C. S. Lewis's "Man or Rabbit?" and Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer"

The Christian philosopher, Victor Reppert recently asked at his blog, "Do Christian apologists and atheists agree on something important that much of the world denies?"

I tend to doubt that such a question is quite as insightful as the fact that fanatics/fundamentalists who attach themselves to mass movements (in either religion or politics) seem to have much in common; while the rest of humanity, perhaps the majority in fact, appear less fanatical/fundamentalistic, and have learned to live a bit more autonomously (not merely being drawn to become cogs in mass movements) and learned to acknowledge uncertainties in their belief systems along with varying degrees of both hope and fear. I even suspect that "moderate" Christians and "moderate" Moslems and "moderate" non-believers can often get along better with each other than fundamentalists/fanatics can with fellow fundamentalists/fanatics even within their own tradition.

Speaking of being drawn into mass movements of the religious or political nature, below are some quotations from Eric Hoffer's little classic, The True Believer. It might be interesting to compare and contrast Hoffer's psychological insights into what drives people to become "true believers" with say, C. S. Lewis's views expressed in "Man or Rabbit?" (especially in light of how I myself summed up matters above). But for now here's Hoffer alone:

P22 "Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves." [Or, when faith in one's own autonomy is not allowed to develop, such a person may join a mass movement, either religious or political.--E.T.B.]

P23 "The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause."

"A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

"There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless."

"One of the most potent attractions of a mass movement is its offering of a substitute for individual hope. This attraction is particularly effective in a society imbued with the idea of progress."

P24 "In a modern society people can live without hope only when kept dazed and out of breath by incessant hustling."

"The embracing of a substitute will necessarily be passionate and extreme. We can have qualified confidence in ourselves, but the faith we have in our nation, religion, race or holy cause has to be extravagant and uncompromising. A substitute embraced in moderation cannot supplant and efface the self we want to forget. We cannot be sure that we have something worth living for unless we are ready to die for it."

P45 "The chief passion of the frustrated is 'to belong'..."

Chapter 11: The Sinners

Pp55-56 "An effective mass movement cultivates the idea of sin. It depicts the autonomous self not only (p56) as barren and helpless but also as vile. To confess and repent is to slough off one's individual distinctness and separateness, and salvation is found in losing oneself in the holy oneness of the congregation."

Chapter 12: Preface to Part Three: United Action and Self-Sacrifice

P58 "What ails the frustrated? It is the consciousness of an irremediably blemished self. Their chief desire is to escape that self-and it is this desire which manifests itself in a propensity for united action and self-sacrifice."

P59 "Both united action and self-sacrifice require self-diminution. In order to become part of a compact whole, the individual has to forgo much. He has to give up privacy, individual judgment and often individual possessions. To school a person to united action is, therefore, to ready him for acts of self-denial.

Pp59-60 "The technique for fostering a readiness to fight and to die consists in separating the individual from his flesh-and-blood self-in not allowing him to be his real self. (p60) This can be achieved by the thorough assimilation of the individual into a compact collective body-by endowing him with an imaginary self (make-believe); by implanting in him a deprecating attitude toward the present and riveting his interest on things that are not yet; by interposing a fact-proof screen between him and reality (doctrine); by preventing through the injection of passions, the establishment of a stable equilibrium between the individual and his self (fanaticism).

P60 "To ripen a person for self-sacrifice he must be stripped of his individual identity and distinctness. The most drastic way to achieve this end is by the complete assimilation of the individual into a collective body. The fully assimilated individual does not see himself and others as human beings."

"He has no purpose, worth and destiny apart from his collective body; and as long as that body lives he cannot really die."

P61 "To be cast out from the group should be equivalent to being cut off from life."

P75 "The readiness for self-sacrifice is contingent on an imperviousness to the realities of life."

"All mass movements strive, therefore, to interpose a fact-proof screen between the faithful and the realities of the world. They do this by claiming that the ultimate and absolute truth is already embodied in their doctrine and that there is no truth nor certitude outside it. The facts on which the true believer bases his conclusions must not be derived from his experience or observation but from holy writ."

p76 "It is the true believer's ability to 'shut his eyes and stop his ears' to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacle nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence. Strength of faith, as Bergson pointed out, manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move."

"Thus the effectiveness of a doctrine should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity or the validity of the truths it embodies, but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from his self and the world as it is. What Pascal said of an effective religion is true of any effective doctrine; It must be 'contrary to nature, to common sense and to pleasure.'"

"The effectiveness of a doctrine does not come from its meaning but from its certitude. No doctrine however profound and sublime will be effective unless it is presented as the embodiment of the one and only truth."

"In order to be effective a doctrine must not be understood, but has to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength."

P77 "If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable. One has to get to heaven or the distant future to determine the truth of an effective doctrine. When some part of the doctrine is relatively simple, there is a tendency among the faithful to complicate and obscure it. Simple words are made pregnant with meaning and made to look like symbols in a secret message. There is thus an illiterate air about the most literate true believer. He seems to use words as if he were ignorant of their true meaning. Hence, too, his taste for quibbling, hair-splitting and scholastic tortuousness."

"To be in possession of an absolute truth is to have a net of familiarity spread over the whole of eternity. There are no surprises and no unknowns. All question have already been answered, all decisions made, all eventualities foreseen. The true believer is without wonder and hesitation. 'Who knows Jesus knows the reason of all things.' The true doctrine is a master key to all the world's problems. With it the world can be taken apart and put together."

P78 "An active mass movement rejects the present and centers its interest on the future. It is from this attitude that it derives its strength, for it can proceed recklessly with the present-with the health, wealth and lives of its followers. But it must act as if it had already read the book of the future to the last word. Its doctrine is proclaimed as a key to that book."

"The urge to escape our real self is also the urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic."

"They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: '[They] pray not only for [their] daily bread, but also for [their] daily illusion'. The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty in deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led."

P79 "A peculiar side of credulity is that it is often joined with a proneness to imposture. The association of believing and lying is not characteristic solely of children. They inability or unwillingness to see things as they are promotes both gullibility and charlatanism."

"Only the individual who has comes to terms with his self have a dispassionate attitude toward the world."

P80 "By kindling and fanning violent passions in the hearts of their followers, mass movements prevent the settling of an inner balance. They also employ direct means to effect an enduring estrangement from the self. They depict an autonomous, self-sufficient existence not only as barren and meaningless but also as depraved and evil. Man on his own is a helpless, miserable and sinful creature. His only salvation is in rejecting his self and in finding a new life in the bosom of a holy corporate body-be it a church, a nation or a party. In its turn, this vilification of the self keeps passion at a white heat."

"He [the fanatic]embraces a cause not primarily because of its justness and holiness but because of his desperate need for something to hold on to."

P89 "Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us."

"There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness."

P90 "A sublime religion inevitably generates a strong feeling of guilt. There is an unavoidable contrast between loftiness of profession and imperfection of practice. And, as one would expect, the feeling of guilt promotes hate and brazenness. Thus it seems that the more sublime the faith the more virulent the hatred it breeds."

Pp91-92 "Their clamor for a (p92) millennium is shot through with a hatred for all that exists, and a craving for the end of the world."

P92 "Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life."

P93 "The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others. The impression somehow prevails that the true believer, particularly the religious individual, is a humble person. The truth is that the surrendering and humbling of the self breed pride and arrogance. The true believer is apt to see himself as one of the chosen, the salt of the earth, a prince disguised in meekness, who is destined to inherit this earth and the kingdom of heaven, too. He who is not of his faith is evil; he who will not listen shall perish.

"There is also this: when we renounce the self and become part of a compact whole, we not only renounce personal advantage but are also rid of personal responsibility. There is no telling to what extremes of cruelty and ruthlessness a man will go when he is freed from the fears, hesitations, doubts and the vague stirrings of decency that go with individual judgment. When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement, we find a new freedom-freedom to hate, bully, lie, torture, murder and betray without shame and remorse."

"Any violence which does not spring from a firm, spiritual base, will be wavering and uncertain. It lacks the stability which can only rest in a fanatical outlook". [Adolf Hitler. Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1943), p 171.]

"Thus hatred is not only a means to unification but also its product. Renan says that we have never, since the world began, heard of a merciful nation. Nor, one may add, have we heard of a merciful church or a merciful revolutionary party."

P94 "Imitation is an essential unifying agent. The development of a close-knit group is inconceivable without a diffusion of uniformity. The one-mindedness and Gleichschaltung prized by every mass movement are achieved as much by imitation as by obedience. Obedience itself consists as much in the imitation of an example as in the following of a precept.

"The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness; and both these ends are reached by imitation.

P95 "The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others."

"The desire to belong is partly a desire to lose oneself."

"Finally, the lack of self-confidence characteristic of the frustrated also stimulates their imitativeness. The more we mistrust our judgment and luck, the more we are ready to follow the example of others."

P96 "Imitation is often a shortcut to a solution. We copy when we lack the inclination, the ability or the time to work out an independent solution. People in a hurry will imitate more readily than people at leisure. Hustling thus tends to produce uniformity. And in the deliberate fusing of individuals into a compact group, incessant action will play a considerable role."

P107 "The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the single-handed defiance of the world.

"Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership. There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts." [Emphasis added]

p108 "The total surrender of a distinct self is a prerequisite for the attainment of both unity and self-sacrifice; and there is probably no more direct way of realizing this surrender than by inculcating and extolling the habit of blind obedience."

"All mass movements rank obedience with the highest of virtues and put it on a level with faith: 'union of minds requires not only a perfect accord in the one Faith, but complete submission and obedience of will to the Church and the Roman Pontiff as to God Himself'. [Leo XIII, Sepientiae Christianae. According to Luther, "Disobedience is a greater sin than murder, unchastity, theft and dishonest.." Quoted by Jerome Frank, Fate and Freedom (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1945), p. 281] Obedience is not only the first law of God, but also the first tenet of a revolutionary party and of fervent nationalism."

P114 Suspicion

"Self-contempt, however vague, sharpens our eyes for the imperfections of others. We usually strive to reveal in others the blemishes we hide in ourselves."
"Strict orthodoxy is as much the result of mutual suspicion as of ardent faith."

FOR FURTHER ERIC HOFFER GEMS, click here and here and here

The Pieces Just Don’t Fit (Part 1 of 2)

There’s something about a rebellious 7th grader and a one thousand-piece puzzle set that just don’t mix. But there I was, sitting at a table, being punished, having to painstakingly and meticulously piece together this stupid image of a serene farm in autumn, a farm I cared nothing for and saw no beauty in. But under penalty of after school suspension, I had to finish it.

So what does a bratty, undisciplined pre-teen do when he is faced with a crappy activity he hates? Why, he ruffles through the pieces and finds the more colorful ones and slams them together into one big mob–whether they fit or not! The rest of the pieces get discreetly thrown back into the box when the teacher isn’t looking. “Close enough”, I figured. No after school detention for me that day!

Had the teacher looked a little closer, my plot would have been foiled. Old and nice, white-haired and soft-spoken Mrs. Cloud in her early 70’s would have seen that the pieces I mashed together were not a perfect match at all, but oh how eyes with less than 20/20 vision can reduce one’s powers of perception!

I never noticed it as a believer, but so many things in God’s most holy of books didn’t fit with what I was taught about the natural world. I could see the logic behind Bible statements, “And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.” (Genesis 1:16) But my view of the natural world - much like our jumbled and contorted puzzle above - didn’t quite fit with Bible mythology.

For one, the sun and moon end up not being able to obey orders all the time. Heavy cloud cover often blocks out sun and moonlight. In the case of a meteor or comet disaster, such as the massive one that touched ground in the Yucatan Peninsula some sixty five millions years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs, sending thousands of cubic miles of dirt into the sky, blocking out light and changing Earth’s climate drastically, the results were cataclysmic. Over fifty percent of life on Earth was destroyed. For almost half a year in the northern and southern Polar Regions, the light of the sun is not to be seen. The inhabitants there live in deprecating darkness. The orbital mechanics of Earth have it so that the moon only shows up in the sky a number of nights per month. So even under ideal conditions, this “lesser light” doesn’t do his job, and never does he do it well. There’s no way by moonlight to see if there are any bugs in my sleeping bag if I’m out camping, and certainly not enough light to read the Bible before bedtime as God would want us to do!

Then, of course, there is the fact that if people had been around three billion years ago, the moon would have been a real bastard! The moon has always been a record-holding mass murderer, producing natural disasters; back when Earth had six-hour days, the moon brought massive tidal waves that pulverized Earth’s surface daily, but you wouldn’t know that today. Today, the moon has gone from overzealous to near apathetic when compared to the earlier impressions he made. He is starting to get lax on his duties as he is retreating from Earth at about an inch and a half per year, slowly but consistently losing his grip on our beloved planet. How this is supposed to “declare” the glory of God in the firmament is beyond me. If it does, God’s glory must be as fleeting and changing as these celestial evangelists that declare it.

Then there is the problem of the moon having craters. Not exactly what you would expect to find in a flawless creation of God large enough to stabilize our planet and solicit awe from mankind. The thing is scarred with craters, and these are marks of a chaotic past, not an orderly creative one. The moon is a testimony to death, to catastrophe, and not life or universal harmony of God’s workmanship. It should be an embarrassment for the Bible believer because by the looks of it, it wasn’t created at all, but formed naturally in a planetary collision billions of years ago. That is what science says happened. More than anything else, the moon is like a great big tombstone to Earth—gray, dead, barren, and over our heads. It just lacks our names!

I am embarrassed to say I once believed that a greater light was made to rule the day and a lesser light was made to rule the night (even though there weren’t two lights, only one, the latter being a simple reflection of the former), but I have since come to understand that neither were “made” for anything or anyone, anymore so than Sirius B was “made” for the Dogon people of Africa to worship as the creator of all life on Earth. But this is not all. The real tickler is to follow.

The Bible says, “He made the stars also.” Oh, just like that! God made the world then the stars! What’s wrong with this picture? We know that stars had their origins before everything else we see around us, certainly long before planets. But to Bible writers, God creating stars was just as trivial as picking up laundry detergent at Mr. Patel’s local Sac n’ Save corner store on your way home from work. The stars were just an afterthought of God…nothing big, certainly not colossal nuclear reactors or nurseries of planets like we know they are now. They were unimportant except to serve as points of light in the sky, testimonies to the creative power of a ghost. This would be a more than forgive-able error for people of that time period to make had believers in this myth not claimed divine inspiration, and thus, infallibility in all matters, secular and religious.

The unsurpassed arrogance boggles the mind…Biblicists want us to believe that the ultimate meaning of NGC 598, the Sombrero Galaxy, M81, Andromeda, and all the other hundreds of billions of galaxies in existence were really created as heavenly testimonies to exalt and extol a Hebrew war-god on a planet far, far away called “Earth,” who commanded his people to kill lambs and turtledoves so that he can take pleasure in the smell of it (Psalm 19:1-5; Leviticus 1:9; 12:6). Like an ugly, middle-aged, business tycoon with a hairy back, who buys a Ferrari just to be noticed by floozy college girls less than half his age, God created galaxies and stars just for us to look up at and admire! The very thought calls for a contemplative sigh of amazement!

(JH)

Carnival of the Godless 53

Welcome to the 53^rd edition of the Carnival of the Godless!

I will arrange the posts by subject tags, but the numbering is arbitrary.

Debunking Theism

1. The God Conundrum, by Sean Carroll from Cosmic Variance: Responds to a review by Eagleton of Dawkins' The God Delusion
2. Fruitful Inconsistencies, by Stephen Frug from Attempts: You may want to scroll down -- the first half of the post discusses the way that contradictions in literature, far from being a blemish, can in fact be a source of literary richness; I then apply the same thinking to religion -- a kind of fiction, after all -- and discuss the ways in which the very contradictions that make it (to atheists) not believable is also a source of its imaginative power
3. Conceptual Time-Capsule Five, by Danieru from The Huge Entity: The post is a backlash to recent secular humanist writings from the likes of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. My submission explores the nature of our 'God-Shaped Hole' and dismisses claims that science can ever fully override religion.
4. The evidence of things unseen, (trackback) by John from Hell's Handmaiden: "Faith is rarely questioned. The unseen evidence of faith is taken as is. It is even worn as a badge of honor. Or taken almost as a proof of itself. I believe, because I believe."
5. ...And This Bird You Cannot Change..., by Akusai of Action Skeptics: A critical look at religious arguments surrounding free will and the nature of God.

Debunking Christianity (see bottom for more from this site)

1. Christian Presuppositionalism: A General Response, by Daniel Morgan from Debunking Christianity: Highlights a paper from a philosopher (Prof. D. Gene Witmer) responding to this style of Christian apologetics
2. Prof. Gene Witmer Debates Pastor Gene Cook on Unchained Radio, get the .mp3 here: Prof. Witmer and Pastor Cook lock horns over whether atheism is capable of explaining abstract entities like logic and morality, and the conversation turns to the problem of evil near the end -- very good show. Chris Hallquist has some of the transcript with analysis.
   
3. A Hard Look at Presuppositional Transcendental Arguments, #1, #2, #3, by exbeliever from Not Many Wise (formerly of DC): These three articles seriously examine the sorts of arguments that claim that Christianity is true because atheism cannot "account" for certain metaphysical entities, and clearly demonstrates the lack of substance to these arguments.
   
4. What Does Fact Matter?, by Michael Klaas from Klaas Acts: De-constructing a conversation between and evangelical Christian and his potential convert.
5. Burying the Dead -- Normalizing the Extreme in the Gospels: A Hypocrisy of Homilies, by Jerry Monaco from Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, & Culture: I write an historical explanation of several passages in the Gospel where the character of Jesus urges his followers to to violate kinship norms, family piety, etc. Kinship systems were both the foundation of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean society and were falling apart everywhere. I explain why attempts to normalize or modernize the Gospels must fail historical scrutiny, because in the context of the time the attack on father-son relations and the chiliastic urgency of the Gospels led the Gospel writers to extremist views.
6. Picking and Choosing Belief, by Jeff Hebert from A Nerd's Country Journal: One atheist's method for deciding which parts of a religious text to give credence to, and which to reject

Evolution/Science

1. Religion, Science, and Bigotry, by Alonzo Fyfe from The Atheist Ethicist: Back in my home state of Montana a Republican law maker called Montana's governor a bigot for claiming that the state's education agenda should not promote the view of those who think that the earth is 4,000 years old. This article looks at the concept of 'bigot' and denies the charge that advancing science fact over science fiction represents any type of bigotry.
2. Francis Collins Does it Again!, by Shalini from Scientia Natura: Evolution And Rationality: On the famous scientists' attempt to save God from scientific falsification, rendering the hypothesis impotent
3. Ken Miller, by Mr. R. from Evolving Education: Talks about the difference in the positions of Dawkins and Miller with respect to evolution -- an ongoing debate amongst scientists and the godless everywhere
4. The Sad State of Science, by Daniel Morgan at DC: comment on the 2006 Science and Engineering Indicators, especially reflects the correlation between poor science education and superstitious thought/belief.
5. Groupthink, by Jason Rosenhouse: Who exhibits the 8 classic symptoms of groupthink more clearly: ID advocates or evolutionary theory (mainstream biological science) advocates?

Misc.

1. Famous Atheists - Butterfly McQueen, by Mojoey from Deep Thoughts: Mojoey has started a project to document and highlight the lives of famous people who are oft-forgotten as having been atheists.
2. Second Coming Insurance, by Stuart from Daily Irreverence: A real story about some Catholic girls who bought insurance to make sure that they'd have the resources to raise the next Jesus
3. Elements of Character, By Wenchypoo from Wisdom from Wenchypoo's Mental Wastebasket: Too often we try to unnecessarily inject the divine into analyses of character
4. The Four Stages of a Truth: Part 1, Part 2, by Francois Tremblay at Check Your Premises: Francois describes human reactions to arguments and facts along the spectrum from acceptance to non-confrontation.
5. Analyzing the Data for Social Trends in Xianity, by Daniel Morgan at GBLoGBB: Is Christianity growing? What are its leaders saying about growth? In what sectors? Are megachurches evidence of growth? What data supports the growth of atheism?
   

On Godlessness, Goodness and Meaning

1. Thus Spoke Zarathustra -- a Book Review, by Brandon Peele from Generative Transformation (trackback): Pretty self-explanatory
2. Make Your Own "Why", by Dave from Villa Nandes: Finding meaning in a godless life.
3. Thank Goodness!, by Daniel Dennett, posted to The Edge: Dennett talks about his very recent near-death experience, and what it taught him about goodness. One of my favorite posts.
4. Atheist pride, by purplebob: calls for agnostics to come out of the closet as atheists, and to use the label with pride, just as queers did -- I suppose the Brights wouldn't appreciate this effort ;-)
5. Peer-Reviewed Article Researching Deconversions, by Daniel Morgan at GBLoGBB: One of the few published journal articles laying out scientific observations among apostates
   

Politics

1. Playing Dirty for God, by the Dr. from And Doctor Biobrain's Response Is...: Questions the role of faith in Bush's own life, in his politics, and in the GOP generally, and concludes, "...it’s not just that Bush is running the False God Kool-Aid stand; he’s also a client."
2. Anti-Dominionism is not McCarthyism, by Alon Levy from Abstract Nonsense: rebukes the notion that people like Kevin Phillips and Michelle Goldberg are just hysteric about Dominionism the way McCarthy was about communism.
3. A Letter Sent to the Office of the Archbishop of York, by Alun Salt at Archaeoastronomy: Archbishops have been attacking public Atheism this week. The Archbishop of York has posted online an address to the Diocese of Newcastle in which the Archbishop insists Christianity should not be rammed down people's throats and the best way to do this is insist on people having Christian names on forms, wishing Merry Christmas rather than seasons greetings and restoring free parking to the good Christians of Plymouth.
4. Ted Haggard Shows the Virtue of Hypocrisy, by Jon Swift: Where did this strange idea that hypocrisy is not a moral virtue come from?
5. Jim Benton on Fundies vs. Gay Marriage, by Salto sobrius: The conservative Christian animosity towards gay marriage is most probably rooted in its interpretation of marriage as defined by women's submission to their husbands.
6. Why I will never vote for anyone who says this, By Barry Leiba from Staring At Empty Pages: Politicians who put God above the people are dangerous.
7. Have we got a minyan for the election?, by Barry Leiba from Staring At Empty Pages: Comments on people praying for favourable election results -- doesn't this amount to asking God to "fix" the election?
8. Evangelicals vs. the Religious Right, by Daniel Morgan at GBLoGBB: Pasted article from Newsweek with commentary afterwards on the intrinsic hypocrisy within the RR among those who give money and time towards the RR but not towards charity
   

A Sample of Debunking Christianity, for the interested:

1. Calvinism Explains Everything and Nothing, by John Loftus at DC: a hard look at the logical difficulties within Calvinism and gullibility required to believe it
   
2. Flat Earth Assumptions of Biblical Authors--Edward T. Babinski VS. Dave Armstrong & J.P. Holding, by Ed Babinski at DC: Examines whether or not the case for a flat earth was biblical
3. The Logical Problem of Evil Is Still Very Much Alive!, by John Loftus at DC: A response to the "solution" by Plantinga to the PoE
4. My Encounter With Calvinism, by Ed Babinski at DC: Discusses the degree of credulity needed to embrace Calvinism
5. Was Jesus Left Handed?, by DagoodS at DC: Wrestles with some of the logical absurdities of the Incarnation -- how God could've been tempted "in all points" like we are
6. On the Possibility of a Beginningless Past: A Reply to William Lane Craig, by exapologist at DC: examines the problems in the cosmological argument for God's existence
7. In Defense of Visions: Objection One, by Matthew Green at DC: rebuttals to naturalistic explanations of the stories in the gospels
8. A Corrupt and Scandalous Faith, by Joe E. Holman at DC: cites famous examples of Christianity's atrocities to support the idea that "Christianity is an albatross to humankind"
9. A Bad Taste!, by exbeliever at DC: cites Scripture to explain why some "have left the fountain [of God] with a horrible taste in our mouths?"
10. There is no Jehovah-Rophi, no Covenant, by Daniel Morgan at DC: investigates the promises of the old and new covenants, particularly with respect to health/healing, and concludes that either God is a liar, or there is no Covenant (and never was)

That's it for this edition. Here are the pages for COTG 52 and COTG 54 (Thanksgiving Ed.).

Responding to ID -- A Review of Their Positive Arguments with Rebuttals

Intro: I simply want to lay out a fair representation of the positive case for intelligent design (ID) in this article, and examine why the case has been ruled a failure by the greater scientific community. Because ID is so vague, eg defined by the Discovery Institute as,

The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.

Therefore, making an argument for such a claim is going to be difficult from the outset. "Some features"? "An intelligent cause"? We see the vagueness of the definition come back to haunt ID advocates in their inability to put forth convincing arguments which line up with "this is best explained by an intelligent cause" versus "random mutation/natural selection". For example, some of ID's cosmological arguments in The Privileged Planet (largely the anthropic principle) do not [obviously] fit this criterion.

And thus lot of what passes for "arguments" coming from ID/Creationism (IDC) these days against biology is simple: find some part of evolution that people don't know a lot about and say, "How do you explain X?!" This argument from ignorance is common among laypeople, because they don't know enough about the science to make positive arguments for the claims of IDC. Therefore, a great deal of the "noise" and political theatre of IDC is just critiques of evolution. As Judge Jones eloquently pointed out, there is a false dichotomy between showing someone else's explanation isn't good and proving your own case [not granting that the former has been done in the case of IDC]. Just because you do the former doesn't mean you've done the latter -- established evidence for IDC. I would call these critiques and arguments from ignorance negative in character, because they do not purport to demonstrate the truth of IDC.

However, there are some positive arguments for IDC, and they will be the focus of this review. I am going to go through and list the positive arguments (that I'm aware of), and link to strong rebuttals/refutations of those arguments.

Almost everyone already knows the basic arguments of IDC: "design detection" (DD) and "irreducible complexity" (IC). Generalized arguments, though very useful in philosophy, don't work in science. You have to pick particular examples (data) and use these to demonstrate your argument works. Until then, you haven't yet crossed the threshold of science. I'll pick back up on this at the bottom.

Responses to the claims IC are abundant, and here are layman-friendly resources to familarize onesself with the mechanisms by which scientists explain complexity and apparent IC: exaptation/cooption, scaffolding, gene duplications, etc:
1) Prof. PZ Myers' Powerpoint presentation, see slides 29-50
2) Prof. Dave Ussery's paper delineating the four different RM/NS pathways to complexity
3) Don Lindsay, How Can Evolution Cause Irreducibly Complex Systems?

Two particular systems are touted as crucial examples of IC: i) the blood-clotting cascade (BCC)/immune response; ii) the flagellum.

i) The IC arguments for IDC are the brain-child of Prof. Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh U. The BCC arguments can be found throughout IDC websites. One of the most well-informed responders to these arguments is Andrea Bottaro. Last year, as more evidence came in that transposons were involved in the human immune response, Dr. Bottaro put together the pieces and completely refuted the claim of IC as it applies to BCC. How did Prof. Behe respond? By moving the goalposts -- not in any way denying the evidence, but demanding a mutation-by-mutation account of the pathways involved. Thus, he undercuts his own argument by rendering the burden of proof unattainable by any scientific pursuit.

Also see Matt Inlay's article on the supposed IC of the BCC. Matt rigorously examines different branches of the tree of life to demonstrate the fallacious nature of the claim by evidencing the reducible nature of the immune response.

The single best place for you to start in looking at IC as it relates to the immune response is here.

These technical papers, as well as others that can be accessed via this long bibliography on the subject, here, here, and peer-reviewed literature like this Nature review and via searches on PubMed and other scientific databases, decisively defeat the claim of IC as it relates to BCC or the immune response. Again, the very important thing to do is focus in on the specific systems that are being examined, and claimed as evidence, and force the burden of proof upon the claimant. In the cases of IC, these claims have been refuted by the research of biologists and biochemists, which have always shown evidence of cooption and homology of these systems -- completely undercutting the identification of IC.

ii) The evolution of the flagellum is probably the keystone argument of IC. IDC proponents use this system because they feel it is best compared to a "machine", is most difficult to reduce, and is the strongest evidence for intelligent design in biology. One of the most comprehensive resources on this argument is from a continually-updated paper written by NCSE staffer Nick Matzke. Another resource is the PandasThumb section here on flagellum evolution.

In addition, Nick Matzke got a peer-reviewed paper published in Nature Reviews which unequivocally demonstrated, for the first time, that of the 42 proteins involved in the flagellar system of a particular bacterium, all but 2 of them had known homologs! This research involves doing BLAST-type searches in the genome of the bacterium being considered, and showing that the raw evidence of co-optation/exaptation is abundant -- there is no good reason to suppose that all 42 of these components originally had the function that they now do. See also Matzke's reader background page.

Moving on to the second prong of the "case for design" involves taking on those claims that design has been "detected" via mathematical research in IC or other biological systems.

iii) Design detection is the specialty area of William Dembski. Dembski took the "No Free Lunch" (NFL) theorems developed by David Wolpert and others (background with citations) and attempted to use these mathematical constructs to argue a few different things. One of his arguments was the the NFLs showed that evolutionary RM/NS would theoretically not be successful in the development of complexity. Although we can find numerous responses and refutations of this claim (here, here, here , here and see references here -- Wein 2002a,b; Shallit 2002; Rosenhouse 2002; Perakh 2001a, 2002a, 2002b, 2003; Young 2002; Orr 2002; Van Till 2002), I think it best to turn to the person who actually developed the NFL theorems in order to take Dembski to task for misrepresenting them and their implications. Wolpert almost immediately refuted Dembski's claims, and it took a few years before Dembski further tweaked his claims:

[David H. Wolpert] The values of the factors arising in the NFL theorems are never properly specified in his analysis. More generally, no consideration is given to whether some of the free lunches in the geometry of induction might be more relevant than the NFL theorems (e.g., those free lunches concerning "head-to-head minimax" distinctions that concern pairs of algorithms considered together rather than single algorithms considered in isolation).

Indeed, throughout there is a marked elision of the formal details of the biological processes under consideration. Perhaps the most glaring example of this is that neo-Darwinian evolution of ecosystems does not involve a set of genomes all searching the same, fixed fitness function, the situation considered by the NFL theorems. Rather it is a co-evolutionary process. Roughly speaking, as each genome changes from one generation to the next, it modifies the surfaces that the other genomes are searching. And recent results indicate that NFL results do not hold in co-evolution. [emphasis mine]

It may well be that there is a major mystery underlying the performance of some search processes that one might impute to the historical transformations of ecosystems. But Dembski has not established this, not by a long shot.

Dembski refined his arguments and published (2003) a response which attempted to show that even in co-evolutionary processes, that the NFL theorems do still hold. A great deal of the problem with Dembski's work is that it is all on his own website and books, and none of it in peer-reviewed literature. That means that mathematical laymen (like me and most of you) are often going to miss the subtleties in Dembski's articles that peer-review would immediately weed out. The most basic mistakes and differences between arguments by Wolpert and Dembski will be caught by other professional mathematicians and fixed in the MSS before publication. This keeps the "certitude" factor on the IDC side to a minimum, because while Wolpert's arguments are accepted by the mathematical community, which immediately lends substantial credibility to them, and evidences Wolpert's authority, none of this can be said for Dembski. An argument from silence may then be made that Dembski's work cannot clear the bar of legitimacy. Why else would he not want it published academically, if it is valid?

Dembski may possibly complain that he can't get his work published due to discrimination, but this complaint makes little sense: Behe has published work since he published his Darwin's Black Box, and Dembski's work, being mathematical in nature, need not even address the question of evolution directly. Therefore, if any case can be made about anti-creationist bias, it would be much more likely for Behe's work to be "censored", [as they love to claim (without evidence)] due to its intrinsically anti-evolutionary content, versus Dembski's abstract math. Dembski's work may or may not apply to biological systems. Behe's is directly about biology. Therefore, which is more likely to be "censored" by anti-creationist bias, and so does Dembski have any excuse for not publishing his work in a respected academic format?

Conversely, Wolpert has recently published, via peer-reviewed literature, about the co-evolution which accurately models biological systems:

Abstract: Recent work on the foundational underpinnings of black-box optimization has begun to uncover a rich mathematical structure. In particular, it is now known that an inner product between the optimization algorithm and the distribution of optimization problems likely to be encountered fixes the distribution over likely performances in running that algorithm. One ramification of this is the "No Free Lunch" (NFL) theorems, which state that any two algorithms are equivalent when their performance is averaged across all possible problems. This highlights the need for exploiting problem-specific knowledge to achieve better than random performance. In this paper, we present a general framework covering most optimization scenarios. In addition to the optimization scenarios addressed in the NFL results, this framework covers multiarmed bandit problems and evolution of multiple coevolving players. As a particular instance of the latter, it covers "self-play" problems. In these problems, the set of players work together to produce a champion, who then engages one or more antagonists in a subsequent multiplayer game. In contrast to the traditional optimization case where the NFL results hold, we show that in self-play there are free lunches: in coevolution some algorithms have better performance than other algorithms, averaged across all possible problems. However, in the typical coevolutionary scenarios encountered in biology, where there is no champion, the NFL theorems still hold.

Dembski has seized on this last sentence as evidence that he is right. It isn't true. Note that the problem here is still that the NFL theorems are about "algorithms averaged across all possible problems".

It is thus hardly convincing to say that the specific ecological "fitness landscapes", or "search space", is not beautifully searched by RM/NS versus a blind search. Simply put, in order to model biological systems properly, the algorithm itself would have to be altered such that it was not specific-target-directed [multiple positive adaptations are possible], such that each "score" improved the algorithm [the scope of the organism's ability to adapt further], and such that each "score" altered the competitiveness of the landscape [the domain in which fitness is evaluated, here, the ecosystem, which coevolves with the players]. This is the true nature of biological co-evolution -- as organisms adapt, the machinery by which they acquire adaptations itself adapts (consider that increasing surface area for sunlight is useless to animals, but not to plants), and the environment around them is full of other "game players", co-evolving just like them. This is, so far as I am able to tell, the definition of an "open algorithm" during the permutations. This is not what Wolpert has even considered at this point.

Dembski has not modeled a system in this way as of now. Thus, in the shortest way to respond to the "postive case" Dembski has laid forth, it is simply a strawman representation of biological evolution. Modeling real evolution in simple mathematical terms is probably one of the most daunting and complicated of tasks. The NFL theorems do not take into account an algorithm that itself adapts with increased fitness of the player, and changes the landscape with each successful target. Wolpert explained this in his earliest response to Dembski, and published his findings that take this into account w.r.t. NFL theorems. This intrinsic flaw is continually overlooked and undermines the positive case for design completely.

To his credit, Dembski's formalistic abilities are not in question. That is, his ability to evaluate a given model, and perform the correct analysis, is A-ok. The problem is the relevance and correlation of this model to anything resembling reality. "Let the reader judge," as Dembski says in response.

The real problem here is that Dembski has never addressed the most substantial critiques of his work. As Mark Perakh points out in this extensively referenced article (a good place to start for an overview of the status of Dembski's claims):

When encountering critique of his work, Dembski is selective in choosing when to reply to his critics and when to ignore their critique. His preferred targets for replies are those critics who do not boast comparable long lists of formal credentials – this enables him to contemptuously dismiss the critical comments by pointing to the alleged lack of qualification of his opponents while avoiding answering the essence of their critical remarks. (See, for example, Dembski’s replies to some of his opponents [3]) This type of behavior provides certain hints at Dembski’s overriding quest for winning debate at anycost rather than striving to arrive at the truth. For example, in his book No Free Lunch [4] Dembski devoted many pages to a misuse of Wolpert and Macready’s No Free Lunch (NFL) theorems [5]. (Some early critique of Dembski’s interpretation of the NFL theorems appeared already in [6 a, b]. A detailed analysis of Dembski’s misuse of the NFL theorems is given, in particular, in [6 c].)

Dembski’s faulty interpretation of the NFL theorems was strongly criticized by Richard Wein [7] and by David Wolpert, the originator of these theorems [2]. Dembski spared no effort in rebutting Wein’s critique, devoting to it two lengthy essays. [3] However, he did not utter a single word in regard to Wolpert’s critique. It is not hard to see why. Wein, as Dembski points out, has only a bachelor’s degree in statistics – and Dembski uses this irrelevant factoid to deflect Wein’s well substantiated criticism. He does not, though, really answer the essence of Wein’s comments and resorts instead to ad hominem remarks and a contemptuous tone. He can’t do the same with Wolpert who enjoys a sterling reputation as a brilliant mathematician and who is obviously much superior to Dembski in the understanding of the NFL theorems of which he is a coauthor.

Dembski pretends that Wolpert’s critique does not exist.

Dembski has behaved similarly in a number of other situations. For example, the extensive index in his latest book The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design [8] completely omits the names of most of the prominent critics of Dembski’s ideas.

We don’t see in that index the following names:
Rich Baldwin, Eli Chiprout, Taner Edis, Ellery Eels, Branden Fitelson, Philip Kitcher, Peter Milne, Massimo Pigliucci, Del Ratzsch, Jeff Shallit, Niall Shanks, Jordan H. Sobel, Jason Rosenhouse, Christopher Stephenson, Richard Wein, and Matt Young.

All these writers have analyzed in detail Dembski’s literary output and demonstrated multiple errors, fallacious concepts and inconsistencies which are a trademark of his prolific production. (I have not mentioned myself in this list although I have extensively criticized Dembski both in web postings [9] and in print [10]; he never uttered a single word in response to my critique, while it is known for fact that he is familiar with my critique; the above list shows that I am in good company.)

Thomas D. Schneider, another strong critic of Dembski’s ideas, is mentioned in the index of [8] but the extent of the reference is as follows:

"Evolutionary biologists regularly claim to obtain specified complexity for free or from scratch. (Richard Dawkins and Thomas Schneider are some of the worst offenders in this regard.)"

Contrary to the subtitle of Dembski’s book [8], this reference can hardly be construed as an answer to Schneider’s questions. Essentially, all the listed writers have asked Dembski a number of questions regarding his concepts. The absence of any replies to the listed authors makes the title of Dembski’s new book [8], sound like a parody. It should have properly been titled The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions About Intelligent Design. Of course we already know that Dembski is a stubborn purveyor of half-baked ideas [10]. Is he also of the opinion that selectivity in choosing when to respond to opponents and when to pretend they do not exist is compatible with intellectual honesty? [edit: Check out the article for the references: http://www.talkdesign.org/people/mperakh/perakh_ddq.pdf]

Welsley R. Elsberry has an impressive set of links (left sidebar) on Dembski's work and its ramifications. Mark Chu-Carroll has an entire section examining some of Dembski's work, Richard Wein has written extensively about the problems with it, also TalkDesign, as does TalkOrigins, on the NFL and his work in information detection, for more reading. Another awesome resource is the PandasThumb IDC archive. Furthermore, this post at the PT lays out some good refs on the background arguments of Dembski involving complexity via RM/NS:

1. Peter Schuster, How does complexity arise in evolution? Complexity, 2:22-30 (1996)
2. Christoph Adami, Charles Ofria, and Travis C. Collier Evolution of biological complexity, PNAS | April 25, 2000 | vol. 97 | no. 9 | 4463-4468
3. Lenski RE, Ofria C, Pennock RT, and Adami C, The Evolutionary Origin of Complex Features Nature, 423:139-144 (2003).
4. Tom Schneider, Rebuttal to William A. Dembski’s Posting and to His Book “No Free Lunch”
5. Tom Schneider ev: Evolution of Biological Information Nucleic Acids Res, 28:14, 2794-2799, 2000

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As we discussed at our freethought group's 11/9 meeting, there are actually some good philosophical arguments in ID. Teleological and anthropic principle-type arguments certainly aren't invalid, although the veracity of their premises is, of course, crucial. However, they simply aren't science, or scientific arguments, without meeting some pretty strict criteria, and without going through the process of peer review, experiment, and eventual scientific consensus. As of now, they are completely philosophical in nature. That only means that ID still has to pass the standard hurdles before including itself into the scientific community as a valid idea to teach in science classes.

As Prof. Joe Meert pointed out at that night's meeting, Einstein didn't take out ads in newspapers asking people to write their congressional representatives to get relativity included in high school curricula. Einstein didn't try to get a relativity-sympathetic school board voted in, and include his ideas in high school textbooks. Einstein wanted legitimacy among his scientific peers and to establish his ideas via empiricism and the method of science, and then, he knew, getting into textbooks would follow. Those sorts of political tactics by IDCists are what undermines their claim to legitimacy in the scientific community. They want their philosophical verbiage smuggled into science classrooms since they can't get a single scientific argument going for them.

Conclusion: Irreducible complexity as a positive argument fails as a critique against evolution, as the proposed systems have viable, published explanations for their evolution; and Dembski's work in design detection fails as it is a critique against quasi-evolution -- a strawman, which does not even intersect with the robust work done by geneticists and computer scientists in mathematically modeling evolutionary theory.

The good philosophical ideas intrinsic within teleological arguments are lost amidst the "culture war" that IDC's are waging against evolution and materialism, in their own words. Hopefully, once the dust settles, and cooler heads prevail, some of their ideas can be incorporated into places that they belong (history, philosophy, etc.), and continue to be excluded from the science classroom until they become scientific...hopefully.
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Technorati tags: Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism

Taner Edis on Multiverses

Here's Taner Edis on Dawkins vs. Collins in their Time magazine debate speaking about mutiverses. see here

What if the Bible was Perfectly Copied for the last 2000 Years?

I was downtown last week with a friend when we were confronted by a student from the local Bible College. In the midst of the conversation the supposed reliability of the New Testament manuscripts came up.

Being a Bible college graduate myself, I've read a number of books on how we can trust what our Bibles say. All the books have essentially the same answer:

We can trust what the New Testament says is true because:
1. There are MORE New Testament manuscripts than any other document from the ancient world (around 5,500 near complete manuscripts which is a lot compared to other ancient documents).

2. There are EARLIER New Testament manuscripts than any other ancient document (scholars range them between 25 and 200 years of when the events they record supposedly happened).

3. There are BETTER New Testament manuscripts than any other ancient document (in other words, scholars are fairly certain that much of what is in modern New Testaments is what was originally written in the first century).

Christian apologists, such as Dr. Norman Geisler, Josh McDowell, and Dr.WIlliam Lane Craig, have used the above three points to persuade people to believe what the Bible says. I used to believe that because the Bible was meticulously copied for centuries, that that was good reason to believe it.

Without going into the fine detail that the above arguments deserve, let's just assume all three of those statements are true. What does that really prove? Does it prove we should trust that what the Bible says is the Gospel truth? (no pun intended here).I used to believe that.

For #1, it shows we've got a lot of manuscripts. But what if it's a lie? Then we have a lot of copies of a lie. In other words, the number of copies of the Bible we have has little to nothing to do with whether I should trust that what it says is true.

For #2, it shows people wrote those things down as early as 30 years after the events happened. It's assumed that since someone wrote it down within three decades of the event, it had to be accurate. But why? People can make things up 2 seconds after an event as easy as 100 years afterwards. It was even easier back then in a world without mass media or other modern tools that would limit one's ability to make up stories. Bill Curry, a contributor here at DC, has written an excellent evaluation on
how legends can in fact arise within the lifetime of an eyewitness.

As far as #3 goes, it shows that what it says today is fairly close to what it said back then. But historians are also fairly confident that the stories we have about Caesar being a god are what was originally written by the author, but no one seriously considers that to be evidence that he really was a god.

Now, I understand those three points are often used to make a cumulative case, but in this case, three bad arguments put together don't make good evidence for anything. I also understand that Christians use other areas of evidence to show why it's "trustworthy" (such as archaeology), but I'm talking about the three claims above that are routinely used by Christians.

There's absolutely no reason why the above three claims, even if they're true, should cause someone to believe that Jesus got people drunk at a wedding instead of just hydrated, or that graves opened up and dead people started preaching the word, or that all of a sudden a room of people could speak perfectly in another language.

So what if the Bible was copied perfectly for the last 2000 years? Would it follow then that we can trust what it says is what really happened? I don't think so.

The bottom line is that these apologists and evangelists are confusing the reliability of the TEXT with the reliability of the MESSAGE. That, I think is a crucial distinction that needs to be made.

Whether the manuscripts are early, late, a lot, a few, xeroxed, or hand copied by a second grader, is not the point. The point is to show that the stuff really happened in history -- and I'm afraid you just can't do that with the New Testament or any other ancient document with the above three claims.

What Evidence Do We Have From the Cosmos (or From the Bible) That Human Beings Are "Valuable?" Questions Abound.

How intrinsically "valuable" are human beings according to the cosmos and also according to the Bible? In the cosmos all living things die, including human beings, and even some of the tiniest forms of life live by sucking the life out of the ones with the largest brains and/or the biggest hearts. As for the Bible's view of humanity's intrinsic "value," even more questions arise, a wide variety in fact.

FIRST, let's review the most direct and common recognitions of humanity's place in the cosmos:

THE COSMOS AND HUMAN "VALUE"

Every living thing in the cosmos dies. There is plenty of evidence that our home planet, the earth, has been struck by large objects from space. Visible fiery meteors continue to enter the earth's atmosphere from time to time some even videotaped, and some larger objects from space have passed so close to the earth in the past few decades that their pathways were within the distance from the earth to the moon's orbit. Also, a little behind the arm of the Milky Way in which our solar system lies, there are stars being drawn into our galaxy from a nearby smaller galaxy, and so over a million stars are entering our galaxy and their gravity is interacting with stars found in our galaxy which can cause grave problems for any planets on those stars as they pass nearby each other. Lucky for us the arm of the galaxy where our solar system lies has just recently (in galactic time) already passed through that danger zone where the stars keep entering our galaxy. Also note that a solar flare from our own sun came so near the earth in the 1990s that it disabled satellite and cell phone communication. The earth's magnetic field is also diminishing (viz., the earth's poles shift in polarity and power over time, and a "few generations from now" our planet will soon be in a down phase, lacking a magnetic shield, and no one knows for sure how that might effect life on earth, or affect how electronic-based technology--computers and telecommunications function). I also read that dangerous gamma radiation was detected striking the earth in bursts coming from the vicinity of a "magnestar" that blew up in our general part of the galaxy. That could be quite dangerous if the star were just a bit nearer. Others have supposed that radiation from a star going nova in our vicinity might have instigated some extinctions in the past. Though if any star went nova near the earth that might be it for all life on earth. So this cosmos provides uncertainties galore concerning the continuance of life. Even stars and galaxies in our cosmos have finite lifetimes (though the question of what sort of infinite matrix all cosmoses might lie within, or how that matrix generates new cosmoses, remains an open one in physics and philosophy).

Astronomers have evidence of rings of matter and even planets surrounding distant stars, so there might be planets in the cosmos other than earth on which sentient beings live (found in the "galactic habitable zone" of our galaxy or of distant galaxies, since there's over a hundred billion other galaxies out there, each of them containing a billion or so stars). It is not inconceivable that such beings should they exist, live on planets like ours in which every living thing dies. One is therefore left with far more questions than answers concerning cosmic "value."


GOD AND HUMAN "VALUE"

Assuming God exists, how do we know for sure that God "values" human beings or to what degree He does? I've already reviewed questions regarding the nature of such "value" based on the cosmic situation in which God has placed humanity, and also based on the fact that neither nature nor God provide every embryo a whole and healthy start in life, but instead the opposite is true, since disabilities, nutritional deficiencies, and childhood illnesses, including deaths during birth and deaths during infancy and early childhood are very common among all species, including human beings.

The Bible says and/or implies that God finds human beings "valuable," even created in God's own "image," however human beings wrote those books, and any sentient being would probably find it difficult to imagine a deity not created in THEIR own image.

However, being "created in God's image" does not even mean that hunanity was so valuable as to be granted the equally god-like gift of immortality. Instead, early authors of some books in the Bible also expressed in numerous places that everyone went to the same place after they died, Sheol, the grave, the land of shades. Such authors of early books of the Bible taught that only God was immortal, while human beings were created from dust and to dust would return. I'm not saying the Bible teaches a uniform view of the afterlife, but simply noting that there are different ideas in the Bible of the afterlife. One was that humanity was animated dust and was not immortal like God. Such a view was common in the ancient world. Among the Greeks for instance, they viewed humanity as mortal , but a select few "heros" could be taken up to be with the gods and live forever like Hercules (the early Hebrews likewise pictured only a few like Enoch and Elijah being taken up, but in other places the Bible emphasized humanity's mortality and a place known as Sheol where all ended up). So some strands of the Bible picture humanity as being "valued" while they lived and breathed, but after death they were "valued" no more than say, "dust" or mere "shadows."

Speaking of the Bible, the same people who wrote some of the earliest books in the Bible also assumed the cosmos was created in six evenings and mornings as measured by evenings and mornings on what we today know to be but one planet, earth. This does not impress humans living today who have learned that all planets have their own days and nights, evenings and mornings, rather than the earth's evenings and morning being central. Was the very first light created "in the beginning" for the sake of instituting our planet's earth days and nights, evenings and mornings? And all the rest of the cosmos was likewise created "based on earth's days and nights," six of them, whether in metaphor or fact? But if that is what "revealed" books of the Bible teach, then how can we be sure of other matters in such books, including statements that God "values" humanity?

Even the pains and pleasures that people and nations experienced were interpreted by the Bible's authors as being signs of "God's" pleasure and displeasure, or signs of God's "punishments" or "blessings." While today people question such easy black or white supernatural interpretations of disasters and boons, of good times and bad times. It would appear that it is indeed the writers of the Bible who are interpreting what happened to them and their nation in terms of "God," just as they interpreted the earth's status in cosmic creation myths, with light created for the earth's evenings and mornings, and the earth created even BEFORE the sun, moon and stars were "made and set... above the earth... to light it, and for signs and seasons" on earth, merely one planet out of the entire cosmos?

The ancient Greeks likewise viewed their nation as lying at the "center of the earth" with their oracle of Delphi lying at the earth's navel, and the earth itself being the foundation of creation with a dome above it where the sun, moon and stars lay. The ancient Greeks also thought they "knew" why good and bad things happened during the Trojan war to certain warriors and nations. They "knew" it was due to the pleasure or displeaure of their "gods" and the exertion of their supernatural powers to decide battles or bless the land (read Homer).


THE "VALUE" OF HUMANITY IN THE N.T.

Only in the New Testament are human beings portrayed as having such "value" that God would put Himself through suffering, death, and hell, including God "becoming sin"--becoming something that God cannot stand--hence God punishing God, in order to spare humanity from "hell." That is quite a claim concerning humanity's "value" but note the lateness of such a claim even in the "revealed religion" of the Bible.

Also, think about the self-centeredness of such a portrayal of humanity. Humanity's self-centeredness began with claiming it was created in God's image, then in the intertestamental period believing it would live eternally, and now in the N.T., humanity claiming its own "sins" or failures are why God had to put God through pain, death and hell, with God Himself becoming sin, and shunning and punishing Himself, thus creating a rift, albeit temporary, in God. Quite a jump from humanity being simply mortal dust that returns to dust and winds up in Sheol, the land of shades. For now the human writers of the N.T. have even divinized humanity's faults, imagining God had to take humanity's faults so seriously as to tear God Himself into pieces in a manner of speaking, God punishing God (or to use a metaphor from nature and animals) God smeared Himself with our poo and hated Himself, dissassociating God from God, creating a rift in the Godhead all because of US. Thus humanity's ego and hubris appears to have grown over time and throughout "revealled revelations" in the Bible, such that even our poo is made to eventually smell good or come out good, regardless of the consequences to "God."


THE "VALUE" OF HUMANITY VIS A VIS THE QUESTION OF HELL

Even one human group's self-centered dislike of other nations or other human beings differing from them, has sought justification in the "Divine," namely "Divine condemnations." Such hubris not only gave birth to the interpretation that when other nations suffered they were being "punished by God," but also applied later in the sense of eternal punishment (book of Daniel) other intertestamental works, and of course the N.T.

In intertestamental works the idea of "evil" demons and Satan ruling this world, their power over this world, and fears thereof, all grew immensely, leading to elevated suspicions and hatreds projected onto "outsiders." In the N.T. the projection of such fears was also projected onto believers who loved the same holy books, and who were labeled, "heretics." Thus Christians began persecuting fellow believers as soon as the first Christian emperor gained the throne of Rome, and Christians proceeded to kill more Christians in a few years during the Arian-Athanasian controversy than were killed during the previous three hundred years under non-Christian Roman emperorsl; even killing each other over matters such as whether or not a bishop had ever denied his faith under duress during the earlier days of persecution or remained "pure" (the Donatist controversy). Today Christians continue to debunk each other's practices and beliefs far moreso than non-believers have ever done.

The notion of hell raises the question of the "value" of humanity in other ways as well. Though some Christians declare that hell is God's "great compliment" to human beings, that simply begs the question of what God would do to someone He wished to "insult" rather than "compliment." Furthermore, if God already sees the past and future, then God would know in eternity that there was no "choice" for some souls but hell. What "value" does such a view place on human life?

Hellish conundrums continue when one considers the view that Adam's sin (as Augustine taught) automatically damned all humanity, and it was up to God to grant the gift of saving grace to whomever He would, but he only grants it to some, and denies it to the rest, which means God "values" only some, and damns the rest. Jonathan Edwards put it in Augustinian terms and added darker metaphors, teaching that we all deserve the utmost punishment, because God's disgust toward all of Adam's children since the fall is similar to the disgust we feel when we see a horrid insect or worm. Doesn't sound like everyone is extremely "valuable" in God's eyes.

Christians have also argued that heretics and other non-believers in this life are not very "valuable" at all, since they spread the disease of unbelief that kills people eternally. Some Christians have even argued that we should treat heretics and/or unbelievers no better in this life than God is going to treat them in the next, in hell. For example see these statements by Luther and Melanchthon regarding the Anabaptists, a diverse Reformation movement of Bible readers and preachers, many of whom wanted to live in a land were religious beliefs were totally a matter of conscience, and there were no state churches, nor coercion, nor indelible national creeds (neither Lutheran nations nor Calvinist ones nor Catholic ones), but instead each person could read the Bible and love and follow Jesus as they were led by God.

“They [the Anabaptists] are not only blasphemous, but highly seditious, urge the use of the sword against them... We may not, therefore, mete out better treatment to these men than God Himself and all the saints.”
--Luther in letter (written early in 1530) to Menius and Myconius who were composing a work against the Anabaptists

“They [the magistrates] should apply to them [the Anabaptists] the law of Moses against blasphemy and treat them as the Roman Emperors treated the Arians and Donatists.”
--Melanchthon in a letter to Myconius (Feb. 1531)[SOURCE: Mackinnon, James (Ph.D., D.D., Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Edinburgh), “Luther and the Anabaptists,” p. 57-75 in Luther and the Reformation, Vol. IV., Vindication of the Movement (1530-46), (New York: Russell & Russell, Inc, 1962), pp.64 & 69]


A FEW FINAL QUESTIONS OF "VALUE" ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE

How "valued" is humanity in the "primeval history" stories in Genesis in which God "repents" of having made man, and floods the earth, drowning nearly every breathing thing on it? How about in Exodus where God tells Moses He would like to let all the Israelites in the desert die and raise up a people from Moses alone? (Even if the story is interpreted as being a ruse on God's part or a temptation or testing of Moses by God, anyone reading it cannot help to also see in it a certain callousness toward human life by God. Note that it states elsewhere in the Bible that God does not "tempt" people so why would he "tempt" Moses with an offer to let the Israelites die and set Moses up as a new Abraham giving birth to a new people? Admittedly, theologians finely divide, some say "gerrymander," the words "tempt" and "test" in this case). And one could also ask what "value" God places on human life when He commands Joshua to slaughter every breathing thing inside certain cities, including babes and pregnant women? Makes life seem relatively "cheap" in God's eyes.

Revealed biblical religion even states that God "sends lying spirits" into prophets, and God "hardens" people's hearts in order that they might be destroyed utterly as in the book of Joshua ("The Lord hardened their hearts to meet Israel in battle in order that He might destroy them utterly, that they might receive no mercy"). Or, God sends plagues and famines, or God says He will put people in the situation where they will be forced to eat their own children just to survive. Or in the N.T. God "sends them great delusion" that they might not turn and be saved. Sounds like a cavalier way to treat human life.


*A FINAL NOTE ON "HELL"*

From Origin's day to ours Christian theologians have continued to debate just how much of Jesus's apocalyptic speech about "hell" needs to be taken literally. Some say such speech is an accommodation to the ideas of Jesus's day concerning ideas of heaven and hell already in circulation since the inter-testamental period; and thus we don't even know for sure just how much of what Jesus spoke about hell was an accommodation to ideas and concepts his audience already took for granted.

The Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (1908) by Schaff-Herzog says in volume 12, on page 96, “In the first five or six centuries of Christianity there were six theological schools, of which four (Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, and Edessa, or Nisibis) were Universalist; one (Ephesus) accepted conditional immortality; one (Carthage or Rome) taught endless punishment of the wicked. Other theological schools are mentioned as founded by Universalists, but their actual doctrine on this subject is not known.”

Augustine (354-430 A.D.), one of the four great Latin Church Fathers (Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome and Gregory the Great), admitted: “There are very many in our day, who though not denying the Holy Scriptures, do not believe in endless torments.”

Origen, a pupil and successor of Clement of Alexandria, lived from 185 to 254 A.D. He founded a school at Caesarea, and is considered by historians to be one of the great theologians and exegete of the Eastern Church. In his book, De Principiis, he wrote: “We think, indeed, that the goodness of God, through His Christ, may recall all His creatures to one end, even His enemies being conquered and subdued....for Christ must reign until He has put all enemies under His feet.” Howard F. Vos in his book Highlights of Church History states that Origen believed the souls of all that God created would some day return to rest in the bosom of the Father. Those who rejected the gospel now would go to hell to experience a purifying fire that would cleanse even the wicked; all would ultimately reach the state of bliss.

The great church historian Geisler writes: “The belief in the inalienable capability of improvement in all rational beings, and the limited duration of future punishment was so general, even in the West, and among the opponents of Origen, that it seems entirely independent of his system.” (Eccles. Hist., 1-212)

Gregory of Nyssa (332-398 A.D.), leading theologian of the Eastern Church, says in his Catechetical Orations: “Our Lord is the One who delivers man [all men], and who heals the inventor of evil himself.”

Neander says that Gregory of Nyssa taught that all punishments are means of purification, ordained by divine love to purge rational beings from moral evil, and to restore them back to that communion with God....so that they may attain the same blessed fellowship with God Himself.

Eusebius of Caesarea lived from 265 to 340 A.D. He was the Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and a friend of Constantine, great Emperor of Rome. His commentary of Psalm 2 says: “The Son ‘breaking in pieces’ His enemies is for the sake of remolding them, as a potter his own work; as Jeremiah 18;6 says: i.e., to restore them once again to their former state.”

Gregory of Nazianzeu lived from 330 to 390 A.D. He was the Bishop of Constantinople. In his Oracles 39:19 we read: “These, if they will, may go Christ’s way, but if not let them go their way. In another place perhaps they shall be baptized with fire, that last baptism, which is not only painful, but enduring also; which eats up, as if it were hay, all defiled matter, and consumes all vanity and vice.”

A Quick and Dirty Refutation of Divine Command Theories

Robert Adams has played a significant role in reviving divine command theories in ethics (DCT). According to Adams, and many before him, the most plausible construal of DCT entails that moral obligation depends on the expressed will of God, where these expressions are properly construed as commands.1 Call any such view a ‘command formulation’ of DCT. Recently, Mark Murphy has argued that command formulations of DCT are untenable, and that the most plausible formulation of DCT entails that moral obligation depends upon the will of God, whether or not it is expressed.2 Call any such view a ‘will formulation’ of DCT. In this paper, I will argue that, while Murphy-style arguments against command formulations are decisive, the arguments Adams advances against will formulations seem equally decisive. But the most salient implication of these results is not that their particular versions of will and command formulations of DCT - those of Adams and Murphy - are inadequate. Rather, as I will argue, a much more dramatic implication follows: no possible formulation of DCT is an adequate moral theory.

This paper is divided into four sections. In the first section, I will briefly describe the defining features of the two most plausible formulations of DCT. In the second, I will discuss Murphy’s main objection to command formulations of DCT. In the third section, I will discuss Adams’ main objection to will formulations of DCT. In each of sections two and three, two goals are achieved: (i) a conclusion that an objection against a formulation of DCT is persuasive, and (ii) the uncovering of a necessary condition for any adequate moral theory. Finally, in the fourth section, I will utilize these results to argue that no version of DCT is adequate.

I
According to all formulations of DCT, at least some moral properties - such as the morally permissible, impermissible, and obligatory - are somehow dependent upon the will of God. Will formulations state that the dependence is direct. That is, certain kinds of divine acts of will are both necessary and sufficient for the exemplification of moral properties. By way of contrast, command formulations state that the dependence is indirect. That is, although certain sorts of divine volitions are necessary for the exemplification of moral properties, they are not sufficient. For such volitions to generate (e.g.) moral obligations, God must also communicate such volitions to the relevant people.

Are either of the above-mentioned versions of DCT plausible? As I mentioned earlier, Murphy has offered powerful criticisms of command formulations of DCT, and Adams has advanced powerful arguments against will formulations of DCT. We will now examine the best of these arguments in turn.

II
A key objection3 to command formulations of DCT can be expressed simply: If God’s ability to impose moral obligations depends on the expression of certain of His intentions in the form of commands, then they are objectionably contingent. For then God would be powerless to obligate without the existence of certain sorts of social practices, in particular, the practice of commanding. Such contingency is objectionable, for if (e.g.) the morally impermissible depends on God’s commands in this way, then it seems metaphysically possible for a community of people to exist in which either (i) the requisite social facts don’t exist, or (ii) they do exist, but God hasn’t commanded anything. But if either case obtains, then there will be actions that aren’t (say) impermissible, but should be. But this is implausible: such moral properties would be exemplified even if (i) or (ii) obtained. Therefore, command formulations of DCT are implausible.

Adams has a reply to this objection: “This does not ground a serious objection to divine command theory. A practice of commanding exists in virtually all human communities, and I think we need not worry about what obligation would be (if it would exist at all) for persons who do not live in communities in which they require things of each other4.”

This is surely too quick and dismissive. For it hardly suffices to say that, as a matter of fact, all (or virtually all) communities have a practice of commanding. For, prima facie, it seems (metaphysically) possible that a community without such a practice could exist. And it also seems that wrongness could supervene on acts in such a community. For consider a possible world, W, in which there exists a community of five people: a man (call him ‘Zed’), and four children, none of which is older than ten years old. Suppose further that this community has no practice of commanding. Finally, suppose that Zed regularly sodomizes these children. Since, by hypothesis, this community has no practice of commanding, command formulations of DCT entail that none of Zed’s acts are morally wrong. But, surely, moral wrongness supervenes on at least some acts in W. But then moral wrongness doesn’t require the existence of a community practice of commanding as a part of its supervenience base. And if not, then command formulations of DCT are false. Therefore, it appears that Murphy is correct: command formulations of DCT are objectionably contingent. With this objection, then, we have uncovered a necessary condition for any adequate moral theory:

The Non-contingency Condition (NC): No moral obligation, R, is objectionably contingent.

Corollary: For any moral obligation R, if R isn’t binding without a human social practice of commanding, then R is objectionably contingent.

It will be important to keep this condition in mind when we come to assess the adequacy of divine command theories in general.

III
Adams’ main argument against will formulations of DCT is also simple: Moral obligations cannot exist unless they are communicated. But will formulations of DCT falsely imply that it is possible for certain sorts of God’s uncommunicated volitions to morally obligate us. Therefore, will formulations of DCT are false.5

There are two ways to support the main premise of this argument. According to the first, uncommunicated intentions can’t obligate because they are generated when (and only when) at least one person requires something of another person. But requiring is a communicative act. If, for example, a parent forms an intention (of a certain sort) that his teenage daughter be home before 8 p.m. every weeknight, but he doesn’t convey this intention to her, then she is not obligated to be home by 8 p.m. on weeknights. As soon as he communicates his intention to his daughter, however, an obligation is generated, and she must now be home at the stated time. Now if this is how obligations are generated, then, necessarily, if God has created obligations, then He has expressed them. But will formulations of DCT falsely imply that it is possible for certain sorts of God’s intentions to generate moral obligations even if those intentions remain forever unexpressed. Therefore, will formulations of DCT are false.6

According to the second way, uncommunicated intentions can’t obligate because a certain version of the “ought implies can” principle is true: If x is obligatory for S, then S must be aware (or at least be capable of becoming aware) that x is obligatory for S7. The general idea here is that one can only be responsible for what one is capable of doing. So, for example, suppose my hands are handcuffed together. If so, then I can’t raise just one of them. So if someone commands me to raise just one of my hands, I won’t be able to comply, even if I want to. But if not, then I can’t be held responsible for failing to raise just one of my hands. Similarly, I can’t be held responsible for failing to comply with an obligation if I can’t come to know of that obligation. For knowing of an obligation is a necessary condition for being capable of (intentionally) complying with it. But will formulations of DCT imply that the following type of situation is possible: (i) Due to a divine intention of a certain sort, at least one person is morally obligated to do something (or refrain from doing something), and (ii) she is unable to come to know of this obligation, since God has not expressed His intention. But since the above-stated “ought implies can” principle is true, this situation is not possible. Therefore, will formulations of DCT are false.

What to make of these objections to will formulations? If we don’t consider the “ought implies can” rationale behind the main premise, then the force of the argument will depend upon whether one finds a social theory of moral obligation persuasive. I suspect that many won’t find it persuasive. But even if we don’t, I think the “ought implies can” rationale is strong enough, all by itself, to support the main premise. However, Murphy disagrees. He thinks that no self-respecting moral realist can accept it. For, he argues, it seems to be a straightforward implication of moral realism that moral facts exist independently of human beings, just as rocks and trees exist independently of us. But then it follows that it is possible that there are moral values that we are not aware of. In particular, there could be moral obligations that we are not aware of. But if so, then the above-mentioned “ought implies can” principle is false, and so the argument doesn’t go through.8

I think this objection misses the mark. For recall the way that the “ought implies can” principle was formulated above. The principle doesn’t have the implication that there can’t be unknown moral obligations. Rather, it implies that there can’t be unknowable moral obligations. But surely any plausible moral theory must have the latter implication. A fortiori, any theistic version of moral realism must have this implication. For, prima facie, God’s holding His creatures accountable for failing to comply with obligations that He doesn’t express is incompatible with His goodness.9 So it appears that, necessarily, if a divine command theory is true (one according to which the divine commander is the God of traditional theism), then if God places obligations on His creatures, then He communicates them (or somehow makes it possible for His creatures to discover them). But as we have seen, will formulations allow for the possibility of morally binding, yet forever unexpressed, divine intentions. I submit, then, that Murphy has not shown that the above-mentioned “ought implies can” principle is false with respect to moral realist theories. It appears that we have found another necessary condition that any adequate moral theory must satisfy:

The Accessibility Condition (AC): Necessarily, for any moral rule, R, R is binding only if R is cognitively accessible in principle.

Unfortunately for Murphy, the principle shows that will formulations of DCT are inadequate. For unlike other versions of moral realism, will formulations of DCT entail that moral obligations can exist, and yet be incapable of discovery (even in principle) if God doesn’t express them. Therefore, will formulations of DCT are untenable.

IV
It is now time to take stock. In section II, we saw that any adequate moral theory must meet the following condition:

The Non-contingency Condition (NC): No moral obligation, R, is objectionably contingent.

Corollary: For any moral obligation R, if R isn’t binding without a human social practice of commanding, then R is objectionably contingent.

And in section III, we saw that any adequate moral theory must also satisfy the following condition:

The Accessibility Condition (AC): Necessarily, for any moral obligation, R, R is binding only if R is cognitively accessible in principle.

Putting these together, we get the following thesis:

The Adequacy Thesis: A moral theory is adequate only if it simultaneously satisfies both NC and AC.

Finally, the discussions of sections II and III together provide strong support for the following thesis:

The Incompatibility Thesis (IT): No version of DCT can simultaneously satisfy both NC and AC: For any version of DCT, T, T satisfies NC iff T does not satisfy AC.

For it is clear from the discussion in these sections that the feature of command formulations that enables them to satisfy the Accessibility Condition - the one that grounds the claim that no divine intention can generate a moral obligation unless it is communicated - is the very feature that prevents them from satisfying the Non-contingency Condition. It is also clear, from the discussion in these sections, that the feature of will formulations that enables them to satisfy the Non-contingency Condition - the one that grounds the claim that divine intentions (of a certain sort) can generate obligations, even if God does not express them - is the very feature that prevents them from satisfying the Accessibility Condition. But IT entails that no divine command theory satisfies the Adequacy Thesis. But if not, then it follows that neither formulation of DCT is adequate.

If the points of the previous paragraph are correct, then it is a short step to the conclusion that no possible formulation of DCT is adequate. For anything that could possibly count as a formulation of DCT would have to ground (at least some) moral properties in either (i) God’s commands alone, (ii) God’s intentions alone, or (iii) God’s intentions expressed in the form of commands.10 Now we have already dealt with (ii) and (iii). But our objections to (iii) apply to (i) as well. For, even apart from the inherent implausibility of type-(i) versions of DCT11, they imply that God’s ability to obligate would depend upon an existing practice of commanding. But if so, then version-(i) DCT fails to satisfy the Non-contingency Condition. Therefore, it cannot be an adequate moral theory. But since versions (i), (ii) and (iii) are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive formulations of DCT, any possible version of DCT must be an instance of one of these versions. And since we have just seen that each version is untenable, it follows that no possible version of DCT is an adequate moral theory.

In summary, then, we have taken a brief look at the only two formulations of DCT that have been advertised and endorsed. While discussing these accounts, we uncovered two necessary conditions of any adequate moral theory. We then saw that, while each of these formulations could meet one of the two conditions, neither version could meet both. Finally, we exploited some of these results to refute the only other possible formulation of DCT, one that no one endorses. And these results yielded the (perhaps) startling conclusion that DCT is doomed.

-----
1His most developed defense of this view is to be found in his Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (New York: Oxford UP, 1999). See especially chapter 11 of that work.

2 Murphy, Mark. “Divine Commands, Divine Will, and Moral Obligation”, Faith and Philosophy 15 (January, 1998), pp. 3-27.

3The following argument is a modified version of the one Murphy gives in “Divine Commands, Divine Will, and Moral Obligation”, pp. 5-7.

4Adams, Robert. Finite and Infinite Goods, p. 266.

5This is a rough summary of Adams’ argument in his Finite and Infinite Goods, pp. 261-2.

6This is Adams’ primary rationale. See Finite and Infinite Goods, p. 262.

7It should be noted that Adams is uncomfortable with putting much weight on this second rationale. See Finite and Infinite Goods, p. 261-2, and footnote 27 on p. 262.

8This is a paraphrase of Murphy’s reply in “Divine Commands, Divine Will, and Moral Obligation”, p. 8.

9Adams seems to be raising the same problem for will formulations when he says that they yield “...an unattractive picture of divine-human relations, one in which the wish of God’s heart imposes binding obligations without even being communicated, much less issuing a command. Games in which one party incurs guilt for failing to guess the unexpected wishes of the other party are not nice games. They are no nicer if God is thought of as a party to them.” Finite and Infinite Goods, p. 261.

10 Surely, no ethical theory that entailed that moral properties are grounded *neither* in God’s will *nor* in His commands (nor a combination of them) could count as a version of DCT.

11E.g., it appears that type-(i) versions imply that there could be a morally binding divine command that God does not want us to obey, which seems absurd., end