I noted this month in my series on Justin Brierley’s book Unbelievable that rather than teaching its faithful how to think reliably, “Christianity teaches against any sound epistemology, even critical thinking.” In fact, “Christianity’s sacred texts” also “completely fail to teach us even what logic and science and democracy are, much less their vital importance toward securing all human goods and welfare.” I don’t have any survey of this fact on my blog, but I have thoroughly covered it in three of my books. You can get all the examples, references, evidence, scholarship, and deeper discussion of the nuances there. But here I want to provide a kind of quick summary to refer people to, and hone your own discourse with. If they or you need the details, my books provide that.

First, in Not the Impossible Faith (summarized in “Christianity’s Success Was Not Incredible” in The End of Christianity) I survey all the reasons Christianity succeeded in antiquity by actually fitting and exploiting its primitive cultural context. And among those reasons were the lack of critical thinking skills in its target audiences, and indeed even its open hostility to such skills (especially in Chapters 7, 13, and 17). I document this in respect to early Christian attitudes toward education in Science Education in the Early Roman Empire (especially Chapters 9 and 10). But it is in The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire (especially Chapter 5) that I document this most thoroughly in respect to explicit and implicit statements by early Christians on epistemology, particularly in respect to what was already at the time a competing epistemology of critical reasoning and the scientific method. Here I will at times select and truncate some of the material from there.

Christian Epistemology Is Fundamentally Irrational

The Bible (Old Testament and New) contains nothing regarding the proper content or importance of the scientific method, formal logic, or sound critical thinking. It contains not a single passage on how to think well and reliably test claims and beliefs. About anything whatever, much less god or religion—or even morality. It doesn’t even exemplify sound dialectic, reliable research, or productive debate in any of its stories, not even those of the heroes it insists we emulate. It is an authoritarian document, front to back, that simply proclaims all its writers’ claims are true and not to be significantly questioned—writers who were demonstrably extremely primitive and ignorant in their actual understanding of people and the world (see my discussions of that this month in Justin Brierley and the Folly of Christianity and The False Trichotomy of Lord, Liar, or Lunatic).

This is the worst thing to revere, especially when we add the observation that its morality is completely barbaric and bankrupt as well (follow the links above). And that’s just accounting for what it lacks in respect to teaching people how to think well and test claims and beliefs. The Christian Bible does far worse than that: it teaches against sound reasoning. In Chapter 8 of Not the Impossible Faith (pp. 236-40), for example, I thoroughly debunk the bogus apologetical claim today that Hebrews 11 preaches evidence-based reasoning, by demonstrating it actually is arguing against evidence-based reasoning. It is advancing the argument that believers should have faith even when they lack evidence sufficient to warrant it; that faith alone is a reason to believe something. It does not teach that faith should be based on evidence; it teaches that faith should never be based evidence. And then as “evidence” for that declaration, it presents a bunch of false myths about ancient heroes who believed without evidence, holding that up as the model for Christians to follow. This is anti-critical thinking in its most glaring state.

But it’s not just one book. None of the authors of the New Testament seem very impressed by rational, historical, scientific, or dialectical methods. So these get no significant positive mention there. At all. What we find used and advocated instead are unempirical paths to “truth.” For example, Paul always ‘proves’ what he says is true by appealing to the efficacy of apostolic miracle-working, to scripture, to private revelation, and to his upstanding behavior or ‘suffering’ as proof of his sincerity (see, for example, 2 Corinthians 12 and 11:23-33, 1 Thessalonians 1:4-5, Hebrews 2:3-4, 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 and 2:1-5). None of which have any actual bearing on whether anything he said was true. By contrast, science, logic, empirical facts—these never seem relevant to him. Instead, Paul’s epistemology is consistently mystical and supernatural. Yet the fact that he only argues in this mode entails his fellow Christians shared these epistemic values. That’s why they are the only ones he appeals to with them. And yet this is the same evidential standard used to persuade people of any other magic, oracle, god, or superstition, and deployed by many a temple, guru, and huckster throughout history. It is the signature methodology of all false beliefs.

Throughout the New Testament (as we can see in the referenced verses above, and many others), “wisdom” and “knowledge” and “belief” come to the Christian through the inspiration of the “Holy Spirit,” not from research or study or learning, or from fact-checking or observing the natural or human world. Indeed, the very fact that Christians exhibited such spontaneous, untested wisdom, knowledge, and strength of conviction was held up as evidence of the gospel’s truth, just as were miraculous powers of psychosomatic healing, other undefined “works of power” (probably psychosomatic exorcism), and the ability to “prophecy,” babble, and to just intuitively ‘interpret’ prophecy and babbling; likewise ‘dreams’ and ‘revelations’ and ‘hearing’ the voices of spirits, and all the “scriptures” recording such things (Romans 16:25-26, Galatians 1:11-16, 1 Corinthians 2:6-13, 2 Corinthians 12; cf. Ephesians 1:16-18 and 3:3-11, 2 Peter 1:19-21, 2 Timothy 3:14-16). This is the epistemic community early Christianity consisted of. It’s exactly the opposite of any community adhering to a reliable epistemology (see On the Historicity of Jesus, Element 15, Chapteer 4).

The “method” of “scripture and revelation” is particularly distinctive of the epistemology advanced and promoted in the Bible. Acts claims, for example, that finding ‘facts’ in scripture was alone sufficient to convert people—no fact-checking, no reliable testing, no critical thinking—and those who were persuaded to convert by studying scripture were especially praised as “more noble” (see, for example, Acts 8:27-39 and 17:11-12). Paul and other authors in the New Testament (as all the verses cited previously show) place “the scriptures” front and center as the school text, the one and true source of wisdom and knowledge, and the ultimate source for refuting and correcting the claims of others. Which is an idea that quickly becomes antithetical to the aims and methods of science and empiricism. It’s certainly no method any reliable critical thinker can heed. It’s literally the worst advice and example the Bible could set or give.

And as the scriptures are authoritative because revealed, further revelations, and “intuition” (a.k.a. inspiration from the Holy Spirit), the Bible tells us, can also take first place in authority. Hence, as seen in the verses previously cited, both Paul himself and those pretending to be him refer frequently to ongoing revelations in his churches as the primary authority in knowledge. This reliance on “revelations from God” superseded all human learning, including science and logic and any form of actual evidence-based or critical reasoning. Which is a direct reversal of the methods of the scientist or critical thinker, or any reliable reasoner: to trust in tradition (scripture) and mere intuition or outright fantasy (revelation), instead of independent observation and empirical evidence. The Bible’s epistemology bypasses every concern of a reliable thinker—skipping the need to discover and understand the actual nature and existence and causes of things—by directly accessing “knowledge” instead through “the word” of God. This is no aberration. Centuries later even Eusebius was still arguing both points—the supreme authority of scripture, and the superior value of acquiring knowledge of the world from divine revelation rather than human reason (Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 11.7; cf. Scientist, Chapter 5.4, for a thorough discussion of this epistemology in Eusebius).

Christian Epistemology Is Fundamentally Anti-Rational

It’s not just that the Bible preaches no reliable method of reasoning, but entirely unreliable methods of reasoning instead; it actually preaches against reliable reasoning. Paul directly denigrates the “human” wisdom of “this age” and of “the world” and of “the rulers of this age” (1 Corinthians 2:6-13), which in his understanding (and that of his readers) would have included formal logic, critical reason, and scientific methods—the distinctive “methods of wisdom” of the Greco-Roman elite (as well as some Hellenized Jews among Paul’s peers), the very thing they called “philosophy.” Paul elevates in its place a “spiritual” wisdom known only from God, through “revelation,” not inquiry or hypothesis-testing, or anything recognizable as objective “evidence.”

Examples of this method of acquiring knowledge can be found throughout the book of Acts as well (see Acts 7:55-56, 10:1-7, 11:5-14, 12:6-11, 16:9-10, 22:17-21); and, of course, the entire book of Revelation. Outside the New Testament, Diognetus 11-12 also articulates the nature and superiority of this ‘holy spirit’ epistemology, as also Lactantius in Divine Institutes 3.6; Tatian in Address to the Greeks 27; and beyond. And yet this is the “method of personal revelation” that even Justin Brierley declared characteristic of false religions, not realizing that in fact it characterized early Christianity as well, his own religion. Maybe someday he’ll put two and two together.

So instead of defending and advocating reliable principles of analysis and inquiry, of scientific and critical methods, Paul argued that “truth” had to be grasped spiritually, on faith—not learned from empirical investigation, or from human teachers, but directly from God, through revelation and scripture. Because only Christ in heaven can be one’s teacher and tutor; and revealed knowledge trumps all other knowledge (as echoed by Matthew 23:8-10 and 1 John 2:27). For, Paul declares, “the spiritual man interrogates everything, but is himself interrogated by no one, for who knows the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? Yet we [Christians] have the mind of Christ” himself (1 Corinthians 2:15-16). That is why Christians are told to “walk by faith and not by sight,” not looking at the visible things, which are temporary, but at the invisible things, which are eternal (2 Corinthians 5:7 and 4:18). In other words, to hell with evidence; let your inner fantasies be the only truth. Don’t question them. Don’t test them. Just believe them. Because you want to (e.g. 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

Throughout the Bible, when we catch glimpses of the actual methods that Christians respected, we find mysticism trumping empiricism every time. Paul openly disavows the established rhetorical principles of evidence and argument in 1 Corinthians 2, for example, and says instead that his traveling magic show—the miracles of the Holy Spirit—are all he came with, and all that God wants Christians to trust as evidence. Miracles and revelations and an Apostle’s word are always sufficient in the discourse of the New Testament. No empirical inquiry or dialectical debate or even formal education was necessary. After all, “the Lord will give you understanding in everything” (2 Timothy 2:7). Which point we find repeated in the Gospels (e.g. Mark 13:11; Luke 12:11-12 and 21:13-15; John 14:16-17). 

Hence when Paul lists the epistemic values of his fellow Christians (1 Corinthians 14:6), he declares “what use shall I be to you unless I speak to you either in revelation,” or “in gnosis,” meaning inner, secret spiritual knowledge, “or in prophecy,” or “in didachê,” meaning received doctrine. Notably, “evidence” and “logic” do not make his list—nor science or even reason. If a claim does not come by revelation, prophecy, inspiration, or tradition, it is “of no use” and not even worth mentioning. As we have seen, wisdom, knowledge, and faith all come from the Holy Spirit (which means, really, subjective inner feelings and intuitive “ways of knowing”), not from research, nor from logical debate, nor from making inquiries or investigations or observations, or properly testing anything. In fact prophecy and revelation are to be “tested” not by scientific, historical, or empirical investigation, but by whether the inspired message is “moral” (meaning whatever they arbitrarily, dogmatically, and unempirically deem that to be) and (also just as circularly) in agreement with prior dogma (see Galatians 1:6-17; 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22; 1 Timothy 6:3-4, 6:20-21; 1 John 4:1-5:13; 2 Peter 1:19-2:22; Matthew 7:15-20, 24:11-12, 24:23-29; James 3:13-4:17; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12; 1 Timothy 4:1-7; 1 John 4:4-6; even, indirectly, Colossians 3:2 and Philippians 3:8). 

This is all exactly the opposite of reliable hypothesis-testing. To the contrary, it’s just a system of rationalizations for replacing reliable empirical methods with arbitrary authorities and emotional peer pressure. This is Cult 101 stuff. Indeed, when Paul institutes a hierarchy of authority, his list goes: “first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly instructors, then [users of] powers, then gifts of healing, then the ability to help, then to administer, then varieties of speaking in tongues” (1 Corinthians 12:28; cf. Romans 12:6-8 and Ephesians 4:11). There is no place here for science or philosophy or logic, or any kind of critical thinking, and certainly no place for a scientist or critical reasoner to claim any respect or authority. They are ruled out, de facto below even random maniacal babblers. 

Scientists and critical thinkers are even more explicitly condemned in the New Testament than this. Someone pretending to be Paul exhorts his fellow Christians to “keep watch, lest someone come along and carry you off as a captive, through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the cosmos, and not according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8), here equating science (the study of “the elements of the cosmos”) and technology (relying on “the elements of the cosmos” for one’s welfare and salvation) with corrupting demonic forces (see my discission in On the Historicity of Jesus, pp. 180-93). Even Paul himself declared:

It is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. And I will reject as spurious the discernment of the discerning.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the investigator of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since through its wisdom the world did not know God, in God’s wisdom He thought it was a good idea to save the believers through the foolishness of His teaching. Because the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks search for wisdom, but we teach Christ crucified.

(1 Corinthians 1:19-27)

When Paul wrote this, sophos, or “wise man,” meant essentially philosophers, and thus he is here referring to scientists, critical thinkers, and evidence-based reasoners. Likewise, suzêtêtês, “co-investigator,” meant then one who debates and discusses questions and theories with others with the aim of discovering the truth, or who conducts research with others (hence including scientific collaboration; see also entries on suzêteô and suzêtêsis). Anyone who goes around preaching only that “the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God” (1 Corinthians 3:18-20) is not promoting critical or empirical reasoning—but rather attacking it, indeed even shaming anyone as a “fool” who would say otherwise. Philosophers, investigators—evidence-based reasoners, critical thinkers—are here pronounced fools (or even ignorant children: Ephesians 4:13-15). All knowledge ascertained by human means “is arrogance” (1 Corinthians 8:1-2); whereas mere feelings and superstitious fantasies—which are actually arrogance—are “real” wisdom. This flips any semblance of reliable reason exactly upside down. This isn’t just irrationality; it’s anti-rationality.

Since scientists, then and now, explained everything by appealing to natural causes rather than divine will, they were obviously among those who do not recognize God’s design in nature. And yet all such people, Paul says, have thereby “become foolish in their reasonings and their senseless heart was darkened” such that “claiming to be wise, they became foolish” (Romans 1:19-25). Since in Paul’s day it was well known to be scientists who catalogued and studied the evidence Paul refers to here—all the empirical evidence of God’s creation—and yet supported paganism or pantheism or atheism instead of the ‘truth’, they are clearly among Paul’s targets in this passage. And yet by describing such thinkers as having “darkened hearts” deprived of sense, Paul directly paints scientists and other intellectuals as not good people to look up to or emulate, but in fact to condemn. 

Similarly, the Bible attacks not only empirical reasoners, but careful thinkers as well—such as anyone who tries to arrive at precise definitions, which the New Testament derides as a “wrangling over words” that is “useless,” bringing only strife and ruin; or as nothing but “fruitless discussion” by those who “neither understand what they are saying nor grasp the matters about which they make confident assertions,” and who eventually become “conceited” and “understand nothing” and “have a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words,” from which arises every evil, according to the Bible (2 Timothy 2:14-16 and 2:23, and 1 Timothy 1:6-7 and 6:3-4). Thus even formal logic and the Socratic method are condemned in the Bible. As Clare Drury describes it in the Oxford Bible Commentary, “Clearly, acceptance of sound doctrine means not asking questions or questioning definitions,” for, “a clear exposition of accepted doctrine was the only proper method of teaching” and “discussion could only lead to dispute, and so must be avoided.” After all, the thinking was, “If the teacher is above reproach, then opponents have no grounds for raising questions” in the first place (p. 1229). Cult 101, again.

Instead, when the Christian does have questions, he is told to ask God for the required wisdom, and not only that, but to “ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind” and “such a man cannot expect to receive anything from the Lord, since he is a man of two minds, unstable in all his ways” (James 1:5-8). Ask in faith—without doubting. For a result of purely subjective intuition. This is quite the opposite of a passion for debate and inquiry essential to scientific progress, evidence-based reasoning, or any reliable method of accessing the truth of things. The man who doubts is here declared to be aimless and unstable and worthy of no help from God. He is morally bad.

Hence rather than making heroes of those who question and inquire and explore the world, who come up with reliable ways to test things and find out the truth, Biblical ideology essentially makes villains of them. For example, the Bible teaches that God punished Zacharias, by striking him mute, merely for requesting evidence (Luke 1:18-20). Thomas is appeased by such a request, but immediately is shamed by having those who believe without evidence praised as better than him (John 20:24-29). The rich man begging Abraham to send Lazarus to give his relatives evidence enough to believe is shamed for even asking, and told the scriptures should be evidence enough (Luke 16:19-31). When the Jews ask “for a sign” (otherwise known as evidence), Jesus condemns as immoral the very idea of asking for evidence (Matthew 16:4 and 12:38-39). Human “reasoning” must therefore be “cast down” along with everything else that is held up against “the knowledge of God” and in their place we must “bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). These sentiments are repeated, and thus confirmed as correct interpretations, by essentially all subsequent Church Fathers who discussed them (which fact I survey in the corresponding section in Scientist, and the chapters I cited above in Not the Impossible Faith).

It is clear from all of this that ancient Christians did not share the same epistemic values or interests that have ever inspired philosophers and scientists and any rational moral and legal theorists. None of the authors of the Bible did. And neither did almost everyone who then revered the Bible. A clear expression of this attitude appears, for example, in Tertullian’s Treatise on the Soul (as I show in Scientist, Chapter 5.2), where Tertullian is alarmed by uncertainty, doubt, questions, complexity—which are all entailed by any honest or productive causal and empirical inquiry—so he takes the solution to be the dogmatic certainty and simplicity of “Christian” ways of knowing: direct from God, with few questions and little research. This typified Christian thinking for centuries (documented throughout Scientist, Chapter 5).

Conclusion

This is how Christianity began. And though it has slowly, painfully come around to sort-of accepting (or at least occasionally tolerating) sounder principles of reasoning over the last two thousand years, it really only gives them lip service. It doesn’t actually preach or teach any sound methodology. This is most obvious, of course, among the still-robust anti-intellectualist versions of conservative Christianity today, where even “going to college” is condemned. And even conservative Christians have noticed this about themselves—though they never voice a correct antidote to it (see the worried hand-wringing of Alan Jacobs, Rick Nañez, Brian Chilton, Michael Austin, Mark Ward, and many others). But even liberal-minded, progressive Christians like Justin Brierley are still echoing ancient anti-empirical sentiments. Of course the reason the “response” to this observed defect in Christianity is still never to promote actually reliable methods is that that erodes faith—for reasons only obvious to atheists. Reliable methods + correct information + time = atheism.

That this is fundamental to Christianity is proved by how it infects even its liberals. As I just noted, even Justin Brierley “lets his Bible tell him to consider as ‘blessed’ those who choose to believe things without evidence,” explicitly citing John 20:2, thus demonstrating that the ancient Christian Bible’s anti-intellectualism is corrupting the minds even of its most liberal of devotees. And that’s a problem. This is why all religion is bad for us. As I wrote before, Brierley’s “religion has literally taught him to praise the rejection of evidence-based reasoning,” which is “dangerous as all hell,” a “disastrously bad effect” of his religion on his mind. And we see this across the whole of modern Christendom. It still preaches hostility to sound inductive logic, and elevates in its place completely unempirical deductive systems of logic instead, the ones most easily corrupted to sell anything as true. And even when Christians pay lip service to sound methods of inductive logic, they completely misuse them, rendering them totally unsound.

And this is yet one more reason why we can be sure Christianity is a false worldview. Its most sacred text, the Bible, the center of its faith, containing what is supposed to be the most important information humanity could ever possess, completely lacks and abandons—and often even condemns—science, critical thinking, and evidence-based reasoning. And after two thousand years, this corruption and degradation of the human mind within that text continues to corrupt and degrade all who revere it, even the most liberal-minded among them. And that is yet one more reason why it is high time for Christianity to go.