Valerie Tarico is a team member here at DC and we just traded books. I don’t think her book, The Dark Side, is gaining the audience it deserves, so I want to recommend it.
As a former Christian with a Ph.D in Psychology this is an admirable book for her intended audience. The focus of her book is described in the subtitle to it: “How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth,” and she does an admirable job of showing this. It is not written for Christian apologists or scholars, knowledgeable skeptics or people well versed in their faith, although I myself learned a few things from it. It doesn’t deal with the arguments for the existence of God, the problems with an incarnate God, or the resurrection of Jesus, which would’ve made this a much better book. Its focus is mainly on the Biblical teachings themselves and how they “counter both reason and morality.” (p. 38). I liked the fact that she doesn’t make any exaggerated claims about her book.
Her book is written in an easy to read conversational style and respectful tone from a unique female Psychologist’s perspective that is rare among debunkers. It would be potentially doubt-producing if placed into the hands of the average Christian sitting in the pew. It's probably intended to be a resource for people who were teetering on the edge of Evangelicalism (either on their way in or way out) and who hadn’t thought a whole lot the moral and rational implications about what evangelicals teach. As such, her book may be more dangerous to the Christian faith than many other books in the same genre, since she targets her audience so well.
She tells her personal story of her deconversion which can be read here. She describes how she moved from “certainties to questions,” which is a story similar in kind to many of us. She briefly describes what evangelicals believe and how they inherited their beliefs (via Catholicism and Protestantism) in their attempt to reform Protestantism. But the distinguishing difference is that Evangelicalism is derived from “the extraordinary status given to the Bible by Evangelicals.” (p. 37). Turning to the Bible she tells how the Old Testament and New Testament came to be, and how scholars study the Bible, which might be eye-opening to many Christian people. She provides evidence showing how the Bible “contradicts science,” how Biblical commands “oppose each other,” how images of God “conflict with each other,” how the Bible stories themselves “contradict each other,” and argues that the Biblical prophecies and promises “don’t stand up” to scrutiny.
Without going into detail in arguing for these claims of hers, she turns instead to how Christians argue against them. She writes, “a whole industry has sprung up to convince believers and non-believers alike that these difficulties are inconsequential.” She quotes from Gleason Archer’s New International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, where he tells his readers that when looking at the Bible one must first assume God inspired the authors and preserved them from error or mistake. Then she writes, “Archer says, essentially that the reader must start the process of inquiry by assuming a certain outcome. Don’t look for the most likely hypothesis suggested by the evidence, he says, nor the one that is most likely straightforward or reasonable. Start by believing that a certain conclusion is already true…Examine the evidence through the lens of that conclusion…Ask yourself, ‘What explanations or interpretations can I come up with that would allow me to maintain my belief that these texts are not contradictory?’ If you can find any at all, then you have succeeded in your task. By implication, if you cannot, the problem lies with you, not the text. Archer’s approach, in almost any other field of inquiry, would be considered preposterous.” (pp. 62-63). I wholeheartedly agree.
Tarico offers up some hard questions for those Evangelicals who believe the Bible. She does this with regard to science and the Bible, the Adam and Eve story, human and animal suffering, the blood sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, the Christian belief in heaven and hell, and the problem of those who have never heard the gospel. I don’t believe these questions, upon deeper investigation, can be satisfactorily answered by Evangelicals.
Tarico devotes one section (37 pages) to the hypocrisies and injustices done in the name of the Christian faith by professing Christians. She mentions the Crusades, the Inquisition, Slavery, the witch hunts, the slaughter of American Natives, and something so simple as the selfish prayers of the saints. She critically examines the excuses Christians offer in response and argues this violence is not just a thing of the past, as can be seen in America’s previous “cold war” against “godless communism,” and the Iraqi war. She also argues against the idea that our morals come from the Bible, since “all societies produce guidelines they treat as moral absolutes whether they attribute these to one god, to many gods, or to none.” (p. 194).
In my opinion she is at her best when writing about the morality and the psychology of religious belief. She describes how irrational and external factors affect what people believe, like when and where a person is born, which she calls, “the luck of the draw.” She argues this is contrary to justice, since God supposedly sends people to hell because of what people believe. She describes why wrong beliefs survive, why smart people defend them, and why Evangelical beliefs are hard to shake. She argues there are methods by which people can protect against such biases, based on evidence and science.
When it comes to false superstitious and religious beliefs, Tarico claims “it doesn’t take very many false assumptions to send us on a long goose chase.” To illustrate this she tells us about the mental world of a paranoid schizophrenic. To such a person the perceived persecution by others sounds real. “You can sit, as a psychiatrist, with a diagnostic manual next to you, and think: as bizarre as it sounds, the CIA really is bugging this guy. The arguments are tight, the logic persuasive, the evidence organized into neat files. All that is needed to build such an impressive house of illusion is a clear, well-organized mind and a few false assumptions. Paranoid individuals can be very credible.” (p. 221-22). This is what Christians do, and this is why it’s hard to shake the Evangelical faith, in her informed opinion.
Tarico ends her book by describing herself as “Coming home,” where she is “content living in a universe with no gods, content trusting that the forces of nature and of the human spirit are what our best experience and reason reveal themselves to be.” (p. 255).
Reflecting on her case she reasonably concludes that "much of what is wrong with Evangelicalism is not mere hypocricy or distortion of Christian doctrine. The evils Evangelicalism promotes are as much a part of the Bible and Christian history as are goodness and love. The problems lie in the traditional teachings themselves and refusal of church authorities to question them."
She continues: "Virtually all of the harm that Christianity has perpetrated and continues to perpetrate comes from one crucial problem: a failure to understand the Bible itself: the historical context in which its manuscripts were penned, the ways they relate to earlier religious writings, and the very human decisions that compiled them into a book that many now call the Word of God. Without this understanding, the Bible can be seen as timeless and perfect, and rigid adherence to its commands can provide a substitute for nuanced moral judgment." (p. 250). Again, she's right on target.
I liked this book. I could only wish more people would buy it, read it and give copies away for others to read.
June 01, 2007
Moral Objectivity, C. S. Lewis, Victor Reppert, Edward T. Babinski
Dear Vic (Victor Reppert for the sake of blog search engines *smile*),
I enjoyed reading your discussion at your blog on moral objectivity, along with comments left by others.
Is it me, or are you asking more philosophical questions concerning moral objectivity than you have in the past? Asking questions and analyzing the answers (interminably so, especially when such questions are large overarching ones) appears to be what philosophy does best.
On the question of "moral objectivity," I think that the most objective thing any of us can say with anything near certainty as fellow philosophical debaters is that we each like being liked and hate being hated.
We certainly like having our particular thoughts appreciated by others. And we are a bit perturbed when others don't "get" what we're saying, so we continue trying to communicate our views in ways we hope others might understand.
I also assume each of us generally prefers not having lives nor property taken from them, and generally prefer not being abused either psychologically nor physically.
I also assume that when one person has something in common with another, be it a love of a game (chess, golf, soccer), a song, the sight of a sunset/sunrise, a philosophical point of view concerning the big questions, or a religion, that liking the same thing tends to bring people together and increase their joys.
Therefore, I'm not sure that "objectivity" is necessarily what I am primarily after, nor what most people are primarily after.
But I will say that there is a marvelous article in this week's Discover about animals with feelings. One anecdote...
...from the article involved a magpie (freshly deceased from an accident with a car) that lay by the side of the road surruonded by four live magpies that went up and pecked gently at it, then two flew off and came back with some tufts of grass in their beaks and laid it beside the dead magpie. Then they stood beside it for a while until one by one the four magpies flew off.
This anecdote sparked my own memory of another one that I read in a turn of the century book titled Mutual Aid by the Russian evolutionist, Kropotkin (his theory of evolution emphasized the benefits of mutual aid & cooperation). Kropotkin cited Australian naturalists and farmers who observed the way parrots cooperated to denude a farmer's field of crops. The parrots sent out scouts, then rallied the other birds, and they would swoop down quickly and devour the crops, but sometimes some of them got shot, and rather than simply fly off altogether the birds "comrades" (remember, this is a russian biologist speaking) would squawk in a fashion of bereavement, trying to remain as long as possible fluttering near the fallen friend and group member.
I also have read stories about the intelligence of crows, even their sense of humor. One naturalist mentioned seeing three crows on a wire, and one of them slipped, seemingly intentionally, and held himself upside down by one claw, which apparently amused the others. (I'd also read about experiments and anedcotes involving birds with amazing memories and vocabularies, even speaking and acting in ways one would consider appropriate for brief human-to-human exchanges.)
Elephants and llamas were some of the other animals mentioned in the Discover piece that reacted strongly to the death of members of their own species. Elephants have come back a year later to the spot where another elephant has died (as seen on Animal Planet) and they react strongly to the bones. I also recall reading in a Jan Goodall book about a young chimp (fully grown, not a baby) reacting so strongly to the death of his mother, that he simply climbed a tree and wouldn't come down and eat until he himself had died, apparently of grief.
The works of Frans de Waal (a famed primatologist), contain some touching stories about the compassionate behaviors of primates, notably of the most peace loving chimp species, the bonobo. When Frans took his own baby son (who was sitting in a forward facing harness strapped round Frans's chest) to visit some chimps at a zoo where Frans had gotten to know the chimps well, a mother chimp with her own young one saw Frans holding his baby up to the viewing glass, and the mother took her own baby's arms and twisted her baby around in a single movement so it was facing outward, and held her baby up to the glass so that the two babys could eye each other. Frans and the mother chimp also exchanged glances. Frans mentioned a case of a female photographing chimps on their little chimp island that had a moat around it. They were bonobos, a female dominated society, and food had just been given them, and they were portioning it out amongst themselves. The photographer wanted to get a shot but the chimps had their backs to the camera and were facing the food that had been delivered instead of facing the moat with the photographer on the other side, so the photographer started to wave her hands and scream and jump up and down to get the attention of the chimps. The other chimps looked round, except one who was suspicious and didn't turn around. So the female photographer continued waving her hands and shouting until finally that last female chimp turned around, and tossed the photographer a handful of food! The chimp apparently thought she was being asked to share her food! And well, she did.
In another case I've read about, Washoe the chimp was on a chimp island with other chimps, one of which climbed the fence and started wadding out into the moat surrounding the island (chimps can't swim, they sink, their bodies are denser than human beings since they have far less body fat). This chimp started to flail around in the water, drowning. Washoe saw this, clambored over the fence, and held onto some tall grass with one hand while extending the other to the drowning chimp, who was saved.
Meanwhile Robert Hauser (Harvard prof and author of Moral Minds) has asked a lot of people a lot of tough moral questions and found out how similar their responses were across the board regardless of whether the person was religious or not.
I have responded to the question of "moral objectivity" elsewhere on Victor Reppert's Dangerous Idea blog, and cited statements by philosophers and primatologists from Mary Midgley to Frans de Waal to Einstein. Anyone can view my responses by clicking here and here and here and here.
Ed (Edward T. Babinski for the sake of blog search engines *smile*)
I enjoyed reading your discussion at your blog on moral objectivity, along with comments left by others.
Is it me, or are you asking more philosophical questions concerning moral objectivity than you have in the past? Asking questions and analyzing the answers (interminably so, especially when such questions are large overarching ones) appears to be what philosophy does best.
On the question of "moral objectivity," I think that the most objective thing any of us can say with anything near certainty as fellow philosophical debaters is that we each like being liked and hate being hated.
We certainly like having our particular thoughts appreciated by others. And we are a bit perturbed when others don't "get" what we're saying, so we continue trying to communicate our views in ways we hope others might understand.
I also assume each of us generally prefers not having lives nor property taken from them, and generally prefer not being abused either psychologically nor physically.
I also assume that when one person has something in common with another, be it a love of a game (chess, golf, soccer), a song, the sight of a sunset/sunrise, a philosophical point of view concerning the big questions, or a religion, that liking the same thing tends to bring people together and increase their joys.
Therefore, I'm not sure that "objectivity" is necessarily what I am primarily after, nor what most people are primarily after.
But I will say that there is a marvelous article in this week's Discover about animals with feelings. One anecdote...
...from the article involved a magpie (freshly deceased from an accident with a car) that lay by the side of the road surruonded by four live magpies that went up and pecked gently at it, then two flew off and came back with some tufts of grass in their beaks and laid it beside the dead magpie. Then they stood beside it for a while until one by one the four magpies flew off.
This anecdote sparked my own memory of another one that I read in a turn of the century book titled Mutual Aid by the Russian evolutionist, Kropotkin (his theory of evolution emphasized the benefits of mutual aid & cooperation). Kropotkin cited Australian naturalists and farmers who observed the way parrots cooperated to denude a farmer's field of crops. The parrots sent out scouts, then rallied the other birds, and they would swoop down quickly and devour the crops, but sometimes some of them got shot, and rather than simply fly off altogether the birds "comrades" (remember, this is a russian biologist speaking) would squawk in a fashion of bereavement, trying to remain as long as possible fluttering near the fallen friend and group member.
I also have read stories about the intelligence of crows, even their sense of humor. One naturalist mentioned seeing three crows on a wire, and one of them slipped, seemingly intentionally, and held himself upside down by one claw, which apparently amused the others. (I'd also read about experiments and anedcotes involving birds with amazing memories and vocabularies, even speaking and acting in ways one would consider appropriate for brief human-to-human exchanges.)
Elephants and llamas were some of the other animals mentioned in the Discover piece that reacted strongly to the death of members of their own species. Elephants have come back a year later to the spot where another elephant has died (as seen on Animal Planet) and they react strongly to the bones. I also recall reading in a Jan Goodall book about a young chimp (fully grown, not a baby) reacting so strongly to the death of his mother, that he simply climbed a tree and wouldn't come down and eat until he himself had died, apparently of grief.
The works of Frans de Waal (a famed primatologist), contain some touching stories about the compassionate behaviors of primates, notably of the most peace loving chimp species, the bonobo. When Frans took his own baby son (who was sitting in a forward facing harness strapped round Frans's chest) to visit some chimps at a zoo where Frans had gotten to know the chimps well, a mother chimp with her own young one saw Frans holding his baby up to the viewing glass, and the mother took her own baby's arms and twisted her baby around in a single movement so it was facing outward, and held her baby up to the glass so that the two babys could eye each other. Frans and the mother chimp also exchanged glances. Frans mentioned a case of a female photographing chimps on their little chimp island that had a moat around it. They were bonobos, a female dominated society, and food had just been given them, and they were portioning it out amongst themselves. The photographer wanted to get a shot but the chimps had their backs to the camera and were facing the food that had been delivered instead of facing the moat with the photographer on the other side, so the photographer started to wave her hands and scream and jump up and down to get the attention of the chimps. The other chimps looked round, except one who was suspicious and didn't turn around. So the female photographer continued waving her hands and shouting until finally that last female chimp turned around, and tossed the photographer a handful of food! The chimp apparently thought she was being asked to share her food! And well, she did.
In another case I've read about, Washoe the chimp was on a chimp island with other chimps, one of which climbed the fence and started wadding out into the moat surrounding the island (chimps can't swim, they sink, their bodies are denser than human beings since they have far less body fat). This chimp started to flail around in the water, drowning. Washoe saw this, clambored over the fence, and held onto some tall grass with one hand while extending the other to the drowning chimp, who was saved.
Meanwhile Robert Hauser (Harvard prof and author of Moral Minds) has asked a lot of people a lot of tough moral questions and found out how similar their responses were across the board regardless of whether the person was religious or not.
I have responded to the question of "moral objectivity" elsewhere on Victor Reppert's Dangerous Idea blog, and cited statements by philosophers and primatologists from Mary Midgley to Frans de Waal to Einstein. Anyone can view my responses by clicking here and here and here and here.
Ed (Edward T. Babinski for the sake of blog search engines *smile*)
Joseph of Arimathea Was Probably a Literary Fiction
With John Dominic Crossan and Keith Parsons I believe that the accounts of Joseph of Arimathea giving Jesus an honorable burial are probably a literary fiction. This shouldn’t surprise the reader since there are good reasons to also be suspicious of the existence of Judas Iscariot, who conspired with the Sanhedrin to betray Jesus with a kiss the night before his crucifixion. With regard to Joseph being a literary creation there are several lines of evidence that point in this direction.
In the first place we have no idea where the location of the town of Arimathea is, whereas we do know the location of other Biblical cites like Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Capernaum and Damascus. According to Roy W. Hoover, “the location of Arimathea has not (yet) been identified with any assurance; the various ‘possible’ locations are nothing more than pious guesses or conjectures undocumented by any textual or archaeological evidence.”[1] More than likely Hoover means we don’t have any other textual reference to the town in any ancient text apart from those influenced by the Biblical narrative, and there is no archaeology confirming the location of this town. No wonder that Luke’s gospel, written to the Greeks from some place in the Roman Empire after the gospels of Mark and Matthew, had to explain why they had never heard of this town before, so it says Arimathea was a “Jewish town,” one which they probably weren’t so familiar (Luke 23:51).
In the second place, there are some implausible aspects about just what this Joseph did and when. In none of the gospels do we find him mentioned at the scene of the crucifixion. And yet we’re told he asked to take Jesus’ body down to bury it. When did he know Jesus had died if he wasn’t at the scene? Purportedly someone told him, otherwise, why didn't they mention that he saw Jesus die? Three Gospels tell us Jesus died specifically at 3 PM (Mark 15:34-37; Matt. 27:46-50; Luke 23:44-46). But it wasn’t until “evening approached” that Joseph went to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus. To confirm that Jesus had died Pilate dispatched a centurion to see for sure, and upon returning he told Pilate Jesus was dead, so he granted Joseph his request. This had to have taken some time. Does anyone expect that gaining access to Pilate was a quick and easy thing, or that it didn’t take time to walk back and forth like they were to have done? Then upon having his request granted Joseph had to go home and get a shroud, find Nicodemus who bought 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes (John 19:38), take Jesus’ body down, bury it, and roll a stone across the entrance all before sundown, when this whole course of action began “when evening approached”? There wasn’t enough time!
The non-canonical Gospel of Peter first saw this problem when it says Joseph asked to have Jesus’ body at the same time Pilate sent him to be crucified. At least then Joseph would be able to make all the preparations. If the Gospel of Peter's scenario is correct, the canonical Gospels are wrong, but if the canonical Gospels are correct then there wasn’t enough time for the burial, or the Gospels placed Jesus’ death incorrectly at 3 PM for theological reasons, or Joseph worked on the Sabbath Day in burying Jesus’ body after sundown when the Jewish day began (contrary to Jewish law), or the whole story of Joseph is itself subject for great doubt.
In the third place, we never hear of Joseph again. This is significant, I think, as explained by Roy W. Hoover: “he is not among the witnesses to the empty tomb in the Gospel stories and is never subsequently said to have become a believer and a member of the early church. His cameo appearance only serves the immediate narrative interest of the Gospel authors—to ‘establish’ the location of Jesus’ tomb, the emptiness of which he was no longer around to verify.”[2]
There are other good reasons to think Joseph is a literary fiction. Look at the texts themselves. In Acts 13:28-29, we’re told that Jesus was buried by his enemies who had him crucified: “Even though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed. When they had carried out everything that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb.” This doesn’t describe Joseph of Arimathea, whom Matthew and John both claim was one of Jesus’ disciples (Matt. 27:57; John 19:38). Also problematic is that earlier in Mark’s gospel we read where all the members of the Sanhedrin high court voted to condemn Jesus to death: “Then the high priest tore his clothes and said…. ‘What is your decision?’ All of them condemned him as deserving death” (Mark 14:62). How could Joseph condemn Jesus if he was his disciple? The gospel of Matthew solves this problem by saying Joseph was “a rich man,” not a member of the Sanhedrin, while John’s gospel solves it by claiming Joseph was a “secret” disciple, “because of his fear of the Jews.” Left unresolved here is how a Jewish member of high standing in the Sanhedrin itself would fear the “Jews,” since he was one.
The gospel of Mark’s own attempt to resolve what was said earlier in his own gospel is with deliberate ambiguity. According to John Dominic Crossan: “Joseph is described not as a member of the synedrion-council but as a member of the boulē-council, as if there were two councils in charge of Jerusalem, a civil council and a religious council, with Joseph a member of the former body (bouleutēs) but not in the later one at all (synedrion). There was, of course, no such distinction in historical life; there was only one council by whatever name.”[3] Thus Mark’s gospel is deliberately ambiguous with regard to whether or not Joseph was a member of the council he had previously told us condemned Jesus.
Mark’s gospel is also deliberately ambiguous as to whether or not Joseph was a believing disciple of Jesus. In Mark we read that Joseph “was looking for the kingdom of God”(Mark 15:43). Crossan asks, “is looking for it” the same as accepting it, entering it, believing in it? That oblique expression “looking for” makes it impossible to be sure whether Joseph was among the followers of Jesus.”[4]
When it comes to the two other thieves who died next to Jesus, we have a tradition in John (19:31) in which “the Jews” asked Pilate that the bodies of Jesus and the two thieves would be removed, indicating that all three crucified victims were removed that same day, even though John indicates later that Jesus was given a separate burial by Joseph (19:38-42). In any case we have the problem of the two thieves. If Joseph’s duty was to bury condemned criminals, or if he was just a pious humanitarian, he would’ve buried them all. But this cannot be, for if he buried them all together in a single tomb, or in a communal grave for criminals, then the problem becomes how one could prove Jesus’ corpse was the one missing when the other two bodies would’ve decomposed by the time of the first Christian preaching of the resurrection? So Matthew’s gospel rephrases Mark that Jesus was buried “in his own new tomb,” and instead of just a “stone” being placed in the entrance, it has now become a “great stone.” (Matthew 27:60), while Luke says it was a tomb “where no one had ever been laid.” (Luke 23:53).
Crossan argues that these points lead him to think Joseph’s honorable burial is creative fiction based upon “prophecy historicized,” by which he means the New Testament writers created their accounts based to some extent on the attempt to show how prophecy was fulfilled by the events they told.[5] We see this in Luke’s concoction of a census to get Mary to give birth to Jesus in Bethlehem, as but one example of many. Crossan wrote, “First, if Joseph was in the council, he was against Jesus; if he was for Jesus, he was not in the council. Second, if Joseph buried Jesus from piety or duty, he would have done the same for the two other crucified criminals; yet if he did that, there could be no empty-tomb sequence.”[6] In the end he argues that Mark “did his best with an impossible problem: those in power were against Jesus; those for him had no power. How could you invent a person with power (at least access to Pilate) but for Jesus? He created Joseph as both a Sanhedrist and an almost-a-disciple of Jesus.”[7]
Two objections come to the forefront at this point. William Lane Craig charges that “the figure of Joseph is startling dissimilar to the prevailing attitude in the Church toward the Sanhedrin. Therefore, Joseph is unlikely to have been a fictional creation of the early church.”[8] Yet, if Crossan’s argument is correct, then this literary creation is due to “prophecy historicized” in which Mark had a near impossible task of satisfying the demands of the antagonism of the early church with the Sanhedrin who condemned Jesus, and his need to provide evidence that there was an empty tomb which he later writes about.
The second objection is why Mark would provide a name (Joseph) and a place of residence (Arimathea) for the person who buried Jesus? He didn’t need to do that, did he? So it’s likely such a person existed, and if he did it’s likely he did something like what Mark said he did. Crossan answers this objection in these words: “The general early Christian tradition was to name those significant characters left nameless in the passion accounts.”[9] The Gospel of Peter gives the name “Petronius” to the centurion who was in charge of the soldiers who were supposed to guard the tomb. Pilate’s wife, the centurion at the cross, and the two thieves crucified with Jesus were all given subsequent names. There are examples of this in the Gospels themselves. The sword wielder and the person whose ear was cut off in the Garden of Gethsemane in Mark’s gospel are later named in John 18:10 as “Peter”and “Malchus.” Crossan asks, “if you create the events, why not create names as well?”
Then there’s the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus in which Luke gives one of its characters a name, “Lazarus.” Even conservative scholars regard the story as one of Jesus’ parables, and is treated as such by Simon J. Kistemaker and by William Hendricksen, without so much as giving the reader a reason why it’s considered a parable.[10] It’s considered a parable because it has the same format of one of Jesus’ parables, and because Jesus begins many of his parables in Luke with the same phrase: “a certain man” or something similar (13:6; 14:16; 15;11; 16:1; 16:19; 18:2; 19:12). In The Parable of the Shrewd Manager that precedes this one, Luke starts out with the same exact phrase, “There was a rich man…” Names in the Bible meant something, and this is the case with Lazarus too, which means “God has helped.” The rich man is later called “Dives” in the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible, meaning “wealthy.”
In a very well-argued chapter, Jeffery Jay Lowder has defended the idea that Jesus’ body was hastily buried before the Sabbath Day by Joseph of Arimathea but that it was relocated on the Sabbath Day to the public graveyard of the condemned, which would make the identification of Jesus’ decomposed body unidentifiable by the time Christians first proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus.[11] The problem with Lowder’s scenario is that it seems improbable that in obedience to Jewish law, the body of Jesus was buried before the Sabbath, and yet in defiance of Jewish law, those who buried it worked on the Sabbath by removing the body of Jesus from the initial tomb and burying it elsewhere.
Even if Joseph of Arimathea was not a literary creation, then at best he was the official whose duty it was to bury condemned criminals, who were buried in the public graveyard of the condemned, which Jewish law proscribed. And if that’s so, all three crucified men would have been buried together, and Jesus' body would have decomposed beyond the point of recognition by the time of the first Christian resurrection proclamation seven weeks later (Acts 1:3; 2:1).
-----------------------------
[1] Roy Hoover in Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact of Figment? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdemann eds., Paul Copan, and Ronald K. Tacelli (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p. 130.
[2] Ibid.
[3] John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus (New York: Harper and Row, 1998), p. 554.
[4] Ibid.
[5] John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus? (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), pp. 1-13. For those unfamiliar with how the New Testament writers constructed stories based upon Old Testament passages see Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions (Amherst, NY, Prometheus Books, 1988), p.131.
[6] Ibid., p. 555.
[7] John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus? (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), p. 173
[8] As quoted in Paul Copan, and Ronald K. Tacelli, eds. Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact of Figment? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdemann, p. 166.
[9] John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus?, p. 177.
[10] As seen in Kistemaker’s book, The Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), and Hendriksen’s book New Testament Commentary: An Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978).
[11] In Robert M. Price and Jeffery Jay Lowder, eds., The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave (Amherst: NY: Prometheus Books, 2005), pp. 261-306.
In the first place we have no idea where the location of the town of Arimathea is, whereas we do know the location of other Biblical cites like Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Capernaum and Damascus. According to Roy W. Hoover, “the location of Arimathea has not (yet) been identified with any assurance; the various ‘possible’ locations are nothing more than pious guesses or conjectures undocumented by any textual or archaeological evidence.”[1] More than likely Hoover means we don’t have any other textual reference to the town in any ancient text apart from those influenced by the Biblical narrative, and there is no archaeology confirming the location of this town. No wonder that Luke’s gospel, written to the Greeks from some place in the Roman Empire after the gospels of Mark and Matthew, had to explain why they had never heard of this town before, so it says Arimathea was a “Jewish town,” one which they probably weren’t so familiar (Luke 23:51).
In the second place, there are some implausible aspects about just what this Joseph did and when. In none of the gospels do we find him mentioned at the scene of the crucifixion. And yet we’re told he asked to take Jesus’ body down to bury it. When did he know Jesus had died if he wasn’t at the scene? Purportedly someone told him, otherwise, why didn't they mention that he saw Jesus die? Three Gospels tell us Jesus died specifically at 3 PM (Mark 15:34-37; Matt. 27:46-50; Luke 23:44-46). But it wasn’t until “evening approached” that Joseph went to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus. To confirm that Jesus had died Pilate dispatched a centurion to see for sure, and upon returning he told Pilate Jesus was dead, so he granted Joseph his request. This had to have taken some time. Does anyone expect that gaining access to Pilate was a quick and easy thing, or that it didn’t take time to walk back and forth like they were to have done? Then upon having his request granted Joseph had to go home and get a shroud, find Nicodemus who bought 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes (John 19:38), take Jesus’ body down, bury it, and roll a stone across the entrance all before sundown, when this whole course of action began “when evening approached”? There wasn’t enough time!
The non-canonical Gospel of Peter first saw this problem when it says Joseph asked to have Jesus’ body at the same time Pilate sent him to be crucified. At least then Joseph would be able to make all the preparations. If the Gospel of Peter's scenario is correct, the canonical Gospels are wrong, but if the canonical Gospels are correct then there wasn’t enough time for the burial, or the Gospels placed Jesus’ death incorrectly at 3 PM for theological reasons, or Joseph worked on the Sabbath Day in burying Jesus’ body after sundown when the Jewish day began (contrary to Jewish law), or the whole story of Joseph is itself subject for great doubt.
In the third place, we never hear of Joseph again. This is significant, I think, as explained by Roy W. Hoover: “he is not among the witnesses to the empty tomb in the Gospel stories and is never subsequently said to have become a believer and a member of the early church. His cameo appearance only serves the immediate narrative interest of the Gospel authors—to ‘establish’ the location of Jesus’ tomb, the emptiness of which he was no longer around to verify.”[2]
There are other good reasons to think Joseph is a literary fiction. Look at the texts themselves. In Acts 13:28-29, we’re told that Jesus was buried by his enemies who had him crucified: “Even though they found no cause for a sentence of death, they asked Pilate to have him killed. When they had carried out everything that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb.” This doesn’t describe Joseph of Arimathea, whom Matthew and John both claim was one of Jesus’ disciples (Matt. 27:57; John 19:38). Also problematic is that earlier in Mark’s gospel we read where all the members of the Sanhedrin high court voted to condemn Jesus to death: “Then the high priest tore his clothes and said…. ‘What is your decision?’ All of them condemned him as deserving death” (Mark 14:62). How could Joseph condemn Jesus if he was his disciple? The gospel of Matthew solves this problem by saying Joseph was “a rich man,” not a member of the Sanhedrin, while John’s gospel solves it by claiming Joseph was a “secret” disciple, “because of his fear of the Jews.” Left unresolved here is how a Jewish member of high standing in the Sanhedrin itself would fear the “Jews,” since he was one.
The gospel of Mark’s own attempt to resolve what was said earlier in his own gospel is with deliberate ambiguity. According to John Dominic Crossan: “Joseph is described not as a member of the synedrion-council but as a member of the boulē-council, as if there were two councils in charge of Jerusalem, a civil council and a religious council, with Joseph a member of the former body (bouleutēs) but not in the later one at all (synedrion). There was, of course, no such distinction in historical life; there was only one council by whatever name.”[3] Thus Mark’s gospel is deliberately ambiguous with regard to whether or not Joseph was a member of the council he had previously told us condemned Jesus.
Mark’s gospel is also deliberately ambiguous as to whether or not Joseph was a believing disciple of Jesus. In Mark we read that Joseph “was looking for the kingdom of God”(Mark 15:43). Crossan asks, “is looking for it” the same as accepting it, entering it, believing in it? That oblique expression “looking for” makes it impossible to be sure whether Joseph was among the followers of Jesus.”[4]
When it comes to the two other thieves who died next to Jesus, we have a tradition in John (19:31) in which “the Jews” asked Pilate that the bodies of Jesus and the two thieves would be removed, indicating that all three crucified victims were removed that same day, even though John indicates later that Jesus was given a separate burial by Joseph (19:38-42). In any case we have the problem of the two thieves. If Joseph’s duty was to bury condemned criminals, or if he was just a pious humanitarian, he would’ve buried them all. But this cannot be, for if he buried them all together in a single tomb, or in a communal grave for criminals, then the problem becomes how one could prove Jesus’ corpse was the one missing when the other two bodies would’ve decomposed by the time of the first Christian preaching of the resurrection? So Matthew’s gospel rephrases Mark that Jesus was buried “in his own new tomb,” and instead of just a “stone” being placed in the entrance, it has now become a “great stone.” (Matthew 27:60), while Luke says it was a tomb “where no one had ever been laid.” (Luke 23:53).
Crossan argues that these points lead him to think Joseph’s honorable burial is creative fiction based upon “prophecy historicized,” by which he means the New Testament writers created their accounts based to some extent on the attempt to show how prophecy was fulfilled by the events they told.[5] We see this in Luke’s concoction of a census to get Mary to give birth to Jesus in Bethlehem, as but one example of many. Crossan wrote, “First, if Joseph was in the council, he was against Jesus; if he was for Jesus, he was not in the council. Second, if Joseph buried Jesus from piety or duty, he would have done the same for the two other crucified criminals; yet if he did that, there could be no empty-tomb sequence.”[6] In the end he argues that Mark “did his best with an impossible problem: those in power were against Jesus; those for him had no power. How could you invent a person with power (at least access to Pilate) but for Jesus? He created Joseph as both a Sanhedrist and an almost-a-disciple of Jesus.”[7]
Two objections come to the forefront at this point. William Lane Craig charges that “the figure of Joseph is startling dissimilar to the prevailing attitude in the Church toward the Sanhedrin. Therefore, Joseph is unlikely to have been a fictional creation of the early church.”[8] Yet, if Crossan’s argument is correct, then this literary creation is due to “prophecy historicized” in which Mark had a near impossible task of satisfying the demands of the antagonism of the early church with the Sanhedrin who condemned Jesus, and his need to provide evidence that there was an empty tomb which he later writes about.
The second objection is why Mark would provide a name (Joseph) and a place of residence (Arimathea) for the person who buried Jesus? He didn’t need to do that, did he? So it’s likely such a person existed, and if he did it’s likely he did something like what Mark said he did. Crossan answers this objection in these words: “The general early Christian tradition was to name those significant characters left nameless in the passion accounts.”[9] The Gospel of Peter gives the name “Petronius” to the centurion who was in charge of the soldiers who were supposed to guard the tomb. Pilate’s wife, the centurion at the cross, and the two thieves crucified with Jesus were all given subsequent names. There are examples of this in the Gospels themselves. The sword wielder and the person whose ear was cut off in the Garden of Gethsemane in Mark’s gospel are later named in John 18:10 as “Peter”and “Malchus.” Crossan asks, “if you create the events, why not create names as well?”
Then there’s the parable of The Rich Man and Lazarus in which Luke gives one of its characters a name, “Lazarus.” Even conservative scholars regard the story as one of Jesus’ parables, and is treated as such by Simon J. Kistemaker and by William Hendricksen, without so much as giving the reader a reason why it’s considered a parable.[10] It’s considered a parable because it has the same format of one of Jesus’ parables, and because Jesus begins many of his parables in Luke with the same phrase: “a certain man” or something similar (13:6; 14:16; 15;11; 16:1; 16:19; 18:2; 19:12). In The Parable of the Shrewd Manager that precedes this one, Luke starts out with the same exact phrase, “There was a rich man…” Names in the Bible meant something, and this is the case with Lazarus too, which means “God has helped.” The rich man is later called “Dives” in the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible, meaning “wealthy.”
In a very well-argued chapter, Jeffery Jay Lowder has defended the idea that Jesus’ body was hastily buried before the Sabbath Day by Joseph of Arimathea but that it was relocated on the Sabbath Day to the public graveyard of the condemned, which would make the identification of Jesus’ decomposed body unidentifiable by the time Christians first proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus.[11] The problem with Lowder’s scenario is that it seems improbable that in obedience to Jewish law, the body of Jesus was buried before the Sabbath, and yet in defiance of Jewish law, those who buried it worked on the Sabbath by removing the body of Jesus from the initial tomb and burying it elsewhere.
Even if Joseph of Arimathea was not a literary creation, then at best he was the official whose duty it was to bury condemned criminals, who were buried in the public graveyard of the condemned, which Jewish law proscribed. And if that’s so, all three crucified men would have been buried together, and Jesus' body would have decomposed beyond the point of recognition by the time of the first Christian resurrection proclamation seven weeks later (Acts 1:3; 2:1).
-----------------------------
[1] Roy Hoover in Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact of Figment? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdemann eds., Paul Copan, and Ronald K. Tacelli (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p. 130.
[2] Ibid.
[3] John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus (New York: Harper and Row, 1998), p. 554.
[4] Ibid.
[5] John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus? (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), pp. 1-13. For those unfamiliar with how the New Testament writers constructed stories based upon Old Testament passages see Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions (Amherst, NY, Prometheus Books, 1988), p.131.
[6] Ibid., p. 555.
[7] John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus? (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), p. 173
[8] As quoted in Paul Copan, and Ronald K. Tacelli, eds. Jesus’ Resurrection: Fact of Figment? A Debate Between William Lane Craig and Gerd Lüdemann, p. 166.
[9] John Dominic Crossan, Who Killed Jesus?, p. 177.
[10] As seen in Kistemaker’s book, The Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), and Hendriksen’s book New Testament Commentary: An Exposition of the Gospel According to Luke (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978).
[11] In Robert M. Price and Jeffery Jay Lowder, eds., The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave (Amherst: NY: Prometheus Books, 2005), pp. 261-306.
Study In "Journal of Religion and Society" Finds Societies Worse Off With Religion.
More morality news (albeit from Sep. 2005!), thanks to recent commenter "The Alpha".
"Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'" from the online edition of The Times.
The original study is here. Thanks Prup!.
Enjoy.
"Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'" from the online edition of The Times.
The original study is here. Thanks Prup!.
Enjoy.
May 31, 2007
Wes Morriston's Critique of the Kalam Argument
The Kalam Argument for the existence of God attempts to show that the universe must have begun at some point, which requires a timelessly existing personal God as the explanation for such a beginning. This argument states that a beginningless series of events in time is impossible, because it would demand an infinite series of events in time. But we can never have an infinite collection of anything, much less events in time. If one were to begin counting, he or his descendants would never finish counting to infinity, because it successively counting to infinity cannot be done. Therefore the universe began to exist, and since it cannot take place by non-personal events in time, it requires a personal agent, God, who is outside of time to create the universe when it began. William Lane Craig is it’s leading defender today.
While the Kalam argument is fascinating, several scholars have offered critiques of it, beginning with J.L. Mackie, and Michael Martin. Book length treatments of it have been written by Quentin Smith (with William Lane Craig) and Mark R. Nowacki.
For this argument, Professor Craig offers a simple structure:
1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
Critics attack the premises of the argument, as well as the conclusion that further claims the cause for the existence of the universe is a personal agent, God, who is outside of time. Victor J. Stenger has argued against the physics implied by Kalam Argument and concluded, “Craig’s use of the singularity theorem for a beginning of time is invalid.”
For one of the best criticisms of the Kalam look at Wes Morriston's exchange with Bill Craig.1
Take for instance the first premise, “everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.” Craig claims this is an obvious “metaphysical intuition.” Based on this premise, however, Morriston argues that if God creates time and places himself in it, “it follows that God...exists at a time prior to which there is no time.” Since God has a first moment in time it seems that “God is as much in need of a cause as the universe,” if indeed “everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.” To get around this problem Craig basically argues that God is the exception to this. But then this added complexity to the premise is hardly an obvious “metaphysical intuition,” as Morriston notes.
Craig argues on behalf of this “metaphysical intuition” that people don’t imagine tigers “springing into existence uncaused.” Morriston rightly counters that “The First Moment in the history of our universe is unlike all others because that is when the whole natural order comes into being. Later moments are embedded not only within time, but, more importantly, within a natural order that did not exist prior to the First Moment.” Speaking of the “First Beginning,” Morriston continues: “There is simply no familiar law-governed context for it, precisely because there is nothing prior to the Beginning. We have no experience of the origin of worlds to tell us that worlds don’t come into existence like that. We don’t even have experience of the coming into being of anything remotely analogous to the “initial singularity” that figures in the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. That is why the absurdity of tigers and the like popping into existence out of nowhere tells us nothing about the utterly unique case of the Beginning of the whole natural order.” Furthermore, according to Morriston, “Some people have quite a strong resistance to the whole idea of a First Moment. The idea of a time prior to which there was no time—of an eternal event before which there were no others—strikes them as profoundly counter-intuitive.”
Morriston goes on to argue that Craig’s view of “creation out of nothing is at least as counterintuitive as is beginning to exist without a cause.” “If someone insists it is just ‘obvious’ that God could create a world without any preexisting material stuff to work with, on the ground that there is no logical contradiction in the idea of such a feat, then the proper reply is that there is also no logical contradiction in the idea of the universe beginning without a cause.”
Craig, however, asserts that people who do not accept the obvious “metaphysical intuition” of the first premise are in a minority, and/or insincere. People who deny this intuition are not being intellectually honest, he claims. They deny it because they want to avoid the implications of a creator God. Given the fact that I have already argued for “The Outsider Test For Faith," I liked how Morriston responds to Craig, in these words: “It is worth noting such an ‘explanation’ could be accepted only by someone who was already convinced that God exists, and a lot of other things as well. From outside the evangelical Christian world view, this is bound to look like an ad hoc hypothesis that merely adds to the implausibility of an already top heavy theory. No matter how much ‘scriptural support’ is cited in its favor, the outsider, who does not yet accept this kind of support, is perfectly justified, from his own point of view, in seeing this attack on his integrity as little more than a lame attempt to reassure believers in the face of recalcitrant data. Whatever the insider may think, the outsider still needs to understand how it is that intelligent and well-informed people can disagree about matters that are supposed to be intuitively self-evident.” There are lots of honest skeptics who just don’t think the evidence and the arguments support Craig’s claims. Like me they do indeed sincerely want to know the truth. Don’t impugn my motives, and I won’t impugn yours.
Craig’s argument leads him to postulate the conclusion that the cause of the universe must be a personal agent, since a non-personal cause from all eternity would have already produced the universe, no matter how far back in time we go. If all of the conditions for the origin of universe were in place from all of eternity, then the universe would already have sprung into existence. In fact, there would be no time in which we travel back where we would find the universe springing into existence at all, since there would always be a prior time when the universe had already sprung into existence from the conditions which had already been there from eternity.
Morriston points out a major problem with this supposed personal agent as the cause of the universe. By postulating a personal cause, Craig cannot escape his own conclusion that the universe must be just as eternal as its cause. For if God is timelessly eternal then there was never a moment in time when God did not will into existence this universe. Since Craig does not deny that God’s intention to create our world is eternal, “God’s eternal decision to create a universe must surely be causally sufficient for the existence of that world. So, if, as Craig indicates, God’s will to create is eternal, why doesn’t he conclude that the universe is eternal?” Only “a personal agent existing in time can have plans for the future.” But a timelessly existing Being is something else. Either “a timeless personal agent timelessly wills to create a world with a beginning, or else it does not so will. There can be no temporal gap between the time at which it does the willing and the time at which the thing willed actually happens. In this respect a timeless personal cause is no different from a non-personal cause.”
----------------------
1 Wes Morriston, “Must the Beginning of the Universe Have a Personal Cause?: A Critical Examination of the Kalam Cosmological Argument” (Faith and Philosophy Vol. 17, No. 2 (2000), 149-169; Craig’s reply: “Must the Beginning of the Universe Have a Personal Cause?: A Rejoinder;” and Morriston’s counter-reply, “Causes and Beginnings in the Kalam Argument: Reply to Craig,” in Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 19, No. 2 (April 2002), 233-244. All three essays can be found on the web. For effective rebuttals of Craig’s arguments against the impossibility of reaching an infinite through “successive addition” and against an infinite past, see Wes Morriston’s “Must the Past Have a Beginning?” (Philo Vol. 2 (1999) no. 1, pp. 5-19.
While the Kalam argument is fascinating, several scholars have offered critiques of it, beginning with J.L. Mackie, and Michael Martin. Book length treatments of it have been written by Quentin Smith (with William Lane Craig) and Mark R. Nowacki.
For this argument, Professor Craig offers a simple structure:
1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2) The universe began to exist.
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.
Critics attack the premises of the argument, as well as the conclusion that further claims the cause for the existence of the universe is a personal agent, God, who is outside of time. Victor J. Stenger has argued against the physics implied by Kalam Argument and concluded, “Craig’s use of the singularity theorem for a beginning of time is invalid.”
For one of the best criticisms of the Kalam look at Wes Morriston's exchange with Bill Craig.1
Take for instance the first premise, “everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.” Craig claims this is an obvious “metaphysical intuition.” Based on this premise, however, Morriston argues that if God creates time and places himself in it, “it follows that God...exists at a time prior to which there is no time.” Since God has a first moment in time it seems that “God is as much in need of a cause as the universe,” if indeed “everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence.” To get around this problem Craig basically argues that God is the exception to this. But then this added complexity to the premise is hardly an obvious “metaphysical intuition,” as Morriston notes.
Craig argues on behalf of this “metaphysical intuition” that people don’t imagine tigers “springing into existence uncaused.” Morriston rightly counters that “The First Moment in the history of our universe is unlike all others because that is when the whole natural order comes into being. Later moments are embedded not only within time, but, more importantly, within a natural order that did not exist prior to the First Moment.” Speaking of the “First Beginning,” Morriston continues: “There is simply no familiar law-governed context for it, precisely because there is nothing prior to the Beginning. We have no experience of the origin of worlds to tell us that worlds don’t come into existence like that. We don’t even have experience of the coming into being of anything remotely analogous to the “initial singularity” that figures in the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. That is why the absurdity of tigers and the like popping into existence out of nowhere tells us nothing about the utterly unique case of the Beginning of the whole natural order.” Furthermore, according to Morriston, “Some people have quite a strong resistance to the whole idea of a First Moment. The idea of a time prior to which there was no time—of an eternal event before which there were no others—strikes them as profoundly counter-intuitive.”
Morriston goes on to argue that Craig’s view of “creation out of nothing is at least as counterintuitive as is beginning to exist without a cause.” “If someone insists it is just ‘obvious’ that God could create a world without any preexisting material stuff to work with, on the ground that there is no logical contradiction in the idea of such a feat, then the proper reply is that there is also no logical contradiction in the idea of the universe beginning without a cause.”
Craig, however, asserts that people who do not accept the obvious “metaphysical intuition” of the first premise are in a minority, and/or insincere. People who deny this intuition are not being intellectually honest, he claims. They deny it because they want to avoid the implications of a creator God. Given the fact that I have already argued for “The Outsider Test For Faith," I liked how Morriston responds to Craig, in these words: “It is worth noting such an ‘explanation’ could be accepted only by someone who was already convinced that God exists, and a lot of other things as well. From outside the evangelical Christian world view, this is bound to look like an ad hoc hypothesis that merely adds to the implausibility of an already top heavy theory. No matter how much ‘scriptural support’ is cited in its favor, the outsider, who does not yet accept this kind of support, is perfectly justified, from his own point of view, in seeing this attack on his integrity as little more than a lame attempt to reassure believers in the face of recalcitrant data. Whatever the insider may think, the outsider still needs to understand how it is that intelligent and well-informed people can disagree about matters that are supposed to be intuitively self-evident.” There are lots of honest skeptics who just don’t think the evidence and the arguments support Craig’s claims. Like me they do indeed sincerely want to know the truth. Don’t impugn my motives, and I won’t impugn yours.
Craig’s argument leads him to postulate the conclusion that the cause of the universe must be a personal agent, since a non-personal cause from all eternity would have already produced the universe, no matter how far back in time we go. If all of the conditions for the origin of universe were in place from all of eternity, then the universe would already have sprung into existence. In fact, there would be no time in which we travel back where we would find the universe springing into existence at all, since there would always be a prior time when the universe had already sprung into existence from the conditions which had already been there from eternity.
Morriston points out a major problem with this supposed personal agent as the cause of the universe. By postulating a personal cause, Craig cannot escape his own conclusion that the universe must be just as eternal as its cause. For if God is timelessly eternal then there was never a moment in time when God did not will into existence this universe. Since Craig does not deny that God’s intention to create our world is eternal, “God’s eternal decision to create a universe must surely be causally sufficient for the existence of that world. So, if, as Craig indicates, God’s will to create is eternal, why doesn’t he conclude that the universe is eternal?” Only “a personal agent existing in time can have plans for the future.” But a timelessly existing Being is something else. Either “a timeless personal agent timelessly wills to create a world with a beginning, or else it does not so will. There can be no temporal gap between the time at which it does the willing and the time at which the thing willed actually happens. In this respect a timeless personal cause is no different from a non-personal cause.”
----------------------
1 Wes Morriston, “Must the Beginning of the Universe Have a Personal Cause?: A Critical Examination of the Kalam Cosmological Argument” (Faith and Philosophy Vol. 17, No. 2 (2000), 149-169; Craig’s reply: “Must the Beginning of the Universe Have a Personal Cause?: A Rejoinder;” and Morriston’s counter-reply, “Causes and Beginnings in the Kalam Argument: Reply to Craig,” in Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 19, No. 2 (April 2002), 233-244. All three essays can be found on the web. For effective rebuttals of Craig’s arguments against the impossibility of reaching an infinite through “successive addition” and against an infinite past, see Wes Morriston’s “Must the Past Have a Beginning?” (Philo Vol. 2 (1999) no. 1, pp. 5-19.
J.L. Mackie's Argument Against Miracles
J.L. Mackie’s Argument Against Miracles.
The late J.L. Mackie in his book, The Miracle of Theism, argues against the belief in miracles, along with Hume. Let me quote from him: “The defender of a miracle…must in effect concede to Hume that the antecedent improbability of this event is as high as it could be, hence that, apart from the testimony, we have the strongest possible grounds for believing that the alleged event did not occur. This event must, by the miracle advocate’s own admission, be contrary to a genuine, not merely supposed, law of nature, and therefore maximally improbable. It is this maximal improbability that the weight of the testimony would have to overcome.” “Where there is some plausible testimony about the occurrence of what would appear to be a miracle, those who accept this as a miracle have the double burden of showing both that the event took place and that it violated the laws of nature. But it will be very hard to sustain this double burden. For whatever tends to show that it would have been a violation of a natural law tends for that very reason to make it most unlikely that is actually happened.”
Mackie then distinguishes between two different contexts in which an alleged miracle might be considered a real one. First, there is the context where two parties “have accepted some general theistic doctrines and the point at issue is, whether a miracle has occurred which would enhance the authority of a specific sect or teacher. In this context supernatural intervention, though prima facie (“on the surface”) unlikely on any particular occasion is, generally speaking, on the cards: it is not altogether outside the range of reasonable expectation for these parties.” The second context is a very different matter when “the context is that of fundamental debate about the truth of theism itself. Here one party to the debate is initially at least agnostic, and does not yet concede that there is a supernatural power at all. From this point of view the intrinsic improbability of a genuine miracle…is very great, and that one or other of the alternative explanations…will always be much more likely—that is, either that the alleged event is not miraculous, or that it did not occur, or that the testimony is faulty in some way.” Mackie concludes by saying: “This entails that it is pretty well impossible that reported miracles should provide a worthwhile argument for theism addressed to those who are initially inclined to atheism or even to agnosticism.”
The late J.L. Mackie in his book, The Miracle of Theism, argues against the belief in miracles, along with Hume. Let me quote from him: “The defender of a miracle…must in effect concede to Hume that the antecedent improbability of this event is as high as it could be, hence that, apart from the testimony, we have the strongest possible grounds for believing that the alleged event did not occur. This event must, by the miracle advocate’s own admission, be contrary to a genuine, not merely supposed, law of nature, and therefore maximally improbable. It is this maximal improbability that the weight of the testimony would have to overcome.” “Where there is some plausible testimony about the occurrence of what would appear to be a miracle, those who accept this as a miracle have the double burden of showing both that the event took place and that it violated the laws of nature. But it will be very hard to sustain this double burden. For whatever tends to show that it would have been a violation of a natural law tends for that very reason to make it most unlikely that is actually happened.”
Mackie then distinguishes between two different contexts in which an alleged miracle might be considered a real one. First, there is the context where two parties “have accepted some general theistic doctrines and the point at issue is, whether a miracle has occurred which would enhance the authority of a specific sect or teacher. In this context supernatural intervention, though prima facie (“on the surface”) unlikely on any particular occasion is, generally speaking, on the cards: it is not altogether outside the range of reasonable expectation for these parties.” The second context is a very different matter when “the context is that of fundamental debate about the truth of theism itself. Here one party to the debate is initially at least agnostic, and does not yet concede that there is a supernatural power at all. From this point of view the intrinsic improbability of a genuine miracle…is very great, and that one or other of the alternative explanations…will always be much more likely—that is, either that the alleged event is not miraculous, or that it did not occur, or that the testimony is faulty in some way.” Mackie concludes by saying: “This entails that it is pretty well impossible that reported miracles should provide a worthwhile argument for theism addressed to those who are initially inclined to atheism or even to agnosticism.”
May 29, 2007
Christian Books I Read that Led Me to Become a Freethinker
There are many more Christian books I read than those I list below, but the following ones stand out in my memory. I pretty much read them in the order I list them. They are all very good books, especially Van Till, Hyers, Dunn, and most importantly James Barr. If you're a Christian and you want to understand why I am a Freethinker, read them. You may see a hint of doubt in each one of them, which were cumulatively seen by me as gaping holes in the Christian faith.
Humans Hard-Wired To Be Generous
[Revision 1. Placed another link to more news like this after the article]
An update on research into morality as an evolutionary adaptation. I'm just waiting for the old "God wrote it on our hearts..." rejoinder....
The problem with that claim is the following.
As a general principle, if god exists, then he wrote it on our hearts just as the bible says.
But the problems are
* there is no credible evidence that God had anything to do with the Bible
* there is no credible evidence that God exists
* it would suggest that if god did write it on our hearts, then he 'hedged' the freewill question
* and this type of morality is not sophisticated enough to be considered some type of divine manipulation.
Enjoy!
Science Daily
An update on research into morality as an evolutionary adaptation. I'm just waiting for the old "God wrote it on our hearts..." rejoinder....
The problem with that claim is the following.
As a general principle, if god exists, then he wrote it on our hearts just as the bible says.
But the problems are
* there is no credible evidence that God had anything to do with the Bible
* there is no credible evidence that God exists
* it would suggest that if god did write it on our hearts, then he 'hedged' the freewill question
* and this type of morality is not sophisticated enough to be considered some type of divine manipulation.
Enjoy!
Science Daily
Here's another related link with more information on this type of research. On that page, on the right hand side are even more links to this type of research news.Humans hard-wired to be generous
WASHINGTON, May 28 (UPI) -- A study by government scientists in Washington indicates humans are hard-wired to be unselfish.
Neuroscientists Jorge Moll and Jordan Grafman of the National Institutes of Health say experiments they conducted have led them to conclude unselfishness is not a matter of morality, The Washington Post reports.
Rather, the two say altruism is something that makes people feel good, lighting up a primitive part of the human brain that usually responds to food or sex.
Grafman and Moll have been scanning the brains of volunteers who were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves.
They are among scientists across the United States using imaging and psychological experiments to study whether the brain has a built-in moral compass.
The results are showing many aspects of morality appear to be hard-wired in the brain, opening up a new window on what it means to be good.
Copyright 2007 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
On Christian Bigotry and Hatred
If you believe conservative Christians don’t propagate a notably strong sense of bigotry and hatred towards those who believe differently than they, then I have some challenges for you.
First, seek out a member of the Ku Klux Klan or any other brand-name white supremacist. Ask that person as plainly as you can, “Why do you hate gays, minorities, and Jews?” Listen to their answer. I’m willing to bet an airline ticket to the Bahamas that the answer will be something like, “We don’t hate them. We hate what they stand for,” or “Those of us who believe in white nationalism are having our way of life taken from us, and we are fighting to stop that.” Or, if the person you are asking is exceptionally well-versed in their bigotry, you may even get to hear a biblically enlightening discourse on Genesis 9:26 and Genesis 11:1-9 on how “God himself enforced subjugation, and put the differences of race between men and women. Who are we to remove them?” Almost never will they say, “I admit it. You got me. I hate those bastards because that’s the way I am.”
Next, seek out someone on the other end of the spectrum. Find some no good race-hustlers, like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, (in this writer’s opinion, two of the scummiest men on our planet). Ask them if they hate white people. They won’t say so. They will emphatically say that they don’t, that they just want equality and reparations for past wrongs, but reading between the lines, one can see the hatred and gut-centered resentment spewing out of their mouths. Men like these have problems; they hold people accountable for things they are not responsible for. So intense is their hatred that it ruined the lives of three innocent lacrosse players by means of character assassination when not a bit of evidence incriminated the boys.
Then, find a radical Muslim, a member or a sympathizer of a terrorist group like al-Qaeda. Ask him why he hates the Jews so much. Chances are, you’ll hear, “We don’t hate Jews. We once lived in peace with the Jews. We are fighting them to win back our freedom.” I am amazed how people can be so damn good at putting soft-peddle twists on hate speech to make it sound less objectionable.
Of course, there are those who are honest enough to admit their hatred, like those of Westboro Baptist Church, who make headlines all the time, telling gays how badly God hates them and wants them to suffer in hell. These mouthpieces of madness spend their waking hours telling teary-eyed families of fallen soldiers that their dearly beloved is in Hell from God’s wrath being unleashed on them because of America’s sins. They’ll tell you in no uncertain terms that “God hates fags” – and since God hates them, how can they not? If nothing else, one must appreciate the honesty! But honesty or no honesty, all these examples are in a clear-cut caste of religion-born hatemongers. The fact that every dimwitted idealist is right in his own thinking does not detract from the message of hate he preaches.
In the case of Christianity, the bigotry comes from the top down, from the condescension that arises when “objective” faith-based standards are proclaimed. There’s nothing wrong with employing objective standards of morality. We do it all the time without any help from religion. The problem comes from believers adding their own brouhaha into the moral mix, creating extraneous laws under the guise of “objective morality.”
These commandments of bologna they consider to be God’s immutable word, and there is no arguing with them. That’s the disadvantage of bowing the knee to a deity and counting on one as your ultimate source of morals: it’s his way or the Hell-way! The reasoning goes a little something like this…
- If God is true and just and right, and cannot be wrong, and…
- If believers in this God are to please him, who is true and just and right, and cannot be wrong, then believers must adopt his ways, opposing what he opposes, while approving what he approves of, and…
- Since God’s truth is absolute, what is true for the believer must also be true for the unbeliever.
~Therefore, if the believer is to please God, he must do all that he can to praise and uphold God and his people who fight for his will, and forcefully oppose those who do not align their conduct and message with the divine revelation.
In other words, when someone believes God is on his or her side, they almost invariably bind those beliefs on others and judge their fellow man by the same standards. Failure to comply with said truths results in shunning at least or persecution at worst. Once one begins this walk, there is essentially no going back; if God himself despises homosexuality, witchcraft, abortion, birth control, or masturbation, then there can be no room for disagreement on the issues. You have no voice in the matter. The faithful must therefore do all that they can (religiously, politically, or otherwise) to ensure that the “one true way” is followed.
If you happen to work as a minister, you preach your message to change the thinking of the masses. If you run a store, you refuse to sell products that clash with your faith, and perhaps even refuse service to adherents of other faiths or no faith at all (like the recent occurrences of Muslim cab drivers refusing to provide transportation to those who purchased alcohol, or Muslim clerks refusing to ring up a customer’s pork at the grocery store). If you are in a politically influential position, you use your “juice” to make some changes that further your cause; if God doesn’t want the faithful to have porn, consume caffeine, or use certain four letter words that offend the ghost they worship, then no one can be allowed to transgress on any point if it is in your power to prevent it.
And herein lies the framework for ages of smothering oppression. Here, you have not only the seedbed for tyranny, but fields ripe for religious bloodshed. Were the years of torture under theocracies not already behind us, we wouldn’t have to wait long for thumbscrews to be brought out and stocks to be put in public squares.
Paying lip service to concepts like “love,” and “tolerance,” and “acceptance” means nothing when your religion causes you to look down in disgust on people who believe differently than you. Regardless of a belief system’s intent, it is easily possible to be a bigot without ever uttering the phrases, “I am holier than you,” or “I am better than you.” And commanding one another to “love thy neighbor” does nothing to bring about love. It’s superfluous, like giving commandments to “have sex” or “eat food.” It is worthless to harp on about love when the principles of acceptance and tolerance end up being killed off by the person’s very own belief system, as is the case with every organized religion I know of.
In a world where petty differences divide us, it’s hard enough to bridge the gaps of disagreements with acceptance and love just being human. We don’t need notions of an authoritarian deity making matters worse. Religion is to be held responsible, in large part, for producing the hatred, which serves as the central precursor to persecution and death.
“The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.” (Psalm 58:10)
(JH)
First, seek out a member of the Ku Klux Klan or any other brand-name white supremacist. Ask that person as plainly as you can, “Why do you hate gays, minorities, and Jews?” Listen to their answer. I’m willing to bet an airline ticket to the Bahamas that the answer will be something like, “We don’t hate them. We hate what they stand for,” or “Those of us who believe in white nationalism are having our way of life taken from us, and we are fighting to stop that.” Or, if the person you are asking is exceptionally well-versed in their bigotry, you may even get to hear a biblically enlightening discourse on Genesis 9:26 and Genesis 11:1-9 on how “God himself enforced subjugation, and put the differences of race between men and women. Who are we to remove them?” Almost never will they say, “I admit it. You got me. I hate those bastards because that’s the way I am.”
Next, seek out someone on the other end of the spectrum. Find some no good race-hustlers, like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, (in this writer’s opinion, two of the scummiest men on our planet). Ask them if they hate white people. They won’t say so. They will emphatically say that they don’t, that they just want equality and reparations for past wrongs, but reading between the lines, one can see the hatred and gut-centered resentment spewing out of their mouths. Men like these have problems; they hold people accountable for things they are not responsible for. So intense is their hatred that it ruined the lives of three innocent lacrosse players by means of character assassination when not a bit of evidence incriminated the boys.
Then, find a radical Muslim, a member or a sympathizer of a terrorist group like al-Qaeda. Ask him why he hates the Jews so much. Chances are, you’ll hear, “We don’t hate Jews. We once lived in peace with the Jews. We are fighting them to win back our freedom.” I am amazed how people can be so damn good at putting soft-peddle twists on hate speech to make it sound less objectionable.
Of course, there are those who are honest enough to admit their hatred, like those of Westboro Baptist Church, who make headlines all the time, telling gays how badly God hates them and wants them to suffer in hell. These mouthpieces of madness spend their waking hours telling teary-eyed families of fallen soldiers that their dearly beloved is in Hell from God’s wrath being unleashed on them because of America’s sins. They’ll tell you in no uncertain terms that “God hates fags” – and since God hates them, how can they not? If nothing else, one must appreciate the honesty! But honesty or no honesty, all these examples are in a clear-cut caste of religion-born hatemongers. The fact that every dimwitted idealist is right in his own thinking does not detract from the message of hate he preaches.
In the case of Christianity, the bigotry comes from the top down, from the condescension that arises when “objective” faith-based standards are proclaimed. There’s nothing wrong with employing objective standards of morality. We do it all the time without any help from religion. The problem comes from believers adding their own brouhaha into the moral mix, creating extraneous laws under the guise of “objective morality.”
These commandments of bologna they consider to be God’s immutable word, and there is no arguing with them. That’s the disadvantage of bowing the knee to a deity and counting on one as your ultimate source of morals: it’s his way or the Hell-way! The reasoning goes a little something like this…
- If God is true and just and right, and cannot be wrong, and…
- If believers in this God are to please him, who is true and just and right, and cannot be wrong, then believers must adopt his ways, opposing what he opposes, while approving what he approves of, and…
- Since God’s truth is absolute, what is true for the believer must also be true for the unbeliever.
~Therefore, if the believer is to please God, he must do all that he can to praise and uphold God and his people who fight for his will, and forcefully oppose those who do not align their conduct and message with the divine revelation.
In other words, when someone believes God is on his or her side, they almost invariably bind those beliefs on others and judge their fellow man by the same standards. Failure to comply with said truths results in shunning at least or persecution at worst. Once one begins this walk, there is essentially no going back; if God himself despises homosexuality, witchcraft, abortion, birth control, or masturbation, then there can be no room for disagreement on the issues. You have no voice in the matter. The faithful must therefore do all that they can (religiously, politically, or otherwise) to ensure that the “one true way” is followed.
If you happen to work as a minister, you preach your message to change the thinking of the masses. If you run a store, you refuse to sell products that clash with your faith, and perhaps even refuse service to adherents of other faiths or no faith at all (like the recent occurrences of Muslim cab drivers refusing to provide transportation to those who purchased alcohol, or Muslim clerks refusing to ring up a customer’s pork at the grocery store). If you are in a politically influential position, you use your “juice” to make some changes that further your cause; if God doesn’t want the faithful to have porn, consume caffeine, or use certain four letter words that offend the ghost they worship, then no one can be allowed to transgress on any point if it is in your power to prevent it.
And herein lies the framework for ages of smothering oppression. Here, you have not only the seedbed for tyranny, but fields ripe for religious bloodshed. Were the years of torture under theocracies not already behind us, we wouldn’t have to wait long for thumbscrews to be brought out and stocks to be put in public squares.
Paying lip service to concepts like “love,” and “tolerance,” and “acceptance” means nothing when your religion causes you to look down in disgust on people who believe differently than you. Regardless of a belief system’s intent, it is easily possible to be a bigot without ever uttering the phrases, “I am holier than you,” or “I am better than you.” And commanding one another to “love thy neighbor” does nothing to bring about love. It’s superfluous, like giving commandments to “have sex” or “eat food.” It is worthless to harp on about love when the principles of acceptance and tolerance end up being killed off by the person’s very own belief system, as is the case with every organized religion I know of.
In a world where petty differences divide us, it’s hard enough to bridge the gaps of disagreements with acceptance and love just being human. We don’t need notions of an authoritarian deity making matters worse. Religion is to be held responsible, in large part, for producing the hatred, which serves as the central precursor to persecution and death.
“The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked.” (Psalm 58:10)
(JH)
May 28, 2007
Ruth A. Tucker's "Walking Away From Faith" Blog.
Dr. Tucker understands what it is to doubt. I recommend her book and her newest Blog to Christians who want to understand ex-Christians like us better.
Here are some minutes from when she spoke at the Freethought Association of West Michigan (I'll be speaking there on June 27th).
Here are some minutes from when she spoke at the Freethought Association of West Michigan (I'll be speaking there on June 27th).
Three Bible Contradictions and the Dishonesty of J.P. Holding
Our own Matthew J. Green is on the warpath against J.P. Holding. In this Blog entry Matthew details three Biblical contradictions and how Turkel responds with dishonesty. The three cases have to do with: 1) the contradictory stories with regard to where the Holy Family went after Jesus was born, 2) the fact that there were no men with David in I Samuel 21:1-6, even though the Gospels say men were with him, and 3) the fact that the Gospels disagree over when the tombstone was rolled away on Easter.
Matthew does a number on Turkel, claiming he "abuses reason," is a "spin doctor," and that he "distorts and even lies by trying to rationalize away that which he cannot explain." Even if you are not interested in Turkel's dishonesty, Matthew lays out three solid cases for the Bible being in error. I highly recommend Christians read it.
Matthew does a number on Turkel, claiming he "abuses reason," is a "spin doctor," and that he "distorts and even lies by trying to rationalize away that which he cannot explain." Even if you are not interested in Turkel's dishonesty, Matthew lays out three solid cases for the Bible being in error. I highly recommend Christians read it.
May 27, 2007
The Morality of Atheism and Lying.
One of the biggest reasons why Christians will not consider rejecting their faith has to do the morality of atheism. Christians do not think atheism provides an “ultimate” basis for morality. They will grant that many atheists can and do act morally, in that they can and do behave kindly and truthfully, but they have no “ultimate” standard for doing so. Their claim is that the morality of the atheist in today’s world is a borrowed morality from Christianity. Without the Christian set of morals atheistic morality degenerates into murder and pillage and mayhem as typified by Lenin, Hitler, and Stalin.
Several things can be said about this. I’ve already written about it before. Let me add to it:
In the first place I have argued that punting to God as the standard of morality has many problems. I previously argued the Christian does not have a superior basis for morality. Christians cannot even say “God is good.” They can only say that God is, well, God, and that’s it. If they recoil from the suggestion that “man is the measure of all things,” they should equally recoil at the suggestion that “God is the measure of all things.” I don’t think Christians fully understand this problem.
But let’s say there is an ultimate moral standard based in God and the Bible. Then what? Well, it means little or nothing that I can see. Just as there is no such thing to us as logic in the abstract (we are not logic machines), there is no such thing as an abstract moral standard (it is always a moral standard as understood by fallible humans). It means nothing to say the Bible provides a moral standard that an atheist doesn't have, for what they need to say is that their particular interpretation of the Bible is the ultimate moral standard, and that's something Christians cannot legitimately do, although they have slaughtered many people while claiming this. Which interpretation of Biblical morality is the ultimate standard, given the various ones Christians have espoused down through the centuries? Spell it out for us all. Professing Christians (the only kind we ever see) have justified American slavery, Crusades, and the killing of heretics and witches from the Bible. What makes them so sure they now have it right when the history of the church is a history of atrocities? I just don't think Christians fully understand this problem, either.
In truth, the way Christians interpret the Bible is what I call logical gerrymandering. Sam Harris called it “cherry-picking.” “Christians decide what is good is the Good Book,” he said. And how they do this is dependent on the social/political factors of which they live and breath. Today’s Christians would have been burned at the stake for believing heretics should not be killed, or that witches should not be punished, among a host of other things.
In any case, anyone who tries to show that no society can be a good society without Christianity needs a history lesson. He needs to study some of the great societies of the past, like Greece during the golden ages, or The Roman Empire, or several of the dynasties in ancient China, or the Islamic Empire under Muhammad, or the historic Japanese culture. None of these societies were influenced by Christianity, but they were great societies by all standards of history.
Even if Christianity was the main motivator in starting most all early American universities, most all of our hospitals and many food kitchens, and the like, these things still would have been started anyway, if for no reason other than necessity. Every society has these kinds of things in it, even those not dominated by Christianity. It just so happened to be that Christianity is the dominant religion in America for a couple of centuries, that’s all. Besides, these things were probably not started by Christian churches out of altruism, or any desire for a better society, but as a way for those churches to convert people. After all, who are most vulnerable to the Christian message? They are the sick (hospitals), the poor (food kitchens) and young people leaving home for the first time to enter universities (which were mostly started to train preachers).
Take the moral issue of lying as a practical example. The ninth commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness” is used as the basis for condemning lying in the Bible, but Hammarabi had already condemned it in law #3: “If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.” The Code of Hammurabi predates the Ten Commandments by about 500 years. Most scholars think the Mosaic law was adapted from the Code of Hammurabi, and if you look at it you can see why they think this. My point is that even if God condemned lying, humans already knew not to lie.
Even though lying is condemned as wrong, the Bible only gives a few examples of when lying was justified, as in Rahab and Abraham’s cases. How else do we decide when lying is okay and when it is wrong? Sissela Bok wrote the classic book on the topic, which can be found here. She discusses practically every issue raised by lying and makes some very reasonable conclusions about when lying is justifiable and when it isn’t, conclusions that I accepted even when I was a Christian. She makes these points based upon reason alone. We don’t need God to spell out when lying is justified either. Therefore, since we don’t need God to tell us lying is wrong and we don’t need God to tell us when lying is justified, we don't need God to tell us what is good!
Why is lying wrong? Lying is wrong because telling the truth coincides with our own self-interest, and it’s wrong because we ought to tell the truth. Let me very briefly comment on these two reasons why lying is wrong. I’ll save most of my comments about this for a later post.
Just think right now what would happen if you started lying to people, whether they are strangers, loved ones, friends, co-workers, customers, and/or bosses. When you think this through it’s really not in your own self-interest to do so. Why? You might get what you want from people initially, but they would catch on, and when they do you'll lose their respect, just as J.P. Holding has lost my respect for being dishonest. They will no longer trust what you say. So the price for some initial gains would be a greater loss to you down the road. Trust, friendship and social respect is much more valuable to rational people than the ill gotten gains from lying. Eventually you would make enemies, be lonely, and lose your self-esteem due to mental stress and the guilt of it all. If you sear your conscience by lying all of the time you will also lose track of what is real and true.
The more a person lies the less he can trust other people, and trust is the backbone for any relationship. He will think people are lying to him if he always lies to other people. Then too as we help to create an environment of lies people in turn will lie to us, since a liar forfeits his right to the truth. So he is helping to create an environment that does not benefit him, since he still would like people to be truthful to him. Lying to people is also tougher than not doing so, for if we lie to people we also have to remember what lies we told, and to whom. There is also the fear of being found out, and psychologists tell us such a fear is not healthy for us.
For all of these reasons I can also say that we ought to tell the truth, and I think this kind of reasoning can apply to the other basic moral issues we face as people.
Several things can be said about this. I’ve already written about it before. Let me add to it:
In the first place I have argued that punting to God as the standard of morality has many problems. I previously argued the Christian does not have a superior basis for morality. Christians cannot even say “God is good.” They can only say that God is, well, God, and that’s it. If they recoil from the suggestion that “man is the measure of all things,” they should equally recoil at the suggestion that “God is the measure of all things.” I don’t think Christians fully understand this problem.
But let’s say there is an ultimate moral standard based in God and the Bible. Then what? Well, it means little or nothing that I can see. Just as there is no such thing to us as logic in the abstract (we are not logic machines), there is no such thing as an abstract moral standard (it is always a moral standard as understood by fallible humans). It means nothing to say the Bible provides a moral standard that an atheist doesn't have, for what they need to say is that their particular interpretation of the Bible is the ultimate moral standard, and that's something Christians cannot legitimately do, although they have slaughtered many people while claiming this. Which interpretation of Biblical morality is the ultimate standard, given the various ones Christians have espoused down through the centuries? Spell it out for us all. Professing Christians (the only kind we ever see) have justified American slavery, Crusades, and the killing of heretics and witches from the Bible. What makes them so sure they now have it right when the history of the church is a history of atrocities? I just don't think Christians fully understand this problem, either.
In truth, the way Christians interpret the Bible is what I call logical gerrymandering. Sam Harris called it “cherry-picking.” “Christians decide what is good is the Good Book,” he said. And how they do this is dependent on the social/political factors of which they live and breath. Today’s Christians would have been burned at the stake for believing heretics should not be killed, or that witches should not be punished, among a host of other things.
In any case, anyone who tries to show that no society can be a good society without Christianity needs a history lesson. He needs to study some of the great societies of the past, like Greece during the golden ages, or The Roman Empire, or several of the dynasties in ancient China, or the Islamic Empire under Muhammad, or the historic Japanese culture. None of these societies were influenced by Christianity, but they were great societies by all standards of history.
Even if Christianity was the main motivator in starting most all early American universities, most all of our hospitals and many food kitchens, and the like, these things still would have been started anyway, if for no reason other than necessity. Every society has these kinds of things in it, even those not dominated by Christianity. It just so happened to be that Christianity is the dominant religion in America for a couple of centuries, that’s all. Besides, these things were probably not started by Christian churches out of altruism, or any desire for a better society, but as a way for those churches to convert people. After all, who are most vulnerable to the Christian message? They are the sick (hospitals), the poor (food kitchens) and young people leaving home for the first time to enter universities (which were mostly started to train preachers).
Take the moral issue of lying as a practical example. The ninth commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness” is used as the basis for condemning lying in the Bible, but Hammarabi had already condemned it in law #3: “If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.” The Code of Hammurabi predates the Ten Commandments by about 500 years. Most scholars think the Mosaic law was adapted from the Code of Hammurabi, and if you look at it you can see why they think this. My point is that even if God condemned lying, humans already knew not to lie.
Even though lying is condemned as wrong, the Bible only gives a few examples of when lying was justified, as in Rahab and Abraham’s cases. How else do we decide when lying is okay and when it is wrong? Sissela Bok wrote the classic book on the topic, which can be found here. She discusses practically every issue raised by lying and makes some very reasonable conclusions about when lying is justifiable and when it isn’t, conclusions that I accepted even when I was a Christian. She makes these points based upon reason alone. We don’t need God to spell out when lying is justified either. Therefore, since we don’t need God to tell us lying is wrong and we don’t need God to tell us when lying is justified, we don't need God to tell us what is good!
Why is lying wrong? Lying is wrong because telling the truth coincides with our own self-interest, and it’s wrong because we ought to tell the truth. Let me very briefly comment on these two reasons why lying is wrong. I’ll save most of my comments about this for a later post.
Just think right now what would happen if you started lying to people, whether they are strangers, loved ones, friends, co-workers, customers, and/or bosses. When you think this through it’s really not in your own self-interest to do so. Why? You might get what you want from people initially, but they would catch on, and when they do you'll lose their respect, just as J.P. Holding has lost my respect for being dishonest. They will no longer trust what you say. So the price for some initial gains would be a greater loss to you down the road. Trust, friendship and social respect is much more valuable to rational people than the ill gotten gains from lying. Eventually you would make enemies, be lonely, and lose your self-esteem due to mental stress and the guilt of it all. If you sear your conscience by lying all of the time you will also lose track of what is real and true.
The more a person lies the less he can trust other people, and trust is the backbone for any relationship. He will think people are lying to him if he always lies to other people. Then too as we help to create an environment of lies people in turn will lie to us, since a liar forfeits his right to the truth. So he is helping to create an environment that does not benefit him, since he still would like people to be truthful to him. Lying to people is also tougher than not doing so, for if we lie to people we also have to remember what lies we told, and to whom. There is also the fear of being found out, and psychologists tell us such a fear is not healthy for us.
For all of these reasons I can also say that we ought to tell the truth, and I think this kind of reasoning can apply to the other basic moral issues we face as people.
Flat Earth? Flood Geology? Young-Earth? Steve Hays & Edward T. Babinski discuss Steve Austin, Kurt Wise, Henry Morris & Henry Gee
Steve Hays of Triablogue is a young-earth creationist with whom I've been having a bit of a discussion since I too used to be a young-earth creationist. In his blog entry, "Babel, Babble, & Babinski," he told me that he read John Walton's NIV APPLICATION COMMENTARY ON GENESIS (2002) in which Walton pointed out that "Moses used architectural metaphors [in the creation story of Genesis, chapter 1] to foreshadow the tabernacle. That would also fit with the literary unity and intertextuality of the Pentateuch." Therefore, the flat-earth creation account in Genesis 1 is an accommodation to Moses's "flat-tent" view of the cosmos--strictly metaphorically speaking that is.
Hays also stated, "I’m more concerned with exegeting Scripture than exegeting Steve Austin." (Austin is a Ph.D. geologist who is a formal member-teacher at the Institute for Creation Research, a young-earth organization).
Hays ended his blog entry with mention of the pro-evolutionary geologist Dr. Henry Gee, "who has documented at length that the fossil records is not a continuous sequence frozen in rock, but discontinuous data-points which are rearranged into a continuous sequence by a value-laden reconstruction of the record that is enormously underdetermined by the actual state of the evidence. A thousand theoretical interpolations to every isolated bone fragment. Of course, Gee isn’t trying to undermine evolution. Rather, like so many others, he’s trying to retrofit the theory. But to clear the ground for cladistics, he must slash and burn phenetics [=the phylogenetic ancestor-descent trees involving arrows showing which fossilized creature descended from which other fossilized ancestor], and it’s quite a spectacle to see how little is left over after his scorched earth policy. So now we have another outbreak of the Darwin Wars."
My response follows on those three topics that Hays raised:
STEVE AUSTIN, KURT WISE, HENRY MORRIS, THE GENESIS FLUB
I brought up Steve Austin and Kurt Wise because they are two of the most prominent young-earth creationists in the entire U.S. who have also published a lot since the 1970s in creationist books and magazines. They are also among the few young-earth creationists in the world with Ph.D.s in geology and paleontology, repsectively. (Henry Morris who wrote The Genesis Flood and founded The Institute for Creation Research [ICR] only has a Ph.D. in hydrology.) I say "few" because I once checked the ICR and Answers in Genesis lists of young-earth creationists who work for both institutes and who had advanced degrees, and I counted only about 8 scientists there with Ph.D.s in geology, and no Ph.D.s in paleontology other than Wise. And they both agreed that Morris's attempt in The Genesis Flood to cite the Lewis Mount Overthrust (the largest such "reversal of fossil layers" found anywhere in the world) as not a genuine overthrust, was a failure.
Yet it was Henry Morris's book, The Genesis Flood, along with the founding of ICR, that is credited at ICR as being God's means to bring back Flood Geology (from the grave in which it had lain since Christian geologists of the 1800s had proven it to be indefensible). Unfortunately for Morris, his book has since been thoroughly discredited, and found to consist of unchecked folk science tales, strung together with faulty photos, and mistaken geological assertions. If that's the book that "God used" to give "Flood geology" a recharge (and "the book that God used to get Ken Ham [of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Science museum in the U.S.] in creation ministry") then it seems more like the devil's book, full of lies spoken in God's name to embarrass the Christian faith. At least that's what some of my old-earth creationist friends might say. And since then, creationists have continued to back down from a host of ridiculous assertions that formerly were touted as disproving modern geology. Just read the Answers in Genesis online piece, "Arguments We Think Creationists Should Not Use." Instead, modern young-earth creationism tries to invent accommodations with modern geological evidence of an old-earth. It does not try to disprove it like it once did. Both ICR and Answers in Genesis admit that the search for "pre-Flood" human remains and artifacts or any new startling evidence of a young-cosmos, is probably hopeless: "Where are all the human fossils?" by Don Batten (editor), Ken Ham, Jonathan Sarfati, and Carl Wieland. The final line of that article is classic: "When God pronounced judgment on the world, He said, ‘I will destroy [blot out] man whom I have created from the face of the earth’ (Gen. 6:7). Perhaps the lack of pre-flood human fossils is part of the fulfillment of this judgment?"
Or perhaps God just didn't want to supply young-earth creationists with the evidence they so desperately crave?
And what about the new "Creation Museum" museum opening soon in the U.S. with its exhibits of humans alongside dinosaurs? The folks who built that museum admit that pre-flood human fossils have not been discovered, but they built exhibitions showing humans alongside dinosaurs. How scientific of them!
And speaking of the age of the earth what about the evidence of an old-earth from a variety of sources likeLake Suigetsu, Ice Cores, The Greenriver formation and what about the way radiometric dating has been done on individual varve layers, individual ice layers, individual tree rings (in three known series of tree rings that each stretch back in time at least 10,000 years), individual sections of sea floor that arose via the expanding molten rifts from the center of the Atlantic as it continues to spread--and in each case the processes of lake varves forming, ice layers forming, tree rings growing, and sea floors spreading, continue to take place today at known rates of formation that show agreement with the radiometric dating of individual portions of older sections of those formation? What are the odds that a load of coincidences would match up? See here and here and here. And my own story, here.
JOHN WALTON AND HIS NIV APPLICATION COMMENTARY ON GENESIS
Walton admits in his commentary that the ancient Hebrews, and the author of Genesis, assumed a flat cosmos and a solid firmament.
Whether or not one also assumes that the creation story in Genesis may be interpreted as a metaphor of the tabernacle-tent spoken of in Exodus is another question. Such a view of the cosmos as a house or tent (built flatly and on a firm foundation) does not lay outside of ancient near eastern assumptions in general, for instance note the 'wall-ring' representations of the firmament lying above a flat earth in ancient Egyptian iconography, or ancient mestopotamian cosmologies in general.
And more importantly, the lack of any insight into how the cosmos is truly shaped, means that the ancients wrote and assumed things on par with the pre-scientific knowledge of their day, and not a sign that one can cite that Genesis demonstrates in was composed via special inspiration.
HENRY GEE, CREATIONISM, AND I.D.
Lastly, about Henry Gee. Creationists and I.D.ists don't understand correctly what he's saying, as Gee himself has complained about numerous times, even directly to creationists and I.D.ists. I have some of his correspondence with them from 2006. He's describing the difficulties of dating the exact chronological order of fossils that lay relatively close together in the geological record, and advocating a greater use of cladistics to aid in determining the order of relationships in such cases. (Note: The way evolution works is that populations split from one another, then the more robust sections of a population grow more numerous and more widely established in different places round the world, which increases the odds of the new species's fossilization, but by the time the new species has spread far and wide enough to increase its chances of being fossilized, it is not likely to simply be the direct descentdant of species that precede it in the fossil record, but a cousin. Hence, Gee's complaint about the drawing of direct lines between species in textbooks. The actual evolutionary lines of descent are more complex, and what we have are the fossils of the most robust cousin species that were living during certain overlapping eras.)
HENRY GEE'S RESPONSE
Henry Gee (henrygee) wrote,
@ 2006-06-12 22:43:00:
"I have become somewhat irked lately at the way that some creationists continue to attribute beliefs to me to which I do not subscribe. For example, creationists of the 'intelligent design' tendency have used my book Deep Time (sold in the US as In Search of Deep Time) to suggest that whereas I don't support their views, my own work somehow legitimises them... even though I have explicitly refuted this attempt at hijack, many years ago.
"I pointed this out recently to creationist Jonathan Witt at ID The Future and as a result have had a civil and gentlemanly email exchange with him (and by extension his colleague Jonathan Wells, who has also quoted from my book)."
See also this discussion at the Quote Mine Project of the use that creationists/I.D.ists have tried to make of some Gee quotations.
Hays also stated, "I’m more concerned with exegeting Scripture than exegeting Steve Austin." (Austin is a Ph.D. geologist who is a formal member-teacher at the Institute for Creation Research, a young-earth organization).
Hays ended his blog entry with mention of the pro-evolutionary geologist Dr. Henry Gee, "who has documented at length that the fossil records is not a continuous sequence frozen in rock, but discontinuous data-points which are rearranged into a continuous sequence by a value-laden reconstruction of the record that is enormously underdetermined by the actual state of the evidence. A thousand theoretical interpolations to every isolated bone fragment. Of course, Gee isn’t trying to undermine evolution. Rather, like so many others, he’s trying to retrofit the theory. But to clear the ground for cladistics, he must slash and burn phenetics [=the phylogenetic ancestor-descent trees involving arrows showing which fossilized creature descended from which other fossilized ancestor], and it’s quite a spectacle to see how little is left over after his scorched earth policy. So now we have another outbreak of the Darwin Wars."
My response follows on those three topics that Hays raised:
STEVE AUSTIN, KURT WISE, HENRY MORRIS, THE GENESIS FLUB
I brought up Steve Austin and Kurt Wise because they are two of the most prominent young-earth creationists in the entire U.S. who have also published a lot since the 1970s in creationist books and magazines. They are also among the few young-earth creationists in the world with Ph.D.s in geology and paleontology, repsectively. (Henry Morris who wrote The Genesis Flood and founded The Institute for Creation Research [ICR] only has a Ph.D. in hydrology.) I say "few" because I once checked the ICR and Answers in Genesis lists of young-earth creationists who work for both institutes and who had advanced degrees, and I counted only about 8 scientists there with Ph.D.s in geology, and no Ph.D.s in paleontology other than Wise. And they both agreed that Morris's attempt in The Genesis Flood to cite the Lewis Mount Overthrust (the largest such "reversal of fossil layers" found anywhere in the world) as not a genuine overthrust, was a failure.
Yet it was Henry Morris's book, The Genesis Flood, along with the founding of ICR, that is credited at ICR as being God's means to bring back Flood Geology (from the grave in which it had lain since Christian geologists of the 1800s had proven it to be indefensible). Unfortunately for Morris, his book has since been thoroughly discredited, and found to consist of unchecked folk science tales, strung together with faulty photos, and mistaken geological assertions. If that's the book that "God used" to give "Flood geology" a recharge (and "the book that God used to get Ken Ham [of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Science museum in the U.S.] in creation ministry") then it seems more like the devil's book, full of lies spoken in God's name to embarrass the Christian faith. At least that's what some of my old-earth creationist friends might say. And since then, creationists have continued to back down from a host of ridiculous assertions that formerly were touted as disproving modern geology. Just read the Answers in Genesis online piece, "Arguments We Think Creationists Should Not Use." Instead, modern young-earth creationism tries to invent accommodations with modern geological evidence of an old-earth. It does not try to disprove it like it once did. Both ICR and Answers in Genesis admit that the search for "pre-Flood" human remains and artifacts or any new startling evidence of a young-cosmos, is probably hopeless: "Where are all the human fossils?" by Don Batten (editor), Ken Ham, Jonathan Sarfati, and Carl Wieland. The final line of that article is classic: "When God pronounced judgment on the world, He said, ‘I will destroy [blot out] man whom I have created from the face of the earth’ (Gen. 6:7). Perhaps the lack of pre-flood human fossils is part of the fulfillment of this judgment?"
Or perhaps God just didn't want to supply young-earth creationists with the evidence they so desperately crave?
And what about the new "Creation Museum" museum opening soon in the U.S. with its exhibits of humans alongside dinosaurs? The folks who built that museum admit that pre-flood human fossils have not been discovered, but they built exhibitions showing humans alongside dinosaurs. How scientific of them!
And speaking of the age of the earth what about the evidence of an old-earth from a variety of sources likeLake Suigetsu, Ice Cores, The Greenriver formation and what about the way radiometric dating has been done on individual varve layers, individual ice layers, individual tree rings (in three known series of tree rings that each stretch back in time at least 10,000 years), individual sections of sea floor that arose via the expanding molten rifts from the center of the Atlantic as it continues to spread--and in each case the processes of lake varves forming, ice layers forming, tree rings growing, and sea floors spreading, continue to take place today at known rates of formation that show agreement with the radiometric dating of individual portions of older sections of those formation? What are the odds that a load of coincidences would match up? See here and here and here. And my own story, here.
JOHN WALTON AND HIS NIV APPLICATION COMMENTARY ON GENESIS
Walton admits in his commentary that the ancient Hebrews, and the author of Genesis, assumed a flat cosmos and a solid firmament.
Whether or not one also assumes that the creation story in Genesis may be interpreted as a metaphor of the tabernacle-tent spoken of in Exodus is another question. Such a view of the cosmos as a house or tent (built flatly and on a firm foundation) does not lay outside of ancient near eastern assumptions in general, for instance note the 'wall-ring' representations of the firmament lying above a flat earth in ancient Egyptian iconography, or ancient mestopotamian cosmologies in general.
And more importantly, the lack of any insight into how the cosmos is truly shaped, means that the ancients wrote and assumed things on par with the pre-scientific knowledge of their day, and not a sign that one can cite that Genesis demonstrates in was composed via special inspiration.
HENRY GEE, CREATIONISM, AND I.D.
Lastly, about Henry Gee. Creationists and I.D.ists don't understand correctly what he's saying, as Gee himself has complained about numerous times, even directly to creationists and I.D.ists. I have some of his correspondence with them from 2006. He's describing the difficulties of dating the exact chronological order of fossils that lay relatively close together in the geological record, and advocating a greater use of cladistics to aid in determining the order of relationships in such cases. (Note: The way evolution works is that populations split from one another, then the more robust sections of a population grow more numerous and more widely established in different places round the world, which increases the odds of the new species's fossilization, but by the time the new species has spread far and wide enough to increase its chances of being fossilized, it is not likely to simply be the direct descentdant of species that precede it in the fossil record, but a cousin. Hence, Gee's complaint about the drawing of direct lines between species in textbooks. The actual evolutionary lines of descent are more complex, and what we have are the fossils of the most robust cousin species that were living during certain overlapping eras.)
HENRY GEE'S RESPONSE
Henry Gee (henrygee) wrote,
@ 2006-06-12 22:43:00:
"I have become somewhat irked lately at the way that some creationists continue to attribute beliefs to me to which I do not subscribe. For example, creationists of the 'intelligent design' tendency have used my book Deep Time (sold in the US as In Search of Deep Time) to suggest that whereas I don't support their views, my own work somehow legitimises them... even though I have explicitly refuted this attempt at hijack, many years ago.
"I pointed this out recently to creationist Jonathan Witt at ID The Future and as a result have had a civil and gentlemanly email exchange with him (and by extension his colleague Jonathan Wells, who has also quoted from my book)."
See also this discussion at the Quote Mine Project of the use that creationists/I.D.ists have tried to make of some Gee quotations.
May 26, 2007
My Book is 11th on a list of 12 books About Christianity.
JB lists it here and writes: "A careful, genuine and honest approach by a former Christian apologist. A must read."
It's also listed 6th on a list of 6 books to test the God-Hypothesis, here. JB says, "This book is especially good for the christian who is having doubts. Loftus was a christian minister for many years and knows theology inside and out. An excellent book."
It's also listed 6th on a list of 6 books to test the God-Hypothesis, here. JB says, "This book is especially good for the christian who is having doubts. Loftus was a christian minister for many years and knows theology inside and out. An excellent book."
What Would Convince Me Christianity is True?
[Written by John W. Loftus] I have been asked what would convince me Christianity is true. Let me answer this question.
In the first place, the question is akin to asking what it would take to believe that any cult leader’s claim is true. There is a man in Texas who claims to be Jesus. What would it take you to believe that he’s Jesus? Sound ridiculous, right? That may not exactly be on a par with the probability of the resurrection of Jesus, but such a claim is simply unbelievable to every thinking person, correct? There are other types of questions that are similar in kind. What would it take to convince you that the Holocaust never happened? What would it take to convince you that aliens built the pyramids? What would it take to convince you that Islam, Buddhism, or Satanism is true? Quite a bit, right? That’s because these beliefs are outside of that which we consider real possibilities. I could just as easily ask Christians what it would take to convince them that atheism is true. Given the Christian responses I see at DC, I dare say probably nothing would convince them otherwise. Atheism is outside of that which Christians consider real possibilities. It would take a great deal to change our minds across this great debate, no matter what side we are on. Although, since people convert and deconvert to and away from Christianity there are circumstances and reasons for changing one’s mind. Here at DC we have changed our minds, and we offer reasons why.
In the second place, Christianity would have to be revised for me to believe that Jesus arose from the dead, since if Jesus arose from the dead then the whole Bible is probably true as well. But many Biblical beliefs are outside of that which I consider real possibilities for the many reasons I offer on this Blog. I see no reason why a triune eternal God is a solution to any of our questions. I see no reason why God should test Adam & Eve, or punish them and their children and their children’s children with such horrific consequences for such a mistake. I see no good reason for the animal pain caused by the law of predation in the natural world if a good God exists, either. Nor do I see why God should send a flood to kill practically all human beings. I can no longer believe in the bloodthirsty God of the Bible. He’s a barbaric God. I no longer see the Bible as an inspired book since it contains absurdities and contradictions, being as it were, written by an ancient superstitious people before the rise of modern science. I see absolutely no way to understand what it means to say Jesus is “God in the flesh”, nor how his death on the cross does anything for us, nor where the human side of the incarnation in Jesus is right now. I see no intelligent reason why God revealed himself exclusively in the ancient superstitious past, since it was an age of tall tales among the masses at a time when they didn’t understand nature through the laws of physics. I see no reason why this God cares about what we believe, either, since people have honest and sincere disagreements on everything from politics to which diet helps us lose the most weight.
[About this someone asked me: "John, you say we must follow the evidence, but haven't you said elsewhere that even if you were to admit that Christianity were proved to your satisfaction that you would not follow it? Could you explain how that is following the evidence." Gladly. The belief system that the initial evidence supports is to be considered part of the evidence itself, and as such, it should be included when examining the whole case. If, for instance, the evidence supported accepting militant Islam, where I am called upon to kill people who don't believe, then I must make a choice between the initial evidence that led me to believe and that belief system itself. And such a belief system, even if the evidence initially supported it, renders that evidence null and void. I would have to conclude that I misjudged the initial evidence, or that I'm being misled, or something else. In other words, a rejection of such a belief system like militant Islam trumps the evidence, for I cannot conceive of believing it unless the evidence is completely overwhelming, and there is no such thing as overwhelming evidence when it comes to these issues].
But let’s say the Christian faith is true and Jesus did arise from the dead. Let’s say that even though Christianity must punt to mystery and retreat into the realm of mere possibilities to explain itself that it is still true, contrary to what my (God given?) mind leads me to believe. Then what would it take to convince me?
I would need sufficient reasons to overcome my objections, and I would need sufficient evidence to lead me to believe. By “sufficient” here, I mean reasons and evidence that would overcome my skepticism. I am predisposed to reject the Christian faith and the resurrection of Jesus (just as Christians are predisposed to reject atheism). So I need sufficient reasons and evidence to overcome my skeptical predisposition.
When it comes to sufficient reasons, I need to be able to understand more of the mysteries of Christianity in order to believe it. If everything about Christianity makes rational sense to an omniscient God, then God could’ve created human beings with more intelligence so that the problems of Christianity are much more intellectually solvable than they are. I would need to have a better way of understanding such things as the trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, and why a good God allows so much intense suffering even to the point of casting human beings into hell.
Short of God creating us with more intelligence to understand his “mysteries,” God could’ve explained his ways to us. He could’ve written the “mother of all philosophical papers” by answering such problems as, “why there is something rather than nothing at all?”, why people deserve to end up in hell, and questions about the atonement, the trinity, divine simplicity, the incarnation, the relationship of free-will and foreknowledge, and how it’s possible for a spiritual being to interact with a material world. He could’ve explained why there is so much intense suffering in this world if he exists. He could’ve explained why he remains hidden and yet condemns us for not finding him in this life. He could’ve helped us understand how it’s possible to want all people to be saved and yet not help people come to a saving knowledge. Christians born into their faith inside an already Christian culture may claim God has explained the things necessary, but for most people in the world he didn’t explain enough. Because he has not done enough to help us understand these things, he is partially to blame for those who do not believe, especially if he knew in advance that people wouldn’t believe unless he had done so.
Short of helping us to understand these “mysteries,” the only thing left is to give us more evidence to believe, and less evidence to disbelieve. Let me offer some examples of what I mean.
Scientific evidence. God could’ve made this universe and the creatures on earth absolutely unexplainable by science, especially since science is the major obstacle for many to believe. He could’ve created us in a universe that couldn’t be even remotely figured out by science. That is to say, there would be no evidence leading scientists to accept a big bang, nor would there be any evidence for the way galaxies, solar systems, or planets themselves form naturalistically. If God is truly omnipotent he could’ve created the universe instantaneously by fiat, and placed planets haphazardly around the sun, some revolving counter-clockwise and in haphazard orbits. The galaxies themselves, if he created any in the first place, would have no consistent pattern of formation at all. Then when it came to creatures on earth God could’ve created them without any connection whatsoever to each other. Each species would be so distinct from each other that no one could ever conclude natural selection was the process by which they have arisen. There would be no hierarchy of the species in gradual increments. There would be no rock formations that showed this evolutionary process because it wouldn’t exist in the first place. Human beings would be seen as absolutely special and distinct from the rest of the creatures on earth such that no scientist could ever conclude they evolved from the lower primates. There would be no evidence of unintelligent design, since the many signs of unintelligent design cancel out the design argument for the existence of God. God didn’t even have to create us with brains, if he created us with minds. The existence of this kind of universe and the creatures in it could never be explained by science apart from the existence of God.
Biblical Evidence. Someone could’ve made a monument to Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden that still exists and is scientifically dated to the dawn of time. There would be overwhelming evidence for a universal flood covering "all" mountains. Noah’s ark would be found exactly where the Bible says, and it would be exactly as described in the Bible. The location of Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt, would still be miraculously preserved and known by scientific testing to have traces of human DNA in it. There would be non-controversial evidence that the Israelites lived as slaves in Egypt for four hundred years, conclusive evidence that they wandered in the wilderness for forty years, and convincing evidence that they conquered the land of Canaan exactly as the Bible depicts. But there is none. I could go on and on, but you get the point. That is, there would be evidence of miracles, and not just that the particular places and people described in the Bible existed. Plus, there would be no Bible difficulties such that a 450 page book needed to be written explaining them away, as Gleason Archer did.
Prophetic Evidence. God could’ve predicted any number of natural disasters (if he didn’t have the power to create a better world which lacked them). He could’ve predicted when Mt. St. Helens would erupt, or when the Indonesian tsunami or hurricane Katrina would destroy so much. It would save lives and confirm he is God. Then too, he could’ve predicted the rise of the internet, or the inventions of the incandescent light bulb, Television, or the atomic bomb, and he could do it using non-ambiguous language that would be seen by all as a prophectic fulfillment. God could’ve predicted several things that would take place in each generation in each region of the earth, so that each generation and each region of the earth would have confirmation that he exists through prophecy. God could've told people about the vastness and the complexity of the universe before humans would have been able to confirm it (if he didn’t create it haphazardly as I suggested earlier). He could have predicted the discovery of penicillin, which has saved so many lives, and if predicted it would have speeded up its discovery.
Present Day Evidence. God could visit us in every age, and do the same miracles he purportedly did in Jesus. If this causes people to want to kill him all over again and he doesn’t need to die again, he could just vanish. Also, Christians would be overwhelmingly better people by far. And God would answer their prayers in such distinctive ways that even those who don’t believe would seek out a Christian to pray for them and their illness or problem. Scientific studies done on prayer would meet with overwhelming confirmation. We wouldn’t see such religious diversity which is divided up over the world into distinct geographical locations and adopted based upon when and where we were born.
Evidence specific to the resurrection. There would be clear and specific prophecies about the virgin birth, life, nature, mission, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Jesus in the Old Testament that could not be denied by even the most hardened skeptic. As it is there is no Old Testament prophecy that is to be considered a true prophecy that points to any of these things in any non-ambiguous way. Many professed Christian scholars think these Old Testament prophecies do not predict anything specific about Jesus and/or do not point specifically to him. The Gospel accounts of the resurrection would all be the same, showing no evidence of growing incrementally over the years by superstitious people. The Gospels could've been written at about the same time months after Jesus arose from the dead. And there would be no implausibilites in these stories about women not telling others, or that the soldiers who supposedly guarded the tomb knew that Jesus arose even though they were asleep (how is that really possible?). Herod and Pilate would've converted because they concluded from the evidence that Jesus arose from the grave. Setting aside their respective thrones, both Herod and Pilate would've become missionaries, or declare Christianity the new religion of their territories. Such evidence like a Turin Shroud would be found which could be scientifically shown to be from Jerusalem at that time containing an image that could not be explained away except that a crucified man had come back to life. But the evidence for it doesn't exist.
Now, I wouldn’t require all of this to believe. I cannot say how much of this I might need to believe. But I certainly need some of it. If it were offered, I'd believe. However, if I was convinced Christianity is true and Jesus arose from the grave, and if I must believe in such a barbaric God, I would believe, yes, but I could still not worship such a barbaric God. I would fear such a Supreme Being, since he has such great power, but I'd still view him as a thug, a despicable tyrant, a devil in disguise; unless Christianity was revised.
In the first place, the question is akin to asking what it would take to believe that any cult leader’s claim is true. There is a man in Texas who claims to be Jesus. What would it take you to believe that he’s Jesus? Sound ridiculous, right? That may not exactly be on a par with the probability of the resurrection of Jesus, but such a claim is simply unbelievable to every thinking person, correct? There are other types of questions that are similar in kind. What would it take to convince you that the Holocaust never happened? What would it take to convince you that aliens built the pyramids? What would it take to convince you that Islam, Buddhism, or Satanism is true? Quite a bit, right? That’s because these beliefs are outside of that which we consider real possibilities. I could just as easily ask Christians what it would take to convince them that atheism is true. Given the Christian responses I see at DC, I dare say probably nothing would convince them otherwise. Atheism is outside of that which Christians consider real possibilities. It would take a great deal to change our minds across this great debate, no matter what side we are on. Although, since people convert and deconvert to and away from Christianity there are circumstances and reasons for changing one’s mind. Here at DC we have changed our minds, and we offer reasons why.
In the second place, Christianity would have to be revised for me to believe that Jesus arose from the dead, since if Jesus arose from the dead then the whole Bible is probably true as well. But many Biblical beliefs are outside of that which I consider real possibilities for the many reasons I offer on this Blog. I see no reason why a triune eternal God is a solution to any of our questions. I see no reason why God should test Adam & Eve, or punish them and their children and their children’s children with such horrific consequences for such a mistake. I see no good reason for the animal pain caused by the law of predation in the natural world if a good God exists, either. Nor do I see why God should send a flood to kill practically all human beings. I can no longer believe in the bloodthirsty God of the Bible. He’s a barbaric God. I no longer see the Bible as an inspired book since it contains absurdities and contradictions, being as it were, written by an ancient superstitious people before the rise of modern science. I see absolutely no way to understand what it means to say Jesus is “God in the flesh”, nor how his death on the cross does anything for us, nor where the human side of the incarnation in Jesus is right now. I see no intelligent reason why God revealed himself exclusively in the ancient superstitious past, since it was an age of tall tales among the masses at a time when they didn’t understand nature through the laws of physics. I see no reason why this God cares about what we believe, either, since people have honest and sincere disagreements on everything from politics to which diet helps us lose the most weight.
[About this someone asked me: "John, you say we must follow the evidence, but haven't you said elsewhere that even if you were to admit that Christianity were proved to your satisfaction that you would not follow it? Could you explain how that is following the evidence." Gladly. The belief system that the initial evidence supports is to be considered part of the evidence itself, and as such, it should be included when examining the whole case. If, for instance, the evidence supported accepting militant Islam, where I am called upon to kill people who don't believe, then I must make a choice between the initial evidence that led me to believe and that belief system itself. And such a belief system, even if the evidence initially supported it, renders that evidence null and void. I would have to conclude that I misjudged the initial evidence, or that I'm being misled, or something else. In other words, a rejection of such a belief system like militant Islam trumps the evidence, for I cannot conceive of believing it unless the evidence is completely overwhelming, and there is no such thing as overwhelming evidence when it comes to these issues].
But let’s say the Christian faith is true and Jesus did arise from the dead. Let’s say that even though Christianity must punt to mystery and retreat into the realm of mere possibilities to explain itself that it is still true, contrary to what my (God given?) mind leads me to believe. Then what would it take to convince me?
I would need sufficient reasons to overcome my objections, and I would need sufficient evidence to lead me to believe. By “sufficient” here, I mean reasons and evidence that would overcome my skepticism. I am predisposed to reject the Christian faith and the resurrection of Jesus (just as Christians are predisposed to reject atheism). So I need sufficient reasons and evidence to overcome my skeptical predisposition.
When it comes to sufficient reasons, I need to be able to understand more of the mysteries of Christianity in order to believe it. If everything about Christianity makes rational sense to an omniscient God, then God could’ve created human beings with more intelligence so that the problems of Christianity are much more intellectually solvable than they are. I would need to have a better way of understanding such things as the trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, and why a good God allows so much intense suffering even to the point of casting human beings into hell.
Short of God creating us with more intelligence to understand his “mysteries,” God could’ve explained his ways to us. He could’ve written the “mother of all philosophical papers” by answering such problems as, “why there is something rather than nothing at all?”, why people deserve to end up in hell, and questions about the atonement, the trinity, divine simplicity, the incarnation, the relationship of free-will and foreknowledge, and how it’s possible for a spiritual being to interact with a material world. He could’ve explained why there is so much intense suffering in this world if he exists. He could’ve explained why he remains hidden and yet condemns us for not finding him in this life. He could’ve helped us understand how it’s possible to want all people to be saved and yet not help people come to a saving knowledge. Christians born into their faith inside an already Christian culture may claim God has explained the things necessary, but for most people in the world he didn’t explain enough. Because he has not done enough to help us understand these things, he is partially to blame for those who do not believe, especially if he knew in advance that people wouldn’t believe unless he had done so.
Short of helping us to understand these “mysteries,” the only thing left is to give us more evidence to believe, and less evidence to disbelieve. Let me offer some examples of what I mean.
Scientific evidence. God could’ve made this universe and the creatures on earth absolutely unexplainable by science, especially since science is the major obstacle for many to believe. He could’ve created us in a universe that couldn’t be even remotely figured out by science. That is to say, there would be no evidence leading scientists to accept a big bang, nor would there be any evidence for the way galaxies, solar systems, or planets themselves form naturalistically. If God is truly omnipotent he could’ve created the universe instantaneously by fiat, and placed planets haphazardly around the sun, some revolving counter-clockwise and in haphazard orbits. The galaxies themselves, if he created any in the first place, would have no consistent pattern of formation at all. Then when it came to creatures on earth God could’ve created them without any connection whatsoever to each other. Each species would be so distinct from each other that no one could ever conclude natural selection was the process by which they have arisen. There would be no hierarchy of the species in gradual increments. There would be no rock formations that showed this evolutionary process because it wouldn’t exist in the first place. Human beings would be seen as absolutely special and distinct from the rest of the creatures on earth such that no scientist could ever conclude they evolved from the lower primates. There would be no evidence of unintelligent design, since the many signs of unintelligent design cancel out the design argument for the existence of God. God didn’t even have to create us with brains, if he created us with minds. The existence of this kind of universe and the creatures in it could never be explained by science apart from the existence of God.
Biblical Evidence. Someone could’ve made a monument to Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden that still exists and is scientifically dated to the dawn of time. There would be overwhelming evidence for a universal flood covering "all" mountains. Noah’s ark would be found exactly where the Bible says, and it would be exactly as described in the Bible. The location of Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt, would still be miraculously preserved and known by scientific testing to have traces of human DNA in it. There would be non-controversial evidence that the Israelites lived as slaves in Egypt for four hundred years, conclusive evidence that they wandered in the wilderness for forty years, and convincing evidence that they conquered the land of Canaan exactly as the Bible depicts. But there is none. I could go on and on, but you get the point. That is, there would be evidence of miracles, and not just that the particular places and people described in the Bible existed. Plus, there would be no Bible difficulties such that a 450 page book needed to be written explaining them away, as Gleason Archer did.
Prophetic Evidence. God could’ve predicted any number of natural disasters (if he didn’t have the power to create a better world which lacked them). He could’ve predicted when Mt. St. Helens would erupt, or when the Indonesian tsunami or hurricane Katrina would destroy so much. It would save lives and confirm he is God. Then too, he could’ve predicted the rise of the internet, or the inventions of the incandescent light bulb, Television, or the atomic bomb, and he could do it using non-ambiguous language that would be seen by all as a prophectic fulfillment. God could’ve predicted several things that would take place in each generation in each region of the earth, so that each generation and each region of the earth would have confirmation that he exists through prophecy. God could've told people about the vastness and the complexity of the universe before humans would have been able to confirm it (if he didn’t create it haphazardly as I suggested earlier). He could have predicted the discovery of penicillin, which has saved so many lives, and if predicted it would have speeded up its discovery.
Present Day Evidence. God could visit us in every age, and do the same miracles he purportedly did in Jesus. If this causes people to want to kill him all over again and he doesn’t need to die again, he could just vanish. Also, Christians would be overwhelmingly better people by far. And God would answer their prayers in such distinctive ways that even those who don’t believe would seek out a Christian to pray for them and their illness or problem. Scientific studies done on prayer would meet with overwhelming confirmation. We wouldn’t see such religious diversity which is divided up over the world into distinct geographical locations and adopted based upon when and where we were born.
Evidence specific to the resurrection. There would be clear and specific prophecies about the virgin birth, life, nature, mission, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of Jesus in the Old Testament that could not be denied by even the most hardened skeptic. As it is there is no Old Testament prophecy that is to be considered a true prophecy that points to any of these things in any non-ambiguous way. Many professed Christian scholars think these Old Testament prophecies do not predict anything specific about Jesus and/or do not point specifically to him. The Gospel accounts of the resurrection would all be the same, showing no evidence of growing incrementally over the years by superstitious people. The Gospels could've been written at about the same time months after Jesus arose from the dead. And there would be no implausibilites in these stories about women not telling others, or that the soldiers who supposedly guarded the tomb knew that Jesus arose even though they were asleep (how is that really possible?). Herod and Pilate would've converted because they concluded from the evidence that Jesus arose from the grave. Setting aside their respective thrones, both Herod and Pilate would've become missionaries, or declare Christianity the new religion of their territories. Such evidence like a Turin Shroud would be found which could be scientifically shown to be from Jerusalem at that time containing an image that could not be explained away except that a crucified man had come back to life. But the evidence for it doesn't exist.
Now, I wouldn’t require all of this to believe. I cannot say how much of this I might need to believe. But I certainly need some of it. If it were offered, I'd believe. However, if I was convinced Christianity is true and Jesus arose from the grave, and if I must believe in such a barbaric God, I would believe, yes, but I could still not worship such a barbaric God. I would fear such a Supreme Being, since he has such great power, but I'd still view him as a thug, a despicable tyrant, a devil in disguise; unless Christianity was revised.
May 24, 2007
The Empty Tomb Official Companion Website.
Jeffrey Jay Lowder informed me that he's just launched the official companion website for the book, The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave. The site may be accessed here. Enjoy!
Atheists Don't Believe in God Because They Think They Are So Smart They Don't Need Him?
This is to a addresses a Frequently Asked Question/Frequently Offered Claim that Atheists don't believe in God because they think they are so smart they don't need him.
It may be true that some self-professed atheists equate intelligence with not believing in God, but I think a good argument can be made that this is a type of self delusion. The kind of un-belief that I experience is not something that I chose. It just happened. It happened as I started to question my beliefs instead of just taking them for granted. And as I gained more knowledge, especially about the Bible, my faith just went away. There was no choice about it. The thought of needing or not needing god never entered the equation. It was irrelevant.
In 1998 The Journal Nature reported that a larger portion of the National Academy of Sciences are unbelievers than believers. This correlates to what I experienced, and it infers that the more you know about the world, the less you believe in a God. But learning about the world is not the only thing that eroded my belief. Studying informal fallacies had a big part in it. It lead me into critical thinking, which led me into informal logic, which led me into the study of reasoning in general.
Learning how to determine the truth in a pragmatic way and applying that to my religious beliefs are what really eroded my belief. A love of truth. A desire to know the truth. A desire to know how to find the truth. A desire to make sense out of the world. A desire to be able to figure out when I am being lied to. A desire to protect myself from the wolves that Jesus said I had been thrown into the middle of. In order for a sheep to protect himself from a pack of wolves when everything happens in Gods time, he needs to be a little bit smarter than the wolves. And when I realized that I could increase my chances of a successful outcome by pre-planning and forethought, all that was left was just dumb luck and prayer. And we all know what they say about prayer, allow me to paraphrase "don't hold your breath".
While I can't speak for all atheists, the cause of my unbelief is not that I am so smart I don't need him, it is the fact that I did an honest search for the truth, and found it. To do that, I needed to find new information. Finding new information means getting smarter. I guess that sometimes when people get smarter, faith in a God just fades away.
My, my, hey, hey.
you will know the truth,
and the truth will make you free.
May 23, 2007
The Loftus-Wanchick Debate on the Existence of the Christian God
Tom Wanchick challenged me to a friendly little debate on the existence of God, but that's not an interesting question to me. The reason is because the God Tom wants to defend stems from his Christian beliefs. He doesn't just want to show God exists. He wants to defend his Christian faith. Besides, even if God does exist he may only be a distant deity, which is not much different than having no God at all. So after some talk we decided to debate the existence of the Christian God. We shall do so here, and my opening statement is up (and also posted below). With a 600 word limit I cut to the chase.
Previously Tom debated Richard Carrier on Naturalism vs Theism. This present debate narrows his focus even more.
Previously Tom debated Richard Carrier on Naturalism vs Theism. This present debate narrows his focus even more.
John's Opening Statement:
1) The Bible is filled with mythic folklore. Here are just a few examples: There isn’t any way to harmonize the creation accounts in Genesis with the age of the universe, granting the time necessary for galaxy, star, solar system, earth, animal, and human formation. The stories of Adam & Eve, Cain, the pre-flood ages of men, and the flood itself have no basis in historical fact. There are similar polytheistic stories like these which predate Genesis by as much as 350 years. Since older sources are to be considered the more reliable sources, then a monotheistic God was not involved, if these events happened at all. There is also no archeological evidence for the Israelites in Egyptian slavery for 400 years, or of their wilderness wanderings for 40 years, or of their conquest of Canaan.
2) I find it implausible to believe that a Triune God (3 persons in 1 who always agree?) has always and forever existed without cause and will always and forever exist (even though our entire experience is that everything has a beginning and an ending), as a fully formed being (even though our entire experience is that order grows incrementally), without a body (and yet acts in the material world), in a timeless existence (and yet creates time), having all knowledge (who consequently never learned anything), and who is the source of all complex information found in the details of the makeup of this universe. This God purportedly has all power (but doesn’t exercise it like we would if we saw a burning child), and is present everywhere (and who also knows what time it is everywhere in our universe even though time is a function of movement and bodily placement). How is it possible for this being to be called a "person," who thinks (which demands weighing temporal alternatives), and who freely chooses who he is and what his values are (even though we never find a time when such choices were made by him)?
3) This barbaric God commanded that witches and people who worship other gods should be killed. He commanded that men should rape women in the spoils of war, and even commit genocide. He allowed people to own slaves which could be beaten within an inch of their lives. He commanded that men should divorce their wives simply because they had a different religion, and women were pretty much defenseless without a husband. He demanded blood sacrifice in order to forgive sins. There is no cogent explanation for how Jesus’ death atones for our sins. He will eternally punish those who don’t see enough evidence to believe in Jesus, while not providing enough of it to believe.
4) The world this God created is not like the world we would expect to find if a good God exists. There is too much natural suffering in it for man alone to be blamed. The law of predation is simply unnecessary. If God exists he could’ve made us all vegetarians and made edible plants grow like weeds do today. If God exists he could end the wars between religious faiths by revealing himself more clearly in this world.
5) God revealed himself in a historically conditioned book before the printing press, even though almost anything can be rationally denied in history, even if it happened. For an omniscient being, he chose a poor medium to do so. I challenge Tom to find one passage in God’s OT revelation to be considered a prophecy (and not wish fulfillment) of the life, death, or resurrection of Jesus which singularly points to him.
1) The Bible is filled with mythic folklore. Here are just a few examples: There isn’t any way to harmonize the creation accounts in Genesis with the age of the universe, granting the time necessary for galaxy, star, solar system, earth, animal, and human formation. The stories of Adam & Eve, Cain, the pre-flood ages of men, and the flood itself have no basis in historical fact. There are similar polytheistic stories like these which predate Genesis by as much as 350 years. Since older sources are to be considered the more reliable sources, then a monotheistic God was not involved, if these events happened at all. There is also no archeological evidence for the Israelites in Egyptian slavery for 400 years, or of their wilderness wanderings for 40 years, or of their conquest of Canaan.
2) I find it implausible to believe that a Triune God (3 persons in 1 who always agree?) has always and forever existed without cause and will always and forever exist (even though our entire experience is that everything has a beginning and an ending), as a fully formed being (even though our entire experience is that order grows incrementally), without a body (and yet acts in the material world), in a timeless existence (and yet creates time), having all knowledge (who consequently never learned anything), and who is the source of all complex information found in the details of the makeup of this universe. This God purportedly has all power (but doesn’t exercise it like we would if we saw a burning child), and is present everywhere (and who also knows what time it is everywhere in our universe even though time is a function of movement and bodily placement). How is it possible for this being to be called a "person," who thinks (which demands weighing temporal alternatives), and who freely chooses who he is and what his values are (even though we never find a time when such choices were made by him)?
3) This barbaric God commanded that witches and people who worship other gods should be killed. He commanded that men should rape women in the spoils of war, and even commit genocide. He allowed people to own slaves which could be beaten within an inch of their lives. He commanded that men should divorce their wives simply because they had a different religion, and women were pretty much defenseless without a husband. He demanded blood sacrifice in order to forgive sins. There is no cogent explanation for how Jesus’ death atones for our sins. He will eternally punish those who don’t see enough evidence to believe in Jesus, while not providing enough of it to believe.
4) The world this God created is not like the world we would expect to find if a good God exists. There is too much natural suffering in it for man alone to be blamed. The law of predation is simply unnecessary. If God exists he could’ve made us all vegetarians and made edible plants grow like weeds do today. If God exists he could end the wars between religious faiths by revealing himself more clearly in this world.
5) God revealed himself in a historically conditioned book before the printing press, even though almost anything can be rationally denied in history, even if it happened. For an omniscient being, he chose a poor medium to do so. I challenge Tom to find one passage in God’s OT revelation to be considered a prophecy (and not wish fulfillment) of the life, death, or resurrection of Jesus which singularly points to him.
Should The Atheist Have to Prove There Is No God?
This is to addresses a Frequently Asked Question/Frequently Offered Claim that since the Atheist claims there is no God, they should prove it.
Should the Christian be required to prove there are no Hindu Gods? Should anyone have to prove that something does not exist? Proving a negative is problematic. To prove something is not there or proving a negative requires iterating through all possibilities and ensuring that if it were possible to prove it, it could be proved. For a closed system or a system where the parameters are well defined it would theoretically be possible, but not practical. For an open system or a system with parameters not defined, it should be impossible. In Informal Logic this is called an Argument from Ignorance.
Typically when someone is expected to prove something they are expected to prove a positive. Plaintiffs are expected to make a case and prove it in court. Citizens are usually considered innocent until proven guilty. Cases where citizens have been considered guilty and required to prove their innocence haven't turned out very well. The Salem Witch trials, McCarthyism and political mud-slinging are all examples of the problems with having to prove a negative.
So now how does one go about proving that God doesn't exist or that anything doesn't exist? One way to do it is to turn it around, inventory what you know and come up with some expectations and test for them. Find something that makes some positive claims and test them. In the case of God, the Bible makes many testable positive claims. Some of them have been verified and some of them have not. Some of them suggest something completely different and weaken those testable claims. Christians make a lot of claims about their experience. As these claims are iterated through, we can get a better idea of what is valid or not. As we go through this process, we gain knowledge and come to a point where we can come to a reasonably sound conclusion.
To assert that someone should prove a negative is to place an extraordinarily high burden on them and history has shown that the process does not have a high rate of success. This is one reason why it is not generally considered a reasonable demand to be placed on anyone. Since, if a thing exists, there should be evidence of its existence, it should be easier to find the evidence of its existence than the evidence of somethings lack of existence.
Since the Christian God is one of many throughout the ages, the default position should be neither for or against and the party making the positive claim should handle the burden of proof. In fact, Jesus reportedly did not tell his disciples to be convinced, he told them go convince (Matt. 28:16-20).
May 22, 2007
A Debate on the Basis of Morality: Taylor vs Craig
We've talked about the basis for morality here before. In case you hadn't seen this, here is a good debate between Richard Taylor and William Lane Craig that took place at Union College, Schenectady, New York, October 8, 1993. Is The Basis Of Morality
Natural Or Supernatural?.
Natural Or Supernatural?.
Does The Atheist Want God To Do Tricks?
This is Frequently Asked Question/Frequently Offered Claim. It seems to stem from the Atheist requirement for less subjective evidence of God.
Atheists have a more empirical criterion than Christians do. Generally an Atheist will not settle for any testimonial or subjective evidence while a Christian will. Since Atheists are not likely to accept anecdotal or subjective evidence for God, they prefer the kind of evidence that results from something like but not limited to a scientific style inquiry.
When faced with a conclusion that does not seem to follow from the evidence, isn't it normal to want more evidence which better supports the conclusion? Law, Law Enforcement, Medicine and Science are only a few fields that depend on having a conclusion as qualified as possible, as certain as possible. Arresting a person, sentencing a person to prison, performing surgery and showing results from scientific grants are actions that depend on a conclusion based on sound evidence. It just won't do to settle for "maybe". Since the prospect of a God has the potential to influence every part of our existence it follows that we should as sure as possible that God exists.
So if the Atheist is not convinced by the evidence presented, it should be expected that the Atheist would want more evidence. This evidence could be as dramatic as imaginable or it could be as subtle as something personal. If God is everything he is supposed to be he knows what it would take to convince us. If God wants a relationship with us, then he should be as present as necessary to create it and sustain it. Christians claim that he does and that Atheists refuse it. But I think a strong argument can be made that an all powerful being could, with a minimal amount of effort, be undeniable if it wanted to be.
What are our expectations for relationships with our friends, family, spouses, business acquaintances or strangers? What does it take to sustain those relationships? Most of the time, its not tricks, just a little understandable feedback.
May 21, 2007
Christians Are Not Stupid or Irrational.
This is to address a Frequently Asked Question/Frequenty Offered Claim that Atheists think that Christians are stupid and/or irrational. This is easily shown to be false, at least for the members of DC. There are plenty of demonstrably intelligent Christians, some of them frequent this blog. But how does this perception persist?
It seems to stem from a misunderstanding. Several factors come into play but the most significant factor is the evidence for God. Atheists have a more empirical criterion than Christians do. Generally an Atheist will not settle for any testimonial or subjective evidence while a Christian will. When every Christian argument depends on the existence of God and the premise is disputed for lack of credible evidence by the Atheist, this creates a significant impediment to the resolution of the disagreement. Rationality depends on a conclusion based on reason. A rational argument depends on taking evidence into account. If the evidence is in question, though both sides are arguing rationally, this situation can understandably be frustrating for both sides in the debate and can, in a worst case, degrade into personal attacks (aka an "Ad Hominem").
Another type of exchange occurs when the Atheist analyzes Christian arguments using principles of "critical thinking" and may be perceived to have or may actually have a condescending tone. The act of argument analysis and criticism can in itself be perceived as condescending. On the other hand, I have seen situations where a Christian will initiate the charge against an atheist. The Christian will assert "The fool says in his heart yada, yada, yada...", and then allege that “Atheists think that Christians are stupid, when in reality the Atheist is the fool” and justify the charge of foolishness using scripture.
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