DAVID MOORE AND DECONVERT, BRANDON WITHROW, IN CONVERSATION

I am grateful to Brandon Withrow for his willingness to engage in this conversation.

WITHROW: First, just a little about my background. I’m a pastor’s kid. I was raised in the church. I went to Christian schools to earn my B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. I taught the history of Christianity (and other courses) at a divinity school, a seminary, and in a religious studies program at a local university. I published several books with Christian publishers. Essentially, my job and faith were intertwined. When I left Christianity, I left my seminary faculty position, which I felt was the only right thing to do. (I wrote about that at The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Guardian.)

I now consider myself a secular humanist. It is my preferred moniker over “atheist,” simply because it is about affirming something positive, rather than identifying just with the negative statement of “there is no God.”

Why did I leave Christianity? The short version is to say that it no longer made sense to me and I had to be honest with myself about that.

There are, however, any number of reasons—complex and simple—that cause someone to reject a faith. I believe that motivated reasoning plays a larger role in faith commitments than most of us recognize—at least, I know it did with me. Part of my deconversion story begins with putting my own motivations under the microscope, to realize that when you want something badly enough you’ll make all sorts of room for it, even when it no longer makes sense.

Motivated reasoning is the creation of an argument to reach a desired conclusion. This takes advantage of our unconscious biases, many of which are supplied to us by nature as short-cuts for decision-making, but which also cloud our perspective(s) and lead to blind spots. I frequently see this happening in the hurdles one might have to take to embrace the Bible—at least, as it was the case for me.

So, for example, it is not a new thing that there are parts of the Bible that seem to contradict each other, or that its record of history that doesn’t connect with what we know, or that descriptions of the universe that don’t represent the scientific evidence, etc. Ancient Christians recognized some of these difficulties and the list of difficulties for a modern Christian is even larger now than it was in the early Church. Many have seen these as being reason enough to part with the Bible entirely.

Even the responses to these problems related to the Bible run along a spectrum and aren’t necessarily new.

One response might be an inerrantist approach, rejecting the validity of scientific or historical facts out of a deep love and devotion to Scripture. A flawed Bible, after all, would not be inspired by a perfect God, according to this type of view. Others might say that the Bible speaks according to the language and understanding of the day—likened to baby talk—a concept not rare among ancient Christians (e.g., Origen). God, in other words, is incarnational in his approach to humanity, communicating within our flawed limitations on science, history, and morality at the time of composition.

Others might say that the Bible is not so much divinely inspired in the details, as it is in the “how to live” category, or even that the Bible is just one record (among many) of humans seeking God or the transcendent (like the Vedas or Quran), and therefore contains errors that are expected from ancient human beings. And in all of these approaches, when the details don’t line up—when the Bible doesn’t seem to make sense—theologians might employ a final appeal to “mystery.” In other words, it might be said that since God is bigger than all of us, so be humble and submit to mystery when things don’t make sense.

In all these approaches, and every shade between, readers craft responses to the Bible that enable them to keep it as divine or sacred.

I believe these responses to difficulties with the Bible are essentially genuine responses, and not consciously trying to overlook the issues or be deceptive. I don’t deny that those who use them have a genuine feeling that the problem has been resolved through re-entrenchment or an adjustment to one’s epistemology, or just “a better theology”—which I now see as translating as “a theology that they feel good about.” But, in all of this, I don’t question their sincerity in trying to be theologically creative. I don’t do this because I know that I was sincerely seeking understanding when I found inerrancy no longer satisfying and when mystery appeared to be a handy solution.

So, I think that we do get in our own way. Having a creative solution is not the same as having the right or a better perspective. When we are faced with conclusions that do not match the evidence we’re faced with, we find ourselves in cognitive dissonance, and the only way to move forward is to have dissonance reduction. And that reduction comes through creative theological thinking, which isn’t necessarily about discarding the bad ideas, but finding a way to live with them by reframing the problem as needing a better theology. 

And this is where we need to ask ourselves—where I asked myself—how are we doing that? What is the motivated reasoning driving our conclusions? Cognitive biases—like confirmation and disconfirmation bias, or bias blind spot—allow us to avoid an inevitable conclusion we find uncomfortable. But this isn’t a process that announces itself; we don’t usually know it’s happening.

For my story, I found that for every hole I stumbled on in the Bible, and every difficulty I had with how the writer’s treat ethical/moral issues related to human rights (e.g., slaves and women, for example), I looked for a new way to understand it so I wouldn’t have to leave the Bible for good. I rotated my definition of what it means for the Bible to be God’s revelation, making it a moving target.

After all, maybe the Bible feels like such a human book because God was just speaking in the language of the day or maybe it isn’t God speaking, but humans seeking, etc., and now it needs to be reimagined within a modern context.

One has to eventually ask (I think) the question: at what point, after fixing every potential problem only to discover a new one, am I willing to say that the Bible isn’t what I think it is? What if this book only made sense of my world because I found theological ways to help it along? I wondered why do we keep making exceptions for the Bible.

There was a day, for example, when humans discovered Mercury’s retrograde orbit and they had to craft any number of reasons for it. Given geocentrism, it made little sense to see a planet go backwards in the sky. People frequently saw that deviant behavior as an omen, believing that when in retrograde, bad things were going to happen here on Earth. Of course, now we know that retrograde is the result of an optical illusion. Mercury doesn’t actually change direction.

With the original reason for retrograde—its very foundation—as demonstrably just an optical illusion, surely that meant that astrologers would give up the idea of bad luck attached to it, right? No. As one astrologer put it, retrograde may not be a “scientific fact,” but it is a metaphor and an “astrological fact” (which is not a thing). There is, therefore, a spiritual retrograde—dissonance resolved.

And I know that there are any number of evangelicals who would argue that there is no reason to accept astrology, and especially this idea of retrograde, and that if the facts do not back it up, then the idea should die. I would agree with that. And yet, this is where I think similar exceptions are made for the Bible. 

The Bible may regularly miss the mark on scientific and historical evidence and human rights, and Christians may (like I did) regularly change their approach to reading and interpreting it. But when all of the evidence points to a human book—even though an interesting one—the desire to keep it divine and sacred means (as it did for me) finding a new way to talk around the difficulties.

I find that many Christians may not give the same leeway to other ideas or faiths which face similar difficulties. For many, a critical view of the Quran or other sacred texts would lead to seeing it only as a human book and rejecting it. But if the Bible has similar flaws, should it be given an exemption just because it’s a beloved Christian text?

I eventually came to see this as bias blind spot on my part and ended my own exemptions.

I get why one’s love for the Bible as holy may not see this as I do, so I’m not surprised if there are immediate theological responses to this perspective. I get it because I was once there. Over time, I noticed that I moved from faith seeking understanding to faith seeking rationalization and dissonance reduction. If my take is one in which the Bible is eventually indiscernible from a human text, maybe Ockham’s razor entails that it is just that. Given this sort of thing, I came to the conclusion that it was no longer for me. It was a long process, but an inevitable one on my part.

MOORE: My own confidence in the reliability of Scripture is due to many things.  Space here does not permit me to enumerate them, but let me mention one thing that may be helpful.  Lesslie Newbigin wrote a terrific book called Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship.  In it he describes how so-called liberal and so-called conservative Christians look to the Enlightenment understanding of truth in determining how confident one can be about the Christian faith.  Liberals think that there is no way you can have a high degree of confidence in the Bible’s reliability, so therefore conclude that the Christian faith has little rational basis.  Conservative Christians tend to think it is fairly “obvious” that the claims of the faith are true, and so conclude that you can have a high degree of confidence in the Bible’s reliability.  According to Newbigin, and I would agree, both have missed the reality of “faith seeking understanding.”  Christians who have come from the conservative side of things can be unwittingly set up for doubts when they begin to realize that there are challenging and difficult things to understand.  As one who has experienced heart-rending doubts I gain my footing by knowing that God already made it clear that not all would be clear (Deut. 29:29: Isa. 55:8,9: II Cor. 13:12: II Pet. 3:16).  My earlier quest for certitude was a fool’s errand.

WITHROW:  There are any number of other discussions one can have about what constitutes as evidence for the Bible as divine or for Christianity as the one true religion. As one person once put it to me, “Jesus changes lives and that’s how I know he’s God.” I believe that many things Jesus teaches are potentially life changing. For example, loving one’s enemies may help avoid war. I also know Christians who became very different people after their conversions, but I don’t think this is necessarily evidence of the truthfulness of one’s faith over another’s.

There are those who became Buddhists or Muslims and found relief from violence or alcoholism or any number of problems. If change for the better is evidence for the truthfulness of Christianity, it would have to be so for these faiths too.

But I don’t see this sort of thing as necessarily consistent evidence. I’ve known many Christians who were also terrible people and who hold terrible views. Presumably, these bad actors would be contrary evidence, though what I normally see as a response to these situations is the “not a true Christian,” claim or “God is not finished with me yet.”

So what I’ve seen is that sometimes people who are struggling to be better individuals find what they need to motivate them to better behavior, whether it is through Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, secularity, or group therapy. And I see bad actors as frequently converting to faith to find a divine sanction on their ideas or as an opportunity for power. There is a spectrum between, as, for example, where decent people under the influence of bad actors can perform bad actions.

In other words, as the Bible looks and appears human to me in what it says, the behavior of others within a faith is also very human—that is, people are frequently following what they are already inclined to do. If Christianity were a pharmaceutical, therefore, I’m not sure I’d see enough evidence of a higher spiritual transformation to take it over other options. But if religion is a human construct, I expect it to have good and bad ideas; I expect it to attract people of all motivations.

I should add something here. People have asked me if someone “did something bad to me” to push me to reject the faith? I recognize that good ideas can have bad people attached to them. Brilliant people have also been known to be horrid people. So, it is not a case of “I’m hurt, therefore I’m leaving,” but rather what does this behavior tell me about humanity and the real draw of religion. It is to say that when I see how people behave in a faith, I just see it as reflective of being human regardless of which world religion one belongs to, where people find the tools they need for whatever conscious or unconscious motivation they have, good or bad.

MOORE: What constitutes bona fide change can be a bit slippery.  How much change needs to occur for it to count?  Much more challenging is how can we assess someone’s motives for change?  I’ve known some people who made significant changes for the better without any religious motivation.   I’ve also met many who said their lives were dramatically changed by Jesus.  I’ve also seen changes in my own life that I am quite confident could not come from sheer dint of will.  I’m quite aware how weak my will is.  As to the former, I will briefly mention former drug addicts who deeply fell in love with the Jesus revealed in the gospels.  In fact, many of these drug addicts did not believe in Jesus before going into rehab, but became attracted to the ways Jesus treated the marginalized.  Later, many of them embraced Jesus’s claims to be true. 

Downplaying or dismissing sinful behavior is clearly wrong.  However, the perversion of a truth does not make the truth any less true.  Richard Bauckham has described how Christianity has unique, built in resources to correct abuse.  Christianity has a founder whose own self-sacrifice and cries against injustice point His followers in the direction they should go.  Granted, some who call on Christ do not follow well, but that would not undermine the truthfulness of the Christian faith.

WITHROW:  I’ve also been asked, if someone did not accept Christianity, couldn’t they still accept the idea of God or embrace another religion? Yes, they could, and regularly do. I also considered other faiths and approaches.

But—and it is really too big to explain it all here—I landed on the idea that the religious drive is a human default provided by our evolutionary story. I think there is a growing case made for this among (religious and non-religious) cognitive scientists studying religion, though I recognize that—unlike the evidence behind general relativity, for example—there is significantly more work to be done in that area and there are experimental limitations.

Because I find the argument compelling enough that religion is an evolutionary byproduct, and because I haven’t seen real evidence for a divine being, I’ve decided to move on from the idea of a God. That is not to say I wouldn’t be open to evidence, but that I have not found a convincing case.

Lastly—and I can’t put too fine a point on this—I’m not of the opinion that someone in a faith is somehow less intelligent than a nonbeliever, or that bias infects only the religious, or that believers are automatically bad people. There are many secular humanists, like myself, who work with people of faith in shared efforts to bring social change to our communities. I would rather have a good Christian as a friend than a terrible atheist, and vice versa.

So when I endeavor to understand religion, I am frequently seeking an understanding of human nature and what it does for us as a species. We are a complicated, wonderful, and terrible species. We are also an immensely creative species, and religion is an impressive example of that. 

MOORE: Appeals to “science” need clarification since scientific discoveries are hardly static.  Thomas Kuhn described it well in his seminal book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Furthermore, science is not devoid of faith.  Michael Polanyi has well described this dynamic.  Why does a scientist go with a certain hunch or not in conducting her experiment?  Why do certain scientists continue to believe certain things when the evidence remains inconclusive?  Science involves both faith and reason, just as the Christian faith entails both.

Pascal said there are two excesses: “to exclude reason, to admit nothing but reason.”  In similar fashion, Chesterton added, “The poet [think of less “rational” more imaginative types] only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician [Mr. or Mrs. Rationalist] who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits…The madman is not the person who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who lost everything except his reason.”

Several years back I corresponded with the well-known New Testament scholar and deconvert, Bart Ehrman. He graciously exchanged several emails with me. My first note to him posed this question:

Hi Bart, I recently saw your latest book [Misquoting Jesus] and had a question that continues to nag. You well know that scholars like Gerald Hawthorne [one of Bart’s teachers at Wheaton] and Bruce Metzger [Bart’s main teacher at Princeton for Ph.D. studies] are familiar with the same manuscripts, history of transmission, etc. as you. But they come to very different conclusions. I am curious as to how you would explain this phenomenon. Thanks so much for you time! Dave

Bart wrote this in response:

I guess it’s rooted in different religious proclivities. I think it’s not a matter of    knowledge, but of what one makes of the knowledge.

“Bart [Ehrman] was, like a lot of people who were converted to fundamental evangelicalism, converted to the certainty of it all, of having all the answers,” added Dale Martin, Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University, and a friend of three decades. “When he found out they were lying to him, he just didn’t want anything to do with it.”  

I’ve seen too many bail on Christianity because they concluded that honestly bringing their struggles to God was antithetical to having integrity in living out one’s faith.  I believe otherwise.

Thanks Brandon!  Though our conversation is just a starter, I greatly appreciate your willingness to have this exchange.

7 thoughts on “DAVID MOORE AND DECONVERT, BRANDON WITHROW, IN CONVERSATION

  1. Steve Carr

    This is a great back and forth Dave and Brandon! Certain of Brandon’s points make very good sense to me. One that has occupied my thoughts is how we read Scripture. Having delved into a particular issue of great personal significance, looking at what the Bible says, reading others’ views on it, I came to a different conclusion on the issue than what I had heard through the years at church and “changed my theology” on the issue. I had always heard that people who change their theology on issues are just looking for ways to sin. I’ve come to reject this notion, and accept the idea that things do change in how we see and understand things, and it’s perfectly okay to change one’s view. The larger question for me is, “If it took reading a bunch of books and other materials to understand a few verses in the Bible on one particular issue, what does it take to truly understand the rest of the Bible, written by writers 2,000 years ago in cultures that were vastly, vastly different than our own?” I’m very skeptical of “nice guy who wants to be a pastor” teaching what he thinks a passage means. And I actually see the need for those with advanced degrees or highly studied persons who have done extensive work and research into history to “teach the Bible”. Finally, I’ve come to realize the significance that we’re all on a journey in life, and not to judge. I haven’t landed at the same place as you, Brandon, but many of your points make perfect sense to me.

    Reply
    1. Dave Post author

      Hey Steve,

      Thanks for contributing!

      Among other things, I would say that there is a general principle that too many “conservative” (I don’t like the term since it is recent) Christians are not very aware of: how much interpretation is necessary to come to a solid conclusion. I fall out more on the more “conservative” side, but we must do good work to make sure our view does stand the scrutiny of the full sweep of Scripture rather than just doing a superficial cherry picking of favorite verses.

      Reply
    2. Brandon Withrow

      Hi Steve,

      Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I’m always happy to hear about those who set out to follow what they believe is true rather than just have it handed to them and accept it without questioning. Every journey like that starts somewhere and hopefully that growth never ends. I also agree with you on the educational side of teaching the Bible. I’ve heard a number of fraught interpretations without any sense of ANE context or the body literature on a passage/book, etc. I’ve also seen those lead to terrible life decisions.

      Thanks for sharing your perspective and—while as you said, we haven’t landed in the same place—being willing to hear mine.

      Reply
  2. David McCoy

    Brandon,
    As one who grew up in a fundamentalist church, I can relate to and certainly appreciate your pointing out the blinders we all put on when approaching the Bible and the fact that many of us Christians like to have everything tied up with a nice neat ribbon.
    It was this close-ended approach to the Bible that turned me off for years since my own proclivities in the sciences run more to the area of research where every discovery fortunately just leads to another question to answer. After getting my PhD, I applied this same mindset to the study of the Bible and renewed my interest in it. This adventure has vastly increased my appreciation of the mastery with which Scripture has been put together as a human and divine document, much in analogy to the dual nature of Christ himself.
    Just as in science, Christianity is based on certain unprovable assumptions, or statements of faith. But in both fields, you must fully embrace those assumptions in order to proceed. Confirmation through experimentation of each individual hypothesis you come up with will strengthen one’s faith in the original assumptions, but not prove them by any means. Conversely, when a particular hypothesis of one fails, that is no time to jettison the original assumptions as well.
    You have obviously wrestled carefully with your decision and approached it in all honesty. Unfortunately, as I have realized in preparation for a series of talks presenting prominent atheist and agnostic objections to Christianity and the Bible, not all of your fellow unbelievers seem to be nearly as honest.
    Whether trolling the internet or reading prominent philosophers such as Bertrand Russell, I have been struck with the spate of illogical reasoning and really laughable criticisms of the Bible. I am really curious whether you have noted the same phenomenon and have any ideas as to the reason behind it. I am personally torn whether believing these people are (a) really as ignorant as they appear (they even put fundamentalists to shame in many cases) or are (b) cynically presenting arguments they know full well are fallacious with the feeling that their presumed audience is too ignorant or unintelligent to catch on. Comments?

    Reply
    1. Brandon Withrow

      Hi David,

      That’s a good, and complicated, question. I can’t speak for the intentions of others. I have seen some fairly un-nuanced arguments. But I see that from believers as well. I can’t say what their intentions are, and I’d probably have to speak to the specific point a person is making in order to know how informed they are on a given subject or just why they might take the approach they do.

      I’ve been thinking how to clarify here, but I may need to give it more thought.

      Reply
  3. Stephen Sternberg

    I found your original comments and responses interesting. I grew up in a broad civil Christianity background and let it go, without noticing, when attending college. That changed during my senior year and I “deconverted,” too; albeit in the opposite direction. I asked myself two things, 1. How high did/do you set your personal bar of certainty for secular humanism vis a vis orthodox (as in right belief) Christianity? and 2. II failed to see just where you applied your motivational reasoning perspective to the secular humanism/atheism you have since embraced.

    Reply
    1. Brandon Withrow

      Hi Stephen,

      For me, the bar was in the area of what seemed to best match a more evidence-based take on the world. And in this way, what conclusion best matched—as I see it—the world as it is experienced and as the evidence spoke to it? I see questions of ethics/morals as a largely philosophical conversation, and not something divine (or in the world of forms, so to speak) or really ultimately a scientific conclusion—though I do see science informing those questions.

      But as I experienced the world, Christianity seemed less congruent with it in terms of things like miracles, etc. And like most of the scientists I know, if the evidence changes, that is where I’d change too. In my case, I don’t see the evidence for a divine being, for example. It isn’t impossible, but at this point, it doesn’t seem evident. And I’d hold to something like Carl Sagan’s words: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

      I also recognize that the philosophy behind the/a scientific method is still an open discussion and this can have big ramifications depending on how important a conclusion is, or results are, for understanding the universe. Rather than simply saying seek “verification”, which is helpful and useful, but also a loose word (eg., Popper), I’d probably emphasize replicated results, falsification, etc. Still, as I see it, there is something more grounded in the idea that science sends a robot to a planet or provides computers, than the conclusion that there is a resurrection.

      In other cases, less extraordinary claims or conclusions about life may not need to be so rigorously explored to just live life, depending on how they affect one’s life and others. There is a pragmatic side to living too.

      I do believe, however, that bias is part of everyone’s life. I see it as providing an evolutionary advantage—shortcuts for fast thinking during survival–but still capable of being a powerful blinder. Even in evidence-based science, the act of selecting data can be biased and therefore making solid peer review all the more important.

      And I also see my choice of secular humanism as (at least, in part) driven by my own desire to affirm positive things and therefore part of motivated reasoning. I am drawn to its value of human rights and connection to science and free thought, but I’m fairly certain that some of my desire to affirm aspects of those values (rather than simply identifying as an atheist, as I mentioned in the interview) are likely the result of me growing up with creeds and confessions. I realize that I’m not living in a vacuum.

      So I regularly put my views under the microscope too, and have even redirected my thinking in how I approach humanism since I de-converted. But I see this as part of a life-long exploration of the self, as I know many Christians see faith in general, and theology specifically.

      That’s a sort of long way of saying, I don’t see myself as above motivational reasoning, but I hope that by looking at conclusions about the world built on a certain weight of evidence, engaging in philosophical exploration of life questions, and regularly revisiting my own thinking, I’ll learn more about where I employ it and whether/where I need to change. It’s not perfect, but nothing is in this worldview.

      Reply

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