I think the quote that you added made it pretty clear what Craig did.

It wouldn't. I'm showing how the reasoning of "If X than necessarily Y" is, IMO, faulty

i dont see how your rebuttal does anything to detract from my point. What is the difference between "A christian wouldnt do x" and "To be a Christian you need to do "x"? In either case, you are setting up a necessary condition based on nothing but subjectivity. So, it stands to reason that someone will come a long and say I'm a Christian and I don't do X!" At which juncture, I suppose, you wouldnt consider them a real christian.

That's why it was important to set up the original statement very tautologically. You can come up with excuses for not hugging the kid. But those are not logical barriers as far as the terms are understood in the example.

There is a very strict correspondence in the setup between the behavior and the outcome of the behavior.

A -> B -> C <--> ~C -> ~B -> ~A

A = The person is a seeker
B = The person follows Jesus
C = The person is a Christian

The seeker will follow Jesus, and by following Jesus, he's a Christian.

If the person is not a Christian, it's because he's not following Jesus. If he's not following Jesus, it's because he's not a seeker (because to be a seeker is to follow Jesus).

Paraphrasing from memory:

"As you do these things unto the least of these you do them unto me."

"You will know them by their fruits."

And the Beatitudes from Mathew:
Blessed are...

...the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (5:3)
...those who mourn: for they will be comforted. (5:4)
...the meek: for they will inherit the earth. (5:5)
...those who hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they will be filled. (5:6)
...the merciful: for they will be shown mercy. (5:7)
...the pure in heart: for they will see God. (5:8)
...the peacemakers: for they will be called children of God. (5:9)
...those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (5:10)

and

"God is Love"


In my view, someone who comes to a life of empathy and compassion has found the spirit of God whether or not he recognizes the metaphoric religious attachments to that word. He has indeed found the gospel Jesus preached, that "the Kingdom of Heaven is near". It's as near as every act of good will in his life. He is indeed following the Way, the Truth, and the Life which Christians say Christ Is.

So in my view there are many atheists who are good friends of the Jesus that still lives even if they haven't reached out and touched his wounds. They are living a life of faith which does not involve belief in things without evidence.


Faith is revolutionary act.


PairTheBoard

PTB:

I suck at philosophy, but don't we all [edit: all rational people] have to agree to the obviousness of the tautology? If a tautology is self-evident, yet most humans don't agree that a seeker is one who [unquestioningly] follows Jesus (especially since the word carries the connotation of examining various possibilities and accepting/rejecting them on some form of merit), I don't see how it's self-evident.

To add another silly example to the thread, what if a wild-haired, foam-flecked street preacher says that to be a follower of Christ one has to wear purple underwear. The earnest Christian rejects this as nonsensical, only to later find himself at the pearly gates being told to drop his trousers for the Purple Underwear Test. As he descends to the pit, he cries out, "But that's not fair! I searched the scriptures and didn't find anything about purple underwear!" to which a loud voice replies, "It was a tautology."

Wouldn't this only be true if Jesus was the originator of those sentiments? If previous mystics and/or holy men conveyed the same thoughts prior to Jesus, wouldn't it be more accurate to say, "someone who comes to a life of empathy and compassion has found the spirit of [insert older religion here]. He has indeed found the gospel [insert older holy man here] preached..."

If following sentiments that are almost universal makes you an accidental follower of whoever said it, don't we have to find out who first said it so we know who we're all accidentally following?

the sentiments expressed in the sermon on the mount don't seem particularly universal (although perhaps the challenging ones aren't the ones that were quoted), or even if they are universally given lip-service, they certainly aren't very widely adhered to.

But I think you're also being a little too literal-minded. The point wasn't to be able to go around saying "aha you! atheist boy! you're a christian and you don't know it! muahahaha". Anymore than in his construction the point is that one needs to intellectually assent to a particular creed. It's about a way of life that is exemplarized by Jesus' teaching. We also strive to be followers of Hillel, or anyone else that teaches similar values, although the Christian may ultimately identify those things with Jesus because we take Jesus to be God

A formal tautology is a statement that is always true. A <-> A, for example, is tautological.

What I'm saying here is that there are some views of Christianity which view the PURSUIT ("following Jesus") as the expression of Christianity, not the intellectual/emotional assent to specific doctrinal claims (such as the "Four Spiritual Laws"). Specifically, the underlined parenthetical statement above relects a purely intellectual activity, which is not relevant to this view of Christainity.

And it's not about "unquestioningly" following. It's about following, in spite of the questions you may have. The verb "seek" is an active verb. A "seeker" cannot be stationary. With this understanding, if the supposed-seeker is not actually doing anything, he's not "seeking." This means that people who pine for a relationship with God, but never actually engage in activities are legitimately not-seeking.

I'm recently recovered from a case of pneumonia for which I was treated by a doctor at the local urgent care facility. In my last visit, after examining me, for some reason the doctor wanted to have a heart to heart talk with me about life. He expressed things he thought are important in life. He's from India and from what I could tell, informs his spirituality from the teachings in that culture.

He shared what he considered one of the most precious experiences of his life. He was walking in India with a friend when they came across a poor man begging for pennies. He was suddenly moved to reach in his pocket and pull out all the money he was carrying - a sizable roll of bills. Without hesitation he deposited the entire roll of bills in the beggar's cup. After doing this, he said he had the most profound experience, like heaven opened up in his presence. His friend told him he had been foolish, that the beggar only expected pennies. He thought otherwise and to this day holds that experience as one of the most vital ones of his life.

I mostly listened, but when he told me that story I suggested, putting aside all the religious specifics of Christianity, that what he experienced was exactly what Jesus spoke of when he instructed his disciples to convey the good news to the countyside that, "the kingdom of heaven is near". I suggested that's what he experienced, the nearness of the kingdom of heaven. He did not disagree.

In my post I expressed my view using terms I'm familiar with according to my own understanding of them. I don't expect you to have the same view. I intend merely to share mine with you for what it might be worth. However, I don't see a problem with having a circle of friends, even if you know them only in spirit rather than by name.

The doctor left me with what he evidently considers great words of wisdom. Maybe they apply here. He said,

Do not question the origin of the river.
Do not question the origin of your mother.
Do not question the origin of your teacher.


Best wishes,

PairTheBoard

I'd disagree with any words of wisdom that start off 'Do not question...'

Do not question the value of questioning.

I disagree with that.

Realised after I'd typed that out that there was a couple of possible responses that may be flung back at me

Doesn't meta ontology do that?

It wasn't even that good of a response.

I'm not trying to be obtuse, but I'm still not getting the "pursuit ('following Jesus')" thing. I'll come back to it if I come up with a better question.

Maybe I'm using a poor idea of "seeker." To me, seeking is too intertwined with finding (or not) to be ignored. A Christian who doesn't hold the view you mentioned in the first sentence*, or a non-Christian theist, or an atheist, would surely reject A -> B. I'm going to get myself in trouble trying to write logic statements, but I'll give it a shot:

[A & B] -> C -> D

A = The person is a seeker
B = The person finds Jesus (even if incompletely)
C = The person follows Jesus
D = The person is a Christian.

It seems the person who holds the view you're explaining feels [A & ~B] is not possible, while many atheists are claiming it as a personal experience. Obviously the atheist is not trying to get to D, but they're pointing out the flaw in this particular view that true seeking must lead to following Jesus.

(As an aside, is it improper/confusing to redefine the terms you used? Should B = "follows Jesus" and D = "finds Jesus"?)

*understood that you're not personally espousing this view.

To "follow Jesus" essentially means to implement behavioral practices that are consistent with Jesus' teachings.

If you want to go down this path, you need to set forth a definition of what is being sought and what would be found. This view puts forth something like "life change" as that which is being sought. And that is found when the life changes.

I would agree that this is one place where it would break down. This would use the idea of "seeking" to mean primarily(?) "seeking answers to questions." That is, they're keeping the behavioral changes at arms' length until the intellectual aspects are sufficiently resolved.

But there are other ways where it may break down. For example, if you think that someone is "saved" by praying "the prayer" or whatever, then you dramatically shift the idea of what it would mean to "follow Jesus." This would break B -> C.

This seems right. When the atheist says "I was an earnest seeker" the atheist is probably referring to seeking an emotional/spiritual experience or an intellectual insight, or something like that. And since such personal experiences are absent, the atheist feels as if that counts for the absence of interaction with God (or something like that).

The counter would be to say that such interaction occurred in some form, and the atheist turned away from God by no longer continuing in the practices. The person *WAS* following Jesus, and then stopped when they concluded that the prayer had not "worked" (or whatever).

The terms are already loosely defined, so any sort of rearrangement of the terms could probably be understood well enough. You'll notice that at no point did I make any sort of specific list of mandatory behaviors which would qualify as "following Jesus." That omission was intentional.

Perhaps I am being too literal. But in my experience both on the giving (when I was religious) and receiving end of this kind of sentiment, while it may not amount to, "aha, you're really a Christian," it does amount to, "you can't be good without God.... as an atheist you obviously enjoy eating babies for lunch, and if you happen not to, it's only because God wrote a bare minimum of goodness on your heart."

I can see where you might feel that it was condescending. I can only speak for myself but I wouldn't mean it to be that way, and I would guess from what I know of PTB that he doesn't either.

I think the best interpretation from a Christian perspective is that it's simply wrong, or even meaningless to try to talk about Christians being good or better than atheists, or anyone else. It contradicts Jesus' teaching about goodness (there is none Good but God) and also about judgement and attitude towards sin, which is supposed to be inwardly focused.

Obviously, to be a Christian and to believe in those things means to believe that people who aren't are missing something, and it entails finding it "better" to be a Christian than not to be one, all else equal. But all else is hardly ever equal, and in practice I don't consider myself to be of more value, or even more moral, than anyone else.

It's a common christian sentiment (or at least used to be :P) to find oneself to be morally worse than others. One of the oldest prayers of the Eucharistic liturgy reads "O Lord, I believe and confess that you are truly Christ, the Son of the living God, who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first." Which is partly a reference to Paul's epistle to Timothy.

So, in any case, someone who takes the attitude you are expressing is not understanding something fairly fundamental about Christian attitudes towards sin.

Sounds good to me

I was thinking more along the lines of what you mention next, that is, "seeking answers to questions."

The would-be Christian might be asking something like, "How can I gain God's favor?" [By behaving consistently with Jesus' teachings.]

Before the atheist can even ask that question, he backs up and asks, "Is there a god whose favor I need to gain?"

To clarify, I didn't think you or PTB were being condescending.

I think there's often a 'soft condescension' that comes with "knowing" something so obvious that the other guy just won't see. Religious people are obviously morally superior to debauched atheists, and atheists are obviously intellectually superior to religious nutbags.

I think it could be successfully argued that this position does not actually seek God within the given viewpoint.

For example, we can ask a huge litany of these types of questions:
* Is there a purpose to life?
* Is goodness an inherent quality within of the universe?
* Are there absolute moral facts?
All of these will have answers which could pertain to God in some way, and could in some sense be seen as "seeking things about God" but they do not necessarily "seek God" per se.

Because even though the question you present above is meaningful, it does not stand as a barrier to the behaviors in question. Again, mental assent of propositions does not play much of a role here.

Q: "How do I know whether there is a God?"
A: Follow in Jesus' footsteps and see what the outcomes are.

Back to WLC for a sec, I'd read him commenting about this some time ago, and found it again (in the Q&A section of his web site). Here is most of his response:

Q. Is God’s Existence Evident to Every Sincere Seeker?

1´. If God exists, then His existence will become evident to anyone who sincerely seeks God.
2´. God's existence never becomes evident to some people who sincerely seek God.

But why should we think that (2´) is true? How do we know that? It’s obviously inadequate to say that (2´) “is evidently obvious to anyone who sincerely gave Christianity a chance and yet is not convinced of God's existence.” For perhaps his lack of persistence is an indication that his search was not as earnest as he imagines (he gave Christianity “a chance”?) or perhaps that person will yet find God.

To establish (2´) it seems we’d have to appeal to cases in which a person was a sincere seeker but at the end of his life failed to come to faith in God. The problem with such an argument, however, is that we’re just not in a position to look into the human heart and judge a person’s sincerity in this regard. This would require a kind of psychological insight that is not available to us. Only God is capable of doing the spiritual cardiogram necessary for answering this question.

Your “Edit” tries to support (2´) by saying that “we generally take people at their word about what they believe. Why, then, shouldn't we generally take the word of non-Christians who claim they sincerely sought to find God?” I’ve already answered that question: if a person persists in unbelief until his death, then the evidence for Jesus’ identity and the truth of his claims gives us reason to think that that person was not as sincere as he imagined himself to be. Notice that in so saying, we do not presume to have the sort of psychological insight that the atheist claims to have.


In summary, if someone seeks God but comes up empty, they either didn't seek for long enough, or they were insincere in their seeking. No alternatives are entertained, as you'd expect on an apologists web site.

The quote you gave, which in my edition of RF is on p. 47, is under the Section "Knowing Christianity to be true" and the Subsection, "Role of the Holy Spirit", which is followed by the Subsection "Role of Argument and Evidence". The quote has nothing to do with making an arguement. WLC is talking about how one subjectively knows God (through the witness of the Holy Spirit), not what should be used as an argument or appealed to as evidence.

That entire chapter is in Part One: De Fide. Craig doesn't begin the apologetics until Part Three: De Deo, when he launches into the ontological argument and others.