An Argument against Correspondence Theory of Truth

Recently, I engaged in random reflection which inadvertently lead me to create an argument against the correspondence theory of truth. In philosophy, there is a debate on what constitutes truth between proponents who support the correspondence theory of truth and those who opt for the coherence theory of truth. The former asserts that truth is simply when statements corresponds to reality, whereas the latter believes that truth involves coherent relationship among beliefs that justify each other. There are problems with both positions, however I recently thought of an objection against correspondence theory that I find to be interesting. I am not sure if this objection has already been made, so I admit ignorance in this subject. Nonetheless, I will like to go over the argument.

Here is the argument, which I will try to clarify and defend:

1. For every existing thing there is a corresponding statement about it. 
2. For two things to corresponds both must exist 
3. A true statement that corresponds to an existing object about it. 
4. A true statement exists as well as the object it is about. 
5. However, if the true statement exists, then according to Premise 1 there should be another true statement about the existing true statement. 
6. However, the true statement about the existing true statement also exists, thus it would require another true statement about the true statement about the true statement.
7. Therefore, there is an infinite regress 

Basically, the argument suggests that if we accept the first premise and the second premise, then we have an infinite regress since for everything that exist, there needs to be a corresponding statement, but the corresponding statements also exists, thus we need to have statements for those too. But the statements also exist, so we need more statements for those, and so on to infinity. 

However, there are at least two objections I can think of against my argument. First, statements do not need to exist in order to correspond to an object. This is the denial of the second premise. If the second premise is false in so far as we do not need two corresponding things to exist in order for correspondence to obtain, then the statements do not need to exist to correspond to an existing object. There simply does not need to be a statement that literally exists in the sense that it floats above an object or is literally attached to an object. This is because there is something queer or unusual to believe in the existence of statements in that sense, it would commit us in believing in the existence of abstract object which seems implausible. Second, the infinite regress argument leads to superfluous infinite redundancy, because a true statement about another true statement essentially asserts the same thing, and so on. There is no need for infinite redundant statements, so we should "shave off" (so to speak) those redundant statements with only one statement corresponding to an existing object. 

However, I do not think these objections pose a problem to my argument for the following reasons. The first objection simply says that statements do not need to exist to correspond to objects, but if that's the case then what follows is that non-existing statements can correspond to existing objects. However, there is something very unusual about this. How can you talk about correspondence between a statement and an object when the statement doesn't exist? How can that which is non-existent correspond to the existent? The objection simply does not provide a positive account on how correspondence is possible. The second objection is simply false, since a statement about another statement does not need to be false. For example, suppose that there is a cat. If there is a cat, then there is a statement about the cat which asserts "There is a cat". However, if the statement exists, then there is another meta-statement (statement about the statement) which asserts "There is the statement which asserts 'There is a cat'". The second statement is not identical to the second statement, however it does assert about what was already asserted. However this apparent redundancy is not sufficient for it to be tautological in the sense that both the meta-statement and the statement are identical. 

So far it seems that the correspondence theory of truth is in trouble, if we accept it then we have an infinite regress. However, if we try to avoid an infinite regress by insisting that statements do not need to exist in order to correspond to objects, then we have to come up with a new account of correspondence. 

Naturalism and Atheism

I consider myself primarily as a naturalist, while I treat Atheism as merely a consequence of naturalism. When one understands Naturalism to have two commitments (Methodological and Metaphysical), then it becomes apparent that Naturalism does entail atheism. Naturalism is worldview that only Nature (along with it's fundamental constituents) exists and that phenomena, state of affairs, or events in Nature have natural explanations within Nature. This implies an ontological holism, in which everything that exists in Nature are interrelated to each other. Naturalism denies supernatural explanations, but not by virtue of it's metaphysical presuppositions but also on the basis on the lack of evidence and/or contrary evidence. What this means is that Naturalism is a radical immanent world-view philosophy, it denies transcendence; it is an anti-transcendent philosophy that emphasizes on "this world" and "here-now" rather than the "beyond". Beauty, values, goodness, and meaning is found within this world, rather than from beyond.

Naturalism

I consider myself to be a naturalist, meaning that I have a commitment to methodological naturalism (i.e. scientific method) as the most reliable ways to understand Nature. However, I also have a metaphysical commitment to metaphysical naturalism, which is what I want to expound on. I do not intend to develop an argument, perhaps I will develop arguments for metaphysical naturalism in another blog post. Here are the characteristics of my stance of metaphysical naturalism:

1. Substantive Monism- There is only one reality that exists, this is the natural reality or Nature. However, Nature is also a Substance in the philosophical sense. Substance in philosophy means many things, I am using Spinoza's idea of Substance to describe how Nature is a substance:
• Underlying basis- Locke use the term "Substance" to denote the Latin meaning of some underlying basis that supports things to exist. In other words, substance is what is the basis of things that depend on it to exist as states. For example, the brain is a substance in which  mental experiences are the states of (supposing that property dualism is true) or smile is the state of the face. Nature is a substance in this sense in so far as it is the basis for all things that exist in Nature, all things that exist in Nature depend on it as states of Nature. 
• Independent existence: something which is not contingent or dependent on something else to explain it's existence. Nature does not depend on anything outside of it to exist, it exists independently. 
• Nature vs. Universe: It is unusual to make a distinction between Nature and Universe, since we identify Nature with the Universe (vice versa). However, I think I am going along with Spinoza's distinction between Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata. I believe that Nature is essentially Natura Naturans which is the underlying reality that is self-generating and manifesting itself as the physical and natural universe. The natural universe is Natura Naturata that is the manifestation of the essential structure, order, and principles of Nature. 
2. (Ontological) Holism: Anything that is a part of Nature is not merely part of Nature but part of a System, which means it is related to all other parts. The parts in Nature are interrelated to each other, they could be understood holistically (and sometimes by reduction) in relation to each other. Everything that exist in Nature, are interdependent on each other to exist. 
3. Immanence- There is nothing beyond Nature, thus there is nothing to look for beyond it. It is only this reality right here that exists, this is all that matters. 
4. Naturalistic Spirituality- I think there is such thing as naturalistic spirituality. For me, naturalistic spirituality simply has the following quality:  
• Oneness- Oneness is tricky, because it has been associated with being identical with Nature. However, this is obviously not true, given that things are individuated as distinct beings with apparently distinct identities. However, there is another way to talk about being "one with Nature". The better word is inseparability, which means recognizing that your existence is inseparable from that of Nature because you are a finite "state" of Nature, your finite existence depends on Nature. 
• Connection: Since one is inseparable from Nature and Nature is ontologically holistic, one is connected to Nature and everything in it. 
• Absorption: This is experiencing oneself as immersed into Nature, realizing that one is absolutely dependent on Nature to exist and sustain oneself. 
• Tranquility: Peace of mind, I believe, is found within a kind of liberation from the fear of death, anxiety, and negative emotional suffering. Such liberation, however, involves mitigating suffering rather than eliminating it since suffering is part of the human condition. What mitigates suffering is to understand that because one is inseparable from the holistic Nature, it follows that one is going to be effected by things in Nature, one's existence (and condition of that existence) is transitory since everything in Nature is simply a state of it. 
5. Naturalistic ethics: Ethics in Nature is simply another form of ecosystem (see Owen Flanegen), since the condition of human existence is that people are social creatures who are interdependent on each other. Each individual has basic capabilities and needs that is to be considered to have a healthy society. 

I admit that my Naturalistic World-view is heavily influenced by Spinoza, who himself was a kind of naturalist. Spinoza inspired me to develop a naturalistic world-view that is similar to his, so I do not claim that my world-view is original. This is simply a sketch of my world-view, I am working on articulating it further. 

Feminism

Feminists tend to get a bad reputation among the public nowadays, since they are portrayed by the media as man-hating lesbian separatists who fantasize the amazonian utopia or women who identifies too many social conducts as sexist. Most even give the impression that only females can be feminists, but this is obviously false since there have been plenty of male feminists (e.g. James Sterba). I reject this popular portrayal of feminism, since it often oversimplifies feminism into a generalized stereotype. Feminism is a tradition that extends from intellectual tradition to activism, which consists in variety of opinions, beliefs, or attitudes on different issues: There are feminists who consider prostitution to be hopelessly exploitative while others optimistically believe that prostitution can be less exploitative if it is de-criminalized and regulated by the government; there are feminists who condemn pornography as objectifying women, while there are other feminists who have more positive views on pornography (although they have some reservations such as unrealistic portrayal of sex). As you can see, these are examples of issues where feminists have different views on. There are even feminists who view sex positively, they are known as sex positivist. You even have feminists disagreeing with each other on how they should understand science: is science ultimately a masculine-POV of the world that is to be mistrusted or is it a relatively neutral enterprise that simply needs more female members? (of course, the debate is more complex than how I present it).

However, there are certain things that are popular (though not universally accepted) among feminists that I find myself resisting. I find myself resisting the idea that there is no such thing as neutral or value-free area of discourse in which ideas or concepts are value-free and purely descriptive. The reason why I resist this is because I think if we were to accept this view, then it seems that we cannot have any objective understanding of the world. I also reject the idea that objectivity is equivalent to masculine values, I think objectivity is an ideal that either sexes should pursue. I also think that "rationality" is not merely a masculine value or trait, I think this is (and should be) a universal quality among capable human beings, although it is not the only one. I often find feminists critique on evolutionary psychology to be tiresome as if almost everything has to be ideological.

Nonetheless, I think there is no shame in endorsing feminism. I personally identify with feminism to the extent that I believe that both sexes (men and women) should be treated equally, however these equal treatments are not arbitrary. I think these equal treatments are underpinned by the moral ideal of treating each other like human persons rather than merely instruments or disposable things; it prohibits dehumanization, but encourages humanizing each other. I also feel very indignant when I find someone who considers females to be the inferior sex, I often find myself wanting to condemn that person (many times I do condemn that person). While men and women are biologically and psychologically different to varying degrees in various of ways, such differences are merely factual differences that does not inform us about what moral norms we should adopt in regards to how we ought to treat people of different sex. While inequality entails differences, differences does not entail inequality: it is possible to be different from each other, but still deserve equal treatment in so far as we want to be treated as persons.

I think almost everyone in the modern world is to some extent a feminist, but nowadays being a feminist is associated with those who are very vocal about gender equality and very critical of any symptom of patriarchy and sexism. Many people find it to be confrontational and rude, which I can understand on occasion, but I don't think feminists are seriously misguided.

The Problem With Faith

Many atheist seem to believe that undermining Christianity begins with making an argument against the existence of God. However, I think this approach mostly demonstrates that people are forgetting something else that is important to Christianity, namely faith. While doctrines, rituals, churches, and moral practices are important to Christians, faith seems to be the most fundamental part of it. You can believe in the doctrines, practice the rituals, and go to churches but not have faith. What is faith? While many Christians profess to understand "faith", I think many of them get it wrong. The reason why I think they get it wrong is that they tend to use a common argument for faith, it goes like this:

Suppose that you are going to take a trip to another country through an airplane, but you have no idea what the exact risks are. You don't know that you might even make it safe to the other side, since it is possible that things can go wrong for you: bad weather, terrorism, professional incompetence, etc. Nonetheless, you still used the airplane anyways, since you believe that you will be safe. On the surface, this seems to describe what faith is. A lot of people may agree that this is basically the nature of faith. However, I want to contend that this is an incomplete account of faith. The problem with this argument (or illustration that serves to make an argumentative point) is that it provides a deflationary account of faith: all faith is, is just making an assumption. The illustration being deflationary alone is not what makes it wrong, rather it is simply wrong because it fails to consider another element of faith. This is the say that having faith does involve making assumption, so the illustration is not completely wrong. However, it is incomplete since it does not consider the important element of faith which is having unconditional commitment or unconditional conviction that something is true. To have this unconditional commitment and conviction means to believe in something no matter what, it is to assume that something is true without evidence even if it is contrary to all considered judgment and evidence. When this element is taken into consideration, it becomes apparent that there is a difference between merely believing (or assuming) something and having an unconditional commitment that what you believe must be true no matter what our all-considered judgment tells us.

Merely believing in something can be conditional, you can believe in X but eventually give up believing in X. You can concede that believing in X was wrong, given the all-considered-evidence. You can concede that at one time you did believe in X, but right now you no longer believe in X. Many times believing in something can be used as a "working-hypothesis", which you believe in but you use it to see if it best explains the environment around you or solves problems more efficiently. However, when it comes to the point when it stops being a plausible explanation or an efficient problem-solving tool, then you would have to either adjust it or replace it with something else. This is pretty acceptable, but when it comes to faith it seems to be the opposite: you can never abandon your beliefs even if the evidence says otherwise. Suppose that you are in a situation where you have to make a quick decision to save everybody, but you have insufficient information to base your decision on. You do not know which decision is the most well-informed kind, but you do not have the time to consider which decisions are best supported because people will die very soon. In such a situation, some people argue that you must make a "leap of faith". However, the problem with this is obvious, considering what I said earlier. There is a huge difference between merely believing that your decision was a wise one and having an unconditional commitment that it is the wise decision. The situation does not necessarily call for unconditional commitment to a quick-decision, it simply calls for a more efficient approach which is quickly deciding something based on knee-jerk intuitions. Suppose that you did make a quick decision, but everybody is killed. In such a case, you will admit that your decision was not a very good one, you will admit that what you believe to be a good decision was actually wrong. However, with faith it seems like in spite of contrary evidence (deaths of people), you will still believe that you made the right decision.

But what about Christians who stopped believing in the inerrancy of the bible and believe in evolution? I think the scope of unconditional commitment is different for every Christian, some Christians have the scope of unconditional commitment that is as wide as believing in the infallibility of the bible down to every statement and every doctrine of certain denomination. Others will have their scope limited to the basic fundamental beliefs such as resurrection, holy trinity, atonement, and divine inspiration, while all other beliefs are merely provisional beliefs that can change over-time such as creationism or historical accuracy of the bible. However, I think any kind of unconditional commitment is fundamentally wrong. I think all our commitments in regards to belief ought to be conditional on evidence.

Someone might ask me if my commitment to evidence is unconditional, my response would be that it is conditional. However, even if it were conditional, it does not follow that it is a weak belief. We can have conditional commitment to strong beliefs, but these conditional commitments presuppose a falliblism of beliefs; any belief is susceptible to be wrong. However, I think the problem with such kind of question is that it conflates justification with beliefs: not all beliefs are justification, such as evidence. Evidences are not beliefs, since beliefs are states of mind while evidences are independent of our minds (although they are interpreted by our minds). We depend on something on external reality, namely evidence, to justify our beliefs about reality; sometimes it agrees with it (to a degree), other times it does not.

However, I have not said exactly why I think faith is problematic. My ultimate problem with faith as unconditional commitment is that it eventually amounts to dogmatism. Many believers would disagree with me here, but I suspect that they disagree with me because when they think of dogmatism they have a certain picture in their mind such as extremism and fanaticism. However, this is not what I am saying. I am not saying that faith amounts to fanaticism, I said it amounts to dogmatism. Fanaticism is when unconditional commitment becomes dysfunctional and abusive to individuals and society; extremism is unconditional commitment to beliefs that can lead people to harm others. However, it is possible to be dogmatic without being a fanatic or an extremist (while all fanatics/extremists are dogmatic, not all people who are dogmatic are fanatics/extremists). You can unconditionally believe that there is a God without becoming a suicide bomber, but this unconditional commitment is still dogmatism. Dogmatism is not always harmful or immoral, but it is irrational. It is irrational because you are giving beliefs the kind of commitment that is disproportionate to what it actually deserves; all beliefs are susceptible to be false (this is what I call falliblism, which is not the same as skepticism), so none of the beliefs deserve unconditional commitment but rather conditional commitment. However, it comes with degrees; some beliefs are stronger than others because they are better supported, so we should have more commitment to those beliefs until it is shown that they are false (or unlikely). 

To be dogmatic is simply unwilling to consider that your beliefs are false or untenable when there are reasons to think so. It is possible that we cannot know that your beliefs are false, but it is still untenable; it is not very well supported to the point that it does not deserve unconditional commitment. You should make unconditional commitment to things that we infallibly know to be true, but this almost never happens. We can almost never infallibly know something to be true. However, when your belief lacks support you shouldn't have unconditional commitment to that belief, you should simply refrain from making any kind of commitment to it.

When faith is out of the picture, the belief in the existence of God deserves conditional commitment (or no commitment at all). This means that at some point, we may have to abandon the belief in the existence of God when there are contrary evidence. However, it appears that most believers would not accept this at all: to them, there must be a God regardless of the evidence. They even go as far to say that science cannot tell us whether or not God exists. Nonetheless, I do not need to argue that science can disprove the existence of God (although I think science can show that it is unlikely), what I have to point out is that once faith is out of the picture the belief in God loses it's religious allure: the belief in God is simply just a belief like any other beliefs, but we are not required to have any commitments to believe in it because we do not have any evidence for it. Without faith, Christianity would appear incomplete and "half-assed".

Why I am not a Christian

Ever since my deconversion several years ago, I always wanted to find a way to articulate my reasons for abandoning my former faith. I have articulated it in many ways and I realize this is going to be an ongoing process until at some point. I will enumerate reasons why I am not a Christian.

1. Faith- Faith is the essential ingredient in being a Christian as much as any other monotheistic religions (and non-monotheistic religions). What makes Christianity stand out from other religions is that it emphasizes so much on beliefs, while other religions emphasize more on rituals, cultures, etc. While it is possible to be an observing Jew without traditional beliefs, this is very rare in Christianity; it is often frown upon. Faith, for Christianity, is absolute and unconditional commitment to core beliefs of Christianity (known as Articles of Faith). However, this is very different from merely making assumptions. Many Christians use the fallacious argument that "we all have faith in something", pointing out that we make assumptions that we do not support with evidence. While these Christians may be unto something, the problem with their argument is that making assumptions (or merely having them) is very different from having unconditional commitment to beliefs. When we make assumptions, we can see these assumptions as "working-hypothesis", we use them as useful instruments to solve problems and understand the world. So, for example, if I try to solve the problem I have to make assumptions on what could work. However, I can test this assumption by solving the problem according to that assumption. If it turns out that the assumption is wrong, I discard it to find a better assumption. The thing is that we do not throw the baby out with the bath water, there are parts of our former assumptions that are right. We keep those parts and add them into new assumptions, and we repeat this process until we solve a problem. We do this with other things besides solving problems, such as understanding the world. Basically, we do trials and errors with our assumptions until we can come up with one that is basically right (or relatively right). What this means is that we are able to treat our assumptions as fallible, we can change them if we see that they are wrong; this is how our brains work so we can avoid making future mistakes. However, this potential quality of assumption is lacking when it comes to faith. Merely making assumptions is open to revision and even abandonment, but faith demands unconditional commitment to the assumption. For some Christians, it does not matter what the evidence or arguments say; your unconditional commitment to the assumption matters more than evidence and arguments. My problem with this is that it amounts to Dogmatism, which is the attitude in which you refuse to revise or change your beliefs since you assume that it is absolutely true even though evidence/reason says otherwise. A lot of Christians like to sugar coat this with fancy or pretty words like "faith" or "hope", but ultimately it's just plain old dogmatism. However, when people think about dogmatism they imagine aggressive, stubborn, and stringent pronouncement of their belief, but this is not entirely true. You can have complacent dogmatism as opposed to aggressive dogmatism; a Christian can be complacently dogmatic in so far as he is simply satisfied with his commitments that he does not feel the need to doubt it; aggressive dogmatist is not merely satisfied but aggressive about his commitments to the point of pushing it unto people. Both forms are still dogmatic, while the latter is more harmful, both approaches are still dogmatic. For me faith is just a non-starter because the kind of attitude has a tendency to produce sloppy thinking which comes along with logical fallacies and bad arguments. I said "tendency" since there are some intelligent Christians who come up with clever and methodical arguments absent of logical fallacies, but what I find is that these Christians are in the minority. I also see that other religions have a similar unconditional commitment except it's commitment  to different beliefs. How can you tell which beliefs are true? unconditional commitments alone does not inform us which one is true, it only informs us which ones we are committed to. I simply have no use for faith, it's very useless in informing us anything about reality. Having commitments  are important, but to demand that they should be unconditional is usually unreasonable since beliefs can be fallible. This does not mean we should not be committed to beliefs, we should but when there is reason to suspect that there is something wrong with the beliefs we should re-evaluate our commitments. Since I reject faith, it follows that I cannot be a Christian. I could be a deist, but even then I find the existence of God dubious. 
2. Existence of God is dubious- When faith is taken out of the equation, the belief in the existence of God looks dubious. Faith creates a sensational feeling of certainty that often makes the belief in the existence of God self-evident and difficult to doubt, but this is merely a sensational feeling of certainty. It is only about our subjective attitudes about our beliefs, but not objective indicators about reality. It tells more about ourselves than reality out there. Once we take off our "faith-goggles", we see the belief in the existence of God for what it is: dubious. I'm not saying it is false, I consider myself to be an agnostic atheist, meaning that I do not know for certain whether or not God exists but I lack the belief since I think it is implausible (but not impossible). So why does the existence of God look dubious? It looks dubious because once we have a better (though not complete) understanding of the universe, it becomes apparent that a lot of the phenomena or events in Nature are explained in the context of Nature from varying layers. We have causal mechanisms, laws of Nature, natural causes, and natural patterns to explain many things in reality. This gets to the point that the explanatory role of God becomes unclear: in what sense does God explain reality? One could point out that God could start the beginning of the universe, but it is unclear if the universe ever did have a beginning. One of the common misconception of big-bang is that it talks about the beginning of the universe, this is not true. Big Bang talks about the beginning of the expansion of the universe. When scientists extrapolate the expansion to singularity, it's unclear what it exactly looks like because it is beyond the observable universe. We are simply unsure, for all we know perhaps the universe always existed! That is as much of a good hypothesis as existence of God, but I think the former is slightly more plausible given the Laws of Conservation. However, I am not physicist, so I'll stop there, but my other point is that if God exists as a supra-cosmic being who interferes with natural/human affairs, we should find events that cannot be explained in the context of Nature alone but explained by divine providence. We haven't found such events, which makes the claim of the existence of God suspect to doubt. Many believers say you cannot prove the negative, I disagree. As long as you use Modus Tollens in which X implies Y but not Y, therefore not X, then you can prove the negative. Just point out that if God exists, then the universe should have events that is only best explained by divine providence, but since you cannot find such an event, then there probably is no God. This all depends on what events occur and how people interpret them. The problem is that people tend to misinterpret events as miracles, when in fact there could be natural causes (more often than not). This makes me doubtful of the existence of God, but I do not reject it out-right. After all, it is possible that God interferes less than how believers anticipated. It is possible that God exists but chose to hide himself or the events he cause. However, such reasoning is ad hoc at best, it creates an extra-hypothesis for the sole purpose of avoiding falsification, but fails to be supported by independent evidence. Pseudoscience tend to use a lot of ad hoc reasoning, which makes their belief suspect to doubt; same applies to theism. What makes the existence of God dubious is that alot of the evidence and arguments used to support the existence of God are not too strong. There are some clever ones, I'll  grant that, but that doesn't make them true. A good example is the fine-tune argument which is probably the more compelling arguments, but it seems to have it's problem. If you think carefully, the fine-tune argument can easily collapse into another problem of evil. If God fine-tuned the universe to create life, but parasites, predators, diseases, old age is part of life, then God fine-tuned the universe to permit suffering of life. But how can an all-powerful, all-knowing, and benevolent God do such a thing? If God is all-knowing, he should know the consequences of fine tuning the universe in the certain way; if God is all-powerful, he could have fine-tuned it in such a way that minimizes or eliminates suffering. But so far from observation there is so much suffering in life for millions of years even until the present day. This makes the fine-tune argument look bad! Also, even if the probability of life is so low in the universe since the value of cosmological constants are extremely sensitive that only certain values is conducive to life, how does this prove the existence of God? all we have is a data that needs explanation, God is just one of them but there are other alternative ones. What makes God a better explanation? If it's evidence, what can we appeal to besides the data that needs explaining? It's arguments like these that makes me doubt the existence of God, it makes me think that so far it's implausible (but not impossible). I'll grant that at least it could be the case that God exist, but I will not grant the case that it is highly reasonable or probable.
3. Bad Science and Anti-Intellectualism: This pertains mostly to conservative evangelical Christians and other conservative varieties of Christianity (i.e. Southern Baptism, Seventh Day Adventist, Pentacostal, Charismatic). Many times these Christians insist that they are not against science, they are only against evolution and big bang. However, I must disagree: by cherry-picking which part of science is true or false goes against the very spirit of science. Science is about using variety of empirical methodologies to test models and hypothesis in order to find evidence FOR and AGAINST the model; you do not cherry-pick evidence. Once the hypothesis is overwhelmingly supported, the consensus of scientists reflect likewise. This is why looking at the consensus among scientist is more reliable than looking at consensus among politicians; unlike scientists, politicians lack empirical methodology. This is why going against the scientific consensus IS going against science, you are not only going against the consensus but also what the consensus reflect: overwhelming evidence. You can doubt that such consensus is based on overwhelming evidence, but don't take my word for it: go read those peer-review articles. This also happens when it comes biblical scholarship; many biblical scholars use different methods to approach the bible, but they usually come to conclusions that goes against the beliefs of many conservative Christians. What happens is that they denounce the scholar's conclusions, and insist that bible is still the "Word of God" (whatever this means). Christianity has a long tradition of anti-intellectualism. Not all Christians are anti-intellectuals, there are intellectual who are Christians (i.e. Cornell West), but these kinds of Christians are not very common. Part of the reason is because many Christians distrust rationality, this is because rationality can come to conclusion that conflict with Christian beliefs. Remember earlier that I said Christianity requires unconditional commitment, well if anything conflict with it then it has to be rejected even if it is supported by overwhelming evidence or good arguments. This is why I find it difficult to accept Christianity, because majority of Christians fall under this description. I know there are Christians who are more liberal and "modern", but this is one of the reasons why I lost respect for Christianity.
4. Too much trust in personal experience- Christians tend to emphasize a lot on testimony both in the bible and outside the bible. Testimonies are bunk, since they are essentially just anecodtal evidence. In Natural sciences anecdotal evidences are highly unreliable. This is because anecdotal evidences are based on eye-witness accounts, which is problematic. It is problematic because a lot of studies in psychology shows that our personal experience is subjected to confabulation, cognitive biases, and fallible memories. It turns out that our memories are not very reliable since it does not act like photographic pictures but rather reconstructing our past experience by filling in the gaps. Testimonies are not free from this kind of problem, it often involves recalling memories. Also, testimonies often beg the question: they are appealing to the very belief that they already believe in to interpret their personal experience. They'll tell you that they believe, if you ask why they'll point to their testimony. If you ask why their testimony is true, they'll point to their belief. If you ask why their belief is true, they'll point to the testimony. It's a vicious never-ending circle. While personal experiences are important, I think Christianity places too much emphasis on personal experiences as testimony.
5. Morality: Christians like to see themselves as paragons of morality (mostly the conservative ones). They either insist that their belief is the source of morality or that at the very least it makes people into better people. I find this difficult to accept given that majority of Christians endorse homophobia. I do not think homosexual sex is immoral, perhaps it is not pleasant to observe but that does not make it immoral. What makes something immoral is if it causes (1) suffering (or gratuitous pain) (2) debilitating agency or personhood. However, Christianity goes as far as to say that the bible is the source of morality, but I find this difficult to accept. I find it difficult to accept that subjugating woman is a moral thing to do in church and house. I find it difficult to accept that people who simply do not believe are sent to hell (or just burn out of existence). I find it difficult to believe that something innocuous as pre-martial sex is immoral (given that there is careful use of contraception which minimizes risks, but not eliminate it). I think that most of the moral claims that Christians are committed to are mostly cultural taboos or mores than real objective moral truths. I do agree that killing, stealing, and lying is wrong, but the bible is very vague about these things. My problem with Christianity is that their moral beliefs are just plainly wrong. I know that there are some Christians who are not against homomsexuality, pre-marital sex, and such. However, more often than not, I find them in the minority...which tells me more about Christianity. 

Nature

I remind myself that I am part of Nature, which means that I am inseparable from it. I do not have this "ego" or "I" that grants me the privilege of isolation from the world. Consequently, I am a being-in-space-time bounded by the interdependent causes/conditions (whether determinate or indeterminate) that circumscribes  my personal identity to the point that it constitutes it. To try to separate myself from Nature would be like pulling mass out of matter, both are inseparable as I am inseparable from Nature. This reminds me that since impermanence or change is ubiquitous in Nature as much as it is essential to Nature, my existence would be an ephemeral and contingent feature of Nature. I am a wave of the vast ocean, a dune on the surface of changing sands. My existence would be a moment from the point of view of eternity.