There's something called 'an appeal to authority'. It involves quoting someone more famous or more intelligent than yourself as though that proves the point you're trying to make. Both Christians and Atheists do it, and it can be annoying.
I call it the Stephen Fry syndrome (Melchett from Blackadder for our American readers): here's a wonderfully funny, clever, charming man who everybody loves and who doesn't believe in God. He is patently more in-the-know than me, so I can therefore hide behind his beliefs, appropriate them for myself, and never properly engage with the questions at hand.
It's not that quotes aren't helpful at times, but they aren't arguments in and of themselves. They can often act as placebos, giving us the idea that we're more clued up than we really are, while actually stopping us from engaging with the question of truth. It's so frustrating to hear people say, 'Well, you're an atheist when it comes to Zeus,' as though it's something that has just sprung into their fertile mind, and not something that gets copy-and-pasted on message boards across the world. (NB Christians do exactly the same thing with CS Lewis).
So let's check out some quotes that get bandied around, and look at how we might respond. Obviously, shooting down a quotation doesn't necessarily prove anyone right or wrong, but the gripe is with people who victoriously parade such quotes like placards of objective truth. Truth is not a popularity contest.
'The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it' – Terry Pratchett.
I loved Terry Pratchett – what an amazing mind that man had. But I don't agree with this. I mean, what if those guys who had been seeking the truth suddenly came upon it? Isn't that the whole point of seeking something? I don't find my car keys in the morning and then think, 'I better just check in a few more places – just in case.' My wife doesn't come in and say, 'I preferred you before you got all hoity-toity and confident about finding your keys; keep looking or it's divorce.'
It's great to seek the truth, but isn't it ultimately depressing if we never feel like we can get to it. That was the whole problem with Lost! Five series of expecting answers that never materialised. Embarrassing.
'Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest'– Denis Diderot.
Nicely said, Denis (who really sounds like he should play in midfield for Auxerre). But in this world we would still be left with someone happy enough to gruesomely kill other human beings using their own innards. How do we get free of that guy? Oh brave new world...
'Faith means not wanting to know what is true' Friedrich Nietzsche.
Richard Dawkins uses something similar when he says that 'Faith is being content with not knowing.' Nietzsche was a brilliant philosopher, but I have literally never read a single Christian apologist from throughout history who affirmed this statement. Faith, in Christian terms, means 'putting your trust in', but to apply that here would mean that Christians 'put our trust in not wanting to know what is true'. That just doesn't make any sense. You might think that's what Faith-heads do, but you'd be way off-piste. I became a Christian in my early twenties because I wanted to know what was true. I didn't look at the list of all the worldviews and think, 'Hey, that one where you can't have sex before marriage – sounds perfect!' I may be wrong about God, but my route to him came out of genuinely desiring truth, not ignoring it.
Stay tuned for part 2...
