I know fellow bloggers here at DC may disagree with me, perhaps even Biblical scholar Hector Avalos. But let me very briefly outline the case for the historical person of the man Jesus. Even though I think the Christian faith is delusional, I think a man named Jesus existed who inspired people in the first century who is best seen as an apocalyptic doomsday prophet.
It’s a worthy question though, something I’m willing to learn about. But here are my reasons.
I think pure historical studies cannot prove whether Jesus actually existed or not. That something happened in the historical past doesn’t mean we can show that it did. That something did not happen in historical past does not mean we can show that it didn’t. You’ll have to read my chapter on “The Poor Evidence of Historical Evidence” to know why I think this, where I argue that if God revealed himself in the historical past he chose a poor medium and a poor era to do so. Historical studies are fraught with difficulties. Even Christian scholar Richard Bauckham acknowledges in his book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, that “Historical work, by its very nature, is always putting two and two together and making five—or twelve or seventeen.” (p. 93)
The very fact that several scholars have reasonably concluded Jesus probably never existed is proof that historical studies is a slender reed to hang one’s faith on. Historians disagree over a great deal, even over mundane things. Christian, your faith is based upon so many conclusions about history, including whether Jesus even existed at all, that with each question the probability of your faith diminishes. Why don't you admit this fact and then turn around and say something like this: "I am willing to stake my whole life on the basis of a probability from historical investigations. It's probable that my conclusions on a whole host of historical issues are true by, say ____% (insert the probability)." [51% 55% 60% ???].
I’ve read the relevant passages in Tacitus (64 AD), Pliny (112 AD), Suetonious (49 AD), Rabbi Eliezer (post 70 AD), the Benediction Twelve (post 70 AD), Josephus (post 70 AD). I’ve read the Christian inscription in Pompeii, too (79 AD). I understand the debates about them. But consider the majority scholarly consensus about the two-source theory of synoptic gospel tradition (Q and Mark) that predate the Gospels, and that we have early creeds inside Paul's writings (I Cor. 8:6; 12:3; 15:3-4; Galatians 4:4-5; I Tim. 3:16) that predate his letters. Consider also the close connection between the New Testament era with the early church fathers like John the elder, Polycarp, Ignatius, Irenaeus, and others. We have to date these texts, no doubt, and many of them are indeed late, and some were forgeries. But they still offer some kind of early testimony to the historicity of a man called Jesus. Even a tradition is based on something. I just don’t see why we must discount the various independent writers of the New Testament itself on the historicity of Jesus. Why, for instance, should we not believe anything at all in the New Testament unless there is independent confirmation from outside sources?
Furthermore, what Jesus may have did and said seems to correspond to the Jewishness of that era as best as we can tell. E.P. Sanders in his book, The Historical Figure of Jesus, even thinks there was nothing strange about his message that would've gotten him killed by the Jewish authorites (he argues instead that the Romans were the sole actors). He argued that "the level of disagreement and arguments falls well inside the parameter of debate that were accepted in Jesus' time." (p. 216). He adds, "If Jesus disagreed with other interpreters over details, the disputes were no more substantial than were disputes between the Jewish parties and even within each party." (p. 225).
I could be wrong. But here is why I think I’m right. Passionate cult-like religious groups are always started by a cult figure, not an author, and not a committee. It’s always a single charismatic leader that gathers passionate religious people together. So who is the most likely candidate for starting the Jesus cult? Jesus himself is, although Paul certainly was the man most responsible for spreading what he believed about his story. And even though Paul never met Jesus and only had a vision of him on the Damascus Road (Acts 26:19), his testimony is that there were already Christians whom he was persecuting in Palestine in the first century.
I think if we look at the New Testament texts it's clear Jesus was an apocalyptic doomsday prophet who's message, like that of John the Baptist before him, is for people to "repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." It was to be imminent eschaton in his day and age, when the prophesied “son of man” was to come. At his coming it was believed there would be cataclysmic events that would take place, even such that The Stars Will Fall From Heaven; literally! Such a message would be more than adequate for starting a cult-like group of people later to be known as Christians. That Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet has been the dominant Christian view since the time of Albert Schweitzer and given a robust defense recently by Christian scholar Dale Allison in his book, Jesus of Nazareth. For an excellent overall treatment of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet see Bart D. Ehrman’s book, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium.
So even though historical studies are fraught with some serious problems, I think the evidence is that an apocalyptic prophet named Jesus developed a cult-like following in Palestine in the first century. I cannot be sure about this though, from a mere historical investigation of the evidence. I could be wrong. But that's what I think.
Fire away now, on both sides. I stand in the middle.
This will be my last post on Dr. Haught’s interesting and thought provoking book, God and the New Atheism . Throughout his book he criticizes the New Atheists for not understanding science, theology, faith, and Christian morality. I have shared where I thought Haught was right and where he was wrong. And I’ve argued that over-all he is wrong.
I’ve commented on several of his main themes. Now I want to speak about his understanding of biblical morality. Haught charges that Dawkins discussion of morality and the Bible, for instance, “is a remarkable display of ignorance and foolish sarcasm.” (p. 68). If you’ve read Dawkins, he speaks, as I do, of the morality we find in the Bible, like dashing babies against the rocks, genocide, slavery, and so forth. It’s in the Bible, so we mention it. It won’t do any good to mention the good portions of the Bible, because if there is a perfectly good God these things should never have received divine sanction in the first place, period.
Haught wants to stress that “the main point of biblical religion…is to have faith, trust, and hope in God. Morality is secondary.” (p. 67) So let’s pause and ask what is the main point of biblical religion. Haught should know this is highly disputed by Christian scholars themselves. From Walther Eichrodt to Walter Brueggemann to Jon D. Levenson to Liberation theologies, there is no agreement. Harvard trained Biblical scholar Hector Avalos argues convincingly that biblical theology “often is selective and arbitrary in judging what counts as ‘central’ or ‘significant’ features of biblical thought.” Avalos adds: "No matter which type one prefers, the lesson is that there is no such thing as a unified ‘biblical theology,’ nor can there be.” [The End of Biblical Studies, pp. 249-51). So I ask, who speaks for biblical theology? From all that I know Dr. Avalos is absolutely correct. So I see no reason to fault Dawkins for not caring to know Haught’s particular views on the matter when writing his book.
Dr. Haught claims that the “moral core of Judaism and Christianity” is “justice…what has come to be known as God’s preferential option for the poor and disadvantaged.” (p. 68). Who is he trying to kid here? Yes, there is an emphasis on the poor and disadvantaged in several major sections of the Bible, notably the prophets, but do the “disadvantaged” include slaves, witches, women caught in adultery, or the many offenses that require capital punishment, like a son cursing his patriarchal kingly father? Does it include the women God told the Israelite soldiers to take as sex slaves (Numbers 31:17-18)? Does it include Jepthah’s daughter who was sacrificed to God by her father? Does it include the wives that Ezra told his people to divorce simply because they were not Jewish? Does it include the surrounding nations that God “commanded” the Israelites to butcher? Does it include the virgins that were stolen as wives from the cities of Jabesh Gilead and Shiloh (Judges 21)? If God cares so much for the poor and disadvantaged, then why not advocate justice for them?
Nonetheless, Haught writes: “To maintain that we can understand modern and contemporary social justice, civil rights, and liberation movements without any reference to (the prophets) Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Jesus, and other biblical prophets makes Dawkins treatment of morality and faith unworthy of comment.” (p. 68). And for special emphasis he mentions Martin Luther King’s civil rights message, which “clearly cites Jesus and the prophets as the most authoritative voices in support of…his protests against the injustice of racism.” (p. 94).
I think Sam Harris already debunked such a view as “cherry-picking” from the Bible, which theologians like Haught do. In theological terms this is the problem of the canon within the canon, where the question is which parts of the canon are to be stressed and which ones are to be minimized. Christian scholars in previous generations stressed different parts of the Bible didn’t they, which legitimized heretic, honor, and witch killings, along with slavery and holy wars.
Besides, the truth is that the prophets actively preached God’s reign among his people, and this God, as depicted by Hector Avalos, “is the ultimate imperialist.” (p. 279). Even the word for “peace” (Shalom) is viewed through imperialistic terminology, says Avalos. “As used in the Hebrew Bible, it really refers to a state of affairs favorable to Yahweh. Peace means no more war only insofar as Yahweh has destroyed his opponents or he has successfully beaten them into utter submission” (p. 279), and he quotes from Isaiah 14:1-2, as but one example:
The LORD will have compassion on Jacob;
once again he will choose Israel
and will settle them in their own land.
Aliens will join them
and unite with the house of Jacob.
2 Nations will take them
and bring them to their own place.
And the house of Israel will possess the nations
as menservants and maidservants in the LORD's land.
They will make captives of their captors
and rule over their oppressors.
While Haught points to the prophets as the moral center of Biblical religion, he utterly fails to understand that there would be no need to reform the Church from sanctioning such things as heretic and witch killings, along with slavery, racism and sexism, if God was clear from the beginning. God could’ve said things like: “Thou shalt not buy, beat, trade, or own slaves,” and said it as often as needed without giving contradictory advice. If God was this clear from the beginning there would be nothing to reform in the first place. The Church could never sanction witch killings if God had said, “Thou shalt not kill people of different faiths nor those who practice witchcraft” and said it as often as needed from the beginning. Instead we read, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
When it comes to the injustices found in the Bible, Haught admits they are found there. But with sarcasm Haught charges: “Either the God of the Bible must be a perfect moral role model and a perfect engineer, or else this God is not permitted by Dawkins to exist at all.” (p. 105) He thinks there is a third way. He claims that it is not biblical religion but “idolatry” that makes religion go bad.” “The antidote to idolatry, however, is not atheism but faith.” (p. 76)
Haught accepts evolutionary biology and with it believes in a God of process. He claims that from a Christian theological point of view “our lives, human history, and the universe itself are part of a momentously meaningful drama of liberation and the promise of ultimate fulfillment.” (p. 101). He concludes that “the God of evolution humbly invites creatures to participate in the ongoing creation of the universe,” (p. 107), and by this he means being active in the pursuit of justice.
Haught's God is one of mystery that requires faith. But in the end Haught’s God is unwittingly the “god of the gaps” where the gaps left unexplained by science, such as the problem of consciousness and the problem of a basis for morality, leave room for his faith in the mysterious God of Tillich’s “ultimate concern.” I’m sure he’ll deny this. He’ll argue instead that his God is the sustainer of creation and can be seen in all of creation, not just in the gaps. But modern science has closed all of the other gaps, so his God is the only one left after the demolition is done. Prior to modern science Christians believed the Genesis creation accounts literally, but with the advent of modern science Haught’s Church was forced to give that up. Prior to the awareness that every human being should be entitled to human rights, Haught's Church defended witch hunts and slavery. Prior to the women’s rights movement Haught’s Church defended sexism. Because things have changed in defiance of the Church, Haught now wants to maintain this is the result of progressive revelation stemming from the prophets of old which takes place by God’s direction.
I’m sure he is aware of the parable of the invisible gardener. I think he believes in one. His faith needs no positive evidence. The only evidence his faith needs are the gaps in our knowledge. But since there are likely always to be gaps, his faith has no positive evidence for it at all.
There is much more in this book than what I could touch on here. It’s very instructive. Get it and see for yourself his robust defense of Christian theology in the face of the onslaught of the New Atheists. Does his faith survive the attacks of the New Atheists? Maybe, but his God is not worth worshipping. He believes in a distant God, and a distant God is no different than none at all. Judge for yourselves. But for me and my house, faith in the gaps of scientific knowledge is an extremely slender reed to hang one's hat on. What will he believe tomorrow? What will his church be able to believe in the future? Less and less and less and less.
I just received an email from a minister-in-training who said this:
In the end, you must understand that if you are wrong, you may want to think about what kind of God you are going to face. I do not buy into the fact that we are just matter floating around by chance with electrical impluses controlling all of our actions. I do not think you do either deep down, otherwise you would not even be writing this blog. You would not feel the desire to prove you are right unless something inside of you was scared in realizing the enormity of the fallout this sort of worldview decision causes. You need others to come along with you in your break away; the same thing you make fun of Christians for doing in evangelism. You are afraid to be alone. Humans were not created by God to be alone. This is what fuels your meaningless movement; the fear of being separated from God alone or from living this life alone as an outcast. In the end, if you are right, all is meaningless. No matter how you strive for meaning, it does not matter---your worldview will not allow man to have a spirit or any eternal destiny. You may live under the motto that you only live once, but I say to you that every man dies forever if he is not reconciled to God. That is the reason death feels like such a cheat to humans, because it is; when you look at the biblical account, we were never supposed to die. We were created finite, but immortal. The Fall changed things, and we know in our being that death is an enemy and is not a natural part of living.
I think the first sentence above should be considered seriously by us all...all of us! I must. My conclusion is that the claims of Christianity are so miserably weak that I have no fear in debunking it...none. That's a pretty powerful statement don't you think? That's what I've concluded. It tells you what I think about the strength of the case for Christianity; that it has no strength at all to me. That's what I'm saying. That's what all of us here at DC think. It's not just that we think it's probably untrue. We're willing to stake our future on what we conclude. We're willing to risk God's judgment when we die on what we think. Is this not like the witness of the Christians who eagerly met martyrdom for Jesus? They were deluded, unlike us. We can argue why we're not deluded on so many different levels it may surprize you. Surely this does not prove our case, just as those early Christian martyrs don't prove their case. But we stand as former believers who say with this much force that Christianity is a delusion.
Then the writer went on to compare Christianity to atheism as if those are the only two alternatives. There is liberal Christianity, existential Christianity, Deism, Pantheism, panentheism, secular Christianity, Liberation Theology, agnosticism, and so forth, to compare Christianity to. I have repeatedly said I might be able to accept a God, a deistic god, a philosopher's god, but since that kind of god is no different than none at all, I choose atheism. The alternatives are not between accepting evangelical Christianity and atheism. There are a whole host of intermediary positions to hold to.
The following is an excerpt from the Preface to a modern academic text: Introduction to theHebrew Bible by John J. Collins. Augsburg Fortress Press, 2004.
"The introduction is historical-critical in the sense that it emphasizes that the biblical text is the product of a particular time and place and is rooted in the culture of the ancient Near East. Since much of the Old Testament tells an ostensibly historical story, questions of historical accuracy must be addressed. In part, this is a matter of correlating the biblical account with evidence derived from archaeology and other historical sources. But it also leads to a discussion of the genre of the biblical text. The historical-like appearance of biblical narrative should not be confused with historiography in the modern sense. Our best guide to the genre of biblical narrative is the corpus of literature from the ancient Near East that has been recovered over the last two-hundred years.
This introduction, however, is not only historical in orientation. The primary importance of the Old Testament as scripture lies in its ethical implications. In some cases biblical material is ethically inspiring - the story of liberation from slavery in Egypt, the Ten Commandments, the preaching of the prophets on social justice. In other cases, however, it is repellent to modern sensibilities. The command to slaughter the Canaanites is the showcase example, but there are numerous issues relating to slaves, women, homosexuality, and the death penalty that are, at the very least, controversial in a modern context. In any of these cases, whether congenial to modern sensibilities or not, this introduction tries to use the biblical text as a springboard for rising issues of enduring importance. The text is not a source of answers on these issues, butrather a source of questions. Most students initially see the text though a filter of traditional interpretations. It is important to appreciate how these traditional interpretations arose, but also to ask how far they are grounded in the biblical text and whether other interpretations are possible." (pp. ix - x)
(A native of Ireland, Professor Collins was a professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago from 1991 until his arrival at Yale Divinity School in 2000. He previously taught at the University of Notre Dame. He has published widely on the subjects of apocalypticism, wisdom, Hellenistic Judaism, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. His books include the commentary on Daniel in the Hermeneia series; The Scepter and the Star: The Messiahs of Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls; Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age; The Apocalyptic Imagination; Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora; and most recently, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible with CD-ROM; Does the Bible Justify Violence?; Jewish Cult and Hellenistic Culture; Encounters with Biblical Theology; and The Bible after Bable: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age. He is co-editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism and has participated in the editing of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He is editor of a monograph series for Brill titled Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplements and of the journal Dead Sea Discoveries, and has served as editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature and as president of both the Catholic Biblical Association and the Society of Biblical Literature.)
We skeptics don't need to explain your belief away. We can, and we do, but we don't need to. We think you have fallen prey to what Paul Kurtz called The Transcendental Temptation. You have a need to believe based on a fear of death, the need for moral certitude and/or a blissful hope in an afterlife. All skeptics have to do is show you why you are wrong, and we do.
But since you believe we will be punished by God in hell (however conceived) if we don't believe, then you need to offer some explanations for why we don't believe. Surely a good God like yours wouldn't punish us if we weren't deserving of it, right? And surely your God wouldn't punish us for our disbelief without offering us a clear testimony with sufficient evidence to believe, right?
Are we ignorant? What are we ignorant about? Is there a book we haven't read that if we read it we would no longer be ignorant? Would we believe if we read it? Which one?
Are we willfully disobedient of the truth? Do we love sin more than truth? Why would you say that? Because the Bible says so? The billions of people who are not Christians in today's world are a testimony that the Bible is wrong about this. There is other overwhelming evidence against believing in the Bible. This is just one more. Why do you trust what the Bible says when the evidence of billions of people say otherwise? Just look at what people of other faiths or no faith at all will do if they think they know what is true. A lot of sacrificing is going on, from freethinkers suffering the approbation of the majority in our society to suicide bombers to ascetic Tibetan monks. People the world over would gladly sacrifice themselves for a cause or a faith they sincerely believed was the truth. I think it’s patently false to say people are not interested in the truth about such things, especially if we’ll fry in hell if we’re wrong. Who in his right mind would be willfully disobedient of that which he knows to be true, if the truth is that he will go to hell if he is?
Have we just failed to experience God in our lives? Do we need to experience something that we didn't? What kind of experience do you mean? A miracle? Well, whose fault is that? God knows what we need to believe, and if so, why doesn’t he provide it? If God did the greater deed, by sending his son to atone for our sins, then why doesn't he do the lesser deeds by providing us the evidence and experiences we need to believe?
I’ve been reviewing John F. Haught’s book, God and the New Atheism, which can read here. This will be my fourth post about it. I’ll write more about his book later.
To recap, I said the claim of the new atheists is that the evidence does not support the faith of a believer in God, and they are right. Haught disagrees, but how does he propose to show them they are wrong apart from the evidence? What method does he propose to investigate our experience in this world other than science and the evidence? Mysticism? Intuition? I argued it’s reasonable to think that since methodological naturalism has worked so well that philosophical (or ontological) naturalism is a reasonable conclusion to come to, even if we cannot prove such a conclusion by a scientific experiment itself!
I also questioned Haught’s choice of atheists to compare the new atheists to. I said let us atheists decide who speaks for us. Don’t go telling us that Nietzsche speaks for us. And I turned the tables on him by asking him if he would object if I claimed that certain Christians speak for him.
Now I want to ask him, “Who speaks for Christianity?”
Haught faults the new atheists for not understanding theology, and he equates them with creationists who reject evolution “without ever taking a course in biology,” (p. 29) because they place “the same literalist demands on the Bible as do Christians and other fundamentalists.” (p. 33). And just like their chosen opponents, Haught tells us the new atheists “are in complete and inalterable possession of the truth.” (p. 39). When they treat God as a hypothesis by ignoring Martin Buber’s distinction between viewing God as an “It” versus a “Thou,” and by ignoring the work of theologians like Karl Barth (who I did my master’s thesis on), and Paul Tillich, the new atheists “have chosen to topple a deity whose existence most theologians and a very large number of other Christians, Muslims, and Jews would have no interest in defending anyway.” (p. 44).
Granted, the new atheists seem to be surer of what they claim than they can truly be. I describe myself best as an agnostic atheist. I cannot be sure that I’m right that no God exists at all. I know I’m right when it comes to evangelical Christianity, for instance, but some sort of deist, or impersonal, or uncaring, or impotent, and/or hidden God might exist who merely created what Stephen Hawking described as a “quantum wave fluctuation.” If such a God existed he would be a distant God. But since a distant God is no different than none at all, I choose to affirm atheism.
That being said, I find it odd that Haught faults us skeptics for treating God as a hypothesis, as an “It,” not a “Thou.” He lauds William James’s essay, “The Will to Believe,” and states matter-of-factly that the new atheists “show no sign" of ever having read it (p. 6). But I have. And James treats God as a hypothesis! James disputes “agnostic rules for truth-seeking” because such rules will prevent us from knowing the truth about God, if he exists. Why? In his own words: “If God exists, then we might have to meet that hypothesis halfway to see whether it is true.” So Haught cannot have it both ways here if he thinks James is on to something—something I take issue with in my book. We are outsiders. We do not know God as a person, a “Thou.” I once claimed to have done so, so I know the perspective from which he writes. But I now claim to have been deluded into thinking I had a relationship with a God. I didn’t, because he doesn’t exist. Now for me all that’s left is the hypothesis whether or not some object (albeit "spiritual object") such as God exists. As outsiders that’s what we do. That’s what ANY outsider can do. That’s what Haught does with the Hindu god, or the Mormon god.
Haught is a theologically liberal Catholic scholar and he seems to be able to tell us what most Christians believe, or most Christian scholars anyway. But I never saw a poll in his book where this was shown. He may be right about most present-day Christian or theistic scholars, but he is surely wrong about most pastors and Christians in the pews. And he is certainly wrong about the Christian theologians and scholars of the past.
The trouble we skeptics have when attempting to debunk Christianity is that we have a moving and nebulous target. So how can any of us be faulted for not knowing which Christianity to take aim at, including the new atheists? In the introduction to my book Edward T. Babinski describes what a many splintered thing Christianity is. He wrote:
Two thousand years and forty-five thousand separate Christian denominations and missionary organizations later, we have modern-day “Christianity,” including everything from Trappist monks and Quakers who worship in silence, and meditating Christians dialoging with Eastern faiths, to hell-raisers and snake-handling Christians. We have damnationists and universalist Christians, and many more groups besides. Even after the Roman Empire adopted and enforced Christian faith, Arian and Athanasian Christians rioted, killed, and persecuted each other, as did Donatists and Catholics. And none of the older ideas ever fully die out, because some of the Bible verses and arguments used by Arians were much later revived and used by deists and Unitarians, while the Donatists never gave up their fight to appoint their own priests rather than Rome, kind of like today’s ultraconservative Catholics who think the papacy is wrong but the rest of Catholicism is good. And there are many differences of opinion on everything in Christianity today from social issues to religious issues like tongue-speaking; baptism; miracles; when and how to best honor the Sabbath; what Old Testament laws ought to be enforced today for the good of society; what signs to look for in the “saved,” including “short hair in men”; or using the King James Bible above all other translations. Meanwhile some things that the early church emphasized are little emphasized today, except among the Catholics, by which I mean clergy celibacy, as seen in the words of Jesus and Paul and the author of Revelation. Christianity continues to evolve and branch into further new rival denominations and suborganizations as time goes on. How Darwinian of the churches!
This blog and my book, for instance, take aim at a specific target for this very reason--evangelical Christianity. I do this precisely because to be effective one must specify with pinpoint accuracy that which he wants to debunk. Too large of a target and I’ll not be effective. But when I do this I am criticized for not dealing with Haught’s type of liberal Catholic Christianity. So be it. As one Blogger said not long ago when justifying our chosen evangelical target:
Not only is fundamentalist Christianity the greatest threat in the United States to science, tolerance, and social progress, but it is also the most prevalent form of Protestant Christianity to be found in our nation, whether you like it or not. It is the fundamentalist religious right that holds the reigns of the Republican party (which currently controls the nation, in case you didn't realize), and it is this same fundamentalist religious right that lobbies for the teaching of lies in public school and fights against funding for embryonic research that could potentially save the lives of millions.
Whether you like it or not, it is this flavor of Christianity that makes the loudest, most obnoxious, most dangerous impact on the world today, giving us plenty of good reason to direct the brunt of our attacks in its vicinity.
Sam Harris does indeed take on the moderates and liberals by questioning their uncritical tolerance of religious faith, which grants legitimacy without penalty for extremists to kill in the name of their God. But Haught still faults Harris for not seeing the irony of his own “intolerance of religious tolerance.” Haught writes: “Even the vaguest knowledge of humanity’s sorrowful struggle toward tolerance and religious freedom would make most people hesitate before promoting the intolerance of tolerance.” (p. 38). But the irony is Haught’s, I think. The irony is that he is defending the Catholic Church which had people burned at the stake for expressing themselves and thinking freely. The Catholic church slowed the progress of science by condemning Galileo in the Inquisition (Rene Descartes had written a book titled The World, for instance, which agreed with Galileo, but when he saw what had happened to Galileo he didn’t publish it). I find it extremely ill-advised for Haught, as a Catholic, if he wants to take any credit for our present day love for tolerance, for chiding the new atheists as they freely express their rage against the intolerance of the church even in today's world. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge once said: "Tolerate the tolerable." That's all anyone can do.
I maintain that the Catholic Church has been seriously wrong in the past with the witch-hunts, Inquisition, Crusades, the protection of molestor-priests, and slavery (The Catholic Church didn’t condemn slavery until the year 1888, after the Civil War and after every other Christian nation had abolished it). If three hundred years of witch hunting and two hundred years of heresy hunting doesn't qualify as something the Church did seriously wrong, then I don't know what to tell you. As a former Catholic and a former doctoral student in a program of theology and ethics at Marquette University (a Jesuit college), I claim that if the Catholic church was seriously wrong once, then I have no reason to trust her at all. A more reasonable supposition is that the Catholic Church is led by mere men (especially men!), as the history of that church can and does show. Whole communties of faith must be wrong given their proliferation, and I think this goes for the Catholic community of faith.
So just as I faulted Haught for telling the new atheists which atheists speak for us, I now fault him for claiming the new atheists don’t target the right theology. Here’s what he needs to do (with no intention of ridicule). Get all of the Christian theologians together. Lock the most important ones in a very large room (that’ll be the first decision) and then have them stay there until they come to a consensus on what theology represents true Christianity. If they can come to a consensus let them emerge and I’ll write a book debunking that. But it’ll never happen, will it? Because not even Christians all agree who speaks for them, unless it’s them!
Over at Secular Philosophy they are running a series on the question, “Is religion the root of all evil, and if so, does science offer an alternative?” Along with a few clips from The Atheism Tapes, they've asked some distinguished guests like Michael Shermer, Susan Jacoby, and John F. Haught (who's book I'm reviewing here) to write 500 words on the question. This week my contribution has been posted. Enjoy.
Several people have asked me whether or not Craig sincerely believes, or whether he goes through the motions, so to speak, since he is surely fully aware of the objections we skeptics offer to his faith. I maintain he's sincerely deluded. He sincerely believes, but he's deluded. And I think I've found the reason why he can continue on in the face of what I consider to be the powerful objections of the skeptics.
If you've seen any of Craig's debates that I post here at DC, in every single one of them he says, in so many words, that he has personally experienced God and that others can too. I think his position reduces to Epistemological Solipsism and subject to all of the same criticisms. Let me explain.
In his signature book, Reasonable Faith, Craig has written about this topic. We find him saying things like...
We know Christianity to be true by the self-authenticating witness of God’s Holy Spirit.
What does he mean by this?
I mean that the witness, or testimony, of the Holy Spirit is its own proof; it is unmistakable; it does not need other proofs to back it up; it is self-evident and attests to its own truth.
And this as quoted in my book (p. 214)...
the testimony of the Holy Spirit trumps all other evidence.
And this...
A believer who is too uninformed or ill-equipped to refute anti-Christian arguments is rational in believing on the grounds of the witness of the Spirit in his heart even in the face of such unrefuted objections. Even such a person confronted with what are for him unanswerable objections to Christian theism is, because of the work of the Holy Spirit, within his epistemic rights—nay, under epistemic obligation—to believe in God.”
You can know that God exists apart from any arguments simply by experiencing him....For those who listen, God becomes an immediate reality in their lives.
Now let's put this into perspective. When Craig is asked to defend his view of the self-authenticating witness of the Spirit, he cannot sufficiently answer my questions and must resort to saying that the propositional content of this witness is "vague" or "ambiguous," and turns the tables on me with a red herring, seen here.
Now here's my point. If Craig thinks this inner witness trumps all evidence and arguments to the contrary, which he claims, then even if he cannot sufficiently defend his notion of the inner witness of the Spirit, it doesn't matter to him. He claims he knows Christianity is true irrespective of all the arguments and evidence to the contrary, even his arguments on behalf of the inner witness of the Spirit! That is, even if he cannot sufficiently defend the arguments on behalf of this inner witness, he still maintains he has it, and because he has it, he can believe despite the fact that he cannot sufficiently argue for it, and despite all evidence to the contrary.
This seems to me to be nothing more nor less than Epistemological Solipsism when it comes to the existence of God, and subject to the same kinds of criticisms.
The Bible’s answer to this post’s title is clear and simple; just consider what the Bible Believing Southern Baptist did to all their women professors, and God forbid women preachers! (Thank St. Paul for this bigoted view.)
Now what do good solid Bible believing Fundamental Christians say about our second point on hair (since they printed this tract). So lets see how the majority of the God fearing Bible Believing Christians understand the Godly points behind this essay.
Here’s how the tract written by Dr. Webb opens:
“Doth not nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?” 1 Corinth. 11: 14 “The current “craze” of male members of society to wear long hair is not the harmless fad that many assume. It is a planned, calculated trend to break down the manliness of American men. It is developing a “unisex” population of weakness, while it destroys the ruggedness of our men. It degrades , sissifies and victimizes out youth who pattern their hair after the “fairies”, “creeps”, “addicts”, “homos” and “anarchists” of this generation. I am aware that these are strong accusations, but read further. Of course to your present thinking it may just be a style, yet ask yourself a question or two. Does it please God and glorify Jesus Christ No indeed! The Bible calls it shame. Now please check the facts. ….There is not one single proof that Jesus wore long hair. In fact, I believe the facts are clearly jus the opposite.”
Here Dr. Webb goes into historical and Biblical proofs he claims supports the fact that Jesus did not have long hair and plus the Bible condemns long hair on men which makes them effeminate.
“SINNER….I am sure this writing will find its way into the hands and under the gaze of many a long haired, unsaved young man. My congratulations to you for reading this far. Forget the hair a moment and consider you first need…salvation.”
The above gives us a clear example that Christianity has been influenced by bigots and flat out nuts from the Apostle Paul to the author of this Gospel tract; Evangelist Dr. Hal Webb.
Yes, after more than a few failed attempts and fretting from my net Neanderthalish-ness, I am on YouTube now. The quality of the video leaves a lot to be desired, I know, but I'm learning. Please bear with me. Alright, here we go...
Rather than ridiculing my opponents which many New Atheists do, including comedian Lewis Black in his new book, and Bill Maher in his movie Religulous (a play on the word ridiculous), Michael Riley says of my book that I prefer to convince people of my position through reason. From the sound of it he prefers my approach. This is a good piece, although I've seen some poll data that differs from his.
Below you can read what one reviewer said of my book, Why I Became and Atheist. He joins several others who think it's a pretty good book, including three Christian philosopher/apologists. I only hope it helps people break free from the shackles of faith. Apparently it's helping. I'm grateful.
This book is nothing less than brilliant, Mr. Loftus was a fundamentalist minister for over twenty years, in the book he outlines in a few short pages why he left the church and became an atheist, the remainder of the book is one of the best philosophic, logical, historical deconstructions of Christianity and religion I have yet to read.
His knowledge and education have caused me to re asses my feelings that ministers are closed minded morons and while it surprises me that their education is so rounded it scares me that they can leave a world of academia still clinging to the medieval nonsense they spew.
Why I became an atheist is a must for the new atheist and the most weathered of us.
[Written by John Loftus] Back in July of 2007 I asked a question of William Lane Craig about Lessing's Broad Ugly Ditch, which I had previously written about here. This is Craig's answer, seen here. Then later that same month I asked him a follow-up question which he delayed responding to until Kevin Harris asked him on this week's podcast, which can be heard right here.
Based on Lessing's ditch Craig admits that historical evidence does not lead the believer to "certainty." Right that. In fact it's even worse than that. Christian, tell us, what is the probability that your faith is true based upon the historical evidence alone? Be honest. How sure are you that you are right about Christianity? Remember, you must be correct about a whole host of essential so-called historical truths like the incarnation, virgin birth, atonement, salvation, resurrection and so forth. In any debate you've heard on the resurrection, for instance, what would you say the probability is for the winner, even if we grant that the winner is Craig himself? 51% 60% 65% 70%? It's not even close to certainty, is it? The lack of certainty isn't the problem here. The problem is that Christians are called upon to stake their whole existence on a probability of historical evidence, depending on how he or she judges the case. So what is it, Christian? I'm very curious. Do you say that it’s 60% probable the Bible is true? Do you say that it’s 60% probable Jesus bodily arose from the dead? Why not? That’s the best you can say, I think, based upon the historical evidence, and even then I totally disagree. But does a 60% probability demand that you to stake your entire life and all that you do upon it? I think not.
Craig admits even more than this, though. Since people don't have access to the evidence how can they be sure their faith is true? According to Craig, God will not abandon us to the evidence of history or the "accidents of geography." So there must be some basis for these people to believe other than the evidence, he said. Really? How does he come to this conclusion, that there must be some basis other than the evidence to believe? Isn’t this assuming that which he needs to prove? He’s assuming his Christian God to explain away a problem—-the problem of people who do not have adequate evidence to believe—-and that his God would surely not ask them to believe if they couldn’t have access to the evidence. He’s also assuming that he has the correct understanding of the relevant Biblical texts, something which I’ve seen interpreted differently.
So let’s put this into perspective. Craig claims to have access to this evidence but even with this access he cannot know with certainty his faith is correct. An interesting question at this point would be to ask him how probable he thinks Christianity is based solely on the historical evidence he has access to. Again, 60% 70%? Then based on this probability he must also stake his claims about the inner witness of the Holy Spirit on the probability he has properly exegeted the relevant Biblical texts. Again, 60% 70%? Multiplying these two conclusions alone at 70% each, we get an overall probability for his claims of the inner witness of the Holy Spirit at 49% (70% times 70%). Not much of a claim if you ask me, even granting him the strength of his arguments.
Then when asked my follow-up question Craig stumbles a bit. Did you hear it? All he seems to conclude is that this witness reveals that God exists and that a person has assurance she is saved. And that isn’t even an answer, for we still need to know more about this God (a pantheist god, is after all, a God), why we need to be saved, from what do we need saved, how we are saved, what we must do in response to his offer of salvation, and so forth, and so on. He even admits he doesn’t know exactly where the limits are. These limits are “vague” and “ambiguous,” which is so good of a dodge that Sarah Palin would be proud of the way he handled the question!
Even to suggest, as Harris does, that such a witness “starts the regenerative process,” doesn’t help. For Craig affirms he knows the truth of Christianity by this inner witness of the Spirit! If this so-called witness merely starts some process, then how it ends that process isn’t explained! Point in fact, Craig would claim that there are essential propositional truths that someone must believe in to be saved. He would not think a liberal Christian is saved, who does not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, or someone who didn’t believe Jesus was God in the flesh, or someone who didn’t accept the Trinitarian God. These are propositional truths and they are based upon historical claims (who, for instance, would claim to know Jesus arose from the dead purely on philosophical grounds--not even Swinburne!?). For Craig, there are essential propositional truths that when believed make someone a Christian. Why then doesn't Craig say the inner witness of the Holy Spirit reveals all of the essential propositional truths necessary for salvation?
Then he finally turns the tables on me. He chuckles while he says, “Why should he (that is me) be setting the standard as to what [content] God wants to provide?” Again, this all assumes he is correct about everything he argues for, doesn’t it? Who sets the standard? Well, the obvious answer is that the rules of evidence and the reasonableness of argumentation set the standard for what I can believe, and that’s it. If there is a reasonable God he should know what those standards are, otherwise he’s asking us to believe against the standards that reasonable people demand, those that he supposedly created in us. It’s simply not reasonable to believe the inner witness of the Holy Spirit is available to everyone, or that it should be used as an excuse for believing without access to the available evidence. The bottom line is that if the Holy Spirit provides its own sufficient evidence to believe, then it should also provide all of the necessary and essential propositional content to the believer for being saved. That’s something I don’t hear Craig saying, because this very content is derived soley from the probability of historical investigations, and those conclusions can only result in some level of probability.
Tonight the conservative evangelical Sarah Palin will debate Joe Biden in the first and only Vice Presidental debate. But with candidate Sarah Palin’s disastrous interviews with both ABC New’s Charles Gibson and CBS New’s Katie Couric, the declining polls show increasing doubt in Palin’s experience and her ability to lead.
As I listened to various Christian radio stations and their morning talk programs this week, I’ve heard time and again the pleading of Christian talk show host for listeners to please pray for Sarah Palin in that God will give her victory in tonight’s debate.
This raises some major points:
A. If God is All Knowing, just why must limited humans tell God what He should do?
B. If God’s Will is to truly be done on earth (as it is in Heaven), then the faithful and righteous Palin should not lose (this will be based of post debate polls).
C. If Palin falls on her face tonight during the debate, just what value is her religion? God states that He would direct her knowledge ( “But when they deliver you up, don't be anxious how or what you will say, for it will be given you in that hour what you will say.” Matt 10: 19).
Finally, since tonight’s debate is in the future and millions of Christians are in prayer for God to support Sarah Palin, this debate will be a great test to see if there is a living “Heavenly Father” who hears His children cry out to Him or whether pray is nothing more than religious thinking = simpy talking to ones self.
This is a continuation of my review of John F. Haught’s book, God and the New Atheism. Earlier parts can be found here.
In chapter two Haught compares the so-called new atheists with some of the atheists of yesteryear. He teaches a course on “The Problem of God,” in which he requires his students to read the best available atheist literature. He maintains that the writings of the new atheists “would never have made the list of required readings.” When compared to the “more muscular” atheist writings found in Feuerbach, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Camus, and Sartre, whom he calls the “hard core atheists,” the “soft-core” new atheists offer a “pale brand of atheism.” They offer a “relatively light fare” in comparison to “the gravity of an older and much more thoughtful generation of religious critics.”
The older atheism, according to Haught, “if one is serious about it, should make all the difference in the world, and it should take a superhuman effort to embrace it.” The older atheists realized that “most people will be too weak to accept the terrifying consequences of the death of God. However, anything less would be escapism, cowardice, and bad faith.” Haught sums up Nietzsche by asking: “Are you willing to risk madness? If not, then you are not really an atheist.” By contrast, Haught argues the new atheists seem oblivious to the logical conclusion that atheism leads them to. They “want atheism to prevail at the least possible expense to the agreeable socioeconomic circumstances out of which they sermonize.” “They would have the God religions simply disappear, after which we should be able to go on enjoying the same lifestyle as before, only without the nuisance of suicide bombers and TV evangelists.” This kind of atheism, Haught argues, would have “nauseated” the older hard core atheists. At least they understood that for sincere and consistent atheists “the whole web of meanings and values that had clustered around the idea of God in Western culture has to go down the drain along with its organizing center.”
Haught is correct about these older atheists. Camus, for instance, wrestled seriously with the question “Why not commit suicide?” Sartre argued that if God doesn’t exist then there is no human nature. We alone define ourselves and we alone must invent our own values. But why must Haught compare the new atheists to these particular older atheists? There is other atheist literature to compare their writings to, like Bertrand Russell, Antony Flew, J.L. Mackie, and Michael Martin, to name some of the most notable and prolific ones. The fact is that the particular older atheists Haught is comparing Dawkins, et. al. to, are mostly known as existentialists. They are men who argued from atheism to a particular conclusion about values and morals, which they believed had no other grounding than one’s inner subjective choices. They were relativists and could see no reasonable explanation for morals apart from the “will to power,” or choice itself. And they concluded, falsely I might add, that without a rational grounding for morals in God our world is potentially screwed. No wonder Christians like Haught love these other atheists so much, because they seem to confirm what Christians want them to confirm about a society without God, that it could potentially go to hell in a handbasket.
By contrast, Bertrand Russell wrote plenty about morality, as did Antony Flew, J.L. Mackie, and Michael Martin. These atheists do not conclude what the existential writers did about morality and a society without God. There have been some other good atheist writers like Erik J. Wienberg and Michael Shermer, who have likewise offered good reasons for morality and a good society if there is no God. Unlike the existentialists of the past who were groping for moral answers in a godless society, subsequent atheist writers have found reasonable solutions to these questions. And these solutions allow me to say that the new atheists are indeed correct that there will be positive changes with only minimal kinds of other changes to society and moral values without God, despite what the existentialists claimed.
So let us atheists decide who speaks for us. Don’t go telling us that Nietzsche speaks for us. We atheists disagree about a great deal of things. In fact, just because one is an atheist does not mean we will agree about much of anything else. History has moved on. We have all learned some lessons of the past. The problems of the past are being solved by more thoughtful thinkers. And when Christians like Haught want to compare apples to apples let's do just that. The new atheists are writing in a new generation, one which has good reasons to think society itself will be better off than one in which the God religions exist, not the other way around. So let's compare their writings to the other atheist literature today.
Besides, if Haught thinks he can declare which atheists speaks for us in this new generation, then what does he say when we do the same thing to him? We atheists can legitimately claim his views of the Bible are lame and insipid compared with those of the previous centuries. We argue that when it comes to the logic of the Crusades, Inquisition, witch hunts, slavery and so on, that given the Bible, the logic of such horrific actions was impeccable. We argue that Christians like Haught have continually retreated in what they think is morally acceptable in light of the advancement of learning and the lessons of history, which is the same basis for how atheists learn their morality. When we do this he would cry “foul,” wouldn’t he? He would say the Christians of the past don't speak for him. So do I when it comes to some atheists of the past, even though I have a much better case to make than he does.
I eventually intend to read and review Loftus' book also, but I've had a backlog of books in my queue and haven't yet gotten around to John's. I see value in both Loftus' and Harrison's approaches, the former being directed at a more sophisticated, apologetics-oriented audience and the latter at more of a popular, uninitiated audience.
Without further ado, here's my review of Harrison's book:
Reading Harrison's book was like a breath of fresh air--courteous and accessible yet effective and to the point. I appreciate his ability to level the playing field of all religions by referring to the "gods" of each using the same terms: Jesus, Allah, Shiva and Zeus are all "gods" worshipped by people in various cultures. Though apologists and sophisticated believers would likely look down on his non-scholarly style, it's a book I could give to my Christian friends and family without having to worry about their ability to process the theological jargon common to many works of this nature.
That's the upside. The downside of treating all religions as equals in the same book is that for certain believers (I think of my Christian friends who are well-versed in apologetics), the meager attention given to biblical prophecies and the Resurrection of Jesus will give them reason to dismiss the book as uninformed about a number of important reasons for believing. For example, Harrison discounts fulfilled biblical prophecies by saying the fulfillments are found in the same book (i.e., the Bible) as the prophecies, implying that same authors wrote both. Now, like Harrison, I do not accept the supernatural nature of biblical prophecies. However, it should be acknowledged that the Bible is not one but many books written over a period of many centuries. All scholars recognize that the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament were written centuries before Jesus' birth, so these prophecies cannot be dismissed using Harrison's approach. It's more likely that the New Testament authors invented details (or passed on details that developed through oral tradition) that made the events of Jesus' life appear to fulfill certain prophecies of the Old Testament.
Left out altogether was any mention of the events surrounding Jesus' Resurrection that convince millions of faithful Christians that something supernatural happened on Easter Sunday morning. This is a cornerstone of Christian apologetics for authors like William Lane Craig, N. T. Wright, and Frank Morrison. I understand it was probably left out because the book attempts to address all religions equally, but this omission will be perceived as a major oversight by many Christian readers.
One of the most powerful of Guy's arguments is his exposition of the well-documented inverse relationship between religiosity and societal health (measured by homicide rates, number of abortions, quality of healthcare, and prosperity) throughout the world. This revelation must be profoundly unsettling for believers who are convinced that the god of their religion is the wellspring of virtue. On the basis of my discussion with believers, the moral argument is appealed to perhaps more than any other to support religion. If this is taken away, it represents a major setback to the legitimacy of religious belief. Unfortunately many believers will respond, "Well, if you look at people who believe and practice their faith just like I do (e.g., those who read the Bible and pray daily with their family), you will find that divorce and crime rates are much lower than average for the population at large. Others may say they're Christians, but their failure to practice it like I do means they cannot be thrown into the same statistical pot as true believers." Much could be said to counter this sort of special pleading, but it's simply hard to pin down anyone with arguments like these. We can always hope that some proportion of Harrison's thoughtful religious readers will take his engaging arguments to heart without persistently exempting themselves from their force.
Don't let my small criticisms of the book discourage you from reading it. It deserves to be read by every believer of every stripe. It will serve as a gentle "jolt" to everyone who believes their religion is special.
I think I've come up with a weighted ranking scale heuristic for scoring the plausibility of claims derived from government, business and theoretical criteria and I'd like to put it out here for critique. This weighted ranking scale could be used for the bible, literature, science, history, news articles etc... and we could compare them.
I suspect that the score for a history text book would be much higher than the bible, the average historical fiction would be somewhat higher, and your average folklore tale would be about the same as the bible.
here's how it goes.
the number by the metric is its relative value.
0. an unsupported claim.
1. a claim has witness testimony
2. a claim that has a verifiable precedent
2. a claim has support of physical evidence
2. a claim that can be reproduced
for example lets take the simple claim that
"Yesterday, the ice in Jans drink melted before she finished it"
- I have seen this happen
- I can put ice in a drink and let it set till it all melts, therefore it has a verifiable precedent, it has support of physical evidence, and it can be reproduced.
So it gets a score of 7.
Now lets take the claim
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."
- I have not seen this happen
- there is no physical evidence that this happened.
- There is no evidence that this has ever been reproduced
- there is a witness
therefore it gets a score of 1.
Therefore the more plausible claim of these two is that Jans Ice Melted.
Here are some more examples to test the heuristic with thanks to Jeff Carter over in the comments section at Exploring Our Matrix.
1. Mary loves me
2. John is thinking of the theory of relativity
3. James is happy or sad or afraid
4. David has faith in me
5. Greg wants to go to the store
"1. Mary loves me"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....
1. are there witnesses?
yes 2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
people have reported feelings of love, I have experienced love and people that love each other, yes 2. a claim has support of physical evidence? Love's all in the brain: fMRI study shows strong, lateralized reward, not sex, drive, maybe some other outward signs, rapid heartbeat, flushing skin, fast breathing, yes 2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
does it happen to her again? yes
I give it a 7
"2. John is thinking of the theory of relativity"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....
1. are there witnesses?
maybe not 2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
someone thought up the theory of relativity, yes 2. a claim has support of physical evidence?
when asked to explain it, he does, yes 2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
when asked to explain it again, he does, yes
I give it a 6
"3. James is happy or sad or afraid"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....
"4. David has faith in me"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....
1. are there witnesses?
have people observed that his behavior is consistent with having faith in you? yes 2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
self-evident, yes 2. a claim has support of physical evidence?
if there are outward signs, when asked he says yes, so yes 2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
the behavior is independently verified on some other occasion, yes
I give it a 7
"5. Greg wants to go to the store"
assuming the claim has a one to one relationship to a real world event ....
1. are there witnesses?
maybe not 2. a claim has a verifiable precedent?
self-evident, "the store" implies that the identity of the store is understood further implying that Greg has been there before, and also other people want to go to the store otherwise the store would be unsustainable, so yes 2. a claim has support of physical evidence?
if there are outward signs, when asked he says yes, so yes 2. is it a claim that can be reproduced?
the behavior is independently verified on some other occasion, yes
I give it a 6, stipulating that the data recorder does not count as a witness
I think the real stickler here, would be quality of evidence. I think a quality heuristic for evidence is needed and possibly exists.
In any case, plausibility is not certainty, and since sometimes decisions need to be made using plausibility as a consideration (for example legislation related to womens rights, civil rights, Invitro fertilization, cloning, homosexuality, stem cell research, abortion, participating in war, etc) a plausibility ranking would come in handy.
There is a population of people in all cultures throughout history who hear voices that aren't there and see things that don't exist to other people. Modern American society labels these beliefs the product of a mental illness and it is given several different names. Most patients with severe, persisting delusions are schizophrenic, a disorder that can be treated with medication, but at the moment is incurable. One of the most common types of delusions seen in schizophrenics is that of religious figures appearing to them or speaking to them.
A study done in 2002 in the UK compared patients who had religious delusions with those who did not have religious themes as part of their delusion. I'll get to the findings in a bit but first, a bit about schizophrenic delusions.
Patients with schizophrenia can be very convincing. Most people who work with the mentally ill have at one time or another had a twinge of concern that perhaps the person they were evaluating might really be being persecuted. They have extremely good logical skills and can generally answer any objection to their overarching theory with a detailed explanation of why they are correct.
For example, some people imagine that celebrities are secretly in love with them. Some people imagine that various government agencies have listening devices located in unusual places and are closely monitoring their activities. Some people believe that the people around them are being replaced with impostors. Still others believer that angels and devils appear to them. Some even have Jesus or the angel Gabriel appear to them.
Now I want to be clear here. If someone you know is seeing Jesus appear to them, please get them to see a mental health professional as soon as possible. There is almost no chance Jesus is actually appearing to them, regardless of what they tell you, and there is a very high chance they are severely mentally ill and in need of medication and therapy.
What's worse, in the study done in the UK, the patients with religious delusions had much worse overall pathology and were harder to treat.
Now -- the hard part for me to understand is this. From my point of view, the present is the key to the past. It is likely that processes that are going on now on earth are the same ones as have taken place for the bulk of our history as a species, especially as it concerns mental functioning.
So if someone today has Jesus appear to him, we don't listen to what he says Jesus told him. We get him to a psychiatrist and medicate him. Rarely, we don't, and the results are usually quite predictable.
So it is odd, given the facts that we have today, that Christians find the appearances of Jesus to Paul to be evidence of God acting in history, yet they don't find the same analogous actions occurring today to be the same phenomenon. Surely Christians believe that Jesus, being omnipotent, could appear should he choose to. In fact, most believe he will appear at some time in the near future.
So I ask again to all my Christian friends:
Let me know what you would think if three of your friends came to tell you about one of them having an appearance from Jesus, and two of them seeing a light and hearing a voice. Assume Jesus instructed your friend he appeared to that all Christians should run daily marathons and become vegans.
Is this something you would consider authoritative? If not, why not, and by what method do you differentiate between ancient appearances, for which we only have textual evidence and modern appearances, for which we have live witnesses whom we can interrogate to determine the veracity of their claim?
I've been defending the idea that historical studies are a slender reed to hang a faith like Christianity on. McGrath shows us what this means when it comes to the burial of Jesus in his new book The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith. From what he wrote on his blog here, and then again here, I think there would be much I can agree with him about.
The following is a continuation of a review I started here about John F. Haught’s new book, God and the New Atheism. If you want to read something more about his views on religion Dr. Haught just recently wrote on the question, Is religion the root of all evil?, for the Secular Philosophy Blog, which, when it comes to his definition of religion I’ll get to that in a later post. [What I wrote in answer to that same question will be posted there next week].
In his “Introduction” Haught previously mentioned two "new" aspects to the new atheism: 1) “Faith in God is the cause of innumerable evils and should be rejected on moral grounds;” and 2) “Morality does not require belief in God, and people behave better without faith than with it.” (p. xiv) Whether these things are indeed "new" to atheists I very much doubt. Nonetheless in chapter one (pp. 1-14) he discusses the first "new" aspect of the new atheism.
Haught outlines the views of the new atheists with regard to faith. Their argument is based on “four evident truths.” The first one is that “many people in the world are living needlessly miserable lives.” The second is that “the cause of so much unnecessary distress is faith, particularly in the form of belief in God.” Faith for Harris, as but one example, is “belief without evidence” (The End of Faith, pp. 58-73, 85). Third, “the way to avoid unnecessary human suffering today is to abolish faith from the face of the earth.” And the fourth is that “the way to eliminate faith, and hence to get rid of suffering, is to follow the hallowed path of the scientific method.”
As a theologian and philosopher of science, Dr. Haught effectively dismantles what I consider to be a few naïve understandings of the new atheists regarding faith and the scientific method. It’s a common mistake that applied and theoretical scientists unaccustomed to understanding the philosophy of science make. Is faith a belief without evidence? No. Do scientists come to their conclusions based solely on the evidence? No.
I don’t want to be too harsh on the new atheists, since I truly appreciate the impact they have had in raising the level of awareness for skeptics, but Haught is correct here, if in fact that's what they think. Anyone who has seriously looked into the philosophy of science and read Thomas Kuhn, Michael Polanyi, Ian Barbour, Frederick Suppe, Paul Feyerabend, and even Karl Popper knows that science is not completely objective, that facts are theory laden, and that certainty as a goal is impossible to achieve, which leaves room for faith. Popper, for instance, talked of science progressing by “conjectures and guesses.” Feyerabend even argued that there is no such thing as the scientific method! Scientists themselves are people with passions, prior commitments, and/or control beliefs. In fact, there are many beliefs we have for which we have no evidence, as Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga has argued--such things as I’m not dreaming right now, that I've existed for longer than 24 hours, that I am not merely a brain in a mad scientist's vat which is being caused to remember the events of today in the year 2030, or that we're not all living in something depicted by the movie the Matrix.
Haught argues that “there is no way, without circular thinking, to set up a scientific experiment to demonstrate that every true proposition must be based in empirical evidence rather than faith. The censuring of every instance of faith, in the narrow new atheist sense of the term (i.e. according to Haught as an "intellectual and propositional sense," rather than a "vulnerable heart"), would have to include the supposition of scientism also." Why? Because Haught argues, faith "is essential to ground the work of science itself.” (p. 11).
Here is where I think Haught is confused. Evidence stands in a dialectic tension with the faith of the scientist in that the scientist’s faith directs his conjectures and guesses, and in turn the evidence corrects these guesses by refuting ill informed ones. Faith and evidence stand in a dialectic tension with each other in this manner. So it would be completely non-scientific of Haught to say that the faith of a scientist should ever take precedence over the evidence itself. The faith of the scientist is one that should never be against the evidence, and THAT is surely what the new atheists are arguing for, irrespective of whether they have ever studied the philosophy of science or not! And the faith of a scientist (qua scientist) does not, and should not be, as Haught describes faith, "a commitment of one's whole being to God." (p. 5) Rather, it's a faith that believes a certain experiment will produce fruitful results prior to doing the experiment, or that spending a great deal of time trying to solve an equation will be worth the effort, or at a more fundamental level that his senses adequately reflect the world. The claim of the new atheists is that the evidence does not support the faith of a believer in God, and they are right. Haught disagrees, but how does he propose to show them they are wrong apart from the evidence?
Haught merely claims there is no way without circular reasoning to establish that every true proposition must be based in empirical evidence. His argument is that if this is the case it leaves room for faith, since science cannot be proved based upon a scientific experiment. So what? What method does he propose to investigate our experience in this world other than science and the evidence? Mysticism? Intuition? What kind of methods are those? And how would someone go about establishing them as methods without reasoning in a circle? What is the exact content to these methods since those who adhere to them come away with different and mutually contradictory understandings of their experiences?
I have argued at length in my book on behalf of methodological naturalism, which was first suggested by the ancient Greek philosopher/scientist Thales. He proposed a natural answer to the question of "what is the source of all things?" Thales claimed the source of all things was water. The method he used in coming to this conclusion eschewed references to the gods and goddesses of his day and merely looked for a natural answer to the question. This method is the one that has been the most fruitful in history, bar none. That method is all we have. So it’s reasonable to think as Barbara Forrest has argued, that since this method has worked so well that philosophical (or ontological) naturalism is a reasonable conclusion to come to, even if we cannot prove such a conclusion by a scientific experiment itself!
So while Haught is right about a few things, he’s dead wrong about other more important things.
Accuracy is verifiable, quantifiable and measurable.
How much inaccuracy are you willing to invest in? 0%? 10%? 25%? 50%? How accurate do you want your road map? How accurate do you want your Scripture? All Christian Arguments can be reduced to the dependence on the presumption that the Bible is accurate to some degree. Accuracy is verifiable, quantifiable and measurable.
A Map is a model of the real world.
It is made to represent the world to some degree of accuracy decided upon before it was ever made. We can make value judgments about the map using whatever criteria are important to us. One criteria that should be important (because it is the purpose for the map) is how accurate it represents whatever it is that it is supposed to represent.
If we have to go somewhere and we are uncertain about how to get there, we can use a map. A map eliminates uncertainty to a degree because it represents a model of the world that we can use for planning. It gives us the ability to make choices and decisions that not only translate into success, but how comfortable it is to get there. We can see where the towns are in relation to one another, make rough guesses about the best route at a glance, make decisions about time and resources based on what resources are found along the path, we can make value judgments about those resources ahead of time. All in all it gives us the ability to form a strategy for the trip that probably has a high degree of likelihood for success. So a successful outcome for the trip really does reduce to the degree of accuracy of how well the map models the real world, and to what degree we are willing to tolerate and overcome whatever inaccuracies there are in the map.
The Bible is like a map.
Jesus describes himself as "the way" and goes on to further describe himself as a kind of "Model" to show what God is like.
John 14:6-11
6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
7 "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him."
8 Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us."
9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
10 "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works.
11 "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.
Jesus confirmed the Old Testament was the word of God by referring to it as such and referring back it frequently.
- Matthew 1-1:21, judgment of Tyre and Sidon
- Matthew 5:18, validates scripture
- Matthew 12:3, verifies Davids actions
- Matthew 12:39ff, verifies Jonah and the whale
- Matthew 15:3, validates scripture
- Matthew 15:6, validates scripture
- Matthew 15:7-9 He refers to the first part of Isaiah's work (Isaiah 6:9), verifies only one Isaiah
- Matthew 19:1-6, verifes Adam and Eve
- Matthew 19:8, 9, Moses wrote the Pentateuch
- Matthew 21:16, validates scripture by citing Psalm 8:2
- Matthew 22:31, validates scripture
- Matthew 24:15, verifies Daniel was a prophet
- Matthew 24:37, verifes Noah and the Global Flood
- Luke 4:17-21, He cites Isaiah 61:1, 2, verifies only one Isaiah
- Luke 11:51, the murder of Abel by his brother Cain
- Luke 17:29, 32, the destruction of Sodom and the death of Lot's wife
- Mark 12:26, calling Moses
- Mark 12:29-31, Moses wrote the Pentateuch
- John 6:31-51, manna in the wilderness
- John 7:19, Moses wrote the Pentateuch
- John 10:35, validates scripture
So how accurate should we expect the Word of God to be?
If we use a weighted raking we can get a rough idea. God is perfect, and man is not. So we can expect that man will be less accurate than God, but if God is helping man, then man should be more accurate that if he were working alone.
1. God is more accurate than man
2. Man is less accurate than God but more accurate with help from God
3. Man alone is less accurate
That should serve as a rough guideline and the first metric in an attempt to quantify the accuracy of the Bible.
Jesus intended us to use himself and, by extension, scripture as a model or a map for how to live our lives.
He intended it to reduce uncertainty about how to live a righteous life. Scripture was intended to eliminate uncertainty to a degree because it represents a model of the world that can be used for planning. It was intended to give us the ability to make choices and decisions that not only translate into success, but how comfortable it is to live with them. We can see where our goals are in relation to one another, make rough guesses about the best choices at a glance, make decisions about how to spend our time and resources based on what resources are found around us, we can make value judgments about those resources ahead of time. All in all it gives us the ability to form a strategy for our lives that probably has a high degree of likelihood for success. So a successful outcome for life really does reduce to the degree of accuracy of how well scripture models the real world, and to what degree we are willing to tolerate and overcome whatever inaccuracies there are in scripture.
Accuracy is verifiable, quantifiable and measurable.
How much inaccuracy are you willing to invest in? 0%? 10%? 25%? 50%? How accurate do you want your road map? How accurate do you want your Scripture? All Christian Arguments can be reduced to the dependence on the presumption that the Bible is accurate to some degree. Therefore, the probability of the likelihood that their conclusions are correct depend directly on the degree of accuracy of The Bible as a representation (or model) of events in the world past and present.
A serious thinker does not try to misrepresent the views of his opponents. If he does this on a regular basis, even if he seems to be intelligent, it will reveal him for what he is, a hack. That's what Paul Manata's latest post does. Here is my response...
Paul Manata tries to drive a wedge between my views about history and fellow Blogger and Biblical Scholar Dr. Hector Avolas, who has soundly refuted the arguments of the Triablogers on the Sargon Legendhere and again here.
Manata makes his point in these words:
What is Loftus’s attitude toward history?...What is the position of the book Avalos offers “praise” for, and the leader of the blog he signed up to be a part of regarding matters historical? Simply put, says Loftus, “Historical evidence is poor evidence” (Loftus, 181). Citing Bebbington he claims, “The historian’s history is molded by his values, his outlook, and his worldview. It is never the evidence alone that dictates what was written” (Loftus, 183). He doesn’t “see any problem in claiming that there is room for doubting many if not most historical claims…” (Loftus, 192, emphasis mine, he adds the qualifier “especially claims about the miraculous,” but that is irrelevant for my purposes here).
What should be understood from my chapter on history is that when it comes to establishing the Christian view of history with its claims about the miraculous, historical evidence is poor evidence when compared to personal experience or the findings of science or logic itself. So it is not irrelevant that I added the qualifier Manata dismisses so easily as "irrelevant" for his purposes. That's the whole context for my argument in that chapter. Manata should also understand that D.W. Bebbington, whom I quoted from, is defending a Christian view of history. He earned a Ph.D. from Cambridge and at the time of his book he was the professor of history at the University of Stirling in Scotland. His book was published by InterVarsity Press, a conservative Christian publishing house. So if Manata wants to take issue with me then let him take issue with Bebbington himself. In my book I repeatedly quote from Christian authors to show that these are not just my claims as an atheist. I repeatedly use Christian authors to establish my case in many areas.
Manata again:
So is all of the “massive historical evidence” Avalos brought to bear on us, “poor evidence?”
Yes, it's poor evidence if one wants to establish the Christian worldview, which is what he is not doing. Anyone who actually takes the time to read my whole chapter on the subject of history will see quite clearly that Manata misrepresented me. What I'm wondering is how his credibility will suffer because of what he wrote. I never said I couldn't come to reasonable conclusions about history. In fact I said I could. And while there is always the possibility I'm wrong about any conclusions I arrive at, it would be a slender reed for someone to hang his faith on, as I said. The very fact that historians dispute what happened in history proves my point, since no one can dispute scientific findings in the same way. And Manata has still given us no reason to accept his Christian view of history, as I argued in that chapter, since his view of history is not something that can be shown to be true via philosophy (who, for instance, would argue on behalf of the virgin birth of Jesus based on any philosophical reasoning?). To presuppose the Christian worldview, as Manata does, would mean to presuppose the conclusions of a massive amount of historical investigations, which, as I said, leave plenty of room for doubt. For instance, he must presuppose a certain view of the of the Trinity, a particular view of the Genesis accounts of creation, that the stories in the Bible were not borrowed to any significant degree by pagan sources, that the canonical books were correctly chosen, that the OT prophecies about Jesus were actually prophecies and that they refer to him alone, that Jesus was born of a virgin in Bethlehem, that he can make sense of the Incarnation, that he can make sense of the supposed atonement, that he can defend the historicity of the supposed bodily resurrection of Jesus, that he can defend the notion of the parousia he's adopted, that a proper understanding of the Bible leads him to Calvinism, and so forth. Any specific conclusion of which, if wrong, defeats his faith! Because the larger the claim is, the more likely that claim is false since more evidence is needed to support it.
Paul promised a reply to what I just wrote earlier today. I haven't seen him respond. Maybe he will. But I do not expect him to be honest with what I said. Shame really. It'll show him to be the hack that he really is. Not to be taken seriously.
Paul, if you want to be taken seriously then you must deal honestly about what someone like me writes. Anyone who reads my book will see that you have not done so. Can you? If you continue to misrepresent your opponents you will continue to lose credibility in the eyes of people who have actually read through my book. That's the bottom line. They will see that you are not being honest as a serious thinker. Now I understand you don't think I deserve any honesty, since you believe God may have created me for hell. But by not being honest about the arguments of another person it will reveal that you are not interested in the truth. Whether or not you are, cannot be seen by your readers. And unless you do, your arguments will not help those who read my book who are looking for good solid Christian responses to what I've written. In my book I try as best as I can NOT to misrepresent my intellectual opponents, and I would gladly accept any criticism from anyone who can show that I did. That's why I AM considered a serious thinker and you are not, even if you think I'm dead wrong.
That's me, according to Phil Johnson over at TeamPyro. He's decided that my rejection of Christianity is to be explained by calling me a liar. No time for any extended look at Phil's post here just now, and I'm not sure what there is to say in response to someone who dismisses all you say as lies, anyway. Here's the comment I left for Phil on his blog earlier. It's not likely to show up in the comment stream there.
Hey Phil,
If you have the courage of your convictions in saying what you do here, I encourage you hear from my friends and family, who remain devout Christians, about my commitment, and more importantly the "fruit" I was known by as a Christian. I'm happy to make it convenient for you to hear from them if you are willing to report back here what testimony you receive from them.
I totally understand that no evidence presented will prevent you from leaning farther the way you already incline -- away from anything that's problematic for your worldview; you can dismiss all that just as easily as lies on their part or a decades long conspiracy on my part to "walk the walk" just to... well, just because of demons I guess you might conclude.
In any case, I bet my wife, former pastors and others would be willing to spare a few minutes to share their understanding of my beliefs and commitments when I was a Christian, even as they might commiserate with you about my rejection of the faith; for them, having real world evidence to deal with -- a relationship with me over time in the real world -- it's not so neat and convenient as the position you've helped yourself to here.
I don't expect that to change your view, but I do think it would commit you to a more honest appraisal of the evidence, having to call me a liar over against the real experiences of those who know me best. I'm sure you can and will maintain your conclusion, because if your blog shows anything about you, it's that certitude and a priori conclusions are what's really divine to you.
But readers would have some background information to contrast your claims with. Even if they agree, they will have had more to work with in judging.
It's convenient to say "I'm too busy" to have a phone call that takes a fraction of the time it took to write your post. It's tempting, I'm sure, to just assume that anyone around me is also under my amazing powers of deception, and therefore of little value in understanding what background is here. But I'm offering, all the same, just because getting an honest view of the situation, any situation, is a good ingredient in making judgments. It's a hassle for me, too, to set that up, especially given the futility it represents in changing anything for you. But I'm willing, just in the interests of doing better than just carving the reality out we like best with our keyboards, and offering soothing and self-medicating rationalizations for our readers.
Let me know if you want to take me up on the offer, and I will put you in contact with people who can speak to the evidence and experience they have of me as a committed, engaged, fruit-bearing Christian. An honest look at the reports of those who know me best won't fit nicely into your narrative here, I anticipate, but that's the thing with being honest: sometimes the pieces don't fit as neatly as you'd like, and sometimes it leads to dissonance, contradiction, and yes, bane of all things Pyro, uncertainty.
-TS
If Phil wants to look honestly at the subject he's addressing, I'm willing to support some further analysis. Does his claim fit with the views of my family, friends, and colleagues, that I'm a liar or a generaly dishonest person? I'm all for looking at the evidence, evidence which should support Phil's allegations if they are true, right? As above, once Phil's convinced of a conspiracy theory, there's no talking him out of it, as the talking just becomes part of the conspiracy in his view. But just for the record, if Phil wants to make personal contact with the people who've known me best, I'm fine with that -- let the evidence show what it shows.
In any case, in the words of a friend who emailed to alert me to Phil's post this morning: "you should have seen this coming... this is what they do."
Fine.
If the retort is nothing more than just to dismiss everything I've said as a lie, and focus on discrediting me and my integrity personally, that's just more evidence against Phil's brand of Christianity as a credible, defensible set of ideas. When you have to resort to dismissing your critics and ideological opponents as liars who can't be even given credit for meaning what they say, there's not much poorer you can get in terms of argument and apology.
