"You've Got Mail -- Maybe"

            What follows is a slightly modified email exchange between Charlie (not his real name) and me.    

To: Michael Bauman
Subject: A Parable

Michael: 
An atheist died and went to heaven.  St. Peter asked him: "Do you regret denying God's existence?"  The atheist said: "Can you demonstrate I am not dreaming?"  St. Peter said:  "If I tried and failed we would both wake up."
Charlie

To: Charlie
Subject: Re: A Parable

Charlie:
Three points:
            (1). If an atheist truly died and went to Heaven, as your parable asserts, and was met there by St. Peter, then he wouldn't be dreaming.  In other words, your parable begins by presupposing the falsity of the dream theory it contains and yet goes on to assert the dream theory anyway.  It's self-stultifying.  For your parable to be consistent with the theory it contains, you'd have to begin by saying that your atheist might have died and gone to heaven, but we just aren't sure.  After all, what can we possible sleepers really be sure of?  Then you'd have to tell us that he might have said such things to St. Peter, but we just don't know, being possibly asleep right now ourselves.  But a story told that way is hardly compelling stuff, which is why you didn't tell it that way, even though the logic of your point required it.  You know that you can't overturn twenty centuries of Christian theology with that kind of mealy-mouthed, fictional supposition, so you tried rhetorical sleight-of-hand instead.  To undermine Christianity you need facts, not dreams. 
            Rather than being consistent with the very dream theory that you want me to think about and to take seriously, you yourself refuse to take it seriously by telling your story in a way that conveniently ignores or denies the possibility that we all are dreaming so that when you get to your dream theory your dream theory doesn't sound like a dream.  If I were your English teacher, I'd tell you that your narrative strategy belies your narrative point.  You want me to believe both your narration and your point simultaneously, even though it's clear from your story that you yourself do not.
            So which do you want?  Did he go to Heaven or didn't he?  Did he talk to St. Peter, or is it all a dream?  You can't have it all ways at once.  You employ both a knowledge-of-reality theory in the telling and an anti-knowledge-of-reality dream theory in the tale.  You're cheating.  I won't buy it.  For you to make a solid case, one that doesn't refute itself, you have to make your parable self-consistent.  When you do, it loses what little logical power it had to begin with.  If your atheist really did such things, and still maintained his dream theory, he's a sadly mistaken fool.  If none of these things happened -- if he just dreamed them -- then he's still asleep and I don't need to pay attention to his dreams, pretending they are actual rational arguments that pertain to a non-dream world.
            (2.) Think of it the other way round, Charlie.  That is, reverse the scenario:  If your atheist were really dreaming, he might wake to find there is a God and that he himself is in Hell.  Who knows what you'll wake to find?  You might wake to find your wife in bed next to you on a pleasant Saturday morning, or you might wake to find the house on fire because Martians are barbequing the insulation in your walls as part of the Fourteenth annual "We Love Fiberglass for Breakfast Picnic."  Atheism based on imaginary dreams and on what you might find when you wake from them, or on the possibility that everyone is dreaming and that everything is a dream, is hardly a compelling argument.  After all, if we all might be dreaming, the atheist is caught in the dream too.  How do you know the atheist isn't dreaming his atheism and that he'll wake to find atheism is false and that he's now undone forever?  You simply assume the opposite.  That assumption is no valid basis for accepting atheism or for rejecting Christianity. 
            But you argue that we could all wake up -- even the saints in Heaven! -- to find theism is false.  In other words, your already self-contradictory story also begs the question it poses -- a second fatal logical error in a story just four sentences long!  You think (or else you dream) that others must live with your dream theory but that you do not.  That's why you made the mistake you did in point number one.  If it's all a dream, you're stuck too.  Your dream theory is autophagic.  It eats itself up.  If it's true, dream theory is just a dream along with the atheism you think your dream theory supports.
            So tell me, Charlie, are you awake in the real world or not?  If you're asleep, your atheism is only a dream.  But if you're awake in the real world, dream theory is a mistake.  Or, to ask the same question in a different way:  Do you have real and dependable knowledge or not?  If you do, then reject your dream theory.  If you have real and dependable knowledge, say so and prove it.  But if you don't, and dream theory is true, then don't harass the rest of the world with your dreams.  You must decide if dream theory is true or false, and then live -- and argue -- accordingly.  But you don't.  You try to have it both ways.  Either admit the falsehood of dream theory, or else realize that dream theory says your atheism is a dream as well.  It even says that you might wake from your dream to find you are still dreaming.  In that case, you dream of dreams.  Your parable is just the Queen Mab passage in Romeo and Juliet posing as theological argument.  Mercutio, you'll notice, is no fine theologian.
            In other words, your parable presupposes that if something (in this case belief in God) is just a dream, then it can't be trusted and shouldn't be believed.  But of course the same is true of atheism, which -- if dream theory is true -- is also just a dream and can't be trusted.  And if dreams aren't to be trusted, and if all is a dream (as dream theory proposes), then dream theory itself is a just dream that can't trusted.  Yet, you send me an email parable about dream theory (A.) that denies dream theory in its very telling, (B.) that says dreams can't be trusted, and (C.) that, if true, is itself a dream and a theory that cannot be trusted.
            You see why I'm still a Christian in spite of your parable.
            (3.) Dreamers, you must admit, construct lousy arguments and make lousy argument evaluators -- which is why students who sleep in class don't often get good grades.  We lecture, or intend to, to those who are awake.  You've probably noticed that lectures aren't held at night in the dorms, but during the day in classrooms.  It's a good policy, I'm sure you'll agree.  By the same token, parables are helpful only to those who aren't dreaming.  I can't think of the last time I told a parable to someone I thought was asleep and expected it to do some good.  The fact that you sent me this email says that you don't think everything is just a dream.  Did you hope for a dream reply from a dream person at a dream email address, or a real one?  Your email itself denies the dream theory your email parable postulates.  If you and I are awake and have access to real knowledge and real persons, then argue like it.  If we are not, then sleep on.  If, or when, you wake from your dream, let me know.  But please don't think that you can sink the ship of faith with a self-contradictory, question-begging, three-line story about dream theory.  You might as well attack Gibraltar with a pop gun as try to tear down what Christ Himself promised to build, and has built, for centuries.  The gates of Hell won't prevail against it, much less an assault of dreams.
            I think I hear your alarm clock.  Time to wake up.
            Or else dream on forever. It's up to you.

Michael

date modified:
5 July 2006