Contradictions
My friend Jen and I argue religion a lot. She’s a believer, and was a believer even in that period when she didn’t know what she believed in, between leaving Catholicism and her recent conversion to Judaism. I am not a believer, the kind of atheist who goes beyond pointing out the absence of compelling evidence for God (or gods) right on to pointing out compelling evidence for the absence of God.
Recently, Jen has taken to shrugging her shoulders and saying, “There you go with that either/or stuff,” the way Reagan rolled his eyes at Carter and said, “There you go again,” without actually answering the point. She does this when I catch her in self-contradiction, and, like Reagan, seems to feel this absolves her of resolving the contradiction, as though an insistence on consistency is somehow a product of narrow-mindedness. I see this attitude elsewhere, too, and it drives me nuts. Some statements—opinions—can have no established truth value, but statements with a truth value are true or false. They can’t be both.
Either I have 87¢ in my pockets, or I do not have 87¢ in my pockets. I can’t kind of have 87¢ in my pockets; I can’t have 87¢ in my pockets for some people and not have 87¢ in my pockets for other people; I have only one set of pockets. Different people may hold different beliefs about the quantity of money in my pockets, but then some of those people, possibly all of them, are wrong. Anyone who simultaneously believes that I have 87¢ in my pockets and that I do not have 87¢ in my pockets is also wrong. He can’t possibly not be wrong.
Either Napoleon ate sausage at breakfast on his 20th birthday, or he did not eat sausage at breakfast on his 20th birthday. We may never know which is the case, but one and only one of these statements is true. He can’t have kind of eaten sausage at breakfast on his 20th birthday. He can’t have eaten sausage at breakfast on his 20th birthday for some people and not for others—how many Napoleons were there? And if one person believes Napoleon did eat sausage at breakfast on his 20th birthday, while another believes he did not, at least one of these people is wrong.
Either Jesus was born in Nazareth, or Jesus was born in Bethlehem, or he was born somewhere else entirely. He can’t have been born in Nazareth for some people and in Bethlehem for other people—how many Jesuses where there? If some people believe he was born in Nazareth and others believe he was born in Jerusalem (as different books of the Gospel claim), then some people must be wrong. We may not know which, but somebody is wrong. Knowing this, it is reasonable for us to question the authority of writers who claim one or the other. And anyone who believes Jesus was born in both Bethlehem and Nazareth has some serious explaining to do.
Either an immortal, omnipotent, omniscient god created the universe and continues to direct its affairs, or no immortal, omnipotent, omniscient god created the universe and continues to direct its affairs. He can’t have created your universe and not created mine; we share the same universe. And if we hold different beliefs on the matter, at least one of us is wrong. Two different beliefs on the matter cannot both be valid; we cannot tactfully agree that we are both right, and that all beliefs are equally true. We might both be wrong; perhaps an omnipotent, omniscient god created the universe but does not continue to direct its affairs, for example. But we are not both right.
And if one of us presents some compelling arguments for his belief, the other must answer those arguments. Simply stating, “Well, you have a world view that works for you, and I have one that works for me" is insufficient when we’re discussing the same world.