to everyone else and consequently makes believers look very bad, because we abhor what they try to argue against. That is, even arguing against the OTF tells an outsider there is something badly wrong with the Christian faith. Good luck with that *cough*
A trial is a good example of an outsider looking in. No thumbs should be on the scales of justice. If there is a conflict of interest a judge or a lawyer should recuse themselves. The jury represents people who are uninvolved peers. None of this describes believers who examine their own faith. The OTF demands the impartiality of agnostic, which is worse on one's own religion but better on the religious faiths one rejects.
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. His talk can be found there as well. He talked for a bit about sex and the triggers that cause people to believe. In my talk I mentioned Robert Price's essay on sex.