Philosophical Failures of Christian Apologetics, Part XI: The Holy Spirit

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Imagine yourself in the shoes of a typical true believing Christian. You attend church, you study your Bible, and you accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Let's also imagine that you happen to be a philosophically sophisticated individual who likes to study arguments from all sides of the debate. You therefore stumble upon a series of video essays entitled “Philosophical Failures of Christian Apologetics" and happily decide to watch them all from start to finish. For the sake of further argument, let’s just go ahead and assume that everything about the series is absolutely flawless in its presentation and thus perfectly compelling. All those big, fancy arguments for God’s existence are now officially debunked to your own personal satisfaction. The burden of proof lies with theists to positively demonstrate God’s existence, and they all have decidedly failed to meet that burden. Not only that, but you’ve even learned how science actually explains the very development of religion itself as a purely natural byproduct of human psychology and cultural group selection. 

Surely, given all of these philosophical contingencies, a true believer like yourself should find sufficient grounds to abandon your faith and adopt a more secular perspective, yes?

Actually, no, because if you really were a "true" believing Christian, then all that evidence, argumentation, and philosophical meandering would mean nothing. You didn’t reason yourself in your faith, which means you sure as hell cannot be reasoned out of it. True Christian faith is not grounded on intellectual merit, but on the incorrigible witness of the Holy Spirit:

“I think the way in which we fundamentally know that our faith is true is through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. My faith in Christ is not based upon arguments and evidence (although I have arguments and evidence). It is based upon the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit.” [1]

“The way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart, and that this gives me a self-authenticating means of knowing that Christianity is true, wholly apart from the evidence.  And therefore, if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I don’t think that that controverts the witness of the holy spirit.” [2]

And so we come to our 11th Philosophical Failure of Christian Apologetics: The idea that warm, fuzzy experiences can supersede all reason, evidence, and arguments to the contrary.

Confessions like this are frighteningly common throughout the Christian world, and they tend to manifest in a number of different varieties. For example, consider the popular “statement of faith,” whereby Christian organizations freely boast to an a-priori conviction that is perfectly inerrant and thus cannot change under any circumstances [3-6]. Some philosophers have even attempted to formalize this doctrine under the cloak of sophisticated academic philosophy, like with Alvin Plantinga’s famous reformed epistemology [7]. Even ordinary, everyday Christians are often quite happy to endorse a similar doctrine through the public declaration that “nothing can shake my faith.” But no matter how it is phrased, the central message is always the same:

I’m right. I know I’m right. I cannot possibly be wrong, and nothing you say or do to me will ever convince me otherwise.

So when all is said and done, it seems that Christian “philosophy” is really nothing of the sort. Western Philosophy, as taught in every modern university, is built on a proud tradition of asking questions, challenging our assumptions, and then following the arguments wherever they lead [8]. Apologists, on the other hand, seem to think that philosophy is built on the rote assertion of a sacred doctrine followed by an unwavering defense of that doctrine no matter what.

Incidentally, this is exactly why apologists are called "apologists." The word itself stems from the Greek "apologia," meaning a "speech in defense." Many apologist organizations therefore openly refer to themselves as literal “Defenders" of the Faith. That's fine if you're someone like a lawyer who is legally obligated to defend a client, but not when your goal is to learn the truth. Honest inquiry doesn’t work unless we actively seek out errors in our understanding so that they may be corrected over time.

Consider again those classic “Top Five” arguments that apologists are so fond of defending:
 

• The Ontological Argument
• The Cosmological Argument
• The Teleological Argument
• The Fine-tuning Argument
• The Moral Argument

Ask yourself: What possible purpose do these arguments serve? By their own admission, most apologists were not actually convinced by any of that goofiness, so what on Earth would give them the naive impression that we should be convinced, either? They practically brag openly that neither evidence nor arguments played any role in their beliefs, but a combination of warm, squishy feelings and sheer force of will. That is not a good faith argument, but an implicit admission that Christian apologists are being willfully duplicitous, and they know it.

It's ironic that apologists are so weirdly reticent about this whole "special witness" thing because in principle it’s actually a really compelling argument. After all, if God is real, and if God indeed wants to have a deep, personal relationship with us, then what better way to demonstrate that fact than by personally revealing Himself to His creations? It’s everything the skeptical community has been demanding this entire time---an empirically reproducible demonstration of God’s existence! Yet, for some strange reason, both professional and amateur apologists alike seem to go out of their way to avoid any mention of this stuff in front of a skeptical audience.

Read any book, listen to any lecture, or watch any formal debate, and it’s nothing but endless rhetoric about first causes, maximal greatness, and transcendent, immaterial, spaceless, timeless, what-have-yous. The Spirit, if it's even mentioned at all, is usually little more than a philosophical afterthought. But then, ask them point-blank what finally convinced them to believe, and it is perfectly normal to suddenly hear stories about personal revelation from God Himself. It’s like an ace up their sleeves that conclusively settles the issue once and for all, yet they only ever play it when there’s nothing at stake. You almost have to wonder if apologists collectively share an unspoken realization that, just maybe, the Holy Spirit is not quite the philosophical slam-dunk they pretend it is.

But what is the Holy Spirit, really? Because if we’re going to talk about this thing in any serious detail, then it’s important to establish what exactly that idea represents. So according to mainstream Christian doctrine, the Holy Spirit is simply the third person of the Holy Trinity. That means, for all practical purposes, any experience with the Holy Spirit is actually a direct communication from God Himself. God is, after all, a single being comprised of three entirely separate, but co-equal persons, all of whom are individually also God.

If that all sounds a bit strange to you, then just remember that this is absolutely a fundamental doctrine of orthodox Christianity [9]. It's an extraordinary concept that all began in the fourth century when some guy had the audacity to argue that Jesus Christ was separate from, and subordinate to, God the Father. You'd think that such a trivial piece of theology could be debated peacefully, but apparently it was a hugely passionate ordeal of violent politics. Thankfully, the facts of the matter were finally settled through the time-honored tradition of "voting about it," followed by the usual state-sponsored oppression against all further dissent. It therefore goes without saying that this is a totally consistent and trustworthy fact about God, of which there can be no further debate.

Setting aside that philosophical can of worms, what exactly is it like to experience the Holy Spirit? That is to say, how do I recognize His presence? Can I sit down with Him and interact, somehow? Maybe talk to him or shake His hand? Will He perform miracles on demand? Does His presence have any measurable effect on temperature? Or air pressure? Or background radiation?

No, of course not. The Spirit is, after all, an immaterial being, which means nothing He does will ever produce a tangible, empirical manifestation. It’s a classic hallmark of our old friend, substance dualism, whereby the universe is neatly divided into two completely separate categories of fundamental stuff. The first kind of stuff is our familiar material universe, comprised of atoms, quarks, electrons, and photons, all doing their thing in accordance with the laws of physics throughout space and time. The second kind of stuff is then comprised of raw consciousness, or mind-stuff, apparently just floating around and thinking all on its own, completely independent of any physical laws or material interactions. It can, however, seemingly interact with other mind stuff, which is why personal experiences of the Holy Spirit are apparently limited to highly subjective impressions. For example:
 

• Some people have described the Spirit as barely noticeable intrusions---almost like a thought in your head that wasn’t really your own, but inserted there from an outside force [10]. 
• Others may describe it an innate awareness of God’s existence---as if we had a sixth-sense for divine presence in the world around us [7].
• Some people report feelings of intense euphoria, as if overcome by an electric frenzy of pure joy [11].
• Others may testify to hearing the voice of God directly as an audible sound from another person in the room [12].
• Others still may describe it as a “Burning in the bosom” or a “Stupor of thought” [13].
• Some people even claim the ability to speak in tongues, as if the Spirit is taking over their bodies and granting them the power to speak the language of angels [14].

So right off the bat, the very idea of a special witness from the Holy Spirit is already on hopelessly shaky grounds. We cannot even talk about the Spirit without presupposing a giant mountain of dubiously incoherent doctrines, and every alleged encounter with Him is almost universally vague. Those who do claim to experience Him cannot agree on what it’s supposed to be like, and what it's usually "like" is either boringly mundane or oddly creepy. The only consistent rule seems to be that "you’ll just know it when you see it," and as long as it leads you to do good, Christian things, then nothing else matters [15].

But before we get carried away with any frustrated dismissal, it’s important to acknowledge the fact that people who share these experiences are generally being completely sincere. Furthermore, it is not difficult to find such testimonials from around the world and throughout history. Something is therefore causing this phenomenon, and it's important to ask ourselves what exactly that cause might be. Are these experiences the result of a legitimate, supernatural communication? Or are they just another natural part of being human?

That may sound like a simple question, but you would be amazed at how impossibly difficult it can be for apologists to differentiate between experience and cause. We have plenty of any of anecdotal reports of spiritual encounters, and they are all immediately rendered true by the principle of mental incorrigibility---I had an experience, that experience was very unique, and so I choose to label that experience as “A special witness of the Holy Spirit.” However, it’s another thing entirely to attribute such experiences with an external cause---i.e., telepathic communication from the spaceless, timeless, omnipotent creator of the universe, who also happens to be the God of the Bible. That is a synthetic proposition, which means the rules for truth assignment are now totally different.

I find it baffling how guys with actual PhDs habitually struggle with one of the most basic principles in all philosophy---in this case, the principle of external world skepticism. All it says is that no synthetic proposition can ever truly be “known” with absolute, unwavering certainty, because there will always exist an infinite multitude of possible explanations for sense data. At best, we can only derive tentative conclusions through a preponderance of empirical data and predictive models. So even if you personally went through some kind intense, spiritual experience, that does not mean we should immediately presume a supernatural cause for such experiences, nor does that presumption get to supersede all further evidence and argumentation forever.

It cannot be overstated that human sensory perception is notoriously easy to fool. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of well-documented illusions, heuristics, biases, hallucinations, and disorders littered throughout the cognitive faculties of ordinary people. Many of these illusions are nearly identical replicas to the alleged manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and many more of them can even be conjured on demand under controlled laboratory conditions. Some Christians will even admit openly to a belief in actual, literal demons who run around imitating the Holy Ghost for their own nefarious ends [16,17,18]. It therefore stands to reason that Christians, of all people, should feel extra motivated to carefully examine this whole “special witness” thing, lest we find ourselves ensnared by the cunning deceptions of the devil himself.

This is exactly why human beings invented science. Despite the inherent fallibility of our subjective perceptions, it is still possible to generate real, working knowledge with a high degree of practical confidence. All we have to do is follow a few simple rules. 

For example, one of the most important rules in the philosophy of science is the principle of replicability. That is to say, if indeed the Holy Spirit is real, and if indeed God wants us all to feel His presence, then presumably I shouldn’t have to take your word for it every time it happens. I should personally be able to replicate that experience for myself, and there should be a simple procedure I can follow to generate further experiences on demand.

Sadly, this is not at all the case. There is no universally prescribed method by which to conjure the Holy Spirit, which means there is no way to formally establish any causal connection with His behavior. Instead, most encounters with The Spirit seem to be entirely random, as if God were a fickle child who only shares His presence with some people, but not others.  

Even on the rare occasions when people do offer up a procedure, it inevitably fails to produce the expected results. For example, one of the most dramatic illustrations of this problem can be found in Latter Day Saint theology, which holds that anyone can experience the Holy Ghost for themselves. All one has to do is read the Book of Mormon, ponder its message, have a little faith, and then ask God in prayer whether or not this stuff is true [19]. If done correctly, then God will supposedly manifest the truth to you personally through the power of the Holy Ghost.

All right, then. Show of hands: How many of you Mormons, non-Mormons, and ex-Mormons tried exactly that, but did not immediately experience the promised results? That’s right. Millions of you. The overwhelming majority of people who try this experiment will categorically fail to replicate the outcome.

Which leads us to yet another key principle in the modern philosophy of science: falsifiability. If people consistently follow your prescribed formula and then fail to produce the promised results, we may immediately conclude that your claim is false. It makes no difference how elegant your theory may be, nor does it matter how good it makes you feel. The world officially does not work in accordance with your described rules, which means you are objectively and demonstrably wrong.

But what about the people who do generate the promised result? We cannot just discount their experiences entirely. Maybe we just did the procedure incorrectly, or maybe there are hidden variables that we just failed to account for. That’s fine, which is why science has provided yet another rule to help us vet their claims: Consistency. That is to say, if people really are producing the expected results, then presumably those results ought to be internally consistent with each other, right?

But of course, that isn’t the case, either. For every Mormon who claims to know the truth by the power of the Holy Spirit, there exists an equal number of Baptists, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others, who all say the exact same thing about their own religions, and with equal conviction. Yet they cannot all be correct, because the doctrines of salvation for one faith are often damnable heresies for another.

Which brings us to yet another foundational principle in the philosophy of science---Parsimony (also known as Occam’s Razor). Given multiple explanations for the same phenomenon, all of which have equal explanatory power, the one with the fewest assumptions is always to be preferred. So given the fact that people around the world are having regular experiences of an apparent spiritual nature, which explanation do you think makes more sense? That a fickle God would manifest Himself entirely at random using inconsistent and barely perceptible impressions towards mutually incompatible conclusions? Or that, just maybe, human beings have a natural tendency to generate these experiences entirely on their own?

Remember that this is still a perfectly valid question to ask, even if the Holy Spirit really is a thing. So let's be completely generous and just assume anyway that a small subset of all these experiences are indeed perfectly legitimate. By admission, apologists would still have to accept the fact that millions of other people are still having similar, counterfeit experiences through perfectly naturalistic means. I myself have personally experienced countless psychological intrusions, intense euphoria, deep guilt, vague intuitions, and even outright voices, but never once did it occur to me that this stuff was the result of supernatural telepathy. It’s perfectly normal and healthy to have these experiences, and virtually everyone has them on a regular basis. That little voice in your head looking out for you prompting you to make good decisions; it wasn’t a magical disembodied spirit. It was you all along!

There’s a lot more going on inside your head than pure, conscious reasoning. At any given moment, your brain is soaking in the perception of your surroundings, building connections, and reacting to stimulus, and it does all of this without the immediate permission of your conscious self. That’s a good thing. We don't always have the luxury to carefully reason through difficult problems, but must instead react in the moment out of pure intuition. That same intuition, however, is only as good as the training we put into it, which is why religious organizations fight so hard to co-opt that intuition with a supernatural bias. It’s a deliberate ploy designed to sidestep our rational minds and replace them with impulsive, uncritical loyalty.

How exactly do you think apologists respond when faced with such an overwhelming preponderance of contradictions, null results, and alternative theologies? Most of the time, they don’t even really talk about it at all---as if it never even occurred to them that other religions exist, or that other believers might have equal conviction to their own, or that some people might just honestly fail to replicate any spiritual encounters. It's like an institutionalized rejection of other human experiences, whereby the spiritual manifestations of other people are just ignored or denied. Then on the rare occasions when they do muster the courage to acknowledge this issue, the responses are almost comical in their smug arrogance and outright bigotry.

For example, reformed epistemology holds to the existence of a sensus divinitatis, or divine sense, that unambiguously reveals God’s existence to everyone [7]. Not just any God, mind you, but specifically the Christian God of the Holy Bible. That way, anyone who claims ignorance to the reality of Christianity is “without excuse" and may thus immediately be dismissed as a damned liar.

Or, alternatively, if they really are being sincere, then it must be the result of a malfunction in their divine sense---almost like a kind of spiritual blindness, whereby our innate God receptors just get clogged up somehow. However, the only thing that can allegedly cause such a problem is sin, which means we can now dismiss any such individuals as a bunch of wicked Hitlers who simply love evil more than God [20].

Or, alternatively again, if you really do experience the Holy Spirit, but just not in the same religious context as they do, then obviously you must be mistaken. The Holy Spirit is, after all, unmistakable for those who truly feel it, which means whatever it is you think you felt was necessarily some kind of spiritual counterfeit [21].

There you have it. According to mainstream Christian apologists, all those Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans, animists, atheists, and everyone else throughout history who failed to convert to Christianity are either spiritually blind, intellectually dishonest, or just outright sinfull. So let's stop beating around the bush and just summarize this doctrine for what it is, shall we?

We're right, you’re wrong, and if you disagree, then you’re stupid and evil. 

That really is the ultimate foundation for the majority of Christian apologists. They know it, and they admit it.

It's hard to fully articulate just how terrifyingly dangerous this kind of doctrine can be. When people cease to believe in their own fallibility, then it is only a matter of time before violent fanaticism enters the equation. By definition, a dogmatist cannot be reasoned with, nor can a false doctrine ever be defended reasonably. Reason itself therefore cannot settle any disputes, which leaves blunt authority as the only viable alternative. To make matters even worse, the very act of disagreement is not interpreted as a simple intellectual confusion, but an implicit moral failure. Nonbelievers are automatically presumed guilty of unspecified crimes by the mere virtue of their nonbelief. Violent oppression is thus easily justified, which makes violent resistance an eventual necessity.

So in the end, the Holy Spirit is yet another embarrassing pile of philosophical failure compounded with dangerous social undertones. We’re talking about an absolute, unwavering conviction in confusingly nonsensical doctrines derived entirely from squishy, subjective sensations that every competing religion on Earth can apparently replicate, only to then lie about it after the fact by pretending this was a serious, academic debate. It’s a shameless betrayal of everything Western Philosophy stands for. It exploits vulnerable human psychology, it demonizes nonbelievers, it justifies violence, and it rejects every known standard of honest inquiry. It allows no possibility for the correction of error, which means any errors within it shall remain errors forever, because error is not even the point. Truth doesn't matter to these people, but only the imposition of authority.

Even the very word itself is a linguistic betrayal of just how absurd this doctrine can be. Spirit is derived from the Latin word spiritus, meaning breath and air. [22]. The Bible itself often refers to the Holy Spirit by name through the Greek word pneuma, which likewise carries the meaning of breath, wind, and air [23]. Even the Hebrew sections of the Old Testament often refer to the Spirit of God as ruach, meaning breath and wind [24].

This is not a coincidence. Ancient cultures almost universally equated wind and breath with the idea of a spiritual life essence. For example, the Chinese word for a spiritual life force is qi, which also happens to translate into air and breath [25]. Ancient Hindu philosophy uses the Sanskrit word prana to describe a cosmic life force connected with breathing [26]. Old Nordic languages often used terms like önd and andi to mean breath and soul [27].

The obvious explanation is that ancient people didn’t understand how air works, and so they just filled in the blanks with whatever observations they could. For example, air can be felt, but not seen, and strong breath seems to feel very similar to wind. Living things have a tendency to breathe a lot, and things which die tend to stop breathing altogether. The only natural conclusion is that air itself must be comprised of a mysterious vital essence that animates living creatures. Air, breath, and soul, therefore all became the same thing, which is why one word was so often used to encapsulate all three concepts [28]. Heck, there are even remnants of this idea manifest in our modern concept of ghosts, which are often depicted as anthropomorphic clouds or semi-transparent vapors [29]. It’s a dead giveaway that, for all of the sophisticated philosophical pretense, the doctrine of Holy Spirit is, quite literally, nothing but a bunch of hot air.

Notes/References

1. William Lane Craig “Dealing with Christian Doubt.” (link)
2. William Lane Craig “Dealing with Christian Doubt" (alternate) (link)
3. "By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.” – Answers in Genesis
4. “The sole basis of our beliefs is the Bible, God’s infallible written Word, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. We believe that it was uniquely, verbally and fully inspired by the Holy Spirit and that it was written without error (inerrant) in the original manuscripts. It is the supreme and final authority in all matters on which it speaks.” – Josh McDowell Ministries
5. “The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are without error or misstatement in their moral and spiritual teaching and record of historical facts. They are without error or defect of any kind.” – Biola University
6. “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” – NAE
7. Plantinga, A., Warranted Christian Belief, Oxford University Press, Grand Rapids, 2000
8. "You see, I myself really do not know yet, but wherever the argument, like a wind, tends, there we must go.” – The Republic of Plato
9. “History of Trinitarian Doctrines,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
10. Foy, T. S. “Practice Hearing God's Voice” (link)
11. (link)
12. (link) (link) (link)
13. Doctrine and Covenants, Section 9
14. (link)
15. Matthew 7
16. John 4:1
17. (Link)
18. Gaunt, D. C., “Recognizing Satan’s Counterfeits” (link)
19. Moroni 10:3-5
20. “Therefore, when a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of a lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God's Spirit on his heart. No one in the final analysis fails to become a Christian because of a lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with god.” – William Lane Craig (Reasonable Faith, page 47). 
21. "The answer is that the witness of the Holy Spirit is unmistakable (though not indubitable) for him who has it and attends to it. He who has it should, indeed, conclude, that the Mormon is lying or, more charitably, sincerely mistaken. The Mormon has probably been misled by a counterfeit experience, and the non-veridicality of his experience shouldn’t lead you to doubt the veridicality of your experience.” – William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith Question of the Week #167, “Counterfeit Claims to the Witness of the Spirit” (link)
22. EtymologyOnline.com – “Spirit”
23. EtymologyOnline.com – “Pneuma”
24. Strong’s Concordance (link)
25. Wikipedia – “Qi” (link) 
26. Manorama: So What Actually Is Prana? (SanskritStudies.org) 
27. See Wiktionary and BruteNorse.com
28. See "Ancient Theories of Soul" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
29. See, for example, Casper the Friendly Ghost or Helena Ravenclaw