I am not a Christian. But out of curiosity, I have taken a class on the new testament this semester. Since it was a class that focuses on historical analysis, a recurring theme was how problematic the pieces that make up the new testament are as historical sources. The analysis treated the gospels as documents written by people for certain purposes, and not necessarily as faithful depictions of past events. This view leads biblical scholars to make some surprising conclusions - their dominant view now is that the gospel according to Matthew is a document that champions a Jewish sectarian movement led by Jesus. The thing, though, is that historical analysis is not what Christians do all the time when they read the bible. One biblical scholar even said that based on their methodology of historical analysis, they are not allowed to treat the resurrection of Jesus as a historical event - all they can say is that followers of the Jesus movement from around 30 CE onwards strongly believed that it happened. The "rules of the game" do not allow them to treat accounts of miracles as fact. Christians in this class are forced to read and think about the new testament in a new way.

While the methodologies prescribed by historical analysis allow for an atheistic explanation of why the text in new testament is the way it is, it gives the impression that Christians are believing in something that did not happen. So, a thing that I couldn't help but wonder is, "Do Christians really believe that these things happened? Why do so many people put their faith in something so unlikely to have happened?"

After discussing what I've "learnt" from my class with my preceptor, Peter (a classmate) and Daniel (Lo and Sim), it appears to me that Christians do not usually read the bible "to the letter" - in our class we scrutinize the differences between two different accounts of the same "event" and try to make sense of those differences in terms of the aims and biases of the different authors, but it seems to me this is not what Christians usually do when they read the bible. The Christians I have asked about this (four so far) get some recurring themes that pervade the bible, and apply it to their lives (kinda like the difference between pure math and engineering, I think). Also, assuming that the accounts in the bible really happened in the past does allow one to explain away some of its strangeness and apparent inconsistencies. What I got out of the discussion was that their faith does not lead them (i.e., these four people) to do things that I think are bad. I was glad that it was so, because I had always imagined some irreconcilable difference between Christians and atheists which would prevent us from have open discussions about important issues without evoking strong emotions.

Just yesterday, someone invited me to a Christian fellowship meeting. I sat through the prayers and songs and observed. They sang a couple of songs, and the songs made it very easy to join in. The melodies were catchy, the tunes were easy to sing and the lyrics had a lot of repetition. Nothing was really unexpected or remarkable, but there was nothing that made complete sense to me either, because they were mostly about the greatness of God/Jesus, which I wouldn't assume to be true. But what impressed me was the lecture given by the director (it was a non-denominational fellowship, so not everyone addressed him the same way, but the director had a title of "Reverend") - he taught about humility and appreciation of grace. These were things that I believed in, and I was glad that he was teaching things that would lead to behavior that I believe are good. At the same time, though, he also said that doing good should ultimately be for extending the grace of God (or something like that) instead of doing it to feel good about oneself. I didn't agree with him on that, so I went to look for him at the end of the meeting.

(Note to reader: the following account would appear biased against him, because I only remembered the most surprising things he said, and even those things I did not remember very clearly. In the actual conversation, he sounded a lot more confident. But I pretty much stopped listening whenever he started talking about God, so what he said would appear a lot more fragmentary.)

I asked him, "Do you think that there are right and wrong reasons for good behavior?" He said something which I interpreted as meaning that the only right reason for good behavior is extending the effect of the grace of God, which triumphs even doing good for the benefit of society, or a sense of good that comes from within. I questioned him on that. He said that while doing good for the benefit for society is a reason, it is not a sufficient condition for being righteous with God. So I asked, "Would you make a distinction between a Christian and a non-believer who do the same things?" He said that he would not be able to make a distinction, but God's judgment would make a distinction between believers and non-believers (which also include Christians who do not really believe), and non-believers would be sent to a place called hell ("which is a real place", he assured me) devoid of God's grace.

I was slightly disappointed at how someone who taught the good things he taught just a moment ago would also believe in such strange things. So I offered my point of view. I told him that I do not agree with him that righteousness can only be found through God. In fact, the concept of righteousness would have existed even before the bible, and if there were some book that advocated a concept of righteousness radically different from people's internal sense of right and wrong, it could not have been as pervasive as the bible today, and therefore, in an indirect way, the bible's concept of righteousness was selected based on people's internal sense of right and wrong.

Then he asked, "And how is that working out for you?" I was stumped. For the previous hour, I was observing a practice based on a somewhat coherent world view, with a venue for people to find emotional support at a time when they needed it the most. I watched it as a spectator, as the stereotypically smug "anthropologist visiting a tribe" observing a case study in social psychology for what people can believe when they are placed in large groups. I saw they had an answer that I believed was wrong. But I hadn't realized that I didn't have a clear answer myself.

He threw in a few more questions, "What is your world view?" I stammered my way through a couple of concepts that I used to think about when I was more melancholic - materialism, utilitarianism and some pop psychology (which led me right into the problem of consciousness). "So your world view is incoherence?" After some struggle, I was greatly troubled and I said that I don't know. "What would it take for you to believe that there is a god?" Someone had asked me this question before, and it was a hard question, because the lack of an answer would indicate that I am not as open-minded as I would like myself to be. It is still a hard question. I didn't answer. "Do you believe that anything controls something?" This was related to the problem of consciousness as well, so I didn't have a good answer. "Why do you think that across cultures, humans seek to worship something?" No good answer. Then he told me that it's okay not to have an answer, since many people are looking for an answer as well. He also advised me to come back again and ask more questions.

Shaken by the tough questions, I walked out and met two people I knew, and we started discussing about our world view. It turns out, that the mind-body problem is a hard problem for them. One of them was a recent convert, and he understood how out-of-place I felt being there, with all the songs and prayers and people who believed strongly in something I didn't. But at the same time, it seemed like such a nice and friendly environment where I can talk about the things that I might not be as inclined to talk about over a meal. At the same time, seeing how open seven out of the seven Christians I chose to talk to were, I felt free to argue against a Christian world view. It was a shaking yet interesting experience.

I was weak last night because I was not prepared to answer such hard questions. But now, I offer my defense.

Someone has once asked me, "How can you possibly believe in the Big Bang?" I did not have a good answer then, but my answer now is, I don't believe in the Big Bang the same way Christians believe that God created everything. My confidence in my belief of the Big Bang theory does not come from my own observation, models, and reasoning, but the confidence in scientists who came up with it. I have not worked through the data and math myself, so I would quite happy to discard this belief if many scientists were to tell me otherwise. I would also be happy to flip back to believing in Big Bang theory if it more scientists were to later proclaim the Big Bang theory to be superior. I do not have the time/expertise/interest to verify everything personally, so I take their word for it. Now I would say to him, "What would it take, then, for you to stop believing in God?"

There isn't any coherent world view that can account for everything with certainty, because once we invoke Descartes' dream/brain in a vat/malicious demon argument against it, we would need to somehow account for the existence of everything except our own consciousness. This means that if we only allow for things that people are certain of, any conscious being would have lots of gaps in their world view. As far as I am aware of, there are two ways to fix this: one is to take a leap of faith and fill in the gaps where necessary. Another way, which I prefer, is to take in any information, but tag on to each piece of information my confidence in it being true. Ideally, I would allow any of my beliefs to be questioned and changed. Rather than taking a leap of faith which adds new unquestionable beliefs, my gaps of uncertainty are instead filled with multiple beliefs with varying degrees of confidence, and if someone asks me what I believe, I would tell them the one that I am most confident of being true. Admittedly, I do not do this all the time - the sleeper effect makes this difficult to maintain, but a guard against this would be to be skeptical of a belief unless I can recall the source and see that it is reliable.

I am not only skeptical against believing in God, I am also skeptical of any belief that requires me not to doubt it. Suppose I take everything that belief in a Christian God entails and replace it with something else, but keep the belief that you MUST believe it or else bad things happen to you, I would still end up with another coherent world view, because I can discard everything that is inconsistent with it. With this formula, I can conveniently replace the stuff in Christianity that make Christians do things that we universally acknowledge to be good with stuff that make people do bad things, and end up with a coherent world view that make its believers do bad things. Suppose I am required to ignore my internal moral compass in my judgment of which one to believe in - the Christian God or the bad God, I would not be able to choose.

I think that the saving grace in the world is mankind's internal moral compass - people prefer not to believe in things that make them do evil, even if they are not allowed to question it, and that is why people who choose to believe in a God that advocates good behavior. On the other hand, telling people not to doubt something allows one to construct a coherent world view that contains anything. Hence, while I do not like the idea of not having a coherent world view, I cannot bring myself to adopt a world view that does not allow me to question. And I would say, my world view is incoherent, I am unsure, and I do not have answers, but that's okay for me.