Is Christianity intellectually defensible?

Does God exist? Did Jesus rise after death? Was Mary a virgin? Will Christianity continue to shape the West?

Written by Bo Winegard

PHILO: Christianity is not only defensible, it is true. I will provide four chief arguments for this assertion, which is admittedly provocative in an era of widespread skepticism and atheism. First, Christianity explains the existence of the universe. Second, it provides meaning and encourages reverence and awe. Third, it humbles and disciplines. And fourth, it promotes a healthy, flourishing civilization. Of course, we will discuss each of these in more detail, so I’ll let you make your opening case against Christianity before responding.

MEANDER: Excellent. I look forward to this debate.

Christianity consists of a series of empirical propositions and hypotheses and the most important of these, the ones that distinguish Christianity from other ideologies and religions, are false. And because they are false, Christianity is false.

You might object that these propositions are not false because they are not even empirical claims. Science and religion belong to non-overlapping realms and can coexist peacefully. Religion deals with values. Science deals with facts.

But this position is untenable and easily falsified. The proposition that Jesus rose from the dead is an empirical assertion. It is not a moral or a poetic assertion. Similarly, the proposition that Mary was a virgin when she conceived is an empirical assertion. I could list many more, but I’ll refrain since the point is clear.

These assertions, which are crucial to Christianity, are obviously untrue. Jesus did not rise from the dead. And Mary did not conceive as a virgin. Christianity’s metaphysics are incoherent and require subjugating reason to tradition and conformity. Faith is an excuse for believing that which one cannot justify. And any ideology, any system of thought that requires subordinating logic and rationality to some supposedly higher good, e.g., the family, the nation, the Church, should be rejected.

The only honest and dignified orientation toward the universe is agnosticism. Even if it pains our hearts and thwarts our deepest desires, we must admit that the world provides no evidence for an omnipotent and benevolent god. In fact, if we are being honest, we must admit that the world, replete with tragedy and disaster, provides better evidence for a malevolent or at least a spectacularly incompetent god. As Stendhal is said to have quipped, “God’s only excuse is that he doesn’t exist.”  

Now, having said this, I should note that I am not an anti-religious crusader, not an atheistic Don Quixote attempting to slay metaphysical dragons. People are innately superstitious. Believing in extravagant and implausible metaphysics is as natural to them as singing elaborate songs is to a warbler. Humans, it might be said, are the metaphysical species. Therefore, trying to eradicate religion is hopeless. And unwise.

But that is not the question we are debating. The question is: Is Christianity defensible? And the answer to that is clear: It is not. It is false. And it should be rejected by honest men and women.

PHILO: Some of the claims of Christianity are literally untrue; but it is a mistake to regard them as empirical assertions. They are poetic and mythical. They attempt, however clumsily, to grasp the infinite or to articulate some profound truth about the human condition, not to make predictions or descriptive statements about the mundane universe.

Therefore, asserting that they are false because they are narrowly or scientifically untrue is like asserting that the line “Or to take arms against a sea of troubles” is false because troubles are not actually a sea against which one can take arms. And rejecting Christianity because one rejects the literal truth of its parables and myths is like rejecting the Aeneid because Aeneas did not really exist. It is a category mistake. It conflates poetry with prose, myth with science, physics with metaphysics.

Christianity is the best, most powerful mythical tradition in the West, the one that most resonates with human nature and best reconciles man to an apparently alien and hostile universe. It survived the wreck of Rome and gave birth to modern Europe. All the lineaments we most laud about Western Civilization are at least partially caused and nurtured by Christianity, without which they are inconceivable and would quickly perish.

Reducing Christianity to dogmatic assertions misses the point. We must, while we consider Christianity and its metaphysics, understand how myths work. How the human mind works. And how civilization works. And we cannot do that until we expand our conception of knowledge and move beyond an insipid and obsolete positivism.

The procrustean bed of post-enlightenment science mutilates our modern conception of the universe. We should reject it and embrace an intellectual pluralism that accepts the importance of poetry and myth. Science is great for predicting the movement of matter or for explaining the evolution of biological order. But it cannot get at mind; it cannot get at meaning; and it cannot get at morals. These are in a different intellectual dimension, one impenetrable to science.

There is more in heaven and earth than is in the Origin of Species or The Elegant Universe. And it is folly to turn to the scientist to explicate Byron’s poetry or Dostoevsky’s prose. Some truths are logical; some truths are emotional; and some truths are spiritual. To focus exclusively on one kind of truth is to shackle the imagination and degrade the soul. We should, instead, explore all kinds of truth, rejecting the debasing ideology of scientific imperialism.

MEANDER: Your contention, if I understand it correctly, is that religious discourse is not literal, but figurative? It is poetry not prose?

PHILO: In some cases, it is poetry. But in other cases, it is not descriptive at all. It is aspirational. We should judge its practical and existential effects. And Christianity, in my view, elevates the spirit. It advocates for the best in man. It lifts him up, while atheism beats him down. It tells him he’s a soul, while atheism tells him he’s a machine.  It gives him purpose, while atheism leaves him empty. It is existentially true because it makes man whole and reconciles him to an otherwise intolerable universe.

MEANDER: Well, let’s leave the idea that much of Christianity is aspirational aside for the moment. I’m still trying to grasp the claim that religious doctrines are poetic, not empirical. As I said in my opening, that strikes me as obviously false. We can test this by asking religious believers what they think. If, for example, I asked the average Catholic if she thought that Jesus’s resurrection was poetic like the story of Macbeth’s tragedy or Odysseus’s travails, and not a real historical event, would she say yes?

I confess that I have not conducted this particular experiment, but I am willing to bet that she would not. In fact, she would probably find the comparison between the God who inspired (or authored) the New Testament and the merely mortal poets who wrote Macbeth and the Odyssey odious and offensive. People do not pray to metaphors or metonyms. People pray to God, presumably because they believe he literally exists and intervenes in the world. What sense does it make, after all, to seek help from a fictitious character or a poetic trope?

PHILO: I do not think this falsifies my contention.

We should distinguish different types of Christianity. There is the Christianity of the masses and there is the Christianity of the philosophers. The two are not identical in form, though I would argue that they are similar, if not identical, in content. One takes the form of myth; the other, the form of abstract thought. But both are targeting a basic human and metaphysical reality.

Philosophers are more scrupulous, more reflective, and perhaps more captious than ordinary people. One may even say that they are pettifoggers! They demand consistency, coherence, and generalizability. They scan a proposition’s full range of consequences, ride a thought into the far corners of their mind. If A then B. If B then C. If C then D. And on and on and on. But ordinary people are more forgiving and their thought is more localized. They are not so troubled by contradictions. They implicitly agree with Thoreau: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. They believe that the brain causes all thoughts but also that the mind is immaterial. They believe that the world is determined but also that they have free will. They believe that life is full of unspeakable tragedy but also that God is benevolent.

MEANDER: I do not disagree that ordinary people are more comfortable with, or perhaps less aware of, contradictions in their thought. But this does not protect Christianity from empirical scrutiny. Most Christians literally believe in the resurrection and the virgin birth et cetera. And to argue that those beliefs are, as it were, florid manifestations of some austere metaphysical truth is special pleading. The beliefs are not poetic manifestations; they are empirically wrong. Now, one can argue that their falsity is outweighed by their existential importance. Or one can argue that their falsity is outweighed by their social utility. But one cannot argue that they are actually true in some gauzy, metaphorical sense.

PHILO: I would not say that they are manifestations of an austere metaphysical truth; rather, I would say that they point to an almost unknowable, unthinkable, and unspeakable metaphysical truth. They are signs that transcend themselves and reach into the infinite otherness of God. They resonate with the mind of the average human. They provide understandable and emotionally powerful content that reveals a deep reality. For as much as you and I might enjoy philosophical discourse, the average person finds it exceedingly boring and often incomprehensible. The Phenomenology of Spirit will never move people the way that Genesis or The Gospel of Mark does.

Let me spell this out because this, I think, is the best philosophical argument for God’s existence. The universe, reality, being, whatever we want to call it, is incomprehensible; we attempt to grasp it with our mortal minds, but it always escapes. We cannot pin it down because we are inside it. Our concepts inevitably fail. Beginning and end do not apply. Time and space do not apply. Mind and body do not apply. This reality is thus contradictory. It is not what it is; but it is what it is not. Everything and nothing. And so on.

But whatever this inscrutable reality is, it manifests as the observable universe—the universe that you and I perceive. Science can tell us about this universe. It can describe, classify, predict, and categorize. But it cannot get behind the surface to the ultimate metaphysical reality. Only theology, philosophy, poetry, and myth are equipped to do that.

And even they inevitably fail, as all speech and symbols must. But they strive toward the transcendent like salmon swimming upstream to spawn new concepts, new ideas, new sensations that might get us closer to understanding God—the ultimate source of reality.

Without poetry and without myth, religion would remain icy and alien to most of the population. And God does not want that. For God is a just God—and his message must be available to all. Those who demean the stories of religion are really demeaning the ordinary man and woman. For those stories are the path most must walk to God.

MEANDER: I do not mean to sound rude or dismissive, but I could not make sense of at least half of what you just said. It sounded like a combination of cryptic sayings, bizarre poetry, and bad philosophy.

So, instead of speaking in vague, and perhaps meaningless, generalities, let us get to more specific claims. The starting place, it seems, for Christianity is the existence of a omnipotent and benevolent creator god. Some liberal theologians have rejected the divinity of Jesus; but none (or only a very few) have rejected the notion of a caring and powerful creator god.

I contend that such a god almost certainly does not exist. As I said before, if there is a god, he or she or it is not benevolent. The world is too full of pain and suffering, disasters, catastrophes, and tragedies. Furthermore, god is a superfluous hypothesis. He is not necessary. We have the Big Bang and we have evolution. Of course, plenty of puzzles remain to be solved. But no insuperable mysteries. The world is explicable to science and reason. And what is not explicable to science and reason is not knowable to any person—not to Homer, not to Plato, not to Shakespeare, not to Blake, not to Rahner. We should have the honesty to admit our ignorance, and the wisdom not to pursue questions that do not have answers.

PHILO: Before discussing the nature of God and our pursuit of ultimate knowledge, your claim that God is altogether superfluous strikes me as clearly incorrect. Neither the Big Bang nor evolution provide an answer to the most important and most troubling question man can ask: Why something rather than nothing?

MEANDER: Did you not say before that our concepts all fail to capture the ultimate reality of the universe? Does not the question “why something rather than nothing?” presuppose that “something” and “nothing” can be meaningfully applied to this ultimate reality? My own view is that the question of why something, as compelling as it seems, is a pseudo question. Pure reason, as Kant noted, inevitably becomes entangled in contradictions and perplexes itself like a dog staring at its own reflection in a window. Best to focus on the empirical world, whose puzzles are tractable.

PHILO: One of the hazards of being language-bound creatures is that we must use language to reach beyond language, to speak of what cannot be spoken of. Wittgenstein wisely wrote that whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent. But one’s relation to God then becomes mystical and solipsistic. I prefer to try to communicate about God, even though I admit that this will often lead to paradox and contradiction.

The ultimate reality clearly manifests, in one of its modes or aspects, as the observable material world. Whatever reality is, it includes stars and planets and plants and animals.

This did not have to be the case. The universe could have been blank and silent forever—a kind of infinite void. Perhaps the nihilist believes that the universe is, at its heart, just such a void. But that pessimistic thesis seems patently false since we know that the universe has birthed the stars and the planets; and we know that the stars and the planets have birthed life; and we know that life has birthed consciousness; and consciousness allows us to reflect on God. To discover the ultimate. To transcend our finitude. And thus to reject the notion that nothingness is the essence of reality.

MEANDER: You are going beyond the facts, though. You say that the universe could have been blank and silent forever. How do you know? Is that a testable hypothesis? Furthermore, you use the adverb “forever,” but forever is a term that only makes sense in time. If there were no matter, no space, no time, then forever would be senseless. At any rate, all of this seems quite beside the point. Even if I granted the existence of this ultimate reality, it is no more the Christian God than the moon is a star. You say God, but you mean something quite abstract and philosophical; you mean reality.

In my view, calling reality God debases the word “God” while unnecessarily mystifying reality.

Now I’m not immune to some of these speculations. I admit that if I contemplate the origin of the universe for long enough, my mind is befuddled and ultimately defeated. But I could say the same about eternity. So long as I don’t think about it, it makes sense. But the more intensively I reflect upon it, the more unfathomable it becomes. These mysteries are Chinese finger traps for the mind; the more you try to wriggle free, the tighter their grip becomes. The way to escape is not to put your finger in it in the first place!

PHILO: No, the way to escape these metaphysical puzzles is God, a being whose essence is existence.

MEANDER: The cosmological argument has been a bad argument for hundreds of years. It remains a bad argument. It seduces with a promise to solve insoluble problems, but it only substitutes the mystery of the origin of the universe for the more bewildering mystery of God. One could, after all, ask the same question of God that you are asking about the existence of the universe: Why does God exist rather than not exist? You may retort that God’s essence is existence, but that’s verbal hocus-pocus. Why not just argue that the universe’s essence is existence and skip the additional step of God?

PHILO: In my view, it’s not an extra step. The universe is a part of God. And it’s not hocus-pocus; it’s a satisfying and elegant solution to an otherwise intractable problem.

MEANDER: Before proceeding to your second argument for Christianity, I’d like to return to a point that was lost in our arcane metaphysical debate. Life on earth offers no evidence that God is benevolent. The world is capricious. The righteous are killed; the wicked prosper. Misery is pervasive. If nature does not destroy us, then other people do. And if other people do not destroy us, then old age does. Suffering is unavoidable. Pleasure is fleeting. Our desires and hopes are often dashed. Our fears are often confirmed. I cannot see divinity in the crooked clockwork of the universe.

PHILO: This, I think, is the most powerful challenge to a Christian worldview. You are quite correct that evil is pervasive. Thus, an intellectually honest Christian must account for this unpleasant reality. In my view, the best explanation is original sin. Not only does original sin lead to human evil, to selfishness, violence, cupidity, sloth and the like, but also it clouds our minds, rendering us incapable of fully grasping the most important truths of the world. We see through a glass darkly. We cannot know why there are earthquakes, tornadoes, and other calamities. And, painful though it may be, we must accept this with equanimity, understanding that God’s plan is sometimes inscrutable to the mortal mind.

MEANDER: I appreciate your candor in admitting that the problem of evil is a challenge to the Christian worldview, but your answer is puzzling. Original sin, even if I were to grant its existence, cannot explain most suffering in the world because most suffering is caused not by other people, but by nature—by predators and diseases and disasters. Philosophically speaking, nature is not cruel; rather it is indifferent. But it is also, as Tennyson put it, “red in tooth and claw.” This is not the fault of man or beast; it’s just how evolution works. The frog devours the bug; the raccoon devours the frog; the coyote devours the raccoon. There is no escape from this hell of bloody interdependence. Even the most adorable of animals participate. The kitten will eventually become a merciless killer, as all birders know.

What is more, claiming that we cannot see the answer to the problem of evil because our minds are clouded by original sin is question begging. The problem only arises because Christianity posits a benevolent and omnipotent creator. If we drop those premises, the mystery of evil disappears. Thus the simpler solution to this stubborn dilemma is to reject Christianity not reason. Evil exists; God does not.

PHILO: Almost every modern philosopher, from Kant to Kuhn, recognizes the limitations and fallibility of human reason. I see no reason a theologian should not also recognize the fallibility of reason while explaining its cause: Original sin. And if we agree that the soul’s vision while it remains trapped in flesh is severely circumscribed, then we should not expect answers to all our most pressing questions. Indeed, we should accept, however reluctantly, darkness and mystery. Nevertheless, I do not pretend that the problem of evil is easily solved or cast aside. It perplexes and vexes me.

MEANDER: Again, I applaud your honesty. But the way to alleviate the anxiety caused by the problem of evil is to let go of the premise of an omniscient and omnipotent God. It’s an anchor on your mind. Once you drop it, you will be free from this unnecessary contradiction.

PHILO: Solving the problem of evil by rejecting Christianity is like curing the pain of a sliver in your finger by cutting off your arm.

MEANDER: Colorful simile though obviously I do not think that agnosticism is like amputation. At any rate, since we won’t solve the problem of theodicy in this conversation, let’s move on to your second argument for Christianity.

PHILO: Absolutely. Humans need meaning. And without meaning, they become hollow like blighted trees. Drugs and sex and video games fill the hole. Then either ennui or nihilism. Atheism cannot satisfy this need because the mind innately desires God, longs for God, seeks God. Only religion can fill man’s heart and teach him to revere the universe and to see beauty and purpose in everything from the snow on the summit of a mountain to the lily pads on the surface of a pond. Only religion can reveal as illusory the apparent ugliness and degradation and horror that pervade our world. And only by committing to God can mankind triumph over evil.

MEANDER: I agree that most humans need meaning just as animals need water, food, and shelter. But I do not agree that atheism inevitably fails to satisfy this need. In fact, that assertion is falsified by examining the lives of atheists, many of whom lived with an abundance of meaning and joy. Dreariness is not a necessary consequence of atheism. Conversely, I might add, plenty of religious believers are sullen and spiteful and empty.

That said, I suspect that Christianity does satisfy certain existential desires better than atheism, and I admit that my own agnosticism is not without despair. But that does not make Christianity true. After all, if I could believe that I was God, that might make me quite happy and might satisfy a deep longing—but it would not mean that I was, in fact, God. Truth is not always easy. And lies are often more pleasant than reality.

PHILO: I believe we should approach religion pragmatically as well as rationally and logically. You admit that religion serves our existential needs better than atheism. As a believer, I do not think that that is a coincidence. Nevertheless, even if you are a metaphysical skeptic, even if you think the universe provides little evidence of the divine, you should still embrace Christianity because it alleviates anxiety, quiets the mind, and orients one toward the infinite. It causes joy and awe and veneration. Of course, I would contend that this is evidence that Christianity is true. But one need not agree to see the practical benefits of adopting it.

Perhaps one could compare it to a holiday. Think of Christmas. Without Christmas, December would be just another month and the twenty-fifth just another bleak day in the beginning of winter. Wake up. Shiver. Turn on the heat. Do work. Fret about the future. Rue the past. Go to bed. And so on. But with Christmas, December becomes magical and rife with meaning. Many things we ignore or dismiss—trees, colors, candies, stockings, candles—become symbols of family and celebration. Children are filled with excitement. Even our pets, I am convinced, can sense our joy and anticipation!

Holidays reveal a deeper significance; they peel away the banal, the tired, the mundane and revitalize the world. That, to me, is what Christianity does. It allows me to love the finite, to see meaning in the tiniest of trifles, but also points me toward the transcendent and toward that which lasts when all the ephemera of our daily lives vanishes.

MEANDER: Eloquently stated. But art can accomplish the same. Art can redeem the world. It can lift us from torpor; it can make beautiful what is ugly; it can elevate what is low; and it can provide meaning and order in a hostile and chaotic world. Furthermore, it does not require accepting preposterous metaphysics. An aesthete does not have to believe that a man was resurrected after death, and he does not have to believe that this bloody and savage world was created by a benevolent and omnipotent deity.

And even if art is not quite the spiritual medicine that religion is, even if it can’t ennoble the world as religion can, it does not require falsifying it, and surely that must count for something. And this is what distinguishes it from religion and what makes it superior to Christianity. Ultimately, Christianity is a lie; and a lie cannot be justified by appealing to its psychological consequences.

PHILO: Well, of course, I don’t think Christianity is a lie! But setting that to the side, my point, a point which was made over a hundred years ago by William James, is that if one is uncertain about Christianity, then one can consider its psychological consequences. If those are salubrious, if they enhance, elevate, and ennoble, then surely those consequences should count in favor of the Christian faith.

MEANDER: Other things equal, I am not opposed to considering the practical consequences of a belief. However, the first and most important criterion should be plausibility. That is, we should assess the truth value of a belief before we consider its social or psychological consequences. And if we find it implausible, then we should reject it even if it promises unbridled joy and social harmony. For it is better to be miserable and correct than to be joyous but deluded. Perhaps that is an austere and unappealing principle. But it is important to face the world without illusion.

PHILO: I do not disagree with the principle, and if I found Christianity implausible, I would not believe. However, religion is different from scientific theories or even ordinary practical beliefs because it grapples with the mysterious and metaphysical.

MEANDER: But this leads back to the disagreement that inaugurated this debate: does religion make empirical claims? Of course, I do not dispute religion’s unique orientation toward the mysterious and metaphysical. But one can still assess its claims empirically and logically.

PHILO: In most cases, I contend that that approach to religion is a category mistake.

MEANDER: If somebody said Paradise Lost is wrong because Satan does not exist, that would be a category mistake. But if somebody said Christianity is wrong because an omnipotent and omniscient god is inconsistent with pervasive suffering, that is not a category mistake.

PHILO: Let us move from this to another psychological benefit of Christianity, one that is important in a post-affluent society: Humility and discipline. One of our great temptations is hedonism, a life of indolent pleasure. And this temptation is especially strong in wealthy, comfortable societies, where, protected from the vagaries of nature, we survive not by hunting and gathering but by clicking buttons on a computer screen. Wealth engenders laziness and boredom; and laziness and boredom engender hedonism.

Christianity counters this process of degeneration. It promotes health because it contends that the body is a gift from God, not a worthless vessel. And it contends that the ego is not the highest reality, but only a fragment of a greater metaphysical whole. Furthermore, it creates a community of the like-minded who encourage discipline and discourage decadence.

So far as I can see, Christianity is the only ideology that is strongly pushing against the trend toward hedonism and decadence. Humanism simply cannot resist because it does not have the tools. Once the spirit is eradicated, the flesh reigns. And principled objections to endless pleasure seeking are impossible. “Everything is permitted” might be hyperbole, but “Everything that increases one’s pleasure while not directly harming other people is permitted” is not. The humanist may have good, even noble, intentions, but the humanist’s project is doomed to failure because it privileges the ego and destroys the soul. It begins with autonomy, but it ends in anarchy and libertinism.  

MEANDER: You might be surprised by this, but I agree with your concern about decadence. It is indeed a dangerous vulnerability of affluent societies, which often decay as each generation, like some doomed family in a novel by Thomas Mann, becomes more feckless and diseased than the last. Obesity is a conspicuous example. As you noted, we no longer hunt and gather; we click buttons on a computer screen. And this leads to grotesque weight gain.

However, I am aware of no evidence that Christians are less obese, less decadent than agnostics or atheists. And I do not agree with you that humanism is less capable of fighting off degeneration than Christianity. In fact, Edward Gibbon, among others, argued that Christianity contributed to the ruin of Rome! I do not have a simple cure for the disease of decadence—nobody does. But a humanist can enforce discipline and humility just as easily as a Christian. Humanists can appeal to Stoicism or Epicureanism or even Buddhism for guidance and discipline. Furthermore, one who rejects Christianity does not need to embrace humanism. He can become a Muslim, a Nietzschean, a communist, a postmodernist and so on.

PHILO: I was trying to be charitable! Humanism is the most attractive alternative to Christianity. The other options you offered all seem obviously inferior.

As for Edward Gibbon’s thesis, well, he was not just wrong, he was wholly and spectacularly wrong. Christianity was what allowed Europe to rise from the rubble of the Roman Empire. It was an immune response to a widespread and baleful disease. That disease eventually killed Rome, but in clearing away the stultifying institutions of Empire, it allowed for the birth of modern Europe. And modern Europe is unthinkable without Christianity.

MEANDER: Well, whatever my views about the argument that Christianity uniquely protects us from decadence—and I find it implausible but not obviously false—it is still an appeal to the psychological effects of Christianity, not the credibility of its metaphysics.

It appears you are somewhat embarrassed about Christian doctrine and want to distract with a variety of emotional arguments. I do not blame you. Christian metaphysics are virtually impossible to defend.

PHILO: Ha! Well, allow me one more appeal to consequences before I summarize my position and directly defend Christian metaphysics.

MEANDER: Of course.

PHILO: Christianity provides a healthy unifying narrative for our civilization, one that is strict and hierarchical but also tempered by the moderating forces of post-Enlightenment liberalism. It has survived the crucible of history—that merciless wheel which crushes so many of our cherished beliefs!—and remains the best tested guide for a flourishing European future.

Civilizations need ideologies and myths. If Christianity were eradicated, hundreds of novel and pernicious ideologies would rise to take its place. Of course, this is already happening. Radical progressivism, or what some call wokism, is likely one such substitute. It’s like a religion, but its only god is resentment. And its foundational texts are jeremiads against white people.

Yes, we can be sure that more such ideologies, like proliferating pond scum, will spread as Christianity ebbs.

MEANDER: I am going to surprise you again. I largely agree with this. When we began, I said that I was not looking to eliminate Christianity. This is one major reason. Christianity is good for our civilization. Ultimately, I would like to see belief in revealed religion wane. However, I do not want to hasten the decline of Christianity. It will die slowly and naturally.

Or maybe it won’t. People have been prophesying the death of Christianity for hundreds of years, and yet it survives!

Whatever reservations I have about the metaphysics, I am ultimately a cultural Christian. I live in the world that Christianity created. And I would prefer to live in that world than anywhere else.

But, again, this is not the question we agreed to debate. The question was: Is Christianity intellectually defensible. I have argued that it is not. You have argued that it is. But most of your arguments have relied upon the consequences of Christianity, not on its actual doctrine. So, let me ask you a couple direct questions: Do you believe that Jesus was, in fact, resurrected? Do you believe in the virgin birth?

PHILO: Fair questions. As I said at the beginning of this conversation, it’s a mistake to conflate the poetry of religious myth with the prose of scientific writing. Jesus was probably not literally resurrected. And Mary was probably not a virgin. Even asking these questions, I think, is the wrong way to approach religion because it treats religion as a collection of empirical assertions. The better question is what do these stories tell us about ourselves, about the universe, and about God?

To offer one example, the story of Jesus, in my view, is about the human triumph over death, which is the inescapable final insult to our flesh. Thus, we must recognize that we are more than skin, more than bone, more than tissue and tendon, and then we too can conquer our fear of death—we can transcend even in the moment of our greatest agony and humiliation. But the story of Jesus is also about mission and sacrifice, love and forgiveness, courage and suffering. Like any good poem, it resists paraphrase. It overflows. It rewards constantly with new meanings and understandings. And like music it may connect so deeply and directly to our being that we cannot even understand it rationally.

When I am in a church surrounded by the dim, colored light that shines through the painted glass, and I look to the vault of the ceiling while listening to a sermon, I am overcome with a profound joy that is truly ineffable. I cannot even explain it to myself. This experience, like the story of Jesus, is not translatable into rational discourse. We cannot study it scientifically. And I see no reason to reduce or eliminate it. It is just as real, just as true, as gravity.

Of course, the rationalist and the scientific imperialist will reject this claim. They will asseverate that all experience can be studied scientifically and that my position amounts to obfuscatory mysticism. Well, I think they are intellectual taxidermists! They want to discuss beautiful animals, but they live in a museum of stuffed corpses.

MEANDER: But this makes you an esoteric Christian, since most Christians, even very erudite ones, believe that Christianity is unique precisely because it arose from actual events in history: The birth, life, and death of the messiah. In other words, they believe that Jesus existed, that he preached, that he was arrested, that he was crucified, and that he rose after death. Earlier, you claimed that there are different kinds of Christians and that these myths point toward the same truth as abstract philosophy, but still I wonder, why are you a Christian and not just a humanist if you believe the that the stories are not literally true?

PHILO: Excellent question. I am not a humanist because I believe in more than flesh; I believe in spirit. I am not a humanist because I believe in more than my ego; I believe in the soul. I am not a humanist because I believe in more than the observable world; I believe in a transcendent reality. I want to see heaven in a wildflower and to hold infinity in the palm of my hand. I do not want to be reduced to my five senses. I want expansion, not limitation.

What is more, I do not think that humans are the central reality of existence. God is. And our life should be a journey to God, which means an escape from ourselves. Thus although I respect humanism, I ultimately find it stifling and misguided. It makes an idol of man—and I do not worship idols.

MEANDER: Fair enough. Let us conclude, shall we. You may summarize your views first, and then I will respond.

PHILO: Great. I have argued that Christianity is true both metaphysically and pragmatically. It explains the existence of the universe; it disciplines and strengthens the individual; and it creates coherent and cooperative civilizations. The mistake that many in this age of science and enlightenment make is to translate the myths and poetry of Christianity into the language of science and reason. This distorts and destroys because religion is not meant to be understood literally. And just as we cannot understand love by vivisecting the human heart, so too we can’t understand Christianity by dissecting its doctrines. It must be lived, not studied.

Nevertheless, I understand that we must forward arguments to justify our religious beliefs. And my major philosophical argument is that the ultimate reality, the ineffable other, the supreme ground of our being, is God. We cannot otherwise understand the universe. Our science does not address this question—and it should not. Science is not about metaphysics. Thus, religion and science are in fact perfectly compatible so long as they recognize their respective positions and do not become imperial. I am a pluralist. I believe in religion, but I do not despise science. I only despise bad, overweening science.

Christianity is the West’s most powerful and resonant myth. Its beauty is unparalleled. It is, in fact, our supreme achievement. And I will fight indefatigably to preserve it against its many enemies and cultured despisers.

MEANDER: Our views are not so far apart, though I do not share your assessment of Christianity’s metaphysics nor do I think its doctrines are poetic or mythical. Christianity may be beautiful. It may be a remarkable achievement. But its factual assertions are false. Jesus did not rise from the dead. Mary was not a virgin. A benevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent god does not exist.

The world is miserable, full of unspeakable suffering and tragedy. If a god did in fact create the universe, then he is a sadistic god, a god for whom I will not genuflect. What a ghastly place this universe can be! No obeisance is appropriate for its creator.

Now, that rhetorical flourish aside, I should say that I respect Christianity’s moderating influence on humans. And I do not wish to destroy Christianity today, tomorrow, or ten years from now. I find militant atheism as repugnant as zealous fundamentalism. The question here, though, is not about Christianity’s influence on Western Civilization. It is about its truth value. And since I think the explicit empirical and metaphysical claims of Christianity are implausible and erroneous, I must contend that Christianity is not intellectually defensible. Honesty requires agnosticism. We inhabit a godless universe. And life ends at death. In the meantime, let us eat, drink, debate, and be merry!

PHILO: Cheers to that. I appreciate the debate as always. And I look forward to our next discussion.

MEANDER: Same to you.