Thread by @SLYProfessor

It’s nerdy Religious Studies and biblical scholar thread time about white Evangelicals🧵

Have you ever encountered something like, “Without God or Christianity, you don’t have a basis for morality or logic,” as though it’s a home run mic drop? 1/22

https://twitter.com/clbolt/status/1365721747329318913

Here are some suggestions and resources for thinking about the history and politics of "Without Christianity you don't have a foundation for morality."

Basic point: don't treat this like a serious philosophical system. It's a strategy for self-authorization and insulation. 2/22

There is a long history to this strategy. Some Islamic apologists deploy it too, but make their God and revelation the foundation for logic and morals. Same with cultural elites of other groups who want a simple self-authorizing strategy that seems sophisticated to insiders 3/22

Going back further, ancient Greek philosophers referred to this as the problem of the criterium: how do you find a foundation for logic, ethics, and knowing? This is a basic topic in what is often referred to as the Skeptical philosophical tradition. 4/22

No one in traditional philosophy has an answer to this problem.

It's thus an opportunity for folks who want A) a simple way to authorize themselves and B) to delegitimize critical dissent.

They simply assert their god or system are that criterium, and deny it to others. 5/22

Important point here: Evangelical apologists don't have an "answer" either, just an assertion. It only seems like they have an answer because (white) conservative Christianity has the privilege of being a longstanding societal default. Disrupt that privilege with questions! 6/22

Here's a simple disruptive question: Can anyone show that in human history people have needed an answer to this Skeptical problem to function as a society, or can the apologist show that when Christians with his answer ran society things were better for more people? Hint: NO 7/22

This is the power of Christian privilege. Scores of *educated* White evangelicals think this "without Christianity you have no morality" move is a home run that means they're necessarily right and you're not only wrong, but illegitimate.

Why is this? 8/22

This characteristic evangelical apologetics rhetoric reflects the paths of authority carved out by longstanding narratives in conservative media about 'everyone has bias' - see Nicole Hemmer's (@pastpunditry) excellent book on that topic. 9/22 amazon.com/Messengers-Rig…

The historian Molly Worthen (@UNChistory @reliunc) wrote a book about the politics of such 'worldview' thinking in evangelicalism: it structures what counts as knowledge in that world and is all about who is legitimate and who has authority. 10/22 amazon.com/Apostles-Reaso…

This common white Evangelical defensive move thus feels right given all the narratives that feel like home already. It also tends to sync with assertions of Biblical Inerrancy. Eg, only "Godless Secular Humanism's faux reason" would question the Bible and find errors! 11/22

This is why historians of white evangelicalism like Seth Dowland (@sdowland) note that characteristic doctrines like Biblical Inerrancy have always been technologies for reasserting white and masculine authority. 12/22 academia.edu/11430001/Inerr…

And the historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez (@kkdumez) shows how the networks that spread these favorite talking points like "without [our White] Christianity there is no foundation for ethics" exist to promote white patriarchal authority. 13/22 amazon.com/Jesus-John-Way…

In Religious Studies, we study the politics of this "no foundation for logic or morality" rhetoric under rubric of Skeptical Strategies. Matthew Bagger briefly addresses these in his book. 14/22 amazon.com/Religious-Expe…

Strategy is the key word.

This favorite white evangelical talking point is not a serious philosophical system, but a self-authorizing strategy that denies legitimacy to others in a way meant to look academically masterful to insiders. It's their mic drop or home run. 15/22

For what it's worth, I've also argued similarly about inerrancy and evangelical biblical scholarship: it's a parasitic academic field characterized by self-authorizing moves and only recognized as 'academic' by insiders or folks who lack expertise. 16/22 academia.edu/10039504/_Prot…

While trad. philosophy has no answer to the problem of the criterium, there are explanations for how human brains can think and have morals without a foundation in gods or revelation.

It's called a "naturalized" epistemology. Eg, Hilary Kornblith. 17/22 amazon.com/Knowledge-Plac…

This "naturalized epistemology" is why conservative evangelical gatekeepers are going into hysterics to malign Evolutionary approaches to ethics and knowledge: such approaches mess with their favorite self-authorizing
and insulating rhetorical toys. 18/22

And Feminist epistemologists like Elizabeth Anderson (@UMPhilosophy) have long promoted such naturalized approaches to epistemology and interrogated the patriarchal regimes of authority they puncture. 19/22 cambridge.org/core/journals/…

Final reflection: I experienced how the "you have no foundation for knowing apart from our Christianity" is an authority strategy while a student at @WestminsterTS, a conservative Evangelical seminary that majored in such "presuppositional" or "worldview" apologetics. 20/22

Professors @WestminsterTS regularly dismissed critical questions with statements like, "To even ask that question shows you have already adopted a non-Christian foundation. You can't even predicate apart from [prof's interpretation of Christianity/Bible]." Neat trick, eh? 21/22

Much more can be said abt the history and misrecognized politics of this "no foundations" rhetoric (eg, whose interests does it promote versus erase?). Hopefully this thread has offered some helpful, critical reflections and resources.

Cheers! 🍻 22/22

Since this has blown up, a few additions.

A common conserv evangelical reply dismisses the critique by saying "it's Postmodern, and that's bad," or turns this into a debate about conscious motives.

Perhaps foolishly, I replied to one such response here:

https://twitter.com/SLYProfessor/status/1366383504989302785

Forgot to mention in the original thread: see @julieingersoll's excellent book that explores how a very small group of seemingly marginal dudes naturalized and mainstreamed the "different worldviews!" rhetorical toy throughout white Evangelicalism. amazon.com/Building-Gods-…

Also: scroll through some of the replies to my original thread and note how one of the most common kinds stirred up by the conservative evangelical responses is folks coming here to mock use of pronouns.