There are times when I find myself fixating on our universe with all of its mysteries and as-of-yet unknowns. But every time I think about the universe, I think about nothing as much as its size, about its unfathomable massiveness.
Light travels at 186,282.397 miles per second or 669,000,000 miles per hour. As far as we can tell, that’s as fast as we’re ever going to go because that’s the physics-enforced intergalactic speed limit. Neither information, nor matter will be found moving faster than that. That is pretty fast. Although, as fast as it is, it would leave any space explorers traveling at that speed extremely unsatisfied with their journeys.
Light arrives on the earth from our sun in just under 8-and-a-half minutes. It takes light around 50 minutes to reach Jupiter from the sun. For light to get to Pluto, it requires 5 hours and 30 minutes of travel time. That’s longer than it takes me to drive from San Antonio to the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex area without stopping in a car going 70 mph. And this is light we’re talking about!
Remember, this is as fast as we’ll likely ever go. Our fastest ship now won’t exceed 47,000 miles an hour—nowhere even remotely close to the speed of light. At our current rate of achievable speed, it would take us at least 2 years just to reach Mars in a shuttle. At its furthest point, Mars requires a 12.8-minute trip for light to arrive.
It takes light 1.3 seconds to go from the moon to the earth, which is the equivalent distance of making 20 trips from the U.S. eastern coastline to Australia’s Alice Springs. So while light may be fast, it is reduced to a snail’s crawl when we factor it into our vast universe.
Not counting any other mysteries, the shear size of the cosmos is enough to dumbfound us. Studying the universe makes us take our focus off of ourselves and onto bigger and grander things. Let’s try and imagine the universe further.
We’ve seen that the speed of light, the fastest speed we can ever rationally hope to obtain, appears sluggish when compared against the distances in our own solar system, but that’s just our solar system. We haven’t even gotten around to considering the next star over. We can’t even leave our star’s orbit without light speed in any workable timeframe.
With light speed, we’ll hit our closest neighboring star, Proxima Centauri, in 4.4 light years. Borrowing a stick of butter from a neighbor next door is only convenient when we’re NOT talking about neighboring star systems. But we are talking about solar systems, not galaxies.
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is composed of at least 220,000,000,000 stars that are as far apart from each other (and some more so) than our sun is from Proxima Centuari. If you want to try and get a mental picture of our galaxy, imagine a huge punchbowl spilling over with sugar. Each granule of sugar is a sun and every one of those suns is a solar system, many with numerous planets orbiting them. It takes light 100,000 years to cross from one side of a galaxy to the other.
And how many galaxies are there of billions of stars? To date, we’ve discovered about 255,000,000,000 galaxies—like and unlike our Milky Way. And we’re discovering between 25 and 125 new galaxies everyday.
Some are spiral, some spherical, and some are blobs that are called irregular galaxies. Some look like crabs and others like sombreros. Many of the stars in the sky are sending us light that is tens of millions of years old. Many of the galaxies that are visible only in very powerful telescopes do not even exist anymore by the time we see their light.
Yes, the universe being so big, it makes us think about bigger things. It took us a long time as a race to learn that it’s ok to gaze at the heavens without fear of being tried as an Observer of Times and burned at the stake. People have been thinking small for so very long, and so it’s not surprising that it takes a few of us a longer time to come around to exploring and learning without superstitious shackles.
Still, those who are holding us back grieve me greatly. I know that as I type, so many who will read my words are of the opinion that when all of these giant stars die in about 208,000,000,000 years in the future, that there will be souls still frying in Gehenna because they once transgressed the law of a Great Spirit who set up one small planet around one small star at one insignificant corner of one insignificant galaxy.
To some, the heavens declare the glory of God and the heavenly bodies are celestial evangelists singing God’s praises and glory. In their minds, if the planets and the stars could talk, they’d say: “Obey God and Jesus who is God’s Son. They created us. We exist to tell of their greatness.” That conviction is so very juvenile and so comical on so many levels.
No faith and no conviction of dogma can come of watching the stars and taking in the universe. The universe is too big for any faith and even for God. Even if a god could create it, he wouldn’t know what to do with it. No tribal blood-god of vengeance like Yahweh who taught men to cut the foreskins off of penises and slaughter enemy tribes could be the one responsible for creating the Crab Nebula or NGC 1097 or Sirius B.
And yet, according to some, we are to believe that the pronouncements of damnation made by bloody priests and popes and notable revolutionary theologians throughout the ages are sound and will one day come true. I spit on those pronouncements and the mentality behind them. How is it, one must ask, that a cosmos-creating deity who has his mind on building nebulae can be offended by anything we could ever say or do?
Is it possible to think that after centuries of fighting and warring, and persecuting with the pointing of chipped and reddened swords, that a Hebrew deity who wrote about stoning adulterous wives and thighs swelling and rotting (Numbers 5) was the mastermind behind quantum mechanics? Did a God who commanded the burning of blasphemers providentially create the telescope and arrange the funding for institutions like MIT and NASA so that we could better come to understand phenomena like “dark matter” and black holes?
Just when my mind would soar to focus on higher and grander things, I am brought back down to earth by those who stand in the way of progress so that we can continue disputing the words of a Hebrew war-god and Daniel's "covenant with many for one week." We have to get tired of this eventually. But eventually will never come soon enough!
(JH)
June 15, 2009
Scriptural Separation: First; Second and Third Degree
1. First Degree Separation: A Christian must separate from unbelievers. (Example: No Christian should read and commit here at DC.)
2. Second Degree Separation: A Christian must separate from any Christian who fellowships with unbelievers. (Example: No Christian should knowingly fellowship with a Christian who reads and commits here at DC.)
3. Third Degree Separation: A Christian must separate from any Christian who fellowships with any Christians, who in turn, fellowships with any Christians who fellowships with unbelievers. (Example: No Christian should knowingly fellowship with a Christian who knowingly fellowships with a Christian who reads and commits here at DC.)
While I was a student at Bob Jones University, the annual March Bible Conference (which features major Fundamentalist evangelist or pastors from large Fundamentalist churches that supported the University with students) is a time when all students, faculty, staff and supporters attend up to four services a day to hear fundamental Bible preaching as well as where the “Real Fundamentalist” stand on core Biblical issues.
It was at the 1971 Bible Conference that two of the main speakers (out of about 10 invited) happen to be Dr. John R. Rice, the fiery fundamentalist from Murfreesboro, Tenn. who published the hardcore Independent Baptist evangelistic new paper: The Sword of the Lord and the French educated Church Historian, John D. Woodbridge (the son of and close friend of Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., Charles Woodbridge).
Dr. John Rice’s sermon addressed the auditorium’s congregation on the Fundamentalist dogma of Scriptural Separation and claimed the Bible supported all three degrees of it.
When Dr. John Woodbridge got the pulpit after Dr. Rice's sermon, he claimed the Bible taught no such degrees of separation and that Dr. Rice was simply reading into the text something that was not there.
After the Woodbridge sermon was over, Bob Jones, Jr. got up and told Dr. Rice and Dr. Woodbridge that the Bible Conference was not a place for a debate and that it was to end here and now.
After a friendship of more than fifty years with the Jones and the University and also as a regular Bible Conference speaker, Dr. Rice stormed off the campus swearing to never set foot on the University again. (It was latter pointed out that he would drive right past the University on his way to see his daughter in Greenville and never stopped again to see his old Fundamentalist friends; the Jones.) Dr. Rice had now put into place what he believed: Scriptural Separation.
Secondly, Dr. Rice used his The Sword of the Lord news paper (which was required reading for all Dr. Bob’s Preacher Boys, as we were called) to attack the University. This lead to the University to cancel all the subscriptions that we Preacher Boys had with Dr. Rice’s paper.
Although Dr. Bob Jones, Jr. had stopped the debate on Scriptural Separation at the ‘71 Bible Conference, he none the less believed in the degrees or levels of this dogma that Dr. Rice taught was in the Bible.
For example, students could not listen to Judy Collins sing the hymn Amazing Grace because she was a “non Christian” signing a Christian hymn. Fifty demerits were given to student who did.
Billy Graham held a Crusade in Greenville in the mid 1960’s and the University let it be known that any student or staff who attended any of the Crusades would be expelled or fired.
Dr. Bob Jones, Jr. told the student body (of which I was apart) that, because of the lack of Scriptural Separation, “Billy Graham had done more damage to Christianity than any man who had ever lived.”
Bob Jr. latter told us at one of the University’s Chapel services that the hymn, Just as I Am, would no longer be sung in any service at the school since it was associated so closely with the compromise of Billy Graham.
I was given 100 demerits (during double demerit week; 150 demerits will get you expelled) for listening to The Son of Faith for the Day sung by Loretta Lynn on a local radio station.
However, just as we have pointed out time and again here at DC with the constant liberalizing of Christian doctrines, Bob Jones University now finds itself the focus of failing to adhere to it’s own Fundamentalist dogma of Biblical Separation.
The chickens have indeed come home to roost!
2. Second Degree Separation: A Christian must separate from any Christian who fellowships with unbelievers. (Example: No Christian should knowingly fellowship with a Christian who reads and commits here at DC.)
3. Third Degree Separation: A Christian must separate from any Christian who fellowships with any Christians, who in turn, fellowships with any Christians who fellowships with unbelievers. (Example: No Christian should knowingly fellowship with a Christian who knowingly fellowships with a Christian who reads and commits here at DC.)
While I was a student at Bob Jones University, the annual March Bible Conference (which features major Fundamentalist evangelist or pastors from large Fundamentalist churches that supported the University with students) is a time when all students, faculty, staff and supporters attend up to four services a day to hear fundamental Bible preaching as well as where the “Real Fundamentalist” stand on core Biblical issues.
It was at the 1971 Bible Conference that two of the main speakers (out of about 10 invited) happen to be Dr. John R. Rice, the fiery fundamentalist from Murfreesboro, Tenn. who published the hardcore Independent Baptist evangelistic new paper: The Sword of the Lord and the French educated Church Historian, John D. Woodbridge (the son of and close friend of Dr. Bob Jones, Jr., Charles Woodbridge).
Dr. John Rice’s sermon addressed the auditorium’s congregation on the Fundamentalist dogma of Scriptural Separation and claimed the Bible supported all three degrees of it.
When Dr. John Woodbridge got the pulpit after Dr. Rice's sermon, he claimed the Bible taught no such degrees of separation and that Dr. Rice was simply reading into the text something that was not there.
After the Woodbridge sermon was over, Bob Jones, Jr. got up and told Dr. Rice and Dr. Woodbridge that the Bible Conference was not a place for a debate and that it was to end here and now.
After a friendship of more than fifty years with the Jones and the University and also as a regular Bible Conference speaker, Dr. Rice stormed off the campus swearing to never set foot on the University again. (It was latter pointed out that he would drive right past the University on his way to see his daughter in Greenville and never stopped again to see his old Fundamentalist friends; the Jones.) Dr. Rice had now put into place what he believed: Scriptural Separation.
Secondly, Dr. Rice used his The Sword of the Lord news paper (which was required reading for all Dr. Bob’s Preacher Boys, as we were called) to attack the University. This lead to the University to cancel all the subscriptions that we Preacher Boys had with Dr. Rice’s paper.
Although Dr. Bob Jones, Jr. had stopped the debate on Scriptural Separation at the ‘71 Bible Conference, he none the less believed in the degrees or levels of this dogma that Dr. Rice taught was in the Bible.
For example, students could not listen to Judy Collins sing the hymn Amazing Grace because she was a “non Christian” signing a Christian hymn. Fifty demerits were given to student who did.
Billy Graham held a Crusade in Greenville in the mid 1960’s and the University let it be known that any student or staff who attended any of the Crusades would be expelled or fired.
Dr. Bob Jones, Jr. told the student body (of which I was apart) that, because of the lack of Scriptural Separation, “Billy Graham had done more damage to Christianity than any man who had ever lived.”
Bob Jr. latter told us at one of the University’s Chapel services that the hymn, Just as I Am, would no longer be sung in any service at the school since it was associated so closely with the compromise of Billy Graham.
I was given 100 demerits (during double demerit week; 150 demerits will get you expelled) for listening to The Son of Faith for the Day sung by Loretta Lynn on a local radio station.
However, just as we have pointed out time and again here at DC with the constant liberalizing of Christian doctrines, Bob Jones University now finds itself the focus of failing to adhere to it’s own Fundamentalist dogma of Biblical Separation.
The chickens have indeed come home to roost!
June 14, 2009
Three Keys To Understand What I'm Doing
Recently on another blog I was sort of dismissed because I don’t have a PhD nor any scholarly articles published. Does this matter? I think not, not when you understand what I’m doing.
I don’t want to write scholarly stuff to get patted on the back by other scholars. While doing so is very important, that’s what they get in return. My goal is to change the religious landscape and you don’t do that by writing for the scholars. You do that by writing for university students and the average intelligent reader.
Three things then are key to understand what I’m doing.
One) As a scholar I understand the scholars. I can effectively engage them. But I “translate” what they’re saying to the intelligent reader. Someone has to do this and I think that’s where my time is best spent if I want to change the religious landscape.
Two) My specialty is in being a generalist. I know that sounds like a possible contraction, but I don’t see this at all. Most scholars specialize in a small little area of expertise in the woods, on some particular tree, and/or a leaf of a tree. My specialty is in being able to see and describe the whole forest. I specialize in the Big Picture. Someone has to do this and it's just as difficult to do as to focus on a leaf on a tree in the forest. But I do this because it's the best way to change the religious landscape.
Three) I focus on Christian theism, not theism in general. The defense of theism in general is a long way from the God of Christianity. To get to the God of Christianity one must defend a whole host of things that cannot reasonably be defended. Christian philosophers delude themselves and others into thinking that by defending theism they can conclude Christian theism is the case. That is one big non-sequitur.
Many people think I’m doing something that few if any atheists are doing. My passion is great about this.
Update: The London Times Literary Supplement will be reviewing my book soon. It’s just a little more influential than a New York Times Book Review. I have also been asked to speak on a panel for the prestigious Society of Biblical Literature's annual meeting in New Orleans this November. [Unlike others who must travel there I must pay my own way]. People see my scholarship; it’s just a different kind.
I'm in the final stages of sending a new work to Prometheus Books for publication. It’s already accepted and due August 1st. I see it as a further extension of my book, WIBA. I wrote four chapters for it and the other 12 are written by Drs. David Eller, Valerie Tarico, Jason Long, Jim Linville, Hector Avalos, Richard Carrier, and Robert M. Price, along with Ed Babinski, Joe E. Holman, Matthew J. Green, and Jeffery Mark. From what I can see as the chapters are being sent my way this will be a very good book. It’s tentatively titled: “Critics Confront Christianity.”
I need your financial help at this time to keep on keeping on, to maintain this Blog, buy important books to review, and attract the kind of firepower we have here. I’m not kidding. Please read this. If you believe in what I’m doing please help. Just about $285 has been contributed with this weekend's push so far. Every bit helps. I'm hoping to raise $500 right now. Thanks for your help!
Let me give a couple of examples of book prices. “The End of Philosophy of Religion” by Nick Trakakis goes for $120 (with 172 pages!). I think some publishers want to rape us. I’m sure it’s a good book though and in a few years I’ll get it. It’s a shame that cutting edge libraries must fork over these costs. It stretches their budget beyond imagining. I have William Hasker’s “Providence, Evil and the Openness of God,” at a pricey $150, (for 236 pages), and Michael Murray’s “Nature Red in Tooth and Claw” for $62 (204 pages), which does represent my speciality, the problem of evil. I also have Edward Adams's "The Stars Will Fall From Heaven," which cost me $109, Just look at the prices of books and you'll know why I need your finacial help (BTW, I spend it frugally).
I don’t want to write scholarly stuff to get patted on the back by other scholars. While doing so is very important, that’s what they get in return. My goal is to change the religious landscape and you don’t do that by writing for the scholars. You do that by writing for university students and the average intelligent reader.
Three things then are key to understand what I’m doing.
One) As a scholar I understand the scholars. I can effectively engage them. But I “translate” what they’re saying to the intelligent reader. Someone has to do this and I think that’s where my time is best spent if I want to change the religious landscape.
Two) My specialty is in being a generalist. I know that sounds like a possible contraction, but I don’t see this at all. Most scholars specialize in a small little area of expertise in the woods, on some particular tree, and/or a leaf of a tree. My specialty is in being able to see and describe the whole forest. I specialize in the Big Picture. Someone has to do this and it's just as difficult to do as to focus on a leaf on a tree in the forest. But I do this because it's the best way to change the religious landscape.
Three) I focus on Christian theism, not theism in general. The defense of theism in general is a long way from the God of Christianity. To get to the God of Christianity one must defend a whole host of things that cannot reasonably be defended. Christian philosophers delude themselves and others into thinking that by defending theism they can conclude Christian theism is the case. That is one big non-sequitur.
Many people think I’m doing something that few if any atheists are doing. My passion is great about this.
Update: The London Times Literary Supplement will be reviewing my book soon. It’s just a little more influential than a New York Times Book Review. I have also been asked to speak on a panel for the prestigious Society of Biblical Literature's annual meeting in New Orleans this November. [Unlike others who must travel there I must pay my own way]. People see my scholarship; it’s just a different kind.
I'm in the final stages of sending a new work to Prometheus Books for publication. It’s already accepted and due August 1st. I see it as a further extension of my book, WIBA. I wrote four chapters for it and the other 12 are written by Drs. David Eller, Valerie Tarico, Jason Long, Jim Linville, Hector Avalos, Richard Carrier, and Robert M. Price, along with Ed Babinski, Joe E. Holman, Matthew J. Green, and Jeffery Mark. From what I can see as the chapters are being sent my way this will be a very good book. It’s tentatively titled: “Critics Confront Christianity.”
I need your financial help at this time to keep on keeping on, to maintain this Blog, buy important books to review, and attract the kind of firepower we have here. I’m not kidding. Please read this. If you believe in what I’m doing please help. Just about $285 has been contributed with this weekend's push so far. Every bit helps. I'm hoping to raise $500 right now. Thanks for your help!
Let me give a couple of examples of book prices. “The End of Philosophy of Religion” by Nick Trakakis goes for $120 (with 172 pages!). I think some publishers want to rape us. I’m sure it’s a good book though and in a few years I’ll get it. It’s a shame that cutting edge libraries must fork over these costs. It stretches their budget beyond imagining. I have William Hasker’s “Providence, Evil and the Openness of God,” at a pricey $150, (for 236 pages), and Michael Murray’s “Nature Red in Tooth and Claw” for $62 (204 pages), which does represent my speciality, the problem of evil. I also have Edward Adams's "The Stars Will Fall From Heaven," which cost me $109, Just look at the prices of books and you'll know why I need your finacial help (BTW, I spend it frugally).
Miracles and Burden of Proof: which side has it?
As argued in my previous post, the apologist who wants to ascribe supernatural causation to the phenomenon of Jesus rising from the dead (assuming it occurred) must demonstrate something like the following:
Assumption ~A: there probably could not have existed naturally relevant differences (i.e. physiological, technological, etc) between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain how Jesus would have been able to rise naturally.
In contrast,
Assumption A: there probably could have existed naturally relevant differences (i.e. physiological, technological, etc) between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain how Jesus would have been able to rise naturally.
Although each claim has a few variants, nevertheless, if the apologist's endeavor is to succeed, then something like (~A) must be established as true and something like (A) must be prevented from being established as true. In this post I will address two questions: (I) if Jesus really rose from the dead, should (~A) be presumed true or should the apologist have to argue for it?, and (II) If Jesus really rose from the dead, should (A) be presumed true or should the skeptic have to argue for it? I will supply two arguments for the following answers: to the first question, the apologist bears the burden of argument, and to the second, the skeptic can initially presume (A) without argument.
A1: (~A) cannot be presumed true without argument:
P1. Whenever we observe biological entity X with capabilities that biological entity O do not have, we should not assume these capability differences cannot be explained, at least in part, in terms of either: (a) relevant physiological differences between X and O, and/or (b) relevant technological differences between X and O, unless we have very good reasons to suppose otherwise.
P2. We observe Jesus with various supernormal capabilities that the rest of humanity do not have. [assumption]
C1. Therefore, we should not assume these capability differences cannot be explained, at least in part, in terms of either: (a) relevant physiological differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity, and/or (b) relevant technological differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity, unless we have very good reasons to suppose otherwise.
C2. Therefore, ~A should not be presumed true until we have very good reasons to affirm ~A.
A2: (A) can be presumed true without argument:
P1'. Whenever we observe biological entity X with capabilities that biological entity O do not have, we should assume these capability differences probably can be explained, at least in part, in terms of either: (a) relevant physiological differences between X and O, and/or (b) relevant technological differences between X and O, unless we have very good reasons to suppose otherwise.
P2. We observe Jesus with various supernormal capabilities that the rest of humanity do not have. [assumption]
C1'. Therefore, we should assume these capability differences probably can be explained, at least in part, in terms of either: (a) relevant physiological differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity, and/or (b) relevant technological differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity, unless we have very good reasons to suppose otherwise.
C2'. Therefore, A should be presumed true until we have very good reasons to abandon this presumption.
Besides their conclusions, the only difference between arguments A1 and A2 is with their first premises, and both strike me as true because they are extraordinary well confirmed; thus, to reject either (P1) or (P1') is to reject induction. However, in order to reject their respective conclusions, (P1) and (P1') must be denied, which thereby puts the apologist into an interesting quandary: either he must accept conclusions (C2) and (C2'), which is clearly undesirable, or he must reject either (P1) and (P1') by rejecting induction, which is also (probably more) undesirable. It therefore appears to be a lose-lose situation for the apologist.
Assumption ~A: there probably could not have existed naturally relevant differences (i.e. physiological, technological, etc) between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain how Jesus would have been able to rise naturally.
In contrast,
Assumption A: there probably could have existed naturally relevant differences (i.e. physiological, technological, etc) between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain how Jesus would have been able to rise naturally.
Although each claim has a few variants, nevertheless, if the apologist's endeavor is to succeed, then something like (~A) must be established as true and something like (A) must be prevented from being established as true. In this post I will address two questions: (I) if Jesus really rose from the dead, should (~A) be presumed true or should the apologist have to argue for it?, and (II) If Jesus really rose from the dead, should (A) be presumed true or should the skeptic have to argue for it? I will supply two arguments for the following answers: to the first question, the apologist bears the burden of argument, and to the second, the skeptic can initially presume (A) without argument.
A1: (~A) cannot be presumed true without argument:
P1. Whenever we observe biological entity X with capabilities that biological entity O do not have, we should not assume these capability differences cannot be explained, at least in part, in terms of either: (a) relevant physiological differences between X and O, and/or (b) relevant technological differences between X and O, unless we have very good reasons to suppose otherwise.
P2. We observe Jesus with various supernormal capabilities that the rest of humanity do not have. [assumption]
C1. Therefore, we should not assume these capability differences cannot be explained, at least in part, in terms of either: (a) relevant physiological differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity, and/or (b) relevant technological differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity, unless we have very good reasons to suppose otherwise.
C2. Therefore, ~A should not be presumed true until we have very good reasons to affirm ~A.
A2: (A) can be presumed true without argument:
P1'. Whenever we observe biological entity X with capabilities that biological entity O do not have, we should assume these capability differences probably can be explained, at least in part, in terms of either: (a) relevant physiological differences between X and O, and/or (b) relevant technological differences between X and O, unless we have very good reasons to suppose otherwise.
P2. We observe Jesus with various supernormal capabilities that the rest of humanity do not have. [assumption]
C1'. Therefore, we should assume these capability differences probably can be explained, at least in part, in terms of either: (a) relevant physiological differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity, and/or (b) relevant technological differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity, unless we have very good reasons to suppose otherwise.
C2'. Therefore, A should be presumed true until we have very good reasons to abandon this presumption.
Besides their conclusions, the only difference between arguments A1 and A2 is with their first premises, and both strike me as true because they are extraordinary well confirmed; thus, to reject either (P1) or (P1') is to reject induction. However, in order to reject their respective conclusions, (P1) and (P1') must be denied, which thereby puts the apologist into an interesting quandary: either he must accept conclusions (C2) and (C2'), which is clearly undesirable, or he must reject either (P1) and (P1') by rejecting induction, which is also (probably more) undesirable. It therefore appears to be a lose-lose situation for the apologist.
Social Impact Of Poor Biblical IDQ
[20090617. Added References] This article explores the Social Impact of Poor Biblical Information and Data Quality focusing on two of the sixteen IDQ dimensions, Understandability and Interpretability and provides a method for scoring them relative to other fields.
How does one measure the success of a Philosophy or Religion?
There are "positives" and "negatives" to almost everything, including philosophies. I will consider Religions philosophies because they are methods of deriving, among other things, how we should behave and what we should value. Philosophies can be measured by their success. Their success should be measured by how "trustworthy" and "reliable" they are. Measurements of their "reliability" and "trustworthiness" should be dependent upon how consistent or reproducible the results are. Some philosophies have become so reliable that they have become a science and some have splintered, become obsolete, and neglected. I agree with some who say that Epistemology is one the neglected philosophies. However, in my view, Epistemology is one of the most important endeavors humans can undertake, and I think it is thriving under other names, such as Law, Statistics, Measurement, Science, Artificial Intelligence, Informal Logic and Information and Data Quality Research.
How Recipes are similar to Religions and Philosophies.
Virtues, Morality and Truth Seeking are areas where Religion and Philosophy overlap. It can be summed up as "What is the right way to live?". We can rephrase this question to derive an analogy as "What is the right way to do something?". This is how Recipes, Religions and Philosophies are similar. Once someone has an Epiphany, or a "Good Idea" or a "Good way to make a sauce" they can write it down so it can be learned, reproduced and used as a basis for other things. Once it gets recorded once, it will be read (consumed), interpreted and acted upon to behave in a certain way. The measurement of how successful the Recipe, the Religion or the Philosophy should be is how easy it is reproduce the results or how well it consistently reflects real world states.
The success of Recipes, Religions and Philosophies depends on how easy they are to Understand and Interpret.
My Grandmothers cooking was widely regarded as being some of the best cooking in the area. Not only the family loved her cooking, the Church "Pot-Lucks" eagerly awaited what she was going to contribute next. In her last years, we tried to get her recipes written down, but we were largely unsuccessful. She didn't use recipes. She used her intuition. When she said to add something as a "pinch", "little bit", "dash" etc. it meant nothing to us. When she said "do this until it makes a noise like...", it meant nothing to us. Her terms were too ambiguous for any of us to take a recipe dictated by her and recreate what she cooked. One person, a neighbor, was successful in getting some recipes made from her and built a local catering business out of it. She sold it when she wanted to retire.
Christianity is split up into an heirarchy of denominations and one explanation for that could be that it has a low score in the IDQ dimensions of Understandability and Interpretability.
Recipes, Religions and Philosophies depend on concepts, described by language. It is possible for a word to describe a concept, but sometimes the word depends on the context. Sometimes when you are translating concepts between languages, some languages don't describe a concept in the same way as another language and some languages are missing words for concepts that exist in another language. When this happens, then error creeps into the understanding and interpretation of concepts. A word is used to generally approximate a concept and then it is read (consumed) by another mind through a network of cognitive biases and prior knowledge and stored away categorically in biological storage media, the brain. There is a lot of room for error and ambiguity which leads to poor understandability and interpretability. Interpretability depends on Understandability, so if the information is hard to understand, it will be hard to interpret.
What does Understandability and Interpretability Mean?
The definitions of "Understandability" and "Interpretability" from the Total Data Quality Managment literature are as follows.
Understandability (Ease of understanding):
The extent to which data is easily comprehended.
Interpretability
The extent to which data is in appropriate language, symbols, and units and the definitions are clear.
Interestingly, intepretability plays a very important role in Imaging. I got the following defininion of "interpret" from the field of Military Imagery from answers.com
Military Imagery
"(DOD, NATO) Suitability of imagery for interpretation with respect to answering adequately requirements on a given type of target in terms of quality and scale.
a. poor -- Imagery is unsuitable for interpretation to answer adequately requirements on a given type of target.
b. fair -- Imagery is suitable for interpretation to answer requirements on a given type of target but with only average detail.
c. good--Imagery is suitable for interpretation to answer requirements on a given type of target in considerable detail.
d. excellent--Imagery is suitable for interpretation to answer requirements on a given type of target in complete detail."
["interpret." Military and Associated Words. US Department of Defense, 2003. Answers.com 04 Jun. 2009. http://www.answers.com/topic/interpretability]
And from Data Warehouse Literature
"the extent to which the data warehouse in modeled effectively in the inforamtion repository and how well maintained the Data Lineage (where the data come from)", "Fundamentals of data warehouses" By Matthias Jarke, Maurizio Lenzerini, Yannis Vassiliou, Panos Vassiliadis
- How easy the queries can be posed? How successful are they?
We all know what an Interpreter is.
When you don't speak the language you need an Interpreter, but "interpret" also has specific definitions in other fields such as Mathematics and Logic.
In the Total Data Quality Management literature the Information and Data Quality dimensions are organized into four categories. The catagories are
- Intrinsic IQ,
- Contextual IQ
- Representational IQ:
- Accessibility IQ:
Interpretability and Understandability fall under the "Representational" Category.
Most of the IDQ dimension have clear cut metrics and methods for deriving a score but Understandability and Interpretability are more subjective and require surveying people and analyzing their answers using weighted averages and whatever is common between them. For example if there are two witnesses to a crime.
Witness 1: It was a Black Car.
Witness 2: It was Blue Car.
Using a what is common between them, we can say it is a car. Using a weighted average, without further questioning, we can say that it was more likely a car than a truck so we can give more weight to the car.
1. Car
2. Truck
and we can say that the blue car from witness two was probably a darker shade of blue so we give more weight to darker colors.
1. Dark Blue
2. Light Blue
An example using Christianity is that they all believe in Jesus Christ.
How they define Jesus is another topic.
Quantifying The Understandability and Interpretability Score For Christianity
Since I don't have a survey prepared and don't have the time to randomly select 1000 Christians from random points around the world, It seems to me that one ROUGH way to quantify the IDQ dimensions of Understandability and Interpretability would be to assume that a Christian denomination represents an interpretation of Christianity and to take the total number of Christian denominations and use that as the denomenator, and use the number one to represent Christianity in the following manner.
Just to keep it simple, lets say that there are only two denominations of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant (but we really know there are more)
Christianity/Total Number of Denominations = some percent or score.
so plugging numbers into that, it would be
1/2 = .5 or 50%
So Protestants and Catholics each get a score of .5 out of 1.
Note, that if there were only one denomination of Christianity, the score would be 1. So one is the perfect score. Also note that this method can be used for other things besides Christianity to enable COMPARING the relative scores of Interpretability and Understanding in different fields. If we were a sociology class, we could do it with a newspaper article and survey students about it. Additionally and more importantly, this type of thing is done as part of the reading comprehension portion of some standardized tests.
To derive a score for each denomination of Catholicism and Protestants you could do the same thing, and the number would come out even smaller as you would then have a percentage of a percentage. For example, taking the score for Protestants, and plugging it back into the equation, and assuming a ridiculously small number of protestant denominations would give us a formula as follows
Protestant Score/Total Number of Protestant denominations = Protestant denomination score
so lets assume only two protestant denominations and plug that into the formula as follows
.5/2 = .25
So now each protestant denomination gets a score of .25 out of 1. The more denominations there are the lower the score becomes, justifiably.
As we can see, the scores for Understandability and Interpretability come out pretty low, and that is reflected by the fact that only ~33% of the world is christian and that ~33% is subdivided into smaller denominations.
Who has the right Understanding and Right Interpretation? Who Knows? How are any of them Justified in saying they know anything about "What is the Right Way To Live?".
They are NOT justified, yet they act as if they are, and make decisions that impact society as a whole.
The key problem with information that is not easily understood and interpreted is Ambiguity.
Ambiguity is derived from poor definitions of terms, leading to unreproduceable results. The information is not mapped properly to real world events and objects. The information does not accurately represent the real world.
There are plenty of examples in the real world that depend on non-ambiguous information to produce consistent results.
Mapping
Medicine
Safety
Logistics
Engineering
Recipes
Mathematical models
United nations
and I'm sure you can think up a lot more on your own.
So now, without further delay, I present to you.....
THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF POOR BIBLICAL IDQ
FURTHER READING AND REFERENCE
[Wikipedia should not be considered authoritative but it is a good place to start.]
Inhumane Treatment Of Others
- Anti-abortion violence
- Torture as means to a Justifiable End
-- Torture in the Past
-- Church Attendance And Torture Approval, Valerie Tarico
- Witch hunts
-- Children Are Targets Of Nigerian Witch Hunt, Lee Randolph
-- Causes and Sociology of Witch Hunts, Wikipedia
-- The Terrible Christian Legacy of the Witch Hunts, John Loftus
- Exorcism
-- Exorcism, Wikipedia
-- A Call For The Scientific Investigation of Exorcism, Lee Randolph
- Mental Illness in the Middle Ages
--History Of Mental Disorders, Wikipedia
- Slavery
-- Christianity And Slavery, Wikipedia
-- Slavery And Religion, Wikipedia
- Address To The Colored People, Robert Ingersoll
- Slavery? NO WAY...NONE!
- Manifest Destiny, Exploration and Conquering
-- Manifest Destiny, Wikipedia
-- The Protestant Atrocities: Manifest Destiny and Slavery, John Loftus
- Heresy, Blaming the victim, Wrong Interpretation, "Not Real Christians" when obviously, if they don't get it, its not their fault. The information is of poor quality.
-- Christian Heresy, Wikipedia
-- List Of People Burned As Heretics, Wikipedia
-- Arianism, Wikipedia
--- Inquisition
--- Inquisition, Wikipedia
--- Words From the Inquisition: "Convert or Die!, John Loftus
- Crusades
-- Crusades, Wikipedia
- Behavior, Sin, Biological Bases of Behavior.
-- Link to Many Articles on this topic by Lee Randolph
DENIAL OF ESTABLISHED KNOWLEDGE
- Human Origins and or Evolution
-- Twenty Reasons Why Genesis and Evolution Do Not Mix, Answers in Genesis
-- Answers in Creation, Christian site that generally refutes Answers In Genesis
-- Debunking Creationism
- Faith Healing
-- Court Rules Faith In God And Prayer As Child Abuse, Harry McCall
UNHEALTHY PSYCHOLOGY
Self-Esteem
-- Is Self-Esteem Contrary to Christianity, Christian Article
- Martyr Syndrome
-- Overcome Martyr-Syndrome, WikiHow
- Co-Opts Humans Natural Flawed Reasoning Algorithms
-- List Of Cognitive Biases
MORE ABOUT THE IDQ DIMENSIONS
In the Total Data Quality Management literature the IDQ dimensions are categorized as follows. Interpretability and Understandability fall under the "Representational" Category.
Intrinsic IQ:
Accuracy (Free-from-error), Objectivity, Believability, Reputation
Contextual IQ:
Relevancy, Value-added, Timeliness, Completeness, Amount of Information
Representational IQ:
Interpretability, Understandability, Concise Representation, Consistent Representation
Accessibility IQ:
Access, Security
"Quality Information and Knowledge", page 43. Huang, Lee, Wang. Prentis Hall PTR
IDQ REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDED READING
Information and Data Quality (IDQ), Newest to oldest
* Journey to Data Quality, 2006, from Amazon
* Data Quality Assessment, 2002
* Information Quality Benchmarks: Product and Service Performance, 2002
* Quality Information and Knowledge, 1999, from Amazon
* AIMQ: A Methodology For Information Quality Assessment, 1997,
Direct Download, may not work
Download from link on the site
* Beyond Accuracy: What Data Quality Means To Consumers, 1996
* Anchoring Data Quality Dimensions in Ontological Foundations, 1996
//////////////////////////////////////
IDQ Applied To The Bible, oldest to newest
1. How Accurate is the Bible?
2. Applying Data and Information Quality Principles To The Bible
3. Applying IDQ Principles of Research To The Bible
4. Overview of IDQ Deficiencies Which Are Evident In Scripture
5. Jesus As God From IDQ Design Deficincies
6. "Son of Man" As Jesus From IDQ Deficiencies
7. IDQ Flaw of Meaningless Representation In The Bible
8. Accuracy In Detecting The Spiritual Realm Using "Triangulation"
9. As You Celebrate The Horror of Easter
10. Where is Jesus's Diary? Information As A Product, Not A Byproduct
11. Social Impact Of Poor Biblical IDQ
///////////////////////////////////
Triangulation, oldest to newest
* "Triangulation", University of California, San Francisco, Global health Sciences
* "Triangulation", Wikipedia
///////////////////////////////////
IDQ Applied, oldest to newest
* National Transportation Safety Board information quality standards
* Thank Sully!
* Information Professionals Caught Not Checking Sources
//////////////////////////////////
Rebuttals to Criticism of its application to assessing the Bible, oldest to newest
* IDQ Flaws Relevant To The Holy Spirit
* Cooking The Books To Avoid IDQ Principles
* Accuracy In Detecting The Spiritual Realm Using "Triangulation"
* Christians Must Be Agnostic
How does one measure the success of a Philosophy or Religion?
There are "positives" and "negatives" to almost everything, including philosophies. I will consider Religions philosophies because they are methods of deriving, among other things, how we should behave and what we should value. Philosophies can be measured by their success. Their success should be measured by how "trustworthy" and "reliable" they are. Measurements of their "reliability" and "trustworthiness" should be dependent upon how consistent or reproducible the results are. Some philosophies have become so reliable that they have become a science and some have splintered, become obsolete, and neglected. I agree with some who say that Epistemology is one the neglected philosophies. However, in my view, Epistemology is one of the most important endeavors humans can undertake, and I think it is thriving under other names, such as Law, Statistics, Measurement, Science, Artificial Intelligence, Informal Logic and Information and Data Quality Research.
How Recipes are similar to Religions and Philosophies.
Virtues, Morality and Truth Seeking are areas where Religion and Philosophy overlap. It can be summed up as "What is the right way to live?". We can rephrase this question to derive an analogy as "What is the right way to do something?". This is how Recipes, Religions and Philosophies are similar. Once someone has an Epiphany, or a "Good Idea" or a "Good way to make a sauce" they can write it down so it can be learned, reproduced and used as a basis for other things. Once it gets recorded once, it will be read (consumed), interpreted and acted upon to behave in a certain way. The measurement of how successful the Recipe, the Religion or the Philosophy should be is how easy it is reproduce the results or how well it consistently reflects real world states.
The success of Recipes, Religions and Philosophies depends on how easy they are to Understand and Interpret.
My Grandmothers cooking was widely regarded as being some of the best cooking in the area. Not only the family loved her cooking, the Church "Pot-Lucks" eagerly awaited what she was going to contribute next. In her last years, we tried to get her recipes written down, but we were largely unsuccessful. She didn't use recipes. She used her intuition. When she said to add something as a "pinch", "little bit", "dash" etc. it meant nothing to us. When she said "do this until it makes a noise like...", it meant nothing to us. Her terms were too ambiguous for any of us to take a recipe dictated by her and recreate what she cooked. One person, a neighbor, was successful in getting some recipes made from her and built a local catering business out of it. She sold it when she wanted to retire.
Christianity is split up into an heirarchy of denominations and one explanation for that could be that it has a low score in the IDQ dimensions of Understandability and Interpretability.
Recipes, Religions and Philosophies depend on concepts, described by language. It is possible for a word to describe a concept, but sometimes the word depends on the context. Sometimes when you are translating concepts between languages, some languages don't describe a concept in the same way as another language and some languages are missing words for concepts that exist in another language. When this happens, then error creeps into the understanding and interpretation of concepts. A word is used to generally approximate a concept and then it is read (consumed) by another mind through a network of cognitive biases and prior knowledge and stored away categorically in biological storage media, the brain. There is a lot of room for error and ambiguity which leads to poor understandability and interpretability. Interpretability depends on Understandability, so if the information is hard to understand, it will be hard to interpret.
What does Understandability and Interpretability Mean?
The definitions of "Understandability" and "Interpretability" from the Total Data Quality Managment literature are as follows.
Understandability (Ease of understanding):
The extent to which data is easily comprehended.
Interpretability
The extent to which data is in appropriate language, symbols, and units and the definitions are clear.
Interestingly, intepretability plays a very important role in Imaging. I got the following defininion of "interpret" from the field of Military Imagery from answers.com
Military Imagery
"(DOD, NATO) Suitability of imagery for interpretation with respect to answering adequately requirements on a given type of target in terms of quality and scale.
a. poor -- Imagery is unsuitable for interpretation to answer adequately requirements on a given type of target.
b. fair -- Imagery is suitable for interpretation to answer requirements on a given type of target but with only average detail.
c. good--Imagery is suitable for interpretation to answer requirements on a given type of target in considerable detail.
d. excellent--Imagery is suitable for interpretation to answer requirements on a given type of target in complete detail."
["interpret." Military and Associated Words. US Department of Defense, 2003. Answers.com 04 Jun. 2009. http://www.answers.com/topic/interpretability]
And from Data Warehouse Literature
"the extent to which the data warehouse in modeled effectively in the inforamtion repository and how well maintained the Data Lineage (where the data come from)", "Fundamentals of data warehouses" By Matthias Jarke, Maurizio Lenzerini, Yannis Vassiliou, Panos Vassiliadis
- How easy the queries can be posed? How successful are they?
We all know what an Interpreter is.
When you don't speak the language you need an Interpreter, but "interpret" also has specific definitions in other fields such as Mathematics and Logic.
In the Total Data Quality Management literature the Information and Data Quality dimensions are organized into four categories. The catagories are
- Intrinsic IQ,
- Contextual IQ
- Representational IQ:
- Accessibility IQ:
Interpretability and Understandability fall under the "Representational" Category.
Most of the IDQ dimension have clear cut metrics and methods for deriving a score but Understandability and Interpretability are more subjective and require surveying people and analyzing their answers using weighted averages and whatever is common between them. For example if there are two witnesses to a crime.
Witness 1: It was a Black Car.
Witness 2: It was Blue Car.
Using a what is common between them, we can say it is a car. Using a weighted average, without further questioning, we can say that it was more likely a car than a truck so we can give more weight to the car.
1. Car
2. Truck
and we can say that the blue car from witness two was probably a darker shade of blue so we give more weight to darker colors.
1. Dark Blue
2. Light Blue
An example using Christianity is that they all believe in Jesus Christ.
How they define Jesus is another topic.
Quantifying The Understandability and Interpretability Score For Christianity
Since I don't have a survey prepared and don't have the time to randomly select 1000 Christians from random points around the world, It seems to me that one ROUGH way to quantify the IDQ dimensions of Understandability and Interpretability would be to assume that a Christian denomination represents an interpretation of Christianity and to take the total number of Christian denominations and use that as the denomenator, and use the number one to represent Christianity in the following manner.
Just to keep it simple, lets say that there are only two denominations of Christianity, Catholic and Protestant (but we really know there are more)
Christianity/Total Number of Denominations = some percent or score.
so plugging numbers into that, it would be
1/2 = .5 or 50%
So Protestants and Catholics each get a score of .5 out of 1.
Note, that if there were only one denomination of Christianity, the score would be 1. So one is the perfect score. Also note that this method can be used for other things besides Christianity to enable COMPARING the relative scores of Interpretability and Understanding in different fields. If we were a sociology class, we could do it with a newspaper article and survey students about it. Additionally and more importantly, this type of thing is done as part of the reading comprehension portion of some standardized tests.
To derive a score for each denomination of Catholicism and Protestants you could do the same thing, and the number would come out even smaller as you would then have a percentage of a percentage. For example, taking the score for Protestants, and plugging it back into the equation, and assuming a ridiculously small number of protestant denominations would give us a formula as follows
Protestant Score/Total Number of Protestant denominations = Protestant denomination score
so lets assume only two protestant denominations and plug that into the formula as follows
.5/2 = .25
So now each protestant denomination gets a score of .25 out of 1. The more denominations there are the lower the score becomes, justifiably.
As we can see, the scores for Understandability and Interpretability come out pretty low, and that is reflected by the fact that only ~33% of the world is christian and that ~33% is subdivided into smaller denominations.
Who has the right Understanding and Right Interpretation? Who Knows? How are any of them Justified in saying they know anything about "What is the Right Way To Live?".
They are NOT justified, yet they act as if they are, and make decisions that impact society as a whole.
The key problem with information that is not easily understood and interpreted is Ambiguity.
Ambiguity is derived from poor definitions of terms, leading to unreproduceable results. The information is not mapped properly to real world events and objects. The information does not accurately represent the real world.
There are plenty of examples in the real world that depend on non-ambiguous information to produce consistent results.
Mapping
Medicine
Safety
Logistics
Engineering
Recipes
Mathematical models
United nations
and I'm sure you can think up a lot more on your own.
So now, without further delay, I present to you.....
THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF POOR BIBLICAL IDQ
FURTHER READING AND REFERENCE
[Wikipedia should not be considered authoritative but it is a good place to start.]
Inhumane Treatment Of Others
- Anti-abortion violence
- Torture as means to a Justifiable End
-- Torture in the Past
-- Church Attendance And Torture Approval, Valerie Tarico
- Witch hunts
-- Children Are Targets Of Nigerian Witch Hunt, Lee Randolph
-- Causes and Sociology of Witch Hunts, Wikipedia
-- The Terrible Christian Legacy of the Witch Hunts, John Loftus
- Exorcism
-- Exorcism, Wikipedia
-- A Call For The Scientific Investigation of Exorcism, Lee Randolph
- Mental Illness in the Middle Ages
--History Of Mental Disorders, Wikipedia
- Slavery
-- Christianity And Slavery, Wikipedia
-- Slavery And Religion, Wikipedia
- Address To The Colored People, Robert Ingersoll
- Slavery? NO WAY...NONE!
- Manifest Destiny, Exploration and Conquering
-- Manifest Destiny, Wikipedia
-- The Protestant Atrocities: Manifest Destiny and Slavery, John Loftus
- Heresy, Blaming the victim, Wrong Interpretation, "Not Real Christians" when obviously, if they don't get it, its not their fault. The information is of poor quality.
-- Christian Heresy, Wikipedia
-- List Of People Burned As Heretics, Wikipedia
-- Arianism, Wikipedia
--- Inquisition
--- Inquisition, Wikipedia
--- Words From the Inquisition: "Convert or Die!, John Loftus
- Crusades
-- Crusades, Wikipedia
- Behavior, Sin, Biological Bases of Behavior.
-- Link to Many Articles on this topic by Lee Randolph
DENIAL OF ESTABLISHED KNOWLEDGE
- Human Origins and or Evolution
-- Twenty Reasons Why Genesis and Evolution Do Not Mix, Answers in Genesis
-- Answers in Creation, Christian site that generally refutes Answers In Genesis
-- Debunking Creationism
- Faith Healing
-- Court Rules Faith In God And Prayer As Child Abuse, Harry McCall
UNHEALTHY PSYCHOLOGY
Self-Esteem
-- Is Self-Esteem Contrary to Christianity, Christian Article
- Martyr Syndrome
-- Overcome Martyr-Syndrome, WikiHow
- Co-Opts Humans Natural Flawed Reasoning Algorithms
-- List Of Cognitive Biases
MORE ABOUT THE IDQ DIMENSIONS
In the Total Data Quality Management literature the IDQ dimensions are categorized as follows. Interpretability and Understandability fall under the "Representational" Category.
Intrinsic IQ:
Accuracy (Free-from-error), Objectivity, Believability, Reputation
Contextual IQ:
Relevancy, Value-added, Timeliness, Completeness, Amount of Information
Representational IQ:
Interpretability, Understandability, Concise Representation, Consistent Representation
Accessibility IQ:
Access, Security
"Quality Information and Knowledge", page 43. Huang, Lee, Wang. Prentis Hall PTR
IDQ REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDED READING
Information and Data Quality (IDQ), Newest to oldest
* Journey to Data Quality, 2006, from Amazon
* Data Quality Assessment, 2002
* Information Quality Benchmarks: Product and Service Performance, 2002
* Quality Information and Knowledge, 1999, from Amazon
* AIMQ: A Methodology For Information Quality Assessment, 1997,
Direct Download, may not work
Download from link on the site
* Beyond Accuracy: What Data Quality Means To Consumers, 1996
* Anchoring Data Quality Dimensions in Ontological Foundations, 1996
//////////////////////////////////////
IDQ Applied To The Bible, oldest to newest
1. How Accurate is the Bible?
2. Applying Data and Information Quality Principles To The Bible
3. Applying IDQ Principles of Research To The Bible
4. Overview of IDQ Deficiencies Which Are Evident In Scripture
5. Jesus As God From IDQ Design Deficincies
6. "Son of Man" As Jesus From IDQ Deficiencies
7. IDQ Flaw of Meaningless Representation In The Bible
8. Accuracy In Detecting The Spiritual Realm Using "Triangulation"
9. As You Celebrate The Horror of Easter
10. Where is Jesus's Diary? Information As A Product, Not A Byproduct
11. Social Impact Of Poor Biblical IDQ
///////////////////////////////////
Triangulation, oldest to newest
* "Triangulation", University of California, San Francisco, Global health Sciences
* "Triangulation", Wikipedia
///////////////////////////////////
IDQ Applied, oldest to newest
* National Transportation Safety Board information quality standards
* Thank Sully!
* Information Professionals Caught Not Checking Sources
//////////////////////////////////
Rebuttals to Criticism of its application to assessing the Bible, oldest to newest
* IDQ Flaws Relevant To The Holy Spirit
* Cooking The Books To Avoid IDQ Principles
* Accuracy In Detecting The Spiritual Realm Using "Triangulation"
* Christians Must Be Agnostic
June 13, 2009
It's That Time Again.
It's time to make a plea for some financial help. Anything you can do will be appreciated. Thanks for everything given so far, and thanks for your help now.
The Gospel of Matthew Debunks the Messiahship of Jesus
Whether through carelessness or ignorance, the author of the Gospel of Matthew inadvertantly disqualified Jesus from being the Messiah, the Davidic king.
The New Testament opens with the words of the Gospel of Matthew, "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Mt. 1:1
Words have meaning. The plain meaning of Matthew's words is that the following list of patrimonial lineage establishes the bona fides of Jesus as the legitimate descendent of King David with a rightful claim to be the promised king who would rule forever and ever. To claim any other reason for these words being penned is to ignore the clear intent of the author. This opening is the very reason that the Gospel of Matthew opens the Christian New Testament even though it was one of the last books actually written.
The list of names as genetic links from Abraham to David through Solomon on down is either accurate or it is not. If it is not accurate, then whatever else Jesus did, no matter how great, he cannot be the legitimate Davidic king. But for the sake of argument, let us assume the list to be accurate.
Matthew follows with a list of generations from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob to king David, the king whose descendents were to be the only legitimate royal line. Next, Matthew rightly runs the genealogy through David's son Solomon which was the only line approved by the predictions of the Hebrew scriptures. 1Chrn 17, 22, and 28.
These texts make clear that the line of Davidic kingship and thus eventual Messiahship must go through his son Solomon to the exclusion of his many other sons. Parenthetically, it must be noted here that the Gospel of Luke's genealogy of Jesus runs through David's son Nathan rather than Solomon thus disqualifying the rest of his list of descendents from legitimacy.
Next, Matthew lists the descendents of Solomon to the Babylonian captivity:
Solomon
Rehoboam
Abijah
Asa
Jehoshaphat
Joram
Ussiah
Jotham
Ahaz
Hezekiah
Manasseh
Amos
Josiah
Jeconiah
As he lists these kings, each of whom fathered the next in line, he points out that Jechoniah was the king at the time of the deportation to Babylon. Let us not miss this point. JECHONIAH WAS THE KING AT THE TIME OF THE DEPORTATION. Then Matthew states "After the deportation to Babylon, Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel and Shealtiel was the father of Zerubbabel, and on down to the end of the line.
Who was this Jechoniah through whom Matthew traces Jesus' lineage? He is characterized in the Old Testament as "evil" King Jechoiachin. The book of 2 Kings 24:8 and following states, "Jechoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Nehushta the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father had done." The text goes on to describe how Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon took him, the riches of the temple, and all the great people of Judah, leaving behind only the dregs. Jechoiachin was no hero among the kings of Judah.
Jeremiah was the premier prophet of the time of the early captivity and deporation and spared no words in his condemnation of the evil kings of Judah whose sins led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. He saved his harshest curse for Jechoiachin. In Jer. 22:18 and following, Jeremiah begins his curse upon this evil king claiming to quote Yahweh saying, "Thus says Yahweh concerning Jechoiachin the son of Josiah, king of Judah..." He goes on with poetic prophecy relating the disobedience of the young king. But then in verse 30, Jeremiah makes a clear prophecy, "Thus says Yahweh, 'Write this man down as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days; for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David, and ruling again in Judah."
Again, "NONE OF HIS OFFSPRING SHALL SUCCEED IN SITTING ON THE THRONE OF DAVID AND RULING AGAIN IN JUDAH!"
In constructing his genealogy of Jesus, Matthew shot off his on foot, for no descendent of Jechoiachin is eligible to be in the royal line. While the Messianic expectation rightly goes from David through Solomon, the entire line of Jechoiachin is disqualified.
Therefore, Jesus is disqualified. Davidic rights do not belong to him.
Some may object that none of Matthew's genealogy of Jesus has standing anyway since it goes through Joseph, who according to the birth narrative was not the father of Jesus in any event. But then of what purpose is the genealogy which clearly maintains that it is the genealogy, the pedigree, the genetic, blood related, DNA source of Jesus?
Some have suggested that Joseph was the adoptive father of Jesus. But then of what use is the list of actual fathers and sons? No adoptive son could be called "The seed of David." Actual patrimony was necessary for being a part of the Jewish royal line, just as actual patrimony was necessary for the perpetuation of a priestly family. The plain meaning of the text is that this genealogy is actual, historical, physical, and establishes Jesus as the "son of David." The tension between the genealogy and the miraculous birth narrative is better understood as arising from a later scribal interpolation of the birth narrative to establish a divine link to Jesus' nature. But even if one could construe a "legal, adoptive" rather than a physical genealogy of Jesus, even though none is even hinted at by the text, Joseph could not have been an heir of David either in that he is listed as a descendent of Jechoiachin.
Matthew has debunked Jesus' messiahship. The New Testament opens with a clear violation of any legitimate claim for Jesus to be the "son of David." Jesus was an imposter to the throne.
The New Testament opens with the words of the Gospel of Matthew, "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Mt. 1:1
Words have meaning. The plain meaning of Matthew's words is that the following list of patrimonial lineage establishes the bona fides of Jesus as the legitimate descendent of King David with a rightful claim to be the promised king who would rule forever and ever. To claim any other reason for these words being penned is to ignore the clear intent of the author. This opening is the very reason that the Gospel of Matthew opens the Christian New Testament even though it was one of the last books actually written.
The list of names as genetic links from Abraham to David through Solomon on down is either accurate or it is not. If it is not accurate, then whatever else Jesus did, no matter how great, he cannot be the legitimate Davidic king. But for the sake of argument, let us assume the list to be accurate.
Matthew follows with a list of generations from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob to king David, the king whose descendents were to be the only legitimate royal line. Next, Matthew rightly runs the genealogy through David's son Solomon which was the only line approved by the predictions of the Hebrew scriptures. 1Chrn 17, 22, and 28.
These texts make clear that the line of Davidic kingship and thus eventual Messiahship must go through his son Solomon to the exclusion of his many other sons. Parenthetically, it must be noted here that the Gospel of Luke's genealogy of Jesus runs through David's son Nathan rather than Solomon thus disqualifying the rest of his list of descendents from legitimacy.
Next, Matthew lists the descendents of Solomon to the Babylonian captivity:
Solomon
Rehoboam
Abijah
Asa
Jehoshaphat
Joram
Ussiah
Jotham
Ahaz
Hezekiah
Manasseh
Amos
Josiah
Jeconiah
As he lists these kings, each of whom fathered the next in line, he points out that Jechoniah was the king at the time of the deportation to Babylon. Let us not miss this point. JECHONIAH WAS THE KING AT THE TIME OF THE DEPORTATION. Then Matthew states "After the deportation to Babylon, Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel and Shealtiel was the father of Zerubbabel, and on down to the end of the line.
Who was this Jechoniah through whom Matthew traces Jesus' lineage? He is characterized in the Old Testament as "evil" King Jechoiachin. The book of 2 Kings 24:8 and following states, "Jechoiachin was eighteen years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Nehushta the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father had done." The text goes on to describe how Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon took him, the riches of the temple, and all the great people of Judah, leaving behind only the dregs. Jechoiachin was no hero among the kings of Judah.
Jeremiah was the premier prophet of the time of the early captivity and deporation and spared no words in his condemnation of the evil kings of Judah whose sins led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. He saved his harshest curse for Jechoiachin. In Jer. 22:18 and following, Jeremiah begins his curse upon this evil king claiming to quote Yahweh saying, "Thus says Yahweh concerning Jechoiachin the son of Josiah, king of Judah..." He goes on with poetic prophecy relating the disobedience of the young king. But then in verse 30, Jeremiah makes a clear prophecy, "Thus says Yahweh, 'Write this man down as childless, a man who shall not succeed in his days; for none of his offspring shall succeed in sitting on the throne of David, and ruling again in Judah."
Again, "NONE OF HIS OFFSPRING SHALL SUCCEED IN SITTING ON THE THRONE OF DAVID AND RULING AGAIN IN JUDAH!"
In constructing his genealogy of Jesus, Matthew shot off his on foot, for no descendent of Jechoiachin is eligible to be in the royal line. While the Messianic expectation rightly goes from David through Solomon, the entire line of Jechoiachin is disqualified.
Therefore, Jesus is disqualified. Davidic rights do not belong to him.
Some may object that none of Matthew's genealogy of Jesus has standing anyway since it goes through Joseph, who according to the birth narrative was not the father of Jesus in any event. But then of what purpose is the genealogy which clearly maintains that it is the genealogy, the pedigree, the genetic, blood related, DNA source of Jesus?
Some have suggested that Joseph was the adoptive father of Jesus. But then of what use is the list of actual fathers and sons? No adoptive son could be called "The seed of David." Actual patrimony was necessary for being a part of the Jewish royal line, just as actual patrimony was necessary for the perpetuation of a priestly family. The plain meaning of the text is that this genealogy is actual, historical, physical, and establishes Jesus as the "son of David." The tension between the genealogy and the miraculous birth narrative is better understood as arising from a later scribal interpolation of the birth narrative to establish a divine link to Jesus' nature. But even if one could construe a "legal, adoptive" rather than a physical genealogy of Jesus, even though none is even hinted at by the text, Joseph could not have been an heir of David either in that he is listed as a descendent of Jechoiachin.
Matthew has debunked Jesus' messiahship. The New Testament opens with a clear violation of any legitimate claim for Jesus to be the "son of David." Jesus was an imposter to the throne.
June 12, 2009
Recommended Books by Evangelical Scholars
The following are books written by evangelical scholars that I, as a religious skeptic, highly recommend to evangelical Christians. Obviously I will not agree with everything written but these authors demonstrate the many problems with evangelical views of the Bible and the natural world.
- Kenton Sparks, God's Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship.
- Vincent Bacote, Laura Miguelez, Dennis Okholm, eds., Evangelicals & Scripture: Tradition, Authority and Hermeneutics.
- John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible.
- Craig Bartholomew, C. Stephen Evans, Mary Healy, Murray Rae, eds., "Behind" the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation.
- Darrel R. Falk, Coming to Peace With Science.
- Stephen J. Godfrey and Christopher R. Smith, Paradigms on Pilgrimage: Creationism, Paleontology and Biblical Interpretation.
- Davis A. Young and Ralph F. Stearley, The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth.
- Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.
- Alan G. Padgett & Patrick Keifert, eds., But is It All True? The Bible and the Question of Truth.
- Scot McKnight and Hauna Ondrey, Finding Faith, Losing Faith: Stories of Conversion and Apostasy.
The Changing Face of Apologetics: I Agree with Lee Strobel
Well, it looks like I agree with Christian apologist Lee Strobel. If he's right then I got it right in my book. In an interview for the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, he was asked this question: How have evangelism and apologetics changed? Here is his answer:
They have become more relational, more story-driven. Josh McDowell would go on college campuses and describe why to trust the Bible. And people would come to faith in droves. Then they stopped coming to faith in so many numbers, and he didn't know why. And now he takes a story approach. "You know," he says, "I was the son of the town drunk. This is how it affected my life and my relationship with [my dad]. This is what prompted me to seek spiritually. This is the evidence I found. This is how my life was changed. This is how I reconciled with my father." So it becomes a story.If he's right then deconversion (deprogramming) stories are useful in counter-apologetics too. In my book I tell my story. I tell how I came to faith, what experiences I had in the church, what experiences led me away from that faith, and why I personally decided there was no God. It's a complete story about my past Christian life, some parts of which are ugly. I also produce what some people describe as a massive refutation of Christianity in it, but it contains a story, my story.
That's what my ministry is about. I tell my story: I was an atheist. I scoffed. My wife became a Christian. It prompted me to investigate. Here's the evidence I found, how I received Christ, the difference it's made. It's a story. And I found that in postmodern America, people often are willing to engage on the level of story.
Link.
June 11, 2009
Well-Researched, Judicious, and Enlightening: A Review of Robert Wright's "The Evolution of God."
I just wrote a review of this book to be found at Amazon.com. See what you think. If it's a helpful review, please let them know.
Making the inference to the supernatural
The apologist needs to show that if Jesus rose from the dead, he probably rose supernaturally (i.e. there was divine involvement). But how can he do this? He can only do this by showing that Jesus probably couldn't have risen naturally. In other words,
P1. Jesus probably couldn't have risen naturally. [I'm granting - for purposes of argument - that Jesus really did rise from the dead].
C. Therefore, Jesus probably rose supernaturally.
When we ask the apologist how he will attempt to establish (1), his defense will be to appeal to current science and our knowledge about the possibility of people coming back from the dead. In other words,
P1. The rest of humanity can't rise naturally.
C1. Therefore, Jesus probably couldn't have risen naturally.
C2. Therefore, Jesus probably rose supernaturally.
This route seems more promising, and if we grant (P1), as most do, then only one question remains: Is the inference from (P1) to (C1) valid? It would be if the apologist can demonstrate the following:
Assumption ~A: there probably could not have existed relevant differences (i.e. physiological, technological, etc) between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, might have been able to rise naturally from the dead.
Why is (~A) needed in order for the inference from (P1) to (C1) to be valid? To see that (~A) is needed, consider:
Assumption A: there probably could have existed relevant differences (i.e. physiological, technological, etc) between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, might have been able to rise naturally from the dead.
If (A) were true, then clearly the inference from (P1) to (C1) would fail, and if there were no good reason to believe that (~A) were true, the inference would also fail. Hence the apologist is forced to argue that (~A) is true, which I do not think he can do. Thus we finally come to:
P1. The rest of humanity can't rise naturally, and ~A.
C1. Therefore, Jesus probably couldn't have risen naturally.
C2. Therefore, Jesus probably rose supernaturally.
Now we see the problem: there's no good reason to accept (P1) because there's no good reason to believe (~A).
P1. Jesus probably couldn't have risen naturally. [I'm granting - for purposes of argument - that Jesus really did rise from the dead].
C. Therefore, Jesus probably rose supernaturally.
When we ask the apologist how he will attempt to establish (1), his defense will be to appeal to current science and our knowledge about the possibility of people coming back from the dead. In other words,
P1. The rest of humanity can't rise naturally.
C1. Therefore, Jesus probably couldn't have risen naturally.
C2. Therefore, Jesus probably rose supernaturally.
This route seems more promising, and if we grant (P1), as most do, then only one question remains: Is the inference from (P1) to (C1) valid? It would be if the apologist can demonstrate the following:
Assumption ~A: there probably could not have existed relevant differences (i.e. physiological, technological, etc) between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, might have been able to rise naturally from the dead.
Why is (~A) needed in order for the inference from (P1) to (C1) to be valid? To see that (~A) is needed, consider:
Assumption A: there probably could have existed relevant differences (i.e. physiological, technological, etc) between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, might have been able to rise naturally from the dead.
If (A) were true, then clearly the inference from (P1) to (C1) would fail, and if there were no good reason to believe that (~A) were true, the inference would also fail. Hence the apologist is forced to argue that (~A) is true, which I do not think he can do. Thus we finally come to:
P1. The rest of humanity can't rise naturally, and ~A.
C1. Therefore, Jesus probably couldn't have risen naturally.
C2. Therefore, Jesus probably rose supernaturally.
Now we see the problem: there's no good reason to accept (P1) because there's no good reason to believe (~A).
My First "Flea"
Richard Dawkins labels any book written against his book as a "flea." I now have one too! Fred DeRuvo's book, The Anti-Supernatural Bias Of Ex-Christians: And Other Important Topics
, deals with mine in the 5th-7th chapters. Check out the back cover. Fred sent me a copy and I've read it. There is nothing there that seriously engages my arguments even though he tried to be fair with them. Of my book he says: "It is a fairly well written and certainly a thoughtful and insightful treatise..." (p. 60). He also admits: "John does not seem to be purposefully unfair in his assessment of Christianity, or of the Bible and or of God." (p. 84) Fred has a Masters in Biblical Studies from Tyndale Theological Seminary.
I know of at least one more flea coming.
, deals with mine in the 5th-7th chapters. Check out the back cover. Fred sent me a copy and I've read it. There is nothing there that seriously engages my arguments even though he tried to be fair with them. Of my book he says: "It is a fairly well written and certainly a thoughtful and insightful treatise..." (p. 60). He also admits: "John does not seem to be purposefully unfair in his assessment of Christianity, or of the Bible and or of God." (p. 84) Fred has a Masters in Biblical Studies from Tyndale Theological Seminary. I know of at least one more flea coming.
June 10, 2009
“Birds of a Feather, Flock Together!”
Asheville Priest Charged With Obstruction In Child Sex Case - Resigned Tuesday
A Western North Carolina Catholic priest has been charged with Obstruction Of Justice.
The Rev. John Schneider was arrested Monday and has since bailed out of jail.
This, after police say he deleted pornographic images off the home computer of his church’s music minister.
That man, Paul Lawrence Berrell, was under investigation and later arrested, last month, on multiple counts of sexual exploitation of a minor—statutory rape—and indecent liberties with a child.
He is currently being held at the Buncombe County Detention Center under a $1.5 million bond.
Rev. Schneider was pastor of St. Eugene Catholic Church since 2005. His bond was set at 10-thousand dollars.
The Diocese of Charlotte tells us he has resigned his position. A replacement will soon be assigned.
Video Here
A Western North Carolina Catholic priest has been charged with Obstruction Of Justice.
The Rev. John Schneider was arrested Monday and has since bailed out of jail.
This, after police say he deleted pornographic images off the home computer of his church’s music minister.
That man, Paul Lawrence Berrell, was under investigation and later arrested, last month, on multiple counts of sexual exploitation of a minor—statutory rape—and indecent liberties with a child.
He is currently being held at the Buncombe County Detention Center under a $1.5 million bond.
Rev. Schneider was pastor of St. Eugene Catholic Church since 2005. His bond was set at 10-thousand dollars.
The Diocese of Charlotte tells us he has resigned his position. A replacement will soon be assigned.
Video Here
Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science: Part 3 of 6
I Know Because I Know
On a warm afternoon in June, two men have appointments with a psychiatrist. The first has been dragged to the office by his wife, much to his irritation. He is a biologist who suffers from schizophrenia, and the wife insists that his meds are not working. “No,” says the biologist, “I’m actually fine. It’s just that because of what I’m working on right now the CIA has been bugging my calls and reading my email.” Despite his wife’s skepticism and his understanding of his own illness, he insists calmly that he is sure, and he lines up evidence to support his claim. The other man has come on his own because he is feeling exhausted and desperate. He shows the psychiatrist his hands, which are raw to the point of bleeding. No matter how many times he washes them (up to a hundred in a day) or what he uses (soap, alcohol, bleach or scouring pads) he never feels confident that they are clean.
In both of these cases, after brain biochemistry is rebalanced, the patient’s sense of certainty falls back in line with the evidence. The first man becomes less sure about the CIA thing and gradually loses interest in the idea. The second man begins feeling confident that his hands are clean after a normal round of soap and water, and the cracks begin healing.
How do we know what is real? How do we know what we know? We don’t, entirely. Research on psychiatric disorders and brain injuries shows that humans have a feeling or sense of knowing that can get activated by reason and evidence but can get activated in other ways as well. Conversely, when certain brain malfunctions occur, it may be impossible to experience a sense of knowing no matter how much evidence piles up. V. S. Ramachandran describes a brain injured patient who sees his mother and says, “This looks like my mother in every way, but she is an imposter.” The connection between his visual cortex and his limbic system has been severed, and even though he sees his mother perfectly well, he has no sense of rightness or knowing so he offers the only explanation he can find (Capgras Delusion).
Neurologist Robert Burton explains it this way: “Despite how certainty feels, it is neither a conscious choice nor even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of knowing what we know arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason.” (On Being Certain, xi) This “knowing what we know” mechanism is good enough for getting around in the world, but not perfect. For the most part, it lets us explain, predict, and influence people or objects or events, and we use that knowledge to advantage. But as the above scenarios show, our ability to tell what is real also can get thrown off.
Burton says that the “feeling of knowing” (rightness, correctness, certainty, conviction) should be thought of as one of our primary emotions, like anger, pleasure, or fear. Like these other feelings, it can be triggered by a seizure or a drug or direct electrical stimulation of the brain. Research after the Korean War (e.g. R Lifton) suggested that the feeling of knowing or not knowing also can be produced by what are called brainwashing techniques: repetition, sleep deprivation, and social/emotional manipulation. Once triggered for any reason, the feeling that something is right or real can be incredibly powerful--so powerful that when it goes head to head with logic or evidence the feeling wins. Our brains make up reasons to justify our feeling of knowing, rather than following logic to its logical conclusion.
For many reasons, religious beliefs are usually undergirded by a strong “feeling of knowing.” Set aside for the moment the question of whether those beliefs tap underlying realities. Conversion experiences can be intense, hypnotic, and transformative. Worship practices, music and religious architecture have been optimized over time to evoke right brain sensations of transcendence and euphoria. Social insularity protects a community consensus. Repetition of ideas reinforces a sense of conviction or certainty. Religious systems like Christianity that emphasize right belief have built in safeguards against contrary evidence, doubt, and the assertions of other religions. Many a freethinker has sparred a smart, educated fundamentalist into a corner only to have the believer utter some form of “I just know.”
Does this mean that rational argumentation about religion is useless? The answer may be disappointing. Religious belief is not bound to regular standards of evidence and logic. It is not about logic and it is not obliged to follow logic. Arguments with believers start from a false premise—that the believer is bound by the rules of debate rather than being bound by the belief itself. The freethinker assumes that the believer is free to concede; but this is rarely true. At best the bits of logic or evidence put forth in an argument go into the hopper with a whole host of other factors. And yet each of us who is a former believer (we number in the millions) reached some point in our lives when we simply couldn’t sustain our old certainties. Our sense of knowing either eroded over time or abruptly disappeared. So sometimes those hoppers do fill up.
Given what I’ve said about knowing, how can anybody claim to know anything?
We can’t, with certainty. Those of us who are not religious could do with a little more humility on this point. We all see “through a glass darkly” and there is a realm in which all any of us can do is to make our own best guesses about what is real and important. This doesn’t imply that all ideas are created equal, or that our traditional understanding of “knowledge” is useless. As I said before, our sense of knowing allows us to navigate this world pretty well—to detect regularities, anticipate events and make things happen. In the concrete domain of everyday life, acting on what we think we know works pretty well for us. Nonetheless, it is a healthy mistrust for our sense of knowing that has allowed scientists to detect, predict, and produce desired outcomes with ever greater precision.
The scientific method has been called “institutionalized doubt” because it forces us to question our assumptions. Scientists stake their hopes not on a specific set of answers but on a specific way of asking questions. Core to this process is “falsification” – narrowing down what might be true by ruling out what can’t be true. And to date, that approach has had enormous pay-offs. It is what has made the difference between the nature of human life in the Middle Ages and the 21st Century. But knowledge in science is provisional; at any given point in time, the sum of scientific knowledge is really just a progress report.
When we overstate our ability to know, we play into the fundamentalist fallacy that certainty is possible. Burton calls this “the all-knowing rational mind myth.” As scientists learn more about how our brains work, certitude is coming to be seen as a vice rather than a virtue. Certainty is a confession of ignorance about our ability to be passionately mistaken. Humans will always argue passionately about things that we do not know and cannot know, but with a little more self-knowledge and humility we may get to the point that those arguments are less often lethal.
Essentials: Robert A. Burton, On Being Certain
V. S. Ramachandran (TED talk), A Journey to the Center of Your Mind
If you don’t want to miss any of this series, subscribe to Valerie Tarico at this blog or send email to valerietarico at hotmail.com and request to be added to her mailing list for weekly articles.
On a warm afternoon in June, two men have appointments with a psychiatrist. The first has been dragged to the office by his wife, much to his irritation. He is a biologist who suffers from schizophrenia, and the wife insists that his meds are not working. “No,” says the biologist, “I’m actually fine. It’s just that because of what I’m working on right now the CIA has been bugging my calls and reading my email.” Despite his wife’s skepticism and his understanding of his own illness, he insists calmly that he is sure, and he lines up evidence to support his claim. The other man has come on his own because he is feeling exhausted and desperate. He shows the psychiatrist his hands, which are raw to the point of bleeding. No matter how many times he washes them (up to a hundred in a day) or what he uses (soap, alcohol, bleach or scouring pads) he never feels confident that they are clean.
In both of these cases, after brain biochemistry is rebalanced, the patient’s sense of certainty falls back in line with the evidence. The first man becomes less sure about the CIA thing and gradually loses interest in the idea. The second man begins feeling confident that his hands are clean after a normal round of soap and water, and the cracks begin healing.
How do we know what is real? How do we know what we know? We don’t, entirely. Research on psychiatric disorders and brain injuries shows that humans have a feeling or sense of knowing that can get activated by reason and evidence but can get activated in other ways as well. Conversely, when certain brain malfunctions occur, it may be impossible to experience a sense of knowing no matter how much evidence piles up. V. S. Ramachandran describes a brain injured patient who sees his mother and says, “This looks like my mother in every way, but she is an imposter.” The connection between his visual cortex and his limbic system has been severed, and even though he sees his mother perfectly well, he has no sense of rightness or knowing so he offers the only explanation he can find (Capgras Delusion).
Neurologist Robert Burton explains it this way: “Despite how certainty feels, it is neither a conscious choice nor even a thought process. Certainty and similar states of knowing what we know arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason.” (On Being Certain, xi) This “knowing what we know” mechanism is good enough for getting around in the world, but not perfect. For the most part, it lets us explain, predict, and influence people or objects or events, and we use that knowledge to advantage. But as the above scenarios show, our ability to tell what is real also can get thrown off.
Burton says that the “feeling of knowing” (rightness, correctness, certainty, conviction) should be thought of as one of our primary emotions, like anger, pleasure, or fear. Like these other feelings, it can be triggered by a seizure or a drug or direct electrical stimulation of the brain. Research after the Korean War (e.g. R Lifton) suggested that the feeling of knowing or not knowing also can be produced by what are called brainwashing techniques: repetition, sleep deprivation, and social/emotional manipulation. Once triggered for any reason, the feeling that something is right or real can be incredibly powerful--so powerful that when it goes head to head with logic or evidence the feeling wins. Our brains make up reasons to justify our feeling of knowing, rather than following logic to its logical conclusion.
For many reasons, religious beliefs are usually undergirded by a strong “feeling of knowing.” Set aside for the moment the question of whether those beliefs tap underlying realities. Conversion experiences can be intense, hypnotic, and transformative. Worship practices, music and religious architecture have been optimized over time to evoke right brain sensations of transcendence and euphoria. Social insularity protects a community consensus. Repetition of ideas reinforces a sense of conviction or certainty. Religious systems like Christianity that emphasize right belief have built in safeguards against contrary evidence, doubt, and the assertions of other religions. Many a freethinker has sparred a smart, educated fundamentalist into a corner only to have the believer utter some form of “I just know.”
Does this mean that rational argumentation about religion is useless? The answer may be disappointing. Religious belief is not bound to regular standards of evidence and logic. It is not about logic and it is not obliged to follow logic. Arguments with believers start from a false premise—that the believer is bound by the rules of debate rather than being bound by the belief itself. The freethinker assumes that the believer is free to concede; but this is rarely true. At best the bits of logic or evidence put forth in an argument go into the hopper with a whole host of other factors. And yet each of us who is a former believer (we number in the millions) reached some point in our lives when we simply couldn’t sustain our old certainties. Our sense of knowing either eroded over time or abruptly disappeared. So sometimes those hoppers do fill up.
Given what I’ve said about knowing, how can anybody claim to know anything?
We can’t, with certainty. Those of us who are not religious could do with a little more humility on this point. We all see “through a glass darkly” and there is a realm in which all any of us can do is to make our own best guesses about what is real and important. This doesn’t imply that all ideas are created equal, or that our traditional understanding of “knowledge” is useless. As I said before, our sense of knowing allows us to navigate this world pretty well—to detect regularities, anticipate events and make things happen. In the concrete domain of everyday life, acting on what we think we know works pretty well for us. Nonetheless, it is a healthy mistrust for our sense of knowing that has allowed scientists to detect, predict, and produce desired outcomes with ever greater precision.
The scientific method has been called “institutionalized doubt” because it forces us to question our assumptions. Scientists stake their hopes not on a specific set of answers but on a specific way of asking questions. Core to this process is “falsification” – narrowing down what might be true by ruling out what can’t be true. And to date, that approach has had enormous pay-offs. It is what has made the difference between the nature of human life in the Middle Ages and the 21st Century. But knowledge in science is provisional; at any given point in time, the sum of scientific knowledge is really just a progress report.
When we overstate our ability to know, we play into the fundamentalist fallacy that certainty is possible. Burton calls this “the all-knowing rational mind myth.” As scientists learn more about how our brains work, certitude is coming to be seen as a vice rather than a virtue. Certainty is a confession of ignorance about our ability to be passionately mistaken. Humans will always argue passionately about things that we do not know and cannot know, but with a little more self-knowledge and humility we may get to the point that those arguments are less often lethal.
Essentials: Robert A. Burton, On Being Certain
V. S. Ramachandran (TED talk), A Journey to the Center of Your Mind
If you don’t want to miss any of this series, subscribe to Valerie Tarico at this blog or send email to valerietarico at hotmail.com and request to be added to her mailing list for weekly articles.
MSBH vs. DBH
1. If H1 and H2 can potentially explain all the observed physical events they are intended to explain, and H1 is not initially less probable than H2, then, if H1 makes far less causal assumptions than H2, H1 is preferable to H2.
2. MSBH and DBH can potentially explain all the observed physical events they are intended to explain (e.g. resurrection, postmortem appearances, etc), and MSBH is not initially less probable than DBH.
3. MSBH makes far less causal assumptions than DBH to explain the observed physical events.
4. Therefore, MSBH is preferable to DBH.
MSBH = Jesus was a merely superpowerful being who rose from the dead.
DBH = Jesus was a divine being who rose from the dead.
In this post I will only attempt to defend (3). Why do I say MSBH makes far less causal assumptions than DBH to explain the physical events intended to be explained? Consider what William Lane Craig says about the resurrection event:
"Resurrection is not resuscitation. The mere restoration of life to a corpse is not a resurrection. A person who has resuscitated returns only to this early life and will die again."
In contrast,
"Jesus rose to eternal life in a radically transformed body that can be described as immortal, glorious, powerful, and supernatural. In this new mode of existence he was not bound by the physical limitations of this existence, but possessed superhuman powers." (Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection, p 15)
Clearly, then, DBH ascribes far more - infinitely more - causal powers to Jesus than MSBH, and therefore MSBH is the simpler of the two.
*Edit*
DBH makes far more causal assumptions primarily because of the following: according to this theory, after Jesus rose from the dead, he was: (a) no longer able to die; (b) no longer able to get injured; (c) no longer able to get sick; (d) no longer able to age; and (e) able to teleport without regard to spatial distances. These assumptions are unnecessary in order to account for the physical facts; and therefore, since MSBH does not ascribe these (infinite) properties to Jesus, it is far simpler.
2. MSBH and DBH can potentially explain all the observed physical events they are intended to explain (e.g. resurrection, postmortem appearances, etc), and MSBH is not initially less probable than DBH.
3. MSBH makes far less causal assumptions than DBH to explain the observed physical events.
4. Therefore, MSBH is preferable to DBH.
MSBH = Jesus was a merely superpowerful being who rose from the dead.
DBH = Jesus was a divine being who rose from the dead.
In this post I will only attempt to defend (3). Why do I say MSBH makes far less causal assumptions than DBH to explain the physical events intended to be explained? Consider what William Lane Craig says about the resurrection event:
"Resurrection is not resuscitation. The mere restoration of life to a corpse is not a resurrection. A person who has resuscitated returns only to this early life and will die again."
In contrast,
"Jesus rose to eternal life in a radically transformed body that can be described as immortal, glorious, powerful, and supernatural. In this new mode of existence he was not bound by the physical limitations of this existence, but possessed superhuman powers." (Knowing the Truth About the Resurrection, p 15)
Clearly, then, DBH ascribes far more - infinitely more - causal powers to Jesus than MSBH, and therefore MSBH is the simpler of the two.
*Edit*
DBH makes far more causal assumptions primarily because of the following: according to this theory, after Jesus rose from the dead, he was: (a) no longer able to die; (b) no longer able to get injured; (c) no longer able to get sick; (d) no longer able to age; and (e) able to teleport without regard to spatial distances. These assumptions are unnecessary in order to account for the physical facts; and therefore, since MSBH does not ascribe these (infinite) properties to Jesus, it is far simpler.
June 09, 2009
Resurrection Debate: A New Approach
John W. Loftus has generously extended his invitation to me to become a member of this blog, and for that I am grateful. In the upcoming months I hope to contribute regularly on topics related to Christianity and its weaknesses, as well as the continuing debate between its prominent defenders and their critics. For those curious about my religious background, here is a little info:
I was not raised in a Christian home or religious environment, but nevertheless found my way into a Christian church, through a friend, prior to entering high school. It was in that church my friend attended that I became a Christian, and remained so until the end of my high school career, right before I left for college. Like many others, the doctrine of hell did not sit comfortably with me -- both on an intuitive and intellectual level -- and was thus the main reason for my departure from the Christian faith. Since then, after completing both undergraduate and graduate degrees in philosophy (I stopped at the MA level), I found many other compelling reasons which justified my abandonment of Christianity, which I hope to share and elaborate here.
In this entry, I will outline a new approach skeptics can and should take in the resurrection debate. As almost everyone agrees, skeptics and apologists alike, the ability for the apologist to establish a good case for the resurrection is vital to a successful defense of the Christian faith, and so, unsurprisingly, an enormous amount of time and effort has been spent devoted to this one area. A testament to the latter is the fact that anyone new (or old) to the scene will often observe the following: the debate can get really really complicated, especially among scholars. Why? A natural reason one might draw from this is that the case for the resurrection is not as terrible as one might think -- after all, if even the scholarly critics have to present elaborate and sophisticated arguments to answer their opponents, then the apologist's case can't be that bad. In actuality, the case for the resurrection can be very weak, despite the sophisticated nature of the debate, but it sure doesn't seem that way to those lost in the minutia of the historical details. I admit to being among the perplexed.
Hence I advocate a new approach to the debate, one that will cut through all the smoke and thus expose how weak the case for the resurrection truly is. To begin, one should pay close attention to the claim that the apologist wants -- needs -- to establish when he argues for the resurrection: it is the claim that God raised Jesus from the dead. And thus from this we can observe what the claim is not: it is not, merely, that Jesus was raised from the dead, which is obviously insufficient if the causal agent responsible for the resuscitation were not supernatural, but natural. The apologist undoubtedly needs to first establish the latter assertion in order to establish the former, but the two are clearly not equivalent -- in fact, the two are worlds apart. Here we come to my new approach: we should challenge the apologist to see if he can demonstrate (with probability, of course) that, if Jesus was really raised from the dead, it was God who did it. For, even if it were a historical fact that Jesus was raised from the dead, if it cannot be shown that God was the cause of the event, then what is the worth of historical apologetics to the rational defense of Christianity? None.
Below are arguments detailing why the inference from "Jesus was raised from the dead" to "it was probably God who raised Jesus from the dead" cannot be made nonfallaciously.
Argument 1
1. It is fallacious to infer that X probably can't y on the basis of data suggesting that all Zs can't y, when either: (a) we know of a plausible reason to suppose there might be relevant differences between X and Z that could enable X, but not Z, to y; or (b) when X does not fall within the category of Z, and we know of no good reason to suppose there are no relevant differences between X and Z that could enable X, but not Z, to y.
2. There is data suggesting that all non-supernormal human beings can't rise naturally from the dead. [assumption]
3. Jesus was a supernormal being (i.e. a being with supernormal capabilities), who was either human or not human, either a natural entity or supernatural entity. [assumption]
4. Jesus does not fall within the category of non-supernormal human being, and we know of no good reason to suppose there are no relevant differences between Jesus and non-supernormal human beings that could enable Jesus, but not non-supernormal human beings, to rise naturally. [premise, supported by C1 and c2 below]
5. We know of a plausible reason to suppose there might be relevant differences between Jesus and non-supernormal human beings that could enable Jesus, but not non-supernormal human beings, to rise naturally.
[premise, supported by the claim that Jesus may not have been not fully biologically human if we assume the virgin birth story]
6. Therefore, it is fallacious to infer that Jesus probably could not have risen naturally from the dead on the basis of data suggesting that all non-supernormal human beings can't rise naturally from the dead. (from 5, 1, and 4, 1).
Edit: I realize premise (1) needs some explaining.
Consider Mike, a body-builder builder who works out 15 hours a day, and suppose one claims: Mike probably can't bench press 500 lbs, and this is thought to follow from the premise that all body-builders who work out less than 2 hours a day can't bench press 500 lbs. This inference is clearly fallacious, but why? According to condition (b) of premise (1), the inference is fallacious not only because Mike and the other body-builders don't belong in the same category, but also because we have no good reason to assume that with respect to being able to 500 lbs, Mike is just like everyone else. If we had good reason for assuming that Mike was just like all the other body-builders (say, for instance, he has a muscular disorder which makes his 15 hours equivalent to a normal 2 hour work-out), then the inference would be nonfallacious. Hence: if X does not fall within the category of Z, the burden falls on the one making the inference to supply good reason for why we should assume the absence of any relevant difference between X and Z that could enable X, but not Z, to y.
To illustrate with another example, consider Dejohn the daily steroid-taker who works out less than 2 hours a day. Claim: Dejohn *probably* can't bench 500 lbs. Premise (data): All body-builders who work out less than 2 hours a day can't bench 500 lbs. Is this inference fallacious? Suppose we know that all the body-builders in our data don't take steroids, and Dejohn has been taking them for the past 8 years on a daily basis (let's assume they don't cause him any harm). Hence, even though Dejohn and everyone else works out the same amount of hours, there is a clear (possibly relevant) difference between the two that justifies an initial category distinction: we can separate Dejohn and the other body-builders -- since none of them take the drug -- into two classes (steroid taker vs. non-steroid takers). If we have no good reason to assume that with respect to being able to bench 500 lbs, Dejohn and everyone else are the same, then we must conclude that the inference is fallacious. Stated another way, given the justified category distinction, the inference is fallacious unless the one making the inference can supply good reason to suppose the distinction to be irrelevant -- like if we knew, for instance, that the steroids Dejohn takes only affects his lower legs and not his chest or upper body.
Condition (a) of premise (1) can be shown with the following illustration. Suppose one claims: Jane probably can't put her bare hand over a hot flame for 10 minutes without it be severely burned. Premise (data): over 100 million people can't put their bare hands over a hot flame for 10 minutes without their hands being severely burned. Is the inference fallacious? Not at all, until we find out the following fact: for over 10 years of her life, Jane has been a subject in numerous super-secret government experiments involving resistance to pyrogenic substances. Does this mean there are in fact relevant differences between Jane and everyone else (assuming those in the latter group were never involved in such experiments)? Not at all, because for all we know, those experiments might have been utter failures, or their scope very limited, and so forth. Nevertheless, because we are in the dark, and because there is some plausible reason to suppose there *might* indeed be relevant differences between Jane and everyone else, as a result of those experiments, the original inference would therefore be fallacious given this new information.
Argument 2: defense of premise (4)
P1. If biological entity X has capabilities that biological entity O do not have, then, barring very good reasons to suppose otherwise, we should not assume it is implausible that these capability differences cannot be explained, at least in part, in terms of relevant differences in the physiology of X and O. [premise]
P2. Jesus had various supernormal capabilities that no non-supernormal human beings have. [assumption]
P3. There are no very good reasons to suppose we should assume it is implausible that these capability differences, between Jesus and non-supernormal human beings, cannot be explained, at least in part, in terms of relevant differences in their physiology. [premise]
C1. Therefore, we should not assume it is implausible that capability differences, between Jesus and non-supernormal human beings, cannot be explained, at least in part, in terms of relevant differences in their physiology. (from P3, P1)
Argument 3: defense of premise (4)
p1. If A can't p, while B can p, then, barring very good reasons to suppose otherwise, we should assume there exist relevant differences between A and B which could explain how B, but not A, can p, even when A and B appear to be very similar.
p2. Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise from the dead. [let's suppose]
p3. There are no very good reasons to assume there exist no relevant differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity which would explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise from the dead.
c1. Therefore, we should assume there exist relevant differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity which would explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise from the dead. (from p3, p2, and p1)
p4. If we should assume there exist relevant differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise from the dead, then either: (a) there exist relevant differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise naturally from the dead, or (b) there exist relevant differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise supernaturally from the dead.
p5. Either (a) or (b). (from p4, c1)
p6. If there are no good reasons to suppose that (a) is false, then we should not suppose that (a) is false.
p7. There are no good reasons to suppose that (a) is false.
c2. Therefore, we should not suppose that (a) is false: that is, we should not suppose there exist NO relevant differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise naturally from the dead. (from p7, p6)
I was not raised in a Christian home or religious environment, but nevertheless found my way into a Christian church, through a friend, prior to entering high school. It was in that church my friend attended that I became a Christian, and remained so until the end of my high school career, right before I left for college. Like many others, the doctrine of hell did not sit comfortably with me -- both on an intuitive and intellectual level -- and was thus the main reason for my departure from the Christian faith. Since then, after completing both undergraduate and graduate degrees in philosophy (I stopped at the MA level), I found many other compelling reasons which justified my abandonment of Christianity, which I hope to share and elaborate here.
In this entry, I will outline a new approach skeptics can and should take in the resurrection debate. As almost everyone agrees, skeptics and apologists alike, the ability for the apologist to establish a good case for the resurrection is vital to a successful defense of the Christian faith, and so, unsurprisingly, an enormous amount of time and effort has been spent devoted to this one area. A testament to the latter is the fact that anyone new (or old) to the scene will often observe the following: the debate can get really really complicated, especially among scholars. Why? A natural reason one might draw from this is that the case for the resurrection is not as terrible as one might think -- after all, if even the scholarly critics have to present elaborate and sophisticated arguments to answer their opponents, then the apologist's case can't be that bad. In actuality, the case for the resurrection can be very weak, despite the sophisticated nature of the debate, but it sure doesn't seem that way to those lost in the minutia of the historical details. I admit to being among the perplexed.
Hence I advocate a new approach to the debate, one that will cut through all the smoke and thus expose how weak the case for the resurrection truly is. To begin, one should pay close attention to the claim that the apologist wants -- needs -- to establish when he argues for the resurrection: it is the claim that God raised Jesus from the dead. And thus from this we can observe what the claim is not: it is not, merely, that Jesus was raised from the dead, which is obviously insufficient if the causal agent responsible for the resuscitation were not supernatural, but natural. The apologist undoubtedly needs to first establish the latter assertion in order to establish the former, but the two are clearly not equivalent -- in fact, the two are worlds apart. Here we come to my new approach: we should challenge the apologist to see if he can demonstrate (with probability, of course) that, if Jesus was really raised from the dead, it was God who did it. For, even if it were a historical fact that Jesus was raised from the dead, if it cannot be shown that God was the cause of the event, then what is the worth of historical apologetics to the rational defense of Christianity? None.
Below are arguments detailing why the inference from "Jesus was raised from the dead" to "it was probably God who raised Jesus from the dead" cannot be made nonfallaciously.
Argument 1
1. It is fallacious to infer that X probably can't y on the basis of data suggesting that all Zs can't y, when either: (a) we know of a plausible reason to suppose there might be relevant differences between X and Z that could enable X, but not Z, to y; or (b) when X does not fall within the category of Z, and we know of no good reason to suppose there are no relevant differences between X and Z that could enable X, but not Z, to y.
2. There is data suggesting that all non-supernormal human beings can't rise naturally from the dead. [assumption]
3. Jesus was a supernormal being (i.e. a being with supernormal capabilities), who was either human or not human, either a natural entity or supernatural entity. [assumption]
4. Jesus does not fall within the category of non-supernormal human being, and we know of no good reason to suppose there are no relevant differences between Jesus and non-supernormal human beings that could enable Jesus, but not non-supernormal human beings, to rise naturally. [premise, supported by C1 and c2 below]
5. We know of a plausible reason to suppose there might be relevant differences between Jesus and non-supernormal human beings that could enable Jesus, but not non-supernormal human beings, to rise naturally.
[premise, supported by the claim that Jesus may not have been not fully biologically human if we assume the virgin birth story]
6. Therefore, it is fallacious to infer that Jesus probably could not have risen naturally from the dead on the basis of data suggesting that all non-supernormal human beings can't rise naturally from the dead. (from 5, 1, and 4, 1).
Edit: I realize premise (1) needs some explaining.
Consider Mike, a body-builder builder who works out 15 hours a day, and suppose one claims: Mike probably can't bench press 500 lbs, and this is thought to follow from the premise that all body-builders who work out less than 2 hours a day can't bench press 500 lbs. This inference is clearly fallacious, but why? According to condition (b) of premise (1), the inference is fallacious not only because Mike and the other body-builders don't belong in the same category, but also because we have no good reason to assume that with respect to being able to 500 lbs, Mike is just like everyone else. If we had good reason for assuming that Mike was just like all the other body-builders (say, for instance, he has a muscular disorder which makes his 15 hours equivalent to a normal 2 hour work-out), then the inference would be nonfallacious. Hence: if X does not fall within the category of Z, the burden falls on the one making the inference to supply good reason for why we should assume the absence of any relevant difference between X and Z that could enable X, but not Z, to y.
To illustrate with another example, consider Dejohn the daily steroid-taker who works out less than 2 hours a day. Claim: Dejohn *probably* can't bench 500 lbs. Premise (data): All body-builders who work out less than 2 hours a day can't bench 500 lbs. Is this inference fallacious? Suppose we know that all the body-builders in our data don't take steroids, and Dejohn has been taking them for the past 8 years on a daily basis (let's assume they don't cause him any harm). Hence, even though Dejohn and everyone else works out the same amount of hours, there is a clear (possibly relevant) difference between the two that justifies an initial category distinction: we can separate Dejohn and the other body-builders -- since none of them take the drug -- into two classes (steroid taker vs. non-steroid takers). If we have no good reason to assume that with respect to being able to bench 500 lbs, Dejohn and everyone else are the same, then we must conclude that the inference is fallacious. Stated another way, given the justified category distinction, the inference is fallacious unless the one making the inference can supply good reason to suppose the distinction to be irrelevant -- like if we knew, for instance, that the steroids Dejohn takes only affects his lower legs and not his chest or upper body.
Condition (a) of premise (1) can be shown with the following illustration. Suppose one claims: Jane probably can't put her bare hand over a hot flame for 10 minutes without it be severely burned. Premise (data): over 100 million people can't put their bare hands over a hot flame for 10 minutes without their hands being severely burned. Is the inference fallacious? Not at all, until we find out the following fact: for over 10 years of her life, Jane has been a subject in numerous super-secret government experiments involving resistance to pyrogenic substances. Does this mean there are in fact relevant differences between Jane and everyone else (assuming those in the latter group were never involved in such experiments)? Not at all, because for all we know, those experiments might have been utter failures, or their scope very limited, and so forth. Nevertheless, because we are in the dark, and because there is some plausible reason to suppose there *might* indeed be relevant differences between Jane and everyone else, as a result of those experiments, the original inference would therefore be fallacious given this new information.
Argument 2: defense of premise (4)
P1. If biological entity X has capabilities that biological entity O do not have, then, barring very good reasons to suppose otherwise, we should not assume it is implausible that these capability differences cannot be explained, at least in part, in terms of relevant differences in the physiology of X and O. [premise]
P2. Jesus had various supernormal capabilities that no non-supernormal human beings have. [assumption]
P3. There are no very good reasons to suppose we should assume it is implausible that these capability differences, between Jesus and non-supernormal human beings, cannot be explained, at least in part, in terms of relevant differences in their physiology. [premise]
C1. Therefore, we should not assume it is implausible that capability differences, between Jesus and non-supernormal human beings, cannot be explained, at least in part, in terms of relevant differences in their physiology. (from P3, P1)
Argument 3: defense of premise (4)
p1. If A can't p, while B can p, then, barring very good reasons to suppose otherwise, we should assume there exist relevant differences between A and B which could explain how B, but not A, can p, even when A and B appear to be very similar.
p2. Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise from the dead. [let's suppose]
p3. There are no very good reasons to assume there exist no relevant differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity which would explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise from the dead.
c1. Therefore, we should assume there exist relevant differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity which would explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise from the dead. (from p3, p2, and p1)
p4. If we should assume there exist relevant differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise from the dead, then either: (a) there exist relevant differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise naturally from the dead, or (b) there exist relevant differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise supernaturally from the dead.
p5. Either (a) or (b). (from p4, c1)
p6. If there are no good reasons to suppose that (a) is false, then we should not suppose that (a) is false.
p7. There are no good reasons to suppose that (a) is false.
c2. Therefore, we should not suppose that (a) is false: that is, we should not suppose there exist NO relevant differences between Jesus and the rest of humanity which could explain why Jesus, but not the rest of humanity, was able to rise naturally from the dead. (from p7, p6)
My Comment on the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology
As of this posting it has received 0 out of 11 votes, my worst record ever. What do you think?
June 08, 2009
Welcome To the New Face of Christianity
Philip Jenkins, professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University, has argued that the Christianity of the future will be the one found in the Southern Hemisphere and Asia, since it's growing phenomenally in these places. In his newest book The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South
, he shows us that Christianity is largely defined by that which it opposes. In the Northern Hemisphere Christianity opposes secularism and has developed responses to it by adopting liberalism. But in the Southern Hemisphere it opposes shamans, witch doctors, and animists--those who already believe in demonic forces. This video series below shows us how some evangelical Christians act on their beliefs. Welcome to the new face of Christianity folks! We're returning to the witch trials of the late Middle Ages, this time by evangelicals who believe the Bible, not Catholics. Doesn't it just warm your hearts?
There are seven parts to this video series all found by following the links in the sidebar at You Tube. Enjoy the first part below:
Related posts can be found by clicking here.
, he shows us that Christianity is largely defined by that which it opposes. In the Northern Hemisphere Christianity opposes secularism and has developed responses to it by adopting liberalism. But in the Southern Hemisphere it opposes shamans, witch doctors, and animists--those who already believe in demonic forces. This video series below shows us how some evangelical Christians act on their beliefs. Welcome to the new face of Christianity folks! We're returning to the witch trials of the late Middle Ages, this time by evangelicals who believe the Bible, not Catholics. Doesn't it just warm your hearts?There are seven parts to this video series all found by following the links in the sidebar at You Tube. Enjoy the first part below:
Related posts can be found by clicking here.
Hell: 20,000 Degrees Fahrenheit And Not A Drop of Water!
Back in 1974,while I was a licensed Southern Baptist Preacher and College Bible Major, the movie The Burning Hell was then being shown at many Bible Believing Churches throughout the Southeast. I was able to attend one such showing at a Pentecostal church in Seneca, SC.
While this video looks cheaply made by today’s high tech cinematography standareds, its affects were on par with such horror flicks of the era as The Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Many Christians who saw it were said to have had nightmares of Hell.
This film looks dumb today, but it’s horrors of the mid-seventies was claimed to have saved many over the reality of an eternal torment in Satan’s Hell.
If you can stomach it, all 8 section are here on Youtube.
Sleep well sinner!
While this video looks cheaply made by today’s high tech cinematography standareds, its affects were on par with such horror flicks of the era as The Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Many Christians who saw it were said to have had nightmares of Hell.
This film looks dumb today, but it’s horrors of the mid-seventies was claimed to have saved many over the reality of an eternal torment in Satan’s Hell.
If you can stomach it, all 8 section are here on Youtube.
Sleep well sinner!
On Cultural Relativism and Rape
Christian philosopher Victor Reppert offered up an argument against condemning rape if cultural relativism is the case. He wrote:
Let's say morals evolve in the same way as species do. Grant me that, okay?
Then I don't see a problem. The caveman who clubbed a woman and drug her into his cave did nothing wrong just as a chimpanzee who exhibits homosexual activity, or a dominant lion who demands sex with all of the females, or a cat who shows no mercy to a mouse.
We humans adopt codes of conduct in order to have the benefits that our higher species need, like friendship, family ties, and so on. That best explains why our moral codes are similar around the world on the major, basic issues, and why they are diverse on the moderate, lesser issues.
So, in a caveman culture rape is considered right. But in ours it is not. Our culture is different. Is it better? I would argue so, at least from our evolutionary standpoint. It's because we have continued to evolve. Because we do our morals have evolved in tandum.
Besides, it's not relativists who argue for rape, anyway, it's religious people, like what we find in Muslim and Old Testament texts.
I had a teacher at Arizona State who told me that in one culture rape is considered perfectly OK, so long as you do it at the right time. In the morning, it's forbidden. In the afternoon, it is frowned upon. At night, it is perfectly OK, since a woman who is away from the protection of her husband is asking for it. (He never said which campus fraternity he was referring to).This is my brief response:
If cultural relativism is true, the rules of that culture, with respect to rape, are justified. There is no "court of appeal" that is over and above that culture and out culture that would permit us to say that their views on rape are wrong and ours are right. For us to suggest that they are "really" wrong in permitting rape is to elevate the rules of our culture to a kind of cosmic status they cannot have. It is to be intolerant.
Let's say morals evolve in the same way as species do. Grant me that, okay?
Then I don't see a problem. The caveman who clubbed a woman and drug her into his cave did nothing wrong just as a chimpanzee who exhibits homosexual activity, or a dominant lion who demands sex with all of the females, or a cat who shows no mercy to a mouse.
We humans adopt codes of conduct in order to have the benefits that our higher species need, like friendship, family ties, and so on. That best explains why our moral codes are similar around the world on the major, basic issues, and why they are diverse on the moderate, lesser issues.
So, in a caveman culture rape is considered right. But in ours it is not. Our culture is different. Is it better? I would argue so, at least from our evolutionary standpoint. It's because we have continued to evolve. Because we do our morals have evolved in tandum.
Besides, it's not relativists who argue for rape, anyway, it's religious people, like what we find in Muslim and Old Testament texts.
June 07, 2009
I Highly Recommend The New Book by Christian Scholar Kenton Sparks.
Christians do not trust the scholarship of atheists. They think we have an agenda and that we misrepresent the facts because we’re God haters. Okay, I guess. But Christian scholars are saying many of the same things we're saying while trying to maintain their faith. If you doubt what we say then try your hand at what your own scholars are saying.
Dr. Richard Knopp (pictured left) is using my book in his Apologetics and Philosophy of Religion classes at Lincoln Christian College and Seminary. He’s also attempting to answer my criticisms by requiring his students to read and evaluate Kenton L. Sparks book, God's Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship.
I’m reading Sparks’s book right now and it’s excellent. Sparks is a Christian scholar who affirms inerrancy. If someone is concerned about his commitment to Christianity or whether he has some God hating agenda, Sparks has no such agenda.
I like how his argument progresses. He begins with Galileo in which Christians learned to re-read the Bible in light of the heliocentric universe. He argued that it wouldn’t do any good to ignore what was learned through science so Christian scholars began looking at the Bible differently. Sparks wrote: “Just as Galileo invited us to turn a critical eye toward the cosmos, so modern biblical scholars bid us to reflect critically upon our assumptions about the nature of Scripture and about how it should be read.” (p. 18) If Christians ignored the findings of Galileo it would discredit their faith. From this Sparks says there is a parallel tragic paradox, in that “the church’s wholesale rejection of historical criticism has begotten the irreverent use of Scripture by skeptics, thus destroying the faith of some believers while keeping unbelievers away from the faith.” (p. 21). His purpose in this book is to render the results of higher biblical criticism “theologically safe” just as Christian scholars did by admitting the results of modern science beginning with Galileo. (p. 23).
Sparks shows how that with the rise of philology we can date ancient writings because language changes throughout time and place. There is, after all, an Old- Middle- and Modern English, as well as British, Australian, South African and American dialects. This discipline began with the discovery that the “Donation of Constantine was a Christian forgery,” which was purportedly written in the 4th century whereby Constantine donated all of the Western Roman Empire to the authority of the Pope.
Sparks then takes us through three periods of hermeneutics, pre-modern, modern and post-modern, and shows us that people have not always treated texts in the same manner. He shows us how difficult it is for people who think they can understand a given text to do so, especially one in the ancient past. But since we must try anyway he proceeds.
The next part of his argument is where it gets good. He shows how historical criticism works with regard to the Assyrian Annals, which contains a lot of propaganda, and Babylonian Chronicles which are more accurate records, and why we know this. He shows how there are many texts in the ancient world which were psuedoprophetic, purportedly to be prophetic about the future but which were not, like the Uruk Prophecy. He also argues that “narrative stories that have the appearance of history may be fictional,” that these texts "can be the product of a very long literary process,” “sometimes written by different authors, and written in different historical periods, than the texts claim or imply.” (p. 71). From these parallels found in the literature of the ancient near eastern world he argues that “the evidence adduced above challenges the common evangelical charge that critical scholars approach the biblical texts with more skepticism than other ancient texts.” (p. 72). Right that.
Then in chapters three and four he shows why the Biblical critics are correct about the Bible, “in many instances,” especially with the Pentateuch, also called the Torah, or the first five books of the Bible. The Bible itself, if taken seriously, leads these scholars to think they were written by the same standards of other ancient near eastern literature in many places. It’s clear that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, if we take what it says seriously. There are problems of chronology, diverse narratives, legal diversity, and religious institutional progression, all reflecting a lengthy written process complete with anachronisms. Then there is the problem of Deuteronomy and the Exodus story itself. The normal evangelical “traditional” answers to these problems do not solve these issues, he argues.
This book is like a good novel. The reader wants to know how he solves these problems for his Christian faith and how he can maintain an inerrant Bible, so I won’t spoil his conclusions. I really like the fact that he’s being honest about what we can know about the Bible. I do not agree with his conclusions at all. In the end I think he undermines the basis for believing. See for yourselves. See if you can maintain your faith once you get done reading this book. I doubt you can.
Dr. Richard Knopp (pictured left) is using my book in his Apologetics and Philosophy of Religion classes at Lincoln Christian College and Seminary. He’s also attempting to answer my criticisms by requiring his students to read and evaluate Kenton L. Sparks book, God's Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship.
I’m reading Sparks’s book right now and it’s excellent. Sparks is a Christian scholar who affirms inerrancy. If someone is concerned about his commitment to Christianity or whether he has some God hating agenda, Sparks has no such agenda.I like how his argument progresses. He begins with Galileo in which Christians learned to re-read the Bible in light of the heliocentric universe. He argued that it wouldn’t do any good to ignore what was learned through science so Christian scholars began looking at the Bible differently. Sparks wrote: “Just as Galileo invited us to turn a critical eye toward the cosmos, so modern biblical scholars bid us to reflect critically upon our assumptions about the nature of Scripture and about how it should be read.” (p. 18) If Christians ignored the findings of Galileo it would discredit their faith. From this Sparks says there is a parallel tragic paradox, in that “the church’s wholesale rejection of historical criticism has begotten the irreverent use of Scripture by skeptics, thus destroying the faith of some believers while keeping unbelievers away from the faith.” (p. 21). His purpose in this book is to render the results of higher biblical criticism “theologically safe” just as Christian scholars did by admitting the results of modern science beginning with Galileo. (p. 23).
Sparks shows how that with the rise of philology we can date ancient writings because language changes throughout time and place. There is, after all, an Old- Middle- and Modern English, as well as British, Australian, South African and American dialects. This discipline began with the discovery that the “Donation of Constantine was a Christian forgery,” which was purportedly written in the 4th century whereby Constantine donated all of the Western Roman Empire to the authority of the Pope.
Sparks then takes us through three periods of hermeneutics, pre-modern, modern and post-modern, and shows us that people have not always treated texts in the same manner. He shows us how difficult it is for people who think they can understand a given text to do so, especially one in the ancient past. But since we must try anyway he proceeds.
The next part of his argument is where it gets good. He shows how historical criticism works with regard to the Assyrian Annals, which contains a lot of propaganda, and Babylonian Chronicles which are more accurate records, and why we know this. He shows how there are many texts in the ancient world which were psuedoprophetic, purportedly to be prophetic about the future but which were not, like the Uruk Prophecy. He also argues that “narrative stories that have the appearance of history may be fictional,” that these texts "can be the product of a very long literary process,” “sometimes written by different authors, and written in different historical periods, than the texts claim or imply.” (p. 71). From these parallels found in the literature of the ancient near eastern world he argues that “the evidence adduced above challenges the common evangelical charge that critical scholars approach the biblical texts with more skepticism than other ancient texts.” (p. 72). Right that.
Then in chapters three and four he shows why the Biblical critics are correct about the Bible, “in many instances,” especially with the Pentateuch, also called the Torah, or the first five books of the Bible. The Bible itself, if taken seriously, leads these scholars to think they were written by the same standards of other ancient near eastern literature in many places. It’s clear that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, if we take what it says seriously. There are problems of chronology, diverse narratives, legal diversity, and religious institutional progression, all reflecting a lengthy written process complete with anachronisms. Then there is the problem of Deuteronomy and the Exodus story itself. The normal evangelical “traditional” answers to these problems do not solve these issues, he argues.
This book is like a good novel. The reader wants to know how he solves these problems for his Christian faith and how he can maintain an inerrant Bible, so I won’t spoil his conclusions. I really like the fact that he’s being honest about what we can know about the Bible. I do not agree with his conclusions at all. In the end I think he undermines the basis for believing. See for yourselves. See if you can maintain your faith once you get done reading this book. I doubt you can.
I WANT IT TO BE TRUE DAMMIT IT! I DO!
I received an email from a Christian well-wisher who sent me the video below. The video produced a tear in my eye (just one). Maybe it's because my dad is dead and then maybe because in these hard economic times I'm hurting financially and might need some heavenly help. There's a huge emotional pull to the Christian message (on one level) that draws me back to that story. But I just can't believe. It's not true at all.
Another Argument by Spencer Lo for Input
See what you thinks about this:
1. If person P is fully human in the biological sense, then P possesses human DNA from both a human female and a human male.
2. If P did not acquire human DNA from a human male, then P does not possess human DNA from a human male.
3. Jesus had no biological human father. [Christian assumption]
4. Therefore, Jesus did not acquire human DNA from a human male. (from 3)
5. Therefore, Jesus does not possess human DNA from a human male. (from 4, 2)
6. Therefore, Jesus was not fully human in the biological sense. (from 5, 1).
June 04, 2009
A New Book Just Released That Will Redefine the Debate
The Evolution of God by Robert Wright is being released this week. Newsweek's religion editor Lisa Miller claims that it "redefines the faith debate." The description on Amazon reads:
In this sweeping narrative that takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy. He explains why spirituality has a role today, and why science, contrary to conventional wisdom, affirms the validity of the religious quest. And this previously unrecognized evolutionary logic points not toward continued religious extremism, but future harmony.This sounds very interesting. Take a look for yourselves, click here: The Evolution of God
Nearly a decade in the making, The Evolution of God is a breathtaking re-examination of the past, and a visionary look forward.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)