In the October 9th 2006 edition of TIME magazine Andrew Sullivan wrote a cover piece titled “When Seeing is Not Believing.” It was the latest in fashionable attacks on conservative, “fundamentalistic” Christianity. Sullivan’s attacks were not limited to Christianity, but all religious believers who possess certainty about the ultimate questions of life. If you take your religious faith seriously, and think what you believe is a real description of reality, Sullivan is talking to you. Certainty is the enemy of our times according to Sullivan. To be doubtful is to be humble is to be tolerant is to have peace.
There were so many outlandish claims, and such an abuse of rationality that I will not even begin to dissect it for you here. I would suggest you read the piece for yourself.
What do you find to be his most outlandish claim? What logical fallacies and/or mistakes of reasoning were you able to spot? I’m interested to see if you walked away with some of the same observations I did.
Thinking to Believe 
October 25, 2006 at 9:31 pm
The main logical fault of his paper is its self-refuting nature. For all of his talk about humility and the “evil” of certainty, he sure talks like he is certain about religious certainty being the problem of our day.
One thing Sullivan said that was quite bizarre was “The alternative to the secular-fundamentalist death spiral is something called spiritual humility and sincere religious doubt. Fundamentalism is not the only valid form of faith, and to say it is, is the great lie of our time.” Doubt is a faith? This makes no sense. To say you believe something is to say you believe it is true, not that you doubt it is true.
His most outlandish statement (in my opinion) came at the end of the paper: “The 18th century German playwright Gotthold Lessing said it best. He prayed a simple prayer: ‘If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left hand only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and to offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand, and say, Father, I will take this–the pure Truth is for You alone.’ That sentiment is as true now as it was more than two centuries ago when Lessing wrote it. Except now the very survival of our civilization may depend on it.”
Unbelievable! According to Sullivan uncertainty is a virtue to be praised over and above certainty–not just because we cannot attain certainty (on his view), but even if we could attain certainty. In essence Sullivan is saying it is better to believe that which is false than to know the truth. Paul was right. People willingly suppress the truth. They do not love it.
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