4S 42 Answering Kyle

By now, we all know about the question that sank the USS Battleship WLC. He blew it the first time. And instead of putting the shovel down to pick up a flair, he kept digging. Like a bad gambler, he doubled down until all he had on the table was his car keys and his pants.

What makes it so sad was that he had many face-saving options along the way that he didn't take. He could have said he misunderstood the question the first time. From there, he could have offered a better answer. This all would have been washed away. He could have said that upon reflection, he misspoke and provided a better answer. He could have said that after seeing the backlash from his answer, he realized that he was unclear. Then, he could have reset the table. All of these options were available to him. Instead, he just kept digging. That's a shame.

Craig gave a number of answers that ultimately reduce to pragmatic justification. As he admits in an interview, it is Pascal's wager. This is possibly the worst of all Christian apologetics. Even most Christians think so. Yet this is where he lands. He has come out with a full-throated endorsement of Pascal's wager. So we have no choice but to take him at his word.

If a person is not informed about the massive amounts of good evidence for Christianity that Bill believes exists, they are still justified in pledging for Christianity on the basis that it is more appealing than the alternatives and has a low bar of risk. That's Pascal's wager. Let's wipe that all aside and see if we can do better. I am putting on my Christian hat to offer three answers that I think serve Kyle and Christianity better than what WLC vomited up. Here they are from worst to best:

1. Keep investigating

Dale's "real seeker" formulation is something the two of us have debated many times. I can't say I fully understand it as he tells me I am wrong when I feed it back to him. So you might have to get it directly from him and see if you can do better. But as best I can understand it, one of the components of his theory is that a person has to always remain openminded with regard to the truth of Christianity.

The problem is this is the kind of Christian speak that doesn't lend itself to clarity when probed. What does it mean to remain openminded about anything, especially when a Christian uses the term? We could never agree on that. Dale believes you cannot be a real seeker if you are not actually seeking. But my counter has always been that there has to be a point when a person can stop seeking. Otherwise, there are not a seeker but a believer. If you devote your life to nonstop investigation of a religion, you have in essence devoted your life to that religion.

My other objection is that if one decides that Christianity is true and stops their investigation due to it reaching a positive conclusion, they are no longer seeking. However, If that same person ends their investigation with a negative conclusion, they were never a real seeker because a real seeker always seeks the truth. This is one of the areas where we have debated and he would say I have misunderstood the criterion. I have done my best. He is free to offer clarification that I would be happy to print and feature.

The point is that one should keep investigating. The formal response to Pascal by another apologist that wrote about a hundred years later suggested that if Christianity holds any plausibility at all, one has an epistemic duty to investigate it. If one does not investigate, then they have failed their duty. I'm sorry for not recalling his name. But that was the general idea. That is the gist of my first answer to Kyle.

The problem with this answer is that Kyle has investigated. So have I. So have you. So if there is an epistemic duty to investigate with an open mind, that has been done. We are right back to Dale's real seeker. How much investigation is enough? Are you ever justified in reaching a negative conclusion and ceasing your investigation? There is another problem which I will mention briefly:

Who is this person dolling out epistemic duties? Why do we have any duty to investigate anything even if it is possibly true? There are many things that are possibly true that don't warrant every individual's investigation. I'm no physicist. I feel no need to investigate superstring theory. Do you? It could be true. But I will not be conducting an exhaustive investigation on it to see where I stand. I have failed no epistemic duty.

Even though I don't believe that the god of the Bible is real, that doesn't mean that there couldn't be another god or gods out there somewhere. It is not worth my investigation as I have no idea how I would even go about such an investigation. You do it if you think it is so important.

In the same way, no one has any epistemic duty to investigate the god of the Bible or the claims of Christianity. It does not get special status as being an epistemic requirement for everyone to meet. Investigate it if you find it interesting. Don't waste your time if you don't. Instead, investigate better recycling methods or solving the homeless problem. You don't owe anyone your investigative bandwidth. This answer is better than Pascal's wager. But it is still a bad one.

2. Pray and fast

Whenever a Christian comes to the church with a problem, the answer is always some version of pray and fast. Not all churches were into fasting. But there was usually someone there who would advise it. One can hardly blame them since fasting features heavily in the gospels.

Prayer is like Christian code for, "I'll keep you in my thoughts. But that's as far as it goes." Church leaders kind of have an obligation to offer prayer for you regardless of your problem as if prayer was effective for anything. If you are in the wrong kind of church, you will also be asked to fast for a time while you are seeking god's help.

Breaking it down even further, telling someone to pray and fast is a little like telling them to immerse themselves even more in the church culture and rituals. If you are having doubts, it could be because you are not involved enough in the life of the religion. You need to sign up for more programs, be a part of more missions. Give more generously. Study more deeply. And attend more faithfully. If you are worried that you are in a cult, it makes sense for the other members of the cult to advise you to get even deeper embedded in the cult. That should fix your doubts.

As you can already see, this approach is problematic for one such as Kyle. He is having doubts about his faith. Telling a person to become even more embedded in that faith might be considered abusive. My justification for this answer is that prayer is something he is used to doing anyway. And depending on the type of Christian he is, fasting might also be a part of his faith routine.

If he is having doubts, it makes sense for him to take those doubts directly to god and not to Dr. Craig. God should be able to give Kyle the assurance he needs without resorting to Pascal's wager. God will be the only one able to provide anything like the internal witness of the Holy Spirit. If Kyle turns to god and god does not help, that's on god, not Kyle. Taking your doubts to Craig will just have him questioning whether you are only a nominal Christian in the first place. Taking it to god should provide you what you need without judgement.

3. His grace is sufficient

When Paul asked god to remove whatever it was from his life he only identified as a thorn of the flesh, god responded that his grace is sufficient. Evidentialists have always been on shaky ground when trying to provide more than what god is willing to offer. Jesus said of those asking for a sign that they were a wicked and perverse generation and would only receive the sign of Jonah. I don't know what that is. But it sounds ominous.

Jesus gave his disciples a sign of his resurrection grudgingly. But made it clear that it is better for those who believe without seeing. Kyle asked for the assurance of seeing when the correct answer was that Jesus wants him to believe without seeing, and that his grace is sufficient.

My advice to Christians like Kyle, even when I was a preacher would have been to tell them that if god's grace is not sufficient, they were in the wrong place and seeking the wrong thing. More Christians ought to have the courage to say this because it is absolutely biblical. It might sound a little harsh to the person seeking evidence. But that is a problem evidentialists have created. They now have a generation of believers whose faith is weak because the evidence is insufficient. News flash: The evidence has always been insufficient. We are saved by faith through grace. If that isn't enough, then pray for more faith, not more evidence.

Conclusion: No satisfactory answer

The real problem with Kyle's question is that it is less a question and more a statement of doubt. Kyle already knows that the epistemic bar should be set high. And he already knows there are no major pieces of evidence that will satisfy him. Kyle put it in the form of a question because that is the only safe way to frame his doubt in a religion that treats doubt as spiritual weakness.

The problem with Craig's answer is that there is no answer to doubt. There can only be encouragement and an offer of unconditional love wherever those doubts lead. For most Christians, that is a nonstarter because it is an admission that there is no evidence that can overturn such doubts. An evidentialist can never shape their mouth to form such words. It would be an admission that their specialization is utterly futile.

They also don't want to encourage doubt no matter how much they pretend to embrace it. They can't encourage doubt since they also label doubt as some kind of spiritual problem as opposed to a problem of weak evidence. For them, doubt is a disease that needs to be cured, not a natural part of the faith journey that needs to be explored to its completion.

Every time a Christian tries to answer this kind of question, the answer is bad. Notice that at no point in the many interviews about this question has Craig stopped the proceedings and offered to pray for Kyle that he find the answers he seeks. As a pastor, that is the first and most obvious thing to do. Why is no one doing it? I believe they know how this ends. From worship leaders to full-time preachers in large churches, we all know how this ends.

By the time someone plucks up the courage to express their doubts aloud, they have already gone through extensive study, meditation, and prayer. They are in an advanced stage of deconstruction and not at the beginning of the process. It is already too late to offer the ineffective prayer solution. All Christians can do is fall back on the horrible Pascal's wager or attempt to demonize and marginalize the person with doubts as a warning to others struggling with doubts.

Kyle's question lends itself to no satisfactory answers. I offered three. But even they aren't enough to help Kyle in his faith journey. Christians need to understand that they win some and they lose some. They need to find a more graceful way to lose because it is ultimately not their job to overcome objections of skeptics. It is their job to teach the good news of the kingdom and it is god's job to move hearts and minds.

Jesus did not teach his disciples how to overcome objections like salesmen. WLC sounds like a salesman who is desperate to avoid a chargeback on a commission. A better response would have been for him to offer encouragement and prayer. And wish Kyle well whatever he decides. Anything beyond that point is a guaranteed loss because skeptics will never let it go.

What answer do you think Christians should give Kyle? What answer do you offer to Kyle? I look forward to reading your take. See you in the comments...

David Johnson