> The passage drdeca quoted explicitly denies you the space to treat Christianity as a "useful fiction"
Yeah, I'm disagreeing with that passage.
> [I]f Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith
Faith can be useful even when it does not reflect an objective truth. In fact, you might say that faith can only exist at all in the absence of objective truth. I don't need to have faith that a triangle has 3 sides, or that ice is cold.
If we do take seriously the idea that Christianity must either be true or false, then it's obviously false: Most religions contradict each other, and none of them have any concrete evidence in their defence. The natural conclusion is that all religious beliefs are false. But then we have to interpret society as a place where most people believe obvious falsehoods, which is just not a useful lens. There is a huge difference between a falsehood like "triangles have 5 sides" and a falsehood like "Jesus was reborn." Nobody would believe the former, but many people believe the latter. We must distinguish useful fictions as a category beyond the dichotomy of simple truth or falsehood.
Yeah, I'm disagreeing with that passage.
> [I]f Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith
Faith can be useful even when it does not reflect an objective truth. In fact, you might say that faith can only exist at all in the absence of objective truth. I don't need to have faith that a triangle has 3 sides, or that ice is cold.
If we do take seriously the idea that Christianity must either be true or false, then it's obviously false: Most religions contradict each other, and none of them have any concrete evidence in their defence. The natural conclusion is that all religious beliefs are false. But then we have to interpret society as a place where most people believe obvious falsehoods, which is just not a useful lens. There is a huge difference between a falsehood like "triangles have 5 sides" and a falsehood like "Jesus was reborn." Nobody would believe the former, but many people believe the latter. We must distinguish useful fictions as a category beyond the dichotomy of simple truth or falsehood.