I think I understand better where you're coming from then. You seem to be more of an agnostic who thinks atheists and theists are too dogmatic. Mind you, I haven’t read many of your writings, but they strike me as Christian.
Anyway, it’s true that I’ve built up a worldview which I present and explore in my philosophical writings. I wouldn’t bother writing anything if I didn’t think I have something worthwhile to say. Maybe you think we should all be Socratic figures that insist we know nothing. My philosophy is pragmatic about knowledge, and I incorporate some postmodern themes too. So, I think philosophy is a kind of storytelling, subject to aesthetic and moral evaluations (as well as standards of critical thinking). Some stories are better than others, and stories help us cope with the real world that surpasses anything we could ever say about it.
I did most of my deep questioning early on in my philosophizing. I’ve been doing this for a while now, so I take myself to be building up a story on foundations that are solid. One of those foundations, for example, is science since my philosophy is naturalistic. I’m not so dogmatic about the whole edifice, though, because again my attitude towards it is philosophical not theological. My philosophy has some humility and irony built into it, but that’s not to say I think we should be falsely modest. Complete open-mindedness would be an invitation for someone to take advantage of you. Plenty of cults exploit confessions of total ignorance.
Do you want me to answer your question about the best argument against my position? I didn’t answer it before because the question is confusing. Better from which perspective? I’ve written numerous philosophical dialogues in which I write on behalf of multiple perspectives. A couple favourites pit the Buddha against the Marquis de Sade, and the devil against Jesus. I can argue, then, from different perspectives, including Christianity. Would you like to hear, then, my best Christian argument against my worldview?
Off the top of my head, here's one:
“Philosophy makes you unhappy. Christian self-sacrifice, too, makes you unhappy, at least in this life since you become ‘poor in spirit.’ But Christianity holds out a greater good, based on faith in God and in the Christian tradition. There’s no greater good in modern secular society since modernity will likely destroy itself, thanks to capitalistic, democratic, and technoscientific overreaches. Why not, then, be unhappy for a good reason rather than torturing yourself with hyperrational standards that alienate you from the masses and from nature? Why aim, in effect, to be a secular monk when you could try to be a more self-consistent religious one, a saint that addresses our limited cognitive resources by taking an explicit leap of Kierkegaardian faith? Secular faith in money, sex, science, or gadgets is no substitute for faith in the infinite.”
Here’s another Christian argument that I think is viable:
“Jesus’s model of a countercultural rebel speaks to the experience of being enlightened due to revelatory peak states of consciousness. That experience goes back to shamanism, as I argue elsewhere (third link below). It’s also the essence of Plato’s cave analogy. The question for Christians is whether that potential for personal enlightenment requires faith in a particular deity or scripture. Is the Christian message a metaphor or a model to spark contemplation, as the Eastern Church comes closer to teaching? Must Christians be literalistic about their message, or are esoteric, more Gnostic Christians free to read between the lines and to treat the creed as a metaphor or allegory? If so, you can be a Christian by acting in a Christ-like way, by setting yourself in opposition to godless institutions, by being an idealist and a moral absolutist who sacrifices his chance for certain common advantages by living as though some ideals were of ultimate importance. Maybe you could be a Christian in that metaphorical sense just by immersing yourself in philosophy and prizing your intellectual integrity. Or perhaps a better sign of your rebirth or enlightenment would be if you were to help people more directly, not just by writing thought-provoking articles. Either way, esoteric Christianity might be more common than we’d assume.”
