STR Ambassador
April 10th 2005, 05:14 PM
Ice Cream or Insulin?
by Greg Koukl
Just a few weeks ago, I opened my talk before a group in Southern California with a “profound” observation: There’s a difference between ice cream and insulin.
When choosing ice cream, you can choose what you like.
When choosing medicine, you must choose what heals.
When choosing ice cream you can choose what’s true for you.
When choosing medicine you must choose what’s true.
There is significant confusion on this point. Americans think of God, religion, and morals like ice cream and not like insulin. They choose religious views according to tastes, according to what they prefer rather than according to what’s true.
“The freedom of our day,” lamented a graduate in a Harvard commencement address, “is the freedom to devote ourselves to any values we please, on the mere condition that we do not believe them to be true.”
Non-believers view religion like ice cream. Remarkably, Christians often do the same thing.
Our offer of Jesus is often not based on truth grounded in evidence, as with the early disciples of Christ, but on mere experience.
Jesus used to be hard medicine for a deadly disease: sin. Now in many circles He’s been reduced to a tasty dish, a pleasant meal, a more delicious alternative: “Try Him; you’ll like Him.”
Sharing our experience has some advantages. First, it’s easy. Second, convictions based on experience are hard to defeat. As one wag put it, “The man with an argument is always at the mercy of a man with an experience.” Beliefs based on experience are extremely difficult to uproot. This is not a virtue, though. It’s a vice. Here’s why.
Our He-works-for-me approach gives us a false security. It protects us from attack—no one can take our experience away from us—but experience alone is never a good test for truth since it often equally affirms contradictory notions, both truth and error.
Experience confirms the truth for us, but how can we ever know, through experience alone, that our beliefs are actually true? How do we know that our religion isn’t anything more than, in Marx’s words, “the opiate of the people”?
Further, this approach consigns us to irrelevance. How do I know? An atheist told me. And he’s right.
In Skeptic magazine, atheist Lawrence Hyman wrote that the defenders of the truth of God and religion"...no longer insist on His existence as an objective truth, but on His presence to them....Many religious people defend their truths by reference to the power of [experience] to console them and to give meaning to their lives. How can anyone argue against the existence of a subjective experience?"
Hyman ends by saying atheism is no longer relevant. That sounds like good news, but it’s not. It’s bad news.
The reason atheism is no longer relevant is because truth is no longer relevant, even to religious people. This “death of truth” portends not just the death of atheism, but the death of Christianity, as well.
If moral and religious truth are subjective—true for us—there can be no conflict between moralities or religions. All are equally true to the people who hold them.
If this is our message, then Christians are no different from anyone else with a religious placebo—some belief that simply makes them feel better.
This kind of Christianity may be able to soothe, but it can never heal. Hyman the atheist understands what many Christians have yet to realize. Truth matters. Even the atheist understands this issue is about insulin, not ice cream.
Stand to Reason - Training Christian ambassadors in the areas of knowledge, wisdom, and character - www.str.org
500
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Notice - The featuring of a particular article does not constitute endorsement of every single item or point of view contained therein by each and every member of TheologyWeb leadership. We strive to have a varied cross-section of representations of differing opinions on secondary Christian issues. The only requirement for the featuring of a particular article is that said article must not contradict the essentials articulated in the TheologyWeb statement of faith found here in our Mission Statement (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/mission/)or be blatantly offensive to the Christian worldview of the site Owners.
by Greg Koukl
Just a few weeks ago, I opened my talk before a group in Southern California with a “profound” observation: There’s a difference between ice cream and insulin.
When choosing ice cream, you can choose what you like.
When choosing medicine, you must choose what heals.
When choosing ice cream you can choose what’s true for you.
When choosing medicine you must choose what’s true.
There is significant confusion on this point. Americans think of God, religion, and morals like ice cream and not like insulin. They choose religious views according to tastes, according to what they prefer rather than according to what’s true.
“The freedom of our day,” lamented a graduate in a Harvard commencement address, “is the freedom to devote ourselves to any values we please, on the mere condition that we do not believe them to be true.”
Non-believers view religion like ice cream. Remarkably, Christians often do the same thing.
Our offer of Jesus is often not based on truth grounded in evidence, as with the early disciples of Christ, but on mere experience.
Jesus used to be hard medicine for a deadly disease: sin. Now in many circles He’s been reduced to a tasty dish, a pleasant meal, a more delicious alternative: “Try Him; you’ll like Him.”
Sharing our experience has some advantages. First, it’s easy. Second, convictions based on experience are hard to defeat. As one wag put it, “The man with an argument is always at the mercy of a man with an experience.” Beliefs based on experience are extremely difficult to uproot. This is not a virtue, though. It’s a vice. Here’s why.
Our He-works-for-me approach gives us a false security. It protects us from attack—no one can take our experience away from us—but experience alone is never a good test for truth since it often equally affirms contradictory notions, both truth and error.
Experience confirms the truth for us, but how can we ever know, through experience alone, that our beliefs are actually true? How do we know that our religion isn’t anything more than, in Marx’s words, “the opiate of the people”?
Further, this approach consigns us to irrelevance. How do I know? An atheist told me. And he’s right.
In Skeptic magazine, atheist Lawrence Hyman wrote that the defenders of the truth of God and religion"...no longer insist on His existence as an objective truth, but on His presence to them....Many religious people defend their truths by reference to the power of [experience] to console them and to give meaning to their lives. How can anyone argue against the existence of a subjective experience?"
Hyman ends by saying atheism is no longer relevant. That sounds like good news, but it’s not. It’s bad news.
The reason atheism is no longer relevant is because truth is no longer relevant, even to religious people. This “death of truth” portends not just the death of atheism, but the death of Christianity, as well.
If moral and religious truth are subjective—true for us—there can be no conflict between moralities or religions. All are equally true to the people who hold them.
If this is our message, then Christians are no different from anyone else with a religious placebo—some belief that simply makes them feel better.
This kind of Christianity may be able to soothe, but it can never heal. Hyman the atheist understands what many Christians have yet to realize. Truth matters. Even the atheist understands this issue is about insulin, not ice cream.
Stand to Reason - Training Christian ambassadors in the areas of knowledge, wisdom, and character - www.str.org
500
If you would like to discuss this article, please contact a moderator.
Notice - The featuring of a particular article does not constitute endorsement of every single item or point of view contained therein by each and every member of TheologyWeb leadership. We strive to have a varied cross-section of representations of differing opinions on secondary Christian issues. The only requirement for the featuring of a particular article is that said article must not contradict the essentials articulated in the TheologyWeb statement of faith found here in our Mission Statement (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/mission/)or be blatantly offensive to the Christian worldview of the site Owners.