One of the biggest problems in the religious dialogue we face is that we misunderstand the implications of a search for answers. According to the Christian worldview, there must be an underlying truth as ordained by God’s order. I hypothesize that this worldview can remain even after deconversion and is a blind spot of the apologist. This accounts for charges of “moral relativism,” “putting Man before God,” and “devil worship.” If the world’s being is one ordained by God, any regression in the search for truth must be a move towards that which is evil. The imposed spectrum becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, at least within polemic terms. This is why I think it is so very hard for Christians to truly entertain the point-of-view held by a well-seasoned atheist. One can possibly entertain the hypothetical possibility of a godless universe, but to entertain a different worldview – especially one often left unarticulated – is an entirely more difficult matter.

I’m approaching the one year anniversary of my own deconversion. It’s surprising to me that so much could have changed in my life in so little time; I’ve moved (and changed jobs), bought a home, procreated, and undergone several philosophical revisions. And I’m making up for lost time. An acquaintance of mine, who was at one point a philosophy professor, loaned me about thirty books to read on my own time (under the condition that I argue with him after finishing each one; I’m only too happy to oblige). And after reading Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty, I feel that if I’m no better a writer I’m at least in a better position to articulate some of our mutual apologetic frustration.

Rorty’s book is concerned with two primary goals: first, the de-linking of metaphysics from political conversation, and second with the advocacy of a public/private philosophical divide – one in which allegedly contradictory beliefs can be held. This post will mostly deal with the first of Rorty’s goals.

As Rorty points out in Contingency, our language and our identity are both contingent, which is to say that they come not from any metaphysical rule that ordains our reality to be so but rather from a particular, unique social context. The values we hold exist because we come from a particular historical trajectory that happens to have put us where we are. Our identities are contingent on many factors beyond our own control. An appeal to metaphysics, with this understanding, is an appeal to a “final vocabulary” which is unique to our personality or culture, but not the product of some innate truth. Words such as “liberty,” “true,” “good,” or in our case “God” are words which can only be supported by circular reasoning – yet because they are foundational to our values, we routinely avoid giving them cause for such scrutiny. Those who realize the flaws of final vocabularies – those classified as Ironists – are often set on unstable trajectories of growth, but are at least (in theory) immune to appeals to the metaphysical.

Rorty predicts that the primary objection to his philosophy (and that of his predecessors) will rest on an appeal to “common sense,” which of course is really an appeal to a widely-shared final vocabulary. I believe that presuppositional apologetics fall under the same category of Rorty’s notion of common sense. These common-sense objections are appeals to circular reasoning, but are also immune to easy criticism as such, because criticism, by using the traditional language of argument, also appeals to the notion of some perfect final vocabulary. In other words, once one adopts the tools of the metaphysician, one is doomed to lose to the metaphysician. Use of words such as “true,” “beautiful,” or “just” may produce some meaningful social change – and awareness of contradictory dogma – but the cost of doing so is to make appeals to some underlying universal truth. Yet this truth rests upon some sort of worship of a god, an organizing force that gives order to our universe. Letting go of these metaphysical appeals, says Rorty, may not be satisfying – we are doomed to continue floating between answers that cannot give us closure – but such action at least empowers us to grow more freely.

This has caused me to change my opinion on some of the ways atheists engage in counter-apologetics. I used to dislike the “merely aesthetic” rebuttals of God’s existence. Such examples include theories of why the universe is more beautiful without God, or arguments that God is evil. Prior to reading Rorty’s book, I found that these counter-apologetics were the result of a failure to engage with the Christian perspective. Now, I believe that engaging with Christians on their own terms and chosen vocabulary is an uphill battle. This is not to say that traditionally logical arguments cannot or should not be put forth. However, it is to suggest that if we truly believe that there is no higher order, there is no limit or rule to how we can view the order of our universe.

This helps us to embrace the freedom of a positive counter-apologetic. But it does not yet give us a tool for helping the traditional Christian apologist to entertain our worldview, let alone embrace it. I suggest that we should first articulate – as in The Contingency of Language – how the terms put forth by Christian apologists beg the question even before the first argument is made. Claims to morality, for instance, are already metaphysical in nature. So too are claims regarding good and evil. When faced with the charge of moral relativism, we should – as Rorty says – not try to rebut the charge directly but explain how such a charge in itself is an unhelpful approach. Simply put, we need to do more than debate. We need to reconstruct the debate.

Those of us who have deconverted from our religion have the opportunity to embrace our own definition of meaning. With this freedom come many difficulties. We have forsaken the mantle of true moral authority, because we know that no moral authority exists. To pretend that we have it is to fall into the trap we mean to escape. Embracing the difficulty of an amoral universe, and to work to achieve human solidarity in other terms – say, the desire for mutual protection, or the right to grow in our own idiosynchratic ways, or to build a world our great-grandhildren may enjoy – is a far more enriching task. I also believe that once we do so, we will set a positive example for others to follow.