The Will to Believe and the Will to Know

During a recent car trip, my wife and I listened to Seth Andrews interview Dale McGowan about secular parenting on his podcast. At some point the subject of Santa Claus came up and the question was put to McGowan about whether or not chilren should be taught this myth. Some in the secular community advocate very strongly against teaching kids any myth as fact. McGowan, however, recommends it in the case of Santa because it's a myth that kids will eventually find their way out of and can serve as a powerful life lesson.

Computer Brains

I was reading a post about thoughtcrime as it relates to Christianity over at A Counter Apologist's blog when it dawned on me that one of my favorite Christian rock bands had engaged in some unintentional irony related to this issue back in the day.

First some background.

It seems obvious that CCM is highly derivative, and the Christian rock band Petra was certainly no exception. In 1984 (the year, not the book) the young people were all tuning in to keyboard-driven techno pop, so there was a natural inclination for a Christian rock band like Petra to veer away from their rock roots and produce a techno pop album. 1985's Beat the System was that album. It was the first ever CCM recording I was introduced to outside of Amy Grant, Keith Green and Truth.

Shields of Faith: It's supposed to sound foolish

As part of my reflections on why I remained a Christian for so long, I’ve decided to try to think about some of the things that shielded my faith from internal critique. I'm calling this segment, "Shields of faith." Yeah, that sounds pretty cheesy, but what did you expect from a blog with a lame pun for a name?

So one thing that popped up from time to time when I was a Christian was just how nuts Christianity sounded. The fact that many of the claims and especially the central narrative of Christianity seemed completely absurd was not something that was lost on me. I knew it sounded crazy and that's probably why I was so often embarrassed about being more open about my faith. I didn't mind telling people that I was a Christian, but I have to admit that the thought of explaining the whys and hows of the story of Christianity did make me cringe at times. I saw someone on a discussion board put it this way:

[Christianity is a story] about the creator of reality sacrificing himself to himself to appease himself by atoning for the sins of creatures he predestined to [or at least knew would] fail to live up to the impossible standards that he devised, so that in his appeasement he does not have to force himself to eternally punish those creatures, provided that they believe that he sacrificed himself to himself in the manner recorded in four contradictory accounts of his sacrifice of himself to himself written [decades] after the event by people who weren't there at the time, and whose original writings have been lost or destroyed, and which survive only as copies of copies of copies.

Now, I would’ve taken issue with the notion that the accounts were contradictory and I would’ve argued that at least two were probably written by eyewitnesses, but overall I would’ve recognized that much of the above is not a straw man. When you express it that way it really does sound rather absurd, but not to worry…