Tolle Lege

One of the more spurious challenges to religious belief is that because religious beliefs are culturally transmitted (that is, because people adopt the beliefs of their parents and communities) they are unlikely to be intellectually grounded. Allow me to paraphrase one way this objection was recently put to me: “It is clear that culture is the determining factor in a person’s religious beliefs. There aren’t a lot of Christians in the Riyadh or many Muslims in Asunción.” My interlocutor’s implication in this instance was that people are not intellectually responsible for their beliefs, because their beliefs are not intellectually grounded. Rather, they are the product of cultural inculcation into a certain way of thinking. They believe in God according to a certain tradition because they were raised in that tradition. Some people who are suspicious of religion in general extend this line of argument to imply that because religious beliefs are culturally transmitted, they are unlikely to be justified or true.  

I will present three responses to this challenge. First, not all religious beliefs are culturally transmitted, and many people hold beliefs that their cultural communities do not share. Second, the cultural transmission of belief is not limited to religion, and when the same suspicion is applied to other kinds of received knowledge the position is clearly untenable. Third, a tradition can be intellectually grounded even if individual recipients of that tradition are unaware of its intellectual content.

Returning to my paraphrase of the objection under consideration, it is probably true that the population of Christians in Riyadh is low; there may be only a handful. However, that handful is significant. Religious outliers, people who hold beliefs that are countercultural, demonstrate that not all religious beliefs are transmitted culturally, even if most are. They demonstrate that religious knowledge can be claimed under the influence of intellectual conviction and in spite of cultural opposition. Of course, this intellectual mobility is not limited to Christianity. People raised by Christian parents can become intellectually convinced atheists or Muslims as well. If culture is not the sole determining factor for religion, then religious beliefs must contain intellectual content, and reasonable examination of this intellectual content plays an important role in the faith of religious outliers. 

Magdi Allam, famous Muslim convert to Christianity 

 Let us now consider the notion that because a belief is received according to tradition it is less likely to be reliable. Most of the knowledge that each of us possesses is received knowledge. We have been taught to accept certain propositions as facts (that is, true and justified beliefs), and we have accepted these facts on the grounds that the authorities in question were reliable. For example, I know that the speed of light is about 300,000 km/s, though I have not conducted or observed any experiments to confirm this. For me, the speed of light is received knowledge believed in according to the tradition of rudimentary scientific education. I was raised to believe that the speed of light is 300,000 km/s; therefore, I believe the speed of light is 300,000 km/s. To argue that my receipt of this knowledge according to tradition is grounds for its impeachment is clearly ludicrous. Why received religious knowledge should be disproportionately suspected is a question for the objectors. 

My beliefs regarding the speed of light are the product of rote memorization. In my case, they are not intellectually grounded. However, this situation adequately demonstrates my third response to the objection to Christianity under consideration. Individual ignorance is not evidence for intellectual bankruptcy. A skeptic of modern physics questioning me about the speed of light might conclude from my lack of intellectual grounding that there is no scientific basis for the claim that the speed of light is 300,000 km/s. However, he would be wrong. The speed of light has been established according to a rigorous intellectual process of which I am merely unaware. The same is often true of religious beliefs. Centuries of theological and apologetic development have endowed Christianity with an immense depth of intellectual content that escapes not only most skeptics but also most believers. Therefore, even if only its cultural flowers are visible, the intellectual roots of a religious tradition may run very deep.