Christians Have No Ultimate Standard of Morality!

I just don't see where a Christian ethic based in a divine commander has any fewer problems than a Godless ethic, especially when Christians have understood so many different ways of obeying those historically conditioned commands down through the centuries. It just looks like a human enterprise to me, which has similar serious problems.

What we know is that down through the ages we have all come to better understandings about how to get along in our world. Not that there are still backward people who want to blow up abortion clinics and become suicide bombers, only that civilized people are, on the whole, better people than those of the past. There have been certain ethical improvements over the years which makes Hitler look better when compared to Genghis Khan; our problems with regard to racism seem "slight" by comparison to the evils of slavery in the South (and sanctioned from the Bible); and we no longer lynch people without a trial (when convicted, our death penalty is that we simply put them to sleep); the problem of equal pay for equal work for women is small when compared to the day when women couldn't vote and were regarded as chattel. With each successive improvement Christians began reading the Bible in light of these social developments, but for the most part they were against every one of them. Present day Christians stand on the shoulders of earlier Christians who interpreted the Bible in inhumane ways, and yet they claim they wouldn't have done so. That's just not probable.

So where does that leave us? In the same boat. Trying to get along with one another, to live decent and happy lives with one another the best we can. The problem is that Christians (and other religions of the book) believe the way we should live our lives is commanded and sanctioned in the Bible. That's the only difference. I think such a claim is a farce, given the history of the church. Just because Christian ethics have evolved in the same direction as civilized society has traveled doesn't mean the Christian can claim her ethic is better. I think a strong case can be made that the way society has traveled in turn changed how the church interpreted Biblical ethics, not vice versa.

Christians repeatedly argue that as atheists we have no reason not to murder others, or create mayhem. They claim we don’t have an ultimate standard for knowing right from wrong, or for abolishing such things as slavery.

But Christians are not off the hook here. Christian, as a believer in God, upon what basis does your God make the ethical and moral judgments he's made? On what basis does he apparently seem to consider Hitler and Genghis Khan in the wrong?

The philosophical Euthypro dilemma applies wherever the buck stops, with us, or with your God. That's why Erik J. Wielenberg talks about eternal Platonic values, in his book Value and Virtue in a Godless Universe. You must assume some eternal standard that exists apart from God if you wish to continue calling God "good." For if the word "good" means anything at all when applied to God, it means he's conforming to some standards of goodness. If not, then God is, well, God. He can command anything and call it "good" simply because he commands it.

So, we're in the same boat. Christians just fail to see it. It's ignorance on their part to say otherwise. Some things are just obvious, and that's all one can say about them.

Again, the bottom line is that Christians cannot say God is "good" without comparing him to a standard that is outside of himself, otherwise all they can say is that God is, well, God, and that's it. The characteristic of goodness is meaningless to God. God does what he does and calls it "good," no matter what he does. Anyone, including God, can call his actions and commands "good," if he defines the word good.

For all you know God has done evil in the past, or presently does evil, or will do evil in the future and simply call what he does "good." At that point we have no clue as the precise definition of the term as ascribed to God except to see how he behaves (and when we look at this world it doesn't look like God is good all). The fact that Christians believe God "doesn't lie" because he says so, doesn't mean he cannot lie, since whatever he does is by definition "good." If he lies about not lying and calls it "good," there is nothing we can say against his actions because he defines the word. Christians have no basis for believing what he says...none. God is, well, God, and that's it.

And to think Christians complain because as an atheist I don't have an “ultimate” standard for morality. Christians have no ultimate standard of morality too! No one does, not even your God.

So don't go pontificating to me anymore about how atheists have no reason to commit murder and mayhem if you cannot exonerate your God from doing likewise. If Christians want to maintain that God can do whatever he wants to us, then it merely means he's more powerful than any of us. It doesn't mean that what he does is truly good.

There is no ultimate anything, for anyone. Christians only claim the moral high ground. But claiming something doesn't make it true. They haven't been fully consistent or forthright about what it means to say God is the ultimate standard for goodness. It doesn't make any rational sense, the only sense God purportedly created in us, which is all we have to assess the claim that he is the ultimate standard of goodness.

Either none of us do, or all of us do (located in eternal metaphysical moral truths)! It's that simple. Sink or swim, that's our choice.

Moral Knowledge vs. Christianity

If someone thinks that they can come to know moral truths through reflection on what they have good reason to believe, they should not be a Christian. Ironically, I think that by holding to Christianity, Christians have to suppress moral knowledge (in contrast to Romans 1:22-23). Authors like Sam Harris and John Loftus are rightly concerned when they see Christians excusing acts that are clearly wrong.

There may be good arguments that an objective morality and knowledge requires some supernatural causality. If there is a being that is identifiable with the source of objective morality and knowledge, a reasonable person should conclude that the being is not Jesus or the God of the Old Testament. (For convenience, I will refer to this being as God throughout the remainder of the post.) Further, this gives one reason to think the resurrection did not happen.

Presume that we had knowledge that a resurrection occurred. By resurrection, I mean that not only that a person who was dead has come back to life, but they had a body that would not incur disease or injury, and it exhibited supernatural powers. If that really did occur, I think it would be reasonable to take the teaching of that individual seriously. I can see how one would think that only God would do this, so a resurrection would constitute endorsement by God.

This view is echoed in Romans 1:3-4 which states "regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord."

It is also echoed in Acts 2:22-24 where it says "Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him."

In other words the premise:

• Premise 1. If Jesus endorsed or attributed to God any writings that God would repudiate, then God wouldn’t have raised him from the dead.

seems quite reasonable to me if one grants theistic assumptions. I have actually talked to an atheist who disputes this premise, but I don’t know how a Christian could dispute the premise while remaining orthodox.

It is also very clear to me that Jesus endorsed the Old Testament as God’s word. He quoted from Exodus and said "have you not read what God said to you" in Matthew 22:30-32 (also Mark 12:26-27). In those passages, he was arguing a theological point about the resurrection based upon the tense of the verb in the Old Testament. His argument presumes both that the work is authoritive and that there is a very high degree of accuracy in the record.

In Matthew 12:2-3 Jesus argued for the correctness of the actions of his disciples by appealing to 1 Samuel 21. In John 10:34-36, Jesus quoted Psalm 82:6 and called it scripture.

The most significant endorsement was Matthew 5:17-20 (also Luke 16:16-17)
"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."

If these passages don’t constitute a wholehearted endorsement, I don’t know what would. It seems that in order to deny this premise, you would have to admit either a) the Gospel writers did not accurately convey what Jesus said or intended, or b) God doesn’t mind if faulty guidance is attributed to his name.

The first denial seems unacceptable for most Christians because the implies 1) The gospels are known to be unreliable, in which case we would have little reason to trust them when they report the resurrection and 2) we really have no idea what Jesus really said and was trying to convey.

Denying that God cares about misrepresenting his word would lead me to think that we shouldn’t believe something just because God says it. This denial would also be difficult to reconcile with Deuteronomy 13:1-6. If the Gospels can be taken as somewhat historically reliable, then it seems reasonable to accept Premise 2a.

• Premise 2a. Jesus endorsed the entire Law and Prophets as God’s word.

I think that an ultimate source of morality and knowledge would repudiate any error attributed to his guidance. Thus I think that any error found in the Old Testament makes belief in the resurrection unreasonable. However, it is not necessary to go that far. Even if one doesn’t think that inerrancy itself invalidates the resurrection, a known serious moral error in the Old Testament would constitute a passage that a source of the moral law would repudiate.

It isn’t too hard to find clear moral mistakes in the Old Testament. If we know anything about morality we know that killing infants because of what their long dead ancestors did is wrong. But that is exactly the rational attributed to God by Samuel in 1 Samuel 15:2-3. There may be good reasons for killing infants and nursing children and women, but not the reason attributed to God here. Even the Old Testament law acknowledges this is a bad reason in Deuteronomy 24:16.

The slavery discussion is relevant here. Who would make the argument that slaves should be treated differently based upon their race? Apparently anyone who thinks that Leviticus 25:44-46 should serve as guidance. Here children of Jewish slaves are to be freed, but not children of slaves of other races. Who thinks that this is something the ultimate source of morality would claim as his idea?

If you believe there is such a thing as moral knowledge, it seems clear that:

• Premise 2b. The Law and Prophets contain passages that God would repudiate.

In order to deny this premise, you have to suppress what you know about morality. (I summarized a lecture about “How we know what we know” here.) If we have moral knowledge we can know that treating slaves on the basis of race is wrong.

Another option is to deny that we have moral knowledge, but that is in conflict with Roman 1 as well as not addressing the argument about how we know what we know.

The argument against the resurrection of Jesus is summarized below.

• Premise 1. If Jesus endorsed or attributed to God any writings that God would repudiate, then God wouldn’t have raised him from the dead.
• Premise 2a. Jesus endorsed the entire Law and Prophets as God’s word.
• Premise 2b. The Law and Prophets contain passages that God would repudiate.
• Conclusion: God would not have raised Jesus from the dead.

I think a Christian would most likely deny premise 2b in this argument. But if I can’t know that kill infants for the crimes committed by their ancestors is wrong, I don’t see how it is possible to have any moral knowledge. A Christian certainly can’t condemn an adherent of any other faith immoral teachings. It seems to me that in order to affirm Christianity, one has to deny what they know about morality. If you are a Christian, I seriously hope you reconsider your belief. Is the evidence for the resurrection stronger than the evidence against the resurrection given here? I concluded that the argument presented here was sufficient to overcome the evidence presented for the resurrection. Further study continues to confirm this belief.

Christianity Miserably Fails The Outsider Test!

Here’s another explanation of the Outsider Test I have developed, which is based upon some hard sociological facts. People overwhelmingly adopt the religious faith of the culture they were raised in. Therefore, my challenge to believers everywhere is to test their faith just like they do the ones they reject, test your own faith as if you were an outsider. Investigate it with a healthy measure of skepticism. Agnosticism is the default position given the outsider test, and I further argue that agnosticism leads to atheism. For in rejecting the religion one was brought up with, many people become agnostics, and/or simply reject religion as a whole. Here's why: A believer in one specific religion has already rejected all other religions, so when he rejects the one he was brought up with he becomes an agnostic or atheist many times, like me.

Let me argue for this further:

You either admit the basis for the outsider test, or you don’t. If you do then you should treat your faith as if you were an outsider. Test your beliefs with a healthy measure of skepticism.

Let’s say you take the test. If you do then you ought to be an agnostic because no faith can survive that test in my opinion, although it should if there is a God who wants us to believe in his specific religion. If God exists and he doesn’t care which religion we accept, then that God might survive the outsider test, but we would end up believing in a nebulous God out there with no definable characteristics, perhaps a Deist God, the god of the philosophers. This God is far and away from any full blown Christianity or any specific religion though.

Let’s say you don’t think you should take the outsider test. At that point I can ask you why you apply a double standard here. Why do you treat your own specific faith differently than you do others? That’s a double standard. Why the double standard?

As I have said, the overwhelming reason why someone becomes an insider to a particular religious faith in the first place is because of when and where he or she was born. Start there for a minute. Do you deny this? Yes or no? Surely you cannot dispute that. The adherents of these faiths are just as intelligent as other people around the world too, and you could no more convince many of them they are wrong than they could convince many Christians. Even with the meager missionary efforts on both sides of the fence, a major factor in why people change is still because of the influence of a personal relationship with someone (a missionary?) they trust.

You might turn my own argument against me by claiming that I myself cannot think outside my own upbringing if what we believe is based to an overwhelming degree on when and where we are born, but that simply does not follow. It would only follow if I said it’s impossible to think outside one’s own upbringing, which I haven’t said.

I was once an insider to Christianity, having been brought up in a Christian culture, so I can argue that Christians should evaluate their faith as an outsider, since I have done so. You say that if I can do it then anyone can, but that too does not follow. I’m not so sure I did in fact do it. There were influences in my life that led me in the direction I am now going. I don't deny this. I am saying that to do so is the exception to the rule, and that you must explain the rule. The overwhelming numbers of people who examine their religious faith, perhaps myself included, follow the influences in their lives. No one knows for sure on such matters. Even so, just because there are some exceptions to the rule does not mean anyone can do it, if it can be done at all. And it does no good whatsoever to claim that because you did escape your upbringing that therefore you are right about what you believe, including me. I might be wrong.

I might be wrong that there is no God. He might exist. But I have put together a solid argument that a full blown Christianity is false, and as a former insider to the faith I had approached it with the presumption that it was correct, trying to fit the facts into my former Christian world-view. But even by approaching the Christian faith from an insider and with an insider’s perspective with the presumption of faith, it does not hold up under intellectual scrutiny, and I ask Christians to deal with the arguments I present here on this blog and in my book. I consider them to be solid, based upon what they themselves believe. To me it’s like believing in the inspiration of Homer to believe in the Bible.

Evangelical Christians must continually argue against all other non-evangelical brands of Christianity, for if any one of these brands are correct, they are wrong. I've said elsewhere, there are so many beliefs that evangelical Christians must believe in order for their faith to be true, that the more they believe the less likely it’s true. If they are wrong on just one of the following beliefs their faith is wrong. Here are a few of them: 1) They believe the Bible is the inspired and innerrant word of God (for the most part)as a collection of books which were continually edited until the time of canonization, and canonized by those believers who chose them out of the number of potential candidates because of their beliefs at the time. [Christians must continually defend the Bible from errors if they think inerrancy is dogma (Bart Ehrman stumbled over Mark 2 in which it was said that David did something when Abithar was the high priest, but II Sam. 21:1-6 tells us Ahimelech was the High priest at the time). Gleason Archer has a 450 plus page book defending these "Bible difficulties," but if one error is found in the Bible, inerrancy falls. What are the odds of that?] 2) Christians must believe there is a God with three persons (what's the likelihood of even one eternal God-person?) who never had a beginning and will never cease to exist (even though everything we experience has a beginning and an end). 3) Christians believe God is all-powerful and good (even though he shows no signs of helping while a child slowly burns to death). 4) Christians believe God did miracles in the ancient past (but we see no evidence he does so today, which is our only sure test for whether or not they happened in the past). 5) Christians believe that God substantiated his revelation in the Bible through miracles (and yet if he chose the historical past to reveal this message he chose a poor medium to do so, since practically anything can be rationally denied in history, even if it actually occurred). 6) Christians believe God became a man (although no Christian has yet ever made logical sense of this). 7) Christians believe Jesus atoned for our sins on a cross (even though there is no rationally coherent understanding of how this supposed God-man’s death does anything to eliminate sin). 8) Christians believe Jesus arose from the dead (even though the evidence is not there and what evidence we do have is based upon the superstitious claims in the past. Would YOU believe a report that someone was raised from the dead today? Wouldn't YOU demand to see for yourself? Doubting Thomas is not you. All we have is a report about what he saw, which I think is flawed). 9) Christians believe Jesus ascended into heaven (indicating an ancient three-tired universe which is rejected by modern science). 10)Christians believe Jesus is in heaven where the believers will join him (but does that mean the 2nd person of the Trinity is forever encapsulated in the body of the man Jesus, or was this body of Jesus discarded, or are there now two separate beings in heaven, the man Jesus and also the 2nd person of the Trinity? And what about free will in heaven for the believers? If they have free will and never sin then God didn't need to create this earthly existence with its pain and suffering and hell for the "many." He could just have created us in heaven in the first place. If there is the chance of rebellion in heaven then it could happen all over again, and no one is eternally safe). 11) Christians believe Jesus said he will return again “in this generation” from the sky heaven where “every eye will see” him (notice the three tired universe again, over a flat earth. Somany failed predictions of Jesus' return have caused Christians to adopt Preterism, since they cannot make sense of such a claim which never happened. Talk about scoffers who will arise in the last days...Christians are now the scoffers!). 12) Christians believe Jesus will judge all people of all lands (and yet those outside of Christ were simply born in the wrong place and the wrong time, as I argue with the basis for the Outsider Test).

Twelve is a good superstitious number multiplying the four corners of the earth by the three vertical planes of hell, earth and heaven, so I'll stop here. [Seven is a superstitious number too, by adding them rather than multiplying them].

None of this makes rational sense. None of this has any good evidence for it. This faith is false if tested from the outside, or even from the inside as I have done. The only reason Christians believe it is because they were influenced to believe it by people they trust, by their parents, and by their culture.

The Evangelical Christian faith fails the outsider test miserably (as well as other brands).

C. S. Lewis Resources, Pro and Con (compiled by Edward T. Babinski)

1. CHRISTIANS WHO PRAISE C. S. LEWIS'S WRITINGS

2. CHRISTIANS WHO CRITICIZE C. S. LEWIS'S PRESENTATION OF CHRISTIANITY

3. ADMIRING READERS OF C. S. LEWIS WHO LATER LEFT CHRISTIANITY

4. CRITIQUES OF C. S. LEWIS'S ARGUMENTS

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1. CHRISTIANS WHO PRAISE C. S. LEWIS'S WRITINGS
(Forgive the shortness of this list, there's nearly 1 & 1/2 million hits for "C. S. Lewis" on the web, and the vast majority of them are from people who praise his writings. So, I shall name a few fairly prominent representatives who have praised Lewis recently.)


Josh McDowell -- Author of Evidence That Demands a Verdict, apologist/evangelist for Campus Crusade


Rev. N.T. Wright -- Anglican Bishop of Durham, England, and author of scholarly and popular books, most recently, Simply Christian. Wright's address, “Simply Lewis,” was delivered at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in mid-­November, 2006, and besides praise, it contains a few paragraphs critical of some aspects of Lewis's thinking:
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=20-02-028-f

Dr. Francis Collins -- Head of The Human Genome Project, and author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
http://cslewis.org/francis_collins.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/voices/collins.html


Tom Tarrants -- Raised Southern Baptist, became KKK terrorist, read the Bible in prison and converted to Christianity, now head of the C. S. Lewis Institute in Washington, D.C.
http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=23764


~~~~~~~~~~~


2. CHRISTIANS WHO CRITICIZE C. S. LEWIS'S PRESENTATION OF CHRISTIANITY


Biblical Discernment Ministry critique of C. S. Lewis's teachings and beliefs
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/lewis/general.htm

C. S. Lewis-Who He Was & What He Wrote by Good Things For Your Family, including links to Questions and Answers From Readers: Lewis Bashing? C.S. Lewis Errata?
http://www.keepersofthefaith.com/BookReviews/BookReviewDisplay.asp?key=4

The Heterodoxy of C. S. Lewis
http://www.puritanboard.com/archive/index.php/t-10805.html

Did C. S. Lewis Go to Heaven? by John W. Robbins
http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=103

C.S. Lewis Discussion Board: Lewis didn't go to heaven...
http://www.cslewis.com/discussion/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=002008

Beware of C. S. Lewis by Way of Life Literature’s Fundamental Baptist Information Service
http://www.wayoflife.org/fbns/bewareof-cslewis.html

C. S. Lewis: The Devil's Wisest Fool by Blessed Quietness Journal
http://www.blessedquietness.com/journal/homemake/cslewis.htm

C. S. Lewis: An Author to Avoid by "Take Heed" Ministries
http://www.takeheed.net/Lewisavoid.htm


~~~~~~~~~~~~


3. ADMIRING READERS OF C. S. LEWIS WHO LATER LEFT CHRISTIANITY


"J Milton" [a pseudonym], and his brief testimony, "Paradise Lost" at http://www.exchristian.net -- posted Thursday, October 26, 2006 -- "I... came to the christian faith via more of an intellectual, mystical path... through the writings of John Milton, Edmund Spenser, C.S. Lewis, and the spiritualist and mystic Renaissance man known as William Blake... If you haven't read Paradise Lost, I highly encourage you to do so. It truly is wonderful... as is the Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser as well as Lewis' Narnia series... they all create mythological worlds on top of the bible, and in my mind, make it all come to life... I still believe in the ethereal plane, sans any man-applied dogma. John Milton will always mean something to me and Paradise Lost will always have a place in my heart... [But I am a] freethinker... exchristian."
http://exchristian.net/testimonies/2006/10/paradise-lost.html


Valerie Tarico -- Psychologist, author, graduate of Wheaton College, her favorite Christian author during her Evangelical years was C. S. Lewis (Wheaton College features one of the most impressive collections of "Lewisiana" in the world). Chapters of her book about leaving the fold were published on ex-Christian.net:
http://exchristian.net/exchristian/2006/06/chapter-1-leaving-home.html
Her blog: http://awaypoint.spaces.msn.com/
Chapters of her book at her blog:
http://awaypoint.spaces.msn.com/blog/cns!C0984D45E2D3590C!206.entry
http://awaypoint.spaces.msn.com/blog/cns!C0984D45E2D3590C!236.entry
http://exchristian.net/testimonies/2006/10/paradise-lost.html


Edward T. Babinski -- If It Wasn't For Agnosticism I Wouldn't Know What to Believe, a chapter in Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/leaving_the_fold/babinski_agnosticism.html


Ken Daniels -- From Missionary Bible Translator to Agnostic (2003)
Mentions his earnest love of Lewis's writings, and how they saved him from apostacizing even earlier than he eventually did. He also mentions having read my own book, Leaving the Fold.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/testimonials/daniels.html


John Stephen Ku -- Philosophy PhD student, Started Fall 2002, U of Mich. -- C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion: A Memoir
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jsku/memoir2.html


Kendall Hobbs -- Why I Am No Longer a Christian (2003)
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/testimonials/hobbs.html


Dr. Robert M. Price -- Former campus minister, now a theologian with two Ph.Ds. and an author, wrote, "...C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters considerably advanced my progress in piety"
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/beyond_born_again/intro.html


A cold and broken alleluia: How did a former minister become an atheist?
http://www.decrepitoldfool.com/index.php/weblog/comments/a_cold_and_broken_alleluia/


Chris Hallquist -- College student. Read The Screwtape Letters a month before becoming an atheist, see his blog entry, "How I Became an Atheist" [Oddly enough, Chris seems to have read the same passage in The Screwtape Letters that the ex-minister did in the testimony directly above this one, and that passage influenced both of them to become atheists.]
http://uncrediblehallq.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-i-became-atheist.html


Posted by Hawk on August 17, 1999 at 18:23:55:
"I [was raised Christian, but] shrugged off Christianity around age 16 after a teacher told me that Moses created monotheism. David Koresh was running around claiming to be divine about the same time, so I figured Jesus was some nut like Koresh. I got real into philosophy in general, and I am an engineering student, so I have taken plenty of science classes, but I never got into creationism or philosophy of religion. I was never a serious christian as a kid, so when I read Pascal's "Thoughts," I decided to give church a try. Well I was 19 1/2, and the places here on campus were nothing like any church I had ever been to. I read C.S. Lewis, William Lane Craig, Schaeffer, Geisler, Moreland and all those guys. I became converted. Unfortunately, I read up on atheistic arguments and evolution, for the purpose of crushing the atheists on this board with my arguments. I lost faith finally a few months ago. I guess I am sort of a don't know don't care agnostic right now, who just enjoys studying religion. My religious time only lasted about 3 years."
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~slocks/iidiscussion_conversions/40306.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


4. CRITIQUES OF C. S. LEWIS'S ARGUMENTS


Philosopher John Beversluis composed in 1985 what has become the leading (and perhaps only) book-length critique of the apologetics arguments of C. S. Lewis, a book that also includes Lewis's replies to letters Beversluis wrote him. The book is titled, C. S. LEWIS AND THE SEARCH FOR RATIONAL RELIGION, and the revised and updated edition is due to appear July 2007 -- In it Beversluis critically yet sympathetically examines Lewis's "case for Christianity," including Lewis's "argument from desire" -- the "inconsolable longing" that he interpreted as a pointer to a higher reality; his moral argument for the existence of a Power behind the moral law; his contention that reason cannot be adequately explained in naturalistic terms; and his solution to the Problem of Evil. In addition, Beversluis considers issues in the philosophy of religion that developed late in Lewis's life. He concludes with a discussion of Lewis's crisis of faith after the death of his wife. Finally, in this second edition, Beversluis replies to critics of the first edition. {250pp, July 2007; Prometheus Books }


Joe Edward Barnhard (philosophy professor, author and a former Christian whose testimony appears in Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists), has an article online titled, "The Relativity of Biblical Ethics" that includes quotations from a few of C. S. Lewis's letters to John Beversluis.
http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/bibethics.htm#BIBETH
[at the site above, scoll down the page till you get to Barnhard's article]


Francis Collins, the theistic evolutionist author of books about God and science, and who heads the Human Genome project, employs C. S. Lewis's argument concerning the miracle of morality. Collins's Lewisian argument is critiqued here:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/10/francis_collins_2.html#comments


"C.S. Lewis, Instinct, and the Moral Law" -- Discusses an argument by C.S. Lewis that aimed to show that we must believe in God because nothing else could explain the high levels of intersubjective agreement on moral issues we(apparently) observe.
http://www.hells-handmaiden.com/?p=1207
Source: PHILOSOPHY CARNIVAL #33
http://philosophycarnival.blogspot.com/


N. F. Gier -- author of God, Reason, and the Evangelicals (University Press of America, 1987), chapter 10, "Theological Ethics"
http://www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/theoethics.htm


Dr. Robert M. Price on C. S. Lewis's arguments -- Google Robert Price (or Robert M. Price) and C. S. Lewis together to find where Price mentions and critiques statements by C. S. Lewis for instance, Lewis's misunderstanding of Hume is mentioned in Price's article, "Glenn Miller on Miracles"
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/skepticism/price_miller.html


Jack D. Lenzo "The Jackal" (Murrieta, CA USA), reviewing The Born Again Skeptic's Guide To The Bible by Ruth Hurmence Green (raised Methodist): "I've read much of CS Lewis and considered him the 'thinking man's' proponent to Christianity. After reading 'The Book of Ruth (Hurmence),' I feel logically duped by Lewis' Mere Christianity. Ruth sets it straight using the Bible itself. A divinely inspired book should not have to use subtle logic employed by Lewis. I wonder what he would say to Ruth's clear, dead on approach that he hasn't said about Freud? Hmmm..."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1877733016/104-9910193-3787145?v=glance&n=283155


Edward T. Babinski on C. S. Lewis's views:

The Uniqueness of the Christian Experience -- A lengthy article that mentions C. S. Lewis numerous times (do a page search for his name). Besides a separate section devoted solely to discussing Lewis, other parts of this article compare C. S. Lewis's tolerant attitude and beliefs with those of the Christian apologist, Josh McDowell:
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/religion/christian_experience.html

C. S. Lewis’ “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism”
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/religion/cs_lewis_theology.html

C. S. Lewis, Jesus, Boswell's Johnson, and the Usefulness/Uselessness of Literary Criticism to Nail Down Historical Truth
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/religion/cs_lewis_jesus.html

C. S. Lewis's "Man or Rabbit?" and Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer"
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/religion/man_or_rabbit.html

C. S. Lewis and the Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/creationism/lewis_naturalism.html

The "Born Again" Dialogue In the Gospel of John
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/religion/gospel_john.html

The Golden Rule and Christian Apologetics
http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/religion/golden.html

Can We Or Anyone Think Objectively?

I like visiting Christian Cadre just to see the best that Christians can do against my arguments. In one comment I had said,

“I have very good grounds for saying that what religious faith a person accepts is due to when and where they were born. Surely you cannot disagree with that. If you were born and raised in Iran you'd be a Muslim, is but just one of a myriad of examples.”

BK responded:

“It goes without saying that if you are raised in a particular country where a particular religion is paramount, the odds are that you will be of that religion….The circumstances of where I'm born and raised make it more likely that I will hold one belief, but that is irrelevant to its truth. To merely point to the fact that some people want to test religious claims in different ways does not mean that we cannot, through reason, arrive at the best way to test the religious claims and then use reason and evidence to test those claims.”

I responded to BK:

“But we all test the claims of different religions from the outside, because we are outsiders, and we arrive at different conclusions precisely because we are outsiders. Why don't YOU test your beliefs as if YOU were an outsider? How does one become an insider in the first place? It's based to an overwhelming degree on when and where we are born, precisely because there are no mutually agreed upon tests to decide. Test them as an outsider. What do YOU find when you do?”

BK responded:

“Excuse me, but you don't know me. You assume that I haven't tested the claims as an outsider. And on what basis do you think I haven't tested the claims like an outsider? Because I found them to be satisfactory?”

Then I responded:

BK: “If you have, then congratulations, you are above the great majority of people. You must be really really intelligent to think outside of your upbringing. Kudos to you. You're smarter than I. You have bragging rights, ya know. Although, tell me how you came to embrace your faith and let's see. Spare me no details, okay? Who or what influenced you? Start with when you were a child.”

Then BK thought he hit pay dirt when he wrote:

“What I find amazing about this conversation is the inconsistency that you are showing. Now, think about it. Either we have the ability to see things objectively or we don't. If we do, then why are you acting so astounded that I may have done so? If we don't, then your atheism is merely the result of a combination of your DNA and experiences. After all, you haven't looked at the claims in any type of objective manner either, in which case you are merely spouting whatever nature and nurture programmed you to say which may not be what nature and nurture has programmed me to say. So, why are you here?”

Christians think this is a showstopper. But it doesn't solve anything. Here’s the problem. In an epistemology class I took with evangelical apologist great Dr. Stuart Hackett, at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, one of the books we read was William Pepperell Montague’s classic book, titled, The Ways of Knowing (Humanities Press, 1925). While it is dated it was (as is) a great introductory book on the various options in epistemology (excepting Reformed epistemology and Hackett’s own epistemology). In his long chapter on the method of Authoritarianism, for instance, Montague wrote: “We accept on trust nine-tenths of what we hold to be true. Man is a suggestible animal and tends to believe what is said to him unless he has some positive reason for doubting the honesty or competence of his informant….To hear is to believe.” (p. 39). Montague takes the reader through how one can evaluate authorities, for which see his book (probably in the libraries). But the fatal question for accepting something based upon authority is based on the fact that authorities conflict: “Why should I accept your authority rather than his?”

While Montague didn’t specify all of the things we believe based upon authority, or take a poll, it just rings true. I suspect we believe based upon authority upwards to 95% of that which we believe. The realm of things we do not base our beliefs on authority are those things we have personally experienced (or incorrigible beliefs) and those things which we have personally “done the math” or performed the experiment. Everything we believe about history, psychology, world geography, and so forth is based upon authority. I have never visited China, but I believe it exists and that the pictures I see of the Chinese people there, really live there. This is not to say there isn’t evidence for these beliefs, because there is indeed evidence. It’s just that I have never personally confirmed them.

So the fatal question when we consider that about 90%-95% of what we believe is based upon authority is this: why should I accept your authorities over mine? Authorities do not conflict about the fact that China exists, so I can be reassured it does. The more that authorities agree the more I can be assured of a particular belief. That's why we can believe what scientific authorities have to say to a much greater degree than any other discipline of learning.

Now let’s talk about religion in this same vein. Authorities do in fact conflict. Not only are there conflicting authorities between religions, there are conflicting authorities between adherents of each specific religion. What’s a person to do? It would take a lifetime to study all of these religions out in great detail, something the great scholar Huston Smith has probably done, and he concluded with philosophers John Hick and Terence Penelhum that this world is “religiously ambiguous.” He wrote, “People have never agreed on the world’s meaning and (it seems safe to say) never will.” [in Why Religion Matters, pp. 205-206].

Okay so far? Now what are the rest of us to do? Authorities like Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig and Norman L. Geisler disagree and argue instead that Christianity is objectively true for everyone. Some think Christianity is rationally superior.

With this as a background let me speak directly to BK’s last response. Can we think objectively about our world? Yes, I would like to think so. It depends upon what issues we are thinking about, though. If nearly all authorities agree, then we can have some degree of objectivity about this world. But I don’t believe we have any ultimate objectivity (defined as “certainty”) about this world. Oriental authorities disagree with our Occidental authorities. The East is the East, and the West is the West. This is no different than when I say I have objective morals but not any ultimately objective morals. For Christians who want to claim they need certainty before they can know anything or do anything good, I think they just must not know anything or do anything good, because attaining (apodictic) certainty probably isn’t possible (Descartes “I Doubt Therefore I Am,” is probably the only possible exception to this, and even that is subject to Russellian doubt).

Do we truly have metaphysical freedom? Yes, I would like to think so, but I don’t know for sure. Jean Paul Sartre thought so, as do some other atheists. If we have self-consciousness, then we have some degree of non-abstract limited freedom, I think.

The point is that most everything we believe is because of which authority we trust. So how do we decide between authorities when there isn’t a mutually agreed upon test to decide between options, and where there is the greatest disagreement between conflicting authorities? We do so based upon where and when we are born.

What does BK say in response? He wants to argue that we do have epistemological objectivity, and he thinks that if I don’t admit this, I have no case. But wait just a minute. At best, the only epistemological objectivity he can argue for is the remaining 5%-10% of his beliefs—beliefs which he has personally experienced, and even those beliefs can be subject to doubt (maybe he’s dreaming, hallucinating, under the influence of prescription medicine, anger, lust, or simply failed to remember what exactly happened)! He must admit that most of what he believes is based upon authority, which is in turn based upon when and where he was born. Should that grant him much comfort, knowing that in no other area of opinion do authorities disagree the most with one another than when it comes to religious beliefs? Not at all. For to say that objectivity is possible merely grants him that it’s possible, in the same exact way that by granting we can know what happened in the historical past is also possible. Even if there is a possibility that objective knowledge and objective history is possible, that is a far cry away from knowing that his particular views of both are probable when it comes to religious beliefs where there is the greatest level of disagreement between authorities.

Now, what can be said if there is no epistemological, or historical objectivity at all, or that there is no metaphysical freedom? What if everything we do and everything we believe is based entirely upon the forces of nature acting in conjunction with our genetic material? Then we can never say we know anything with any objectivity at all. We believe simply because of random chance events.

If this is the case, then it’s the case, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it, Christians like BK included. But there is nothing preventing us from acting as if we are free simply because we have the illusion that we are, and there is nothing wrong with thinking we have an objective reasons for believing something even if there is none. We can neither act nor think differently than we can act or think! There is likewise nothing wrong with condemning murder even if there is no objective morality. Why? Just to mention one reason, there might actually be an objective basis for these things in self-consciousness, or eternally existing Platonic values and norms for knowledge, like some atheists believe. So if something seems reasonable to us we should argue for it. That’s how nature will progress, as we do our part as a part of nature.

Does this then grant BK the needed justification for believing Christianity is true? No! For once he acknowledges that there is no epistemological objectivity he should be an agnostic. He should abandon all attempts to justify his own certainty with regard to Christianity. Agnosticism is default position. My claim is that agnosticism leads to atheism, that’s all. The question is how it would be possible for agnosticism to lead BK to Christianity? It can’t, and yet by my analysis it’s the default position.

What BK argues is that it’s all or nothing. Well, if that’s his demand, then like demands of this sort, he gets nothing. Granting him some objectivity doesn’t get him to the full-blown Christian beliefs anymore than handing a child a set of blocks gets us a New York Skyscraper. And admitting we may not have an objective basis for knowledge (if this is the case) does not mean that Christianity is true by default either, since Christianity still falls by the wayside with the other religious claims made by different authorities based upon when and where they were born.

Another Five Star Review!

Sorry, but when you self-publish a book you have no one to promote it but yourself. The difficulty is in getting people to take a good look at it. In my case, those who have read it promote it, so I merely share what they write. Here's the most recent review written by Paul Harrison:

Many other reviewers do a good job at explaining the book's contents, and I agree that reformatted, it would be more pleasing to the eye and easy to digest.

But if you're looking for information, it isn't lacking. The reason the print is so crammed and there are so many references is because John has experience in academic settings where research must be accounted for and careful argumentation means more than mere emotional rhetoric. This isn't a light book you would enjoy reading a couple of sittings and then pondering, but a book that bombards you with information and argument that you have to stop and think about, almost as if you were reading a reference book.

Truly, the only valid critique of a book like this from those who disagree with the arguments is to make a point by point rebuttal showing that John's arguments don't stand up. This should be easy for any Christian apologist to do, yet it is never done. Instead, sweeping generalization and characterizations are made of his motives. Even if you believed John was an immoral, bitter, raving cry baby who abandoned God because he was immature, you would still have his arguments to deal with.

There is nothing new in this book that hasn't been pointed out for decades in various places, it is just a very compact and concise anthology of the best of these arguments, always added to the personal experience of the author. Just as Christians have a life-changing existential experience and believe the Gospel is intellectually valid, so a mixture of existential experience and intellect causes deconversion.

This book can be seen as "an attack on Christianity" in a sense that former Christians are believed to be bitterly getting back at what disillusioned them, but ultimately, skeptics write books like this to help disillusioned Christians understand that they are not crazy or alone and help them adjust to life without a belief system that can shown to be false intellectualy and experientially. This is no different that Christian apologists "attacking Islam" or "attacking Mormonism" by using deconversion stories from former Muslims and Mormons showing why nothing worked existentially along with arguemnts againt the validity of those worldviews. Christians believe they are doing it in love to rescue people out of harmful and false belief systems. A book like this is no different.

If you read Christian apologetics, you owe it to yourself to have an anthology of the best arguments against Christian apologetics in your library.

You Wouldn't Believe That. Would You?

Here's a comment I wrote over at Christian Cadre:

What I find very strange is that if someone told you a snake or ass talked, you wouldn't believe they talked just because someone told you they did. But you believe they did and everything in the Bible precisely because it's in there. You would be skeptical of every single claim in the Bible if someone came running up to you and said an old lady turned into a pillar of salt, or that lifting up the hands of Moses caused a military victory. You wouldn't even believe it if someone else came up to you and confirmed it. You would want to see for yourself, wouldn't you? Or are you truly a gullible person? But you are more than two millenia removed from such claims and all you have is a text that says these things happened. Where are your critical thinking skills? Be consistent. Be as skeptical about those claims as you are about the same claims today. Test these claims as an outsider. If you conclude Christianity is false, then see what you believe, like I have. But I cannot be asked to believe these things actually took place without good evidence. You do realize how superstitious these ancient people were, who heard the messages of the prophets and apostles, don't you? [I have a long chapter in my book relating such incidents as these]. Then why believe those same stories just because they did?

(non-religious) Objections to Neo-Darwinism (Richard Dawkins et al)

The Canadian Philosopher Charles Taylor was recently interviewed on ABC Radio National's (Australia) The Philosopher's Zone. What I was most interested to hear (and I suspect many of you will be too) were his philosophical objections to and critique of recent Neo-Darwinians such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett.

I realise Dawkins is lauded as a bit of an Atheist hero these days but it was fascinating to hear some of the perceived philosophical flaws in his assertions. Don't get me wrong, that which was brought up by Taylor in no way resembles Evangelical rhetoric. Taylor isn't anti-Evolution, rather he challenges some of the philosophical applications of Neo-Darwinism.

The interview was presented in two parts and can be accessed here and here. Be quick though as the MP3 files tend to be removed after a few weeks (although the transcripts remain indefinitely).

I would also suggest you subscribe to the podcast of this brilliant radio show.

Slavery? NO WAY...NONE!

I've said this before, and I'll say it again, there is no justification for God to have allowed the slavery in the American South, or any slavery for that matter. None. If God was perfectly good, he would've said, "Thou shalt not trade, buy, own, or sell slaves" (KJV version), and said it as often as he needed to do so. But he didn't. The following is an excerpt from freed slave Frederick Douglass' Narrative of his life:

In one incident Frederick Douglass described how his Christian master whipped his aunt right before his young eyes. “He took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist. He made her get upon the stool, and he tied her hands to a hook in the joist. After rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood came dripping to the floor.” “No words, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the blood clotted cowskin.”

On this issue I am adamant. There is no excuse for God not to have effectively communicated to his followers what he wanted them to do...none! There has been so much needless intense pain and misery caused by God's shortsightedness here that I see no reason why people are still not angry about God's ineptitude. My only comfort is that he does not exist! I cannot be too angry with the forces of nature, human ignorance, greed, fear and hate for this, even though as part of the forces of nature I can still argue against this inhumane behavior, but if such a lousy God does indeed exist, he should be fired! So let me do this:

You're Fired!

Frequently Asked Questions

Welcome to DC!

First read my comment policy at DC

Were We Really Christians?:

There is No Doubt I was a Christian.
Well, it Depends.
There Are No Christians!
Some Christians Also Struggle With Serious Doubts.

Are We Angry New Atheists?:

Are We Angry Atheists?
Am I An Angry Atheist? No, I'm Just Mad as Hell and You Might Be Too.

Why Do Christians Believe?:

Why Do Christians Believe?
The Concept of God Solves All Problems.
Christians Often Retreat to What's Merely Possible.
You Can't Argue With Christians.
Control Beliefs...Control
Consider the Obvious
Absence of Evidence and the Evidence of Absence
Christians Are Fearful of Doubting
Christianity Simply Reinvents Itself in Every Generation

Why Don't Agnostics and Atheists Believe?:

Is It Really Because We Have a Hard Heart?
Why I've Adopted My Control Set of Beliefs
Why Skeptics Have an Anti-Supernatural Bias.
Why I Don't Believe the Bible is God's Word
What Would Convince Me Christianity Is True?

What Motivates Us to Debunk Christianity?:

Why Our Focus is on Evangelical Christianity
A Bad Taste.
Why I'm Debunking Christianity
What Motivates Me.
Why I'm Doing What I'm Doing

Atheism, Christianity and Morality:

What Motivates Atheists to be Good People?
The Christian Illusion of Moral Superiority.
Do Christians Have a Superior Foundation for Morality!
Do Christians Have An Ultimate Standard of Morality?
The Evidence and So-Called Objective Morality
What Can Account for Morality?
An Atheistic Ethic

Lessons From Bowflex

They are in our houses, lying under our beds, tucked away in our closets. They are in our lofts, or covered up with boxes in our garages and storage rooms. Being the born-and-bred packrats some of us are, we take them with us, laboriously moving them from house to house as we relocate through the years. We had a number of opportunities to sell them at garage sales, but we never did. We keep telling ourselves that we’ll get around to using them again one day, like that short month-and-a-half period just after we bought them, right before we quit using them and tossed them into that “I’m already bored as hell with this” pile of virtual paperweights we own. I’m talking about Bowflex machines and their knock-off competitors sold on TV from those annoying infomercials that perhaps caught us off guard one night, resulting in our making a bad investment [At this point in the article, Joe lowers his head in shame!]. What did we invest in? A piece of crap, that’s what…one that does nothing but remain unused and take up space in our houses.

When it comes to buying trinket-y, worthless gadgets, I am as guilty as a career woman in a shoe store on payday. I buy things, usually smaller items I can talk myself into buying on the spurt of the moment. I’ve got needless computer keyboards, pens, pencils, desktop items, flashlights, and office supplies all over my place, why? Because that tactile part of me, like a small red devil above my left shoulder, convinces me that making these senseless purchases will somehow make me feel more satisfied in accomplishing whatever purpose I bought the item for.

No pattern is more predictable than the cycles of satisfaction (or should I say, dissatisfaction); we want an item, then we want it really badly, so much so that it overcomes any doubts about whether or not we need it or can afford it. So we buy it, have brief fun with it, quickly get tired of it, and then think back on how wanting it was better than actually having it. In the end, we wish we hadn’t bought it at all! However long any satisfaction might have lasted us, it wasn’t long enough, all things considered.

It’s funny how something so vainglorious like Bowflex can teach us big-league lessons about life, religion, and human nature; you have those who seriously want to get in shape, and then you have those who are just toying with the idea. The small irony of it is, those who are no-nonsense about maintaining their bodies will likely not be interested in something as piddly as Bowflex. They would veritably have – lo and behold – a gym membership! But more germane to our subject, those who buy into the claims of Bowflex infomercials parallel those who buy into the assertions of religion, though not in every way.

For instance, you have those who buy into religion, and many of them remain satisfied with it, but with Bowflex, I don’t think I’ve known anyone who remained satisfied with it for long! Most of us buy it and then hate it. You have those like me, for instance, who buy the damn machine and soon get tired of it (those of us who were once religious and became disenchanted with it). Then you have those who never got duped into buying the blasted thing in the first place (those who were never taken in by the charm of religious appeal), and you have those who bought the piece of junk and got tired of it, more or less (those who have been religious and then grew weary of all organized and fundamentalist forms of religion, rejecting them for much more liberal and science-friendly versions). They too have seen for themselves how disappointing faith systems are when the elaborate euphoria of ecclesiasticism wears off, when the harm done by “born again” believers becomes apparent, when the false-alarm-sounding mentality of evangelicals comes to light.

Those who have experienced the flaws of faith are not impressed with hollow religious promises for quick fixes or miracle cures for society’s ills, nor are they ready to buy into dubious claims on how to make a better tomorrow—anymore than a smart consumer watching a Bowflex infomercial will be inclined to buy it because of those nicely tanned, washboard-abdominal-muscled models who are paid to show off the product. Not a one of those finely tuned human specimens got their illustrious bodies from using that machine, but the company wants you to think they did.

The smart shopper realizes that not only are these claims the products of deceitful advertising, but the machine will not feel as satisfying in its use as it appears it will from the view of the couch, watching TV. The device might be too cheaply made, perhaps, or not big enough, not sturdy enough, or just not as fun to work out on as it seems it will be (I have found this to be the case with every “as seen on TV” piece of garbage I ever purchased!). This is in contrast to the believer who looks with elation at Christianity and sees a system of belief that will be the perfect cure-all for a world longing for happiness and answers; stop AIDS by not being homosexual; stop rape and adultery by outlawing pornography and immodest dress; stop terrorist attacks like those of 911 by making abortion illegal so that God will be moved to providentially protect us again; stop school shootings by bringing prayer and the ten commandments back into classrooms; it all sounds so simple and effective to the pious mind, to those living in the black-and-white world of theism.

The wise consumer knows that if he really wants to get in shape, it won’t be through knickknack-y exercise machines, and cute, jazzy-looking equipment. It will be through hard work and the embracing of a healthy lifestyle—eating right and exercising regularly. It’s about life changes, not nifty products. When it comes to considering a smart, pragmatic view of life, healthy amounts of skepticism and cynicism are more than called for. A pious life of folded hands and bent knees is not the only way to go, I don’t care what some preacher or priest tells you.

Equivocally, adopting religious systems to live by will not solve the world’s major problems; they will not bring peace, will not answer questions, and will not improve the quality of life. Religions will not somehow Utopian-ize society as some expect it to. If it could, the world would have been a mostly peaceful and wonderful place since before recorded history, and still would be.

“When a man's ways please the LORD, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.” (Proverbs 16:7)

“But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.” (Psalm 37:11)

Uh…not quite! The Holy Land and surrounding areas – that area on Earth with the highest population of “righteous” men in any one place – is far from peaceful and leaves much to be desired, as any remotely westernized thinker must admit. Just look at Islam verses the different sects of Islam, Islam verses Judaism, Islam verses the west and Christianity, and we would be fatuous not to mention the feuding Irish Catholic and Protestant groups throughout the world who relish murdering one another on an incredibly wide scale. Incidentally, the Bible writers seemed to have quite a learning disability when it came to identifying peace. It was prophesied that Josiah would die “in peace,” and yet he died by a pagan king’s arrow in an unnecessary confrontation (2 Kings 22:20; 2 Kings 23:29-30; 2 Chronicles 35:23-24). A similar fate befell Zedekiah who was also promised by God through Jeremiah that he would die in peace, though it certainly did not happen (Jeremiah 34:4-5; 52:10-11). Well, if these are biblically “peaceful” ways to die, I don’t want to even try and think of violent ones!

Like many other well done paid advertisements, a strongly promoted product becomes a sensation where a less promoted product loses out. The biggest and most successful businesses advertise heavily, from Apple Computers to Yahoo. Advertisers target one of two things—need or want (sometimes both). By doing a great job reminding their viewers that a nice, hot, muscular body is the best kind to have (with the proper lighting, stage presentation, camera work, and tanned, pumped-up, oiled-up bodies), Bowflex fosters the want behind the sale and is thus able to move these machines by the thousands each year.

Proponents of Christianity play up the need angle; man is a sinner, depraved and wicked to the core, and he is spiritually stupid too, unable to use his natural mind to appropriately and humanely conduct himself, and life is such that it’s hard to find happiness amidst all the depression anyway. So what is the cure? Religion, of course—always each particular preacher’s own version of it. Mankind needs help from the next world. Mankind needs the gospel. But like the wise consumer, the astute freethinker sees through all such lies. He realizes man is fully capable of producing goodness, dignity, and happiness all by himself. In the case of religion, people are being convinced that they have a need for an invisible product; Christianity comes along, says mankind has a “sin problem” (one we would not know exists except for Christianity telling us about it), and then gives the solution to it. As Dan Barker put it, “Would you be thankful to a person who cut you with a knife in order to sell you a bandage?”

Scam artists are kept alive and in business by bad consumers who make bad financial decisions. The world needs smarter consumers, but it also needs a smarter populace, one that won’t so easily buy into the claims of creationists, pseudo-scientists, and religious idealists, like hatemonger preachers and fascist religionist politicians. But the road to improvement is a long one to travel, and it doesn’t look as though many want to arrive at that destination.

(JH)

Atheist Peter Kirby is Now a Catholic

[Edit this is old news since Kirby now says he's basically an agnostic. Link.]


Former atheist Peter Kirby says the Catholic Church is his home, and he now finds himself "identifying with the Christian religion."

*cough* In my opinion he never was an atheist in the first place, or that if he was one, someday he'll return to the atheist fold.

I'm not serious when I said he was never an atheist, but Christians regularly say that about those of us who leave the Christian fold. How does that sound, Christian?

In any case, I'm not sure what Kirby has been converted to, since what he describes isn't all that clear to me. He describes himself as "a Catholic-Naturalist." I'd like for him to explain what doctrines of the Catholic Church he believes, and where he has changed his mind regarding the content of these beliefs, if these beliefs have changed. But whether he does or not is up to him in his own timing.

It seems as though he felt the need for "help" from outside of this present existence. We all have that feeling. Just last week I myself "prayed" for help, just in case there was actually a Spirit out there, or just in case there is a mind and that thinking affects reality in some way. I have always been a lucky person, and I don't know why this is so. I think lucky thoughts, if you will, and fortuitous events happen in my life. Is it because I think I'm lucky that in turn I see a fortuitous event, or is it the case that my positive thinking somehow affects events that bring me luck? Since there is no evidence that positive thinking affects historical events, it probably doesn't affect them. But we want to think positive anyway. At least in doing so it helps us to react positively to what happens in this life which gives us the best chance to act in ways that produce positive events in our lives.

Why is it that on shows like "Deal or No Deal," and "Family Feud" that after people make a guess they subsequently clap and say it out loud as a "good choice/answer"? Does it help? What about the Craps Dice roller in Vegas? He calls out for his numbers as he throws the dice. Does it help? Probably not, but who can say for absolute certain, right? So we do. I do. Perhaps Kirby is doing the same thing? Maybe for him it's a Kierkegaardian leap of faith into the unknown. It brings comfort. It offers the promise of help. It feels safe.

Even though I can't fully understand why he would want to support and align himself with the Catholic Church, given its past and present day atrocities, I for one, wish him well.

I would hope that atheists treat their apostates more respectfully than Christians or Muslims treat their apostates.

All Gods Have Been Taken Seriously

One objection to the cliche' that atheists believe in just one fewer God than religious believers do, was expressed recently over at Christian Cadre:

Third, there aren't really thousands of other gods that are taken seriously, and anyone who sees religions as the same except that they have "different gods" has a very childish grasp religious belief. Sure, a thousand and more years ago some people believed in Ishtar and Odin and Zeus, but only a handful of people (if any) really give those types of religions credence today because, unlike Christianity, they don't ring true.

The truth is that every God that people have believed in, both in the present and in the past, was taken very seriously by those very people. Just because we no longer take most of them seriously doesn't mean we could ever have convinced them otherwise via an argument, or with counter-evidence. Christians simply take their God seriously, and that's what all other people have done too.

There is only one God that is deserving of the name, and that is the philosopher's God. That is the God established by reasonable arguments, if such a thing can be done. The other Gods are human religions based upon the doctrines of a superstitious "faith," that legitimize and grant power to those who propogate them, which are spread by the sword, but not containing much by way of convincing evidence, in my opinion.

Chris Hallquist's First Live Debate

Chris Hallquist just had his first public debate. Here's the link. I did find it somewhat amusing that Chris refers to me as a "philosopher," but refers to William Lane Craig as "a Christian writer."

I liked how Chris started. *ahem* I liked it when he startled his audience by saying he was talking to a group full of atheists. Then he explained that they don't believe in the other gods of the religions of the world. I also really liked his suggestion in his closing statement that people should read the Bible because of his confidence that the Bible itself can lead people to disbelieve. Julia Sweeney tells how reading the Bible led her away from God too. Enjoy. Nice job Chris. Thanks for thinking something I wrote was worthy to use as a springboard for your argument.

It's All About Seeing Things Differently.

I like optical illusions. They're fun, and I've compiled a bunch of them. What do you see in the picture at left? Christians see God in this world just like they see a baby in the outline of the tree. I see the world as a natural phenomenon just like I see the natural landscape of the picture. That's the way I look at the world. Christians see it differently. I think they are wrong. They think I'm wrong. But on such an issue we all cannot be right.
My invitation to Christians is to put on what Julia Sweeney calls her "No-God glasses." Try them on for just a few seconds at first. Then for a few minutes. Don't worry, you won't go out and murder anyone. [For those who may not be able to see the baby, I've provided an outline of the baby in red].

From the Introduction of My Book.

Since here at DC our posts are brief and haphazard, let me challenge people who visit to seriously consider getting my book to read one single cumulative case against the Christian faith. In it you won't find a piecemeal argument like you find here on a daily basis. Consider reading it. Here's a selection from my introduction explaining what I aim to do in the book:

In this book I’m writing to explain why I rejected Christianity. It’s sincere, and it’s honest. In it I present a cumulative case argument against Christianity. It includes my own personal experiences with the Christian faith, along with the arguments that I find persuasive enough for me to reject that faith. I consider this book to be one single argument against Christianity, and as such it should be evaluated as a whole. My claim is that the Christian faith should be rejected by modern, educated people, even if I know many of them will still disagree. I’m just sharing the reasons that convinced me, and I think they should convince others. If someone is persuaded by the same reasons I argue for in this book, then I’m pleased.

My method is explained in more detail later in this book, but let me introduce it here. I consider the most significant sections (or subsets) of my argument to be

1) Sociological, in “The Outsider Test For Faith…”;

2) Philosophical, in "Does God Exist?," and "Do Miracles Take Place?”;

3) Scientific, in “The Lessons of Galileo, Science and Religion”;

4) Biblical, in “The Strange and Superstitious World of the Bible”;

5) Historical, in “Historical Evidence and Christianity”; and,

6) Empirical in “The Problem of Evil.” All of these sections are partially summed up in “The Achilles’ Heel of Christianity.”

These sections provide me with the control beliefs for rejecting Christianity’s specific foundational miracle/doctrinal claims.

Since having control beliefs don’t by themselves tell me what to believe about the evidence of a specific miracle claim, I will also examine the evidence for the foundational miracle claims of Christianity. I will consider them as the historical claims they are. I will examine them by looking at the internal evidence found within the Biblical texts themselves. I’ll consider what these texts actually say and scrutinize their internal consistency. Wherever relevant, I’ll also consider whether the Old Testament actually predicts some of these events. Then I will examine these claims by looking at the external evidence. I’ll consider any independent confirmation of these events outside of the texts. Lastly I will subject these claims to the canons of reason using the control beliefs I have previously argued for. I will conclude from all of this that Christianity should be rejected.

Logical Gerrymandering

I have been using the term "logical gerrymandering" for a few years now to describe what some Christians do in unfairly "redistricting" what people like me say out-of-context, in order to gain an unfair intellectual advantage, or to ridicule us.

I also use this phrase to describe what Christians do when caught in a logical inconsistency. Calvinists, for instance, claim God decrees (or ordains) everything we desire to do and everything we do, yet they want to describe God as good, and blame us alone for everything bad we do. With a flood of words they logically gerrymander around this logical inconsistency. [See this article on gerrymandering for what the term means politically].

The first person I know of to use this term outside of political spheres is Walter Kaufmann, in his 1958 book, Critique of Religion and Philosophy, although he merely calls it "gerrymandering." He claimed that "many theologians are masters of this art. Theologians do not just do this incidentally: this is theology. Doing theology is like doing a jigsaw puzzle in which the verses of Scripture are the pieces: the finished picture is prescribed by each denomination, with a certain latitude allowed. What makes the game so pointless is that you do not have to use all the pieces, and that pieces which do not fit may be reshaped after prounouncing the words 'this means.' That is called exegesis."

Sam Harris calls this same approach to exegesis, "cherry-picking," because Christians will cherry-pick the good out of the Good Book, and reinterpret or ignore what they don't like in it. Harris argued, and I agree, that Christians decide what is good in the Good Book.

In his 1961 book Faith of a Heretic, Kaufmann wrote about how Christians view Jesus in the New Testament: "Most Christians gerrymander the Gospels and carve an idealized self-portrait out of the texts: Passen's Jesus is a socialist, Fosdick's is a liberal, while the ethic of Reinhold Niebuhr's Jesus agrees, not surprising, with Niebuhr's own."

Anyway, Kaufmann knew in advance there would be theologians who would gerrymander the words in his book. He said: "This Critique is exceptionally vulnerable to slander by quotation and critics cursed with short breath, structure blindness, and myopia will be all but bound to gerrymander it."

Kaufmann said:

"Quotations can slander
if you gerrymander."

[Pages 219-220].

Of course, The Principle of Intellectual Charity is pretty much the exact opposite way to deal with intellectual opponents, and is akin to what Christians themselves believe they should do with people in general (I Corinthians 13). If we followed this principle when dealing with our opponents, we will be less likely to commit the informal fallacy of attacking a strawman, and thereby less likely to make a fool of ourselves.

The Lessons of Cho Seung-Hui Killings.

In the 48th comment on Joe Holman's satirical post about the Cho Seung-Hui killings, our own exapologist makes a very good point, one that I expressed to my wife last night, and one which is reminiscent of the Columbine shooters.

While many of us want to argue back and forth about the lessons learned from this killer for and against Christianity, exapologist wrote:

I'm worried about the extent to which this massacre is being used to make our pet points, without taking to heart what happened here.

There is a pattern. A kid, or group of kids, are picked on and alienated from their peers. I'm not talking about an occasional jab, but a systematic, coordinated rejection of a child as a non-person. The kid internalizes the message. It builds up until they can't take it any more, and so they explode -- with lethal consequences.

Why is it so hard to learn this lesson? This sort of systematic alienation is just too much for the human psyche. We're essentially social creatures, and can't survive this sort of global rejection. Can't schools, or at least parents, raise their kids well enough so that it would never occur to them to engage in this sort of bullshit?

Here are two links talking about the treatment Cho Seung-Hui suffered from people in general. See here, and here.

What is wrong with us that we cannot treat people who are different from us humanely and with some measure of respect?

God Loves Cho Seung-Hui

In trying times like these, when terrible crimes against humanity have been committed, like the recent murders of Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old South Korean man of Virginian Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, we must be extra careful not to rush to judgment or let anger get the best of us! The world watched in horror on April 16, 2007, as Cho Seung-Hui made history by unleashing the worst school shooting rampage in U.S. history.

Cho Seung-Hui was described as a deeply troubled man, one who never smiled or greeted strangers, and always expressed deep-seated hatred of “rich kids,” and people who led lives of “debauchery.” He took antidepressants, and it is believed once set fire to a dormitory, stalked women, and wrote very disturbing pieces of literature. He was what many would call “a bad guy.”

Where is God when terrible things like this happen? What we must
remember is, God is there, even though it seems at times as though he isn’t. God loves us all, including those of us who have chosen the wrong path. God loves Cho Seung-Hui very much and looks down from heaven with compassion, despite his wreaking sheer havoc on an unsuspecting college campus, taking many innocent lives in the process.

Jesus was right there all the time, looking down with love as this
angry man premeditatedly sawed the serial numbers off the guns he used to blast screaming college kids into tomorrow. Jesus was watching as young people, with their lives still ahead of them, stood petrified with fear in those brief moments before their demise. Jesus was there, waiting in the wings to comfort those mourning families who lost their loved ones at the whim of a tarnished soul. Jesus was there, my friend, Jesus hasn’t forgotten! As the song goes, Jesus knows, Jesus cares!

There’s a lot of anger in the air because of this tragedy. The world is wishing this guy straight to Hell, thinking of how much people like Cho Seung-Hui deserve to suffer, but its times like these when we must try especially hard to think like Jesus. Its times like these when the grace of Jesus Christ our Lord shines out brighter than the sun. The Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance! We should not wish evil on this disturbed and erring child of God, no matter how horrible and unsettling his deeds.

We should all aim never to be judgmental or hateful, and we must be careful where we place blame. People are quick to judge Cho Seung-Hui, but before they do, they should consider judging the people he executed first. They were college kids, most of them, and like the majority of young men and women today, probably experimented with premarital sex, smoked pot, and drank alcohol—not exactly followers of Christ! So we shouldn’t judge him too harshly.

Maybe, after this heartless berserker’s rage, when the traumatized halls of Virginia Tech were finally calmed, and 33 people (including the gunman himself) were dead, and 21 more seriously injured, just before Mr. Seung-Hui took a bullet from his own gun to the head, he repented. Yes, maybe, just before the blood-caked carpets of Virginia Tech were combed over by police, when only faint pleas for help could be heard from terrorized victims, curled up and quivering in the fetal position in the corners of classrooms and under desks, this furious killer genuinely repented. Perhaps just before that last bullet ravaged his brain, doing away with his thought processes, he muddled a prayer to God, asking for forgiveness of his sins and relief from the pain of life under which he snapped.

For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life! God loves Cho Seung-Hui, just like he loves you and me. He wants us to spend eternity in heaven together.

Maybe, even as I write this article, those slain men and women that
meet God at the pearly gates are in for a surprise! Singing hymns,
encircling the throne of God, listening to the lovely melody of harps, those murdered children of the almighty will be met by the very man who sent them there, and with forgiveness and beaming smiles of compassion and unfathomable joy, they will make that circle one soul larger! Cho Seung-Hui may not have been smiling much on earth, but he certainly will be in heaven as he, and all the redeemed, clasp hands and dance before the Lord on the streets of gold in that city foursquare!

(JH)

(JH)

Speech at "Battlecry" rally, San Francisco

City Hall Steps, San Francisco, March 9th, 2007.

Battlecry is a fundamentalist youth organization that is gaining
strength and was recently in San Francisco. (see: here. Prior to their demonstration about moral values there was a press conference of people addressing the threat of the Christian right. The San Francisco chronicle had this story:

Marlene Winell, a returning member here, contributed the following speech:

"Good afternoon. I'd like to say a few words about them, and a few
words about us and consider how far apart we really are. My area of
study is psychology and I'm also a former fundamentalist Christian.
The book I wrote, Leaving the Fold, is a self-help book but it began
with my effort to understand my own recovery. Since then I have spent many years working with people struggling to heal from the devastating effects of dogmatic religion, and especially Christian fundamentalism. I've learned a lot about why it works so well, the reasons people stay, the reasons they leave, and the stages of recovery. I believe the helping professions should study it they way they study other traumas and addictions - alcoholism, domestic violence, drug use and child abuse.

This is a system of thought that is powerful and seductive. It begins with the most basic of human needs and fears – about mortality, about meaning, about connection. The young people who will be here today are motivated by the most primal concerns, and their religion has offered answers, clear and absolute. And don't we all wish it were that simple.

Unfortunately, the price for membership in this select group of saved individuals is utter conformity and obedience. Along with the doctrine of original sin, they are taught to deeply distrust their own ability to think, their own instinctual feelings, and to look outward for any resources of wisdom or strength. The fundamentalist belief system is ultimately based on fear, and the believers spend the bulk of their lives fighting the enemy, whether it is the enemy of temptation
within, where sexual urges are the most frightening as threats to faith, of the enemy without, such as the culture war manufactured by Battlecry. They are taught to think in terms of spiritual warfare, and they must join the forces of good fighting the minions of Satan. A bit like America fighting the axis of evil.

When some of the faithful do manage to pull away and come to me for help, they are terrified. The most sincere souls are the ones most damaged because they tried the hardest to annihilate themselves to obey God's will. They have no idea that thousands of other former believers are also struggling to recover and reclaim their right to think and feel for themselves.

The most dangerous aspect of the fundamentalist mindset is not any specific belief or prejudice or judgment. It's not homophobia or sexism or opposing evolution. The biggest threat, to the mental health of the individuals, and to our society, is the authoritarianism.

This teaching of submission to revealed truth, pure and simple, dictated from on high, from a pulpit, from a book, or from the White House, is a serious threat to all of us. We can't afford the attitudes of good and evil, black and white, us versus them, because the world is not that simple, and people get hurt that way. But this deference to authority, paired with absolute skepticism about one's own right or
ability to think is exactly what endangers our democracy. It makes it possible for someone like George Bush to call himself a born-again Christian, and get overwhelming support from millions of people who have not examined the issues to form their own opinions or have any idea what Bush's policies even are before voting for him.

But before we get too judgmental, let's reflect on this issue for all of us. How well do the rest of us engage in critical thinking? How much do we passively stand by while our unquestioned leaders do what they like to our country and to the world? Why do we allow the super-rich and powerful to dictate the terms for our lives? Why do we turn a blind eye while corporations rape the world? Why do we purchase
goods without questioning where they came from? And why, in God's name, do we allow war to continue and the warmongers to stay in power?

The young people with Battlecry today believe they are standing up for morality, and they have taken the time to do so. You can count on the fact that many of them are scared to death, and yet they are taking a stand. They also want to belong to something bigger than themselves. Yes, they are making judgments, and we may believe many of these judgments are misguided. They need help to see how the results are not loving at all. But let's look at the judgments we have and the morality that we want to uphold.

I for one agree that we have a moral crisis. I think our country has lost its moral compass when we care more for material wealth than for justice, when we are too busy with our own lives, our careers, our pleasures, even our own families, while people are suffering, starving, and slaughtered. Yes, we can have judgments too, because we do need to distinguish right from wrong in the sense that we must uphold the values that are most important. And in the current climate with corporate greed hand in hand with government leaders who seem to have no conscience whatsoever, I believe we do need to fight. We are our brother's keeper. The sin of consequence is not in the privacy of our bedrooms; it's in our boardrooms, and for that we are all complicit because we are reaping the benefits.

We do need repentance. George Bush needs to repent and make restitution for the war in Iraq. And we need to repent for being asleep for too long, imagining that voting every four years spells democracy. Is this nation going in the wrong direction? Hell yes. The Christian right is worried God will withdraw his blessing from the nation because of our iniquity and they say 9/11 was a warning, as if to Sodom and Gomorrah, but they've got it wrong when they focus on who is loving whom or which of us is enjoying what kind of bodily friction, singing about it or even looking at pictures of it. What about the photos at Abu Graib? Let's get real about pornography. As parents, we should worry more about our kids living in a land where
torture and war is condoned, where racism is rampant, the poor are left to drown in a flood, and the state can tap our telephones. What of the future? Will our children even have one? The obscenity on TV is not sex in the city; it's the barrage of sexy ads for new cars in the city, and this while the polar ice caps melt. The disease most deadly in America is not AIDS, it's affluenza complicated by narcolepsy.

So I say let's invite these Battlecry young people who are not asleep, to a table with us, a table where all are welcome, just as Jesus sat down with prostitutes and tax collectors. Let's have sinners and saints, fanatics and fornicators, and let's be honest about what really matters. Who knows, perhaps we can all dig deep and find our common humanity. Let's learn from their passion and urgency and let's help them cherish this earth as the only one we have.

So we stand today as opposed to immorality as anyone here, Christian or not. We will not relinquish the gains made by movements for social progress - the battles successfully fought for abolition, equality for women and all races. We will not sacrifice the integrity of science or the privacy of personal lives. We will not release the ground gained, painfully over the years, to grant every human being their dignity, and we will not relinquish our faith, our hope, in our ability to forge ahead, slowly but surely, collectively creating a world that is just, a world that by its structures supports the human desire and ability to live in peace and yes, love. We reject the notion that we cannot do this, that the prince of this world, the devil, infects us and weakens us to where only the returning Christ, with his armies in the sky, will be able to bring us to our senses. This has not happened
yet despite two millenniums of longing. In today's world, this expectation is too dangerous.

We cannot afford the hopeless and helpless message of the fundamentalist Christian looking to be raptured away, excused from responsibility. This fatalism, by requiring apocalypse for the savior to return, actually fuels the crises - supporting war as a sign of the end, neglecting the environment because the earth will burn anyway, spurning peace-making because it's hopeless, and fearing global community because it spells anti-Christ. This is a recipe for disaster. And yet these beliefs are firmly held by millions of Americans, including high members of our government. Key advisors on domestic and foreign policy have these views. We need to speak up and oppose these attitudes and insist on taking responsibility for the world we create. Our sin is our willful ignorance, our denial of being interconnected, our rejection of our God-given power to be the life-loving, creation-caring, wise and creative beings that we are.

So with ordinary human love, we reach out to everyone willing to join in this commitment to our highest values and our deepest concerns, knowing that when the details of formal religious teachings are taken away, we really do have much in common. We have the most important things in common if we can just see past our fears. And then we can hope."

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Please visit marlenewinell.net for information about services for recovering from religious indoctrination, including an upcoming weekend retreat May 4-6. The book, "Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion," is now back in print and available from Amazon.