Ravi Zacharias, Socrates’ Daimonion, and Liberation

Ryan asked:
Have I heard of Ravi Zacharias?

Yes I have. Like Dinesh D’Souza, I have little interest in reading the books he has written. I’ve listened to some lectures of his, although not the one Ryan offered. I couldn‘t make it through the first segment of the one Ryan provided because it runs off the rails from the start. From my limited exposure to Zacharias, my understanding of his argument is that he sees Christianity as the best solution to existential questions.

I basically see this as a repackaging of Pascal’s Wager. I can say my beliefs just don’t work like that. There is something that lets me know when I’m not being honest with myself. Socrates described something similar, which he called a “daimonion.” It literally means “divine something” in Greek, but I don’t know if Socrates literally meant it as a supernatural force. This might just be an instance of language getting in the way of communication. Regardless of whether Socrates believed his “daimonion” to be supernatural, I feel something similar that I don’t ascribe to the supernatural. Like other intangible feelings, it is hard to say if everyone experiences it the same way, or even experiences it at all. Maybe other people don’t have this “daimonion” and can believe whatever they wish to believe. All I am saying is that I have a “voice”, for lack of a better term, that won’t let me do that. It isn’t necessarily loud, but it is very persistent. This “daimonion” is a central part of my inner life. It is a source of doubt. It motivates me to try to learn new things and encourages me to question and verify what I think I know. I don’t know what Zacharias’ suggestion for wrestling with my “daimonion” is, but my “daimonion” recognizes that his is an argument from consequences, and to believe in Christianity, to believe Jesus was literally raised from the dead, the son and part of the tri-union God, born of a virgin, turned water into wine, walked on water etc. because it resolves some existential issues that I face would be the definition of delusional thinking.

From reading what some Christians have written, some seem to be aware of this experience of a “daimonion” as well. Since it tends to erode their faith, they seem to think it is Satan trying to lead them to go astray. Pascal seems to be aware of it as well and suggests to ignore it, and hope that it will go away in time. I consider this repression akin to the church’s repression of sex, and it has similar consequences: needless dysfunction and suffering.

I know this isn’t what apologetics means in this particular context, but I do wish Christian apologists would actually apologize. A good start would be apologizing for the murder of Hypatia of Alexandria who was killed by a Christian mob. If Christ died for our sins, Hypatia died for our ignorance. As a Christian, I don’t know how you could bear the suffering of this woman. She was dragged behind a chariot and flayed. Her quivering limbs tossed into flames. However, as a Christian, you would have to believe that was just the beginning of her torment. Your God tacitly consents for her to suffer an eternity of similar experiences, just as He tacitly consented to suffering she experienced in this life. I ask, what kind of justice is that?

In this respect, it is not enough to just say that the Bible is entirely implausible, which it is. We also need liberate ourselves from the desire to wish it were true. If the Bible were true, it wouldn’t be good news, it would be bad news. It would mean there was a celestial bully who commands that you love and fear Him. He makes you sick and punishes you for not being well. That our sins can be forgiven by sacrificing the innocent. A being exists that can and will convict you of thought crime. A being from which there is no hope of liberation and which you will never be able to overthrow. If you think Oceania in George Orwell’s 1984 was bad, that is nothing compared to heaven and heaven is the best you can hope for. The prospect of eventual annihilation and eternal oblivion is certainly a source of personal anxiety, the supreme existential crisis that Zacharias says Christianity resolves. I’m not arguing that it doesn’t, but as an existential choice, I wish more people recognized what an utterly revolting choice it is. It should be the choice we pick when we have no other options left, and even then with some trepidation and reluctance. Thankfully, there is no credible evidence for believing it to be true, and good reasons for believing it actually false.

We do live in a great age. Our knowledge has progressed that probability of the prospect of sacrificing your liberty and surrendering your conscience in this life in the hope of avoiding eternal torment in favor of suffering an eternal existence in a celestial equivalent of North Korea is so vanishingly small that it is being ignored or outright rejected by a significant and increasing portion of the population in many educated countries. For example, knowing what we know now about chemistry, it is entirely implausible that water can be turned into wine. Knowing what we know now about biology, it is completely implausible that a virgin would give birth to a male offspring.

The underlying reason isn’t that it isn’t just the case that a belief in Jesus requires less faith now, it is that it requires substantially more. Consequently, even from the Christian perspective, I haven’t completely understood the textual basis for condemnation of Thomas the doubter. Jesus said “blessed are those who have not seen yet have believed.” Jesus didn’t say it was required to believe in him without seeing him, he just praised those who could. According to the story, Thomas was one of Jesus’ disciples and presumably witnessed at least a few of Jesus’ other miracles and got a personal visit after Jesus rose from the dead. On the other hand, we are expected to believe, just as reverently, based on hearsay from spotty texts, some of which plagiarize each other, about a guy we’ve never physically met, which tell of implausible events that we have not seen any credible physical evidence for, coming out of a particularly illiterate part of the world and are not collaborated by independent contemporaneous secular accounts. If lots of people got up from their graves and started walking around Jerusalem, one would think someone else would make a note of it, or at least it would be in all of the gospels and not just in Matthew.

To make this point clear, I’ll draw a parallel with homeopathy. I’m not going to accept the fact that water has “memory” of let’s say onion juice, even when we know from chemistry that some of the solutions that so dilute that there is unlikely to be any molecules from the onion juice remaining, and similarly how the water “remembers” the onion juice but presumably forgets the urine, or how this exactly “memory” of onion juice helps these water molecules cure an ailment any better than a regular molecule would. That is to say, how exactly do these water molecules behave differently than other ones that don’t have a recent “memory” of onion juice? Similarly, I’m not going to accept a human man can be born of a virgin until I get a plausible explanation of where the Y-chromosome came from. I would accept parthenogenesis if the offspring were female and people noted the striking resemblances between Mary and her daughter. If this daughter then went on to tell the world about germs, atoms, stars and galaxies, spoke of Neptune and Pluto approximately 2000 years ago, I think we would have good reasons for believing some type unexplained intervention took place. Jesus’ miracles, in contrast, become increasingly discredited and provincial as our knowledge expands. Given the trend, I find it hard not to draw the obvious conclusion.

In summary, I have considered an outline of Ravi Zacharias’ argument. If you feel I am misrepresenting it, I assure you it is completely unintentional and please feel free to correct me in the comments. While I admit Christianity is a solution to the existential crises we all face, I don’t feel the solution that Christianity offers is at all desirable and is among one of the last options that I would choose, even then only if the evidence, logic and reason forced me, and with great reluctance and sorrow, for it would mean we could never be truly free. It would mean as tragic and pointless I find the suffering of poor Hypatia of Alexandria to be as an atheist. As a Christian, I would have to believe it was just an insignificant prelude to the torments the being I am compelled to worship, upon the fear of my own torment and punishment, has in store and will tacitly allow her to endure for all eternity. Thus, I freely thank all that it good that there is not a shred of credible evidence to support such a lamentable state of affairs and there are quite good reasons for believing that it is actually false. If that were not good enough, the reasons for not believing are actually getting sounder as time progresses and our knowledge expands, and I find no reason to believe this trend won’t continue far into the future as well.

This is usually the end of my interest in apologetics for I have no reason to find rationalizations for beliefs I have no desire to have in the first place independent of my “daimonion.” (Although, I occasionally can’t help myself from commenting if an apologist starts making a particularly inane claim.) However, what would convince me in one God over others is physical evidence. For example, someone showing that praying to a particular God produced better outcomes than praying to any other God under suitable controls. It wouldn’t satisfy all my objections, but it wouldn’t be something I could ignore either. This is why I didn’t really mind taking the time to read something like “90 Minutes in Heaven.” Although, I won’t spend all my time doing it, because I find many reports of miracles won’t stand up to even the most modest skepticism. I would rather just read the ones the Christians themselves find the most credible and respond to those. I think “90 Minutes in Heaven” meets that criteria. From the outset, reading apologia, like Zacharias’, just doesn’t interest me because I don’t see how it could even begin to without more evidence. Maybe you could give me some factoid from a book that would pique my interest. For example, maybe there is a book where an archeologist retraces the steps of Jesus in the Bible, finds good historical evidence for the site of the country of Gadarenes and subsequent finds the remains of a large herd of pigs in a sea or what probably was a sea 2000 years ago. Furthermore, the remains can be carbon dated to around Jesus’ time and this author got his results published in a secular peer-reviewed archeological journal thus confirming some basic facts given in the account given Matthew 8 and other gospels. Even this most likely wouldn’t convince me to become a Christian, but it is something I would find interesting to read with evidence I would accept, especially if I could see pictures of the pig bones.

Maybe you consider my refusal to read Zacharias’ book unsatisfactory or disingenuous. I’m sorry if you feel that way, but I can’t possibly read every book any one can demand of me. If you satisfactorily address the above objections, can point to some quotes in which makes it clear I’m misrepresenting Zacharias’ argument, or make a better case for why as to why I will find Zacharias’ book the least bit interesting, I assure you, I will honestly consider it. In my defense, try putting yourself in my shoes, and imagine someone suggesting that you consider the arguments for Baal more carefully. I hope from that perspective, you might consider my position more justified.