The End of Christianity Read Free Page A

reason why we shouldn't start by looking at the world as agnostics, for it helps us determine fact from fantasy. All metaphysical claims must pass the OTF before we should believe them. Atheists and agnostics share this skeptical common ground. It's just that atheists are willing to conclude there are no supernatural beings or forces with enough assurance to say so. That's pretty much all there is to it.
    In short, the OTF merely asks believers to test their own culturally inherited religious faith from the perspective of an outsider with the same level of skepticism they use to evaluate other religious faiths. It does not matter what level of skepticism they might apply, only that they test all beliefs the same , privileging none. Again, the OTF simply asks that believers take whatever level of skepticism they would use when examining religious faiths they reject and use that same level of skepticism when testing their own religious faith. Nothing more. Liberals, for instance, should be as skeptical of their own faith as they already are of fundamentalism, and vice versa. This isn't a radical doubt. It's the same doubt believers already embrace—just not when it comes to their own “faith.” And I'm saying that's wrong. Fatally wrong.
    This dispels once again the wrongheaded objection that if the OTF asks believers to be skeptical as outsiders of their own religious faith, then why not be skeptical as outsiders that there is even a material world? That's like rejecting the OTF because it's not skeptical enough , and then using that as an excuse to not be skeptical at all. The OTF does not entail such radical skepticism. We have more than enough evidence to conclude that the existence of the material world is far more probable than any proposed alternative—which is why we think it exists. 3
    WHY THE OTF FRIGHTENS CHRISTIANS SO
    The whole reason Christians object to the OTF is because they intuitively know their faith will not pass the test, even though this tacitly concedes the whole argument. If their faith passed the test, they would be the first ones embracing the OTF and pushing it on everyone else. Instead, they argue against it. This tells us there is something very wrong with the Christian faith. In effect, what they're doing is like arguing against the need for a fair and impartial ruling coming from a fair and impartial judge in a court case. Why would anyone interested in the truth want that? No fair-minded person would ever want this, much less publicly argue for it. Believers will retort that it is impossible not to be biased, but this is the very thing I admit that causes me to propose the OTF in the first place. Again, what is the alternative?
    Now, it didn't have to turn out that the Christian faith would fail the OTF. If God exists, he could have made the Christian faith pass it. He didn't do this, even though he should have done so, for it only takes a moment's thought to realize that if Christianity is true, it should pass the OTF. Otherwise there are billions of rational non-Christians who were raised in different cultures who could not believe by virtue of the fact that they were born as outsiders and will subsequently be condemned to hell. So, if Christians want to continue objecting to the OTF because of fears that their faith cannot pass it, let them admit that God is allowing people born into non-Christian cultures to be condemned to hell merely by virtue of the fact that they were born as outsiders into different religious cultures. And let Christians stop all cross-cultural, missionary-evangelist work, too, for if Christianity was not created to pass the OTF, then there could be no hope such efforts would succeed.
    THE CONSEQUENCES OF ACCEPTING THE OTF
    Christians might finally admit the OTF is neither faulty nor unfair and then bite the bullet by asserting their faith passes the test. But once they make this claim, they have just agreed that the skepticism of the OTF is a consistent, fair, and