Why does "objective truth" require deception?

Remember those "infomercials" that would play on late-night TV? The spokesperson would make shocking claims about the product and how it could solve a problem that you didn't even know you had. When customers received these "too good to be true" products they'd be dismayed to learn these items couldn't be found in stores because once the truth was apparent all desire to own the product would promptly fade. The claims didn't match the reality of the item.[1] Why was the truth of these products hidden behind grandiose promises if the goal was anything other than deception?

Portions of Christianity helped shape the perception of infomercials through frequent live presentations by televangelists. These scam artists and their "prosperity gospel" were frequently criticized by many Christian groups for distorting Christian tenets and misapplying Biblical verses without considering the likelihood of irreparable harm. Despite the outcry against televangelists, they continued to serve as very public representatives of the religion for years. Armed with often unfalsifiable and dubious claims of miraculous healing powers, telepathy, telekinesis, connections to a spiritual realm, and the ability to use these powers for the benefit of regular monetary supporters, they defrauded millions of their money and health and likely even lead some supporters to bankruptcy or death.

But the interesting thing to me about the anti-televangelist community is the largely uncriticized grift perpetuated within their ranks. The increased influence of Christian apologetics in social media has enabled them to further a fabricated reputation, to build a community based on deception, with potentially an even greater modern influence on Christianity than the prosperity gospel denounced as heresy managed 20 years ago. They've harmed the perception of science within Christianity; they've influenced politics towards Christian nationalism; they've misrepresented history; and they've damaged families and relationships. I've written about them before in a previous post; in this entry I want to expound upon my claim that they build thought prisons intended to keep people ignorant and within the orthodox opinion of their specific denomination rather than any self-proclaimed pursuit of truth.

No doubt permitted here

Kirk Cameron recently shocked the fundamentalist evangelical Christian community when he admitted that he was changing some of his views of Hell, a punitive destination set for the majority of the world in an afterlife Christians attest is written in their sacred texts. The terms of punishment are often stated to be eternal, which was the major issue for Kirk and what prompted his roundtable discussion with other apologists in a YouTube video he entitled "Hellgate: The Christian Debate We're Afraid to Have" (let's all agree to stop adding a "gate" suffix to any moment deemed controversial, please).

In the video Kirk restated his position where he admitted that he had begun to doubt his previous convictions, deciding that an ever-lasting torturous experience seemed antithetical to his perception of standards for an all-powerful, all-loving, all-knowing deity. Kirk could see a moral contradiction in God punishing eternally an individual for a temporary crime that they could not not commit. Kirk's own mind, claimed by Christians and the Bible as being inherently feeble and limited, could come up with alternative methods of punishment that felt far more appropriate for the types of infractions most people make. It seemed wrong then to doom someone to a fate of eternal agony for something most people would brush off as a minor mistake.

These were legitimate doubts, both in the logic being presented and the earnestness of Kirk's position. Kirk's questioning wasn't intended to confuse others nor did it seem to be a signal that Kirk wished to apostatize some or all of his religion. On the contrary, Kirk was so eager to become a better Christian that he wanted guidance on how to improve his doctrines.

The response from dozens of online Christian apologists was intense and aggressively fearful; Kirk had asked some of the Bad Questions.

Paulogia -- Kirk Cameron Caught Hell for Exposing Christianity's Biggest Problem (20+ Apologist Response)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xz8SE6MLhNY

The truth has been curated

Any question asked of an apologist must be returned with an answer that fits within a very particular theological framework. The goal of the apologist is to simplify the question to something more easily answered, and one that does not challenge that particular framework.

If I were to diagram that framework, it would be a subset of a larger list of available answers. Suppose I pictured it as two circles, one larger, and one smaller contained within the larger. The smaller circle would be the list of answers available to an apologist. Some answers are just not available within an apologetics framework.

The problem with Bad Questions is that they cannot be simplified or be made vague enough to be satisfied by the that subset of possible answers. If the answer isn't readily available, then the next easiest and most often used tactic is to vilify the question. Thus, it becomes a Bad Question -- one that shouldn't be asked because the apologist deems it to be an indication of a weak relationship with God, a sign that the person lacks faith, or has non-repented sin in their life -- whatever it takes to protect the barrier between acceptable answers and dangerous ones.

If the pursuit of truth is the goal of an apologist, then seeking truth from any source should not be something considered hazardous. However, because an apologist's primary goal is to keep people within the inner circle, the answers apologists provide are not necessarily the most truthful response: they are instead the answers that are closest to truth that don't break the barriers of doctrines, statements of faith, cultural norms, or any other standard deemed orthodox by that apologist's denomination. Some apologists bind themselves with their own personal worldview while others, who are often employed by churches, seminaries, or Bible collages, are limited by their employer's statement of faith.

If vilifying the question doesn't work, apologists claim their answer is "objective truth." The concept is a trump card to all reason and logic used in an argument, an escape hatch when the apologist begins to get desperate because their interlocutor isn't simply taking the apologist's words for granted. The definition of objective truth is merely a rewording of the same chorus many have heard since their childhood: "for the Bible[2] tells me so." If God said the Earth was flat, then it's flat. If God said genocide was an acceptable act of war, then onward Christian soldier. The system presupposes that God is both bound to and the source of his morality, and we are all to discover it through the limited references included in the Bible. As many evangelical pastors have crowed, "If it's good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me!"

If there is an objective truth to be found, then that objective truth need not adhere to any denominations points of view, and it should be so transcendent that it is a ubiquitous truth a universal truth one that is found throughout all of humanity. Yet that is not what I observed: truth is subjective, at least according to the apologist. As you can see in the Kirk Cameron video, even the apologists cannot agree on what is true, and these truths are not small truths that can be cheekily debated; these are incredibly important questions about the afterlife that our scene is fundamental to some apologist faith. But there is no agreement, despite every one of them claiming to be hearing from the same divine source.

Now I'm letting go / And I can finally breathe, I can finally breathe / And my hands are open, reaching out / I'm learning how to live with doubt / I'm learning how to lean into the grey / 'Cause I've had enough of black and white / I'll find another way and I will lean into the grey / I'll lean into the grey (The Grey -- Thrice)

Answers from the apologetic community are fenced in, limited to offering only the answers that conform to their worldview, denomination, seminary, etc. They can't extend beyond that frame of reference without risking the branding of heretic. They are just as much imprisoned and a victim as they are a perpetrator of narrow-mindedness. Despite being provided with better evidence they must maintain an unmovable requirement of infallibility for the Bible, so they contort argumentation to make their case.

What does one call someone who claims to have absolute truth and then regularly fails to provide it? Is that person a liar or a fool? Have they deceived themselves? Are they deceiving others? Why would anyone trust a person to provide accurate answers when that person is required to purposely limit themselves, bound either individually to a specific worldview or via their employer's statement of faith?

Deep Drinks -- I Fact-Checked Apologists with the Bible, Here's What I Found

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX_eyJN48Hs

The system's proclaimed benefits

When challenged regarding the claim of supposed objective truth, an apologist might fall back to the utility of their claim. They might ask what other book has had more of a significant impact on the world, what religion was the first to push against slavery, or what faith has done more for women's rights? They might refer to the work of the historian Tom Holland in his book Dominion. Christian apologists will say his work provides good reasons to cite Christianity as the source and creator of some of all of the morality of the western world, and the improvements upon ethics and rights for a number of people. This seems to be an exaggeration of Holland's claims. It appears to me that Tom's position was a far more minimal one and his claim that Christianity had an outsized impact on the western world feels rather obvious considering it was in power for hundreds of years as the official or most supported religion of that area.

In an effort to account for the perhaps perceived deficiencies in Tom Holland's book, Christian author Glen Scrivener decided to build upon Holland's hypothesis in his own text, The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality. In it Glen seems to claim that not only did Christianity have an impact in the west but that even the messier morally gray areas or just downright awful elements written in the Bible were essential. In effect, I think he posits that the utility of the text was also the truth -- the ends justified the means, in other words. The elements of the Bible that modern perception now saw as immoral was a necessary step in history to bring humanity to a more ethically acceptable state and any criticisms of either the inception or retention of that text was to be ignorant of its utility.

If anything, I think that Glen Scrivener's work helped to highlight both the apologist's shaky foundation on historical accuracy and earnestness and seeking truth, but also mundanities of Tom Holland's foundational research. Of course, Christianity had an impact on the world and an outsized one at that because they were the dominating religion throughout centuries. But the larger claims of Holland supporters and apologists -- that Christianity was the creator of those ethics -- only needs to be refuted once to show the case to not be that Christianity holds the keys to morality and that humanity cannot find these conclusions on their own (or that they weren't the ones to find it in the first place that Christianity adopted and perhaps improve upon). One only needs to look into an ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian materials still available to see that treatment of slaves in the format depicted in the Hebrew Bible or Christian Old Testament were pre-existing. On top of that one could look toward any Eastern religion or culture find a corresponding or correlating morality and realize that Tom Holland's decision to limit the text to the western world was deliberate -- and I feel duplicitous -- considering the way in which his work seemed targeted or at least how it was received. In post-publishing interviews with Tom that I've watched I've gotten the impression that he knew his text was going to be interpreted to be holding a stronger position than what history could confirm, which feels to me as if he was complicit in the Motte-and-bailey technique apologists use in citing his material: if the truth is up for debate, then fall back to the utility of the text.

Glen Scrivener was interviewed last year with two prominent skeptics who found two different ways to approach his work question his reasoning. Personally, I think he showed up rather poorly, and both men articulated the problems that I have with both Scrivener's and Holland's works within apologetics.

Uncommon Ground -- Alex O'Connor vs. Glen Scrivener: Morality, Freedom, Slavery & the Bible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZnVNM8lkGw

Pangburn -- Stephen Woodford vs. Glen Scrivener: Does Religion Poison Everything?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J-WOwrq6bE

Why is the truth so hard to admit?

Does the truth of a claim matter if it proves to be useful? If a fable about a monster in the woods results in children not walking into the forest and getting lost or harmed, then isn't it a net good that the fable gets perpetuated across generations? If success is basically guaranteed provided nothing change, isn't making a change that might conform closer to reality risk losing the positive effects of the initial claims made in the fable?

Does the usefulness of a claim matter if it's not true? If a child is told that a monster lives in the woods and believes for a time that a beast exists within the forest intent on their harm, then the child avoids the forest without understanding any of the actual dangers inherent there or why they should avoid it once the mythical elements of the fable become apparent. No critical thinking skills are built and the child is left unprepared to handle a similar situation in the future.

What if we focused on the truth of a claim and let the usefulness be determined later?

If all the outsiders are wrong / If your questions don't belong / If your doubt is called a sin / And you're not to search within / Let it go, open your eyes / Let bad religion die (Let Bad Religion Die -- Gungor)

Why do evangelical pastors, theologians, and apologists hide from truth?[3] Why do they shy away from telling their audiences what is really in the Bible? Truth does not become more true because of belief. Truth does not follow Tinkerbell rules where one has to believe hard enough for the truth to be real. Truth is rational and testable and when tested still conforms to expectations. A claim of truth seems weak when that claim withers under scrutiny or when its doubters are accused of evil intentions. "Pay no attention to the uncomfortable questions behind the curtain of apologetics" is not a sign of a strong framework of truthfulness; it seems an illusion propped up with fear and uncertainty.

Is this limited (small circle) version of the search for truth worth its social and cultural costs? Isn't a search for repeatable, testable, verifiable truth an admirable act that need not be demonized? Why are those who are casting the doubt on seeking the truth the same people who claim to have an absolute grip on an objective form of it? Why does their version of truth require the additional baggage of all their denominational claims and cultural norms in order for it to be seen as an acceptable version of reality? Isn't truth the thing to set one free?

Footnotes